Ill Will

by Cate Corvin

  “No, that’s west of us. But the veil between Earth and Hell might still be thin here. I should’ve left Selena upstairs.” He huffed and followed her.

  I glanced up at Sura. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing straight up. “Think they’re gone?”

  In the darkness, he was almost frightening, big enough to steamroll anyone, with a face like a marble statue, hard and cold. His entire body was strained. “I know they’re not. We should go back.”

  I didn’t argue with his definite tone. There was something here with us, hiding behind that too-sweet smell. Nerves churned in my stomach like stones. “You think Will would listen?”

  There was something in Sura’s dark eyes that set me on edge. “No.”

  We followed Will and Selena, catching up near another door that led into an access tunnel. They didn’t notice us approaching, caught in their own private argument. “You don’t care what she does!” Selena was saying, her lips drawn back over her teeth. “You’ve known her for three months, and me for three years! Who do you trust more?”

  “It’s not about who I trust more.” Will’s eyes burned pale in the flashlight beams. “I trusted her to accompany us down. This isn’t about playing favorites.”

  “You just didn’t want to let her miss out on any glory,” Selena spat at him. “You think I didn’t notice you eye-fucking your own sister in the pixie club? Apolline’s gonna be sick she ever touched you when I tell her.”

  “Tell her whatever you want. Tori’s not my sister. She’s an unwanted bonus that came with my stepmom, nothing more. And right now, you’re the one who’s out of line. Professional, my ass.”

  I’d be lying if I said that didn’t hurt, even though I’d already come to terms with Will’s dislike towards me.

  But far more important was why they were arguing, their voices growing louder, when we were supposed to be on a recon mission.

  I started to snap, ready to hiss at Will and Selena to be quiet or get back, but a sudden burst of hostility rose in me as soon as I made eye contact, and my mouth took off on its own. “Who gives a shit who you trust? I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, Will, and you’re a first-class twat, Selena. Neither of you are professionals.”

  That wasn’t what I meant to say at all, but I gripped my dagger in tight fingers, already planning to step forward and make the smooth motion to slam it home between Selena’s ribs.

  I froze in place, the problem connecting in my brain just as Selena turned on her heel and strode through the door, scowling at Will.

  There was a demon nearby, sowing and feeding on our discord. “Selena, no-!”

  She stilled in mid-step, liquid pattering around her, and it took my brain a second to catch up to my eyes. Several thick, black needles were sticking straight through her neck, holding her in midair. They sawed outwards, bringing forth a gush of scarlet.

  Her body crumpled, landing in her own blood with a smack.

  Will lunged through the door, flying over Selena’s body and slicing through the organic appendages at the roots. The Berith imp, a tall, thin creature with wet, inky skin, screamed and threw itself aside, but Will moved like lightning, jerking his dagger up through its guts and dumping holy water over its head when it keeled over.

  When the clouds of acrid smoke boiling from its skin had dissipated, the Berith imp lay curled next to Selena, slowly dissolving into dark ichor. The needles that had pierced Selena’s neck, the demon’s fingers, had already dissolved.

  Will took a deep breath. “A Berith imp. Sower of discord and murder.” His pale eyes flashed up to me and Sura. “How long until we’d turned on each other?”

  “About five seconds,” I said grimly. The Berith’s proximity had brought all my irrational, seething hatred boiling to the surface. If I hadn’t realized what it was in time, I knew I would’ve killed Selena myself, driven by demonic urging. That’s how demons operated; they slid into your head from a distance, convincing you bow to your most twisted desires and baser impulses. “We should go back. She’s dead, Will.”

  “I know she’s dead!” He visibly choked back more words, his eyes wide. “I know.”

  Will’s fists were clenched at his sides. He’d just earned his first slayer mark, and had his girlfriend murdered in front of him. I found myself wavering, unsure of whether to comfort him or stay focused on the assignment.

  Before I could make up my mind, he picked up his flashlight, clicked it back on, and let out a long breath. “We’re finishing this. We need something to bring back to Ermengol besides Feldt’s body.”

  “And if we run into more Berith imps?” I wiped my sweaty palm on my pants. “We’re obviously not immune to their influence.”

  Even as I spoke, I found myself following Will. He was right: we had to finish this. Something was calling, and I couldn’t ignore it.

  “Bad choice, Will,” Sura murmured, but he seemed strangely complacent about the decision, like he already knew what we were going to decide and had already accepted it.

  Will stepped over the slowly spreading pool of Selena’s blood. “Go up if you want, Sura. I’ll find my way back, after I’ve seen what’s down here. Come with me, Tori.”

  A fine sheen of sweat glimmered on his face, and his lips were set, but there was a strange glint in his eyes. Rational Tori railed against the decision to go down, knowing we were open to demonic influence… but wouldn’t it be better if we had concrete evidence? There was something here, I just knew it, and if we could look at it with our own eyes and see, everything would be clear.

  “I’m coming.” I walked past Selena, and Sura followed.

  We didn’t encounter any more Berith imps, but my muscles were growing loose and languid, and the scent of burnt caramel was richer now, overlaid with the sweetness of honey, the rich musk of skin… I took a deep breath, tasting the scent like a flavor. Oddly, it no longer smelled like caramel or honey at all, but like masculine skin and sweat, the taste of hungry lips and leather.

  I licked my lips, the sensation of Will’s tongue on mine tingling like it had just happened, my neck prickling where Sura had kissed me.

  I knew it wasn’t the time to be thinking about that at all, but common sense seemed far away and unimportant.

  The access tunnel gave way to a massive storage room where the dust on the floor had been cleared in strange patterns, like several heavy somethings had been dragged through here.

  A massive summoning pentacle had been painted on the floor, the black paint shimmering under the light of massive taper candles that had burned down into rolling pools of wax. Several offering bowls, still full of their bloody contents, decorated the pentacle next to a cracked human skull, and the marks in the dust led towards the pentacle. Or away from it.

  “They completed the ritual,” I breathed. It was hot in here, almost as sticky as the pixie club. I took a deep breath and tasted caramel and smooth skin. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to shrug off my jacket.

  “Prince Sitri is here,” Sura said. The tiny candle flames were reflected in his black eyes, and when I swung my gaze back to Will, I could’ve sworn I saw the faintest sheen of midnight iridescence on Sura’s skin. When I looked again, it was gone.

  “Where’s the conjurer?” Will stripped off his jacket, loosened his tie, and yanked it over his head. What an excellent idea. I followed suit, unbuttoning the top button of my shirt, and his eyes landed on the motion.

  “Who knows? Help me out?” A slow grin spread across my lips, and my stepbrother didn’t hesitate, closing the short distance between us.

  “The Prince is here now.” Sura’s voice was strained and low, lost under the sickening thump of my heartbeat and Will’s shallow breaths. “You might want to stop.”

  I yanked open Will’s shirt, revealing the chiseled slopes and valleys of his chest and stomach, dark gold from a summer in the sun. I didn’t want to stop, not in the slightest. Every fiber in my body was pulsing, reassuring me that this was th
e right thing to do, the only thing to do.

  “Don’t ruin their good time, Sura.” A new voice, dark, masculine, heavy with indolence and approval, filled the room like thunder.

  Whoever owned that smoky, sultry voice was right. We were having a good time- hell, make that a great time.

  Will opened my shirt one button at a time, running his fingers over the swell of my breasts, and I finally lost patience. I gripped his open collar and pulled him down, his lips crashing into mine painfully, but the taste of blood and the sting of my split lip made it better, somehow even more real.

  He sucked my lower lip between his teeth with a groan, and my fingers started fumbling at his belt buckle like I’d lost all control.

  The fact that he was my stepbrother and hated me didn’t matter at all anymore. Will yanked the rest of my shirt off and tossed it to the ground, revealing my lacy burgundy bra, the clan necklace, the Star of Protection on my hip.

  “Sura, come here.” I sounded raspy and languid, nothing at all like myself, but I couldn’t look at him while Will had his hands tangled in my hair, holding my head back to kiss his way down my neck to my breasts. “Come join us.”

  Will pulled the cup of the bra down and caught a pebbled nipple between his teeth, grazing my sensitive skin sharply enough to send a shiver through my whole body. My hands slid around the back of his neck, and he released my hair.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist when he picked me up, gripping me under my thighs. He sucked my nipple harder, swirled his tongue around the tender flesh, and I moaned out loud, tormented by the feel of his thick cock throbbing against me.

  Will’s growl reverberated against my skin, sending a jolt of pleasure straight to my pussy. I needed these strangling clothes off before I lost my mind.

  “Sura, please,” I gasped, but he wasn’t with us.

  He stood at the edge of the circle, looking up at an impossibly tall man, the most unearthly beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Humanity had never seen such perfection- we weren’t even capable of dreaming it.

  The man’s hair hung to his waist like a sheet of beaten gold, eyes the color of the deep ocean staring at us through a fringe of dark lashes. He shimmered, like he stood in a haze of heat, and the massive golden ram’s horns curling around his head glimmered like stars.

  “Why don’t you join them?” the beautiful man asked, turning that blue-fire gaze on Sura. He was the owner of the smoky, lazy voice.

  Will’s fingers tightened, dimpling my thighs, and he pushed against me. The pressure against my clit was almost too much to bear.

  “Prince Sitri, I abjure you to leave.” As huge as he was, Sura only reached the demon’s chest. The knowledge was a punch to the gut- that was Prince Sitri, in the flesh, right in front of us- then Will strode forward and my back collided with a wall, and his fingers finding my belt drove all thought from my mind.

  “I need you, Tori,” Will rasped. “I’ve needed you so bad-” He pushed against me and I raked my nails over his chest, leaving red lines behind.

  Sura watched us, an expression almost like pain on his face, mixed with a strange sort of ecstasy. I crooked my finger, writhing against Will as his fingers slipped under the waistband of my jeans and delved between my wet folds. When he stroked my clit, panting against my neck, my nerves lit up like fireworks.

  “Nothing makes such a good midnight snack like repressed desire.” The demonic Prince sucked his lip between his teeth, watching us hungrily, but somehow it felt right for him to witness this. I knew in my bones that he was the architect of desire, drawing it out into the light where there was no shame.

  Sura was panting too, his hard cock limned against his leg, but he turned his head back to Sitri with an effort, the tendons standing out on his neck.

  “Not here. I abjure you to leave,” he snarled, and Sitri grinned just before Sura muttered something else and brought his foot down on the human summoning skull, crushing it to powder.

  Prince Sitri vanished with a rumbling laugh, along with the heavy hum of pressure in the air. It felt like the room itself had popped, and all that was left was cold air on my prickled skin and the scent of damp and dust.

  Will froze over me, his fingertips still pressed against my clit, cock straining against me. My bra straps were down over my arms, revealing the hard pink tips of my breasts, and we stared into each other’s eyes for a long, painful moment.

  He yanked his hand out of my pants and released me. I dropped to the ground like a brick, scraping my back on the rough wall all the way down, but barely felt the sting over the tidal wave of hot shame and anger.

  We’d known there was a greater demon, and we’d walked right into it like idiots, letting Sitri’s influence wind around us like snakes. So stupid, so fucking stupid- and it could’ve been worse, a Prince of Hell with a far more sinister agenda than Sitri’s desire to force humans to fuck.

  I yanked my bra straps back up over my shoulders and scrambled for my shirt, almost buttoning it wrong in my haste. “How’d you resist him?” I asked Sura, still breathless from the after-effects of Sitri’s presence.

  He was breathing heavily too, but his eyes were glittering, skin flushed dark bronze. He looked strangely vibrant against the remains of the boiler room. “I barely managed it. I think he was too caught up with you two to notice me.”

  Will buttoned his shirt in silence, his skin pale and face rigid.

  “I think our conjurer is dead,” Sura continued, nudging one of the offering dishes with his foot. “There’s blood here.”

  “Idiot probably ended up in Sitri’s little slice of Hell,” Will finally said. “I’m not wasting time looking for him. Let’s get Feldt and head up.”

  Sura grabbed my jacket from the floor and dusted it off before handing it to me with a flourish. “For you, O Beautiful One.”

  I took it, feeling cold inside. “You’re awfully jazzed up.”

  “We just met a greater demon in the flesh and survived. What isn’t there to be jazzed about?”

  He had a point, besides our dead teammate and the fact that I would’ve screwed my stepbrother’s brains out if Sura hadn’t broken the circle.

  Deep, deep down, in a small dark corner of myself that I refused to inspect, I wished he hadn’t broken it in time.

  Will didn’t say another word until we found Selena’s body. He picked her up, carefully lifting her under her neck and thighs, uncaring of the blood soaking through his clothes. We retraced our steps to the surface.

  The sun was going down on the Sugarworks when we left. The limo was at the curb outside the sagging fence, right where we’d left it, along with Apolline and Pheric.

  Apolline went white as a sheet when she saw Selena, the hanging blonde ponytail almost black with blood.

  “What happened, Will?” she gasped, but he just shot her a death glare.

  “Get in the fucking taxi and shut the fuck up,” he growled.

  She stared at us for a moment, then yanked one of the doors open. Will eased Selena in, laying her across the seat and cradling her head in his lap.

  It was a long, silent ride home.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ________

  SURA

  Headmaster Burns, Knightley, Ermengol, and the Dread Mothers stared at us from across the headmaster’s desk. For the first time in over a year, a trickle of nervous sweat ran between my shoulder blades. If they’d figured it out, it was game over for me. It was death by drowning in a bath of holy water, a blessed iron blade right through the heart.

  Half-formed plans flickered through my head. Kill them all- but I couldn’t raise a finger to hurt Will, and the idea of hurting Victoria the Beautiful was repugnant. Kill them all and take Will and Tori to Hell with me- but they’d fight to their last breath.

  Escape back to Sitri’s Court alone and spend the next millennia trying to forget them.

  As Knightley opened his mouth to speak, I knew the last one was my only option if the jig was up.

  Will’
s muscles tightened, and I felt his anxiety and irritation like they were my own emotions. After three years of entangling myself deeper into his life, his family, his deepest hopes and fears and needs, the Cords of Fate had slowly wound around us. I hadn’t paid attention until it was too late.

  I was still very young. For a demon, anyway. Two hundred years was just a sneeze on Sitri’s time scale.

  “But the Prince just let you go without marking you,” Knightley repeated. He seemed to have difficulty with that particular aspect of the evening’s events.

  “Yes,” Tori said flatly.

  Of course Sitri just let them go. Will and Tori’s repressed lust for each other, and the anger it caused them, was far more amusing to the Prince than keeping them in Hell. He knew what digging your own grave looked like; he just provided the tools.

  Will and Tori refused to look at each other. Their emotions rippled through me: Will’s were stronger, his physiological reactions mirrored in my own body when he was feeling a particularly strong surge, but the closer I got to Tori, the clearer hers became.

  My heart was pounding in my throat with their anxiety. Tori’s shame burned in my face and Will’s unfulfilled lust sent a jolt of desire straight to my cock, while his mortification made my lungs feel hollow.

  “I crushed the skull before he took it too far,” I interrupted, and went temporarily light-headed with their combined gratitude. “I was closest to the circle.”

  Ermengol’s eyes were too sharp. Sometimes they lingered on me in a way that made me more than a little nervous, wondering if I should expect to wake up to an iron dagger in my chest. “Why weren’t you afflicted by the Prince’s presence, Mister Enver?”

  Sergio Enver, the face I’d worn for three years, wasn’t fazed by anything. I leaned back in my seat and gave her a cocky grin. “Because I chugged half a bottle of holy water on the way down and wore the biggest goddamn cross you ever saw-”

  “Do not take God’s name in vain in this room,” Headmaster Burns interrupted. “Crosses mean nothing to a greater demon.”