Psychic for Hire Series Box Set

by Hermione Stark

  “Don’t be stupid, baby,” she says. “It’s the same thing you’ve been enjoying these past few nights.”

  “A succubus’s kiss,” says Dr Carrington, sounding amused. “She fed on your life energy. Too much and she would have killed you. Don’t give her a reason to do it again. Do you understand?”

  Freddie nods miserably. He weakly gets to his feet, swaying a little. His bruised eyes look even darker now, as if the experience has worsened his injuries. He looks like he might drop at any moment. And yet he is staring at Lila with fascination, almost as if he wants her to do it again.

  “You took too much,” says Dr Carrington to Lila. “Take him back to the castle with you before he passes out. It’s best if he’s not been gone too long.”

  “We should get rid of him,” says Lila. “We can’t trust him.”

  “He’s ours now,” says Dr Carrington. “You’d better make sure he stays that way. He’s going to bring all his rich powerful pals onto our client list.”

  He is speaking about Freddie as if Freddie isn’t even there. And Freddie might as well not be. He is still staring at Lila like a lovesick dog. All the while I twist and pull at the ropes on my wrists, trying to work them loose enough to slip my hands free.

  “Come on then,” says Lila to Freddie impatiently.

  He follows her out of the cabin meekly.

  When they are gone, Dr Carrington turns back to face me. His eyes run over my body, assessing me, seeming to see right through my clothes.

  “You’re still a virgin?” he says. “A pity we have to waste it. If you hadn’t been so feisty I could have got top dollar for it.”

  I flush hot with anger. How dare he talk to me like that? It is none of his goddamn business.

  He crouches beside me, so that his eyes are at my level. “You really should have let Freddie break you in. You could have had fun with him.”

  My eyes must be spitting fire at him. Stupid man with his stupid wire glasses and his stupid ponytail. But he only smiles. “I’ve always had a soft spot for you, Diana. I even considered saving your first time for myself. Wouldn’t that have been sweet? But it’s far too dangerous to break in an angry untouched succubus.”

  I mumble against my gag, trying to tell him that I am not a succubus and that he can go to hell.

  “Back when you were a sweet young thing,” he says, “I was so fascinated by you that I allowed myself to be tempted into a mistake. But she was a poor substitute. I had to get rid of her.”

  I stare at him in disbelief.

  “Did you suspect?” he says, looking amused. “None of my other succubae has ever managed to get under my skin quite like you. Oh, they’ve tried. But it was you who made me understand what it is to be truly allured. That other girl looked so like you, but she was a poor shadow. Quite boring. And not worth all the media attention in the end.”

  I feel a prickle of horror run down my spine. He’s talking about the girl from my hometown who was hung from the tree. The girl who looked like me.

  He strokes a lock of my hair, and brings it to his nose and inhales a deep breath. “Her hair was almost exactly this shade. So long and lovely. I thought I would miss her when I left her up there, dangling. But she was just an ordinary human girl. Not special like you.”

  His finger trails over my lips as if he just can’t help himself. “Did you know that untrained succubae frequently kill their first lovers? Even their beloved boyfriends? Often completely without meaning to, those poor, heartbroken girls. Their Hunger usually comes to life the first time they have sex and they simply cannot stop themselves.”

  I shudder in revulsion, and twist my head away from his touch.

  “What they really need,” he continues, “is a man like me to teach them the way. And that’s what I’ve been doing. Saving them from themselves. Imagine all the lives that I’ve saved by taking girls like you off the streets.”

  Creep, spits out the little voice.

  He sees the defiance in my eyes. Suddenly he clenches my jaw between his thumb and fingers. “This is all your own fault,” he says. “I would have arranged something better for you, but you really wouldn’t play along.”

  I shake my head defiantly, but he holds on. If only I could maneuver myself so that I could kick him, perhaps even knock him out, but he is by my head.

  Safely out of the reach of your legs, the little voice says, as if I didn’t already know it.

  “You’ve put me through far too much inconvenience already,” he says. “If I had known that letter contained a flight ticket I would never have given it to your aunt. The fact that other people were writing to you was only supposed to scare her into handing you over to me. But I could tell the lying bitch had no intention of doing that, so I had to deal with her.”

  “Murderer!” I yell. The gag muffles it but he knows what I have said.

  “She was going to make far too much trouble for me.”

  “You’re DCK. Evil!” I yell. It is muffled, but he understands.

  He laughs at it. “Enough now. You’ll soon be able to get all that anger out of your system. Distressed untrained succubae are almost guaranteed to kill during sex. So I’ve arranged for two of your old friends to come and pay you a visit.”

  I roll away from him, and thrash and writhe until I am sitting upright on the bed against the headboard. My arms are still tied behind my back, and a few more buttons have popped open on my blouse. I curl my knees up to my chest to cover myself. He watches me, but he makes no move to touch me.

  “They should be here any minute now,” he says. “The sooner it’s done the sooner I can take you home. Let’s hope your Hunger doesn’t kick in too soon, hmm? It’ll give them enough time to beat the willfulness out of you.”

  When I make a sound of outrage and fury, he only smiles. “Don’t fret, my dear. You’ll be doing me a favor. Those two seem hell-bent on finding you, so I need to get rid of them both anyway.”

  My heart starts racing for a different reason. They’re trying to find me? He can’t mean Storm, can he? Storm and Remi? It makes no sense for them to come unless he has lured them here to kill them. But he doesn’t know that I’ve warned them. They won’t come unarmed.

  Dr Carrington’s eyes flick around the dirty small cabin in disgust. “I usually arrange nicer accommodation for my girls, but you haven’t earned it yet. And anyway, if you’re going to kill those two idiots, you might as well do it here where we can dispose of their corpses easily.”

  “I won’t kill anyone,” I snarl through the gag.

  He laughs at that. “When you get angry your urges will take over. It’s like an inner beast comes out. I’ll make sure to lock them in with you so you can get the job done.”

  And then we hear wheels crunching on rough ground as a car pulls up outside.

  Dr Carrington looks pleased. “That’s them now.”

  Chapter 40

  DIANA

  Dr Carrington opens the door to let them in. Two men enter, and any tiny flicker of hope that I had of it being Storm and Remi dies out.

  Buck Colton walks into the room, followed closely by his brother Cody. They look angry and on edge, their fists curled up. Their gazes flick around the room warily. Buck sees me curled up on the bed, my ankles tied together and my mouth gagged, and a grim light comes into his eyes.

  He looks to Dr Carrington in surprise. “You really did find her.”

  Dr Carrington does not look particularly pleased to see Buck or Cody. “Remember the deal,” he says. “You can do whatever you want, but you can’t damage her in any lasting way. I don’t want any marks on her skin.”

  Buck’s eyes narrow. “You were being serious?”

  Dr Carrington nods.

  “The bitch killed our parents!” yells Cody. “If you think we’re going to let her off easy—”

  “Shut up, Cody,” says Buck. He is looking at Dr Carrington. “We’ll do what you want.”

  “You’d better make sure you do,” says Dr Carrington
. He taps his ear. “I’ll be listening.”

  Dr Carrington leaves. I hear him lock the door behind him. And then I hear the quiet clink of a chain and a padlock snapping shut, but Buck and Cody aren’t listening to it. They don’t know he’s locked us in. They are too busy staring at me, their faces a mixture of a sick desire to hurt me and disbelief at their luck.

  This is your opportunity, whispers the little voice. You can handle these idiots.

  “It’s a trap,” I try to tell them, but my voice only comes out a mumble.

  Buck sneers. “That’s what I should have done to you all these years. Tied you up and gagged you to shut you up. But I was nice, and look where it got me.”

  “We ain’t gonna go easy on her, are we Buck?” says Cody. “After what the bitch did to mom and pop?”

  Buck doesn’t reply. He comes to the bed to look down at me. Cody hangs back. It has always been like that. It was Buck who first whispered obscene things at me when his mom was out of earshot, Buck whose hands started to brush my ass when he’d walk by, who first slapped me for my backchat. And where Buck led, his brother soon followed.

  “We were supposed to have fun on our road trip,” Buck says quietly. “But you had to ruin it. You seized your chance as soon as we were gone, you evil bitch. Now you’re gonna pay.”

  I retreat as far into the corner of the bed as possible, but it is against the wall, and I have nowhere left to go. My eyes flick again and again to the cabin window, desperately motioning for Buck to look there and notice what I have seen. The cabin has two windows and both have shutters on the outside of them which are firmly closed. Both have bars too, running from top to bottom. Narrowly spaced metal bars like in a prison. Bars to stop any of us getting out.

  “It’s a trap,” I scream again at Buck. My gag mangles the words.

  Cody laughs. “Stupid bitch. We’re in the middle of a forest. We damn well nearly got lost finding our way here. No one around for miles. No one to hear you scream.”

  “I’m gonna hear you scream,” says Buck.

  He leans across to grab me and rips the duct tape off my mouth.

  Bite him! says the little voice.

  But I can’t do it. He will hurt me even more if I do.

  “It’s a trap,” I gasp instead.

  Buck slaps me so hard that my head whips around and hits the side of the bed post. He pulls me by my bound ankles, dragging me down until I am lying flat on the bed, his knee on my stomach. He grabs my hair to keep my head still and slaps me again. Then he back hands me on the other cheek. I taste blood in my mouth.

  “Stupid bitch,” he spits. “You thought you could run away? You thought we wouldn’t find you?”

  “It wasn’t me,” I cry out, my voice sounding more panicked than I wanted. “I never killed them. It was Dr Carrington!”

  “Liar.”

  He climbs on top, straddling me, his weight crushing my hands which are bound behind my back and not caring when I cry out in pain. He is heavy. The smell of stale sweat makes me want to gag. He begins licking my face all over, his cold fleshy lips and his wet tongue on me. His hands fondle my chest. I squirm and writhe underneath him, trying to evade his touch but there is nowhere for me to go.

  “Don’t you dare touch me!” I scream.

  He ignores me. His hands go lower down my body, yanking my skirt, groping me. It is a show of power. I am at his mercy. My wrists, trapped beneath me, feel like they are going to snap under his weight. My bound legs kick uselessly. My breath is going too fast. I am hyperventilating.

  “Please don’t do this, Buck,” I beg.

  The little voice said she would help me but there is only me here. There is no way for me to save myself. Some Angel of Death, I am. I almost screech hysterically at the irony.

  Think, Diana, think! Dr Carrington thought I was a succubus and that I could hurt Buck. Kill him. He thought my Hunger would surge to uncontrollable life. But I am not a succubus. I have no way to defend myself. Only Buck doesn’t know that.

  “I’m a succubus,” I shout. “You’d better stop or I’ll kill you.”

  He laughs. “Go on then.”

  “I swear I’ll do it!”

  He slaps me hard, and then leers at me, enjoying the helpless fury on my face. I scream as loud as I can. Not out of fear or anger but in the hope somebody outside is near enough to hear me.

  He laughs and twists my hair hard. “Scream again. I like it.”

  I scream and scream. I look towards the door. But only Cody is still standing there, his mouth slack, and breathing hard as he watches his brother.

  “Find a knife,” Buck tells him. “I want to get this rope off her ankles.”

  Cody obeys immediately. He strides to a table that is crammed with old tin cans and bottles and other rubbish. He picks through it, then sweeps it onto the floor. There must be no knife there. He goes to a cupboard by the wall and opens all the drawers, dumping their contents out, mostly old clothing.

  “There’s no knife,” he says.

  Buck scoots down my body and gets off me to inspect the ropes around my ankles. As he bends forward, I pull my knees in, and then I kick out with my legs with all of my might. My feet catch him on his jaw. He goes flying back, banging his head against the bed post.

  He comes at me, furious. He slaps me in a frenzy with both hands, his nails scratching at my face. Then he punches me in the stomach. I screech in agony, and thrash, trying to get him off. He pummels me over and over until I stop fighting back.

  I curl up on my side, whimpering and sobbing.

  “Hold her down,” says Buck harshly.

  Cody does it, his arms pinning me onto the bed while Buck yanks at the rope that is binding my ankles together. He manages to work one of the loops free, and it doesn’t take long for the rest to unravel.

  Buck climbs back on top of me. I am weak from the beating. Cody is pinning my upper body down, while eagerly watching Buck. There is nothing I can do. Time seems to slow down. Like my brain has detached from my body and is refusing to acknowledge what is going to happen.

  Help me, I whisper in my mind, even though I know she cannot help.

  Let me, she whispers. Just let go. Let me do it.

  I’m scared, I tell her. I don’t want to die.

  You may be the most pathetic Angel of Death in existence, she says, but you do have one power. You can heal. No matter what they do to you, you can heal.

  Not if they kill me.

  Trust me, she whispers. Let me free. I’m tired of watching you be a victim.

  And I’m tired of it too. Suddenly I don’t care anymore that they might kill me. I might not be as strong, and there might be two of them, but I’ll die fighting if I have to. I’ll live up to what I am for once in my life. I won’t be anyone’s victim any more. I let my control over my own body go slack. I tell her she can have me. She can do what she wants.

  An odd sensation uncoils within my aching body. It feels like raw fury. It feels powerful and infinite. I feel like more than just me. And there is no way in hell I am going to let these morons do this to me.

  My head rears forward and my mouth closes onto Cody’s throat. I dig my teeth in hard, my incisors and canines ripping into thick flesh. He squeals. He tries to rear away, but I hang on, biting deep and tasting blood. It tastes wonderful. It tastes repulsive.

  He slams his fist into the side of my head. Stunned, my jaw loosens. He rears away, releasing a massive spurt of hot beautiful blood. He falls onto the floor, clenching the side of his throat and screaming a wonderful music. Blood gushes over his hand. It sickens me and invigorates me all at once.

  “See?” she says. “How wonderfully easy it is? This is what they deserve.”

  Her voice sounds like it is coming out of my mouth.

  Buck seems stunned by what has happened to his brother. Then he regains his senses. My upper body jack-knifes towards him, my jaw going for his throat too, but he sees me coming. He bashes my head away with his arm.

 
“You bitch!” he shrieks. His face is speckled with a fine spray of his brother’s blood. His hands close around my throat, choking me.

  But she is as angry as he is. And he has freed my legs. She kicks him in the groin with all of my might, and his eyes open wide. His hands slacken around my neck. She seizes the chance to push him off me. He curls up on the floor, clutching his groin and groaning in agony.

  She runs to the door of the cabin, and contorts my body to reach the handle with the hands that are tied behind my back. She manages to grasp it and pull it with all of my weight. The door does not budge. Realizing that I cannot get out, she curses violently. She looks around the cabin for a weapon. There is nothing large enough, except some logs of firewood in a bucket in the corner.