Chapter 3
Chapter Three
T he crowd was an easy one tonight. This was an area Sinner’s Sideshow had never been to before—filled mostly with werewolves. They were easy to impress, and their manners were more agreeable than a lot of audiences we’d had in the past.
Our audience was always monsters, sometimes hungry, mean ones who looked at me and saw a meal.
It was a good night if no one was jumping into the ring to act out whatever disturbing, impulsive thoughts played through their head as they watched me with my men.
So far, no one had been slaughtered by my possessive mates, no appendages chopped off, no innards ripped out by Daemon or his hellhound pack. Not yet, anyway, but the night was still young.
I stood on the round platform that gave every seat in the house a perfect view of me, twirling my sword to the rhythm of my signature song, “Boss Bitch” by Doja Cat, before sliding my sword down my throat and swallowing all twenty-five inches of pure steel.
They all clapped and whistled, but the lust rolling off them was lackluster. Barely a meal. I’d fed from the twins’ lust pre-show, but it hadn’t been enough.
As a circus brat, I grew up in show biz, so being in the ring was as natural as breathing. As a succubus, I loved being the center of attention in a place like this because it kept me sated. It was my feeding ground.
I pulled my sword from my throat and, making a show of it, took the blade’s point and sliced my top off. I gave the audience a shake, my nipple piercings glinting under the lights.
The crowd went wild. Lust bled into the air. I breathed it in like a drug, spread my wings and gave another slow turn on the platform, drinking in their adoration, their envy, their hunger for me.
I didn’t even have to use my succubus charm powers. All it took was a flash of my tits, and I had them eating out my hand—while they jacked off into theirs.
What happened next unfolded all in a breath.
A man in one of the first few rows, the death seats as we referred to them, lunged out of his seat and over the divider that separated the house from the ring.
In midair, he shifted into a great brown wolf with beady red eyes honed on me.
“ Mine! ” His growl exploded through the big top like dynamite, making everyone jump in their seats.
Before the werewolf could pounce on top of me, a black hound twice the wolf’s size appeared seemingly from nowhere. His maw closed around the wolf’s throat and snatched him out of the air. Both beasts hit the ground hard, making the lighting overhead sway and shadows shift.
Daemon had transformed back into a man, naked and glistening under the lights. He pressed his foot on the wolf’s throat, looking down at him like he was less than dirt.
“I’d ask if you have a death wish, but seeing as you came from a death seat, I know the answer.”
The death seats were named because that’s exactly what they were. A monster bought a ticket for a death seat only if they had no intention of walking out of our grisly show alive.
We were the demon circus straight from Hell, and for a price, we’d send you there in style.
“Yeah, I bought a death seat,” the wolf wheezed beneath the pressure of Daemon’s foot. “So fucking kill me already. I’m ready to meet Discord.”
“That’s not how this works. We decide how you die, not you.”
Alistair melted from the shadows, his umbral form taking shape into flesh. His stature was somewhere between Daemon’s and the twins, tall with an athletic form that filled out his maroon ringmaster’s uniform to perfection.
The music had faded, and the click of his cane as he walked echoed through the tent, his long, shadowy hair billowing behind him.
He approached where Daemon stood with the wolf pinned beneath his foot, cocking his head. “You’ve lost your privileges to look at my star.”
With that, the shadow demon pressed his cane into the creature’s eye socket. Purposefully slow, making a show of it.
The werewolf thrashed and screamed, but before he could wiggle from Daemon’s hold, dozens of shadowy tentacle-like tendrils shot from all directions of the room and strapped him to the ground.
The ringmaster’s unhinged smile could be seen beneath the shadow of his brim, stretching wider as the wolf’s screams grew louder.
With a tug of his wrist, he pulled the cane from one eye socket and moved to the other. A mix of disgust and fascination rolled off the audience. Alistair finally pulled away. This time, the eyeball stayed speared to the cane’s tip.
Turning to face the audience, the shadow demon leaned against the ring divider and held the cane out to a random soul in the first row. It was as if he was offering a carnival snack on a stick rather than a werewolf’s eyeball.
“Eat it.”
The monster—some kind of ghoul—stiffened in his seat. “What?”
“This is Sinner’s Sideshow. You came here for the entertainment. No one promised you it was for your entertainment. Now go on.” Alistair gave the cane a flick, making the eyeball’s cornea jiggle. “ Eat it.”
My succubus urge to feed on his terror quickly squashed the human urge to pity the ghoul.
Unable to resist, I drank it in. Just a small taste. Goosebumps pricked my skin. By Discord’s dick , I was so damn ravenous it took every shred of willpower to keep from gorging myself on the ghoul’s terror as he obeyed Alistair’s command.
However, I previously got sick from feeding on too much fear. My emotion of choice was lust. Sure, it was a bit of a cliché for a sex demon, but with mates like mine, could I be blamed?
The ghoul swallowed the gooey mass and struggled to keep it down. Ghouls were known to eat flesh, but the humiliation of it all had him gagging.
Satisfied, Alistair turned away from the audience with his emerald glare trained on me while he continued to address the entire house. “You pathetic Upside wretches are lucky I allow you to look at her at all. I should pluck out every last one of your eyes.”
A shiver shot through me, and Alistair’s smile widened. His mark on my thigh grew infernally hot under his attention.
“But no…” Alistair went on. “Tonight, I’m feeling magnanimous.” The shadow demon approached me. He was so tall that the platform I stood on brought us to eye level. One of his shadow tentacles caressed over my face, sweet and gentle at first. Then, it slid to the back of my neck, gripping me possessively. “Perhaps we should demonstrate who you really belong to, Little Demon?”