Chapter 10
Quinn
For the past month, my life had kept getting more surreal, to the point that I was starting to expect that at any second I’d step through a doorway into an Escher painting. Like at the moment, I was somehow sitting on a smooth leather seat in the back of a fancy Cadillac, eating drive-through hamburgers for lunch with a millennia-old demon after fleeing for my life from a psychotic monster-enslaving cult.
It was hard to remember what it’d been like living a normal existence, without monsters or magic or death even more imminent than the possibility of a failing heart.
Rollick, through some supernatural ability he hadn’t disclosed, managed to eat his entire hamburger and a carton of fries without getting a single drop of ketchup anywhere on his immaculate suit. I was still halfway through my burger because I was eating much more carefully, trying not to look like a slob, although I was starving. This was my first meal since he’d grabbed me from the forest near the enclave.
By the time we’d made it back to the car he’d stashed beyond their territory, I’d been so exhausted from the stress and the late night that he’d ordered me to sleep in the back while he drove us farther away. When I’d woken up to the morning sun beaming through the windows, he’d directed me to a motel room in whatever city we’d ended up in so I could shower and start to feel like a somewhat normal human being again. It wasn’t until after we’d grabbed this quick meal and driven out to a secluded lane amid more hilly countryside that he’d allowed me to give my account of what I’d seen last night.
The hearty meatiness of the burger had fortified me, although my appetite was waning as I got to the most gruesome parts of the story. “They’d brought three people—I don’t know where from. A woman around my age, a little girl, and I didn’t see the third one because I couldn’t help trying to intervene with the kid and they caught me then. The sorcerers sent them out into the clearing and the guy just tore into them like he was a rabid animal.”
Rollick let out a soft huff, leaning against the door across from me in a casual pose that should have clashed with his formal clothing. “That’s what they think shadowkind are—rabid animals. Monsters. It’s not as if they’re alone.”
I grimaced and set aside the rest of my burger in its wrapper. “Most people don’t even know you really exist. They’re only going by stories and imagination. It’s not their fault they don’t know better. The sorcerers are interacting with actual shadowkind all the time. They should be able to see you’re more than that.”
“It wouldn’t really be in their best interests to see anything worth respecting in us, though, would it?” The demon cocked an eyebrow. “That might put a damper on their enthusiasm for subjecting us to their whims.”
I couldn’t deny that he had a point. “It’s still not right,” I muttered, hugging myself. “Is it strange that those rites work at all? I thought you said that no shadowkind can manipulate other shadowkind. So how could something in them give humans that power?”
“I’ve heard of other ways a merging of human and shadowkind can create more than either was on its own,” Rollick said. “That phoenix you met is an example. I’d guess that sorcerous power is generated by an interaction between the shadowkind qualities and whatever you mortals possess, transforming something inside you into an entirely new thing.”
“A horrific thing. And then the shadowkind that kill those sorcerers are able to take that thing into themselves.”
“So all available evidence suggests.”
I sighed. “What do we do now?”
Rollick hummed to himself. “Well, I don’t think we should stick around Norway now that they’ll have their enslaved creatures on the hunt for us. I think I’ve found out all I can here about the beings we’re up against. What matters more is what that villainous duo is getting up to right now.”
“Back in the US. You think we should go home?”
He shrugged. “I think if we want to stop the menaces as soon as possible, we have to be where they are. And possibly the maniacal mortals here have given us some strategies for improving our chances of victory. You mentioned that the one who was mentoring you said that the rites could expand your powers just as they activate them for total novices, didn’t you?”
At the recognition of where he might be going with that line of conversation, my spine stiffened. “She made it sound like that’s the case. But what does it matter? I’m not going to murder and consume some innocent creature or run around attacking people just in case it gives a little more umph to my powers.”
“I think we can assume that the attacking part isn’t necessary,” Rollick said with a chuckle. “Just their misinterpretation of what it takes to connect with the shadowkind experience on a visceral level. The absorbing of shadowkind essence might give your magic a boost that could tip the balance in the battles ahead, though.”
I glowered at him, my stomach twisting. “I’m not killing some little beast the way they did. It was awful. And we don’t even know for sure what effect it’ll have on me. It didn’t sound like the sorcerers usually did rites for people who already have the talent.”
Rollick studied me with an intentness in his dark blue eyes that set me on guard. “To be clear, though, your main objection is to the slaughter of a random creature? If we happened to have some shadowkind essence on hand that you could drink in without any unwilling being suffering, you wouldn’t object to giving it a go?”
“I—I don’t know. I guess not.” If it could make the difference between stopping more suffering, more murders, and whatever else our enemies had planned, then how could I say no? “But you don’t have it bottled somewhere, do you? And if you’re thinking you’re going to wait until Torrent and the others can come back, if they even decide to come when they can, and convince them to?—”
“Oh, I don’t have any interest in waiting that long.” Rollick grinned. “Especially when we already have everything we need.”
Before I could process what he’d meant by that, he was already moving—launching himself forward across the seat as if he’d been braced to pounce the whole time rather than lounging there all nonchalantly. I barely had a chance to flinch before he was grabbing me by the waist and yanking me under him.
My head bumped into the soft padding of the seat, my breath jolting out of me. Rollick loomed over me, trapping most of my body in place with his powerful legs. His clothes were rippling away as his massive demonic form emerged. The heat of him washed over me, almost smothering.
Panic sliced through my chest. I whipped up my arms in an effort I already knew would be futile, smacking against his muscular torso to try to dislodge him. “Don’t—what are you doing—get off?—”
Rollick’s veneers had already wisped away to reveal the jagged demonic teeth underneath. Without paying my protests the slightest attention, he brought his arm to his mouth and gouged open his own wrist all the way to the bone. Then he slammed the wound down over my lips, cutting off my voice.
Smoky blood poured out of him into me so fast it was congealing in my throat before I’d even managed to shove at his arm. Rollick snatched my wrists with his other hand and pinned them to my chest. When I tried to shut my mouth against the flow of his shadowy essence, he pushed his limb even farther between my lips where I couldn’t dislodge it. It was either suck down the smoky substance or suffocate.
I dragged a ragged breath through my nose and sputtered and gagged, but the billows of essence seeped down my throat into my lungs and stomach. It prickled through my nerves with an electric tingling everywhere it touched. The shadowkind blood didn’t actually taste smoky, I realized as I struggled against Rollick’s hold. It was cool and misty and laced with flavors that made me think of an autumn forest at night.
My muscles strained, and the demon gave me a tight smile, his ruddy demonic face gazing down at me with a flicker of fire in his darkened eyes. “There’s a hell of a lot more essence in me than some little beastie. And the sooner your powers are up to snuff, the sooner we can deal with the real brutes we’re up against. You don’t have to let your morals stir up doubts this way. I made the decision for you. It’ll be over faster if you relax and let it happen.”
Maybe he was right, but my body still wanted to resist. Tension coiled all through my muscles. I tried to wrestle my arms away from his grasp ineffectually.
But even as I squirmed with defiance, a different sensation was sweeping through me. With each gulp of Rollick’s essence, the prickles in my nerves were softening into something almost giddy.
I wanted to… I wanted to run and rove and feel how fast my limbs could move. I wanted to stretch my body, lunge and leap. There was so much—so much I could do. Gravity didn’t hold me back. I was strong, powerful, impervious. Nothing could keep me down.
Was this how the initiate had felt in the clearing as he’d absorbed so much of that creature’s hazy blood? And then the sorcerers’ chants and all the preparation he’d done had made him turn those urges into something viciously murderous. Or maybe he’d been a brutal soul all along.
I didn’t feel any inclination toward violence, only power and freedom. But I was restrained still—fixed in place by the weight over me. I inhaled, drawing even more of the smoky torrent into my lungs, and a weird tremor of sensation rippled through my senses.
I was aware, suddenly, of the rise and fall of Rollick’s breaths. Of the fragility he noticed in my mortal body and how carefully he was holding his own much beefier form to avoid hurting me. Of a flicker of admiration at the fight I’d put up even as he was annoyed that I couldn’t just accept what he’d done.
It was his essence I was drinking in, and more of who he was coursed into me alongside it. It woke up a hunger to have even more of him than that. To take in all of the hauntingly impressive body I’d seen on full display weeks ago, to merge with him in every possible way.
I’d been attracted to Rollick before. It wasn’t a totally unfamiliar sensation. But my uncertainties about his motives and my knowledge of the screwed-up things he definitely had done had made it easy to ignore those impulses. Now, my mind seemed to have detached from my body. It was floating away, worries and longings dispersing in opposite directions, my physical presence taking its own initiative.
My hips arched up. My cunt bumped against the bulge of what I knew was not just one but two cocks, one over top of the other. A fresh wave of need rushed through me, sweeping away more of my distant protests.
No, I yelled at myself from wherever that part of me was floating now, but even more of me called out, Yes!
My muscles loosened beneath Rollick, and he relaxed his grip on me, his own breath quickening with a flare of desire I felt with the flow of his essence. My hand slipped free and reached to trail down the planes of his naked chest. My hips lifted toward him again, beckoning, practically begging.
The demon let out a growl. He dipped his head, his wrist still clamped over my mouth, and buried his face against the crook of my neck. His hot breath washed over my skin, and a needy whimper reverberated out of me. Every inch of me was on fire with him pressing so close. I wrapped my arm around his shoulder to tug him even nearer.
“You want this now, do you?” Rollick murmured in a dark, velvety voice that shivered through every cell. “A little taste, and you realized how much you were missing out on. That’s my sweet sorcerer. Let me hear you say it, Quinn.”
He eased his wrist away, and my lips parted as if seeking to gulp down even more of the smoky blood he’d poured into me. My thoughts were jumbled, the giddying hunger scattering every other concern. The only sound that came out of me was a moan.
I slid my hands down Rollick’s body again, but his form had gone still over me. I rocked upward impatiently as he gazed down at me with an impenetrable expression. His essence was still gushing through the enclosed space of the car from the wound he’d given himself, but he barely seemed bothered by it. I had the vague sense that I should have been wondering how much he could afford to lose, but that worry drifted away.
He was so close and yet not close enough.
“Quinn,” Rollick said, softer than before, “tell me what you want.”
Why was he making this so hard? “I—I—” I managed to get out, but the craving seemed to choke me. “Please,” I mumbled desperately, the burning need driving my hips toward him again.
He wanted it too. The hunger thrummed through him loudly enough that I could taste it even without the direct stream of his blood filling my lungs. But a hint of hesitation had risen up alongside it. Something cool and unyielding. I didn’t like it.
“This isn’t you,” he muttered. “You’re drunk on the stuff.” His head bowed, and for a second I thought he might kiss me, but his mouth never quite reached mine. Then he pushed himself off me.
In the first moment when his body pulled away from mine, I cried out at the loss of contact. But as the cooler air slipped in between us, my gaze slid to the window, and the other desires that had gripped me first raced back into my mind. I scrambled up onto my hands and knees and peered through the window at the landscape that called me to run riot through it.
“I don’t think letting you loose like this would be a good idea,” Rollick said from behind me, his voice carefully even. When I glanced back at him, he was back in humanesque form, wrapping a bandage around his wrist to stem the flow of smoky blood while he healed. One of my hands lifted to scratch at the window, more wildness coursing through me.
Rollick shook his head. “I’m not losing you that way either.” He rummaged around and found the blanket he’d given me to sleep with, wrapping it around me. The weight of it dampened my restlessness just a little.
“Just stay here until you come down from it,” he said. “I’m going to find us the nearest airport. And then we’ll see whether I’ve accomplished anything other than making a total mess out of things.”