Chapter 31
The mortal is shaking with fear when Finn removes her gag and sucks the soul from her lips.
It tastes like envy and timidness. A life spent wishing for things others had.
Things she was too weak to pursue for herself.
Not the best meal of the night, but not the worst. He allows her cold, rigid body to topple to the floor, and watches with mild satisfaction as it bursts into ash at his feet.
But Finn’s already champing at the bit for checkmate.
The anger simmering inside his warlock’s king—a man who continues to thrash in his shackles and shout uselessly into his gag—should make for a more fulfilling feed.
“I have a good teacher.” Orin grins.
Finn glares at his underling. “Don’t be a kiss ass.”
Orin’s smile fades instantly.
Finn will follow that move by having his bishop take Orin’s rook.
He’ll get to drink the delectable soul of a young, teary-eyed girl.
Finn’s stomach tightens. His hands transform so he can tap his claws together to soothe the rush in his head.
He can’t even help the laugh that slips from him.
His claws rattle away. Clack, clack, clack…
“Check,” Orin says, a gleam in his eye as he studies the enormous board below his raised steel chair.
Finn’s blood cools. It can’t be—
He assesses the board again. His favorite game. All these souls, corralled on a large chessboard with ball gags in their mouths so they can’t beg to be freed. Forced to watch in suspended panic as he plays and drinks and fucks and sleeps. He never loses his favorite game.
“If you win,” a voice pleads around his gag, “does the game end? Do we all live?”
It’s his own pawn. A sweating djinn with a comb-over.
“Of course,” Finn says, not listening. Did Orin really beat him? He stands, inspecting the board. He didn’t want to kill his warlock, but desperate times call for—
“Queen to G2,” the djinn urges. “Your queen can take his king—”
“No,” the furious king shouts through his gag. “Fuck no!”
But it’s a good move. “You heard the pawn,” Finn tells his queen. “Go on.”
The older woman, eyes downcast, stumbles forward toward the furious, thrashing king. Finn’s Brood moves to hold him down.
“Checkmate,” Finn growls, eyes on the djinn.
He’d held out through torture, given them nothing on the aeon girl Finn’s now-slaughtered Brood saw in his restaurant.
He was supposed to die tonight. But perhaps Finn’s been going about breaking him all wrong.
Perhaps the man could be an asset if offered the right deal.
After all, he saved Orin’s life and he doesn’t even know it.
“Well done, my liege,” Orin says.
But Finn’s already down on the board, prowling toward the king. The sweat dampening his skin. The rage in his eyes. He can’t even hear the man’s pleas. Not over his own gleeful laughter. Not with this heat across his body. Not over the taste of his next soul.
He’ll handle the djinn shortly.
Pleasure always comes before business.
When my eyes snap open, the pain in my back…It’s as bad as it’s ever been. Worse. Piercing. Dragging through my skin. Sweat clings to me, my palms and neck itching like I have a fever. I’m roiling with the need to kill.
With effort, I slide from the bed and grasp for my phone, only to find Hellion clutched in my palm. My head is pounding. A fire is roaring in my chest. Finn’s voice cackles from somewhere in the suffocating darkness of my bedroom.
“Hello?” I bark.
His claws click together. Clack, clack, clack—
“Show yourself, coward!”
My pulse speeds. I’m not sure he’s in here. I’m not sure where I am.
I need to hunt.
Find a demon. Mutilate. Dismember. Make it suffer—
When I slip outside my room, I don’t have much of a plan. I can hardly think around the insistent need and thrashing pain. Finn’s wicked, gleeful laugh echoes in my ears.
“He’s not here,” I whisper to myself. “He’s not here.”
I need to drive the fine edge of my blade through something weak and whimpering. I’m revolted by myself. And insatiable.
I stumble past the couch where Finn is looming over a sleeping Penny and Sophia. Claws raised, teeth gleaming in the moonlight—
No—
I shake my head violently. Press my eyes closed.
Try to breathe in the scent of clean linens and stale popcorn.
When I open my eyes, Penny and Sophia are still sound asleep on the couch, but Finn is gone.
Penny’s mess of blond curls. Sophia’s copper bangs skewed this way and that, fluttering with her breath. Alone. Safe.
Get out to the city. Get out to the city before I accidentally kill someone in this house.
I make it past the kitchen and nearly past the dining room, wincing, lurching—
“Sneaking out to meet a boy?” Deacon tsks. “Don’t you know you’re grounded, young lady?”
I hadn’t even noticed he was behind me. That’s how whacked-out I am.
If my aeon senses tingled, I missed it. The thought is sobering—I can’t even protect myself like this.
No matter my aeon bloodlust, it was never so all-encompassing that I’d miss the hum in my skin that told me a predator was near.
When I turn, I force my face into neutrality.
But I can’t speak around the agony. I’m scared I’ll throttle him.
Drive his elegant jaw into the weighty stone table he was probably about to pick up for another lonely, brutal night in his gym.
And all while Tinker Bell sleeps in his bed. Naked, satisfied—
Suddenly, smashing his jaw into that table doesn’t sound so bad.
Deacon sighs, setting down his water bottle. “More murder shenanigans?”
Unable to get a good breath, I slump against the table, catching myself with weak arms. Kill him—
The planes of his face shift. Concern. “Why didn’t you tell me this was getting worse?”
But my rage is beginning to boil over. My vision misting red. The need, the urge—
“It’s been kind of hard to focus on my symptoms,” I pant. “You know, with a roommate who fucks a different girl every night one wall over. Loudly.”
“What’s not to like about that, sweetheart?”
I recoil at the pet name. The one he uses for all of his conquests. My rage skitters along my limbs. “Don’t call me that.”
Deacon’s brows knit together as if he has no idea why it should bother me. “Come on, Girl with the Syrabraxa Tattoo. Follow me.”
Where to? To be strapped down until this passes? To fight him? To be tempted into killing an innocent? “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Deacon takes a swift, short inhale. “You need it, Vivienne. You’re aching.”
“Don’t tell me what I need.” I try to sound steadfast, but a slight moan slips out at the pain. “What would you know about it anyway?”
Determination clouds his face. “You are…” He shakes his head.
In the dark like this, just the two of us, he’s as much a creature of nightmares as any deviant I’ve fought.
“I heard you that night, you know.” His voice is a mind-bending drug.
“Watching me in the gym. Your hurried breaths. The needy beat of your little heart.” I gasp despite myself.
My back pulses in agony. “I didn’t think then…
” He shakes his head, something new forming in his eyes.
“There are other ways I can take care of those needs. If you’re asking. ”
And I can’t help the thought. That maybe whatever Deacon might do with me could cure this pain—this desire—as swiftly as the kill. But I shove the instinct away. That has to be the madness talking. “The only thing my heart was beating with was the overwhelming desire to slice you open.”
He takes a step forward that brings him all too close to me. Black cherries and tobacco and sex and violence. Colors are blending into sounds. Moans and whines and whimpers. “You drive me insane, do you know that?”
There’s a rough-edged heat in his eyes, in his voice. Something feral and wanting and unfed. I don’t question how he knows a stab to his ribs won’t cut it this time. He takes my wrist before I can wriggle free and drags me down the hallway.
“Let me go.” I writhe. His skin is scorching against mine.
“You need a release.”
An image of both of our blood splattered for the Fever Dream cleaning crew to find flashes in my mind. I have to physically shake off the allure.
When we stumble outside, I can see my breath in the air.
Deacon’s features are shadowed, but his gaze is destructive.
Relentless. I can’t escape it. Can’t escape him.
Fury that these sick desires have developed against my will wars with the horror of seeing them mirrored back at me. “I don’t feel like myself.”
Deacon’s icy blues burn hot as flame. “Go hunt.”
“What about Finn? Caspar? The Elders, the Brood—”
“That’s why I’m here.”
I squint at the clocktower up North. Just past two a.m.
My feet move before I’m conscious of it.
Stalking through the streets of the city I love and have vowed to protect.
Someone is praying for a miracle right now, and I am that miracle.
My daggers sing in my palms. I keep my steps tight and quiet, Deacon strolling effortlessly behind me like Hound might. A guard dog. A knight behind his queen.
I’m looking for something nocturnal. Something wicked…I stop short at a corner where trash lines the street. Close my eyes and allow my body to speak. Allow the pain to guide me. An image of razor-edged white fangs and cruel bedroom eyes jolts through me. “A vampire.”
“Go get ’em, Kill Bill.”
“Enough with the movie references.”
Beneath a townhome missing bricks is a young girl, probably just eighteen, with a pert nose and soft eyes.
Her strawberry blond hair has about a can’s worth of hair spray in it.
A good-looking guy leers over her, grazing her cheek with his thumb.
I stretch out my neck and shoulders as violent euphoria skates through me. I’ve found my deviant.
The girl leans in, unafraid. Only then do I register her electric pink boy shorts and sheer tank top. The vamp hands her a wad of cash, and I break into a sprint.
“Hey,” I call. “Hold up!”