CHAPTER SIX
To say the experience was painful was the understatement of the millennium. It wasn’t just painful, it was agonizing. It was paralyzing. It was as if being drawn and quartered. Only instead of quartered, my body and soul were being pulled apart by a million horses, in a million different directions, not just four.
I did my best to keep my thoughts on just getting through. On ignoring the pain, and not worrying about my mates and what they might be experiencing or whether they were okay, but it was harder than I thought.
Everything was dark, but at the same time, my brain was full of bright, flickering static. Even though, technically, I didn’t have a brain because all my molecules had been torn apart and were torpedoing through time and space to another dimension. So how I was still able to have thoughts was just a bigger mindfuck, on top of the already colossal-sized mindfuck that was alternate dimensions, realms, vampires, shifters, demons, and mages—oh my!
It all probably lasted no more than a few minutes, or it easily could have been months that we were in that dark, excruciating tunnel, I couldn’t tell. Just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to take the pain any longer, it stopped. Then it was like I was being squeezed into a sausage tube too small for my body and all my parts began to glue themselves together again .
I tried, I really freaking tried to think about getting to the other side, but when you don’t know what the other side looks like, that part is near impossible. So of course, my thoughts wandered to worries. What if my arm and leg got disorganized in the reassembly and I came out looking like a disfigured monster? Or what if I lost my memories of Gemma and Aunt Delia?
Get it together, Playfair. Just think about reaching your mates. They’re already through and waiting for you. Picture them. Focus on them.
So, I did.
And like the enormous water slide at Chase City Waterpark, I shot out of the wormhole—or whatever it was—flying through the air and landing on my ass directly at someone’s feet.
Instantly, I checked to see that all my body parts were intact. That I didn’t have a hand for a foot, and that my nose was where it was supposed to be. Then I ran through my memories. I still remembered Gemma. Innocent, sweet, spicy Gemma. And Aunt Delia. A quick flash of anger laced with heartache caught me unaware at the thought of Aunt Delia lying there dead in her bedroom after Lerris tortured her for information about me.
I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet.
Oh god! Did I have eyeballs?
I blinked them open, and the first person I saw was Drak. I was sitting on his feet and the relief mixed with pain that stared back at me in his gaze was gutting. He offered me a hand and helped me to stand up. Zandren shifted and was putting his clothes back on from Maxar’s backpack. From the looks of things, my bear-shifter mate kept his monstrous manhood through the portal.
Thank the gods, Fates, and everything in between for that.
“How’re you doing?” Maxar asked, coming up to me and running his hands down my arms to double-check I made it through in one piece. “I see Moloch’s Sacrifice made it through.”
“That sucked,” I said, my hand still in Drak’s. “No wonder you guys don’t make a habit of coming here.”
Speaking of here … I glanced around at our surroundings. At Hell .
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but this sure as hell wasn’t it.
Where was the fire? Where were the brimstones and tar pits? Okay, maybe I was expecting something, but this wasn’t it.
It was a desert with dry, dusty air, a vulture-like creature circling overhead, and red-hued mountains off to … well, I didn’t know which way was north or any of the other directions, but there were mountains to one side, and an endless flat desert in the other direction. The ground beneath our feet was red, the sky was red, and even the atmosphere felt red, if that was possible.
One thing was for sure, it was hot as fuck. I shielded my eyes and glanced overhead at the red sun, which seemed larger than the one on Earth, and brighter.
Immediately, I peeled off my T-shirt, so I was just in a sports bra, and stuffed it into my bag. “Now where do we go?” I asked, scanning all of their faces for a glimmer of an answer.
“We head toward the mountains,” Maxar said, pointing to the distant hills. “The portal spat me out in this desert last time too. The only way I know that for sure is that peak right there.” He pointed toward the mountains and to the right where sure enough a steep, ominous peak, hauntingly resembling a dagger, stood up like a redwood among shrubs, looming over all the other rolling mountains. “There’s a small town on the other side of the mountains. We can get our bearings and figure out a plan from there. No matter what though, we can’t be in the desert when night falls.”
Sweat poured down my face and before we’d even gone a step, I untied my combat boots and yanked off my sweatpants, replacing them with some shorts that Melissima said I should pack. I’d scoffed at the suggestion, but now I was eternally grateful to the healer-mage.
Zandren looked epically put out from the heat and had ditched all of his clothes within minutes of putting them back on. Maxar didn’t seem any worse for wear; then again, he was a fire-mage and was probably a little chilly. Drak, however, looked close to death.
“Are you going to be okay in this heat?” I asked him as we trudged over the cracked ground. It looked like what had once been mud was now dried and fractured, lending to the eeriness of the entire area. Like at any moment, some beastly sandworm might break through the cracks and devour us whole.
“I’ll be fine,” he murmured.
“Are there sandworms in Hell?” I asked, pivoting to look at Maxar.
“Yep.” He nodded causally, as if I’d just asked him if he’d like tomato on his BLT.
“And are they something we need to be worried about as we traipse across the desert?”
“I don’t think so,” he mused, providing me with zero reassurance. “I mean, maybe. I’ve never seen one. And I think the ground is too hard for them to live.” He stomped. “Hard packed. It’s not sand, it’s dirt. They can’t live in this … probably.”
My terror eased a little, but not much. I glanced over at Drak again. The man was paler than normal, and his entire face was a shiny sheen of sweat. Pausing, I rested my hand on his arm. “You’re going to pass out from the heat. You need to take off the freaking suit.”
“I’ll be fine.” He couldn’t meet my gaze.
“The fuck you are,” I spat back. “Look. I get that you’re reeling from the betrayal. And you’re allowed to grieve, but you can’t grieve if you’re passed out from heat exhaustion.” I laced my fingers through his and gave them a squeeze. “Please, Drak. I just saved your ass once. I’d rather not do it again so soon.”
“Technically, that was the second time you’ve saved his ass in like two days, considering you also let him feast on your blood to heal his injured leg.” Maxar glanced at Zandren. “Caused by the deranged bear, of course.”
“Not helping,” I shot back, glaring at the mage.
Drak pulled in a deep breath through his nose, closed his eyes for a moment, and seemed to be counting in his head or something. I squeezed his hand again, which prompted him to open his eyes and nod.
Then he peeled out of his suit jacket, followed by his white dress shirt, but apparently, he drew the line at removing his pants.
“Dick to the breeze is best,” Zandren said, shaking his head at Drak’s obstinance. “The more airflow, the better. Nothing like swamp crotch to turn off a mate. ”
I rolled my eyes.
Without his shirt, Drak’s pale torso practically glowed against the red-brown dirt, but he seemed to be doing better and was no longer close to keeling over.
We had water in our backpacks, but sipped it sparingly.
“How long have we been walking for?” I asked, after we’d all been quiet for a while, conserving our energy.
“Twenty minutes,” Maxar said.
I gaped at him. “You’re kidding? It feels like hours. Those mountains are closer, aren’t they?”
He shook his head. “Not really. And it feels like hours because it has been hours, but in Hell time, it’s been like twenty minutes. Time is fucked up here. There’s no explanation for it. Sometimes an hour can feel like a day, and sometimes a day can feel like an hour.”
“Well, that’s just fucking lovely.” I shook my head and continued on. The sun beat down against my skin until it felt crispy and I had to drape my T-shirt over my shoulders to keep them from burning.
We kept moving. Kept walking. And eventually, the mountains did get closer, until they were looming above us, not nearly as rolling and benign as they appeared from a distance. They were towering and craggy with a flat face that didn’t look climbable unless you were a gecko.
I slid into Drak and Zandren’s minds just a little, feeling their hopelessness which seemed awfully similar to my own. No way could we scale that. Zandren glanced at me when he felt me in there and tossed me a smirk before wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Whatcha lookin’ for, Little One?”
“Just an idea of how we’re supposed to get up over those,” I said, my eyes travelling up, up, up until I couldn’t see the top any longer.
“We’re not,” Maxar said matter-of-factly. “We go through them. There’s a passageway somewhere here. We just need to find it.”
“It’s getting dark,” Zandren noted. “Will we have to make shelter for the night?”
“I fucking hope not,” Maxar said. “You don’t want to know what creepy-ass creatures roam the deserts of Hell at night.”
“Wh-what?” I stammered. “What kind of creepy creatures?”
“I don’t know,” Maxar said, his eyes wide. “And you don’t want to either. All I’ve been told is that you need to do your very best to only cross the desert during the day. Otherwise, you won’t make it out.”
I met Zandren’s gaze and for the first time since I’d ever met the bear, he looked genuinely terrified. Fair enough, this was my first rodeo in Hell too. And with any luck, it’d be my last.
“We need to find the passageway,” Maxar said, a thread of immediacy in his tone as he headed to the left along the base of the mountain range.
“Should we spread out?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. We stick together no matter what.”
So, we did. We meandered as far down the left side of the mountain range base as we could, then back to the right. And with each footstep, the sky grew darker, the setting sun casting our frames into long, black shadows over the dirt and up the face of the range.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and my skin prickled in fear as a sense of impending doom settled over us. We each felt it. We were racing the clock. A fucked-up clock to boot, and it was winning by a wide margin. We hadn’t found the passageway yet, and it was almost dark.
The tendons in Maxar’s neck stood out as he ramped up his speed, walking faster in search of the entrance. Drak was quiet since I made him remove his shirt, and Zandren kept a watchful eye on the desert behind us.
We were working as a team.
A deep, rumbling growl rolled through Zandren, and he dropped to all fours.
We all paused, spinning around to face what he must have sensed.
“Wh-what is it?” I asked, my voice trembling almost as much as my hands.
“I caught a scent,” he said, his voice low. “I can’t describe it though.” He sniffed some more. “Blood … copper … iron, and … death ,” he growled the last word.
The ground beneath us vibrated like the plates were shifting, and rocks from the cliff face tumbled and rolled down, scattering across the cracked earth .
“Watch out!” Maxar shouted, lurching forward and shoving me out of the way before a boulder bigger than my head nearly crushed my skull. “You’ve gotta keep your wits about you here, babe. Everything is trying to kill you. It’s like Australia, but not as pretty, and with no wombats or joeys to snuggle.”
I nodded, my heart pounding painfully against my ribs. “So, more like Florida.”
He smirked. “Exactly. Florida without the beach, and bigger, scarier monsters than crocs and gators. Same kind of crazy people though.” He rubbed his hands up and down my arms. “You okay?”
I nodded again. “Yeah.”
He released me and resumed his search for the passageway entrance.
My nerves were shot. Everything inside of me shook with fear as the sense of doom just grew thicker and more suffocating by the second.
The ground shook again and my stomach lurched to my throat. I reached for the first hand I could find—Drak’s. Swallowing, I glanced up at him, licking my lips.
His expression wasn’t what I expected. Gone was the fear, the fatigue, the pain. All that looked back at me was … emptiness. He was blank.
“Found it!” Maxar called from up ahead. I tried to move, to pull Drak along, but my shoes had glued themselves to the ground. “Come on!” He shouted again.
I swallowed again, staring up at Drak, pleading with him with my eyes to follow. He nodded, and for the moment, that was all the reassurance I needed, and knew, I would get from him. But it was enough. I released his hand.
Zandren stood up. Only rather than taking my hand, he scooped me into his arms, throwing me over his shoulder like a caveman. Fair enough, his strides were longer than mine and he was faster. I wasn’t about to argue when the man was saving my life. I hedged a quick glance up and was relieved to find Drak running just behind us. At least he wasn’t giving up and letting the monsters in the darkness take him.
We reached Maxar, who waited for us at the mouth of a narrow passageway through the mountains, just as the sound of giant wings beating overhead and a screech loud and high-pitched enough to burst your eardrums, echoed above.
“In. Now!” Maxar hollered, ushering us all forward, having to yell over the screeching, and enormous beating wings. Sharp, hot gusts of air from the beast’s wings wafted toward us, bringing with it a coppery, putrid scent so powerful I had to hold my breath, otherwise I would taste it too.
More rocks tumbled down the flat mountain face and I peeked up again as I bounced against Zandren’s back, just in time to see tremendous claws come barreling behind us and into the passageway. But the beast was too big to fit, and we were deep enough inside that it couldn’t reach us.
Another harsh screech of frustration penetrated the night, and the monster pushed off from the rocks, allowing me to see its silhouette against the last remaining slivers of daylight in the sky.
I thought at first that maybe it was a dragon, but no. The beast had wide, scallop-edged wings like a bat, but a beak like a bird, and body and limbs like a … giant cat? It was a silhouette, so I couldn’t really see, but that’s what it seemed like.
Either way, it was infinitely bigger than all of us and could have devoured each of us in a few bites.
Now I understood Maxar’s panic about getting across the desert before nightfall.
The narrow passage was pitch black as we carefully made our way through. Pitch black, that is, until my handy fire-mage snapped his magical fingers and handed us each a blue-flamed torch—since blue flames weren’t hot, and used almost solely for illumination—so we could see where we were going.
The corridor through the mountain was long and windy. Just when I thought the next corner would spit us out on the other side, we’d have another turn or straightaway to go.
Nobody said anything, and it was probably for the best.
What was there to say?
We didn’t want to be here. We were in literal Hell. Like lobsters in a soup pot and someone just turned the heat on to medium. The end was nigh, but it was going to take a while. Because the chef was a sadistic motherfucker .
Who the chef was in this scenario, I wasn’t sure. My brain was so hot, my metaphors weren’t even making sense.
“Can we just … can we stop for a sip of water for a moment?” I asked, wishing that maybe Zandren hadn’t put me down once we were out of the open desert.
“Quickly,” Maxar said.
Nodding, I dug around in my backpack for a water bottle and took a sip, then offered it up to the guys, who all took sips as well.
“It’s not desert on the other side before civilization, is it?” I asked. “Or do we need to sleep in this passageway so that the bat-winged thing doesn’t eat us?”
“Bat-winged?” Zandren asked. “You saw it?”
“Only it’s silhouette. It was massive. Scalloped wings like a bat, beak like a bird, body like a large cat.”
Zandren growled at the mention of a cat.
“A bisibra ,” Drak murmured, causing all of us to face him. He merely shrugged. “Learned about them in school.”
“Vampire school?” I asked.
“Something like that.” More with the muttering.
My brows lifted. “And they like to eat—”
“Everything,” he said. “They hunt only at night. Their eyesight is terrible, so they hunt by sound and smell. They’re also known to be cannibalistic if desperate.”
“Wonderful,” I said sarcastically. “Just fucking peachy.”
“It’s civilization right away after we get through the range,” Maxar said, returning to my earlier question. “At least, it was last time. This could be a different mountain range for all I know. Though, I don’t think it is.”
“Man, Hell really is just that, isn’t it?” Zandren murmured, dumping a bit of water on his head to cool himself off before handing me back the bottle.
“There’s a reason behind the name,” Maxar said dryly. “We need to keep moving.”
Nodding, I stashed the water bottle back in my backpack and fell in line behind Maxar, who led our little team of explorers.
The temperature was only mildly more bearable now that the sun was down. The rocks that made up the passageway weren’t cool to the touch, like I expected. They were hot, and I had to be careful not to brush up against them and burn myself.
“Lights up ahead,” Maxar called out. “We’ve reached the other side.”
I exhaled in relief, only to have that relief quashed almost instantly by a little voice in my head telling me not to celebrate prematurely. The other shoe had yet to drop. We were deep in the bowels of Hell in search of a grumpy demon who hated everyone. Surely it wasn’t going to be smooth sailing from here.
The little village up ahead had enough light that we didn’t need our torches anymore. So Maxar took them back, and with a snap of his fingers, they disappeared. Would I ever not find that terribly cool and sexy? Hopefully not.
“So, what now?” I asked. “We just start knocking on doors, asking if they know Kenvin Jol and where we can find him? How populated is Hell? Does everyone know everyone?”
Maxar’s expression was amused. “ This isn’t all of Hell, babe. Hell is massive. This is just a little village. We’ll go to the local watering hole and sniff around, see if we can get some answers. Then go from there. We might need to find a place to hold up for the night though.”
“Hell has hotels?” I fell in line with him as we exited the passageway, hooking my thumbs under the straps of my backpack. “Are the bedbugs massive?”
He snorted. “Not sure, but probably.”
“You should probably conceal the sword,” Drak said stoically. “Everyone—especially demons—knows Moloch’s Sacrifice and they’ll wonder why you have it.”
“Good call,” I said, grabbing a sweater from my backpack and draping it over the pommel so it covered most of it. The hilt and pommel were the most unique and discernable parts of it, the rest was just a blade. So if someone saw the blade, they might just think I was a chick who liked old timey weapons, or I’d just been to a renaissance fair or something. I nodded and checked with my companions. “Am I good?”
They all nodded.
As soon as we stepped foot into the village, it was impossible not to feel the burning gaze of thousands of eyes watching us. We were intruders. Outsiders. A ragtag crew of a shirtless vampire, a naked bear-shifter, a fire-mage with the glint of murder in his eyes, and me—a half-demon, half-human hybrid. They could probably smell the human part of me a mile away and were either boarding up their doors or sharpening their pitchforks.
I’d never really traveled anywhere, but Gemma liked to watch documentaries and travel shows. So I sat with her and absorbed other cultures that way. The little village we were in reminded me of the favelas in Brazil or the slums of India. The buildings were dilapidated shacks with corrugated metal roofs that looked like a mild breeze might knock them down. Some were sturdier than others, with concrete or mud walls instead of wood. Laundry hung from lines overhead, and dogs barked off in the distance. At least they sounded like dogs. For all I knew, they could be another beastly abomination from Hell that wanted nothing more than to play jump rope with my carotid artery before making a meal of my liver with a side of fava beans.
A neon sign with several letters missing flickered overhead, only I couldn’t understand the language. They were the same letters from the Roman alphabet I was familiar with though.
A lightbulb flicked on in my head. Was this the demon language?
Aunt Delia always said that my name—Omaera—meant “rose” in my father’s native tongue. I’d tirelessly searched for that language and came up with nothing. A tickle of joy surged through me. The demons here would speak my father’s native language. I instantly felt closer to him, even though that was kind of stupid. He didn’t even live in Hell when he was alive. Not that I blamed him. So far, this place sucked. Nevertheless, I did feel closer to him.
“In here,” Maxar said, jerking his head toward the door beneath the flickering red sign.
Swallowing, I was about to follow him in, but paused and turned to Zandren. “Maybe put some clothes on, Pooh Bear? At least some shorts?”
He frowned, but nodded, stepping forward to open the backpack on Maxar’s back and yanking out the sweatpants he wore before at Melissima’s. Only he had cut them off just above the knees to turn them into shorts. They barely hid anything—least of all, the thick line of his cock.
“Better?” he asked, already sulking.
I smirked. “Mildly.”
“All right, let’s go,” Maxar said, shoving his hand into the door and leading us into the loud, darkly-lit tavern teaming with demons.
Like a record scratching, all conversation ended abruptly when the four of us stepped inside.
Dozens of sets of eyes focused on us, not all of them curious. Some of them were fixing to fight.
Maxar cleared his throat. “We come in peace,” he announced. “We are merely searching for the demon they call Kenvin Jol. If someone knows where we could find him, we’d be very grateful.”
The demon closest to us with the thick black hair, dark-brown eyes, and hoop piercing through his left eyebrow sniffed the air, leaned toward me and sniffed even harder. “This one’s a mutt. There’s human in this one’s blood.”
I swallowed and moved half a step closer to Zandren.
He sniffed again. “The rest of you aren’t even demon.”
Chair legs scraped across the worn wooden floor, and murmurs echoed through the crowd. The tension and animosity in the small space was getting thick enough to choke on.
Without even discussing it, all three of my mates circled me, closing in so nobody could touch me, let alone sniff me.
“You’re the Shifter Prince, aren’t you?” someone from the back of the crowd near the bar asked. “Ryden’s boy.”
Zandren lifted his chin. “I am.”
“Who’s she?” the same voice asked. We had yet to see him.
“My mate,” Zandren said, puffing up his chest a little. My hand fell to the space on his back between his shoulder blades, which was hard as rock.
“Then who are the other two?” someone else asked. “What’s the Shifter Prince doing hanging out with a vampire, and a … what the hell are you?”
“Fire-mage,” Maxar replied, creating a little pink flame on his fingertip just to show off. “We are also her mates. ”
Even more murmurs and louder ones took over the room. Nobody could believe a demon-human hybrid had three mates. Fair enough. Some days I struggled to believe it myself.
“Please,” Maxar said, raising his voice above the din, “if you don’t know who Kenvin Jol is, that’s fine. We’ll be on our way. We don’t mean to cause trouble.”
“What do you want with him?” came another voice.
“We wish for his help,” Maxar replied. “Our mate … her powers are … they are causing her trouble. Her human side is making it difficult for her to control them, and we were told by King Ryden that Kenvin Jol would be the man to help her.”
A part of me thought that maybe if we appealed to the crowd and told them who I really was, who my father was, that they’d be more receptive to us. To helping us. But we really had no idea who we could trust. Maybe finding out that their beloved king had an affair with a human would turn them against me and rally them to Lerris’s cause. We had to tread carefully and remain truthful while also keeping my parentage hidden.
“Why would we help a mutt?” sneered the man who’d been sniffing me earlier. “Let alone a vampire, mage, or shifter. You must think we’re stupid.”
And because he really was fucking stupid, he decided to prove a point and took a literal stab at all of our brains. All four of us gripped the sides of our heads in pain as the asshole demon shoved a poker between the lobes.
Maxar quickly blocked him, and I dug down deep to the one lesson I had from that maniac Raewyn, and slammed down a shield, severing the poker and breaking the connection it had with my brain.
Instant relief.
Then I went in for retaliation, channeling all of my anger and pain and gathering it into the red ball in my mind until that ball could no longer be contained, and it formed, pulsating in my hands. “Stop hurting them,” I said slowly. “Now.”
The demon torturing Zandren and Drak—who were now on the floor, writhing in agony—did nothing but smirk, like he was this invincible motherfucker and I was nothing more than a halfling monstrosity who never should have been born.
“Last chance,” I warned.
He simply ramped up his torture, and blood began to pour out of Zandren and Drak’s noses as they screamed.
Heat filled my chest and head. I increased the energy within the ball until it was slightly smaller than a basketball and hurled it at the demon—just as thunder clapped overhead—sending him flying backward into the chairs and people behind him. Steam sizzled from his chest where a hole the size of the energy ball ripped through him all the way to the other side. I could see a pile of fallen, soggy French fries on the ground through his abdomen.
“We. Come. In. Peace,” I enunciated slowly. “All we want is to know where we can find Kenvin Jol. If you don’t know him, just say so, and we’ll be on our way.”
Drak and Zandren slowly stood up, each of them leaning forward to grab napkins from a nearby table to wipe the blood from their faces.
“No demon can do that. What the hell are you?” came a grizzled voice from the depths of the crowd. Soon the people parted and a man not much older looking than Zandren, but probably way older, slowly stepped forward. He had more gray in his dark hair than anything else, and the deep creases around his eyes told of stories he’d probably rather forget.
“Kenvin Jol?” I asked, knowing this was him.
“What are you?” he asked again.
“Let’s find somewhere to talk— in private— and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
He studied me, then my mates, for a long moment. Long enough that I started to squirm a little under his intense scrutiny. His gaze flicked down to where my sweater had slipped off the pommel of Moloch’s Sacrifice and his pale-blue eyes widened for a moment, but nothing else on his face moved. “You’re his heir,” he whispered.
“Can we find somewhere to talk, Mr. Jol?”
His nod was small, then he jerked his chin toward the door we had just come through. “My place is not too far. We’ll be safe from eavesdroppers there.”
“You just going to let that mutt blast a hole through Tanen?” another demon asked as Kenvin stepped around us toward the door.
“He threw the first punch,” Kenvin said, not bothering to stop or turn back. “His mistake picking a fight with a stronger opponent.” Then he pushed through the swinging door, not bothering to hold it open for us, and we followed him back out into the street.
“You okay?” I asked, sidling up to Zandren, who looked a little worse for wear.
He nodded. “Just need to lie down for a bit. My head is killing me.”
Drak was stoic—as per usual—but he, too, looked exhausted. The dark circles beneath his eyes were near black. He needed to feed.
I held my wrist up in front of his face. “Don’t drink it all, but have a sip. You look like you need it.”
His blue gaze slid to me, and he gently pushed away my hand. “I’m fine.”
“The fuck you are,” I snapped back. “Drink, goddammit.”
The war he was fighting within was written across his face. He knew he needed to feed. He lost a lot of blood. He was weak. This would help. But he didn’t want to admit that he needed help, that he wasn’t fine. That he wasn’t strong. He was still healing from the ambush at the portal entry, not to mention the heat stroke from the desert. He needed this.
Growling, I swung my wrist over to Zandren’s face. “Please use a fang and pierce a vein.”
He looked at me like I was crazy.
I rolled my eyes. “Pooh Bear, please.”
It was his turn to roll his eyes, but he acquiesced, being as gentle as possible. He had nearly broken the skin when Drak snapped. “Fine!”
I smirked and whipped around, holding my wrist in front of the vampire again. “Drink.”
“I’ll wait until we get to where we’re going.”
“Fine!” I mimicked.
Two doors up and Kenvin turned and headed down a narrow alleyway, took a left down another alleyway, and finally came to a dark-blue door. He opened it and didn’t wait for us to funnel in first before entering.
I was definitely not expecting the opulence and luxury within, given the ramshackle conditions of the exterior. I could tell my mates weren’t either.
“Drink?” Kenvin murmured, stepping behind a polished wooden bar riddled with glittering bottles of various spirits on tiered shelves behind him.
“Water,” all four of us said at once.
I found a spot on the plush brown leather couch and indicated Drak sit next to me. I handed over my wrist and after giving me some side eye, he held it gently, punctured it with his fangs, and began to feed.
Heat and pleasure filled me from head to toe, and even more pleasure emerged when I watched the color return to Drak’s face. He closed his eyes and moaned, which made me smile.
He didn’t feed long—which I was grateful for, since if he continued any longer, I may have inconveniently had an orgasm. Why did it feel so good to have my blood drawn like that?
After a moment, he pulled his mouth from my wrist, swept his tongue over the puncture marks to seal them, and pressed his lips together in a small, forced smile. “Thank you.”
I stood up. “May I use your washroom, Mr. Jol?”
The surly demon was still standing behind his bar, having watched the whole blood-sucking thing with veiled interest. He grunted and nodded. “Third door on the right.”
“Thank you.”
I took off in search of the bathroom. When I woke up this morning, my period was mostly over—thank god—but I needed to check that the flow didn’t pick up again after my journey through the portal. I also just needed to pee. I wore nothing but a pantyliner, and thankfully, things were mostly over.
Free of that burden for another month.
I looked like shit as I studied myself in the bathroom mirror, the frame gilded in gold. My super kinky hair was frizzy, my face was grimy and greasy, and when I took a whiff of my pits, I nearly gagged.
Hopefully, Mr. Jol wouldn’t mind me using one of his plush hand towels to wash my face. I gave myself five minutes to freshen up, finding some lemony-scented hand cream in the cupboard under the sink and slathering that on my armpits. I used the hair elastic around my wrist to tame my tresses into a bun, feeling instant relief to have that weight and cover off my neck.
Gentle murmurs pulled be back down the hallway toward the living room where I found Zandren sitting on the leather chair, Maxar on one end of the couch, and Drak on the other. Mr. Jol was perched on a barstool, clutching a short tumbler of amber liquor.
“Been ages since I’ve seen Ryden,” Mr. Jol said, swirling the liquid around in his glass. “He refuses to come to Hell, and I can’t be bothered to go back to Earth. So …”
Zandren snorted. “Dad’s pretty set in his ways. I can’t call him before eleven in the morning—after his nap.”
That made Mr. Jol chuckle. “My kind of man.”
I cleared my throat and all four of them faced me. “I … I hope you don’t mind, but I used a towel in your bathroom to wash my face.”
Mr. Jol nodded, reached into the bar, and held out a tall glass of water. “Afraid it’s too hot in Hell for ice,” he said.
I didn’t care. I accepted the glass and chugged it. “Thank you.”
“We haven’t told Mr. Jol much,” Maxar said. “We were waiting for you.”
With a satisfying, “Ah,” I wiped the back of my hand over my mouth and set the water glass back on the bar. “All right then, let’s start from the beginning.” I made my way over to the couch where I sat down between Drak and Maxar. “A couple of weeks ago, I was struck by lightning …”