Chapter 2
Julian
I looked out across the throng of hot, dancing bodies as they moved to the driving beat.
Delerium pulsed with life, just the way I liked it.
Magic and desire danced to the thudding bass that vibrated up through my boots and into my soul.
Strobing lights cast flashes of white and violet across bare skin and slinky fabric.
This was my domain, a little patch of paradise carved out and hidden away in an unforgiving world.
I’d opened this dance club decades ago so that my incubus and succubus friends wouldn’t have to hunt anymore.
No more alleyway seductions that could lead to our exposure to the human authorities.
No more dangerous bargains with wizards and witches that could see us imprisoned and bound by magic.
No more living at the fringes of society.
Here, our conquests came to us hungry and left breathless and begging for more.
Humans and monsters flocked in, week after week, drawn by the thumping beats and flashing lights.
Some just came to dance and stayed in the regular nightclub section of the establishment.
Others moved Upstairs, chasing the promise of sweet release.
Few people knew it, but technically Upstairs was a separate business and operated as a swingers’ club since that was the closest legal designation I could get at the time we opened. Sexual energy recharging wasn’t listed as a business type on the application form.
They used to call our conquests victims, but that label never fit. Not for me. Victims suggested we drained them dry, left them hollow, like sexual energy vampires. But that wasn’t the truth. At least not here at Delerium.
What we offered was a symbiosis, a give and take: their sexual energy for our pleasure. Yes, we fed. But we also filled. We left them glowing, trembling, satisfied in ways no mortal touch could replicate.
My eyes landed on a trio of women weaving through the bodies.
A minotaur and an incubus followed behind.
Prax, the incubus and my longtime friend, spotted me immediately.
He tilted his head, flashing me a grin that promised mischief.
I lifted my hand in a lazy wave from my dais, which was elevated above the VIP area, where the music was still loud but not deafeningly so.
My gaze locked on the only single woman in the group: Lily.
The last time I saw her, she had a single pink streak in her blonde hair. Tonight, it was all pink. It was bright and unapologetic, glowing under the club lights like cotton candy.
The minx had teased me all night, and when I’d asked her to join me Upstairs in one of the club’s private rooms, her usually lusciously pink aura had flashed an angry red.
Then she’d rolled her eyes at me and danced away.
I wasn’t used to being rejected, but her aloofness only made me want her more.
I’d treated her like just another incubus fangirl, which had been totally my fault. She was several steps above. I loved a good challenge, and I couldn’t wait for another chance to turn her “No” into a resounding “Yes!” She’d be worth the effort, I just knew it.
Today, Lily’s aura was duller than normal. Was something bothering her? You couldn’t tell from the brilliant smile she wore or the way she laughed with her friends, as her body began swaying to the rhythm.
Lily was everything the incubus inside me craved.
Her energy was pure and bright, and while I hadn’t actually gotten the chance to have a taste, I just knew she’d be delicious.
When we’d danced, our bodies gyrating to the beat, she’d rubbed that perfect ass all over me until I was craving her like nothing else.
When she’d left with her friends at the end of the night, I’d stayed behind to sample the men and women eager to feed me and my friends. But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get into it. None of them interested me the way Lily had, and I’d left without my usual top-up.
Not a big deal. Despite popular belief, incubi and succubi didn’t need constant sexual energy to survive. In fact, we could go a surprisingly long time without it, especially if we didn’t turn solid or interact with the world.
The group’s usual VIP table was taken tonight.
Thursday wasn’t their usual haunt; they came on Saturdays.
I guided them to another one, tucked into a velvet alcove with a view of the dance floor and a little more privacy.
The table shimmered with a privacy spell so those sitting could talk despite the loud music.
I ordered them a round of complimentary drinks.
Lily didn’t seem to be holding my faux pas from last time over me, so I took that to be a sign to pour on the charm again.
“Celebrating something?” I asked the group in general, leaning in just enough to be heard over the pulse of the music. “You don’t usually show up midweek.”
They all glanced at Lily. She gave her hair a toss. “Got fired today. Figured dancing was a slightly more legal alternative to caving the asshole’s skull in.”
I raised a brow at the violent imagery. “Asshole? Your boss?”
“No. The owner’s nephew. Claimed I stole his work. Fucker’s a lying liar.”
“Want me to send a friend his way?” I winked. “I’ve got a few that specialize in poetic justice.”
She laughed, and the sound tinkled over the music. Her hand landed on my arm, and my skin sparked under hers, rippling with awareness.
“Thanks,” she said, her fingers lingering just a second too long. “Penny already offered to put a curse on him. But it’s okay. I’m trying to see this as a good omen. I mean, I keep saying I need to start my own thing, but I never do. Got too comfy. This just forces me to grow.”
The server arrived, and I handed Lily her Guilty Pleasure, before raising my whiskey, the ice clinking against the glass. “To new beginnings.”
“To new beginnings,” they echoed, glasses meeting with a series of soft clinks.
I stayed for a while and we danced, her body pressing close and her magic brushing mine in teasing waves. She lost herself in the beat, and I could see her aura glow, like it was recovering just by being here and dancing next to me.
It probably wasn’t me doing the healing, but I liked to pretend that it was. Her glow surrounded me as it had the last time we’d danced together. It felt so good. So perfect. And that had me wondering how our bodies would fit together off the dance floor.
The idea titillated, heating me up with thoughts of her naked and begging under me.
Incubi needed sexual energy to live. Sure, we could eat food, and many did because it was yet another bodily pleasure.
But if our well of stored sexual energy ran out, we ceased to be able to turn solid.
Being stuck in an immaterial soul form meant it was infinitely harder to rebuild that energy reserve.
We wouldn’t quite die, though, since we were never really alive.
The closest thing to describe it was like being a ghost stuck in purgatory, unable to do anything or interact with the world, also unable to end it all.
But having it in excess didn’t make us any stronger.
Take Prax, for example. He danced with his witch mate across from me.
He glowed with power and energy as strong as my own, even though he only fed from Penny.
I was surprised when my old friend showed up at my club with his little witch and her friends.
I hadn’t realized he’d been freed from the clutches of an evil wizard.
I was also surprised that despite having been bound for so long, he chose to stick with one, and only one, witch.
I pitied him at first. The poor fool was freed from bondage of one kind only to be stuck mate-bonded to a witch, but Prax had assured me time and again that he was the happiest he’d ever been.
I couldn’t imagine limiting myself to just one source of power for the rest of my life, not after having been spoiled for choice for so long, which was exactly why my growing obsession with Lily was so strange.
The sexy little witch danced in front of me, her body knowing precisely how to move to make me want to drop to my knees and worship at the altar of her body.
Maybe it was the lure of something I couldn’t have. A challenge. Maybe after I’d won her over and I’d spent several days or weeks pumping into her, the covetous feeling would fade. Yes, that must be it.
My head of security, Nathan, caught my eye from across the room with a look too grim to ignore. I excused myself, reluctantly peeling away from Lily’s presence.
“What’s the news?” I asked, stepping into the shadowed hallway with him.
The huge-ass bear shifter didn’t waste words. “Someone tried to mess with our cameras. Ran when we spotted him. Disappeared around the corner.”
We went out back to scour the area. The corner the guy disappeared around was a dead end. Nothing but a wall, a garbage can, and the strong smell of ozone.
“Ozone,” I said. “He used a portal.”
Nate nodded. “Think it’s the po-po trying to pin something on you after last week?”
“Could be,” I said noncommittally.
My entire security team had been on high alert since last weekend, when two witches vanished after leaving the club.
The cops came on Monday—not Cooley and Hayes, the pair I was used to dealing with—but two men I’d never met before.
They arrived with all sorts of accusations, playing good cop and bad cop, and trying to get me to slip up and say something incriminating.
They were convinced the disappearances were tied to Delerium. Demons of any kind were often the first suspects when women went missing, incubi and succubi even more so. It was hard enough fighting the stigma to keep my club open. I didn’t need rumors flying about witches disappearing at my club.
I didn’t know what happened to those witches, and that was the truth. But I also hated being in the dark. This club, this whole block, was mine to protect. And I took that seriously.
Lucky for me, we had video proof that both witches left the club.
One even hit a twenty-four-hour kebab place across the street.
My cameras caught her crossing the road, and the money trail backed it up.
Still, one of those smug bastards tried to claim my footage was doctored.
But facts don’t lie. And neither do credit card transactions.
And now someone was tampering with my surveillance. Nate was right; it could be the cops. But it could also be whoever is targeting witches.
We did a quick walk of the perimeter and headed up to the roof for a quick check before stepping back inside to the security room, where several screens met us.
The only video we’d gotten of the guy was useless.
Dressed head to toe in the epitome of nondescript black clothes, the guy had pulled a buff over his face. There were no defining features at all.
I continued to scan the videos, then cursed when my eyes landed on the video of Lily by the bar. A guy was giving her unwelcome attention, grabbing her ass, which resulted in her throwing her drink at the man’s face.
“Little Lily, already getting into trouble,” I mumbled under my breath. “Send someone to defuse the situation, will ya, Nate?”
Usually, I’d trust her to take care of herself; I knew she was capable. But with the witch-napper on the loose, I’d much rather she draw as little attention to herself as possible.
“I’m on it.” Nate barked a few orders through his radio, and a guard showed up just as the idiot decided to grab her by the hair.
But it seemed Lily didn’t need help after all because the man’s face suddenly screwed up like something was grabbing his balls.
No one touched him, but Lily’s magic sizzled around him, the same bright pink as her aura.
Soon Lily was walking away with a replacement drink in her hand, and the idiot was being taught that here in Delerium no meant no, and it was enforced by monstrous guards not scared to show their less-than-human side.
I finished scouring the rest of our feeds, taking longer than I wanted, before I returned to the public-facing area of the club, leaving Nate with his screens.
About time too. I was missing too much of the action, and I didn’t want my newly jobless little witch going home with someone else.
I’d decided that she was my newest conquest, and if anyone was going to distract and console her, it would be me.
What I saw next had my nonexistent blood boiling.
Lily was passed out at their table, and her friends surrounded her, worried. Thanks to the privacy spell around the VIP tables, no one else noticed them.
“What happened?” I squeezed my way through the circle to reach her.
“We don’t know,” Penny said, wringing her hands. “We got back from the ladies’ room and were dancing, then she felt dizzy and had to sit down. Then she was out cold.”
Griselda, or Gigi for short, reached out to touch her friend. “It’s a spell. I can feel magic that isn’t her, but I can’t trace it.” She looked out into the writhing mass of clubgoers like she was trying to see who was responsible. “It will fade. But we should probably get her back home.”
“Should she be alone right now, though?” Penny asked. “You know, because of the thing?”
The thing? What did she mean?
“You’re right,” Gigi said, nodding. “Someone should watch her, at least until she wakes.”
“I’ll do it.” I didn’t realize I’d volunteered until the words left my mouth.
They all turned to me like I’d grown an extra head.
“What?” Did they not trust me? “No harm would come to her. And this is my club; if anything happened to her here, I’d be responsible.”
Penny and Gigi exchanged a look, then Gigi cast a blanket of silence spell over the booth, as if she didn’t trust the privacy spell already on it.
“Not sure if you know, but several witches went missing in the past few weeks,” Penny said, looking serious. “And the last two went missing around here last weekend.”
I pressed my lips into a thin line. I hadn’t realized those two witches hadn’t been the only ones. “I do know about them. The last two, anyway. I had nothing to do with it.”
Penny put up a placating hand. “Oh, we weren’t implying it’s you.” Her eyes trailed upward toward the private rooms. “But I’m not sure I want my friend up there alone, passed out.”
“I won’t just leave her in one of the private rooms,” I promised. “I’ll bring her to my apartment. No one can get in there. And I’ll watch her myself.”
Gigi and Penny exchanged a look.
“Okay,” Gigi finally said. “But you better not take advantage of her.”
“Unless she asks for it,” Penny added.
“I promise.”
And that was how Lily ended up on my bed, in my private apartment above the club.