Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Syke
The line to get into Infernus, the demon friendly sex club downtown, went around the block. The line was all humans though, since the club let creatures skip the line. God knew there were enough humans who wanted a taste of the dark side. Well, Lucifer knew would be more apt.
“Syke,” the bouncer rumbled at me. He was a demon, a powerful one, and I wasn’t sure what the club’s owners had done to secure his cooperation, but he was enough of a deterrent that only the stupid or brave tried to start something inside Infernus.
“Astion.” I walked across the wards, which also must have cost a pretty penny. I wasn’t sure who owned Infernus, not really, but I had my suspicions. They had deep pockets and bloody hands, but that wasn’t my concern right now.
At this moment, all I wanted was to find some pretty little human who wanted to be spanked until she cried then suck down that pain like a shot of the finest whiskey. I felt eyes on me as soon as I stepped beneath the deep, red lights. Yeah, I wouldn’t struggle to feed tonight, and I was hungry.
I strolled up to the bar and smiled at Kirz, a sprite who made the best moonshine in the northern hemisphere. She slid a glass across to me and leaned on the bar with her breasts pressed together.
“Hey, Syke,” she purred, and I smiled tightly at her. “You going to make me a happy fae and take me home tonight?”
I gave her a mock frown. “I thought you grew out of making bad decisions last century.” The smirk I gave her was what I liked to think of as my fuckboy final boss expression. “Besides, you know I don’t do happy. I could make you cry and wish you’d never met me, but that’s it.”
“Somehow I think I’d enjoy the way you drew my tears,” she teased.
I had one rule about this club—hell, maybe a rule for life.
Don’t fuck the staff at your favorite bar.
It only took one misunderstanding, and I’d have to find a new place to haunt, so I grabbed my drink and raised it in her direction.
“I make no promises. Busy here tonight? The line is all the way down the block and around the corner.”
Even as she shook a cocktail for a girl standing topless at the bar, Kirz rolled her eyes. “Every night, it feels like there are more and more humans. I had to water down the moonshine because they’d throw it back like it’s human liquor and flop to the floor like a dead fish. Bad for business.”
I stared down at my glass suspiciously, and she gave me an offended look. “Creatures get the pure stuff. You’ve dishonored me by the expression on your face.” An offended sprite was bad news, but I knew Kirz was just messing with me.
“As if I wouldn’t know it was watered down. Now who’s insulted?” I winked at her and stepped from the bar. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I walked through the darkness, the red strobe lights flashing around me, and I tasted the people in the crowd.
Humans were so easy to siphon for emotions, they were the equivalent of fast food.
Their self-loathing alone would keep me full for the rest of the day, but I didn’t want to have to come back tomorrow, and it felt almost wrong to feed from Hailey now that she was going to be on the team.
Humans swayed to music with incomprehensible lyrics, wearing fewer and fewer clothes until some were just in thongs and nothing else. Both women and men were trying to tempt a demon, since gender didn’t matter in Infernus.
I found myself straying from the women and gravitating toward the males in the room. I could use some self-loathing coupled with repressed sexual urges. They definitely wanted me to tell them that they were worthless little worms, a waste of the stardust used to create them.
Ugh, I was rusty at degradation, but I’d figure it out.
I stood at the edge of the dance floor, and my lips curved into a smile as I found the perfect candidate.
The guy was jacked and easily as tall as me, perhaps a little taller.
He was strutting around the dance floor like he belonged here, despite his aura being entirely human.
He was dancing up on half naked women, and when they stepped away, he stepped with them.
Ah, a tourist. He was here because he thought the women were desperate for cock, and if they couldn’t ride a monster, then they might slum it with him, but beneath that shit-eating fuckface expression was crippling inadequacy, and the low hum of violence born from bitterness.
Yes, he was perfect.
I moved toward the dance floor. He had his fingers curled in the exposed thong of a girl who couldn’t be more than twenty-one. What was she doing in here? She looked uncomfortable, but like the sweet little sheep humans were, she was frozen in fear.
I danced up to them, letting random hands stroke over my chest while I tasted the edges of people’s fear. They could tell I was a demon. There weren’t many here, so I was a novelty—the major prize.
When I stopped in front of the girl, she looked up at me with huge, scared eyes. What a girl like this was doing here was beyond me. I leaned down and buried my face in her throat as she stood frozen beneath my hands. Delicious, delicious fear.
I slid my hands around her back and grabbed the little worm’s wrists. I squeezed hard until he let go of her clothing and breathed in his pain, then I smiled into her throat. When I pulled back, I looked down at her.
“Go home, little lamb. This is not the place for you,” I murmured in her ear, and she blinked up at me before turning on her heel and pushing through the crowd. I was still holding the worm’s wrists, and we both watched her disappear past the bar.
I threw out strong pheromones, and I could feel the answering echo of lust from him, but the horrified response of the man in front of me was a great appetizer.
“Look,” he started, and I released one of his wrists so I could raise my finger to his mouth.
“Shush, no one said you could speak.” I looked him up and down. Humans would find him attractive, but I could see to his core, and it was mottled with ill intentions. He wasn’t evil yet, but it was more from a lack of opportunity to grow rather than a moral barrier. “Do not move.”
I walked around him, my magic reaching out and stroking that putrid aura. “You are the nastiest little worm, aren’t you?” It wasn’t a compliment despite the fact that his dick twitched in his pants. “You like that, don’t you, worm? You like it when I tell you how disgusting you are. Be honest.”
He gritted his teeth. “Yes.”
My lips curled, and I breathed in his hatred. I ran a hand down his chest, flicking his nipple with my finger and watching him groan. Yeah, he liked it.
“Worms don’t have legs.” I walked backwards until I was on the outer edge of the dance floor.
“Crawl to me, worm.” I made my voice travel, and I relished the way his skin shuddered.
I wasn’t commanding him. Everything he was doing was of his own volition.
These predators needed to know they were the prey.
Here, they were little better than nothing.
Those who sought to take without permission would quickly find themselves on the other side of the equation.
Though there were plenty of my own kind who would have eaten that little lamb alive too.
Satisfaction twisted through me as the worm got to his hands and knees and crawled.
His back muscles flexed, and aesthetically he was very pleasing.
I breathed in the embarrassment that coated his skin, his confusion about why he was responding to me, and the ache in his cock that he hated because it meant he was attracted to something worse than a demon.
It meant he was attracted to men.
I rolled my eyes at the hypocrisy of it all. A demon I might be, but I didn’t pretend to be anything but male. There was nothing soft and effeminate about me. The bigoted ones couldn’t pretend that my lithe beauty was feminine the way they could with the fae.
I sipped his confusion like the finest wine. Delightful.
When he finally made it to me, he sat up on his knees, and I stared down at his earnest, hateful expression.
He licked his lips, his face level with my crotch, and I wondered if I should reward him by letting him suck my cock.
Then I remembered how scared that little lamb was, and the fact that he wouldn’t take her very obvious refusal.
Shitty humans didn’t get rewards.
Lifting my leg, I put my boot on his chest and pushed until he tipped onto his back and lay there staring up at me, entirely stunned. I put my boot on his throat and watched as his face turned purple.
His whole body shook, and I saw the stain bloom on his obnoxious gray shorts—cum or piss, or maybe both. I left my boot there, pressing harder on his windpipe until fear for his life colored the air around us.
“This is not your hunting ground, worm. Come here again and force yourself on my playthings, and you’ll soon find out just who the real monsters are.”
I took my boot off his throat, and he sucked in a deep breath. I turned and walked away from him, off the dance floor, and out of the club.
I might not have gotten my dick wet, but I was leaving Infernus completely satisfied.