Chapter 26
“Are they demons, too?” Mabel asks, leaning in so I can hear her over the music.
“No,” I say back, voice nothing more than a hoarse whisper. If she wasn’t a vampire, she wouldn’t be able to hear me. “That’s Vivian and Marco Russo.”
Mabel gasps. “Your adoptive parents who sold you out! I’m glad they did because we’re friends now, but how dare they!” She steps in front of me, fangs drawn. “We should tell them they’re terrible people!”
I want to be mature and tell her they’re not worth my time or energy, but fuck, I want to look Vivian in the eyes and tell her that I know everything. But we’re also trying to save innocent drunk guys from getting their souls sucked out while they get sucked off.
“Later,” I say and grab Mabel’s hand. Marco pushes Vivian forward and I grit my teeth, realizing we’re all going after the same demons.
“How do you kill a succubus?” Mabel asks as we hurry down the stairs.
“With a special blade,” I say shortly. “Which I don’t have, but I promise you, Vivian does. We can take it from her.”
“Are they here for the demons or here for you?”
“How would they—?” I start to ask but then stop myself.
Mabel posted us getting ready on her social media stories, saying we’re heading to the particular club.
She went live in the car and stayed on live for a good twenty minutes, talking to her followers as we stood outside.
It’s not hard to figure out where we are even if she didn’t tag the location.
Shaking my head, I push forward, having to go around a group of girls here to celebrate a twenty-first birthday.
“You think you can get us into a private room?” I ask Mabel.
“Of course!” She beams, retracts her fangs, and pulls her phone from her little clutch purse that’s hanging on her wrist. Vivian and Marco are ahead of us, but they get hung up when a bouncer stops them from going into the back.
Technically, anyone can get a room—if you pay.
Mabel, on the other hand, just shows the bouncer an email from the club manager who invited her here for “the press” and lets us back.
I turn, eyes narrowing as I look Vivian dead in the eyes.
Unable to help myself, I mouth the words, “I know,” before turning and going down the hall behind Mabel.
We go through double doors that are covered in bright red pleather, looking like headboards in a cheap hotel.
The music quiets as the doors swing shut behind us.
“This place might be a little skeezier than I thought,” Mabel says, wrinkling her nose as she inhales.
“Yeah, it’s giving sex worker vibes. But hey, sex work is real work, no judgement.”
“True. What’s the plan?” Mabel slows, turning to look at me with bright eyes. She’d been forced to the sidelines as a hunter and even after all this time, she’s eager to get in on the action.
“We need to figure out which room they went into and go in, acting like we’re drunk and got lost. I don’t know if they’ll be able to sense you’re a vampire right away or not, so get the humans out and I’ll distract the demons. Then, we kill them.”
Mabel’s fangs come down and she claps her hands together, looking like a kid excited to wake up and see all the presents under the tree on Christmas morning. She tips her head, listening. “They’re in the second to last room.”
“We make a good team,” I tell her, and her smile grows. “Never would I have thought—” I’m cut off when the doors open and Vivian and Marco come marching in. I don’t think. I just act.
Whirling around, I rush forward.
“You’ve got some nerve,” I say through gritted teeth. Vivian puts her hands up, trying to let me know she’s not going to hurt me. Her face is pale, and she looks like she might cry. But it’s not from her guilt of selling me out, it’s from how fucking screwed she is that things didn’t go as planned.
No one expected Xavier to marry me.
I was supposed to be used like a breeder, locked away and hidden from the world, silencing the truth and making it just quietly go away.
“We’re just here for the demons,” Marco says, reaching into his jacket for a weapon.
Not even giving him a chance, I throw my hand out, eyes narrowing as I look at Marco.
My fingers land on his forehead. “Somnum,” I say and he slumps forward.
I grab him, not wanting him to collapse on his knife, and lower him to the ground.
Using magic on my “parents” has always been strictly forbidden.
It was a rule I understood at the time, and it was one that made sense.
But these people aren’t my parents. Not anymore.
“You kidnapped me.” I round on Vivian. She’s looking from Marco, to me, to Mabel and back. “Everything you said was a lie. My whole life.” Tears burn in the corners of my eyes. “You didn’t save me. You took me.”
“Wren, please, I can explain,” she tries. I can sense Mabel slowly moving closer and I can only imagine how unhinged she looks, pressed up like a 90s TV vampire slayer, moving effortlessly down the dim hall behind me.
“It won’t change anything. You took me from my family and told me they were murdered.
I grew up as an outcast amongst outcasts and I devoted my life to you!
” The lights above me start to flicker as the anger surges through me.
“Everything I did was for you and the fucking Order and now, I. Know. Everything.”
Vivian’s eyes widen and I can sense her fear.
She’s entirely cooked if this gets out. The Order needed to keep this whole thing under wraps.
While most of the members blindly follow whatever they’re told to do, knowing the Order was behind injecting members with the blood of a witch isn’t going to go over well.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” Mabel says, appearing at my side. She doesn’t mean it, I don’t think at least, but she’s here, being that ride or die friend I’ve always wanted.
“I-I can tell you where your parents are,” Vivian blurts out and I inhale sharply. Xavier told me they were dead, but I didn’t believe him.
“You’re lying,” I reply, breath hitching in my chest.
“No,” she insists. “Blackwood. That was your last name. Florence Blackwood. That’s who you are.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry, Wren.”
I shake my head. “No, you’re not.” With tears in my eyes, I raise my hand to cast the sleep spell on her. Vivian is faster, and whips a throwing knife at me.
But Mabel is the fastest of us all, and she catches it right before it hits me in the shoulder.
“That wasn’t nice,” she says, gripping the blade with her hand.
It cuts through her skin and blood drips onto the ground.
Someone inside the room with the demons screams, and I spring forward, casting the sleep spell on Vivian, too.
I don’t catch her, but step back and let her heavily slump to the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” Mabel says, tossing the knife onto the ground next to Vivian. Her hand heals immediately.
“It’s fine,” I rush out, bending down to get the knife from Marco.
“It’s not,” Mabel says as I start down the hall. “No one who said they loved you would treat you that way. But I know this isn’t the time to talk about it.”
I turn, meeting her eyes for a second and nod.
She can be so odd and out of touch that it takes me off guard when she’s incredibly understanding.
We throw open the door and burst into the room.
It’s dimly lit, with a table in the far corner and a couch in the other.
Two guys are huddled together at the table and one is unconscious on the floor, pants around his ankles.
“You certainly work fast,” I say, and the succubus crouches over the man on the ground whirls around, mouth open as she screams, looking far from the pretty young woman she was pretending to be only moments ago.
Her jaw opens unnaturally wide, revealing dozens of sharp teeth.
She makes a move to lunge at me and I throw a ball of energy, hitting her square in the chest.
“It’s go time,” I tell Mabel. “Get the guys out of here!”
She nods and zooms forward, picking up the guy on the floor. His pants fall to the ground as she swings him up onto her shoulder and I run forward, using another blast of energy to knock the other two demons to the ground, giving Mabel time to zoom to the table.
The succubus on the ground recovers and charges at me. Gripping the knife, I look at the others and lean back, kicking the one coming at me in the chest. Using a combination of magic and hand-to-hand combat, I get her pushed up against a wall.
“Please have brought the right weapon,” I mumble to myself as I stab the blade into the demon’s chest. Her hands land on my shoulders and she pushes against me, trying to keep the blade from piercing her heart.
Letting out a harrowing scream that reverberates through the entire room, her arms fall to the side and I shove the knife in, cracking her sternum.
Her body tenses and then starts to shake, and thick, black blood drips from her eyes right before she collapses, pulling the knife along with her. I bend down, having to use brute force to pull the serrated edge blade from her bone.
The door opens and closes again and Mable rushes to the other demons. She’s holding a silver-tipped wooden stake, one that I recognize as belonging to Marco.
“Look what I found! Will this kill them?” she asks cheerfully.
The blade comes free, splattering blood on my face. “Don’t look at them in the—” It’s too late. “Eye,” I finish and straighten up, using my arm to wipe blood from my eyes. One of the succubus has Mabel’s hand in hers, smiling as she looks into Mabel’s eyes.
“Hi, best friend,” she says, voice echoing through the room.
“You’re just like a sister,” the other coos, telling Mabel what her heart wants to hear.
“Don’t listen to them!” I shout, pulse bounding. Shit. What do I do? If they’ve got Mabel under their spell they can get her to do anything.
“That’s a pretty thing you’re holding,” the first one goes on. “You should stab it into your heart.”
Mabel’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “Why would I do that?”
“It would make us happy,” both demons say at the same time. “Don’t you want your friends to be happy?”
This is what succubus demons do. It’s not just about sex, though sexual energy is the most potent.
They pull on your heart's desires, and since there is no one in here to make Mabel physically pine over—which could be a little insulting. I mean, I look pretty good, but that’s so not the point right now—they are instead pulling on her other desires, which is to have a best friend.
“Her friend is happy, you harpy cunts,” I say, gripping the knife tighter. My free hand comes up and I inhale, pulling in as much energy as I can before throwing an energy ball right between the two demons, hitting them both.
Then I run forward and shove Mabel to the ground. She’s spelled and doesn’t react or try to stop me, so she stumbles back, dropping the wooden stake.
“Whoa,” she says. “That was weird.”
“You good?” I step in front of her, knife raised, eyes darting from one demon to the other. Taking out two at once is going to be tricky.
“Yeah, but that wasn’t very nice.”
“No, it wasn’t.” My heart is in my throat and my adrenaline pumps through my veins. The longer I stand here, the more I run the risk of coming under their spell and I’m terrified to know what my true desire is right now. My mind flashes to Xavier, and it’s like I can feel his hands on my body.
Shaking my head, I jump forward. Mabel moves at the same time, zooming around and grabbing the demon in front of me by the arms. I raise my hand and see Xavier again, but this time, it’s not just his body against mine that I’m craving.
It’s the way he looks at me like he sees me, the real me, and accepts me for exactly who I am.
And wants me to embrace it even more.
Something bubbles inside of me, something familiar and foreign at the same time. I turn and it’s like time slows. The last succubus is coming at me, sailing through the air and about to land on me.
“Ignis,” I say and release the buildup of energy inside of me. It bursts against the demon, setting her on fire. Screeching, she madly runs back, batting at the flames that encompass her entire body.
“Wren!” Mabel calls and I shake myself. She’s holding the demon’s arms behind her back, and I shove the dagger right into the succubus’s chest. Mabel pushes the body at the same time, and the blade slices right though, slicing into her cold, black heart.
Mabel steps back and the demon slumps to the ground. Stepping over it, she stands next to me and we watch the last succubus crumble into a pile of ash.
“I guess fire kills them, too,” I say right as the sprinklers come on, followed by the smoke alarms.
“That was awesome,” Mabel tells me. “We make a good team, right?”
“We do, especially considering that was your first kill. Demon kill,” I quickly add as I retrieve the knife. The doors open and Vivian and Marco come running in, sliding to a stop, shoes squeaking on the wet tile.
“Good. You’re awake.” I throw the knife down at their feet. “Clean up this mess.”