Demon's Hunger (30 page)

A shadow spread along the slushy ground, and the sound of heels on pavement echoed, off the high brick walls on either side of the alley. Sensing a second threat, Dain spun to his left, again shifting his body to protect Vivien, to stand between her and danger.

"Incompetence should be classified as one of the seven deadly sins," a smooth, feminine voice said, her tone both chilling and heavy with threat.

The demon made a choked sound, its arms coming up as though to ward off a blow. Spinning, it slammed against the wall, moaned, lifted its head, then let it fall.

The woman strode toward them, her heels tapping a rhythm on the asphalt. She was beautiful and icily flawless, everything about her polished to perfection, her hair smooth and dark, a diamond necklace glinting at her throat.

Dain pressed his mangled forearm against his abdomen, blood oozing, warm and sticky, from the lacerated flesh. Gritting his teeth, he dragged himself forward until he was directly in front of Vivien.

Shaking hard, Vivien pressed against him, her gaze focused on the woman, her breathing harsh and jagged. She was chalk pale and trembling, a slew of emotions skittering across her features. Shock. Horror. Fear.

And pain.

"Oh, God," she whispered, shaking her head from side to side.

The woman spared them a glance, her gaze lingering on Vivien for an instant, her expression thawing the faintest bit. She moved to stand over the demon, gazing down at it in blatant disgust.

"I told you to collect her and bring her to me. I did not tell you to
ingest
her."

Vivien. She was talking about Vivien.

The demon hauled itself onto its hands and knees. Bloody streaks marked its face, and one eye hung from the socket. Dain realized he must have gouged it loose during the fight.

Vivien made a sound of distress, her breathing fast and shallow.

Dain dragged the metal pipe forward so he could use it as a weapon. She was warded. She was safe, at least temporarily. And he was going to do anything it took to stay alive long enough for the others to get here and make certain she stayed that way.

"I didn't know she was the one," the demon rasped. "I thought she was a blighted seed. She stinks of sorcerer magic, light magic. I didn't know she was the one you sought."

Dain shook his head to clear it. The demon sensed light magic in her, and Dain sensed brimstone. So who was right?

"Did you hurt her?" the woman demanded icily.

The demon said nothing.

With a glance at Vivien, the woman half turned, her sleek, dark hair swaying as she moved her head. Her eyes narrowed, and she seemed to study Vivien's appearance, her gaze lingering on the blood that stained her collar and the ragged holes torn at her knees.

Was she an ally? An enemy? Dain had the lousy suspicion that she was the latter.

Her lips thinned. She spun toward the demon.

"She is not a sorcerer, you idiot," the woman hissed. "She is a succubus, as I am a succubus. Think on that. It is the last thought you will ever have."

With a moan, Vivien sagged against him.

"A… succubus." She gave a harsh, panting laugh. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God."

He wanted to explain it to her, tell her that it wasn't as bad as it sounded. Offer her reassurance. Only he had no idea what to say, not with the situation what it was. Jesus. He should have told her everything last night.

The demon made a mewling sound as the woman stepped closer.

Dain sensed magic, the same freaky signature that had been haunting him for days, and her words, combined with her aura, told him that here was the succubus they sought. Here was the serial killer.

The realization actually offered him some comfort, because so far the killer had slaughtered only men. Maybe that was something in their favor. Maybe she would let Vivien go.

"Vivien, love,
run
," Dain ordered, wrenching the words out against the pain of his efforts to call his depleted magic and the dark agony of his shattered arm. "Run for the street."

Her eyes met his, terrified, horrified, and then her gaze shifted beyond him, toward the demon and the woman, and if possible, her face went a whiter shade of pale, shock and dismay bleeding from her to scorch him like an acid cloud.

Dain followed her gaze and grimaced in disgust as the succubus took the demon's face in her hands, dragged the creature into a stoop so their eyes were level, and pressed her open mouth to its gaping maw. Black, oozing ribbons wound from the demon's body, out and around the woman, twining, writhing until her arms and legs and torso were surrounded by the swirling mass. Her skin absorbed the greasy sludge, and after a moment, the demon seemed to cave in on itself.

Beside him, Vivien made a moaning sound of utter horror and revulsion, and Dain reached for her hand, clasping it tightly; then he turned her, gave her a nudge in the direction of the street, his eyes locked on the threat of the succubus.

"Go, Vivien," he ordered.

Christ. The succubus was siphoning the demon's power, absorbing it.

With a choking sound, Vivien resisted his attempts to make her flee, her expression a stark mixture of disgust and dismay.

Stepping back, the succubus let the creature drop in a desiccated pile on the ground, and after a moment, the demon's remains began to bubble and hiss, decomposing in a stinking, gurgling ooze, releasing pungent waves of brimstone and rot that hung heavy in the air.

She turned and studied them, her face pinched. Her gaze slid to Dain, to the pipe he held as a paltry weapon, and then to Vivien. She raised an eyebrow.

"Vivien," Dain rasped. "Go, now. Go! Run!"

"Run?" Vivien echoed, the word tremulous as she shook so hard her teeth clacked together. "F-f-from my
mother
?"

sis sic sic

Her mother.

Vivien swayed, barely able to stay on her feet, her thoughts whirling. Sick horror bubbled through her, and she swallowed against the hard lump clogging her throat.

The succubus—the murderer Dain had sought her help to find—was her
mother
.

OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod.

She'd spent her whole life thinking she was human, thinking her mom was ice cold and hard but still
human
. How was she supposed to process this? How was she supposed to survive it?

Oh, God. Her mother had just sucked the life from a demon and then dropped it on the ground to bubble away as a hissing blob of puke-green sludge.

Desperately, she tried to summon calm composure. What came at her was raw despair.

She'd been lied to her whole life. Her mother was a succubus. Some sort of demonic creature and—

Oh, no. No, no, no.

Vivien recoiled, her chest pulling tight.
She
was a succubus. She was a demon. She was—

"Am I what you are? A
succubus
?" Vivien demanded, her voice high find wild, her gaze sliding to the demon's remains.

"So it seems." Araminta gave a tight, closed-mouth smile. "So you are not your father's daughter after all."

"Vivien," Dain said, "it's going to be all right."

She choked on a laugh, hysteria burbling like a free-flowing brook. All right? All right? How? How would it be all right?

She tightened her hold on Dain's hand. He was her anchor, her one real thing in a world gone mad.

"You're quite old to come into your succubus power, Vivien," her mother mused. "I wonder why it never revealed itself earlier, but I cannot say I'm displeased with the outcome."

"How could you lie to me? How could you let me go my whole life thinking…" Vivien swallowed, reined in her escalating panic. "How could you not tell me? How could you let me believe I was human?"

"There was no reason to tell you. To all appearances, you
were
human. What was I to say? That I would live for millennia, while you would die after a paltry few years? That I was all-powerful, and you were weak and unprotected? Do you think it was easy for me to live with that, to know that it would end so fast? That you would die and fade to nothing but memories and ash?"

Vivien recoiled, her mother's words shocking her. Was this an explanation, a reason that her mother had held herself so aloof, so apart?

It was too much. It was all too much. She didn't know what to think, what to do.

Chilled to the marrow of her bones, Vivien sent a quick glance at Dain. He was looking at her without expression, his gaze shuttered, his lips drawn tight. He looked exhausted, strained to the point of breaking, as though he remained on his feet by will alone.

"What a greedy girl," Araminta said, her tone remote, cool. "You've sucked him dry, spooled all your sorcerer's magic onto a bobbin inside you. Tied it up in a tight coil. You've left him nothing but crumbs."

"What? No, I—" Vivien's gaze shot to Dain's, and she read the truth. She had done this to him. Stolen his magic. Left him running on empty. "
Oh, God. No
."

What could he have been thinking? Why would he have let her do this to him?

Suddenly, she
knew
, everything slapping her in a sharp rush. Her heart hammered. She remembered everything. Memories of the time she had lost whirled and dipped, but despite the disjointedness, she remembered everything. Every horrifying detail. The hunger. The need to feed. The overwhelming ache. Walking through the woods outside her house at night, searching for the source of the dark energy she sensed, wanting to inhale it, to slake her hunger. Those things she had sensed watching her—she had wanted to
feed
on them. Only she hadn't. Something, some inner boundary of ethics and morality had stopped her.

She'd been starving.

That's why Dain had let her pull his power and his magic. Because she'd been starving.

Terrible understanding scored her, leaving her aching to whimper and sob. What sort of creature was she that she could do this to the man she loved?

The haze lifted, and every memory crystallized, clear and harsh. Terrible things. Frightening things.

The battle in the derelict building. She'd followed the trail of
hybrid
magic, wanting to take it from them, wanting to feed from them.

But she hadn't fed. Couldn't make herself feed on their smeared magic. They'd come at her, and Dain had saved her. She remembered that now.

Dain, standing before her, between her and them, protecting her, willing to give his life for her.

He hadn't left her.

She'd just gotten hungrier and hungrier…

Until last night, when she'd fed from Dain.

Her head whipped around, and she cried out in her horror and despair as her gaze slid across the bubbling remains of the demon and then skidded to her mother and finally to Dain.

"Is
that
what I did to you? What she did to that demon? Stole your magic? Your life?"

She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, bile rolling bitter and vile in her gut.

"Vivien," he rasped, his voice weak, his skin a terrible shade of gray. He was ill. Horribly ill. Her fault.

A nauseating mix of dread and horror left her shaking. She wanted to scream. She wanted to sob and beat the ground with her fists and tear at her hair in a frenzy of panic and despair.

She'd never felt this out of control, this terrified, this desperate. It was too much. It was all too much.

Drawing a shaky breath, she forced herself to be rational, calm. She needed file folders. One for the shock of her discoveries about her mother. One for the horror of what she now knew she was. And the folder at the top of the pile, the one marked
urgent
, was for Dain.

She needed to fix this. Now.

"I need the short version of the succubus manual. The crash course," she said, turning her gaze to her mother, forcing the churning melee of her emotions under rigid control. In this instant, she was grateful for that, grateful for everything in her life that had taught her how to compartmentalize and keep her cool. "I need to know how to fix this, and I need you to tell me how, because I don't think I have time to figure it out on my own."

Dain was leaning heavily on her now, unable to remain upright on his own. God, he'd saved her. Again. Stood in front of her and protected her even though he'd known what she was. Known she was a succubus. Something dark. Something terrible, like the things that had killed his wife and daughter.

And still, he had stood by her.

She couldn't deal with that right now, with the implications of his actions.

She just needed to fix this. Keep him safe.

"I need to know, Mother. I need to fix this," she snapped. "Tell me. Please."

Araminta studied her with a baffled expression. "Why fix it? He lied to you, or at the very least, kept things from you. Do you think he didn't know that you were a succubus? Do you think he didn't feel your aura? You must ask yourself why he fed you, Vivien. What did he want from you?"

Terrible, hurtful words.

True words.

Of course Dain had known. But then, why had he let her drain him, take so much?