Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3) (34 page)

Soon, they would need her to lead them, whether or not she had fed. And it looked like she wasn’t going to be able to. She slumped to the floor in front of the arrow loop—a narrow slit cut into the wall—and dropped her head into her hands. Elise felt weak. Nauseatingly so. But it didn’t make her as sick as the idea of killing the hapless fiends.

“Is this you, Eve?” Elise hissed under her breath. “What’s your fucking problem?”

The angel within didn’t respond. Eve wasn’t a conscious force that Elise could hold a conversation with, and she definitely wasn’t going to react to derision.

No, this inability to feed—this
weakness
—couldn’t be blamed on the angel.

Seeing Neuma’s family had fucked up her head. Being responsible for so many damn humans wasn’t helping. All she had wanted to do was close the fissure, stop the demons from attacking, save the Earth. She wasn’t prepared for how hard it was to see the actual victims of the war.

She reached out to James again and found nothing but silence. Her stomach twisted. She could have used words of confidence—assurances that she wasn’t weak, but learning to be sympathetic, and that it would make her stronger someday. It would be a fucking lie, but a good one. A
necessary
lie.

The door opened, and Neuma climbed into the guard tower. She looked so little like her childhood photograph. Now that Elise knew what she had looked like when she had been innocent and young, it was easier to pick out the hard lines of age in her face—not actual wrinkles, but something about her expression that spoke of decades of hardship and wisdom. Elise had never thought of her as wise before.

“We found the stuff you left,” Neuma said. “Did you deliver the envelope?”

“I did,” Elise said without looking at her. She didn’t want to see the gratitude on the younger, more beautiful, healthier version of Lorena’s face. She picked herself up off the floor and glanced outside at the misty swirl of nightmares beyond the wards.

“Then what are you doing in here?”

She lifted her hand to show Neuma the black fingernails. Her skin was subtly grayer than usual. Two dimension jumps and using all that magic to kill Belphegor had drained her of the energy she retained from feeding on Seth. “I need to feed before I can fight. I went to the barracks to kill some fiends, but…” She couldn’t say aloud that she had failed. It felt weak enough without having to say it.

Neuma ran her fingers through a lock of Elise’s hair, letting it fall over her shoulder again. “There’s an easier way,” she said softly. “You don’t gotta kill anything if it’s going to make you hate yourself.”

Elise finally looked at her. Neuma was in full armor—not just the old Palace leathers they had stolen, but weighed down by a few pieces of plate armor on top of it, as well. She had a breastplate and vambraces. Though she was a small woman, they fit her surprisingly well.

It would have been so much easier if Neuma had encouraged Elise. She wanted an excuse to do it. Some kind of justification. “You wanted me to feed off of Abraxas when we held him captive,” Elise said. “I can’t believe you think that these are innocents.” She paced the wall. The black smoke of nightmares slid past on the other side like a taunt.

“I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, doll, I’m all in favor of killing when something’s gotta be killed. You don’t last long as an overlord of an entire territory if you’re not willing to slaughter and maim and torture.” Neuma grabbed Elise’s elbow, stopping her in mid-stride. “But you’ve got it in your head that feeding has to make you miserable. It doesn’t. Don’t kill if you’re going to hate yourself for it. There’re other ways to eat.”

She didn’t need to say what she was thinking. Neuma’s gaze raked down Elise’s body, making it clear that she had entirely sexual ideas of how she might feed.

Elise’s instinctive reaction was to brush off Neuma—again—just as she had brushed off Neuma’s come-ons a dozen other times over the years. But this time, she actually thought about it.

Was it so much better to kill than to just have sex?

Her glare slid off of her face. Her mind was a whirl with feeding off of Lincoln, and how he had been possessed—or how Seth had died right after she fed from him. Neuma knew about both incidents now. She knew, and she was still offering herself.

“Stop thinking about it and do it,” Neuma said, stripping off her breastplate and dropping it to the floor with a clatter. “We don’t have forever.”

“I could kill you,” Elise said. “I almost killed Seth. I
did
kill Seth.”

She shoved Elise to the wall. “We’re not doing anything life threatening. You make me come, you drink it up, you’re good for the fight. Don’t make this so damn hard on yourself, doll. Don’t make it complicated.”

Neuma pressed her lips to Elise’s.

She tasted just the way she smelled—like liquor and blood and chocolate, although Elise couldn’t imagine where she would have gotten such a thing in Hell. It was pleasant enough. It didn’t arouse Elise. There was nothing sexy about a half-succubus coming on to her in a guard tower with nightmares beating against the walls.

But Neuma was right. They didn’t have much time. Elise was about to fight, and she needed to feed.

She lifted her hands to Neuma’s shoulders and settled her fingers on them lightly, uncertainly. Neuma giggled against her mouth.

“What is that?” Neuma asked, melting against Elise, chest to chest and thighs to thighs. She tangled her fingers in Elise’s hair. “You gonna make me orgasm by touching my shoulders? Don’t think so.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Elise said. It was an embarrassing admission. She considered herself brave, in the sense that she never backed down from a challenge just because she didn’t know how to handle it. But the idea that she needed to satisfy Neuma—a succubus, a woman who had been with probably thousands of other women—was more daunting than trying to figure out how to kill a demon the size of a skyscraper. She didn’t even know where to begin.

“What do you like done to you?” Neuma asked, guiding Elise’s hand between her legs.

All she could think about was James—the long, quiet night they had spent together in the studio they used to own together. The one time that they had been content together before everything else went wrong. She liked the way he had dug his fingers into her as if he couldn’t hold enough of her all at once. She liked the way their bodies had pressed desperately together, and how they had fit better than well-trained dance partners in a breathless tango.

He had known how to cause pain, and when. And he had known how to turn that into pleasure. The first time they’d had sex was like the thousandth time. James and Elise had known one another’s bodies from years of fighting together, from years of watching the other involved with other people, years of waiting and longing.

Everyone else had just been something to pass the time. It had been about scratching an itch, not feeling
good
.

A bright spark of pain snapped Elise out of memory. Neuma had pulled Elise’s shirt aside and sunk her teeth into her shoulder.

“Focus,” Neuma said, and she licked a hot line up the side of Elise’s neck. “You’re depressing yourself again.”

Elise jerked her wrist out of Neuma’s grip. “You don’t have any idea what I’m thinking.” The anger was safer than the other feelings—the longing, and the self-hatred, and the regret.

“I can read you. Trust me.” Neuma sucked Elise’s earlobe between her lips. Her teeth lightly raked against the skin. “Just keep it simple.
Don’t make it complicated.
”

“But it
is
complicated,” Elise said.

“Not with me it’s not. I’ve taught dozens of baby succubi to feed.” She unbuckled Elise’s bustier and spread it to bare her chest. She smiled at the sight of her tender skin bared. “Perfect,” Neuma said, sliding her hands up Elise’s ribcage, cupping the underside of her breasts, mounding them in her fingers. She kneaded gently. “Totally perfect, doll.” Her thumbs flicked over Elise’s nipples. “I always wished you woulda been one of my girls, you know. Way back at Eloquent Blood. I wasn’t blowing smoke up your ass by trying to get you up on my bar.”

Elise set her jacket down gently. She was carrying the vials of blood in the pocket and didn’t want them to shatter. “I assumed that was because—” she began, but then Neuma’s mouth closed over one of Elise’s nipples and sucked on it lightly, and she forgot what she was saying. A low groan escaped her. “I thought you tried to recruit everyone that entered the club.”

“Sometimes. But mostly just you.” Neuma nibbled on the skin hard enough to leave imprints. “We could have had fun, though. Lots of fun.” She bit again, even harder than before. She drew blood on the side of Elise’s breast. The blood cooled as it trickled down her ribs.

That
was what she liked. Heat shot through her, arching her spine back. She grabbed for the windowsill and missed.

“You never told me that you were taking care of people,” Elise gasped. “You should have told me why you needed the money.”

Still pressed to her chest, Neuma’s chuckle shook through Elise’s entire body. “Talking family is not sexy.” She slithered up to stand tall and pushed a thigh between Elise’s legs. They rocked together gently. The friction was good, almost as good as biting.

Neuma slid her fingers between them, down Elise’s leggings, seeking out the warm heat between her legs. She laughed again when she felt how damp Elise was, her body reacting to the bite, to the pressure of flesh against flesh. It wasn’t derisive. It was joyful.

“Tell you what,” she murmured into Elise’s mouth. With two fingers, she spread her folds and sought out her hot center. Her fingers began working in long, slow strokes. “I’ll show you what to do and feed off of you, and then you get to do it to me. We’ll both get what we need.”

Elise wanted to argue, but she wasn’t sure why. It felt good. It was easier than killing a few fiends. But this was Neuma—one of her oldest allies and someone she considered to be a friend, whether she was comfortable with the idea or not. Elise hadn’t been with anyone since Lincoln, and he was possessed by a demon. And her last feeding from Seth had led to his rigid body in the House of Abraxas and the mourning of an entire werewolf pack.

“What if I do kill you?” Elise asked. With their hair draped over their bodies, there was no telling where one sheet of black ended and the other began.

“Like I said, I’ve trained tons of young succubi. You can’t hurt me. It’s not even worth worrying about.” Neuma smiled impishly. Her lips were flushed from pressing against Elise’s body, and there was a smear of blood on her chin. “And I told you to stop thinking so much.”

Maybe she was right. Maybe she wasn’t. Either way, her fingers were sliding in and out of Elise, and it felt too good to stop her. It wasn’t just her demon that liked it. She did, too.

So Elise stopped thinking, and she started enjoying.

Jerica was waiting
for them when they emerged from the guard tower rumpled and breathless. She must have known what Elise and Neuma had been doing, but she didn’t remark on it.

“There’s something moving inside the mines,” Jerica said, hands folded behind her back, a cleaver sheathed on one hip and a Taser at the other. “I think something’s trying to get through.”

Elise muttered a few swear words and pulled her shirt down, checking to make sure that everything was covered properly. Her fingernails were a normal color again. Her skin didn’t hurt as much. She felt almost as good as she had after having sex with Lincoln—good enough to fight.

“Have they gotten far?” she asked, winding her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck.

“It’s hard to tell. The fact that I can hear digging makes me think that they must be getting close.” Jerica’s features were pinched. She swallowed hard. “I wouldn’t think we have more than a few minutes. Everyone’s armed and ready—we need to go
now
.”

Neuma shot Elise another little smile. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

“I bet you are,” Jerica said.

Neuma gave her a quick and sloppy kiss. “You’re still my favorite,” she said, bumping their foreheads together. “Always will be.” It sounded a lot like a goodbye. Jerica gave her a small smile, far from her usual toothy grin.

They climbed down the wall to join their army.

Elise surveyed the weapons that the slaves had put together with their wish list of supplies. She had brought them batteries big and small—some that powered the Tasers directly, and larger car batteries that they carried in backpacks. They had wrapped cord around blades and spears to electrify them. The assortment of weapons looked ridiculous. But when they flipped the switches on the hilts and bags, the air buzzed with danger.

“You and I will have to stay at the back,” Jerica said, noticing Elise’s glare. “Neuma’s going to have to take the lead—she’s the only one of us three that won’t be hurt by crossfire more than an average human. We’ll push the humans through after her. They’ll open a tunnel and we’ll follow behind. Got it?”

“Yeah, got it,” Elise said.

Jerica stepped up between the army and the portcullis to debrief them, leaving Neuma and Elise in back. “I’ve picked out the path to the Palace,” Neuma said softly underneath Jerica’s shouts. “It’s a straight line, including a couple of alleyway shortcuts that’ll be a tight fit. Should only take an hour if we walk real fast. Two at most.”

“And this will go to the main entrance?” Elise asked.

“Yeah, Jerica says it’s the only gap in the wards. Soon as we all get there, we can head up for the bridge. Should be easy, right?”

“It might be, except that I want the army to hold the main tower until I find Belphegor and come back. I want them to keep my path to the soul links clear.”

Neuma blinked. “Wait—
find
Belphegor?”

“I still need to get a sample of his blood,” Elise said. She took the samples from Lincoln, Aquiel, and Abraxas’s lab out of her jacket pocket and handed them to Neuma. “You can take those down to the soul links while I get him. Keep them safe.”

“Elise, do you even know if Belphegor’s in the Palace?” Neuma asked in a low, urgent voice.