How to Kill an Incubus: A Rae Erickson Story (20 page)

“I knew you were listening to us!” I hissed. “You’re protecting her.” I wriggled, trying to get him to release me. I kicked with one foot, lashing out at him. No dice. Breathing heavily, I spat, “This is why we can’t discuss these things. I’m Alien and you’re Predator. We can’t fucking join forces. Andrei, let me go.”

“I’m not protecting her,” he calmly replied, rubbing the pads of his thumbs along my skin. “I’m protecting you. You yourself said you know nothing about the supernatural. You’ll only get yourself killed and I’ll be damned if I just stand back and watch that happen.”

“Then, kill her for me.”

The idea was so simple, I felt like an idiot for not thinking about it before. Daniel thought he was doing me a solid by helping me kill the woman that had almost sold me to the devil, literally. But at the end of the day, did it matter who killed her as long as she was killed?

Andrei’s fingers stilled. “I can’t do that.”

“You can’t?”

His brow furrowed. “Fine. I can, but I won’t.”

“Get out.”

His grip on one leg loosened and I was able to kick my foot free, hitting him right in the middle of his perfectly sculpted chest. He barely flinched, which was most probably due to the orgasm I’d given him last night.

“I said, get out!”

“Rae…”

“This is crazy! I’m crazy!” I rolled off the bed, shoving him down when he tried to get up. “Listen to me,” I said as I sucked in air, surprised that he actually let me push him. “The sex is great—explosive even! But I feel guilty about plotting with hunters one moment and fucking you, a demon king, the next. Daniel… he’s a good guy. And once upon a time, I tried to be good. Being with you, Andrei, is not just pretty fucking bad. It’s a treachery.”

Andrei eyed me for a long moment before squeezing his eyes shut. Long lashes kissed his cheeks and because of that stupid distraction, I didn’t really notice that he was putting some clothes until… well, until he was fully clothed.

“I’m not going to apologize for what I am.” His voice was roughened by barely controlled rage as he rose to his full height. Cold blue eyes stared down at me, practically piercing through the flimsy satin of my robe. “Causing dissention in my ranks for nothing? That’s what I’d be doing if I went after your mother. Have your little sulk.” In one fluid motion he was breathing in my ear, “But if you go near that hunter again, I will slit his throat. I will not be made a fool of… by a human, no less.”

“I’ll do whatever the hell I please.” I made a noise in my throat when he pecked my earlobe. “Get out. I mean it.” I closed my eyes, mentally counting to ten.

“That’s the thing, Rae,” he said, almost regretfully. “You don’t.”

When I got to ten, Andrei was gone and a thought popped in my head.

Since Daniel was still in Paris, maybe he could help me out with Damien’s demons. Maybe I could finally be a real Erickson. That being said, I now realized that thwarting my father’s attempts at getting me into the family business was one of the dumbest things I’d ever done in my life.

But only second to falling for a demon king, of course.

Chapter 14

I needed him.

No
, I mentally rephrased.
I don’t need him. I just want him.

There was a huge difference between the two words. But either way, as I had kept telling myself every day for the past five freaking days, Andrei wasn’t going to come back to me, no matter how much I needed and/or wanted him. I was well aware that I had pissed him off. And much to my surprise, it hurt.

It hurt like hell that I couldn’t see him. It hurt like hell that I couldn’t touch him. It hurt like hell that I couldn’t hear his stupidly sexy and rare laughs, the ones that I distinctly felt were reserved for me. It hurt that I couldn’t have him inside me, turning my whole world upside down. He told me to have my “little sulk”, but I would never have anticipated that it could turn into a big one… and would result in me wanting him even more.

If this was what love felt like, I didn’t need it in my life. No, what I needed was a tub of Ben and Jerry’s, a dirty martini and my favorite movie,
Kill Bill: Volume One
, playing on TV. That was the best way to get over… whatever the hell this was. How stupid did a person have to be to go and fall for a demon, one who was using her?

“Pretty stupid,” I huffed at myself, looking down at my stained sweatpants and baggy T-shirt. I looked like shit and felt like it, too.

My phone rang, like it always did at this time. And as always, I rejected the call. Daniel could go to hell for all I cared. He’d been phoning me incessantly. And when that didn’t work, he resorted to banging on my door. He was way too eager to be the Jackie Chan to my Jaden Smith, in my opinion, and that had my guard up.

I had plenty of time to mull over my anger at Lauren and had decided that she wasn’t worth risking my life for. Now I just felt plain stupid knowing I was beating a dead horse. There really wasn’t any need for me to mix with the supernatural world anyway. I had bigger things to worry about, things I’d put on the backburner to deal with my own crazy shit—things like Ana Fontaine’s brother and a posse of demon-possessed virgins.

I am an idiot and I know it.

So, after sitting cross-legged for hours on the couch with a tub of Rocky Road in my lap, I decided to dial the one person that could probably help me fix my fucked-up mental state.

Myrna answered on the first ring.

“Rainelle? What a pleasant surprise, hon!” she chirped, sounding a billion times more positive than I did.

I decided not to beat around the bush. “Do you know where he is?”

Myrna didn’t need to make five guesses to know which “he” I was referring to.

“You sound terrible,” she remarked, her voice heavy with concern. “What’s up?”

I had a strong suspicion that she knew “what was up”. I was pretty sure that pissing off a demon king would become public knowledge in supernatural circles seconds after it happens.

“I don’t know,” I sniffled into my phone, trailing my fingers down my cheek and horrified to find them wet. “Do you think that maybe… maybe I’m not one of those untouchable beings? That maybe I’m… normal?”

A long, uncomfortable silence elapsed. I was about to end the call when Myrna spoke up, “Have you taken a pregnancy test?”

She had some fucking nerve!

“I’m not pregnant,” I snapped, my grip on the phone tightening. “What would make you say that? Did Andrei say anything to you?”

She let out one of her annoyingly joyful, tinkling laughs. “No, honey. I haven’t seen the man since you came in with him a week ago. I was just curious, is all.”

“I’m not pregnant,” I repeated. “I just feel like shit because he stormed off in a rage five days ago and I haven’t seen him since. He’s mad at me.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I’d rather not,” I said carefully, chewing on my lower lip thoughtfully. I took a deep breath. “I think I’m attached… to him.”

Silence stretched once again before I heard an encouraging “Go on.” from Myrna.

“We’re not even technically in a relationship but the last time I saw him, he called himself my boyfriend,” I babbled.

But Myrna didn’t need to know the extent of that situation.

“Can demons date? Is that done? Can they honestly remember romantic stuff like anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, and all that cliché shit? I’ve never really even had a boyfriend and it’s just my luck that the first guy who claims that position is the lord of sex demons!”

Myrna made little noncommittal replies to get me to continue.

“Then again, he acts so freaking human sometimes and I get fooled into thinking he is human. Maybe I want him to be human, but then he wouldn’t be Andrei if he was, you know? What am I saying? Of course you don’t know.” I sighed heavily. “I really am my mother’s child, aren’t I? Because, Myrna, I think I might be in…”

“In love with him?” she put in.

I let out another sigh, relieved that I didn’t have to say the words myself. “It will never work. He’ll be forever young while I’ll age. And he’ll watch me die. This is so screwed up.” I was seriously starting to hyperventilate.

“I think you should know a few things, though,” Myrna said quietly. She waited for me to calm down. “One, Andrei is not using you. Tell me, were there times when he didn’t have sex with you? Just hung out and enjoyed your company?”

I thought back to the first time that had happened. He found me watching
Shaun of the Dead
and I’d pissed him off so much that he let me have bloody, gory sex with him. If we hadn’t fought, he would’ve simply been content to finish the movie with me. There had been subsequent times when he just hung around, watched me do my own thing… and just gave me a chaste kiss when I went to bed—much to my disappointment.

“Yeah,” I reluctantly replied.

“Two, his kind craves sex on the most primal of levels—with whomever,” Myrna went on, as if I didn’t know. “Male or female, it doesn’t matter to them. Sex is sex and the variety is just as exciting as the act. But for Andrei, there is only you. Haven’t you wondered about that?” She didn’t wait for my response. “I’ve known him for centuries and he’s never been monogamous before. He’s never been bonded to a human, too. And the fact that he’s, well, faithful when it comes to you… without the ceremony. He cares about you and I never thought something like that would ever be possible in his case.”

“I have to go, Myrna. I shouldn’t have called you,” I added, although speaking to her had weirdly been as reassuring as speaking to my best friend, Renée, who I missed way too much these days.

“Call me any time,
mea domina
,” she said, and judging from her tone, I knew that she was smiling.

Resisting the urge to chastise her for using that cursed title, I ended the call and flung my phone to the coffee table along with the half-eaten tub of ice cream. My appetite had vanished. First, there was the persistent dull ache in my gut that had something to do with a certain six foot six giant’s disappearance. And then there was the repulsive idea floating in my head about a baby growing inside me that was just too horrible to even contemplate.

I sure as hell wasn’t ready to be a mother, and definitely not to a demon king’s child. I couldn’t bring a baby into a fucked-up world like the one I found myself in at the moment.

But then I started wondering if Andrei would want a baby, if he ever even had one. There was a strong possibility that someone as old as he was could’ve fathered millions of hybrid spawn across the world. That thought further dampened my mood.

After checking my cheeks for more moisture, I was just about ready to call it a night—maybe after a glass or two of well-deserved Zinfandel—when a group of demons materialized in the living room like it was the most normal thing in the world, which I supposed in this case it was. Demons came in and out of here like flies, which prompted me to reflect that asking Daniel to demon-proof this house was long overdue.

I curiously stared at all four men, wondering if this could possibly be a hallucination brought on by brain freeze and my pathetic misery. But the wave of awareness that washed over me told me that no, this was as real as Sofia Vergara’s accent.

“Don’t be afraid,
mea domina
,” the biggest one, a fiery-haired meathead, said in what he probably thought was a soothing voice, but in reality sounded like how a psycho would most likely talk to his victim.

However, I couldn’t even get up—that was how worn out I was from being useless. “Get the hell out,” I muttered warily, and they all blinked at each other, stifling their laughter.

“Our king sent us.” This came from a demon that looked like he’d just left high school. He even had a baby face and a black, grungy Ke$ha T-shirt on. “All you have to do is come quietly.”

“And where, pray tell, am I supposed to come quietly to?” I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

“You’ll find out when you get there,” another one declared, which was pretty much the response I expected.

“Okay,” I said, slowly getting to my feet. “Let me just change.”

They glanced at each other before the meathead said incredulously, “Really? He said you’d be difficult.” 

So he sent four demons to get me? I was flattered he thought I was Xena, the Warrior Princess.

“It’s not my time of the month,” I said with a shrug, when really, I wanted to say that the thought of going to him filled me with unbelievable joy. It was too humiliating to admit it to myself though, let alone say it aloud to a bunch of strangers.

I strode past the small group of demons and headed to my room, kicking the door closed and locking it behind me. Shedding my filthy clothes, I decided to wear a dress Andrei had casually admired on me a while back. Black and clingy, it fell just a little above my knees and it was during my make-up that I came to the dismal conclusion that I, Rae Erickson, was absolutely dick-whipped to the nth degree.

“
Mea domina
?” someone said politely while rapping loudly on my closed bedroom door.

I had to have a talk with them about calling me their queen, in Latin or otherwise. I certainly wasn’t married, or bonded, to Andrei.

“Almost done,” I assured the disembodied voice as I set my mascara down on the sink.

I admired the finished product in the mirror, satisfied that I didn’t look like I’d been wallowing in my penthouse for close to a week because I was missing Andrei. I looked like a fully functional adult that just happened to look great in a black Versace.

When I finally unlocked my bedroom door—after slipping into my favorite pair of Louboutin pumps, of course—I was met with the stare of the kid demon. I totally recognized that hungry look and it pissed me the hell off.

“You want me to tell Andrei you looked at me like that?” I snarled, the ferocity in my voice visibly startling the demon.

“Um, no,” he said quickly, schooling his face into nonchalance. “I’m very, very sorry.”

I nodded, mentally high-fiving myself for being unaffected by a demon that obviously wanted to jump my bones. “So… where are we going? Which restaurant is he meeting…?”

“Restaurant?” Meathead queried as he approached us. He gave me a strange look. “No,
mea domina
. Tonight, we go to the king’s castle. You’ll teleport with me.”

Andrei’s castle was located in a dense forest on the Romanian part of the Carpathian Mountains. However, I wasn’t able to admire the scenery because Meathead, who’d cordially identified himself as Trick, teleported us right into the castle, which, by the way, was an oven.

Trick wordlessly left me alone in the chambers, gently closing the large, creaking oak door behind him. It felt like I’d been transported back in time and goosebumps prickled my skin. There wasn’t even any electricity, if the oil lamps flickering on the marble pedestals were anything to go by.

Something wasn’t right.

Andrei had never even mentioned a castle and if he had, I certainly wouldn’t have thought it would be in this realm. God, I was such an ignorant idiot. I knew nothing about anything.