How to Kill an Incubus: A Rae Erickson Story (34 page)

I spat at him, although the spit that came out was embarrassingly pitiful. Anger sparked in his hazel eyes and he grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him.

“My mum was tormented by one,” he declared, reaching out to swipe a handful of my hair out of my face with his free hand. “Oh yes, Rainelle, we are more alike than you know. Only difference is, while your mother was a whore who ended up wanting seconds and thirds, my mum was… taken against her will… every single fucking night.” He stared into my eyes. “No one believed her, and it was just her and me. I saw it once, the monster. But I was weak and couldn’t do shit to protect her. All I could do was throw up whenever it was in the house.” He paused. “Mum killed herself the day after my eighteenth birthday. Finally, she was free of the demon then, so I couldn’t hate her for that. Your father believed me. He let me know what I was. Who I am.”

“Daniel, I’m sorry about your mother but the demon king I know isn’t…”

“Evil?” Daniel sighed heavily. “All demons are evil incarnate, Rae. But incubi? They’re an especially perverted kind,” he said slowly, as if he were talking to a child. “They violate humans, kill them with the most primal of acts. They barter souls for a one-off sexual experience. They spill their seed into women and increase their warped population.” He gave me a sad look. “And you’re fucking one—their king, no less.”

“What trap?” I repeated, my voice shaky.

Daniel regarded me for a long time before saying almost gleefully, “Your demon is outside. Once Teddy and Paisley have completed their spell, the ward will drop and
voilà!
He’s ours.”

“You’re an idiot,” I snarled, pulling at my restraints. “Andrei will kill all three of you in one breath.” I changed tactic. “If you let me go, I can make him let you go, Daniel. What do you say?”

His eyes narrowed. “As long as we have you, it will be perfectly harmless. I’m still trying to understand how you’ve gotten a fucking demon so pussy-whipped.” He shook his head ruefully. “You’ve practically domesticated the creature.”

“He’s not an ‘it’, you cocksucker,” I fumed. “He’s more of a man than you could ever hope to be and when he’s decapitating you, he’ll be the last man you’ll see.”

Daniel laughed in my face. “Be good or you won’t get your early supper.”

My stomach growled, clearly excited to hear his annoyingly English terminology for something it so desperately wanted. Daniel laughed again, holding up a Tupperware container I didn’t notice he brought inside with him.

“It’s probably a bit rank for someone of your rich palate,” he confessed, removing the lid, “but I guarantee it’s better than anything old Ted wanted to feed you.” He picked up a plastic spork and dug it into the mushy-looking gunk swimming in a little soup. “Ramen noodles,” he clarified, catching my look of disgust. “I hope you like chicken?” He loaded the spork with noodles and brought it to my mouth.

Defiance and hunger fought for dominance; hunger won. I parted my lips and allowed him to feed me, all the while seething inside. Everyone from my father’s past was worthy of my wrath—Teddy, Lauren, and now, Daniel. Nothing was as it seemed with them. And when I really thought about it, I hadn’t pushed hard enough to cut them all out of my life.

It was ironic that half of the few people I trusted were demons I was taught to fear and despise. Hunters protected people from demons… but who protected people from them?

“That’s good, Rae,” Daniel was saying, and I looked down to find the lunchbox empty. Daniel picked up a bottle of Gatorade, uncapping it and putting it to my lips. “I probably should’ve given this to you first. Ted said you were vomiting.”

When I chugged the drink down, Daniel rose, smoothing the front of his jeans. He gathered the empty container and turned on his heel to leave.

“Wait!” I called out.

He paused, not bothering to turn around and look at me.

“I… This won’t work, Daniel,” I said in a rush. “The king doesn’t like me as much as you think he does. I’m just a toy. Disposable. He won’t care what happens to me and you’ll all end up dead.”

“Then why has he been trying to get in here for the past eight hours?” Then he left the room, slamming the heavy door behind him.

For a few seconds, I stared at the wall and then took in a deep breath. I had to do the one thing I could to help Andrei.

I had to sleep.

Chapter 23

It was scary how easy it was for me to fall asleep, especially under such circumstances. The dream was hazy, and I figured it was because I wasn’t in a deep sleep yet. Grey mist drifted around me, its ghost hands caressing my skin. There was no fixed setting and I began to panic, wondering if that meant that Andrei wouldn’t come. He didn’t need to be asleep to slip into my head, I knew. But if he was busy, there was no way he could multitask and just drop by.

I called out his name, the sound of my voice echoing back to me. Then silence.

That damn silence drove me half insane with anxiety.

At any moment, Daniel—or Teddy, or the blonde witch named after a flowery girly pattern—would come in and wake me up and then everything would be screwed. Of course, I was screwed either way, because there was no light at the end of this fucked-up tunnel.

Andrei, please, please, please show up.

“Rae.”

His voice came from above me, behind me, inside me… around me. It was the strangest thing and yet, the most reassuring. His voice made me feel like nothing could ever harm me, like world peace could be achieved if he just kept talking.

And I was in danger of sounding like a character out of a Nicholas Sparks book.

“That fucker Teddy broke into my house and claims he actually killed a billion-year-old succubus, but how is that even possible?” I said to the fog. “Then there’s the little fact that he has magic, which is impossible because he’s a hunter, not a warlock, right? You were so right about Daniel. I am going to enjoy fucking him up.”

I sucked in a huge gulp of air after my spiel, squinting in the grey to see the one person in my life I could trust implicitly, wholeheartedly.

“Have they hurt you?” Andrei’s voice was no more than a harsh growl.

“It doesn’t matter, Andrei. If Teddy really killed Selene…”

“He didn’t. But I am going to kill him. How many hunters do I have to get through?”

“There’s Teddy and Daniel, plus their witch sidekick, Paisley.” And before he could cut me off, I told him everything I knew so far. It was obvious that they drugged me, so most of what I remembered was still frustratingly fuzzy. But what Teddy and his posse were planning for Andrei was what mattered.

Daniel’s confidence that they would trap a demon king that had been around for-fucking-ever worried me. But there was no possible way to do that, was there? They were either suicidal or delusional—or both. Right?

“I want to see you,” I breathed, mentally telling the mist to go away.

“You can’t. You’re not ready.”

“Not ready?”

“Do you remember what you said to me earlier? In your dream?”

This made me pause. Everything that had happened before I stirred from my drug-induced sleep came to me in bits and pieces. Pissed off, I vowed that today would be the day I killed for the first time. But I always thought it would be a demon I’d end up killing. I guess life was funny that way.

“What did I say?” I asked, after racking my brain for a few minutes and coming up empty.

“Rae, when I come in, I want you to stay the fuck out of my way. Can you promise that?”

“What did I say?” I mindlessly repeated the question.

Silence stretched into eternity, but time pass differently when you’re asleep.

Until, at last, Andrei’s faraway voice said, “I want you to be awake when you see my true form. Then you can decide if you meant those words or not.”

A shiver tickled my skin. I didn’t know what to be more apprehensive about: the fact that I was going to finally see him for what he was, or that roofies apparently made me chatty.

“Someone is waking you up now, Rainelle, and the ward is being lifted,” Andrei intoned.

Sure enough, my dream was dying away, and I found myself clinging to it with fervor. Because once I woke up, everything would change.

Blonde, blue-eyed, and elfin, Paisley could’ve passed off as an angel. Too bad she could also pass off as Damien Ivanov’s little sister.

She was hunched up beside me, tongue sticking out in concentration as she began to unshackle my wrists, picking the locks with tiny bobby pins.

“Why can’t you use your precious magic?” I muttered, wincing as the metal only became tighter before it got loose.

“Because it’s exactly that, precious,” she replied in a lilting voice. Of course, she had to be a dainty English flower. “You have two minutes to use the loo and then we should leave. Just because I won’t waste my magic setting you free, doesn’t mean I’ll hesitate to set you alight.”

I glanced at the toilet. “The loo. Right. Obviously a euphemism for shit bucket.” But I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. My bladder was full and it was making things dangerously uncomfortable for me.

“Get up.” Paisley stepped back, a safe distance away from me, watching me unsteadily get to my feet and limp to the toilet. I wondered if Teddy had warned her that I was feral.

“You know,” I told her when I was done, “back in the day, you would’ve been the one worrying about me barbecuing your skinny little ass.”

She huffed, combing her fingers through her perfect flaxen mane before wordlessly grabbing me and tugging me through the door. Invisible bonds had snaked around my wrists, making any attempt at throttling the bitch impossible. It didn’t make any difference; I was still feeling lethargic. I could barely shuffle forward, let alone go Chuck Norris on her ass and give her a roundhouse kick.

I froze once we were outside the door, instantly recognizing the expansive building we were in. Everyone in the Bay knew the old, abandoned climate-controlled Winkler Warehouse. It was huge, isolated, and rumored to have been the personal icebox of a serial killer during the seventies. Solely made up of brick and steel, no one really remembered what exactly the storage space had been there for, save for the fact that it was owned by the Winklers.

So yeah, now I was being kept in this veritable haunted house.

Paisley moved to stand in front of me. “I have to ask you something,” she said, making me look at her.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her where she could shove her questions but her look of genuine curiosity stopped me.

“What is it?”

She was wringing her hands now, looking over her shoulder at the bleak, empty space behind her before turning back to me. “The demon,” she whispered. “Are you its sex slave?”

I stared at her, grinding my molars. “No, I’m not his slave.”

“Then… you’re with him of your own volition? Why?”

I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. I couldn’t believe we were having it now.

“Because being in love with someone means you can overlook a whole lot of crap,” I murmured, humoring her. “Even if that crap just happens to be the fact that he’s a demon lord. There’s a reason they say love is blind.”

Paisley’s blue gaze scorched me. “Does he love you?”

Good question.

I didn’t know if demons were capable of love. Lust, yes. Anger, definitely. Jealousy, hell, yeah! But love? That was a different story. I knew that Andrei cared about me, cared about what happened to me. I knew that he didn’t want to be without me, that he wanted only me.

But that didn’t equate to love, and that was why, I suspected, being in love with him was going to destroy me.

“You don’t have to tell me. I can’t judge you,” Paisley said softly. She glanced over her shoulder once more, then gave me a meaningful look. “Teddy doesn’t want to kill him, Rainelle. Daniel doesn’t know this but…”

“Paisley.”

At the sound of her name leaving Teddy’s mouth, Paisley visibly stiffened, her eyes pleading with me to be quiet. I didn’t understand her… at all. She had been about to tell me what Teddy really wanted, and I had no idea why.

“Thank you for bringing her out. Daniel needs help in the office upstairs.” Teddy jerked his head upward, bringing my attention to the high ceiling and strip of walk space above us. “Be ready, my dear. We’ve come too far for you to… make new friends.” He fixed me with a pointed stare.

The witch sprinted away without giving me a second glance. Then I was alone with a psychopath. A psychopath who was wearing a ridiculous black robe, which was probably supposed to make him look like he regularly practiced the dark arts before dinner, but only made him look like a fool.

“You do know I didn’t mean to hurt you, right? Rainelle,” Teddy confessed, hands behind his back as he approached me. He flashed me a fake smile. “Raymond was a good friend. You were like a daughter to me, and to Josephine.”

I looked away, seething. I had never been so bloodthirsty but it was impossible not to imagine the many ways I would like to kill Theodore Bunting… and make him my first kill.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Without touching me, he jerked my head in his direction. Magic. He practically sparkled with the stuff. I realized that the oddity of his power was what scared me. He couldn’t possibly be both a hunter and a warlock. Witches were born with their power, passing it down to the next generation by blood, and to my knowledge, hunters never had any in their bloodlines.

“If everything goes according to plan, you will walk out of this building.” Teddy’s voice broke into my thoughts. “If not, well… that’s what you get for sleeping with the enemy.”

“Fuck you.”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Fuck you!”

He smiled devilishly. “I thought so.” With a casual flick of his wrist, he brought me to my knees again, choking the life out of me.

This time, I felt something compress my lungs, sucking all the air out of me. I couldn’t scream. But I wouldn’t have wanted to, even if I could. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. And when black spots peppered the back of my eyelids, I vowed that if I didn’t kill him in this life, I would in the next one. Or the one after that.

God, please make it quick
.

Air rushed back into my lungs just as Daniel and Paisley appeared. Daniel pulled me to my feet, dragging me to the center of the space, facing the wide steel door. I leaned against him, catching my breath, grateful for the gulps of life-sustaining oxygen.

To Andrei, the scene would probably shock him because it looked like Daniel was embracing me, if one could ignore the fact that my wrists were awkwardly restrained. We were the ones caught off guard, however, by the explosion in the far wall.

Brick and metal flew everywhere, throwing us to the ground, dust billowing in its wake. Someone screamed. Paisley. I tried to crawl away from Daniel but he grabbed my ankle, dragging me back toward him. Protection, of course. He needed to be around me. Andrei wouldn’t hurt him if there was the slightest probability that he could hurt me in the process.

So I kicked him with all my might, catching him in the face and scrambling to my feet. For some reason, the invisible rope around my wrists was gone. And so, on shaky feet, I stood up and scanned the room, my heart racing a mile a minute.

Teddy was nowhere to be found, but Paisley…

I cupped my palm over my mouth, swallowing a scream.

I want you to see my true form…

I tasted bile and gulped it back down, refusing to empty my stomach for the second time that day. And it had everything to do with the beast looming over a cowering Paisley. She was going to die and there was nothing I could do. I was rooted to the spot, my vocal cords useless.

He took up a hell of a lot of space. As a human, he was big. As a demon, he was immeasurable. Hovering high above us, talon-tipped black wings that spanned the width of the room jutted out of his massive back. Wild, jet-black hair flowed from his scalp down the middle of his back—his only feature that I was familiar with. From behind, his body rippled with huge bulky muscles, ones that looked as though they were made for destruction, under his reddish leathery skin.

And that tail…

Prehensile
, my biology teacher’s voice said in my head.

Yes, it was flexible… and could probably pick me up. Right then, it was twisting about, actually whipping about like a lion’s tail. Wrath radiated from his every pore… wrath that was unequivocally directed at the scared-shitless woman in front of him.