“I’m trying to determine if this demon’s penis is oozing pus or seminal fluid.”
Now I scrunched up my nose. I threw my book into the pile between us. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I’ll never look at the male genitals the same way ever again.” She handed me the scroll with a shudder. “I’m going to die a virgin.”
Depicted on the yellowing parchment was a cock large enough to penetrate an elephant. Or maybe there were two dicks, I couldn’t tell. I unrolled the paper a bit more and brought it a little closer in an attempted to decipher the image. One dick, split in half. Two-inch horns ringing the base protruded from the phallus. Above the spikes, mouth-like holes did indeed leak something.
“You’re hardly a virgin,” I said absently and glanced at the caption below the hand-drawn picture.
It wasn’t written in a language I knew. In fact, none of the dusty old books Roy had ordered us to go through were in a language I was acquainted with. In an attempt to curb my restlessness and not give into the urge to bolt over to Micah’s apartment and tear off his clothes—with my teeth—Roy had suggested I help Hannah with research. We were supposed to be searching for any reference to the Vampire Queen and the Demon Son while he tried to figure out why my heart was still beating. At least my blood test had come back. I wasn’t pregnant.
Roy had yet to deduce what had been done to Micah and me, or how to break the connection between us. Was it a lust spell? A binding spell? He had no clue and neither did I. What I did know was that it sucked.
I couldn’t sleep or eat. Looking at food made me think of blood, which made me think of Micah. When I looked at my bed, I thought about sex. This led to more thoughts of Micah. Not to mention, anytime I did close my eyes, Julian was there waiting for me. On top of everything else, I couldn’t deal with my sire.
“Am too still a virgin!” Hannah shouted and snapped me out of my trance. “Jeremy Wyatt doesn’t count. He lasted all of two seconds.”
I lifted an eyebrow, rolled up the scroll and handed it back. “And what about that Mark guy in your Econ class?”
“Five minutes of my life I’ll never get back or forget. He made this awful noise in the back of his throat and he was so sweaty!”
“Girls!” Book in hand, Roy walked by us and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t need to hear about these kinds of things. Keep looking through the books. The answer is in there somewhere.”
The wrinkles on his forehead deepened in concentration. He licked his finger and flipped the page he’d been studying. I glanced at my sister. For the first time in days, I grinned. “Hey, Hannah.” I nudged her with my foot. “Wanna know about Micah’s penis? Maybe it’ll help with the research.”
Rory shook his head and marched up the stairs. As soon as the door shut, Hannah broke into a fit of giggles. The lingering pressure in my chest eased. I picked a random text from the pile, settled my back against the wall and started flipping through it.
PMD Day Six
Torrents of icy rain fell in vertical sheets. The thunderous din was deafening. Ah, what a perfect night to get my ass kicked. At least I was finally off house arrest, even if I did have a chaperone. I grunted and cursed under my breath as I struggled to claw my way out of the freshly dug grave I’d been knocked into. The six-foot hole was less a grave and more a muddy wading pool.
I reached for the slippery hand Eli held down to me and gripped his wrist. He pulled me out as if I weighed all of twenty pounds, spun to face the demon whose ivory claws were aimed at my head and threw out a sweet side kick. Before his boot made contact, the thing poofed away.
I scraped the mud from my jacket and looked up at Micah’s brother. His normally curly hair was now straight and dripped with water. The nearly black strands hung to his chin. The bruise I’d seen in the hospital last week had faded only to be replaced by a ring of purple circling his other eye. If I wasn’t mistaken, his lower lip had split open recently too.
A badass hunter complete with battle scars had replaced the serious Eli I’d know for the last several months.
“Thanks,” I shouted.
“Don’t mention it,” he panted and pushed his dark hair out of his face. The boyish grin he’d just flashed faded. “Duck!”
I threw myself back into the mud and felt the rush of air above my face.
“Fuck,” I hissed. At least someone was paying attention.
Rolling to the left, I used the momentum to propel myself to my feet. I only had a second to plan my attack. My gaze darted left, and then right, over the variety of rounded and flat-topped tombstones. I surveyed the lot. Cracked in half. Too short. Too pointy. Crumbling. Too tall. When I found the perfect stepping stone, the grin that curved my lips exposed my fangs.
I sprinted and leapt. The smooth, concrete hedge I landed on was slippery. As I slid to the end, teetered, and almost fell on my face, the stray thought hit me, This plan sucks. The demon, with its rotting, hollowed-out eye sockets, made a clicking sound in the back of its throat I barely heard above the howl of the wind.
I jumped off the hedge and into a full three-sixty rotation. As I lined up with my attacker’s head, I threw out my leg in a flawlessly executed roundhouse kick that cut through nothing but rain. The demon disintegrated. I landed on a soft patch of freshly cut grass and a cyclone of sand rained down upon me.
Wonderful. Along with mud, there were now finely ground pebbles woven into my hair. I spit out a mouthful of gritty dirt and tried to rub out the sand in my eyes.
“Damn. What is this thing?”
“It’s an Osiris demon, some Egyptians see him as the god of the afterlife,” Eli grunted as if was in the middle of hitting or kicking something.
How did he know this crap? I looked to the sound of his voice and tried to find his tall form through the sheets of rain. My moment of distraction was a careless mistake.
The demon solidified, struck.
Claws slashed along my lower back. Hot, hot, pain. I staggered a few inches and teetered on the slick, melting edge of another open grave before Eli caught me and pulled me to safety. I was seriously off my game. Sleep deprivation was a bitch.
“Jesus, Ella, are you okay?”
My chest constricted. It took me a several seconds to exhale through my agony and nod that yes, I was fine. It took two more to realize my plan to kick the sandman across the cemetery into the moss-encrusted mausoleum wasn’t going to work. My fucking boot wouldn’t budge from the mud that incased it.
Our attacker switched its focus. Now in solid form, the thing delivered a rapid succession of closed-fist hits to Eli’s stomach and ribs. Each blow landed with a sick thudding sound. Pain etched across Eli’s face. Instead of doubling over, he pulled a knife from his boot and stabbed. Good boy. The demon dissolved and the weapon drifted through a cloud of sand.
The wind changed directions and I swore Mother Nature laughed at me. Capricious bitch. Instead of blowing away, a mixture of sand and rain pelted me in the face. Shit. I couldn’t see. My senses tingled, told me the demon was shifting. I moved a second too late. The sandman reformed in front of us. I shoved Eli out of the way and took the hit aimed for him. Poisonous claws raked across my abdomen.
The world spun. I stumbled back in a daze. I looked down at the blood welling from the gut wound. The sticky substance oozed from the gashes. Warmth slid down my stomach. Since my transition from quasi-vampire to full-fledged vampire, I healed faster. Already the blood flow was slowing. Stopping. The cuts, not deep enough to scar, were already healing, but damn did they hurt.
The scent of blood carried through the night. I tasted the honeyed rust on the tip of my tongue. I spun back in a flash of movement and sent my fist speeding through another sandy cloud as the demon turned into faceless granules.
“This isn’t working,” Eli growled and pulled a large, shiny gun from the back of his Levi’s.
My stomach lurched and I froze. Wind whipped my hair. Rain pelted my exposed skin. I didn’t care about any of it
. In that moment, Eli looked exactly like Micah. Dark hair. Square jaw. Tight black shirt and faded denim. Firearm in hand. The rhythm of my heart increased and I had to shake my head to clear the double image. My rambling thoughts weren’t helping me win this fight.
I turned left, then right in an attempt to pinpoint the demon’s direction.
“What’s the matter? Can’t stay and fight like a real demon?” I yelled into the rain.
“Fight?” The thing’s low-pitched cackle came from behind me.
Eli’s gun clicked. “Get down.”
I dropped to a knee. Gunfire exploded. Bang. Bang. Bang. The shots rang out like big booming cracks of thunder. I half expected flashes of lightning to graze across the night sky.
“Did you get him?” I asked and peeked over my shoulder. Nothing but rain.
“No.”
“You’re weak and I tire of this game.” The demon whispered the words into my ear.
I spun right into the claws. Heat. Pain. The sound of skin tearing. I gritted through the agony that spread from the claw marks forming a gash from my shoulder blade to my lower back. The wounds burned and throbbed. The pain had less to do with the cuts and more to do with the poison as it began to move through my system. The problem with demons was that you never knew what nasty surprise ran through their veins. Once they drew blood, it could be disastrous.
My eyes widened, pupils taking in everything at once. I caught the flash of movement in front of me. I threw my body into a rolling duck, acting on the screaming impulse to move. The demon reformed and aimed its clawed fist at my head.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The rain shifted and blew another blinding gust of wind and water in my face. I fell to the saturated ground and slid through the mud. I jumped back to my feet with a grunt of annoyance. The sandman puffed away and then reappeared directly in front of Eli.
The demon laughed before cracking a meaty fist into the side of Eli’s head, sending him sprawling to the ground. Too late for me to react, the creature reappeared and shoved his claws into my shoulder.
My body reeled when nails dug and ripped through flesh and muscle, just narrowly missing the bone. The pain intensified as the demon reared back, pulling bloody claws through the ragged tears in my skin. Tremors of shock moved up my rib cage, constricting my throat and watering my eyes. I fell back.
I recovered before I hit the ground. In a well-practiced move, I reached into my boot to pull out a Silverstone blade. I’d already lost both of my Brimstone weapons. I held the familiar weight in my hand for a moment before it slipped from my uncurled fingers to drop, useless, to the ground. The poison in my shoulder was numbing my entire arm.
I glanced at Eli, who I could barely make out through the rain. He wasn’t getting up. Micah would never forgive me if I got his brother killed. Never.
Flexing my hand sent a warm gush of blood from my wound, down the sleeve of my jacket and out the cuff. I smelled the infectious sludge of venom dripping to the ground. I blinked before moving my hand over the gaping holes in the front of my shirt. I wasn’t exactly sure how much poison my body could handle before it was too much. Determined, I forced my eyes wide and ignored the spiking pain.
My fingers were sticky and the tips were dipped in crimson when I brought them in front of my doubled vision. Rain washed the blood away.
Clarity cut through the pain.
My senses flared and I picked up on a crackling of energy to my left. I dropped a knee to the cold, wet ground in the same instant the demon formed beside me. I used the tips of my fingers to find the hilt of the blade I’d dropped.
“I. Am. Not. Weak,” I hissed.
I closed my hand around my weapon and struck up, hitting solid flesh. The demon emitted a high-pitched squeal. The sharp tip of my knife slid through the beast’s abdomen and split its body in half. Brimstone worked best on otherworldly creatures, but in a pinch Silverstone could do the job. I saw the tar-filled depths of the demon, shock registering in its eyes. The thing’s form was mummified, wrapped in strands of beige fabric, tinged yellow with age and decay. Slowly the strands unraveled, falling away one by one. The monster melted into a cloud of dusty debris.
I fell back, into the mud. The sky was gray above me, full of morphing clouds that rained down on my cheeks. The cool water was a relief against my heated skin. I watched the drops fall.
Eli’s battered face filled my vision as if he were leaning over me. Water dripped from the point of his nose and splattered my cheek. He pressed his fingers to the dripping wound along his forehead. “You gonna make it?”
I didn’t know. Injured and lying in the middle of the cemetery during the heart of the night was the worst place we could be. Pushing the pain aside, I rolled onto my side. The blood had stopped seeping from the wounds on my back and stomach. As the cuts healed, my skin grew tight and itchy. My shoulder still oozed, though. We were fawns amongst a pack of hungry lions. Lions.
Eli vanished. The clouds now in my sight pulsed, started to blur together. Maybe the poison was getting to me, or perhaps it was the blood loss. Maybe my prolonged separation from Micah had finally taken its toll. I blinked at the image of frolicking yellow cats leaping over rainbows. The rain faded away and the soft melody of a woman singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow filled my ears.
The shrill ringing of a phone snapped me out of my hallucination. Lazily, I patted around my pocket with my good arm before I fished out my phone.
“What’s up?” I whispered, the pain making it hard to talk.
“Is that any way to answer the phone?” Roy chastised.
“I’m doing great. Thank you, dearest uncle, for asking. How are you on this fine evening?”
As usual, Roy ignored my sarcasm and cut right to the point. “How quickly can you and Eli get to Micah’s apartment?”
I stared up at the sky for a moment, tried to process what he was asking. Had I not just spent the past six days going through hell in an effort to stay away from Micah? Now he wanted me at his apartment. Clouds streamed across the sky. The longer I stared at them lost in thought, the more they began to resemble lions. My eyes drifted shut just as the bright, colorful rainbow arched.
Someday I’ll wish upon a star, and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that’s where you’ll find me. Somewhere over the rainbow…
“Ella? Are you there?” Roy’s voice sounded far, far away.
“What?” I asked, blinking my eyes open.
If only I could sleep for just a few minutes.
“How quickly can you get here? Micah’s condition is deteriorating at an alarming speed. I’m afraid if we wait much longer it will be too late…”
Roy said something else, but I was having a hard time following the conversation.
“Condition? What’s wrong with him? I don’t understand—”
He cut me off. “Micah said sometimes you can phaze to him. Can you do that, now?”
I thought about it for a moment, tried to find the spot inside my head. Nothing. Jesus, I wasn’t even sure of my own name.
“Yeah, not gonna happen. What’s going on?”
The concern in Roy’s voice deepened. “You sound really strange, are you injured? Where’s Eli?”
Was I injured? Hadn’t someone just asked me something similar to that? Right. Eli. I was seeing lions jumping over rainbows and hearing songs in my head. I didn’t think I was okay.
“I’ve got a flesh wound or two. Nothing a few bandages won’t fix. Roy, are you sure Micah and I should be around each other? You said—”
“I know what I said,” he snapped before drawing in a deep breath. “I apologize. Hannah found something. I know what’s happening between you two and I need you here now.”
“We’ll leave now.” I struggled to pull Eli into focus. He stood a few feet away with a concerned frown pulling at his full lips. “How long will it take to get to your brother’s?”
His eyes
widened. “Uh, fifteen minutes…but we can’t go there.”
I shook my cell at him. “Roy’s orders.”
He crossed the distance between us in two large strides and snatched the phone from my hand. The jerk didn’t trust me.
“Eli here,” he said into the phone. There was a pause and I tried really hard to hear what Roy was saying. The drilling rain made it impossible. “Are you sure?” Pause. “Okay. We’ll be there soon.” Eli looked down at me where I still lay in the mud. “She got tagged by an Osiris demon, they’ve got hallucinogens in their venom.” Pause. “I’ll get her there safe.”
He hung up and once more held out his hand to me. He pulled me up and I struggled to stand on my own two feet. The world spun around me.
“How’s the head?” I asked and eyed the blood leaking down the side of his face. He smelled sweet and kind of musky. The tips of my elongated fangs tingled.
“Barely hurts.”
“You know,” I said, words slurred, “the stubble, black eye, fat lip and bleeding forehead—you’re looking pretty badass these days. I didn’t even know you could grow facial hair. How old are you anyway?”
He chuckled and steered me away from the tall cross gravestone I almost walked into. “I’m twenty-three. Not only can I grow a beard, I have chest hair too. As for the shiner, Micah hasn’t been in the best of moods over the last week.”
I stopped and nearly fell on my face. “He did that to your face?”
“Not on purpose. I had to restrain him to keep him from going to you.” Eli shook his head. “He’s in bad shape, Ella. He won’t eat or sleep and it’s getting worse. I only left because Roy made me. Whatever happened between you two is tearing him up inside. I’ve tried to settle him, but…” He pointed to his battered face.
I leaned into him and rested my head somewhere near his shoulder. I wasn’t quite tall enough to reach that far. “You’re a good brother, Eli.”
I managed the rest of the trip to the car without falling. When we got to my dad’s old rusted pickup truck, which I saw three of, Eli helped me into the passenger seat. I handed him my keys without protest and closed my eyes. Roaring lions danced behind the lids.
Dark Cravings Page 8