by C. M. Owens
“I’m sure you understand we’re on a quest for the queen and king. You can’t really keep us locked up in here. Surely you know there would be severe—”
“Completely fatal,” Dice interrupts.
“—ramifications for such treasonous actions,” I go on, pretending as though I wasn’t interrupted.
“Hellfire will rain down on you like you never before imagined, Jeremiah,” Dice adds.
Jeremiah does not sound like a name I’ve been forced to remember as an important one. And he’s an incubus. Which makes him as harmless as Dice.
I can handle—
A wave of seduction blasts me with more force than I’ve ever experienced—well, unnaturally, that is. Slade has certainly made my head fog up and my mind short circuit with just his presence.
But I’ve never been hit so potently with an incubus’s power. Not even Dice—since he trained me against it after I turned, giving me small doses so I’d grow resistant.
It was awkward for the both of us until I got the hang of icing out the power. Like I’m slowly doing now, while still pretending to be lost in the fog. Caught off guard, a great deal of it has slipped past my defenses, so I don’t have to pretend too hard.
“A Princess would look very appealing in my harem, and would certainly up my power intake.”
“What’s he…talking…about?” I murmur, not faking the slowed words.
Dice scowls over at me like he’s pissed I’m even struggling against this power and is personally offended by my vulnerability.
I blame the magic-infused bars.
“Jeremiah is Type A incubus. The stronger his harem, the stronger his powers, since he feeds regularly off all of them and their never-ending state of lust he keeps them in.” He turns his cold eyes back to the said creeper. “And it’s reprehensibly illegal.”
Jeremiah smiles a sickeningly cold smile that could double as a barely disguised sneer. “And you grew morals when you joined the queen’s court? Maybe I should kill you now in case stupidity is catching.”
“Those were different times, mate. And my harem was always a willing set of participants who didn’t have to be constantly drugged. This is disgusting even by my standards.”
The women, now that I study them better, do seem like mindless drones. Can Dice impose that sort of influence over people?
Vacant eyes don’t even seem to notice us in the room, as they both consistently rub their hands over his chest. His aura seems to glow brighter, showcasing his powers like a proud beacon.
Even if I hadn’t seen his eyes, I’d still know exactly what he is. It’s actually considered indecent these days to expose an aura so blatantly.
The heady rush still vibrating through my body now makes me realize what I’ve been struggling with and why it’s not affecting Dice. It isn’t the bars weakening me.
It’s Jeremiah.
I really want to touch him…so I can rip his head off. Though I’d possibly kiss him a little first. Maybe sit in his lap and kiss him before ripping an arm off first. The longer I’m subjected to this, the less harm I want to inflict on him, as the desire to pleasure him starts to overwhelm me.
My blood boils, the memory of another man imposing his will on me, stealing from me, taking from me, bonding me in a way that sent me into a mindless spiral when I defended him from my own family.
The burning anger slowly eats away at some of the influence, allowing the need for pain to return.
I didn’t get the chance to kill the last man who broke sacred trusts; a man whose name shall not be spoken. He remained untouchable for far too long.
But Slade killed him.
My lips curl in dark delight, and Dice mutters a curse when I sway a little drunkenly, feeling a familiar high creep up.
“You really have no idea what diluting her ability to think will do. I’d rather not fucking die, so I respectfully request you cease at once,” Dice snaps, not sounding respectful at all.
I almost giggle.
Jeremiah laughs outright. “I already feel ten times stronger just feeding off her what little bit I have. I think the king should guard his daughter better if he wants to keep her. I’ve never been one for the monarchy anyway.”
A very icky smile dons his toxically immaculate lips—lips shaped too perfectly to hold a smile so uninviting.
“Maybe this will start their fall,” he adds.
A loud siren wails from outside, and the two girls vanish from his side. So we can dematerialize from in here without consequence?
I try…and fail. I glance around, seeing there certainly are markings to prevent such all along the bars confining me. There are thousands of markings, all tasked with a different responsibility of which powers to trap or contain.
Jeremiah leers at me a moment longer before saying, “As soon as my company is gone, I’ll be returning.” He cuts his gaze to Dice. “Then you can watch her become one of mine. It should remind you of the past, and you can watch helplessly from the sidelines.”
There’s a bitter bite to his words, a hard set to his jaw, and a rigid posture to his stance. I give Dice a dubious look that he pointedly ignores.
“You’ll regret this,” Dice assures him, not sounding like the funny guy he usually is in tense situations.
That has an inkling of dread crawling up in me. How serious is this? Regardless, Jeremiah is still just an incubus. The second he opens this door to touch me, those little markings won’t do him any good—the seal will be broken. And I’ll level him with barely any effort.
Jeremiah laughs and turns to walk away, leaving us in here with Dice shouting at his back.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to kill him,” I state confidently, staggering back to my feet when the other incubus is gone from the room.
My words are dampened a little by the way I stumble around like a drunken fool, but I still mean them.
Dice sags in relief as he looks over at me. “If you’re talking like that, then he’s fortunately not as strong as I feared.”
“Oh, he’s strong. But I’m just pissed off enough to eat away at some of the lust crowding my mind. I’m not sure how we ended up in here. There’s no way that small spell set off that big of a reaction from the forest. At most, we should have had a few branches whip us. I’ve seen Dad use the same spell in those same woods before, and three out of four times, nothing happened. The degrading whipping happened the fourth time, and we easily got away before taking too many licks. Where’re our phones?”
“No clue. Mine was missing the second I reached for it in the woods. Those damn woods are tricky, though. For all we know, we lost them early on.”
Just. Great.
Dice looks confused for a moment.
“Those women looked…familiar,” he says, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “Though I can’t recall where I’ve met them.”
He shakes his head.
“Not important. We have to get you out of here before you become a slave, because that will be inevitable. He’s been keeping a harem for centuries.”
“You claim to stay stuffed around us, even gripe at us when we feed you energy on accident.” I don’t say sexual energy, because I’m still young enough to where that sounds hella creepy. “Yet you make it sound like he’s constantly feeding.”
“He is constantly feeding, and his appetite is ravenous. That’s what I mean by Type A. He fed too much when he was transitioning. Now his hunger is insatiable. But if he keeps you for too long, he’ll need more power as strong as yours, and Alyssa will be next.”
I stumble again before righting myself. “He can’t take her on.”
“He’s not even in here, and you’re still struggling,” he points out. “And you’re stronger than her.”
“Strength is the wrong word. I have more power. She has more strength. Regardless, he caught me off guard. Just give me a minute to get this out of my system—”
“If that’s a euphemism for rubbing one off, I’m not okay with that. First of all, i
t’d just be a little too uncomfortable for me to have to see. Secondly, Karma is very jealous. Third of all, I’m like your favorite uncle, and…I don’t want to be that uncle. If you know what I mean.”
He snorts, and even though I want to punch him in the face just a little, I also feel a little more at ease just hearing his ridiculous jokes. It means he’s calming down, which helps me to calm down.
“I’m not touching myself in front of you, so chill,” I grumble, and he weirdly blows out what sounds like a major breath of relief.
He really thought I’d do that here?!
When I give him a glare, he shrugs. “It’s the easiest way to free up some headspace. Most of them don’t know that in the beginning, and they get sucked into the spell too quickly to figure it out before it’s too late.”
My cheeks rise with heat but…hell no. Not doing that.
“There’s got to be another way for me to sober.”
“If getting pissed is working, then think of him getting his hands on Alyssa.”
All of the little floating fire lights blow out at once as a surge of power rushes out of me unbidden. As one, they relight, as though they’re set to do just that, should they be blown out.
I’m steadier when I look at Dice, and he smirks.
“Maybe these cells aren’t as good at trapping your powers as I worried,” he says.
I try to dematerialize again, but no such luck.
“So what’s the plan?” he finally asks. “He won’t let us go. Jeremiah is literally psychotic. He’s had a taste of your power, and we can’t leave him alive. Not that I’ll shed tears over that, but we kill him, and we also run the risk of killing his harem by default. They have to go through withdrawal, and if they’ve been tethered to him for too long, quitting cold turkey might fry their brains. You only saw two, but I can promise you, there are at least fifty somewhere within this cave he’s made a home in.”
“This place is barely big enough for one.”
“This is just for one. There are probably fifty other rooms just like this one for all of his women. It’s an old trick to put the women in their own separate dwellings to temp down jealousy and keep them mindless, never letting them chip away at his thrall when they have no deep emotions.”
I huff out a breath. Why can’t my life be simple? Just one thing could go right on occasion. I don’t have to be tested at every corner.
One of the women returns, her eyes never glancing in my direction, as she grabs a red silk robe meant for a man from the couch. Ah, come on. Seriously? Could he be more cliché?
She walks back out without a backward glance, but I hear a squeal of surprise, and suddenly I see a woman and man walk in. Two very familiar faces.
Simone and Hank.
Slade’s people.
Relief instantly fills me.
I see the girl who had the robe now over Hank’s shoulder and unconscious, the robe no longer clutched in her hand. Simone is dragging another woman behind her.
She gives me a cold smile. “Well, what have you gotten yourself into now?”
Hank starts moving toward the back of the cave, pushing around like he’s searching for something near us.
“Just get us out before that creep from hell gets back,” Dice says, thoroughly relaxed now.
Her cruel eyes drift to him. “Nothing personal, incubus, since you’re actually the first thing to entertain me in far too many centuries to count, but I can’t pass up this opportunity,” she says, her eyes shifting back to me as an uncomfortable warning tingle spreads in my spine.
“Two of our girls went missing a few weeks ago,” she goes on, gesturing at both the downed women. “Slade will accept this as a consolation prize when I tell him I lost track of you in the woods while under a beetle attack.”
My spine goes completely stiff, and Dice releases a humorless laugh, shaking his head as though he can’t believe this.
“You followed us?” I growl.
Her eyes never leave mine. “My orders were to locate Gavin and kill him if he touched you in any way.” She moves closer to the cage, her gait predatory. “Nothing personal. It’s not because Slade wants you. I love the ruthless way he fucks me—” An ill-timed, and completely embarrassing, feral growl escapes me when she says those words, causing her lips to curl in a taunting grin. “—but that’s not what this is about. I’m not that kind of woman. I just simply can’t stand you, the self-righteous bullshit you represent, or the fact everyone wants to keep you alive at the risk of everything else, regardless of the fact you only get yourself in trouble and never actually help. You increase our chances of dying more and more with each day we sacrifice resources and valuable time to save your precious little ass.”
Hank doesn’t even pretend to care as he continues his search against the wall.
“So petty jealousy is going to cost me my life, even if it has nothing to do with Slade,” I remark coldly, taking a step back, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a pointless round of begging.
Obviously this tension between Slade and I is not very discreet.
I’ll blow this place to hell before I let Jeremiah near me.
“No, Ella Ice,” she says with a dark grin. “I’m not jealous. I just resent the hell out of your very spoiled existence.”
She backs away, grinning the entire time, as though she’s waited her entire life for this very moment.
Then Hank moves through the wall, and I watch as she grabs the other girl and follows him before I slam my fist into the iron bars. Reinforced with impenetrable magic, they don’t even budge.
“Slade’s going to pop her head off her shoulders like a zit,” Dice graphically states the second they’re gone. “Then he’ll rip off that crusty cum nugget’s dick and feed it to gators or something. Should make for an entertaining evening. I’ll bring the popcorn if you get us out of here.”
Really?! I thought I came up with crusty cum nugget!
Sooooo the least of my concerns right now.
“Slade won’t kill his people for abandoning us here,” I tell Dice absently, trying and failing to distract myself from the truth of Simone’s words still lingering in the air.
“Dice, can you get out?” I ask him quietly, staring at the doorway.
“The longer he’s in the room, the stronger I get because his energy is so abundant that it’s seeping. But that means you’ll get weaker, so that’s a double-edged sword if I’ve ever heard of one,” he tells me in response.
“But can you break out?”
“Probably. I saw the wall they used. He just pushed in the right place to make the illusion drop. It’s a passage way back into the forest without having to dematerialize and set off unwanted spells once they land out there blindly, I’m assuming.”
I just nod, sliding down the wall until my butt bumps the ground and I pull my knees up. “Do that. Get through that wall and run as fast as you can the moment you can break free.”
He makes a scoffing sound. “Not leaving you behind. We’ll just wait on rescue. My girlfriend loves me, so it shouldn’t be too long.”
Forcing a smile, I look over at him. “Run, Dice. Run hard. I’ll get myself out of this mess once I’m sure you’re too far gone.”
He pales a little. “Ella, be careful. Your emotions are being toyed with right now. Sexual energy can be produced from any emotion—anger, fear, grief, vulnerability, inadequacy—and with him being Type A, he can use those emotions against you. They may not even be your true emotions. Do you understand?”
His warning seems to help some of the fog lift, even though it’s still a little imposing. It’s hard to do, but instead of feeling anything, I force myself to go numb in an effort to stifle Jeremiah’s hold over me.
Dice is saying something, but I don’t really hear him as I work on numbing myself completely, feeling Jeremiah’s hold slip more and more.
This time, when all the flames blow out, I feel a crackle of power that isn’t mine, and a slight breeze before they all
light up once more. My head swivels, but I see no one there.
I guess it was my power and I just didn’t feel it?
Understandable, since I’m forcing the numbness right now.
Taking a deep breath, I turn my attention to the doorway as Jeremiah stalks in, face red with fury and fists clenched like he’s planning to do more pummeling than touching.
“Run if you can,” I whisper to Dice again as I slowly stand, lifting my chin just defiantly enough to piss off the already seething incubus—not Dice. The other incubus.
I can feel the effect of his power diminishing instead of strengthening, and a challenge rises in my chest, warming me, feeding me.
Apparently survival instincts are a real thing.
When the smile quirks my lips, Jeremiah’s head looks like it’s ready to explode.
Some of that lovely darkness settles in with just enough bite to remind me why I’m alive.
I might be a hazard, but I pack one hell of a punch when I do get a shot in.
Chapter 6
SLADE
When I see Simone enter the room, I pause, stopping myself from entering the forest, telling myself it’s ridiculous to fucking be here. I’m wasting precious time stalking a girl I have no desire to be stalking.
Especially when I already sent two others to stalk her in my stead.
I’d briefly closed my eyes, checking on her again, trying not to be annoyed with the fact she’d never answer the incubus’s questions about me. I’m twice as annoyed with myself for continuing to fucking close my eyes so I could listen to their conversation, worried I’d miss her motherfucking answer.
It’s been a rather inconvenient distraction, if I’m being honest.
Then I saw a glimpse of blood, and the next thing I knew, I was dematerializing from one place to another, making my way to the edge of the forest just as Jeremiah walked in.
I’d already started closing the distance on her when I couldn’t see her present life right in front of me when I closed my eyes. The second the images started back toward the end of the year she turned eighteen, I was immediately closing ground.
Then, of course, I kept walking while my eyes were closed and got turned around in that godforsaken forest while trying to watch her.