by Liz Meldon
The pale pink in her cheeks brightened. “I mean… It’s sister-in-law on Earth, but, sure, that… that works for me.”
A thought suddenly occurred to him, a thought Malachi should have banished but instead let seep to the tip of his tongue. If they were having a moment, why not clear the slate completely?
“In the spirit of this newfound truce,” he said slowly, still a touch hesitant when she lifted her eyebrows, “and sisterhood or whatever… I’m afraid there’s something I need to tell you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What have you done now, Malachi?”
“Not really a now issue, I’m afraid,” the chaos demon admitted, taking a subtle step back at the spark of suspicion in her gaze. “Before we rescued Severus, when we joined the other demons in the assault on Seraphim Securities… I… I had Cordelia alter your memory of a certain, er, meeting.”
Well then.
The frosty silence gathering between them couldn’t be a good thing, right?
Opting to fill it rather than let it solidify, Malachi regaled her with all the pertinent facts of the issue—from conception to execution, he relayed his involvement in altering her memory after their meeting to persuade the demon mobsters of Farrow’s Hollow to attack Seraphim Securities. Hoping to make her laugh, he even included the bit about her breaking a demon’s arm when he had the gall to touch her, but her lips had hardened into a permanent thin line.
“You see, it was done to limit your culpability should the angels give you a Truth Touch,” he insisted, “which, of course, they did… as I predicted.”
The silence stretched on, frostier than ever, until—
“How dare you alter my memories!” And then it was pain. Blinding angel light and pain. Like a Fury on a mission, Moira was on him in seconds, hands aglow, face contorted with rage. She managed to catch one of his hands and latch on with both of hers. His inner demon roared. The scent of scorched flesh filled the alley. And one swift kick to the back of his knees had him tumbling to the ground, writhing at her feet.
“It was f-for your own protection,” Malachi forced through gritted teeth, his bloody hand on fire. Finally, after a fucking eternity, she released him, staggering into the brick wall of the neighboring building. Light diminished, Moira pressed one hand to her forehead, the other to her chest, gasping. Malachi, meanwhile, sat up and examined what ought to be a useless stump of a hand. All there, thankfully, every finger—but charred black. Honestly, when had she gotten so powerful?
“I want it back,” she snapped, the conviction behind her words admirable, even with the wobble. “All of it.”
“I’ll see what Cordelia can do.” Slowly, agony sluicing through his veins, Malachi stood and flexed his hand. The black had already faded to a waxy red, the top layer of flesh shedding like a serpent’s second skin. The punishment almost fit the crime. “Memory work is dangerous.”
“Fuck you.”
“But I’m sure Cordelia can make it right,” he continued, holding up both hands to soothe her. “It really was for your own good—”
“Yeah, it always is with you, isn’t it?” She pushed off the wall, stalking toward Alaric’s building, only to pause and storm back, her footprints a mess in the snow. Moira leveled him with a look that screamed more exhaustion than rage, but the tip of the threatening finger pointed his way had Malachi shoving his hands into his pockets with a wince and tucking his chin down to shield his vulnerable throat.
“Logically, I get it. They did search my memories, and I probably would have agreed to it if you’d asked first,” she said slowly, as if choosing every word with great care. “But that does not mean I forgive you for it.”
Well, Malachi could give her that. “Fair enough.”
“And if you ever do that to Ella,” Moira growled, taking a menacing step in his direction, “you’re done.”
His lips twitched up. She truly was worthy of the Saevitia name. “Are you threatening me, sister?”
“Uh.” Moira blinked back at him. “Yeah.”
“Noted.” Upon realizing that at some point the snow had stopped, Malachi glanced up to the dark, lifeless winter sky above. “So, have I sullied our trust for good, then?”
“No,” she said, far quicker than he might have expected. “But I’m pissed at you, and I probably will be for a while.”
Right. He could live with a little anger, especially when warranted. “No less than I deserve, I’m sure.”
She crossed her arms with a humorless chuckle. “Oh, I still haven’t decided what you deserve, Malachi Saevitia.”
Full name. He was in trouble, wasn’t he? Clearing his throat, he offered his unblemished hand with a lopsided grin. “I’ve got another hand, if you’d like. May as well make a matching set.”
She drew a breath, shivering, and he swore the hybrid almost smiled as she shook her head at him. “Do you really think I enjoyed—”
Moira flinched when the pantry door flew open, slamming off the nearby brick and rebounding back into his brother.
“You need to get in here,” Severus insisted, his eyes black, his expression grim. “Both of you—now.”
Chapter Fourteen
Feed, feed, feed…
“It’s like one of those emergency alert broadcasts,” Ella muttered, eyes clenched shut. She pinched the bridge of her nose, grimacing against the throb of a headache better suited for an epic hangover.
Just when she’d finally calmed her raging body, fed it, satiated the hunger and soothed the beast within—Serafino had to ruin everything by running some bullshit message on a loop. At least he wasn’t screaming anymore. With Malachi’s blood humming through her system, filling her, strengthening her, her master’s rasping voice had dropped to an insistent whisper. Still, she couldn’t ignore it like she usually did, not when the message was batshit insane.
“What’s he saying, honey?”
“I think it’s like… a blanket statement to all his vampires,” she said, finally opening her eyes and squinting against the bright lights of the first floor. Alaric, Severus, and Cordelia sat across from her at the dining table, Severus standing behind the other two, while Moira crouched at her right, an arm around her shoulders, occasionally rubbing her back.
Malachi, meanwhile, was at the counter—getting her a refill. A slit wrist filled her wineglass within about ten seconds, and her gums ached at the sight.
But her body ached at the sight of him.
Finding the chaos demon at the bottom of the stairs tonight, finally back from Hell nearly four days after he’d promised… She had wanted to do much more than sink her fangs into him. Much, much more. Especially after the run-in with Serafino’s lackeys some ten hours earlier in the park. Malachi symbolized hope—and sex and fun and blood and ugh. Simply hearing his booming voice through the floorboards had been enough to strengthen her resolve, to remind her that she was capable of fighting Serafino’s grasp. Now that she knew his blood severed the ties to her master even more than her own willpower, Ella hoped he never left again.
Sure, maybe there were a few reasons she didn’t want him to take another extended trip to Hell, but they had all fallen to the wayside the second Serafino started his broadcast some twenty minutes ago. It had appeared out of nowhere, as his voice always did, but this was different. His tone lacked the usual seductive purr, the kind that crept into her brain like a vine of insidious, coiling ivy. Tonight, the demonic vampire sounded… stressed. Strained. Amidst all the crap he’d been spewing, he occasionally murmured what she assumed was a private message, just for her.
Ella, bella, come to me tonight and your friends will be spared. Come to me, and I shall turn a blind eye to the hybrid, to the leech, to the bringer of chaos…
“He’s calling for an attack,” she said after another cycle of the two messages, all but snatching the wineglass from Malachi’s slightly seared hand when he offered it to her. She gulped down the entire contents as he settled into his usual seat at the head of the table, studying her with a
n intense black gaze.
“An attack?” Alaric’s eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean?”
“Nine o’clock,” Ella announced, picking through the fluff in her head for key details. Serafino started whispering directly to her again, the same message as before, and she rubbed at her ear as if she could physically block him out. “He’s telling the colony to attack. Free feed. Go wild. Go into people’s homes, businesses—nothing is off-limits. It’s… He’s demanding a bloodbath.”
“What?” Moira retreated somewhat, tucking her shimmering hands behind her back. “He can’t do that, can he? That has to be, I don’t know, illegal, even by Hell’s standards.”
“There are rules, of course,” Severus insisted. “And yes, he’d be breaking them. By attacking humans, he’s spitting in Lucifer’s face. We are encouraged to corrupt, to send souls down rather than up, but an outright rebellion on this scale is…”
“Madness,” Cordelia finished for him, fiddling with her nails, her gaze a very long, long way away. Malachi’s chair legs groaned as he pushed back and stood, still clutching a towel to his wrist. She tracked his movements into the kitchen, ever the prowling predator—a big cat, a lion in his prime with that golden mane, huge paws, and even bigger teeth. There was grace in every step, elegance in his stride, but there was power too. Danger. Darkness. The chaos demon made her feel so deeply as a vampire, well before her human emotions kicked back in, but he wasn’t someone she’d want to go toe to toe with in a dark alley.
“It’s been playing on a loop in my head,” she stated. “This, I don’t know, call to action of his.”
Alaric flicked his wrist to bring his watch around, frowning. “It’ll probably go on for the next hour—just gone eight now.”
Fuck. Ella slowly rotated her empty wineglass in place, then grabbed a coaster when she noticed the blood dribbling down its stem. “There’s something else. Between this, like, foghorn that I’m sure the entire colony hears, he’s telling me if I go to him, he’ll spare all of you.”
Something crashed in the kitchen, but Cordelia’s little giggle-snort had Ella looking to her instead of whatever Malachi had just destroyed.
“Ignore him, Ella,” the witch told her, her eyes manic, her smile beyond amused. “Like he could ever penetrate this house… He’s preying on your fears to get what he wants.”
“Agreed,” Moira said without missing a beat. “Don’t even consider it. Everyone in this room is stronger than a vampire, hell-born or not. He isn’t a threat.”
Well, almost everyone. As the others murmured their agreement, Ella couldn’t help but look to Severus. The incubus released the backs of Cordelia and Alaric’s chairs and started to pace the length of the table, back and forth, slowly.
Slowly and without much confidence.
When was the last time he had touched a human—and for how long? He looked better lately than he had in months, but would his borrowed strength last in a fight?
A bond had formed between them since she’d turned; they both risked an epic crash and burn if they didn’t feed.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” she muttered. And so out of nowhere, at that.
“Yes.” The sing of metal accompanied Malachi’s growl, and she spotted him removing the largest, sharpest knife from the block on the counter. He eyed the weapon, tossing it between each hand as if to test its heft. His previously slit wrist had closed, but blood stained his arms in vibrant red tracks. His lips twisted in a sneer, his eyes both black and fiery. “A vampire uprising in my city… How very bold of him.” The chaos demon trailed a finger the length of the blade. “How very foolish.”
“If someone alerted Serafino that you were investigating him in Hell, your return may have forced him to make a move,” Alaric mused. Moira nodded as she warily eyed the enormous knife in Malachi’s hand.
“This could have been his endgame all along,” she said. “Build his numbers, then attack.”
“Vampires have been fighting for more rights in Hell as long as I can remember,” Severus added, still pacing, his eyes a charcoal grey—not quite dark enough for this. “Much like incubi, they are… lowly in demon society. Perhaps Serafino promised his followers a vampire paradise on Earth. It would certainly be appealing.”
Anger bubbled in Ella’s core, threatening to shoot up her throat like an erupting volcano and spew all over the table. She swallowed it down, because no one here deserved her wrath.
Still, this was her city. Malachi may legally own it through some twisted deed in Hell, but Moira and Ella had grown up here. They had been born here. Farrow’s Hollow had its faults, but fuck Serafino if he thought he could take it like this. Vampire paradise on Earth—fuck him.
“I don’t really give a shit about his endgame,” Ella said, cutting through the conversations around her. “He can’t do this.”
“And he won’t,” Malachi insisted gruffly, stalking around the kitchen peninsula and twirling his newfound weapon with the ease of a master assassin. “Alaric, I suggest you open that pretty gun collection of yours and suit up. We’re going hunting.”
Ella shot up, her chair colliding roughly with the wall behind her. “I’m in.”
“That’s a horrible idea.” Moira caught her wrist, her eyes pleading—her palm still burning, kissed by the lingering heat of her angel light. Ella twisted free, not unkindly, and cradled her hand to her chest. Her bestie cleared her throat. “Sorry. I just… Guys, let’s take a breath. We have an hour.”
“Fifty-three minutes, actually.”
She shot Alaric a narrowed look, and the hybrid smirked back.
“Okay, fifty-three minutes,” Moira carried on, fingertips resting on the dining table as she looked from person to person, eventually settling on Severus. “The best course of action is the one that will limit human casualties.”
“Well, that seems like his main goal tonight.” Ella rubbed the space between her eyebrows, trying to work out the tension headache gathering there as Serafino’s whispered loop started over again. “He’s literally instructing us to break into homes. Like, the suburbs are fucked. Campus housing is still full because exams are on for another week… It’s a vampire buffet out there, and no one knows it.”
“She’s right.” Severus finally paused next to his brother, two inches shorter and noticeably leaner. The incubus gently lowered Malachi’s knife-wielding arm with a hand on his wrist. “We need to involve the angels.”
Malachi barked something between a scoff and a snarl, shaking his head. Ella swallowed thickly as she studied the chaos flaming behind those black orbs, his aura pulsing, swelling—calling to her. Could the others feel it as strongly as she did? The siren song, the war cry, the deep, ancient bellow of a horn summoning them to battle.
Deep down, she longed to respond.
She longed to join him.
Instead, she grabbed her chair and plopped back down next to Moira, hands together in a white-knuckled fist.
“No, no, he’s right,” Alaric said, standing to face the chaos demon. “If we charge headlong into the fight, into this vampire uprising, and the angels do respond—”
“Which they will,” Severus added.
“Then we may be seen as coconspirators,” Alaric finished. “Cassiel warned us… Thin ice, remember, after we freed Sev? We can’t risk it. If we look like we’re involved in any of this, we’re fucked. I personally never want to see the inside of a cell in that dungeon ever again…”
“I’m going to call Zachariah.” Moira dug her phone out of her jeans’ pocket, then set it on the table, tapping around. Slowly, her face crinkled. “Wait. I don’t have service. Severus, give me your phone.”
“I’m afraid mine is the same,” the incubus told her, holding up the unlocked screen as evidence. “No bars.”
Ella’s phone was currently charging on her nightstand upstairs, but when Alaric confirmed that he didn’t have any reception either—no internet, no data, nothing—she had a feeling there was no point rushing
up to get it. The final straw was Malachi, whose phone looked so sleek and untouched that she suspected he’d used it maybe twice since buying it.
“Nothing,” he rumbled. “Is this out of the ordinary?”
“He’s done something,” Ella said, a prickly feeling making itself at home in her stomach. “I just know it… It’s starting.”
“Then we’ll go to Zachariah’s apartment,” Moira insisted. “Seraphim Securities will be closed anyway. I know where he lives.”
The room quickly agreed with her, despite Malachi’s eye rolls and sighs of displeasure. As soon as Ella was on her feet, however, her gums aching, gearing up to do some damage, Moira touched her shoulder in a way that suggested she wouldn’t like what her best friend was about to say.
“Honey, I think you should stay here.”
Nope. Did not like. How could Ella sit this out when it felt like her fault? Logically, she knew none of this was her fault, that Serafino was just a fucking psychopath hell-bent on destruction and rebirth, but for some reason he had targeted her specifically. He had threatened her loved ones. She couldn’t just sit on the sidelines.
“But… But I want to help.”
“He wants you to leave the safety of this house,” Cordelia mused as she smoothed out her many layers of lace and chiffon. “You mustn’t give him what he wants.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Moira told her softly, but that had Severus shaking his head from across the table.
“Darling, we need you to convene with Zachariah. He and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.”
“Go. All of you.” Malachi stabbed the knife into the table, then folded his arms, expression verging on a stern pout. “Alaric should alert his father. Cordelia is vital for when you inevitably run into Serafino’s brats. I’ll stay with Ella.” His black gaze slid to her, and she felt it in her core, its molten heat dripping languidly down to the crest of her thighs. “Should they come here, it’ll be my absolute pleasure to paint the street with their innards.”