Dark Descent (Codex Blair Book 3)

by Izzy Shows

  She frowned. "I do not have to get used to you, I do not need you to be a fixture in the community."

  "Actually, you kind of do. Because if you didn't, then I wouldn't have so much to do around here."

  She didn't respond to that, which only proved me right. If she didn't need me, I wouldn't be doing anything. If she had someone that could take care of things the same way that Aidan had, she would have already had them into position before I had healed from Tyburn Tree and taken up the cross.

  "What do you want this time?"

  I sighed, walking further into the store. "I do wish we could get along. But since you don't want to do that, let's cut to the chase. The succubus attacked again. Well, twice. One of your mages, and me."

  She lifted her chin slightly, keeping her narrowed eyes on me. "And yet you remain."

  "I had a paladin on my side."

  Her eyes widened.

  "Yeah, you know, I happen to have strong friends. I could be an ally to you. If you let me."

  She shook her head. "You keep doing what you're doing, and stay out of my hair. I don't want to mix with the likes of you."

  What the bloody hell did that even mean, the likes of me? I was getting more and more fed up with her as time progressed.

  "I'll ask again," she said. "What do you want?"

  I blew out a frustrated breath. "As I was saying, the succubus attacked again, and I want to get ahead of it."

  "And you came to me because…?"

  "Because I don't want to do what everyone thinks I should do, so I'm coming to you so that you can veto it, and I can tell that that it's a horrible idea and that there's no way to pull it off."

  She stared at me for a long moment, the wheels turning in her head. "You don't want to follow through with the plan laid before you?"

  "No, I don't, and I hope you can appreciate why. We need to set up a trap, and your mages are the bait. We've determined that the succubus is addicted to feeding on magic users, to their energy. If we can get enough of them in one place, it should draw her out. We can kill her then," I said.

  She was quiet, which took me completely by surprise. I had expected her to rail at me, to tell me to get out of her shop right that instant and that I was never welcome there again. She'd done it for a lot less already, so you would think that me asking her to truss up her mages and serve them up on a platter would qualify for the speech. But she remained quiet, looking down at the counter as she tapped her fingers.

  I waited, impatient but not willing to push the topic.

  The fact was, as much as I wanted her to veto the plan, I also needed her to agree with it. Without this plan, we had no good options, other than waiting for another attack to occur.

  Then again, I might be bait enough for the succubus. She said that she was going to come after me again, so why not run with that?

  Why hadn't I thought of that last night? Probably because I had been so distracted by arguing with Mal, and the fact that I had just been attacked by something intent on sucking my soul out.

  Gah, just thinking about what the succubus looked like was enough to make my hair stand on end.

  "All right," she said.

  My eyes bulged, my jaw dropped, and I took a step back. "What? No, that's not what you're supposed to say. Is this just because I'm against the plan? Are you just agreeing to fuck me over?"

  She flinched at my vulgar language, glaring at me. "No, I’m agreeing because your friends, whoever they are, are right. If you wait to try and find another solution, I am guaranteed another death. But it is a possibility that you can pull this...trap off without that happening. You will be there, of course."

  I chewed on my lip. "Yes, I will be there. I think we both know I've got the most energy going for me. Hopefully I can draw the succubus' attention away from anyone else there."

  "Precisely my thinking," she said, nodding her head. "I will, of course, be letting the community know what you want to do. The final decision will be up to them." Her words carried a warning note to them.

  "I wouldn't want it any other way. Actually, yes, I would rather we not be doing this at all."

  "In a perfect world, it would not be a necessity," she said.

  I stared at her, my eyes widening again. Had she just agreed with me about something? That had never happened before. I felt the door of hope creak open in my heart, that she might let me work with her. That perhaps one day, we could be friends.

  It felt like a futile hope, but one I allowed all the same.

  32

  A cool breeze rifled through my hair as Shawn and I walked back to his car.

  “That went well,” he said, casting a cautious glance in my direction that I caught in my peripheral vision. I was keeping my eyes focused dead ahead on the parking lot. I didn’t like that Lillai had agreed to the plan, didn’t like that we were going through with it. It wasn’t a good plan, at least I didn’t think so.

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  “Blair.” He reached out and touched my upper arm, a gentle motion that could easily be ignored, but I stopped and turned to face him. “I—”

  Before he could say anything more I was tackled to the ground, my head hitting the concrete with a resounding thud that I was going to feel for days to come. My eyes had closed reflexively, but I creaked them open to see dead eyes staring back at me.

  The succubus had compelled another mage.

  Don’t use magic. I can’t use my magic. I can’t hurt someone else. I thought to myself, remembering the attack in the club when I had laid someone out with one ice encased fist. That had been a bad move, and I needed to get control of myself.

  Instead I pulled my fist to the side and slammed it into the side of my attacker’s head, watched it lurch to the side and back again, and then lifted my head off the ground to head butt the fucker. He yanked himself off of me, which was good because my head was bloody sore. Hitting the pavement on one side and someone’s thick skull on the other wasn’t the best idea for taking care of myself, but it was what I had to work with.

  I managed to get to my knees before the man threw himself at me again, fists flying. I caught one punch with one hand, twisting his wrist to the point of almost breaking it, bowed my head, and slammed it into his windpipe.

  You need your brain to work, idiot! I reprimanded myself, but I shook the thought away. I crawled to my feet, gave myself a second to get it together, and then kicked the man in his chest. He was down on the ground, staring up at me from the submissive position, and his eyes had no focus or life in them. He could barely see me, I knew, but I also knew that he wasn’t going to stop until I put him out. Compelled mages never do, they have one mission and one mission only—to take out their target.

  Neutralize him.

  Kill him.

  The thoughts warred in my mind and for a moment I saw red, the blood lust surging inside of me and urging me to pound into him until there was nothing but a skid mark left on the pavement. I battled against it for a moment, resisting, but it got the better of me.

  I leapt on my would-be attacker, slugging him in the face with one hand and then another, again and again.

  I lost track.

  Time slowed down around me and I almost couldn’t see the man in front of me that I was beating within an inch of his life. There was only the call, the need to hurt, the desire to unleash pain and take control of everything.

  Strong hands formed bands of steel around my upper arms, dragging me backwards and off the man. I had been about to kill him, I was vaguely aware of that, and yet I couldn’t muster up the shame that I knew on some level I should be feeling. Why wasn’t I ashamed?

  “Blair!” Shawn’s voice cut into my thoughts, forcing me back to the present. He had whirled me around so that I was facing him, so that he could see the brutal look on my face, and his hands held me firmly in place. He shook me, and I felt my lips twist into a snarl of their own accord. His eyes were wide, but he wasn’t backing down.

  I inha
led through my nose, panic rising that Shawn was going to see the monster inside of me and needing desperately to hide it from him. He couldn’t know. He couldn’t know what I was, what raged within, or he was going to leave.

  Everyone leaves you eventually. Emily’s going to leave. You think you’re afraid of Shawn not sticking around, but if Emily had even an idea of what went on within you…

  The thought trailed off, though its torment remained. I already knew that everyone was going to leave me one day or another, they always did. This was just temporary, this weird situation where I had friends that wanted to help me.

  “Blair, can you hear me?”

  I concentrated on Shawn in front of me. It was hard. I bit down on the inside of my cheek, wincing at the pain. I did this, bit myself, enough that I had sores sometimes. But the pain was what I needed to concentrate, it helped me.

  “I can hear you,” I said at last.

  He stared at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was looking at. Could he? My face felt calm now, my mask firmly in place, my decision to keep it from him firmly planted in my mind.

  “What the hell got into you?” He shook me again, as if to rattle the answer out of me.

  A corner of my lips tilted up in a twisted little smile. “Nothing.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. You were about to kill him!”

  “He attacked me, he was under the influence of the succubus, he wasn’t going to stop,” I said, pulling away from him. His hands relaxed, allowing me to pass.

  “Shawn, just drop it,” I said, a warning note in my voice. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Turning away from him, I headed towards the car.

  I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. The bloodlust raged on.

  33

  Shawn took me back to my house. Lillai was going to call an emergency meeting and had agreed to call me after it was over to let me know what the final decision would be.

  Foolish and stupid though it was, I was still holding out some small hope that she was going to call me with bad news and tell me that the plan was off. I knew that it was bad, I knew that I shouldn't want it, but I just didn't like the plan we were going through.

  I wanted to find a way to handle this without getting innocents caught up in it.

  "Thanks for the ride," I said, reaching for the door. His hand was on my other arm before I got very far, and I stopped to turn back and look at him.

  "Wait," he said.

  "What?"

  “You won’t talk about what happened, fine. But I wanted to talk to you about...what you're planning to do."

  I lifted an eyebrow. "You seemed on board with it before. What's the hold up now?"

  He looked down at the centre console, taking several moments to choose his words.

  "I don't like it, that's all. I don't like the idea of you risking yourself like this. I didn't realise that you intended on being...I don't know what to even call it. I didn't know you were going to try and draw the succubus from everyone else. Fuck, that's still so strange to even talk about."

  I snorted. "You had to realise that I was going to go up against her sooner or later."

  He glared at me. "I didn't think about it, OK? I didn't put two and two together."

  "Sometimes, you aren't the sharpest tool in the shed," I said, sighing. "Come on, I need a cigarette if we're going to have a conversation like this."

  I got out of the car, heard him doing the same, and walked up to my steps. I took a seat and pulled out another cigarette.

  Nicotine is my best friend. Not only does it calm your nerves, but it almost instantly makes any socially awkward situation a little bit better. Standing out on the street waiting for someone? A cigarette takes you from the weird loner to the cool kid.

  Maybe that's bad. Maybe it's societal peer pressure.

  I didn't care.

  I pulled on the cigarette before I looked up at Shawn, who had chosen to remain standing.

  "You know what I get into, Shawn. You've known for a while now."

  "That doesn't mean I have to like it, does it?" He shook his head. "Every time you get into a scrap like this, you come to me and you're barely holding yourself together. I'm constantly afraid that the next time you come to me, I'm not going to be able to put you back together again. Fuck, I still don't know how you've mended after some of those wounds. I've told you, time and time again, that you need to go to a hospital, but you never listen to me. And what can I do about it? You're always just going to do what you want to do, at the end of the day."

  I took another drag on my cigarette, watching him, not sure how to respond.

  He was right. I was going to do whatever I wanted at the end of the day, and there was nothing he could do about it. I wasn't about to give up my agency just because he had decided to be worried about me.

  I had never had someone worry about me before, save maybe Finn. I didn't know how to deal with it, but I did know that I wasn't going to give in to it.

  "Blair, you've got to say something," he said, squatting in front of me so that we were on eye level. "Please tell me you understand even a little bit."

  "I get that you're worried about me," I said, turning my head to exhale the smoke away from him. "But I'm sorry, it doesn't change anything. I'm not going to stop fighting just because there's a chance I won't make it out alive. There's nothing else out there for me."

  As soon as I said it, the weight of those words hit me.

  There was nothing else in the world for me but the fight.

  When had I become that person? The person who couldn't look away, who couldn't not be involved, who couldn't stand down. That was who I was now, like it or not. I had the sudden feeling that I didn't recognise myself, that I wasn't the girl I had grown up knowing.

  Did I like who I had become, or did I fear her?

  I couldn't tell.

  I met Shawn's eyes, and I could see the concern there. I wanted to tell him that it was all going to be OK, that he was worrying over nothing, that nothing bad was going to happen to me and we were all going to laugh once it was over.

  But I had never truly fought a demon before. I had sparred with Mal, a Fallen, and maybe that meant that I could take on a demon. But it was a truth that could not be denied that at the end of the day he pulled his punches with me, which meant that I didn't know how well I could hold myself in a fight against a demon.

  This could be the fight I didn't make it out of.

  I pulled on my cigarette again, letting that sink in.

  I might be going on a suicide mission. Was I OK with that? With the potential of not coming home, not seeing Mal, Emily, Finn, or Shawn again? What about Fred...what was it going to do to him to lose another master?

  I didn't like to think about myself as being his master, especially not knowing as much about him as I did now, but that was how he saw me. It had broken him for months after he'd learned about Aidan. I didn't blame him. I'd known the man for only a few days and I'd been more broken up than I had a right to when he'd died.

  Could I do that to Fred? I owed him so much, and now I was risking his sanity.

  Fuck.

  I didn't want to think about these things, didn't want to be responsible for other people's feelings.

  "Blair?"

  I jerked my head at the sound of Shawn's voice, having floated off into another world for a moment.

  "What?"

  "Where did you go?"

  "I..." I looked at the ground. "I'm sorry, Shawn. I know it scares you. It scares me. I don't let myself let go of the fear. I like to tell myself that's the only reason I make it out of any of the fights alive, but we both know a lot of that is left up to chance. There is a real possibility that I won't make it out of this alive. I know that. I'm sure you know that too, or you wouldn't be trying to talk me out of this. But I can't stand down, Shawn. I can't watch as this monster kills people, knowing that I have a chance to stop it. You understand that, don't you?"<
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  He shook his head, standing up and walking away from me. He kicked at the dirt, sending turf flying, before he turned back to look at me.

  "I don't want to," he said, his voice breaking.

  "You're not supposed to care," I said, trying for a joke.

  "Fuck that. I care. I'm your friend, fuck everything else, your friend is allowed to care if you go kamikaze! Don't do this, Blair. Let someone else draw the succubus in, wait in the shadows, something. Anything."

  I smiled, tired and sad. "No one else can do it. I wouldn't feel right letting anyone else do it, anyway."

  "What about your friend, the demon?" He still didn't know Mal's name. "Why can't he do this?"

  "Because, Shawn, he's a demon. The succubus isn't feeding on other demons, she's feeding on the humans that have magical abilities. Which is me, if you recall. And out of the people that we're asking to be a part of this, I'm the biggest fish. I have the highest chance of making it out of an attack alive. Are you forgetting that she already targeted me?" I tried to smile again, but my lips just kind of twitched.

  "And you only made it out because of Emily," he said, shaking his head.

  Mm, he had a point there. I hadn't made it out on my own merits, I had been lucky that I had insisted Emily accompany me to the event. If she hadn't been there, I might have been demon chow myself.

  "It's happening, Shawn. There's nothing you can do about it. I'm sorry."

  He sighed, walking back over to me. He reached out a hand to tousle my hair, and I scowled up at him. For a moment, it felt like we weren't talking about me potentially dying, it felt like we were just hanging out again.

  If it weren't for the sad look on his face, I could almost believe it too.

  "There's nothing I can say, is there?"

  "To change my mind?" I grimaced. For a moment, I wished that I could tell him there was. Just to make him feel better, to make him feel like he had any control in this situation.

  He didn't, though. He was just a human. He wasn't going to be invited to the party, he was going to have to wait for me to come back banged up as ever, and deal with the consequences of a decision I had made without him.