by Cate Corvin
Not slayer marks. Nephilim runes.
He was the Paladin.
“Our friend’s been poisoned with blessed iron,” Càel said, stepping in before I could wedge my foot in my mouth. “And this woman needs shelter.”
The Paladin focused on my mom, and all I could think was that this guy was wearing suspenders, for god’s sake, but he motioned us in with a wave. “Come in, come in. I’ve got just the thing. A little brimstone and your friend will be right as rain.”
Will and I dragged Suraziel inside, following Arkomoch’s massive form through a huge foyer. A chandelier made of swords hung overhead, casting a warm glow over us.
I blinked when we passed through the foyer into a very modern kitchen, the kind I never would’ve expected to see in a castle.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Arkomoch wriggled arched black brows. “Best decision Christian ever made. I kept telling him no one wants to cook human souls over an actual hearth, we left that insanity behind in the sixteen hundreds. Much easier to microwave them. Let’s get him up here, I need to remove the iron.”
I had no idea who the hell Christian was, but I let Arkomoch help us haul Suraziel’s prone form onto a black granite island that spanned the room.
The Paladin entered the kitchen and adjusted his spectacles as he looked over the hole in Suraziel’s chest and made to move him. I expected the wizened man to need help, but he easily lifted Suraziel enough to peer at the blossoming wound on his back.
“Well, now. Arko, put on some tea, would you? We have guests.”
I felt like I’d stepped into some bizarro-land dreamworld as the Legionnaire filled a copper kettle and placed it on the stove. “Is he going to be okay?” I demanded. Every second that Suraziel bled lessened the chances he’d recover, and he was worried about tea?
“Of course, dear, of course. Demons are much harder to kill than we give them credit for.” The Paladin poked at Suraziel’s stomach and the incubus let out a low groan. “See?”
“Can you please not poke at him? Look, I’m very grateful for your help, but he saved my life tonight, and it’s extremely important to me that he doesn’t bleed to death in the next ten minutes.”
He opened a drawer and started rummaging around, and eventually extracted a pair of pliers. “Just the thing!”
Arko appeared at my shoulder. “Refreshment?” I took the cup and saucer automatically and watched in an increasingly-dazed feeling of bemusement as he dragged a plush armchair into the room. “Lay her here, vampire.”
Càel lowered my mother onto the chair, her head lolling.
“I wonder if I should even be here when she wakes up.” I sipped the tea without thinking and let out an almost-sensual moan. He’d given me a cup of hot blood, not tea. I found myself chugging the rest of the cup, my hunger roaring back to life now that the immediate stress was taken off my shoulders.
“Of course you should, shíorghrá.” Càel wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my hair. I leaned into him, closing my eyes. “Better to face your fear now than let it eat away at you.”
Will received a cup of actual tea, looking relieved about it. I’d seen him eyeing my cup suspiciously. “He’s right. You gave yourself for her, Tori. She’s not going to throw you away for having sharp teeth.”
The Paladin had a grip with the pliers and pulled hard. Suraziel’s back rose off the counter, his entire body arching up as the Paladin extracted the bolt. He let out another low, breathy groan, collapsing back onto the counter as soon as the blessed iron left his body.
I made to dash forward, but Arko stepped between me and him, taking the empty cup and saucer. “I don’t think so, your Majesty. Let Christian work.”
So, the Paladin was the Christian he’d referred to- wait. Majesty?
“Um. Nobody’s a majesty here,” I said, feeling awkward. “Thanks, though, I guess?”
Arko looked me over from head to toe, finishing on my face with a skeptical look. “You are Victoria Holmwood, right?”
I felt like cold water had been splashed in my face. Càel’s arm tightened around my shoulder and he let out a low snarl, focused on the Legionnaire in front of us.
“She is,” Will said slowly, answering for us. “How did you know that, exactly?”
A wide smile cut across the demon’s face. “It’s our business to know things, William Godalming.”
Okay, then. If that wasn’t creepy, I didn’t know what was.
Christian left Suraziel’s side and opened what looked like a spice cabinet; only, alongside the jars of nutmeg and paprika were things labeled ‘baby’s breath’ and ‘true love’s kiss’.
He pulled out a jar full of sickly-yellow rocks. “Brimstone!” he said brightly. “Open his mouth, Arko.”
Suraziel was still pale, but a hint of color touched his cheeks. “I can think of something much better than that,” he croaked, but the Legionnaire held him down and gripped his jaw, forcing his mouth open.
“I bet you can, but nobody’s doing the pants-off dance-off in here, incubus,” Arko said. “This is where we cook. That’s just unsanitary.”
Christian fished out a cube of brimstone and popped it in Suraziel’s mouth, and the other demon shut his jaw, forcing him to swallow. Almost immediately, blue tones washed over Suraziel’s skin. He wasn’t quite back to his usual vivid self, but at least he no longer looked like he was beating down Death’s door.
The Paladin capped the brimstone, thank god, because the sulfurous stench was burning my overly-sensitive nostrils. “There we go. He’ll be good as new by morning.” The wounds in Suraziel’s back and stomach were already closing over, like watching a wound heal in fast-motion. “Maybe not with his, ah, usual level of pep, but sometimes, not being dead is really all we can ask for.” He beamed at me.
What a strange man. I had no idea what I’d expected from the Night’s Paladin, a slayer marked by a Nephilim and tithed to the Shadowed World. Maybe an austere, hard-bitten older man, one who’d just survived to old age by the skin of his teeth.
I hadn’t expected a kindly grandfather-figure in suspenders and glasses, let alone one gifted with magic. Male slayers didn’t have magic, the exclusive realm of the Dread Mothers among our kind. He was an anomaly.
He left Suraziel to Arko’s questionable care and bent over my mother, touching her face with a hand that rippled with silvery light.
Mom’s eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. She turned her head to the side, brow creased, and let out a fluttering sigh. It took everything in me not to flee to her side and wake her up.
What if what Percival had done irrevocably shattered the rest of her mind?
The Paladin must’ve sensed the anxiety coursing through me. He lifted one of Mom’s eyelids, clucked his tongue, and gestured to Arko. The big demon brought over a plush woven afghan to drape over her.
“She’ll be perfectly fine, Miss Holmwood. She’s just had a little shock.” Christian patted my arm kindly. “The rest of you should sleep and feed as well. We’ll discuss our next move in the morning.”
I didn’t want to sleep. Hell, I didn’t need to sleep. I just needed a few mouthfuls of blood and I’d be ready to… what, exactly? I had Mom. That was all that mattered for now. “Where will we sleep?” At the very least, I could keep watch over Will’s rest until Mom woke up.
Arko gestured toward us in a come-on. Part of me wanted to stay behind and rinse out our cups- what kind of houseguest left their bloody teacup on the counter? - but Càel tugged me along after the demon, while Will helped Suraziel off the counter.
We ended up somewhere in the depths of the castle, a windowless interior section where the sun would pose no threat to us. We’d each been given a separate bedroom, but I found myself slipping into Suraziel’s room, closing the door behind me while Will showered across the hall. Càel had memorized the path to the bedroom we’d share and had gone to speak to Christian.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. I pulled my bathrobe tighter around myself. I
t was yet again time to find another wardrobe change. My spelled armor stank like demons, ash, and blood now.
“Been better.” Suraziel sprawled across the big four-poster bed, still beaded with water from his own shower. His hand rested lightly over the cleanly-sealed hole in his stomach. “Been worse. How’re you holding up, Tori?”
He patted the bed, and I crossed the room and curled up next to him, my knuckles brushing his side as I adjusted myself. “I’m perfectly fine. You took a fucking bolt for me, Suraziel.”
His eyes were closed, dark lashes fanned out over the glistening skin of his cheeks. A tiny smile tugged the edges of his lips. “Well, maybe if you didn’t go around trying to sacrifice yourself, I wouldn’t need to.”
I toyed with the string of his pants. “What I mean to say is thank you. I won’t lie, Sitri was a little too excited at the prospect of Percival cutting my throat. Your dad’s a total creep.”
Suraziel’s eyes flew open on a laugh. “He’s a Prince of Hell, Tori, ‘total creep’ doesn’t even begin to cover all the bases.”
I nudged his hand aside to examine the hole. The scar was a neat little circle. I gently moved my thumb across it, my hand rising and falling with Suraziel’s breath.
I wasn’t going to complain that he’d saved my life, but the guilt was close to overwhelming the relief of still being alive. Suraziel had had his guts ripped open, and Will had had to watch his father’s head ripped off. No matter how evil Percival had been, that didn’t just take away twenty-one years of being family, or whatever lingering love he felt for his father.
The incubus’s breath shallowed as I stroked his stomach. Suraziel could’ve easily died from the blessed iron poisoning his body. He was still weak, no matter what the Paladin said. A sitting duck for anyone with a mind to slay a demon.
He’d been willing to give his life for mine. Demons simply didn’t do that, not unless they were ordered to.
And nobody had ordered Suraziel to do anything.
I leaned over him, bracing my hands over his shoulders, and bent down close. The hellfire in his onyx eyes was a dim flicker compared to his usual bright fire.
That flicker was my fault. Maybe I shouldn’t have rushed into the church, never mind that instinct had taken over the moment I saw Percival with a knife to Mom’s throat, or blindly offered myself up as the sacrifice.
There was one way to juice him up again. Thing was, like Càel, I didn’t want it to be a transaction. It wasn’t a debt.
It was just because I liked him a lot, demon or not. I didn’t want his hellfire to flicker out.
My lips just brushed his. “Does it hurt right now?”
“A little.” Suraziel kissed me back, but I could tell from the set of his lips that he was determined to keep his mouth closed. “Blessed iron keeps burning for a while once it’s in you.”
“Are you refusing to kiss me because of your spit, or because of the brimstone?”
That got a real smile out of him. I sat up, resting my splayed hand on his chest.
Sura gripped my fingers weakly. “Both?”
“What if I said I found sulfur really sexy?”
“I’d call you a dirty liar.”
He was fading fast, the glimmer still gone from his skin. “And you’d be one hundred percent right. Go to sleep, Suraziel. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
He squeezed my hand and closed his eyes. “Night, Tori.” His voice was faint.
One way or another, I was making sure my incubus woke up with more lemony zest than he’d ever felt in his life.
Ten
Tori
I had to check on Will before I went to feed on Càel. Suraziel had taken a hit for me, but there was no way Will was feeling fine after the night’s events.
I knocked softly on his door, and heard his voice call out a moment later.
He sat on the edge of his bed, forearms braced on his knees, staring at a patch of floor between his feet. A fluffy towel was wrapped around his waist. The Paladin really hadn’t skimped on guest amenities.
“Will?” He didn’t look up. I crossed the room and knelt in front of him, feeling much like the time Will had done the same to me in his manor’s library, but this time the positions were reversed.
There really wasn’t a whole lot I could say to comfort him. We’d gone in knowing we might have to kill Percival; now that the deed was done, there were no take-backs. Apologies wouldn’t help.
Not that I wanted Càel to apologize; Percival had put a knife to Mom’s throat, aimed a crossbow at my heart. I was perfectly fine with knowing his headless corpse was nothing but fine ash now.
“You know what the worst part is, Tori?” Will asked. I braced myself against one of his knees and slid my hand over his. At least he wasn’t so lost in his sadness that he didn’t lace his fingers with mine, but his next words made me realize how far off the mark I was. “The relief. I’m not sad at all. I don’t think I could mourn no matter how hard I tried. I’m just glad he’s been wiped off the face of this earth.”
His gaze rose from the floor to my face, searching my own expression for… what? Judgment? Disapproval? I knew exactly how he felt. No judgment here.
“I think that’s completely understandable, Will.” His fingers tightened around mine. “Nobody else will ever know what he was capable of. No one else lived it.”
“You’d think that would make me the monster.” Will let out a short laugh. “I thought for sure it’d hit me tonight. But here I am, I’ve had time to think on what we did, and all I feel is freedom. I’m glad that he’s suffering right now. He didn’t deserve anything but an eternity in Hell.”
I was pinned in place by that green stare. Will’s bloodsong was stronger than ever, so loud I was amazed he couldn’t hear it. I felt like my entire skeleton must be rattling in place from the force of it. “I would never blame you for feeling that way.”
“Good. I’m glad.” He ran his thumb over my knuckles. “In the end, all that matters is that you and Connie are fine. I was thinking that from here on out, wherever you go is where I go.”
He caught the look on my face and backtracked swiftly. “Unless you don’t want me there. I guess I could just go home, I’m going to have to finish covering up his murder eventually-”
I squeezed his hands hard. Too hard. Will winced a little. “Oh, shut up. Of course I want you to go with me. Who’s going to sulk over wearing Hawaiian shirts if you’re not with us?”
His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “You know, with Percival’s bullshit behind us, Hawaiian shirts suddenly sound a lot more appealing. Can we get you a coconut bra?”
“Oh my god, Will, now that you’re free to live your own life, you might end up having real fun.” I scooted closer, leaning on his knees. “Real fun? Do you know what that is?”
He leaned down, just a breath away. “Hmm. Does it look like… this?” Will kissed me, tilting my head back and stroking his fingers over the line of my throat.
Shivers prickled over my skin at his touch, and his lips moved over my jaw to my earlobe. “Or maybe this?”
I’d crawled halfway over his lap, following the tug of the bloodsong before I realized what I was doing. He was wearing nothing but a towel, for god’s sake. Every ridge and dip of his musculature was visible to me, and he smelled delicious, like freshly-showered man with the tart tang of blood just beneath that.
“Will,” I said breathlessly. “You do realize that if you invite me up, I won’t stop? I can’t stop.”
Fire burned in me, more than the heat of lust. The cup of blood had only done so much to quench the thirst brought on by the adrenaline rush of finding Percival’s ritual, the fear of losing Mom, and the very real prospect of being dragged to Hell by Sitri.
And I knew Will was exactly the thing I needed to quench those twin flames.
“That’s the goal, Tori.” His voice buzzed against my ear, and suddenly his hands were on my hips, pulling me against him to straddle his lap. “The last thing I’d
want you to do is stop.”
Will’s towel came loose when I moved against him. Any misgivings I might’ve had at that point- and really, there weren’t many left- disappeared completely.
His pulse hammered in his throat, a flutter under the golden skin that pounded in my head in time with the bloodsong, and the sensation of his cock hardening between my legs, with nothing but my underwear between us, drove the atavistic bloodlust rearing up in me.
I buried my fingers in his hair and pulled his head to the side. Will was completely pliant for me, kneading my hips and letting out a soft groan when I ran my tongue along the line of his neck.
I closed my mouth over the humming pulse and closed my eyes, teasing myself with the promise of the blood beneath.
Will raised his hands and tugged the robe’s tie, loosening it with a single jerk. He slid it off my shoulders and tossed it aside, crawling further onto the bed with his arm clamped around my waist to keep me in place.
“Lose these,” he said hoarsely, tugging the side of my underwear. “Feed how you do with Càel.”
Now there was something I could definitely do. The invitation was too tempting to resist. I released Will’s neck and shimmied out of the underwear, kicking them away and settling myself back over his hips. His cock pulsed against me, and I felt I was already wet for him, anticipating blood and sex in short order.
I ran my hands over Will’s broad chest, feeling the pulse of his heart, the quickening rise and fall of his breath.
It was so simple to lean over and lick him everywhere, my mouth searching every inch of skin as his muscles jumped and fluttered under my touch. I explored the valleys between them, making my way back up to his throat and cupping his face.
He turned his head to kiss me and I pushed him back. It was fun being stronger than Will for once, watching his full lips turn into a wry pout, dark lashes framing pinprick-pupiled green eyes.
“Not yet,” I whispered, stroking his throat with my thumb.