by Sarah Piper
Gabriel blinked, his vision blurring, then righting again. “Do I… know you?”
“Not yet.” Again with the black smile. “But I’d like very much to change that. Wouldn’t you?”
Gabriel scratched his jaw, considering. Would he? How long had he been sitting here? Where were his brothers? His associates? That woman with the silver hair? Jennifer? Was that her name? Jeanette?
The raven-haired woman lifted her glass, touched it to the rim of his. “To new friends.”
Gabriel nodded and took a drink. It burned, just as he thought it should.
She downed hers in a few quick gulps. Then, leaning in close, “Maybe I’ll stay for another. No one wants to be alone on a night like this.”
Gabriel nodded. He couldn’t argue with that.
He poured another round, then another after that. In the darkest recesses of his memory, something scratched, a trapped thing trying desperately to free itself, but if he was supposed to do something that day, or meet someone, it was too late now.
He turned toward the woman. Heat made her image waver. Made him thirsty. Made him tired.
“You look like you could use a hug,” she said, reaching for him.
“Why not?” Gabriel leaned into her embrace. She felt hot and suffocating, but suddenly he didn’t have the strength to resist her. To wonder if he even should.
“That’s better, isn’t it?”
Gabriel nodded. It was better. Soft. Warm. Tired.
She threaded her fingers into his hair, stroking him. Humming. Sounded like an old song his mother used to sing.
The woman tilted his head back. Leaned in close.
Her black lips grazed his mouth, then pressed closer…
No. The kiss was all wrong.
Everything about this was wrong.
Shaking out of the lull, he wrapped a hand around her throat and shoved her away, holding her at arm’s length.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” he demanded.
Her mouth stretched into a wide, hideous grin, her eyes turning demon black. “I’m your worst nightmare, vampire prince. And I’ve come to—”
Hellfire exploded around her, enveloping her in a silver flame that reeked of brimstone.
Gabriel released her and leaped backward, slipping and smacking his head on the bar, landing on the floor with a crash, everything spinning.
When the room finally righted itself, the bar vanished.
Gabriel was back in the penthouse, sprawled face-down on his bed, his head throbbing.
Just a nightmare. A hallucination.
He rolled over onto his back. Sat up slowly.
And watched the nightmare come to life.
Across the bedroom, the woman with the raven hair leaned back against the wall with her hands raised in mock surrender, a cruel laugh cutting through the ringing in his head.
Just a few feet away, Jacinda held her hands out, a ball of silver hellfire roiling between them.
Hellfire she controlled.
Hellfire she conjured.
Gabriel sucked in a breath. Squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them.
The hellfire grew brighter at Jacinda’s command.
Gabriel tried to fight the logic, tried to mute the alarm clanging in his head.
But it was no use.
He watched in stunned horror, his heart shattering, his head spinning, his life spiraling.
The woman—the one he was pretty damn sure he’d fallen for—wasn’t just a witch.
She was a fucking demon.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Viansa’s laughter filled the bedroom, crawling across Jaci’s skin like fire ants.
“The Lab Rat has sharpened her teeth!” The bitch sneered at her, taunting her with wild, crazy eyes. Eyes the same shade of blue as Jaci’s. The same as their demon mother’s.
“Stay out of his head!” Jaci ordered. The hellfire in her hands grew brighter. The tips of Viansa’s hair were already singed, her gold dress stained black. But the attack hadn’t hurt her. Nothing could hurt her.
“Don’t tell me you’re carrying a torch for that bloodsucker.” Viansa rolled her eyes, as if the very idea were a major inconvenience to her plans. “Honestly, Jay. Drop the fire. I’m your sister, for devil’s sake!”
“Half-sister, and I think I’ll keep it, thanks.”
Another eye-roll. A huff that made her sound fifteen years old instead of fifteen millennia old. “Oh, look! Boyfriend’s awake! That’s… unexpected.”
Jaci didn’t dare take her eyes off the demon. In her peripheral vision, she caught the movement on Gabriel’s bed. Heard the groan of confusion as he came to consciousness.
“You actually listened to me?” Jaci asked, wondering what the trick was.
“Hell no. Boyfriend broke free all on his own.”
Jaci gasped. It should’ve been impossible.
As a succubus—an extremely powerful one at that—Viansa could trap people in her thrall, wreaking havoc on their minds while their bodies sat in stasis. Since Viansa was the one who’d bound the Redthorne curse, she had a direct connection to Gabriel through his blood—like a GPS signal she could theoretically follow anywhere. It would also enable her to dig that much deeper into Gabriel’s head.
What Jaci couldn’t figure out was how the fuck she’d finally manifested here, and how Gabriel managed to break the thrall.
As far as she knew, no one had ever done it before.
Viansa knew it too. And though she was doing her best to hide it, it fucking terrified her.
“Anyway,” she said with a dramatic sigh, “I brought a message from Demetria. She really wanted to be here herself, but she couldn’t. Got a little… tied up.”
Viansa reached into her purse and hauled out something purple, tossing it at Jaci’s feet.
It glistened up at her, sending her stomach into free fall.
A tangle of purple hair torn from a scalp, gruesome and bloodied.
It’s a lie. It has to be a lie. If Meech were dead, I’d know it. For sure I’d know it…
Swallowing her fear, Jaci repeated the mantra in her head, keeping her hellfire hot.
If there was a single bright side to this monumental shitshow, it was that the bitch was now topside, which meant Jaci had a chance of binding her.
Assuming she could survive the next five minutes.
Assuming she could find another spell.
Assuming a lot of things.
“Aww, what’s wrong, baby?” Viansa made an exaggerated pout. “Did my unexpected arrival throw a kink in your plans to ride off into the sunset with your vampire boy-toy? I mean, I get it.” She glanced at Gabriel, still struggling to get out of bed, and let out a low whistle. “I would absolutely hop on that cock if he were mine. Actually, what am I saying? He is mine!”
She stripped out of her dress and sauntered toward the bed, but Jaci was faster, hitting her with a blast of hellfire that sent her sprawling.
Bad idea.
Viansa was on her feet in a heartbeat, her own hellfire flickering black in her hands as she charged toward Jaci with a look of vengeance Jaci knew all too well.
But once again—impossible, beautiful, jaw-dropping—Gabriel was faster. He blurred between them, slamming Viansa into the wall so hard the plaster cracked.
“You won’t touch her again, demon.” Gabriel pinned her by the throat, her feet six inches off the ground, her naked flesh glimmering with a sheen of sweat.
“Mmm, you like it rough, vampire? I can teach you a thing or two.”
“Leave him alone,” Jaci said, ready to lay into her with another fireball, but Gabriel pushed her back, keeping her tucked behind him with one hand, the other still wrapped around Viansa’s throat.
“How the fuck did you get here, demon?” he demanded.
Still pinned to the wall, Viansa shrugged her shoulders and let out a high, false giggle. “Lab Rat didn’t tell you? Jacinda! Secrets and lies aren’t the way to start a new relationship!”
; Gabriel turned to look at Jaci over his shoulder, but she didn’t have the answers, only speculation. Was it the mages? Some other scheme her sister had been cooking up? Something to do with Meech?
“She summoned me, silly!” Viansa said. “A splash of your blood, a few Tarot cards, demonology 101 really. I mean, there were some other steps after that—a few human sacrifices, a bunch of dark mages doing my bidding, a vampire who can’t say no—but it all started with your blood. Poetic, right?”
Gabriel dropped her, letting her hit the ground. “Explain.”
Viansa laughed, sending shivers down Jaci’s spine. “Nah, I think I’ll let her do it.”
Gabriel turned to look at Jaci again. The moment he took his eyes of Viansa, the succubus charged at Jaci, knocking her to the floor.
Her vampire reacted fast, but this time, Viansa was faster. The bitch hadn’t even moved, hadn’t even glanced in his direction, but suddenly Gabriel was immobilized, dropping to the floor in a graceless heap.
“Let him go, Viansa,” Jaci demanded, scrambling to her feet. “You’re here for me. So fucking end it. End it!” Her voice shook with rage, with all the things Viansa had put her through, with all the terrors she had yet to unleash. Jaci couldn’t beat her here, not without the right magic. Not without backup. “End it!”
Viansa glanced at her red-lacquered fingernails and shrugged as if Jaci had just asked her what they should order for lunch.
After an endless sigh, she finally looked up and said, “You know, it’s the funniest thing, Jay. All this time, I had a plan. Get topside. Turn boy-toy’s mind to mush and fuck him until he turned to ash, then do the same thing to every one of his royal brothers and their sirelings, then drag you back to hell and spend the rest of eternity repaying you for leaving me.”
“Leaving you? Viansa, you—”
“But now that I’m here,” she said, “I think I might hang out a bit. Check out the sights, see what I’ve been missing out on all these millennia.” She picked up her dress, slithered back into it. Did a little shimmy. “Damn, it feels so good to stretch my legs.”
“Hang out?” Jaci asked, incredulous. Her half-sister was already headed for the door. “Hang out? Check out the sights? Viansa, where the fuck are you going?”
“Nowhere. Everywhere. I don’t know.” She turned to flash one more cruel grin, dropping her voice to a menacing whisper. “But I’m sure we’ll catch up again real soon. Ta!”
The moment she was gone, the thrall broke, and Gabriel got to his feet.
Jaci ran to him, reached for him, but he held out a hand to stop her.
And in that one gesture, that one small movement, Jaci saw the end of it all.
“The demon said she’d let you explain,” Gabriel said, cold and detached. “I suggest, little moonflower, you make it compelling.”
It took Jaci twenty minutes of pacing the bedroom before she could form a coherent sentence, and when she finally rediscovered the ability to speak, the first thing that fell out of her mouth was, “Viansa is a succubus.”
“A demon,” Gabriel clarified.
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“There are common demons—like Rogozin and his crew. Dark essences who possess human vessels. Then there are demons. Like, O.G. demons whose essences are bound to hell. They don’t need vessels because they can take any form they want. Viansa’s always favored that one.”
“How long is always?”
Jaci blew out a breath. “Near as I can tell, somewhere between twelve and twenty thousand years.” She met Gabriel’s stern glare. “She’s the first succubus, Gabriel.”
“How the fuck do you know her? Whose purple hair is that? What did she mean, you summoned her? What the fuck did she do to my mind?” He shoved a hand through his hair, his questions coming at her rapid-fire, anger rolling off him in waves.
It was no less than Jaci deserved. In fact, she deserved worse. Way worse. And she was pretty damn sure she was going to get it.
Still, she owed him answers. As many as she could give him.
“Viansa has the power to control thoughts. She can make a man relive his worst nightmares, bring his fears to life, or create a complete illusion in your mind. It immobilizes you while it’s happening, and your mind has no idea the illusion isn’t real.”
“For fuck’s sake. How did she get here?”
“I’m not sure. She’s an original hellbound demon. She wasn’t supposed to be able to manifest here.”
“She said you summoned her. With my blood.”
“If that’s true, it was unintentional. Gabriel, I…” Jaci dropped onto the edge of the bed, no longer possessing the strength to stand on her own two feet. “Viansa is the demon who bound your curse.”
The look in his eyes was murderous. “How long have you known?”
She blinked. Sucked in a breath. Tried to gather her thoughts. Her strength.
“How long?” he shouted.
“Since… since that day I did the blood spell in my apartment. She possessed your body, just for a minute, and I knew it had to be because of the connection to the curse. It was the only explanation.”
“And you recognized her?”
Jaci nodded.
He lowered his head and sighed, still trying to piece together the puzzle, to find the explanation that would make any of this craziness sound real.
“How the bloody hell do you know her?” At this, he looked up, captured her gaze. She could see the gears turning behind his eyes, keys sliding in and out of locks, pieces filling in the holes.
But she held the final pieces.
“Viansa is my sister. Half, anyway.”
“Your sister. That means you…” He shook his head as if he couldn’t bear to let the thought stick. The truth. “I saw your hellfire. I saw you cast it. You… You’re… You’re a…”
This was it. The last piece. The final stake through the heart of whatever relationship she’d stupidly thought they could have.
“I’m a hybrid, Gabriel. Half witch, half demon. Created in hell, born of an unholy union between a drugged mage and a vicious demonic bitch, bred for one purpose.”
Time stopped.
Heartbeats stopped.
Lungs stopped filling, blood stopped moving, clouds stopped passing before the sun.
And in those bleak, brutal moments—far too late, far too feeble—Jaci tried to make her full confession.
She told him about her life in hell, how her mother and sister had tortured her, experimented on her, forced her to perform like a circus monkey, beating and starving her when she couldn’t produce the desired results.
She told him how, when she turned eighteen and still hadn’t manifested the dark powers her mother had expected, the demon bitch had planned to kill her.
She told him how her father had bargained his own soul away to set her free. Told him how she’d brought his body back from the dead, spending the last seven years searching for a way to save him.
And then she told him the worst of it.
The Redthorne curse. Her discoveries. The resurrection. The heart.
Vita mutatur, non tollitur.
Life is changed, not taken away. The dead shall rise. The dead shall return.
Three of Knives, Death, Ten of Knives.
Blood and vengeance. A severed heart.
Death. Resurrection.
Blood on the sheets. Betrayal.
The dead shall rise. The dead shall return.
Vita mutatur, non tollitur.
Blood on the roses. Blood on the sheets. Blood on the snow. Blood on the grave.
The dead shall rise. The dead shall return.
All of it spilled from her, a torrent of pain and deception, of fear. Of sorrow. Every word seemed to slice a little deeper into Gabriel’s chest, to put another block of ice around his heart, to suck the new warmth from his eyes until there was nothing left but barren snow.
Finally, drained of all her words, every confession wrung free,
every fear laid bare, she waited for her vampire to roar. To lay waste to the bedroom. To kill her.
But in the end, all he said was, “What purpose, witch?”
Witch. Cold as frostbite. Cold as death.
“For what purpose was the hybrid hellspawn bred?” He looked right through her, right past her.
Jaci rubbed the chill from her arms, her heart bleeding, her soul in tatters. “Destroying vampires and ushering in the eternal rule of hell on Earth.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Gabriel’s world had never felt so small. So dark.
A demon. A bloody demon. One who’d lied to him, manipulated him, and used him to summon an even greater danger to their world, setting an ancient succubus loose on a city whose residents had no way to protect themselves and needed very little encouragement toward abject depravity.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Jacinda Colburn, his silver-haired little moonflower, his witch, his partner, the woman who’d set his soul on fire, had been plotting to turn him into an undead ghoul. To carve out his heart and leave his body to waste away, feeling every bit of flesh rotting off the bone, every sunbaked blister, every hollow pang of desperate, unquenchable thirst until the slow march of time finally trampled him into dust.
“It didn’t work, Gabriel,” the witch—rather, the demon—said now. “I was a complete failure in their eyes, and they almost killed me, but then my father made the deal and sacrificed himself to—”
“Don’t.” He held up a hand, unable to hear another word out of her filthy, lying, conniving mouth. “Don’t speak to me of fathers and sacrifices. Any man foolish enough to bed a demon deserves what he gets.”
Including Gabriel, he realized. And he’d be paying for that mistake for a long time.
“My father was innocent,” she said.
“My father was not. But he did teach me a hard lesson. Fucking gutted me at the time, but it stayed with me, a shadow in the corner of every nightmare. And now, two hundred fifty-odd years after that wretched, soul-crushing day, it comes back to taunt me.” He took a step toward her. Another. “Do you want to know what it was, little moonflower?”