by Zoe Winters
“I thought about calling the archbishop, seeing if they could bring someone higher up in. Maybe that would make a difference. And I made an appointment with some paranormal investigators I saw on TV. They’ll be here tomorrow”
“I could just call the coven,” Tam said.
“No!” Both Luc and Anna shouted at once.
“I’m just saying. A witch started this mess. Maybe other witches can undo it.”
“Thank you, Tam, but no,” Anna said.
Tam had been claiming to be a witch since high school. Anna had thought it was a phase. When her friend didn’t grow out of it, she decided it would be the thing no one acknowledged, like the uncle who farts when company comes over.
With evidence right in front of her of not only demons but witches, well, she liked to keep pretending she had a normal life. If Tam started breaking out the pointy hats, she didn’t know how long she could maintain that fantasy.
Maria cleared her throat. “No one is talking about it . . . but I do have gypsy blood. And I have relatives who are full Romani. I haven’t spoken to that side of the family in awhile, but I’m sure that . . . ”
Anna looked at Luc and shrugged. “Gypsies aren’t witches.”
“Yes, but Gypsies aren’t traditionally good news for my kind either.”
“What do you have against witches?” Tam said. “It’s not like I hex people.”
Anna turned back to Luc. He was making her brain fuzzy. The scar on her hand tingled pleasantly, as if happy to be so close to him.
“We really have to try something. If we aren’t going with the coven, we should at least try the gypsies,” Anna said.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “But I’m putting your fluffy bath towels on the dining room table.” The look in his eyes dared her to challenge him.
“Luc!”
“It’s fluffy bath towels or no gypsies. You keep them in the guest bath anyway.”
“So?”
An arched eyebrow.
“Fine. Take my fluffy towels.” She thought she might cry.
. . . Luc sat in the middle of the living room floor staring off into space. The house was deathly still except for a constant, irritating drip from a leaky faucet in the kitchen. He made no move to shut it off.
He hadn’t fed in weeks. All he could think was that she was gone, and it was his fault. He heard the back door fly open. It wasn’t a woman. He would have known instantly if it were a woman. If it wasn’t food, there was no point wasting any more strength. Without food or means of escape, immortality became a true curse for the first time.
Footsteps stopped in front of him.
“Luc, my God. What’s happened to you?” Cain said.
“I killed her. She was right there for two whole days.” Tears streamed down his cheeks as he pointed to an empty spot on the couch.
Cain’s eyes were wide, his face filled with horror and disgust. “Why on earth are you crying?”
As if Cain had the right to be disgusted. He had no soul, not the slightest bit of empathy. “Why wouldn’t I cry? I killed her. I loved her, and I killed her.”
The other demon’s jaw clenched. “Why haven’t you left this place?”
“I can’t leave.” Luc didn’t have the energy yet to explain about the magic. He couldn’t rid himself of the image of Beatrice’s lifeless eyes staring up at him. All my fault. All my fucking fault. “They finally found her and took her out. She was still pretty.”
Cain ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath as if trying to gather a tsunami of patience. “Why can’t you leave?”
“Trapped. She didn’t want me to leave her . . . trapped me.”
Cain grabbed an unresponsive Luc by the arm and dragged him to the door. He tried pushing him out, but the magic smacked against Luc, sending a shock of pain through his body.
The other incubus took Luc’s face in his hands and stared hard into his eyes. “Snap out of it! She was a witch. Goddammit! I knew something was wrong with you. I should never have left you here.”
Luc jerked out of his grasp and started to pace. Anna stared out from inside him, wanting to back away from Cain.
Luckily, Luc needed to rest against the wall, and moved, getting both of them out of the other demon’s immediate sphere. The only thing keeping her from screaming to wake up was the reassurance that Cain couldn’t hurt her.
“Luc, you have to listen to me. She’s using the same mind tricks our kind have used for thousands of years. She made you want her, made you care for her. It’s not real. None of this is real!” Cain swiped his hand over the mantel, breaking half a dozen knick knacks. Luc didn’t even twitch.
“Doesn’t matter. I feel it. It doesn’t matter what she did. It’s done now. I can’t stop seeing her face.”
Cain growled in frustration. “You need to feed. I’ll be back. We’ll find a way to get you out of here.”
Anna wanted to leave. She wanted the scene to shift like it always did. She wanted to wake up. Anything to no longer be swamped by Luc’s anguish.
Why wouldn’t the scene change? She was gripped with panic that she’d be trapped forever in this time and place with him. She couldn’t stand it. Anna never thought she’d be so happy to see Cain return.
“Here, this one’s already under.” Cain shoved a very willing female at Luc. He ravaged her mindlessly as she moaned and writhed beneath him.
“Yes, oh yes,” she cried.
He felt the life slipping from her, and his mind screamed at him. No No. You have to stop. Stop right now. Stop. But he was too hungry. Her little pants of yes kept goading him on.
Cain had two other girls, holding them each by one wrist, his grip punishing as they struggled.
Luc flung the girl away, his self-disgust raging through him at having taken another life. He didn’t want to kill anyone now. The witch had unlocked his long-forgotten human emotion, and now that the floodgates had been opened they could never be resealed.
Cain stepped forward with the second girl. She was under his thrall now and clawed at him, begging him to satisfy her needs.
“Come on, now. You want to please me don’t you?” Cain said, his voice a seductive purr.
“Yes, please,” she whimpered, trying to unbutton his shirt.
“Then go to my friend. He’s very lonely.”
The girl detached herself from Cain and stalked Luc as if she were the predator instead of the prey, and Luc went through the motions. The edges of his hunger slowly abated, but he couldn’t stop in time as the life left the second girl.
Cain was about to put the last one under.
“Don’t,” Luc said. “No more.”
Cain sighed and shook his head. “One more, Luc. I’m sorry for what’s been done to you. You shouldn’t feel bad killing them, but we’ll fix it. Until we do, the more you feed the less likely you are to kill.”
Cain was right. Of course he was right.
“Don’t put her under. Let me.” Luc hated the way his brother turned them into zombies and had never done it himself. He’d have to now. You couldn’t seduce a woman who’d just watched you kill her friends. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly, focusing on what he needed to do.
When his eyes opened and settled on the target, he allowed his mind to touch the edges of hers, enough that her body relaxed. But there was still awareness in her eyes.
Cain released his grip, and she slunk toward Luc. She was trembling and trying not to go to him.
“Don’t play with your food,” Cain said.
Luc growled. “I’m not playing. I need to talk to her first.”
“Please don’t kill me,” she whispered, her eyes brimming with tears.
“I’ll try my very best not to. I have to put you under. If I can’t stop, know that I’m sorry, and it won’t hurt.” Then her eyes glazed over, and she was willing in his arms.
He fucked and fed, feeling more in control this time. He was fully alert when he pulled away. She blinked as she came out of it,
surprised to be alive.
“Sleep,” he said. Luc stood and passed her unconscious form to Cain. “Take her home.”
“As much as I am trying to appreciate how you feel, this is a lost cause. Even if she remembers tonight as a dream, when her friends turn up missing she’s going to know. She won’t make it through this. It would be a mercy to kill her. I’ll do it if you don’t want to.”
“No. She’s strong. She’ll make it.”
Cain shrugged. “Whatever you say. I’ll take her back and clean up here.” He indicated the two bodies on the floor. “Then I’m going to bring you a couple more.”
“No more. I’m done.”
“Just to be sure. I’m trying to support this new feeding pattern. If you don’t get enough, tomorrow you’ll just kill someone else.”
Luc nodded and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor again. The sea of conflicted emotions overwhelmed Anna. Then the blackness engulfed her.
Chapter Fourteen
Anna sipped her coffee while a leftover biscuit and some gravy heated in the microwave. Her foot tapped nervously on the kitchen tile as she read the same paragraph of the paper for the third time. When she managed to stop her foot, her hand started shaking. She needed a steady hand to drink coffee, so the tapping would have to be coped with. The microwave dinged and she jumped, almost spilling the hot beverage.
Luc appeared then. “Are you all right?” He propped himself against the counter and observed her. How long had he been there?
“Fine,” she lied. But the tapping wouldn’t stop. It had been a nervous tick since childhood. She poured the gravy over her biscuit and started cutting it into little triangles.
She chanced a glance to see a troubled expression knitting Luc’s brow as he tried to decipher what she was thinking.
“Anna, please. What is going on?”
“You could just read my mind if you wanted to know so badly.”
“No, I can’t.”
“But you have the thrall thing.”
“I can touch emotions and send thoughts and images. That’s different. I’m getting fear from you, but I don’t know why.”
He crossed the kitchen to sit in the chair beside her and placed a hand on her knee. “Anna, stop. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I just need to know, okay? I won’t be mad.”
“Know what?”
“I had another dream last night, and it made me think about the first night with Cain here. Those times when you were in my dreams, were they really dreams or do I just remember them that way? Did you really . . . ?”
“No, I didn’t touch you. Why would you think that?” He seemed hurt by the suggestion.
She moved his hand from her knee and backed her chair away. Being too close to him made it hard to think, and she wondered if he was using the thrall just a little bit to make her more pliant. After all, it didn’t always have to be as strong as what Cain used. She knew that now.
“I just . . . you do it with other people and don’t seem to have a problem with it.”
“I don’t do mind thrall. That’s Cain’s thing. Even when I was more evil, I didn’t do it. It’s like cheating. I prefer to hunt, to seduce a meal fair and square.”
She still wasn’t ready to let it drop. The issue was too important. “You did it once. And you do it after you feed.”
His eyes lit with recognition as it occurred to him what exactly she’d dreamed about. “I had to that time. I was starving. And yes, I do the tricks afterward, but only as a security measure. What’s to stop someone else from finding another way to hex me? I’m a sitting duck while I’m here. I have to protect who and what I am. With you, it’s different. I need you to know about me to break the curse. There’s no need to use those tricks on you.”
He traced his index finger down her cheek, and something in him seemed to shift. “Do you know how hard it is? To not take what’s mine?”
Anna wanted to deny she was his. She wasn’t. He didn’t have her heart. But cracks were forming in the walls she’d built around herself. At some point, tears started flowing down her cheeks.
Luc edged his chair closer to hers. His hand stroked soothingly through her hair as he murmured reassuring words in her ear. Anna’s arms looped around his neck, and she laid her head against his chest. She couldn’t stop the dam now that it had broken.
She was overwhelmed with the memories from the dream, the things he’d had to endure all because of a curse placed on him by a spoiled, selfish witch.
Luc’s head was bent against hers as he spoke. “I know you loved Vince. I’m sorry he couldn’t commit to you. But I’m not him. Just because things look similar on the surface, doesn’t mean . . . ”
She raised her mouth to his and kissed him. She had to, to shut him up. She didn’t want to think about Luc being inside her dreams the way she was in his, knowing things about her previous relationships. Despite her best intentions, they were becoming more tightly entwined. She didn’t want to think about any of it, and if he kept talking, she would.
“Anna,” he murmured against her mouth.
She could feel herself falling farther into a pit she wouldn’t be able to claw her way out of. The only thing she’d end up with was a broken heart. If she managed to survive him at all. She couldn’t share him with the harem but she couldn’t seem to stop kissing him either. She wanted this to be real.
The doorbell rang, and she pulled away, thankful for the interruption. Anything to stop her before clothes started hitting the floor.
Luc kissed her palm, and she pulled it away to go answer the door. Her hand tingled where his lips had brushed over the scar.
A sound like loud music blared out as she reached the front door. “What the hell is that?” Luc asked, just behind her.
Anna pulled back the curtain to reveal a white van with a cartoon haunted house on the side. Haunt Enders was painted in bright red lettering beside it along with a phone number and a slogan that was too far away to read.
The sound in question happened again. Anna looked more closely at the driver’s side. Someone was laying on the steering wheel.
“That’s the car horn.” Anna smacked a hand over her forehead. The sound they’d just heard was part of the Ghostbusters theme.
“This is gonna be fun,” she said with an eye roll as she opened the door
“We’re here about the haunting.”
The guy standing on the porch couldn’t have been more than twenty. He was short with thick glasses, unruly dirty blond hair, and a pocket protector. Forces of darkness beware. He looked like he’d decided D&D was so much fun he wanted to live out his gaming exploits for real.
Anna stepped aside. “Come on in.” Luc stood beside her but had made himself invisible, at least to anyone who wasn’t her. He was also non-corporeal since the guy walked right through him, then shivered.
“Ah . . . there’s a cold spot right here,” he said, already pleased with his findings. “My assistants will be here in a minute. They had to get supplies out of the van. I’m Dale, by the way. We spoke on the phone.” He extended a hand to Anna.
“Nice to meet you.” She was already having doubts. A man thrilled by slight temperature variations didn’t seem promising. She’d already told him the house was haunted and she needed help getting the ghost out. She wasn’t trying to assemble a case for Luc’s existence to present in court.
Moments later the other two joined him. Frank was tall and lanky, with adult acne, black hair, and navy blue eyes. Lonna was an attractive, leggy, redheaded woman in a short skirt. Frank and Dale seemed unfazed by her charms.
Luc showed no apparent interest in Lonna, either. Something which relieved Anna. She didn’t know why it mattered, but it would have bothered her if he wanted every female who crossed the threshold. Maybe he just wasn’t hungry.
As if on cue, Susan glided into the room, a pleasantly sated look on her face. She wore a pink terrycloth bathrobe, her hair was wild and mussed, and the look on h
er face said, I had amazing sex last night. Don’t you wish you did? She collapsed onto the couch and part of the robe slid back to reveal a long expanse of thigh.
“These the ghost people?” she asked.
Frank and Dale, who must have been vaccinated against Lonna, were gawking at Susan like she was a Christmas present all wrapped up for them. Anna looked to Luc again. She was irritated with her sudden need to watch his reaction for everything, but he was as unaffected by Susan as Susan probably was by most of the men she’d slept with for money.
She gave Anna a meaningful look, then excused herself to get dressed. Anna didn’t want to be unkind, but she couldn’t help feeling the production had been set up for her as part of the harem’s new mission to get her in bed with Luc.
Frank and Dale snapped out of it and started setting up a bunch of machines. One of the items looked suspiciously like the ghost trapper contraptions from the movie they seemed desperate to emulate. If they thought they were putting Luc in a little steel box, this would not go well.
Lonna flitted around the room, taking temperature readings with a digital room thermometer. “Where all has the apparition been?”
Why did everyone keep asking that? What did it matter? Luc was in the house. He needed to be out of the house. Anna’s life would be much less complicated once that happened. How did cataloging his favorite rooms help?
“Everywhere. He’s been trapped for fifty years by a spell.”
Lonna wandered out of the room with the thermometer.
Frank laughed. “You expect us to believe in witches?”
“You believe in ghosts, don’t you?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “We just went on TV that one time for publicity. We aren’t sure we’re full-fledged believers yet. We investigate. We take a scientific approach and do not pass judgment on the phenomena we encounter.”
Anna was pretty sure if there was a brochure, he’d just quoted the ad copy. Luc let loose with what Anna was sure was his calculated, evil laugh. She almost burst out laughing herself when Frank and Dale nearly jumped out of their skin. They might not be able to see him, but they could hear him. Anna turned to Luc, who just winked at her.