Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy)

by Harley Laroux

I had an idea, but I asked anyway: Who is this?

  Jeremiah

  Sorry, lol

  Might’ve snagged your number when you gave it to my sister.

  I rolled my eyes. I knew it. It’s not like I’d told him he couldn’t have my number, but this felt like he was pushing to see where my boundaries were. Why did he even know I’d turned down Victoria’s invitation?

  Despite my determination not to believe Leon’s wild stories about the Hadleighs being members of some cult, a little red flag of suspicion was waving in my mind. They weren’t cult members (as if!) but Jeremiah was still giving me some weird vibes.

  Well, like I told Victoria, I already have plans today

  His response was a sad face. Aww, plans without me? I want an invite next time!

  I put down my phone. I didn’t have time to deal with another cocky boy, I had monsters to worry about. I started another pot of coffee, then jogged upstairs to change out of my pajamas.

  I had just slipped into some loungewear when I heard something bang against the side of the house. Cold dread washed over me, and Cheesecake scrambled up to hide under my bed. The sounds were coming from the wall near the firewood pile; it sounded as if something was rummaging through the logs.

  Leon had made it sound as if those things only came out at night. I had no more herbs to burn. I didn’t think there was anywhere in the house I could barricade myself that a monster wouldn’t be able to break into.

  Maybe they were weaker during the day. Maybe I shouldn’t hide this time.

  I grabbed my knife, and then my baseball bat from where I had it stashed near the front door. Between stabbing and bashing, I figured I could take down one of those monsters. It had been about five years since I’d last played softball, but my swing was still in good shape.

  No hiding in fear this time. I wasn’t helpless. These monsters needed to learn not to fuck with Raelynn Lawson.

  I crept out of the house. The day was cool and gray, birds singing in the trees. There were deep scratches in the wood just outside my door, and I remembered the huge claws on the monster in the chapel. I’d have to move fast, bash it to a pulp before it could slash me.

  I held the bat high as I neared the corner of the house, gripping the handle of the knife in my teeth so I could use both hands to swing. My heart was in my throat. This was madness. I should have stayed inside. Who the hell did I think I was, Van Helsing? I was a paranormal investigator, not a monster hunter!

  As I stepped around the corner, the monster was coming the opposite direction. I flailed as it loomed in front of me, swinging the bat down with a scream.

  The bat made contact, but it didn’t hit a monster.

  Instead, it was caught and gripped solidly in one of Leon’s massive hands.

  “Oh...oh my God…” The knife fell to the ground as my mouth hung open in horror. Leon was stone-faced, staring at the baseball bat gripped in his fingers, inches from his head. He’d dropped several long pieces of wood in order to catch it. Mouth twisting sourly, he glanced down at the dropped knife, then back to the bat, then to me.

  And he began to chuckle, the laughter of a man who’d just caught someone doing something very, very naughty.

  “You are the maddest woman I’ve ever met.” He jerked the bat out of my grasp and tossed it down among the wood pile beside him, but he’d dropped something from his opposite hand as he did so. I looked down at the thump, and nearly screamed again.

  “What the hell, Leon?” I backed away from the pile of heads he’d dropped to the ground. Heads — the severed, skeletal heads of three Eld beasts rolled in the dirt. I backed away in disgust as he glared.

  “Fucking hell, you need all the help you can get. A knife. A fucking baseball bat.” He snorted, grumbling to himself as I tentatively bent down and snatched up the knife. He collected the heads from the ground, holding them by the bits of scraggly fur and long hair clumped on them, and the pieces of wood he’d collected as well. He brushed past me, toward the front yard, a slight limp in his right leg.

  I trotted after him.

  “What are you doing?” He’d gone to the edge of the trees near my front driveway, dropped the heads again, and was lining up one of the long pieces of wood he carried with the ground. He was dressed in a black t-shirt and tight jeans, and his hair was disheveled and sported faint streaks of darkened blood. “What happened last night? Did you kill all of them?”

  The questions tumbled out of me. The relief I’d felt when seeing him — a monster that wanted to fuck me, not a monster that wanted to kill me — had brought all my energy back.

  “Did you kill all of them?” he mocked, and I folded my arms in irritation at how high-pitched he made my voice. “No, I didn’t kill all of them. I led them away, Raelynn, and killed what I could. You expect me to kill every bloody Eld in Abelaum?” He snorted again. “Kill this for me, Leon — kill that for me, Leon — do you have any idea how goddamn tired I am of you humans expecting me to just kill everything for you?”

  He was in a far worse mood than the last time I’d seen him. Probably something to do with that limp, if I had to guess. I shrunk at his irritation, but gave a little shrug. “You snap bones with your bare hands. You’re the strongest person, er, strongest…” He gave me a slow, exasperated look. “You’re the strongest being I’ve ever met, okay? I figured you could kill anything.”

  “Almost,” he said softly. With a sudden violent jolt, he jammed the wood into the ground with his bare hands, the narrower end sinking into the damp earth and standing upright. He picked up one of the severed heads and speared it down on top of the wood. I stared at it in horror as black goop oozed down the stake.

  “Leon, what...what are you doing?”

  “Warning off the other Eld,” he muttered. He collected the other two heads and stalked off again, moving along the trees until he found the next spot he approved of and lined up another stake. I followed tenderly, my feet bare since I hadn’t had the sense to put on shoes before I went outside to fight monsters. I lingered beside him, trying not to stare at the heads.

  “Their skulls are the only part of them that don’t rapidly decay,” he said, spearing the ground again. “Keeping them around can make the others a little less eager to come into yard.”

  I winced in disgust as he mounted the next skull on the stake. The once-white eyes in the skeletal sockets had shriveled and blackened like old grapes. Absolutely disgusting.

  “I can’t just keep severed heads around my yard,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Leon turned to face me. “Do they not fit your aesthetic? Would death suit your aesthetic better?” He paused, giving me a long look up and down. His eyes lingered on my neck, on the numerous hickeys he’d left there, and he grinned sadistically. “Red and purple suits you well.”

  My cheeks heated as I rubbed my neck. Every day since our tryst in the graveyard, I’d felt giddy pleasure at the sight of those marks. They represented the ecstasy of the pain I’d endured. They were a scarlet letter, branding me as wicked, lustful girl.

  “I should turn your ass the same colors for all the trouble you’ve caused me,” Leon grumbled, and I sputtered in protest. “Losing the goddamn grimoire...you should have given it back to me to begin with, in St. Thaddeus. Now I have to run all over the Pacific Northwest to track the thing down.”

  “God, you’re an even bigger asshole than usual today.” I folded my arms. Like clockwork, my raging horniness at his threats flared up again. If spanking me would make him feel better, damn, he could go for it.

  As I’ve said: self-preservation, I have none.

  As I kept following him, I began to realize just how tired he looked. His hands were filthy, there was a tear in the back of his shirt, dirt smudged along his neck and in his disheveled blood-stained hair, and there was a faint, dirty, red gash peeking over the top of his t-shirt from his shoulder. I gulped, remembering the oozing blood from a couple nights past. “Are you hungry? Do you need a snack or something? Wi
ll that calm you down?”

  He only grunted as he chose the next spot to display my morbid protection charm.

  “Why did you come back here, Leon?” I said, as he mounted the last head and ran his filthy hand through his hair. “I don’t have the grimoire — and I’m not giving you my soul.” His eyes flashed as he glared at me. “So why did you bother to come?”

  “...wasting time,” he muttered. He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking at me as if he wanted to say more, his lips pressed into a thin, hard line.

  I stepped closer, closing the gap between us. He didn’t smell sweaty, like I would expect from a man who’d been running through the forest all night. Instead, he still smelled faintly of wood smoke and lemon, the kind of comforting smells that made me want to get close and close my eyes.

  I reached for the neckline of his shirt, and he didn’t move a muscle. I pulled it down, carefully, revealing the rest of the red, angry mark I could see on his throat. But it was so much worse than merely a mark. A jagged, open wound ran down his chest. The skin was torn open, the wound deep, ripped through his tattoos. It was darkened with dirt, reddened, and puffy. My eyes widened as I stared.

  “Leon…”

  “It will heal,” he said firmly. “The beasts cut deep. I was trying to be careful...” His voice lowered, almost imperceptible as he said, “Didn’t...didn’t want to hurt the cat.”

  “And you’re limping.” I frowned. “You’re hurt, Leon.”

  He cleared his throat and took a step back, tugging my hand from his shirt. “It’s nothing. I’ve had worse.”

  But it wasn’t nothing. It was a wound he’d sustained while trying to protect me, while trying to protect Cheesecake. He’d let himself get hurt rather than risk injuring the animal I loved. He could have let Cheesecake die, and abandoned me to the same fate.

  But he hadn’t.

  Why the hell did this demon care if I died?

  “It’s filthy,” I said. “It’ll get infected…”

  “Demons heal far better than humans do. It’s fine.”

  “Come inside.” I motioned toward the house. “Let me clean it.”

  He blinked rapidly. It was subtle, but as he looked between me and the cabin, he actually looked confused. “Inside?”

  “Yes. Come inside. Get a shower. Let me clean it at least.” I motioned to him, trying to urge him to follow me like a lost dog. “Just...come. Please. Let me help you.”

  The soap smelled exactly like her: peppermint and sage, tinged with the natural smell of her from all the times it had been rubbed over her skin. Her scent was everywhere in the house — obviously, she lived here, but being surrounded by it for a prolonged length of time was making my cock strain.

  It had hardly been two days since I’d fucked her, but it felt like ages. Leaving her needy and desperate on campus yesterday hadn’t been as easy as I’d thought it would be. I’d worked myself up too much teasing her, and had gotten so restless that I’d gone back to the cemetery and found her panties in the grass.

  They were still in my pocket, my personal trophy.

  I’d left my marks on her neck, but scrubbing myself down with her soap was going to mark me too. How the hell was I supposed to handle that without craving her? She’d infested my mind. She had me desperate to possess her.

  That was what we demons wanted, in the end. To possess, to own. We liked to leave our marks: some temporary, some more permanent. The silver hoop with the green jewel in my left ear had been pierced and threaded through by Zane, and I’d put a needle through his tongue in return. A mark was a bond, a claim. Even demons that hadn’t been lovers in years kept each other’s marks.

  But bonds were weaknesses, they were vulnerabilities. As I could already painfully feel, they only led to one getting hurt, particularly when it came to humans. The very nature of human delicacy made them appealing: it wasn’t easy to keep them. They died, they broke, they faded away. Trying to keep a human alive could drive one mad.

  I shook my head, growling in the water. Rae refused to listen to my warnings, the petulant brat. She’d thought she’d fight off the Eld with a kitchen knife and baseball bat — it was shocking she hadn’t brought her camera along too, to record the evidence of her encounter. She was going to get herself killed, running into trouble like that.

  I’d left the bathroom door open as I showered. I couldn’t see her through the fogged glass of the sliding door, but I could sense her eyes on me. She was seated out there somewhere, in the living room likely, pretending to be disinterested.

  If she was going to tempt me, then I was going to tempt her too. Tempt her until she broke again.

  The drive to claim her, protect her, keep her, was so deeply rooted in my mind that there was no shaking it. Here I was slaying monsters for a human. Worrying over a human. Risking life and limb for a human.

  I still needed to find the grimoire. I didn’t know what the hell Everly planned to use it for, or even where she was, but if she decided she wanted to summon me herself, there would be nothing I could do. I’d go back into servitude once more.

  I turned off the water, and stepped out of the shower just in time to catch Rae quickly turn back around, head down as she sat on the couch. I grinned at the back of her head, and the floor creaked under my feet as I approached.

  “Should I sit?”

  She glanced over at me, then quickly looked away again, a blush rising on her cheeks. There was no point in putting back on my clothes if she wanted to tend to my wounds, and seeing her try desperately not to stare made it even better. She got up abruptly from the couch, motioning to it.

  “Yeah, uh...sit. Sit down.” Her attempts to avert her eyes from my cock was cute, and ultimately futile. Funny how she could still blush when she already knew what it felt like inside her. But then the sight of my injuries, oozing blood again from the shower, distracted her. “Jesus, Leon! You need stitches!”

  “Not necessary.” I settled on the couch, stretching my arms over the back of it, and its firm softness immediately awakened an odd pang of nostalgia. I did have a home back in Hell — I hadn’t set foot in it in over a century, but it was still there, waiting for me. There were some comforts one could only associate with home, with a place that was familiar and safe.

  Fuck, what did safety feel like?

  Rae threw up her hands, walking away as she grumbled, “So your magical super demon powers grant you the ability to fight off gangrene? Or create new skin? Your shoulder is infected!” She returned, arms full with a bag of cotton balls, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and a damp washcloth. Her eyes fell on the gash running from my thigh down across my knee, and she winced as she set her supplies down.

  “God, what the hell would you do without me?” she said it playfully, but there was a note of real concern in her voice. It made me frown, and I shrugged.

  “Likely go to Zane’s place and sleep it off,” I said. “A few days of solid sleep can heal almost anything. Although, under Kent’s control, I’d just hope for a few days of sleep when I was injured. He never quite grasped that even demons need time to heal.”

  She frowned now as she knelt with the cloth and carefully dabbed at the edges of the wound. She still didn’t believe me about Kent — or didn’t want to. But I liked how she looked on her knees.

  “Zane is a demon too, isn’t he?” she said. I nodded. “Are there others? In Abelaum?”

  “Could be. I haven’t met them. But everywhere there are humans, there are demons. We’re drawn to the brightness: human lives burn so brightly but so briefly. An explosion, a roaring fire in the night. We demons…are more like smoldering coals. Burning on and on. Dulling and flaring. We’re always seeking more. We’re driven toward that light, to take it, own it.”

  “Why?”

  I chuckled at her curiosity. “Why do humans breathe air or drink water? It’s necessary. It’s irresistible.”

  I don’t think my answer satisfied her, but she quieted for a bit.

  “You an
d Zane,” she said slowly. “You’re lovers?”

  I snorted. “Once upon a time. We’re companions who share similar pleasurable tastes.”

  She laughed, dabbing a cotton ball soaked in hydrogen peroxide along my leg. “Companions, right, okay. Way to not give an inch on any emotions there.” She shook her head. “Are all demons like you?”

  “Bisexual? Yes, but we don’t have a need to label our attractions like you humans do.”

  She laughed again. “No, that’s — that’s not what I meant. I meant, like, are all of you so...closed up. You just replace emotions with anger or sarcasm. Are you all like that?”

  I glared down at her. “Years of torture and solitude will have you learn that anger is the safest emotion. It’s the strongest. It’s a fire that will keep you going in the dark.”

  The playful smile on her face fell, and she went on cleaning my leg in silence. The gentle touch of her fingers over my skin nearly made me flinch — not from pain, for pain I could endure, but simply from being touched. Soft hands weren’t something I typically encountered.

  A happy little chirp announced the arrival of Raelynn’s cat, sauntering down sleepy-eyed from the stairs. He came straight for me, hopped up on the couch, and curled his chubby orange-and-white body against my side, purring as he kneaded the cushions with his claws.

  Raelynn paused as she watched me stroke the cat’s head, using my claws to give him proper chin scratches.

  “He rarely comes down to visit people,” she said. “He’s usually too shy.”

  “Cats and demons tend to get along well,” I said. “They’re the only animal that can be found both on Earth, and in Hell.”

  “Figures.” She laughed, but then her face grew somber. “Thank you for saving him. Really. He means a lot to me.”

  “You would have gone after him yourself if I hadn’t. And then we would have had a dead cat and a dead woman. I was trying to minimize damage.”

  Her eyes were moving over my face; searching, wondering. It was as if she could tell I was lying; the last thing I’d ever tried to do in my existence was minimize damage. I was a killer. A destroyer. Saving things wasn’t a path I usually chose.