Page 35 of Beggars, Sin, and Wine

“If she’d drop her stupid mental wards, she’d know we’re having our first fight in my head. I’m half Siren, so I like attention and don’t do well with being ignored, but I’m also half succubus, so I’m super forgiving because the makeup sex gives me a power boost and gets me kind of high.”

“You know I love you, right? If I can get my glasses when we get out of here, I’m taking you up on your offer of going drinking and doing mean things to stupid drunk boys.”

“You’re my heart, Medusa. Platonically speaking. I know you haven’t done the big reveal to your mates yet because you’ve got some hangups, but when they come down here, I’ll use my lure to try to convince them it’s not safe to look at you. You should get your happy ending, too.

“You can all get out of here safely and you can find your magic glasses. Then we’re going drinking. My mates can come because they are women and will probably want to do mean things to stupid, drunk boys, but yours have to stay home because they are men and will probably kill the stupid, drunk boys. That’s just messy and would ruin the whole night.”

Whatever they were planning was going to happen soon. My magic was almost back. I could tell them to leave me here all day. The mate pull wouldn’t allow it. I could tell myself that if I had the strength, I’d run from them, but that wouldn’t happen either.

I could only hope Jezebel’s lure was enough to convince them not to look at me. I could tell them, but finding out your mate was a monster was kind of like ripping off a BAND-AID or asking for forgiveness instead of permission.

Easing someone into it was generally far worse than just doing it and I was kind of fatal.

Hannibal was ridiculous. He was so fucking greedy and power hungry at the idea of being famous for being the one who cured demon possession for good he was willing to believe anything. He decided bread was too expensive and too much work for his staff, so everyone was getting Benji’s Holy Trinity in the form of mashed potatoes.

They were the instant kind and bought in bulk, which set Benji off again because he was a spoiled brat and a picky eater. Quite literally, everyone was grateful for hot food that wasn’t sandwiches and sludgy porridge except Benji. Yeah, we went a little overboard when we took in a traumatized young hybrid, but I loved the shit out of Benji, even when he was ranting that instant mashed potatoes were morally reprehensible.

Our magic was back, and the vampires were as strong as they were going to get with the little nips we’d been offering. It was just enough to make them stronger, but not enough to weaken us. Most of us had supernatural hearing. We could plot where the humans and cameras couldn’t pick it up.

We had most of what we needed so far, but we were kind of blessed that Kat ended up kidnapped. Maybe she was part of Athena’s whole hero quest? Cas had fought in wars before, but not nearly as many as Kat since she was an original vampire.

Cas never got as far as first sergeant but Kat had been a fucking warrior queen. She planned entire battles and then rode to war with her people. Our mate told us about the gas in the basement. We didn’t know if it was hooked up to the system with angel tears or they were using something else.

But if you needed a vampire chieftess who led several supernaturals to battle throughout history to lead several pronged attacks with a bunch of half starved supernaturals, Kat was who we needed. Everyone had a part to play so the three of us could get everyone out of the basement.

It wasn’t just our mate down there. Kat said she felt two of hers down there. She never lost her magic, and I was betting several people had tried to get into that magnificent mind of hers over the years. Her mental wards were probably stronger than New Eden Asylum’s wards to take away our magic. She was able to block her mates because she needed to focus on saving them. Kat did say one of them was mad as hell about it so the sooner, the better.

It was time. They gathered us all in one place and thought they were safe from us. They got comfortable behind their wards and thought we’d never break them. I’m sure they thought if we ever did, their angels would come protect them. The angels were only mailing them their tears suspended in carrier oil in boxes with no return address.

Even if we guessed wrong and the angels were watching, Di and his friends were just waiting on a text that we were about to break the ward in the basement and they’d be able to see this place now. I didn’t know what Di and his friends were. They were being pretty shady about their names, too.

Kat had her theories, and she wasn’t sharing them with us, even though she’d told us everything else we wanted to know. I was pretty sure whatever it was, it could kick any angel’s ass.

I was lurking near the basement with Cas and Benji. I’d passed Cas my phone to sneak a text to Di that it was on. I was perfectly capable of sending texts myself, but my voice to text didn’t like whispering and mumbling. If I spoke loud enough for my voice to text to get the text right, someone was going to hear me.

Cas slipped my phone in my pocket.

“If Di wants to be sexy and mysterious, he’d better fucking come through,” Cas growled.

Cas was the oldest out of all of us. He’d never ended up with the Coalition, but he’d seen some shit. He lived during a time when there was more religion than science and that was on all sides, ours and humans. People didn’t go much for proof. The Coalition was born a few years later and never left that mindset.

Cas believed what he could see, and he liked honest people. Everything Di had told us had checked out so far. I felt our connection to him. Cas was going to refuse to believe our mate was his missing girlfriend until he had solid proof and he was going to deny feeling the same connection I did until Di and his friends told us their real names.

But we had a job to do. The resident incubi and succubae were up. They were about to make some fake nuns and priests super horny. They were supposed to be celibate, but some of them had consent issues with their captives. And unlike the assholes here, most incubi and succubae were all about consent.

So, they were only blasting them with lust to give the shifters and vampires time to take them out. It was going to be a fucking blood bath. I’d come to terms with losing my eyesight, but I really wanted to see this.

Hannibal had disappeared the past few days. I was pretty sure he was writing his memoirs and shitting his guts out thanks to Benji. That was where Kat came in. Vampires were predators. She promised to hunt Hannibal down and have him trussed up so Benji could do his thing when we got our mate out of the basement.

Kat was ancient, but she understood dibs. She also understood this man had hurt our mate and Benji needed to graphically kill him in front of her. I didn’t know if Benji stayed up all night plotting or he was just going to wing it, but he was dangerous either way.

I broke out into goosebumps as the pheromones and scent of sex washed over me, but I wasn’t otherwise affected. Most parents didn’t send their children out of the house when they got above a certain age if they were going to send the entire room into an orgy. They started them learning to target their pheromones from a young age and how to turn it off completely because that could end in disaster.

Everyone here seemed to have exceptional control because I was easily able to shake it off. The sexual moans I heard soon turned to screams of terror as I could also hear body parts being torn off and flung against the wall. Vampire venom could be extremely painful or very erotic. All these people were meeting the painful end of the fang.

Benji was laughing like a crazy person.

“They are running from vampires and shifters. They spent this long kidnapping us and haven’t figured out you don’t run from a predator? That makes it more fun.”

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