Page 24 of Can't Bite This Feeling
Lucifer.
A soul.
My fists clench involuntarily. My breath shudders. Not now.Please, not now.
But the call won’t be ignored.
“We’ll settle this later,” I bite out. I can’t even meet her eyes.
And then I’m gone.
The Below swallows me.
The rage still claws at my insides, growing, growing,growing.
Even as I tear another soul from the body of a dying miser in a gold-threaded bed, I can still hear her voice, telling me I’m losing myself. That I’m becoming what she feared.
And the worst part?
She’s right.
I didn’t notice it at first. Not when I started making trades without hesitation. Not when the lines blurred between necessity and indulgence.
But now… I do.
Drusilla’s words echo in my skull like a curse:You swore you’d never become them.
I pace the obsidian hall, waiting for the next soul. The walls pulse faintly with bloodlight—veins of damned energy that feed the place like a living organism. My fists won’t unclench. I can still feel the linen in my hand, torn from the line like a trophy of my madness.
I didn’t just lose my temper. I lostcontrol.
A succubus enters the room, eyes my expression warily, and wisely leaves. I must look like death incarnate. No. Worse. Ifeelworse.
The next soul is delivered to me like an offering.
I sit through the entire meeting, listening to a man in an overpriced suit ask me to destroy a father of four who dared to outpace him in their cutthroat little tech war. I wait for the usualrush, the sick, soaring high that comes with feeding Greed into the world like rot into a wound.
It comes. Of course it comes.
A dark thrill grips me as I seal the deal. The man signs, and power surges into me like bloodlust. I almost moan. Not from pleasure. From addiction.
That trade should end my night.
But I keep going.
I stay in the Below for days, trading, reaping, corrupting. Making deals not because I need to, but because Iwantto. I hit my quota within hours, but something deeper has awakened, something I can’t quiet. The more souls I claim, the darker I become and the less I care.
I blink out of the room to the Veiled Market—the shadowy marketplace that exists on the boundary between worlds. A crossroads between the mortal realm and the Below, where demons, fae, witches, cursed souls, and desperate mortals go totrade secrets, souls, magic, and forbidden goods.
Evening light dims the lantern-glow into gold-drenched shadows. All around me, fae and demons barter for cursed trinkets and dangerous promises. I must look particularly wretched as I pass a flock of winged fairies because they flit away from me in terror, hissing warnings.
I almost curse them to a realm where monsters eat fairy wings for breakfast. Almost. But I sense another soul to collect. A nun, of all people.
She’s waiting by a shadowed stall, her eyes darting as if afraid someone might see her. When she spots me, her fear wars with greed. Greed wins. It always does.
Her lips tremble as she sinks to her knees. Not for prayer. “I want Allison gone,” she says, fingers trembling as they twist the silver cross around her neck. “She’s spreading lies… Says I don’t belong in my position.”
My grin is too wide, too sharp. “She’s right, though, isn’t she, Mary Grace?” The way she cringes made my teeth itch with pleasure.
