Page 28 of Succubus Sins
I clicked the locket closed and the moment of awe passed. Nausea set in, thinking of what Derek had said last night of a succubus dying from overfeeding. What would have happened to me if I didn’t have an empty Blood Stone for protection? Did Derek fear for his own life? Is that why he didn’t hold back, and gave me all Silvia had to offer?
Questions for another day. I had a man to save, and sins to amend with Sarah.
I donned last night’s clothes, slipped on my heels, and eased out of the room.
Clicking my way through the empty hall, I realized I wasn’t exactly sure where David would be. Of course, he’d be with Detective Anderson. But where was that pest hiding now? He wouldn’t still be at his old rundown office. I’d had Zack ransack that place more than once.
Turning around the last bend of the hall, I found Zack wearing nothing but his jeans. He teetered on the edge of an enormous leather chair, failing to procure any of the expensive comfort as he leaned on his elbows and stared at his phone. He balanced on the balls of his feet, bouncing his heels on the ground, never taking his gaze off the screen.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed with a bunch of thrall girls or something?” I asked, pinching my cheek between my teeth.
He glanced at me. “It’s not polite to speak of the dead.”
I balked. “What?”
He shrugged and looked back at his phone. “What can I say. I was hungry.”
There was a certain fondness for Zack in my heart. But it was times like these that I was reminded how true he was to our race. He saw humans as food. Nothing more. Nothing less. I could never truly love anyone who felt that way.
As always, I attempted to divert my feelings with humor. “Waking up next to a corpse is the least sexy thing I can think of. Much less three.”
He glared. “You’re one to talk.” He thrust the phone at me like a spear.
Blinking, I took it and stared at the screen.
A message from Sarah. My heart lifted, until I read what it said.
Ihave my evidence, and the freak of a girlfriend.
The Black Widow has 24 hours to turn herself in, or the girlfriend’s next.
- Detective A.
Two pictures were attached, and I tapped the screen while my heart fluttered its way up my throat.
The first image was a close-up of Sarah, gagged, with one black eye, and a frightening patch of red around her chest, holding up a note that read, “4112 Lance Street. Come in 24 hours or I die.”
The second image was loaded off the screen and my finger trembled as I scrolled to see what came next.
Bile rose in my throat when I saw David had fully deteriorated. His pasty grey skin was taut across his cheeks and his cloudy eyes stared back at me, full of judgment and terror.
David was dead.
The phone clattered to the ground as tears welled in my eyes. “D-David. How is he dead?”
Zack wouldn’t look at me. Rage filled my chest and I stomped towards him and shook a clenched fist. “Don’t you sit there and judge me. You just killed three innocent girls.Three!”
“Thralls choose their fate, David didn’t.”
There was truth in that. A selection of humans learned what we were, and what would happen to them if they slept with one of us. There was nothing short of a cult, full of an endless supply of men and women who thought it an honor to give their life-force to a supernatural. They told themselves that they’d be reborn as a succubus or incubus themselves, but that’s not how the curse worked. There was no rebirth. There was only death.
Zack had the nerve to roll his eyes before he stood. My fist went flying of its own accord, aimed straight at his face.
Zack could have dodged, but he didn’t. My knuckles cracked against his cheekbone and a shockwave rippled through the air. My ears popped and the hairs on my arms singed from the heat.
How dumb could I be? I’d just filled a Blood Stone to the brim. My locket and body burned with more sexual energy than I’d ever had in my life, and Zack had just devoured three thralls. No way would we be able to hurt each other.
A breath shuddered into my lungs and I shook my fist as if it hurt, but it only felt hot.
