10. Sherlock with a Death Wish — Part One

Darkness veiled him as he snuck down alleys and followed the map in his mind to where he'd stashed his bag before collapsing in that fateful alley. Hunger chewed at his insides with glacial, relentless teeth.

He almost grabbed a loudmouth teen off the street to sate it.

But that wasn't who or what he hungered for. His craving had written herself in his bones. It was as though Liora's absence, the changes she'd wrought in him, was a frosted blade twisting in his abdomen.

What had she—found it!

He whistled as he shoved aside the massive dumpster, the boxes and bags he'd piled atop his belongings.

The stench of rotting garbage, damp rodents, and mold on the walls hanging in the air made him gag. He killed his breathing to avoid it. His hand closed around a familiar strap.

The grubby black bag's weight was a feather to him, despite its heavy contents. He'd fled his mortal hit squad with most of his belongings.

They hadn't been able to break into it. He'd ensured it.

He glanced around. Claws had scored the damp walls. Ragged marks that made him grin, giving him a warm flutter in his belly, and heat sparked behind his sternum. He couldn't smell her, but her calling card was clear to see.

He made a silent promise.

Run all you want, demon. I'll chase you down. He refocused before anyone could sneak up on him, and slung the bag over his shoulder and bolted back to the hotel.

The city was a caustic blur of dazzling lights, stumbling people, and honking horns as he flew down the empty street. Not that anyone would see him. He moved too fast for that. The closer he got to the hotel, the stronger the ice inside him grew.

What did that mean? It had warmed a shade the deeper into the city he'd gotten.

Logic, he ordered himself, show the succubus how a hacker turned vampire hunts.

Show her the truth she ran from. How many bodies would she drain before admitting it was all rotten? How many gallons would it take— stop it.

He raced up the fire escape instead of entering through the front door, afraid someone would ask questions. He scanned his surroundings, ears ringing as he listened for any sign, someone had followed him. He halted as he caught sight of Liora's signature touch.

Talons had torn deep and raw through the rusting iron. Very interesting. His fingers warmed as he traced the grooves she left.

Was it just her venom lingering in his veins? Or something more? A shadow distracted him, darker than the grey ones shivering under the streetlights.

He focused his eyes on it as it twisted and inched closer, almost waving at him. He leaned forward, studying it, breath hitching. So she'd left a single sentinel to stand guard to see him leave.

Perhaps so it could tell her when it was safe to return. He narrowed his eyes as the shadow coiled closer, its edges fraying like smoke caught in a draft.

Instead of recoiling, it brushed his cheek. Just a whisper of warmth. Ash stilled.

Liora's shadows spoke louder than her mouth. This one curled around his wrist, its murmur like a breath against his nape. No words, but the intent thrummed between them:

hurry, leech. Chase her.

The words slipped into his arteries like her teeth the night before. He said, "If you want me gone, you'll have to cut me out yourself, Red." He paused, to twist the blade. "I don't think they'll help you, though."

He hurried away before it could form into a dagger and stab him for his cheek. A weightless sensation stole over him, and his smug expression fixed on his face as the shadow stayed where she'd left it. He was back inside her ruined bedroom within seconds.

He swiped her cosmetics off the vanity and unpacked his bag. He frowned, nose wrinkling as his head tilted.

Ash tried to imagine her sitting there, preparing to lure some mortal to bed, but the image wouldn't form. The space where a mirror should have hung gaped at him.

It was an empty socket, unseeing and as hollow as her denials. He tilted a lipstick tube, the light glinting off the black and gold casing, before setting it down beside his laptop. A photo he refused to look at crinkled under his fingers as he snatched hold of the power cord.

It was a crumpled photograph of him and his brother he'd pulled from social media when Jason had first gone missing.

Useless to him now, but his inability to throw it away stayed. He scented the air to distract himself.

Liora's fragrance was almost gone. He'd never forget it. The demon had transplanted it into his DNA. He thought she'd loved the taste of him.

His coldness was a turn on and not a bad thing. And that's why she ran.

He saw her revel in it last night. He could still feel the baseline of her pulse rumbling in him. The way she roasted through him, his every muscle straining to drive deeper.

Yep. Getting warmer by the second.

He flipped open his laptop and waited as it booted up. He tunnelled into his offshore server cluster. The encryption was more binding than a blood oath.

Completely untraceable. He left it running a check through all the supernatural databases he had, his mind becoming a laser. Zeroed in on one track, finding the succubus before she left for new feeding grounds. He swore violet fissured his screen for a moment.

Scowled at it until it dissipated. Ash dove into the minibar. He took a bottle of whiskey this time. Her fingerprints marred that one, too.

No tumbler was big enough. He needed to down it. It scorched through him exactly how he wanted it to. Her blood was stronger in this one.

It was a younger vintage and almost as good. Better in some ways. But a shelf in his brain slid open, flooding him with memory. The whiskey's burn down his throat mirrored the scorch of Jason's pyre.

Ash's fingers flexed on the glass. For a moment, he tasted smoke instead of alcohol. Then it was gone.

Ashes then, ashes now. He settled in the velvet padded chair and found one thing with her name.

He groaned, ground his teeth, and scrubbed at his jaw with a tense hand. He was sure there had been more. The rest of it, someone had corrupted or wiped.

Corrupted magically. The screen fractured when he tried to unravel the code from the magic. The mangled files taunting him with pixilation.

Liora's clever handiwork. He scowled and cursed up a storm. She'd had someone scrub her past cleaner than a crime-scene, but cryptomancers always left fingerprints.

There's always a ghost in the machine. He wondered what she'd paid to have it done. Those techno-mantic creatures traded in digital absolution.

He had read it cost more than a month of your lived experience for just one year of erasure. Liora had it all demolished. They erased more than data.

They siphoned years from your life, leaving static where memories thrived. His brows knitted together. What had she traded?

A century of laughter? The taste of joy and human connection? Her first kill?

He'd have to dig deeper later. Use her own tricks against her. Hack her past like she'd hacked his veins. A sigh escaped his lips, eye twitching. He searched for himself.

His alias. Liora didn't know it.

Sean Calden. He checked to ensure everything was as he left it. His malware was self-replicating. Designed to burn their data and beam the charred crumbs to a dead-drop server in Reykjavik.

Insurance, in case they resurrected his brother's case files. Tension bled from him, smirk sharpening as he finished. Everything appeared to be working properly. He read through their weapons' inventory next.

There wasn't a single mention of the bullet they'd used on him. He had thought they'd be screaming about that. How successful it almost was. The list of what else could kill him glared at him.

Yew ash. Graveyard desiccation and folklore turned weapon.

Excellent, he muttered in his head, shoulder stiffening. Because nothing said 'immortality' like snorting your own funeral pyre.

Such a hilarious joke. He huffed a bitter laugh, mouth filling with an acidic taste, and his fingers tapped on the vanity. Immortality was a pyramid scheme.

You decomposed slower, but you still rotted. Or the dregs of their humanity did. And Silverthorn?

The hunters loved that shit. Deadlier than a rattlesnake sinking its fangs into some schmuck's bare ass as he took his morning bowel evacuation.

It destroyed him from the inside. It unmade him, hyper-stimulated his vampiric instincts until he became paralyzed by hunger.

Turned him back into the scared human he'd been before the viral-venom lied to him. His innards turned to ice and fused together, hands clenching and unclenching at the thought of its bite. What a nightmare.

Every hunter had one. Vampires were common. Succubi weren't. They were rare. He had the notion Liora had ensured they were rare. Too many, and well, things get out of hand.

Nature's Balance broke if their chaos grew beyond the numbers it could hold without tipping. But what had she turned him into inside?

Her—his hunger was a serrated hook in his gut. Two years ago, it would've sent him on a rampage to ease it. He forced himself to focus. Holy water didn't burn either.

Their weakness was man-made. Silverthorn alloy, witch-made bullets, not scripture. God had no hand in his creation or his attempted extinction.

Nor did he believe there was one. Not after all he'd seen and done. Something had rooted his curse from the earth.

Vampirism was a fossil, a virus awakened from prehistoric slumber. Loosed upon the world with no remorse. It had adapted, injected into humans by their sires venomous bite, no longer an airborne curse. He sipped at the whiskey.

It tasted like her. Liora had vanished. Now it tasted like Claire. Claret, smoke, something that sliced too deep. Fucking Claire.

An aching muscle in his neck twinged, searing his nerves as his teeth bared, yanking him back to the past.

History harmonized itself, it was a glitchy bitch. Bitten by a toxic ex-girlfriend. Transformed out of spite.

He should've known from the start she'd destroy him. She hated he was close to his mom.

Hated that he called his mother instead of her some nights. A vampire's boyfriend should be at their beck and call. If only he'd known what she was then. If they'd been teenagers, it would've been funny.

They were adults. He was thirty-one. She was two years younger. Old enough to know better. And Claire had permanent fangs beneath her fancy veneers.

He found out the hard way. A Netflix and chill gone biblical. It turned out Twilight wasn't just a terrible romance series. It was her life's blueprint.

Yes. Her venom sparkled. And yes. He'd mocked her for it.

No, it didn't save her.

She had even claimed his blood sang to her and she couldn't ignore its call. She mimicked humanity well.

Her rich parents afforded her the best witches and warlocks to glamor her, so she even had a pulse.

Claire's mask hid her monstrosity. He hadn't noticed her ruthlessness until she left him gasping, drained, and shaking. Funny how sex always got him in trouble.

It was another night spent drowning between her thighs. She never reciprocated. Then he'd slid inside her. All was well for a while, but her corporate glamor faltered as it grew more frenzied.

Her beauty melted away, hunger warping her features into something he couldn't recognize. She hurt him that night.

Almost drained him dry. He still remembered waking from it, weak and questioning reality, as she sobbed, begging for forgiveness.

And he, like the prize idiot he was, gave her it. After a few days of Claire's impassioned groveling, he came to terms with the reality that vampires were real. Curiosity won out.

As it always did. Still, he couldn't forget how fast she had shifted from adoring to lethal. Even now, his dead stomach wrenched at the thought. It happened again weeks later.

He feared her more than he loved her. So he dumped her, as gently as he could. He even took the blame.

Thought it would sweeten her to him. She reacted as if he'd doused her in gasoline and set her aflame. He knew right then.

The second her expensive enhancements dropped, platinum hair shining under moonlight, the yellow glint in her eyes... he knew. She was going to curse him with vampirism.

Make him hurt forever because he'd wounded her pride. He still recalled how hard his heart had beat against his ribs. She had complained about how horrible it was to drink blood. To crave it.

Food helped. Red meat, and lots of it. But she hated it. Curiosity killed the human, but brought him back twice as mad—it was his turn to suffer.

Poison, all of it. Liora's poison burned cleaner than Claire's. She lied, too, but there was no pretense of humanity with the succubus. At least this demon didn't pretend to love him.

He'd killed three people after Claire, not counting her parents. Their unmarked graves hid his real name, a secret even worms couldn't unearth.

No one would find it unless he gave them it. Liora had done the same. The encryption was a scream. Someone had deleted everything he'd managed to piece together six months ago.

He'd make them regret it. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was idiocy.

But he still wouldn't have done it differently. A gutter was his ending before she healed him. He typed her forename. He hadn't had that the last time he researched succubi. Even the Guild didn't have her names.

The screen glitched as he read the text. It was a new addition, something that shouldn't be there. He leaned closer, eyes devouring the screens words. Shadows writhed in the margins. It was an old, tragic tale.

About a man and a woman, that old forbidden love trope, betrayal underscoring every word. Priestess burns to ashes. Her secret lover, too. Liora must've emerged before the smoke cleared.

With a whirlwind of shadows shielding her as she fled the scene. She was only twenty-seven when she transformed.

He chuckled, who's the youngling now, Red?

He'd bet good money she set the fire.

They hadn't recorded finding her bones amongst the ashen remains. But the drawing looked like her. Stripped of the perfection that her glamor provided for her now.

Freckles and a full, wide mouth wearing a soft smile, dimples on her cheeks. She looked sweet, gentle and naive. She'd chiseled away the flaws and turned herself into a creature of seduction.

Holding beauty by the goddamn blade. The article said she perished with six other priestesses, too. He'd have to research that more later. He knew how her story ended.

She'd walked out of that fire reborn. With ash in her lungs and madness in her blood. He'd walk into her flames willingly.

He would let it rewrite them both. He'd have to tread carefully and wield it the right way. He had to test his theory. Taste her again to see if it did what he thought it would.

He'd let her taste him, study her every reaction. Use it to build a map of what this was between them. His spine tingled, heat flashing up his neck.

Ah. So desiring her raised his body temperature?

Good to know.

Ash chugged the whiskey, not feeling its intoxication as he sifted through the information. He found a hunter's group chat.

He scoffed as he assessed its protections, amateurs. A teenager with a Chromebook, a six pack of Red Bull, and a half-assed prayer could beat this.

It almost felt like cheating. He grinned the entire time. He could read their chats in less time than it took Liora to fuck him senseless.

He hacked into their servers and engraved his initials into their code. They'd try, but they could not decrypt it. They'd tried with him, worked hard to force his compliance. His fingers, muscles, and synapses remembered the straps.

Remembered the needles pinching his skin, his scarlet blood draining away. Testing to see how he'd react and if he'd survive their tests. The flashbacks cut deeper than their scalpels.

The quiet hum of his tech synced with the hunter's machines resonating in his mind. A phantom sting pricked his arm. He grabbed the edge of the vanity to anchor himself, knuckles threatening to split his skin, then the smell hit.

Decay, iron, and iodine soaked his lungs. Thick enough to choke on. He wished he'd bought cigarettes while he was out. That would help. He bit down on the inside of his cheek until the skin gave, instead, using the pain to clear his head.

Concentrate on the now. The past bites, but so do you.

Ash heaved a sigh, squared his jaw, and settled in.

He had little time left. He wanted to keep the upper hand. So, he had to be fast. And he'd grip that winning hand tighter than a nun clutching her rosary as a sinner passed by her. Liora would fold first.

She'd try to keep playing and pretend she held all the cards. The joke was on her. His poker face was Bad Romance levels of unreadable.