16. Pride and Prejudice and Other Fatal Flaws

Another night, another beating.

Liora stood at the factory’s rotten heart, shadows pooling like hot tar around her boots. It was the third time she’d brought him here. He learned. Just slowly.

She inhaled, hands flexing, and heart steady. The atmosphere bled rust and iron, his blood cutting under it.

Ashton circled her, a false wolf in leather and smirk, frost crackling at his fingertips. He still had little control over it. He’d gain some, use it against her.

But it mostly exploded when he got distracted or her claws were at his throat. The irritation on his face brought her peace whenever it happened.

An empty fluttering in her stomach kept her movements fluid. The air thrummed with the metallic taste of anticipation—iced bergamot seared by hellfire fury.

“Still sore from last night?” He purred, flexing his hands. Ice shards spiraled around his wrists. “Should’ve asked for a softer touch, Red.”

She’d sussed him out over the past few days. Being stuck with him at the witching hour each night forced her to learn his tells.

Green tinted tells that rankled her pride and made her want to maim him. Subtle, hidden behind the grin and half-cocked eyes.

Every time she mentioned a past conquest, his humanity reared its ugly head. It was a greasy weapon she despised wielding. But to make him the monster she needed him to be, she’d use it.

Liora’s laugh was a blade slid over marble as she rolled her shoulders and planted her feet. “You didn’t even leave a bruise. Rasputin fought harder. Begged louder, too. But then… he lasted twice as long.”

She smothered her own smirk as her words landed with the force of an uppercut. His jaw twitched, expression going sullen.

If his cheeks could flush, she imagined them turning purple as he reeled himself back in. A flicker of it lingered in his silver eyes—there, then gone.

Good.

She swung first. Using history instead of claws to provoke him. Insulting him didn’t work, nor did ignoring and stabbing him.

He appeared to enjoy having a gut full of her claws. He hated tales of Rasputin most of all. Men.

Such simple creatures. Let them think they could possess you, even just for a moment, and they couldn’t stop their territorial senselessness from overtaking their intelligence.

They often thought of her as helpless. In need of a firm hand to tame and guide her. She allowed them to believe it. Allowed them to think she was breakable.

Frailty was a shroud reserved for saints in their glass coffins. She wore only wrath. She plucked another piece of rotten, maggot-ridden fruit off the vine of her memory and flung it at Ashton.

“Oscar wept when I left him.” Her heel cracked the concrete where he’d stood a breath prior. “He wrote a novel for me. I read it to get myself off when nostalgia hits.”

It worked exquisitely. Ashton scoffed, lip curling. He lunged, hoarfrost scattering in his wake.

It bloomed like mold on a corpse, claiming her shadows inch by inch. Her pulse jumped, adrenaline replacing her blood, and she mockingly gestured for him to come hither.

She sidestepped, phasing into smoke as his hand shot out to throttle her. She reappeared behind him. Claws necklacing his throat as she shoved him onto his knees.

Her teeth grazed his ear as he panted and ground his fangs. Rubbing salt in a festering wound, she remembered another braggart she’d endured.

“Henry the Eighth? Just a pig in satin.” Her talons cut in as his head whipped to watch her from his periphery, drawing more black blood that made her mouth water. “But he did scream prettily when I took his other head.”

Ashton vibrated with a tension so strong it shivered through her hands and wove up her arms. As if a swarm of angry wasps were living in her bones.

“Enough—” Ice surged toward her, jagged and wild.

She shattered it with a flick of her wrist. Shadows devoured the shards, hissing and wreathing a web around them both. Her eye twitched, mouth furling as she sneered at the vampire glaring at her.

He had no crass japes to pierce her with. No rumbling laugh that made her shadows constrict around her ribs, a corset fashioned from smoke.

“Jealousy’s unbecoming, leech. Even for a corpse.”

His snarl was barbarous. Beautiful. Wretched. He wasn’t scared of her, but her past sliced him to the quick. For once, he didn’t respond. Hallelujah.

He came at her in a blur, fists sheathed in glacial fire. She met him strike for strike, an eternity of war carved into her muscles. It was almost clinical in its precision.

Her elbow jabbed his ribs—crack. She grinned, sweat trickling down her neck, and the demon inside her cheered for more. She gave it.

Her knee drove into his gut. He gasped and doubled over. The smell of black amber, its edges sweetening to match hers, leaked through his anger. Her laughter was a lash on his back, reopening the invisible wounds he’d never admit to. Her breathing came easier as they fought.

Battling with talons and fists and poisonous words that made him easy to predict. It was a rarity she relished.

“Victoria kept me as a pet. That was a fun experiment,” she murmured, ducking his wild swing. His split knuckles scuffed over her nest of copper braids, barely a whisper. “She fed me her enemies. Liked to touch herself while she watched me… That queen knew how to worship.”

“Shut up, Liora.” There was a distinct fracture in his voice. The roughened dark velvet transformed into something animal.

Something he despised as his mask slipped and revealed the haunted human lurking beneath. She wished to study it. See how deep it ran in him. Did he still hope like a mortal would?

Only five years undead. He couldn’t have chiseled away all of his tender spots. She just had to find them.

Keep pressing on them. Give him a taste of his own medicine. His ice clawed at her shadows, desperate and dying to prove a point.

It wept glacial tears; each droplet was a eulogy for the human he’d buried to outlast her.

Her mind was eerily calm. Strength and grim determination were all she knew. All she needed to know to survive him.

She spun, tendrils of night binding his wrists as he struggled in their hold. Her pulse sped up, familiar heat sparking to life, caramelising the air between them, as she slammed him into the wall.

Another past life formed a twisted spike. She drove it through his mummifying heart.

“A warlock in Kyoto once forged me a blade from his bones. He thanked me as I devoured him. I still have the knife.”

She all but cackled as he trembled, the muscles in his neck corded. His eyes blackened with hunger, and barely contained rage. The void within her demanded her attention. Her darling succubitch echoed it.

Do it. Taste him. If we feed now, we’ll gorge.

Liora mentally flipped her off and braced herself.

Ashton roared, frost spraying outward. The factory rattled as her breath curled from her lips. Ceiling rot rained down, dusting her hair and shoulders, as his power ripped through her binds, raw and untamed.

Liora didn’t flinch. She remembered.

Her hand shot out, talons piercing his shoulder with a wet crunching squelch. Blood, cold and electric, splashed her cheek. “Do you think you’re the first to burn for me? The first to claw at my skirts? You know what I am. You know how this ends.”

He froze, chest heaving. Defiance shadowed every hollow of his face, sharp cheekbones glittering with his frost.

“You’re a relic,” he hissed, inching closer, gelid breath ghosting her lips. “All your pretty ghosts are dust. I’m here. I’m real.”

His glacier glaze crept up the factory walls like invasive ivy. Shimmering before it splintered. She cocked a groomed eyebrow. The air thickened. Burnt sugar and bergamot. Saffron and ambered-laurel.

Her smile was a straight-razor. “Real? You’re a blink, little bat. A match struck in a hurricane.”

She let the words sink in, metaphorically gutting him with her next low blow.

“You think you can own me if you fuck me right? Is that it?” She smiled wider, slow and threatening. “I’m selfish, Ashton. I feed on your need for me. You’re not the first to mistake that for love.”

He had gone deathly still, no longer breathing, mirrored eyes unblinking as a thrill flickered through her. She didn’t realize she’d used his name.

Ash did. Heat pooled low in her belly, turning her slick between her tense thighs. She couldn’t beat it back, too riled and fired up from the fight. Static shocked the small distance between them.

He just stared at her. Eyes tracing her and likely trying to discover a fissure he could widen with that barbed tongue of his. The abyss inside her was a poisoned wellspring, its once acidic waters now sweetened by his venomous name alone.

She wanted to carve it out of herself. Fix it and move on from this insanity. The silence grew thicker. At last, she’d shut him up.

The gift was more precious than any jewel she had ever received. She yanked him close, her shadows coiling around his throat and limbs.

Her voice dropped, all honeyed venom and shameless sin. “Shall I tell you how Rasputin died? It wasn’t from the poison. And not from the bullets, either.”

Ashton strained against her grip, frost melting under her heat. The steady thud of her heart timed her every shift and word. His smirk was nowhere to be found.

Warmth filled her bones at the lack of it. Magnificent.

“I let him inside me one last time,” she said, whispering. “He thought he’d won. That he held my leash.” Her tongue flicked the shell of his ear, revelling in the groan he failed to swallow, the slight jerk of his hips. “Then I tore his magic out mid-thrust. His last words?

‘More, please’.”

Liar, her succubus crooned.

His last words anointed us as the ‘devils prized cunt.’ One of my favorite titles.

Liora paid the demon no heed. It worked exactly as she’d planned it to.

A shudder wracked Ashton. Hunger ruled him now. He stormed toward her, black veins embroidered his eyes and neck, her gold glowed through the leather jacket he’d pilfered from somewhere. Likely a gutter.

She never gave him a chance to throw his fist at her. She dealt with him.

Her knee jackknifed into his stomach. There was a sickening crunch. And a wet cough, and her blood sang his name in triumph. She wanted to pour it out on the filthy floor even as he folded, gagging.

Her elbow crashed between his shoulder blades, slamming him into concrete. Dust plumed, fresh blood streaming from his gasping mouth.

“You’re nothing,” she spat, boot grinding his spine. “Just a child playing with frost. I bathed in the blood of crusades.”

His laugh bubbled up, bloody and as unhinged as he was. “Then why do you burn for me when you never did for them?”

Her shadows faltered. She faltered. Wrong move.

His hand flung out. Ice engulfed her ankle, crawling upward. It was like a gelid hail of microneedles pinching her skin. Pain lanced through her. Clean and bright.

She huffed, slashing the rime with her claws. Her wildfire heat soothed the frozen, scalded skin, tingling as it defrosted. But he was already moving, a tempest of fists and frost and fury.

“You’re right,” he growled, fist grazing her jaw.

She struggled to suppress her gasp of pleasure as the slight hurt intensified her sweetened scent. Meeting his barrage with equal fervour. Mercy nowhere to be found.

“I’m not them. I don’t break. Not anymore.”

She almost asked him to explain. A part of her, the part she could never fully bury, needed to know why he didn’t run away screaming. Needed to know why he would not die while he kept courting death, anyway.

But his claims slunk under her skin. A sensation akin to a million tiny invisible creatures crawled over the muscle.

The factory suddenly seemed too small, not enough oxygen for the two of them. He clearly hadn’t learned.

She was no one’s trophy.

She let him come so close he was all she could see. Until he believed he’d won, she feigned a stumble to solidify his overconfidence. Just like Rasputin.

Then…

Pivot. Twist.

Strike.

The move was so rapid, even his vampire senses couldn’t track it.

Her palm hammered against his sternum. Shadows erupted, a black sun devouring the space between them.

He flew backward, cursing and crashing through a rusted conveyor belt. Metal screamed.

She pinned him before the debris settled. Knees on his chest, talons at his throat, shadows pinning him down.

His pulse was dead, yet an airy groan caught in his throat like a boy giving his first confession. Her breathing was steady, but his rasped, ragged.

Still reeking with the sour tang of misplaced jealousy. Her heart thumped, scarlet heat flushed her cheekbones, and the need she’d avoided looking at these past days roiled hotter.

“Yield.”

His grin was bloody, faux glory turning it gruesome, but her tongue tapped against the backs of her teeth as though it wanted to taste it.

“Make me,” he said, the childish demand returning to piss her off again.

The smell of her—pomegranates and grave dirt—drowned his truculent bergamot. Burnt brown sugar stitched through their melded scents—a candied decay, decadent and damning. Treason.

She leaned down, inhaling through her mouth so she wouldn’t smell the blood so strongly. “You want to be remembered? You want to fuck me? Outlive your betters.” Her claws pricked deeper. “Survive me long enough to etch your name in my memory.”

He laughed, chest vibrating under her. “You first, Red.”

His words and laughter were as empty as the immature vows she’d once spoken before allowing herself to be chained. The slickness between her thighs mocked her.

Her magic and demon joined in as she shook her head at him. She never knew what fresh horror would slip from his mouth.

She stood abruptly, leaving him panting and staring after her. Shadows coiled back into her veins, sated for now.

Her rage never left her. No matter what she did. It was a cathedral in ruins. Crumbling gargoyles preached vengeance and spite atop their shattered spires. She clung to its warmth.

She’d need it where she was going.

“Rest. Lick your wounds.” She turned, leather sighing and heels clicking off the damp concrete, crunching over old bolts and broken glass. “Tomorrow, you’ll need both hands. Don’t dirty my suite while I’m gone.”

She strode away, hips swaying, and darkness preparing to whisk her away. Her inner diatribe had quietened, lowered to a slow mutter she effortlessly tuned out.

It was a welcome reprieve compared to its usual cacophony of howls and screams.

But the hunger within her still felt foreign. It was hers. It gnawed the same. But it chewed more rabidly, hungering faster and faster.

Sharp talons scraped at her ribs from the inside, marking time and warning her it was better to give in. She secretly doubted she could abstain from feeds for as long as she usually did.

Liora dreaded testing that theory and instead let it moulder at the back of her mind. She concentrated on the present, how light her step was and how her veins were alight with that sparkling, euphoric energy she’d missed.

Ashton was… not quite adequate. But he didn’t die within a few punches. Perhaps he’d get there if she kept stoking that mercurial mood.

“Where are you going?” His voice chased her, raw as a pinched nerve, as she hauled open the heavy metal door. He almost sounded as if he cared.

The chain that sealed it shut clanked to the floor as a cool night breeze seeped onto her sweaty face. Her braids ached, her eyes were gritty, and she wanted her bed more than she wanted to live. One thing stood between her and sleep.

One thing she couldn’t let go. The vampire repeated himself, assuming she hadn’t heard. She stalled her answer more to set him on edge.

She inhaled a lungful of fresh air, hoping to cleanse the bergamot and stop it from following her. Futile. Moonlight caught the Silverthorn dagger at her hip as she glanced back.

“It’s time I track down and remind a cryptomancer what happens when rats steal my name.”

His smirk faded. He fidgeted with the torn sleeve of his jacket, gaze hardening, and his plush mouth thinning. “Alone?”

His tone was… different. She edged closer to the exit, wondering why he was so bothered.

“Worried, leech? I don’t want it.”

“Jealous.” The word crumbled from his mouth as if he’d gnashed it between his fangs all night.

Then he ruined it. Hubris holding the reins once more. “I’d pay good money to watch that showdown.”

She disappeared into the shadows, his laugh trailing after her into the night like a shackle she’d yet to feel the weight of.