3. Demonic Bargains for Dummies

"...I'll make it worse."

Her words were a lie, but they tasted better than the truth. Honey and hellfire. It blended with her saffron and dark fruit tinged fragrance.

The scent was a knife. Her voice was the crimson blood that dripped after she plunged it into him. Great, he was writing twisted poems when he should be pleading for a quick death."The books... they lied. You're not a dark fantasy. You're the... fucking index," he said, struggling to speak as the gelid poison glazed his vocal cords.

She tutted, ignoring him, a claw slicing his shirt open. He wanted to flinch, scramble away, but the bullet left him at her mercy.

However much she had. She frowned as she studied the blackened veins spiraling out from his wound.

A harsh breath spilled from her as he screamed internally, ice flaying him from the inside. His lungs crackled, soft tissue slowly dissolving. He didn't have long left.

The knowledge was almost a relief if not for the demon studying him like a cipher she planned to break.

He'd let her try if it got him out of this alley. If he got out of this, he was buying a sauna. Or a walk-in oven. Anything to banish this freeze.

Liora's claws hung like black daggers above Ashton's ruined chest as her dark magic sniffed him and learned.

Her face hardened as a tendril curled close to her ear and murmured its findings in French.

She bit back the urge to snarl as she listened, bastards. They'd armoured up somehow. Her eyes narrowed on the crater the bullet had left in his freezing flesh. Impossible.

Her voice was barbed wire covered in silk. It was a warning.

"Why did the hunters carve their sigil into a bullet for you, leech? What did you steal from them?"

He laughed, a choked sound escaping him as frost bloomed on his lips. "Wouldn't you like to—know, Demon."

She cocked a brow, a fledgling, she guessed. He hadn't been undead for long. Only a fledgling would risk such defiance.

Her shadow serpent tightened around his throat as she smiled slowly.

Demon.

He knew what she was, but no fear marked his pained face.

Only the sweet and sour tang of his marrow-deep desire to live emanated from him. How precious. His humanity still lurked beneath his chilled surface."I prefer Liora."

His eyes twinkled. She ignored it. " I could peel the answer from your crumbling mind but I'd rather hear you beg to give it freely," she said, voice lethal and low."Not my style," he rasped, a brief lull between every word, punctuated by a rattling breath he didn't need to give.

Liora's nostrils flared, catching the burnt sugar of her own starvation.

Pathetic, she thought. Centuries of hunger and discipline, fraying at the stench of poisoned blood.

Strange. It should repulse her. Her shadows seemed drawn to it, slinking closer to the wound and recoiling, looking at her as though saying; well, aren't we going to fix it?

Not her usual routine. But the hunter's latest efforts overrode her original plan to end his borrowed second life. The universe must have decided to toy with her, test her. She sighed and examined his clothes.

Modern casual jeans, shirt, and leather jacket. They stunk of old blood and dead men. But they were relatively clean, apart from his destroyed shirt. He watched her as much as his condition allowed, eyes flat again, but something wicked worked away behind them.

His scars glowed faintly. bioluminescent riddles she'd solve later. She could always get rid of him once he'd shared his discoveries with her.

Something niggled at her. Like a cool wash of breath down her nape, something told her to stay far away from this.

She'd do anything but if it got her what she wanted.

"I'll make you a bargain," she said, gold veins flickering up her neck like cracks in porcelain. "Your life... for the truth you stole."

The rain seemed to hang like tiny jewels in the air as she finished speaking. The atmosphere vibrated with tension as it awaited his answer. Her shadows whispered amongst themselves in French."Deal," Ash spat, too fast.

Too eager, his crackling breath hitched, but his eyes remained calm, and his smirk was still sharp. His gaze pleaded to live and gave him away.

Desperate, but reckless, she thought."Liar," she purred, but she accepted his answer, anyway.

She'd allow him to think he could fool her. Let him live. The hunter's obsession with him reeked of her history, their scorched-earth purge of any supernatural they took affront to.

Saving him would send a message. One that would ring through the Shroud. She summoned her power from the well inside her. More arduous a task than usual because she hadn't fed.

This would cost her.

Ash would've laughed if he had the ability. Could she steal things out of his mind? It didn't matter.

Only survival did.  He studied her to avoid acknowledging the threat she posed. She sounded both young and ancient. Seductive and deadly.

Lifetimes of stories, lore no hunter possessed, lurked beneath her facade that he suddenly yearned to uncover. He hadn't had access to his digital archives since they captured him.

Searching by himself just brought him more disaster. Maybe this was a way around all that. His wound closed over, sealing the rot inside. Liora's black eyes sharpened to a razor's edge.

"This is going to hurt, leech. I'd say I'm sorry, but I would not mean it."

He had no time to brace for it. Her claws pricked his chest, driving deep, reopening his injury. Agony burst in shockwaves from it.

He gaped like a beached fish at the sky. Even his teeth screamed. The fast decaying perfume of his blood infused the rainy air.

Bergamot left to decompose in a dank cellar. The demon recoiled as she scented the full strength of the poison.

Her shadow snake rubbed its head against his jaw. It was almost affectionate. Gentle.

He didn't get to take any comfort in that. Abruptly, it coiled tighter and tighter, smokey fangs bared as it struck.

He leaned into the pain as it split him open. It was a rosary shoved down a sinner's throat and yanked out of his ribs, bone shards scratching him to ribbons.

It slithered inside his chest as Liora observed.

The serpent writhed and moved deeper. Pain, like a fist wrapped in fiery barbed wire, punched through him.

This doesn't feel like she's saving me, he yelled in his head. Unable to make a sound. It seemed to last an age.

Then came a bud of warmth. He gasped, body shaking. The relief was immediate. Obscene, as it throbbed and spread outward. Ashton inhaled a little deeper.

He grunted, gasping as his vision speckled with black spots. Her power didn't burn like he'd expected.

It unraveled.

Ash groaned as the shadow twisted around the bullet, a lover's fingers plucking a thorn. The meteorite iron resisted, hissing back at her shadow.

Her darkness sang, speaking a single word to the bewitched slug lodged inside him. He prayed it cured him."

Mine."

There was a hard tug. His stiffened body lifted off the pavement as her face harshened. He wanted to tell her to stop.

Tell her to let him die. It would end the battle he'd started. He wouldn't have to—no. He had a score still to settle. And a life to secure.

One that didn't involve hunters and running. He'd hunted for her. He wasn't letting her leave without gaining more. Another tough, pulling sensation rocked his stiff form.

Pain lanced through him, spiked icicles spearing his insides as it resisted leaving him.

He couldn't breathe, life force dwindling to the dregs as the seconds ticked away. Liora growled, the noise shuddering over his dying nerves.

Abruptly, the bullet dislodged with a sickening, wet crunch.

Clattering to the ground as Liora pulled her magic back and shook her head. His chest ached and tightened, frozen fire still burning.

He wished he could just scream and thrash like a fish out of water, as it didn't stop hurting.

The misery remained. She'd only removed the weapon, its curse still thrived. Fabric tore to reveal Liora's pale skin, flickering with threads of gold.

He stared, brain swirling with theories as she slit her wrist.

Her claws trembled slightly as she did. Black blood splattered and sizzled on the wet concrete as she cradled his face with her uninjured hand. Talons pricking his throat.

"Drink, and pray I'm not the poison you crave."

His mouth was already open. He couldn't stop her as she rested her cut wrist over his chapped lips.

A heaviness settled in his hollow stomach, weak breath hitching, and more coldness perforated his core as he observed her.

Succubi never gave their essence willingly, but there it was. Dripping into his desiccated mouth.

Her warning rang in his head, a vulnerable edge to her serrated tone. He knew he was risking manipulation, and likely a far more painful death, but he just needed the pain to end.

He should ask her questions. Find out how she'd survived when the Guild was determined to eradicate anyone who looked at them wrong.

She cut through his roaring thoughts. "You might think you're clever, clever enough to escape a hunters trap. But you're indebted to me now."

Her talons dug deeper. "Whatever tricks you employed, don't even think about using them to get out of this, leech."

He smirked against her wound, the action automatic as her words settled. Ah, she was selfish, too paranoid.

Just like he'd learned to be. But his instincts had led him here. And here she was, saving him. She thought his agreement was a trick? Good.

She could believe he was that stupid. She could think what she wanted.

The truth—that he'd lost everything and everyone who mattered, who cared, was too pathetic. He had expected no one to show up and save him.

Ash had just hoped someone would remember him. Now he could ensure it himself. The want to live swelled like a tide within him.

To survive and study her when she wasn't saving his sorry ass. Even if she had the power to turn him into a lovesick mutt, he wanted to decode her.

Then he didn't care if it turned him into her puppet. His tongue twitched as thick, hot liquid soaked it and banished the ice.

He sighed, a phantom pulse in his heart as if it recognized her aid. He'd tasted nothing like it. It was a potent drug he had no resistance against.

Three more drops awakened his fangs. They snapped down, sharp and deadly, sinking deep into her skin.

Her expression shifted from disdain to an insatiable hunger. Her pupils dilated, ink spilling across a requiem mass booklet before she masked it. And he gave himself over to it as he closed his eyes.

Liora's blood was a conflagration of power and hunger that reawakened his every suppressed instinct.

The taste of her killing and remaking him all at once. She tasted not of the sweet rot of humans or the stale, processed flavor of stolen blood bags.

It was lightning in a cathedral. Glass shattering, hymns howling, a sacrament that scorched his tongue.

A fucking Aurora Borealis sliding down his parched throat. Five years studying supernaturals after his changing, he'd written a thesis on succubus venom.

How it addicts. How it kills. This, though?

This was a Michelin meal.

He swore he'd write a Yelp review from Hell once he'd settled in. The seductive side of it never arrived. Her blood demanded.

And God, he wanted to kneel.

She let him take enough to heal. He craved more. More of this molten venomed-blood that chased away the creeping chill. That made him yearn to live and feel again.

By the time she tore her arm away, it had begun.

The thaw of his body was agony in reverse. Fire ants forged new tributaries in his veins, molten gold replacing ice and snow. His muscle fibers restitching themselves and strengthening.

His glowing scars throbbed as though counting down to his destruction, or rebirth. He hadn't studied the effects of succubi blood on vampires.

It had never been done. Forbidden by vampire and succubus laws. She either didn't care or didn't know.

He thought it might be the former. His cells shrieked as they rewrote themselves.

Since when did vampires feel warmth? He shivered. He swore his heart beat again. Only once.

But after five years without it, it felt more like a hammer blow.