4. Five Star Doomsday

A chill slid down Ashton's spine. There was a queer, shimmering bubbling sensation spiraling down his torso.

His thoughts raced.

She wasn't just a succubus. The static energy of her power spoke of something much greater. She felt more like a relic, a myth even myths feared. A strange, open expression alighted on her face.

It was almost hopeful, if a demonic entity could be such a thing.

Her mask snapped back, in a blink, a breath, a century of practice, maybe more. Still, he saw it: curiosity, sharp as a scalpel and deadlier than any bullet.

She was a haughty queen as he burned. Her blood was a sun in his ribcage.

He'd spent five years fearing daylight, hiding from it, and getting blistered by it. Now, he'd swallow every star to keep this heat. She pulled a tissue out of her leather jacket.

She used it to dab at his lips as he pretended he still couldn't move. His mind short-circuited. He wanted to chuckle. It was a human gesture, oddly charming if it weren't for the glare she wore.

Her clawless fingers ghosted the stubble covering his cheeks as she sighed.

"You smell like hunters and bad life choices. A Yelp review? Whatever it is, I hope it's better composed than your pitiful attempt to deceive me."

He chuckled then, giving in to the need, the sound more akin to gravel crunching in a coffin hinge. His skin throbbed and tightened until it was gossamer thin. His scars pulsated like fireflies trapped under cemetery soil.

He analyzed her, how her shadows caressed his healing wound. They didn't seem like they wanted to soothe him, their touch was closer to a locksmith probing a vault.

Liora plucked the hunter's bullet from the ground, its Ouroboros and Cross engraving glinting. Something deep inside her froze, tangled up. She didn't notice the initials carved into the other side.

Her shadows flinched as if scalded. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Why did it exist? Her muscles coiled tight, bracing for a fight.

She'd watched this symbol burn centuries ago, along with the archives that taught mortals how to forge star-rot and witchbone. Her talons unsheathed with a satisfying snick."Who gave you this?" she hissed at Ash's frozen form, rolling the bullet between her claws.

It was a demand to ghosts. She doubted that the vampire had any idea of what he'd stumbled into. The hunters of her era would've flayed their own tongues before breaking the Accords.

No killing of magical creatures without provocation. No relics of the Old Blood. That was the way. Now?

They'd grown laughably ineffective over the past century. Children playing with sticks, bible verses, and stones. They'd lost their artistry, and all their skill. Just a swarm of useless brutes, all with a short expiration date.

This new development did not fit all she knew of them.

Ash rasped a laugh, frost cracking on his lips as he answered her demand. "Compliments of my fan club."

She closed her fist around it and crushed the bullet. Powdered bone sifted through her fingers like hourglass sand.

"Amateurs. They used zircon instead of diamond ash in the alloy."

Her voice dripped disdain, but her chest constricted, and her darkness wound around her. Her pulse fluttered in her neck, venom pooling in her mouth.

Sweet and scalding. She choked it back down. No. This wasn't amateur work.

Someone had pieced together fragments of the codex she'd written. Stolen pages from a life she'd buried.

From a life she'd burned. One of many. Lives she'd thought she'd locked and interred deeper than bones. How in the world had they discovered enough to create this?

What if— If they had it all, you'd know. You set the traps. Stop brooding, her succubus crooned. Liora told her to shut up.

Her lip curled, head shaking, and eyes flashing with amber before she leashed it. Her claws were steady as she wiped her hands clean.

She glanced back at the healing vampire. She'd thought he wouldn't survive her. He shouldn't have. But he still lived, a single drop of her blood had crystallized at his collarbone, a black garnet pendant only she could see.

It sank beneath his flesh as she blinked. The brand on her own clavicle burned beneath her glamor. Ash licked his lips."Savor it, you'll taste nothing else like it," She said, a cruel lilt to her voice.

The corners of his mouth twitched, and she rolled her eyes.

Ash tracked her as she moved to withdraw. Not a chance.

He'd get his answers, even if she gutted him for it. He wasn't letting this fresh chance at survival slip away. His hand shot out, thawed now, grabbing her bleeding wrist.

Static snapped like a witch's magical psyche breaking under torture where their skin met. Her blood smeared his palm.

His body reacted as it warmed his hand. Bioluminescent scars flared to life, a mirror of the gold threading her wrists.

Some kind of bargain bond, maybe? He wasn't sure. He'd never been rescued by a monster before. Their scars and glowing arteries were a language neither fully understood.

Yet. He'd decode it later. Once he was back at full strength. Her skin was cold even to him. Succubi legends, the little he'd found, described them having a furnace heat within them.

Her flesh leached warmth like a grave stealing daylight. Strange, but there had to be a reason. Her pulse stuttered under his thumb, sluggish. Weak.

He internally crowed at the shock in her obsidian eyes."I'll give your blood five stars, demon. Would die again. You lose half a star for the post-resurrection dry cleaning bills. And I'd hope for a second course next time," he said, his legs tingling horribly as if a million tiny needles pinched his skin."Typical vampire. Never satisfied," she said, eyes sharper than any blade.

He arched a brow as he sat up, movements jerkier than normal as Liora's blood chased away the last of the poison.

She inched back, but he didn't let her go, shadows flinching as he laughed. Barely noticeable, but his supernatural eyesight caught it.

"That's rich coming from a succubus. Are you afraid of me?"

She glared daggers at him. "Don't be ridiculous. You're a pup, a babe—a little bat. I fear you'll start drafting terrible sonnets soon. It's pathetic. My charm is... potent. You won't be able to help it."

Ash stilled. Thumb stroking over her wrist as her cut stitched itself together. Her pulse jumped, just enough for him to feel.

Her heartbeat had been steady as she helped and threatened him. She sneered at him. He scented the salted musk of sweat on her, but it was a mix of other men and women.

Not just hers. Interesting. He wondered where she'd been before she found him. She tugged her hand, trying to get free.

He didn't allow it, jaw firm as he tightened his grip, and her fine bones bent under his fingers.

The bruised violet in her eyes under the glamor spider-webbed through her shadows as he held onto her."Too late. I'm already drafting hymns to all the hollow places in you. The acoustics there are better," he said, voice light, but with a cruel edge, trying to push her off balance.

And testing if his instincts were working correctly again."Stop while you're ahead. Anymore, and you'll kill me faster than that bullet," she said in a drawl that rubbed against his cold skin.

He inhaled. A strange caramelized scent clung to her, but it seemed bigger than that. He'd sensed it before she even arrived. It was the absence of something beneath her scent. Something seemed carved out of her."You're starving," he stated, bold brows rising, and his scars flared gold where her blood touched him.

She laughed. The sound was strained and forced as she wrenched her arm free, dark tendrils convulsing.

"I don't need your faux pity. I've survived worse hunger than this, boy."

He opened his mouth, but her shadow peeled away from the wall, slapping over his lips and shutting him up.

Her brows slammed down as she narrowed her gaze on him. Oh, she didn't like that he knew she was hungry. Her gag rippled over his mouth. Sentient, the shadow whispered, tickling him.

It tasted of pomegranates, brown sugar, and grave dirt. Her fury distilled into a flavor.

Her warning words about her charm echoed like a death knell in his head, he ignored it. He knew succubi manipulated, seduced.

Drained their victims dry to live forever. But her blood felt different. As if it were a choice, and not a curse like his turning had been. It was something he'd grabbed hold of, welcomed, and let it burn through him.

He didn't care what it was. Too busy thinking she'd vanish before he could find out why. Before he could ensure he never found himself in this predicament again. Her kind kept and traded secrets as weapons.

They never gave them away for free. He had a hard job ahead of him. But he'd cracked governments, secret hunter cells, and barely broke a sweat.

Until his actions came back to haunt him, but he'd do it all again. You just had to don the right mask, decrypt the data, and risk your life to do it.

And she was a challenge like he'd never encountered. Adding her to his collection was more tempting than all the blood in this awful world. He glanced at her hand.

Her 'human-seeming' hand."Your claws are gone. Where do they go? When you're not slicing and dicing, I mean?" He said, tone too innocently curious, able to speak even though her gag still flickered over his mouth.

Morbid curiosity had always been a disease in his mind. He always had to pursue a mystery. Breaking laws and promises to do it.

Losing everything for the cause. No wonder he'd wound up transforming into a cliched vampire."Don't get used to it. They come at my command. Read a book. Some get it right," she snarled.

Her claws came out in emphasis, piercing his thigh hard enough he let her go.

He watched as the tiny wounds immediately healed over. Wow. It usually took a few seconds. She fluidly rose to her full height, stiletto heels a weapon in themselves as her shadows bound around his ankles, waist, and throat.

She yanked him to his feet. His resurrected body thrummed with the luscious heat of her venom. Her magic muzzle lingering on his lips even as she put her back to him.

His mental voice yelled at him to keep her from leaving. The warmth inside him, that she'd gifted him, would disappear with her. He refused to give it up.

Ha. He never gave up and he wasn't starting now. Not if there was a chance he could keep it. She tossed a piece of paper at him. A quick glance told him it was a phone number.

"I'll drop you at a safe house. Text me when you're not dying. Maybe I'll RSVP."

Her heels clicked off the cobblestones, shadows like oil spills as they fluttered behind her. He shook his head, expression hardening. He zipped his jacket over his ruined shirt.

The wound on his chest, now nothing more than a small, silvered scar. A single golden suture over it glowed feebly until he covered it.

Don't let her go.

Whatever you do, don't let her leave.

Ash didn't need to be convinced. He bolted forward on steady legs.

He had zero caution, nothing left to lose. Nothing but a life spent running and hiding and hurting since he'd fallen for the wrong woman. He wanted more out of his forced eternity.

He wanted power, control, and survival—no matter the damned cost. He hooked his pointer finger around her pinkie. It was a crooked little digit.

Interesting. The rest of her was a perfect recreation of modern beauty. Really, it was too perfect.

Uncanny, offputting to humans. There was a faint blue sheen to her moon-glow skin as if it were airbrushed. But that small finger had a visible imperfection.

She whirled as he touched it. The demon was a storm of swirling amber eyes, copper hair, and fragmenting glamor that she soon locked down.

He bit his cheek to keep from asking about it. She might kill him if he asked before she fed that hunger he sensed gnawing at her nerves. Her talons phased in and out like a twinkling star again.

Then, a hare-brained idea came in. After all that had transpired tonight, the thought seemed childish, or stupid. He couldn't stop himself. He had to know more. She might be the key.

The key to ending the torment he'd spent the last few years trying to escape. Even if he had to force her.

"What do you think you're doing? You ask a lady's consent before—"

He cut across her, ignoring her condescending tone. "Let's fix your little hunger problem." He shrugged, feigning casualness. He held his breath, throat still tight.

He wanted more of her time. Her blood. "Dumplings first. Soul-selling negotiations after. Let's make it a date."

A date for the hellbound and heaven cursed, he mused, stifling the need to laugh. He was insane. He knew it.

It didn't stop him. She was still here, close enough to make his mouth water. Close enough, he listened as her heart beat faster, even as her gaze turned dangerous.

Dark pleasure filled his mind as she took a step back and shook her head.

"You're delusional. I just fed you. That's our third date in succubus math. Besides, your choices might not be your own. I'd rather not 'date' a slave."

Ash didn't budge. He wasn't a slave. Somehow, he understood that. His vampiric sense telling him to follow this uncharted path. To make sense of the twisted life someone forced on him.

See if Hell would roast him to cinders or warm him inside out.

"Come on. It's just dumplings. It was my dying thought, after all. And I," he hesitated, a calculated pause, silver eyes blazing and shining with false hope. "I want to see you when you're not saving my life."

Liora's stare gave the impression he was a bug under a magnifying glass as she concentrated the sun's fire to char him to dust. Good, he never went around fire and expected not to burn.

Bring it on, demon.

Her voice was the caress before her talons slipped between his ribs. He bet even that would feel sweet compared to the scalpels, Silverthorn cuffs, and needles the hunters loved to use on him.

"Careful. I might think you like me."

Ash smiled smugly. She still hadn't pulled her hand back. Her pinkie quivered almost imperceptibly as he smoothed his thumb over it.

"I don't know you, but I guess I like you enough to risk eternal damnation and food poisoning." Another pause, letting his words seep into the night. So she could hear the truth and believe it was more subterfuge. "Your move, Liora."

This near-death experience was just an apostrophe. A chance to learn more. He wanted to know why.

Why did she help him? Why not just put him out of his misery and uncover the hunters secrets herself?

Was it really all about the bullet, the hunters? Or was there something softer or sinister behind her heroism?

The answers eluded him, and Ash had to bite his own tongue to keep from asking them all at once. She didn't seem to breathe. Shadows writhing lazily as they pooled at their feet.

The misting rain didn't harm her appearance. Stunning, murderous, she was a creature of the night.

Just like him. She sighed, flipping her hair over her shoulder, and appraising him from head to toe. He steeled himself for rejection.

He usually had no problem finding a bed to steal warmth from, but she wasn't his usual mark.

He'd be her conquest if they'd met another way. She rolled her eyes, reluctance written all over her. He prepared to force himself to leave.

He'd find another path to her if she walked away. He was nothing if not stubborn at attaining his goals.

"Fine. You're paying." Their heads shook in unison, the absurdity of their situation almost a physical thing. "I saved your life. You owe me."

The alley itself held its breath. Somewhere, a dumpster rat applauded.

He almost swayed, hiding his grin, as he fell into step with her. Her scent shifted to something he couldn't understand, something old, cold, and strange.

He let her go as they walked out of the alley.

Ash didn't want to push her too far. She'd shatter him and he needed to feed before he went through another battle. Plus, he got what he wanted.

Well, what his human self would have wanted before the hunter labs and almost dying, before Claire, and then Jason... he'd think about the trauma of the past seventy-two hours, and the last-half decade, tomorrow.

Or maybe never. That seemed safest. Tonight was for the demon, who now wore silence like armor. Her magic rubbed against his skin even without touching her.

Her shadows slithered ahead as they strode into the street, scouting the path. Her obsidian snakes were invisible to the human eye, he noticed, when no one screamed. He tried to think of something to break the tension, like a noose around their necks.

Liora beat him to it.

"If the pork buns are mediocre, I'm resurrecting the hunter who shot you."

He snorted and said, "Fine. Tell him to decapitate me next time." He hummed, head cocking. "And tell him to bring confetti. I'll want photos for my revenge scrapbook."

She only gave a dry scoffing sound that was almost a laugh.

Close enough, he said to himself as they walked.

He towered over her. She took the lion's share of the air as they moved around zombie-eyed humans returning home after a long day at work. Their eyes lingered on him, some smiled shyly, cheeks flushing.

Many glared at him as though sensing the glacial chill emanating from him. They swerved out of Liora's way on instinct, unable to stop themselves from sneaking another glance.

Both attracted to the glamor she wore and repulsed by it. The perfect symmetry of her features frightened them without understanding why.

It appeared to please her. The neon sign promising a kingdom of dumplings beckoned them.

Bright red and gold lights flashed before her darkness doused it for a few seconds. He wondered what else they did for her. The restaurant was almost empty as he held the door open for her.

He stifled a maniacal cackle as her shadows spilled through the room. This was wild, weird. Liora's glamor flickered as they entered and he recorded it.

It was a half-second glimpse of hollow cheeks, eyes like collapsed stars, pupil-less and endless. Freckles dusted her cheekbones.

A lock of her copper hair darkened to void black before she fixed her veneer. The woman working behind the counter recoiled, then rapidly snapped out of it. The mortal smiled like nothing had happened.

I'll have to track that. See if there's a pattern to it failing or if it's just her hunger."Make this quick, leech," Liora snapped at him as her gaze clung to a couple nearby. Their hands entwined, fingers pale as communion wafers against the checkered tablecloth.

They leaned close to one another. Foreheads touching across the table. The female smiled as if drunk as her partner kept interrupting her to kiss her. Love.

Lust.

She could siphon it, take a drop, just a tiny taste.

So easy, so ripe, she thought as her veins sparkled with golden light, creeping up her jaw and arms. It wouldn't be enough, but it would help ease— Ashton blocked her view, forcing her to tilt her head to meet his mirthful gaze. She knew it was a deliberate move.

"Eyes on me, demon." His smile was full of unearned hubris. "Wouldn't want you snacking on the help."

She hissed, teeth bared to curse at him, but the gold veins receded, and she held her tongue.

Ash's scars pulsed in answer.

He kept blinking, kept eyeing her through his periphery, and running through all he knew about her kind.

He'd never felt more alive. Chili oil, star anise, and succulent roast pork perfumed the air as he followed her to a table.

He sat across from her as she eyed the laminated menu with a curled lip. Sensing him staring, she faced him. And watched him with baleful, curious eyes.

Her elegant, clawless fingers tapped a thunking rhythm on the tabletop.

Her dark cobras draped every wall and window, moving, knotting like embroidery thread soaked in arterial spray. They hung from chair backs, watching him order for them.

The mirror on the wall behind Liora caught his attention. The fly-specked glass showed his pupils flecked with gold. Or maybe that was her shadow, still nesting behind his eyes.

This wasn't how he used to plan a first date. He usually dressed better, and he typically didn't wear his own blood as cologne. Then again, monsters rarely RSVP.

They simply devoured.