6. Bad Blood (Taylor’s Infernal Version)

Liora brought him to a hotel lobby, devoid of people, opulent furnishings, old money obvious in every piece of vintage decor. No one manned the check-in desk. The place was spotless.

For all he saw of it.

His vision kept phasing in and out. Teeth aching,  gums burning. Fangs turning brittle like winter bitten weeds, as the graveyard poison ate through his cells. The marble floor glimmered under the lights of the massive chandelier.

It was an enormous amalgamation of crystal and twined metal. Hanging like a tree draped in starlight in the sky. She aimed for the elevator.

Its black doors opened, mirrored walls showing them both. They weren't lined with silver, then, his mind mused. Her reflection wavered—freckles dusting her hollowed cheeks before she hissed, and the mirror cracked.

When he looked at her, her glamor hid them again. His brows rose, putting the image away to examine it once he regained control of himself. He hadn't the energy to question her.

The yew scoured through his nerves like invisible fire, muscles cramping, sore throat tingling, and eye twitching uncontrollably. He noted no cameras anywhere, despite his eyelids slipping shut.

She shook him, hand firm and sending a lovely flare of warmth through him. A quiet moment settled over them, tension still vibrating under her deceptively placid surface.

Something vicious writhed in her endless gaze. He wanted to coax it out.

See what it tasted like. Shame he couldn't even make his fingers work. The elevator ascended. Smooth and fast. Another shake of her hand to rouse him as his head dropped.

Her shadow slid around his wrist like a manacle. Or a promise. He couldn't decide in his current state. Her scent, that burnt sugar.

His mouth watered. He knew what it meant. He'd known since the alley, but assumed it was just her emptiness. It was a fragrance older than time.

But his dying brain couldn't form a plan to exploit it. It was as if a thick sheet of frosted glass sat between him, the world, and his scheming thoughts. He chuckled internally as she eyed him, brazen, uncaring if he noticed.

The succubus was in charge now. This was her territory, he didn't know what to expect. Reading about her kind only got him so far. There was no thrall that he could see or feel.

The manipulation he'd worried about hadn't appeared. His slight spasming movements seemed like his own. She hadn't uttered a word to suggest anything different.

Her earlier warnings lingered, but it was simple to shut them up.

"Don't die yet, leech. Twenty minutes. Come on."

Leech, boy, she seemed averse to using his name. He'd keep a log of how she addressed him, see if there was a pattern to it.

Keep it all in the filing cabinet, he called a brain. He buried his small half-smile before she noticed it. They stopped at the top floor.

The doors opened with a quiet whir. Her magic carried him out onto the carpet. Its thick crimson fibres muted her steps. His feet didn't touch the ground.

The room, number three, was huge as she unlocked and kicked the door open. She hauled him inside, moving so fast his head spun as his surroundings blurred.

They passed the bathroom, an enormous bathtub built into the tiled floor. Black, grey, and white themed. Like the rest of the suite.

She took him to the bedroom, or perhaps her battleground. They were likely one and the same to her. It was a sumptuous space.

A large portion of it taken up by the immense handcrafted fourposter bed. She hadn't hung curtains from it. Claw marks gouged the wood posts. Liora's shadows dropped him down on the burgundy silk sheets.

All the better to hide blood stains with, his mind taunted. How much more would spill tonight?

He couldn't wait to find out, even as the yew still devoured his veins. He sniffed. Ash expected to find a bouquet of different fragrances in the still air. Past feeds before he came along, but he scented no other but Liora in the room.

Wilted jasmine, her pomegranate fragrance, and something akin to embalming fluid stained the atmosphere. Her tendrils of smokey darkness licked dry paths along his torso.

Then they were gone. He chuckled under his breath.

The demon doth protest too much. He'd try harder, figure out what was a lie and what was the truth.

He had forever. If the hunters didn't get him first. She seemed determined to keep him alive. Time might not be a finite resource for now. He wrenched an eye open, scanning the space.

There were no mirrors in the room. He frowned, vision swimming, chest crackling as he inhaled. He couldn't remember seeing one in the rest of her suite, either. Strange.

Succubi were vain creatures. To hook in feeds, lovers, they had to be. She hadn't once glanced at her reflection.

Not even in the night dark window of the Chinese restaurant she'd showered in hunter blood. Her reaction in the elevator... He groaned quietly as her aroma flooded him.

An unnatural spark of heat shot up his spine. He fisted his hands as his awareness of what was happening fully settled in. His cock stirred to life as he bathed in her sheets, perfumed by her bare skin.

He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Dying with an erection seemed like a sick, cosmic joke. One he hadn't considered or composed. His entire life was one bad jest these days. Everything appeared warped, contorted, and shaken around until it made little sense.

Time unspooled. Every blink took an age. What remained of his human self already thought she'd left him there to rot.

At least my ultimate resting place wont be a dirty alley.

He screwed his eyes as an unsettling, distant, dissonant melody slipped through the walls.

It sounded like an old music box. Delirious.

That's all it was. He was dying, after all. Maybe she'd resurrect him if he passed away before she got her answers. Perhaps he'd meet the reaper this time.

Find out if he truly carried a scythe. You'd think he'd upgrade— Something, someone, rudely interrupted his deathbed musings. Liora's icy hands made him jump. He shouted, rough and loud, as agony pierced his fracturing ribs.

"Fuck! Liora? A warning before you stab me next time."

She glared at him, mouth flat. Her eyes swirling like tiny nebulas, heat radiating from her darkness. Her hand stilled, a silver knife embossed with runes and crystals poised to scrape out his injury.

He jerked away from her, not able to stop himself as he recognized the thorn impregnated alloy. She huffed.

"If you don't let me do this, I'll be burying you tomorrow. Is that what you want? It's simpler for me."

He laughed then. The sound was tattered. Liar.

He wouldn't have known if her glamor hadn't shivered. What did she look like under the spell?"Have you got any painkillers? I don't think they work on me, but they might help if I take all of them." He only asked to make her think him weak.

She shook her head. No remorse on her pretty face. Dark eyes embroidered with plum. Gold infused veins branching up her neck. Stolen life force? Or just her starvation?

How long had it been since she'd fed? A while if her taut jaw and elevating pulse was anything to go by. Her foot tapped on the floor as she perched on the bed, jiggling the mattress.

Her thigh pressed into his side to keep him from rolling. He grimaced at the idea of her using that knife on him. But it was his only way out of this. She waited for his nod, at least.

"Just be quick about it, Red."

She chuckled. The sound laced through all his nerves, raising the hair on his arms, and giving him goosebumps. The blade scraped.

He sucked in air and held it, a stupid human reaction he'd yet to beat into submission. A chorus of vile language spilling from him as she worked, ruthless, but fast.

She sliced away the wound's edges, which were charred as if held to a blue flame.

He couldn't hold it in as the smell of decay, ash, and ruin infiltrated his senses. A scream clawed out of his mouth and bounced off the walls. Neck straining as her shadows hovered over him, drinking it in.

It made her scent strengthen. The sugar sweetening until it was all he could taste."You're... enjoying this," he accused, tone like paper tearing out of his raw throat. Forcing the words through his gritted teeth.

Liora leaned in, breath warm on his cold bare chest. He didn't remember removing any clothing. She wiggled the tip of the blade at a stubborn bit of rot.

Her thigh pressed harder into his side as he jolted, like a hot iron against ice. Ash hissed, then sighed as he experienced true heat for the first time in years."You'll waste your voice. Scream instead. I've missed the screaming," she said, sounding more seductive than she had all night.

Ashton shivered. Her tone felt like a warm caress down his spine. His fingers smoothed over the silk as he wondered which side she slept on. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction of a response, scream or jape.

He'd bite through his own tongue if he had to. He focused on her throat as she sighed, the air stroking his twitching skin, as her elevated pulse caught his attention.

He honed in on it, counting the jumps. He ran his tongue along his sharpening canines, already awaiting another taste. Needing to see how she'd react as his jeans grew uncomfortably tight."How many vamps have you hunted?" He asked, to distract himself from the impulse to grab her.

She huffed, voice deadpan as she said, "You'd be the first. I caught your stench from blocks away. Like bloodied roses left to rot in a slaughterhouse."

He frowned. Roses? That wasn't his scent. But it was—a hysterical laugh bubbled up from his roasted throat as his mind shot back to his first kill. He immediately shut the memory off.

He'd lived enough horror tonight and didn't need to relive that shit, too. No thank you. The need to provoke, to prod, and learn overtook him.

"Did you enjoy the hunt at least, Red? Did you like how easily I agreed to your trap?"

She chuckled. Dirty and raspy from disuse, almost soft in an odd way.

"Stupid. Reckless. You should know better than to offer yourself up to someone like me. But I'd take a guess that's why you're in this mess, am I wrong?"

She did not know the half of it. Ash's smile sharpened to a razor's edge. Her scent was almost a physical thing. His head cleared a bit as it soaked the air between them and it was like he'd always known it.

Arousal, potent and endless. Finest, sugared dark fruit, staining lips and fingers. Hints of saffron and musk, rapidly kindled the blacker hunger in him.

His mouth filled with venom, gelid as tomb frost. Gums tender as his tongue licked the back of his teeth in anticipation. He swallowed it. He clenched his hands so tight his bones cracked.

His skin flickered from warm olive to vampire pale pallor as he struggled to reel himself, the need, back in. Impossible. He was still a man, after all.

It only got stronger, shuddering through him with the force of a tectonic clash. The black tribal markings of his polluted veins were more stark than ever.

Hunger gnawed at him like a rat in the cathedral rafters. The pit, the one he could never fill, widened inside him.

He wanted her more than he wanted to see another day. It felt imperative, as though he'd die if he didn't get to taste her again. Learn what her pleasure tasted like in her blood. Lust as consuming as a black hole taking control.

All his muscles coiled and prepared to attack, as he stared at her. He hadn't fed properly in months. They'd only given him enough to keep him 'alive' for their tests. He hadn't had time or the strength to hunt after his escape.

Two near-death experiences in a single day had left his insides writhing and trying to eat themselves. Ready to tear heads off just to whet his scorched throat with slick scarlet death.

Every cell in his body yearned, no, demanded her black blood. The heat in it a counter to his constant chill. It was the only thing his thoughts and body would focus on.

All it would take was one motion. One snap of his teeth. His humanity vanished, as his fangs gleamed.

"Liora." He said. A growled warning, giving her a chance to end this before it was too late. "Run."

Her head snapped to him. Eyes flat until a spark caught in the depths of her gaze. Like a fire spitting in a stiff draught. Quick and hot.

"Do it. I dare you." Her mouth curled menacingly. "Give me a reason to carve 'regret' into your spine."

He grinned. "You better sharpen your claws first. 'Regret' has too many letters for dull blades."

Her breath hitched, his evened out, and the seconds turned to hours as they stared at each other. Hand itching to palm his hard cock, urgent want making everything more intense.

Her pulse quickened. Bottomless sin and lightning captured in an artery drowned him.

He lunged.

She didn't move. Sat stock still as he crashed into her. She gasped, shadows rippling and sliding over his shoulders as his elongated canines burrowed deep.

Venom laced his bite, it heightens mortals pleasure, but he had no idea if it would affect her. She jerked, claws piercing his hips as she swallowed heavily.

He sensed her restraint fraying. Arsenic threaded her caramelized scent—the taste of it coating his tongue. He groaned, past caring about hiding it.

Her dark tendrils wound around his wrists, pinning them as he drank deeply. She didn't play the passive victim for long.

She sliced her claws at his chest. Opening a weeping cut. Black blood drip, drip, dripped. He shuddered. His blood was typically red.

"Rookie mistake. I bite back."

Her voice was a knife at his back. He hoped she'd twist it when she plunged it in. Her body turned a little and her scalding mouth was on him. Hot face buried in his neck.

He moaned into her throat as she bit down hard, not expecting how intense it was, how it satiated him more than any other meal he could recall. The pulling sensation of her feeding from him was—he didn't have the vocabulary to describe it.

He hadn't considered that it would set him alight, thought he'd hate it. But as her venom surged into his veins, he just wanted more.

He tugged her closer, wanting to eliminate every atom of space between them. To let his fingers tear at her clothes until she could hide nothing from him. Hunger was more than blood for him.

It was to break her, gain an advantage, to lick the truth raw.

His cock strained against his jeans hard enough to bruise as her arousal raised the room's temperature. His predatory instincts kicked in hard. He hadn't no heartbeat, but it fucking shivered in his chest.

He'd take a fistful of claws to the gut if it meant he could take her. Her fangs at his throat, her claws drawing blood, it all burned clean, and he leaned into the pain. He'd allow her to believe she controlled this dance.

Every glance, every calculated flinch, coiled the tension tighter until it was an electric current thrumming between them. Monsters craved vulnerability most of all.

Give them a wound to lap at, and they'll bare their own.

He wouldn't last five minutes if he were human. She broke away from his neck and panted. Eyes glazed with something he couldn't dissect. Her brows furrowed low, an expression of sincerest confusion.

"You should burn me. I can't drink vampire blood. I expected vinegar and got ambrosia."

She said the last part with the reluctance of a priest admitting he had a thing for prepubescent choir boys. Ash dragged his mouth away, her taste was a requiem on his tongue.

She glowered at him. Chest heaving. Was it an echo of how he felt? Her pulse pounded. Was it desire or rage he saw in her eyes?

Both, he thought. Thank fuck. The blood he'd just sipped rushed into his ears, muffling the tearing of fabric, as it singed his every cell. Head full of filthy fantasies, he wanted to live out on her.

For her. Of her sprawled and arching under him, buried deep inside her, drinking from her as he— Her claws shredded the bedspread as her thighs trembled. Hand shifting in and out of talons or no talons. Her slender fingers tapered into serrated obsidian.

They pricked his hips as she surged close. All supple, finely crafted curves and secret, sinister strength as she sensed his own desire. Her need was a call he'd always known.

He answered it. He wanted to engrave her into his bones, a tattoo even death couldn't fade. Split her apart and feel her clenching around his cock as he gave her everything he had.

She whimpered.

Whimpered. The tiny noise sent him reeling as she nodded her head. Her nose skimming along his jaw and down the column of his neck, inciting his low growl.

Did I say I wanted to ruin her out loud?

The thought only lasted a second. She answered it.

"No. In these moments, I can hear your voice. Not everything, but enough."

Oh, right. He'd forgotten about that aspect of her power."I feel violated and extremely turned on," he said in a voice roughened by everything rolling in and around him.

Her smirk was feline, volatile. He mirrored it with his own. The scars on his body glowed again as she trailed a talon over a werewolf's clawed scar on his torso.

It was a remnant from one of his earlier kills, warmth bloomed under her touch, and his muscles jumped under. Heat washing from her to him, a living flame despite her cold, sharp tone.

"Then do it. Act on it. What good is hunger if you won't satisfy it?"

A tendril of her shadows caressed his cheek, but she tore it away. As she leaned in, her freckles surfaced like stars through smoke. A fleeting crack in her facade.

They vanished faster than a lie, but not fast enough. He'd torn her shirt in his haste to feed, revealing more creamy flesh that he longed to map with mouth, teeth, and hands.

Ash's gaze sharpened. "You're not the first monster to hide behind pretty skin," he rasped, watching her pupils slit. "But you're the only one who bothers to keep it up."

She scowled at him, stilling as he spied the brand on her collarbone.

VII. Roman numeral seven. He narrowed his eyes, head tilted. Scales had popped through the spell, black, gold edged, with an opalescent sheen. A small cluster of them had gathered near the VII, as if her skin had crystallized around the old wound.

Even her shadows avoided going near them. The brand pulsed with scarlet light. Ash's frostbitten thumb hovered over the scales. No, he didn't believe they were a part of her skin.

They were something hotter, armor forged long before he laid eyes on them. She covered it up fast.

"Seven what? Sins? Souls?"

Liora's low laugh was a blade dragged across stone. "Seven husbands. Eternity with me is—problematic."

He shook his head. Did she ever tell the truth? Her hand batted his fingers away as he tried to touch where the marking and scales had been.

He opened his mouth to ask why, but her eyes flashed, teeth bared in warning. No, not yet.

She was liable to eat him alive and pick her teeth clean with his splintered skeleton if he questioned her now. Better to wait until she'd fed.

Maybe it would soften her a bit. Ha. He hoped not. She awaited his answer.

He suddenly believed he was in a parallel dimension.

One where succubi asked permission before they fucked and drained you dry. Her talons scraped his chest, her blood already healing him.

Almost back to normal, body howling, urging him to bury himself deep inside her. See who shattered first. Somehow, he got the last words.

Only after she demanded. The dim lights flickered on the dappled ceiling like a dying candle.

"Choose wisely, little bat. The filth in your head." She was an inch away, a flush coloring her neck in pink peonies. "Or the feast I'll make of someone else."

Her talons tips sank into his thigh, so sharp, he hardly registered it. Drawing blood as black as her smile. Her shadows snarled at him. Were they feeding off her impatience or their own?

He'd dissect it later. She silenced them with a glare. They wove around the bed, widows lace enshrouding them in gloom.

His hands tightened on her hips, tugging her closer. "The filth in my head," he murmured, lips grazing the small scar below her ear. "Lucky for you, I've got enough filth to drown in, and you're already begging to choke on it."

In his head, he added; be careful what you wish for, demon. I just might comply.