8. How to Lose a Corpse in 10 Days

Liora lay on her back, panting, nerves jumping like sparking wires under her skin. Mind running a mile a minute as warnings flared and past mistakes threatened to bite. Her heart beat itself bloody against the prison of her sternum.

The ghost of his fangs still prickled in her throat.

It was now a scar she’d wear to remind herself of her own stupidity. Her limbs shook as the heat eased at a granular rate. But her hunger still gnawed, sharpened by the aftertaste of him.

Bergamot clung to her tongue, an arctic glaze of vicious citrus and imprinted with the smirk of his hubris. Her eyes skimmed over the dark wood panels on the walls. The burgundy rug on the hardwood floor that matched her destroyed sheets.

And the mini bar beside her bed. Stocked with expensive liquor and crystal tumblers, glittering under the light. It called to her. Alcohol wouldn’t fix this.

It would only muddy her more. A distant siren in the streets below seeped through a crack in the window, jolting her.

Run, screamed the primal thing in her marrow. Its sibilant voice slithering through her ivory.

Run before he stains you indelibly.

Her insides writhed despite the feast of Ashton’s desire. She needed more blood, more life-force, not more sex. She sighed, glancing at the passed out vampire.

She’d take no more of his, a fledglings veins were kindling, and she was no amateur arsonist.The thought looped and echoed in her skull.

It sounded hollow as her veins still sang the closing harmonies of the pleasure he’d wrought in her. The VII pulsed with an icicles frozen sting.

As if his chill had dripped into the old scar. Her shadows slunk over his chest, his clavicle, tracing the raw bite she’d left in his neck.

Look at him, her demon cooed.

Sleeping like a saint after desecrating you. Should I carve your initial next to his?

Her claws twitched to maim something.

Try it, and you’ll burn. We both will.

Liora’s threat only made the bitch laugh harder.

She was rigid beside him, heat still smoldering like a censers ember inside her. There was a choir of dead and broken false promises laughing in her arteries. He slept on, unaware, his breathing steady.

One gelid arm slung over her waist carelessly. Her shadows sniffed, wrapped, and stroked his pale flesh despite her hauling them back.

They were turncoats. Poets without spines. They slumped, falling back to her at her insults. Her jaw clenched as her venom and his spend glossed her inner thighs. Enough of this.

Enough of him.

He’s different, the demon pressed.

You felt it. His cold numbs, but it also preserves. Imagine the things you could ruin together...

“Silence,” Liora said.

She’d let boredom get the best of her. And a toxic blend of frustration, her need for vengeance—fucking spite. All of it had ruined her before she’d brought him to her bed. She had allowed it to infect her.

Life grew dull when one outlived kingdoms, she’d seen everything. Until now, it seemed. More fool her. Her stomach sank, and a vein in her temple throbbed in time with her marching thoughts. This was a mistake.

He was a mistake she had to rectify before it devoured her. Her fingers quaked as she fisted her hands, claws unsheathing and biting into her palms to ground herself. She wanted to decorate this city with its own entrails for daring to bring this untrained vampire into her life.

Why hadn’t she left it alone? Had it truly been boredom? Or was the universe a comedienne? Something was at play.

Something she hadn’t asked for. She would not bow to it. Liora peeled Ash’s arm away, shredded silk clinging to her damp skin.

The chill lingered where he’d touched like a phantom claim. Her talons clicked together, trembling and tarnished, his blood still singing at their tips.

Pathetic, five centuries of honed, earned brutality, undone by a walking, talking corpse who brawled like a drunk mercenary and laughed in the face of her fury. Her kiss of death.

The shadows recoiled as she stood, hissing, formless heads shaking as they refused to cover her nakedness. Her skin pebbled and felt too sensitive. She swore under her breath, head shaking. The cold should bite.

Perhaps it would cleanse her of this madness. She sheathed her claws. Fingers rising to her lips, swollen and still tasting of him.

She walked to her mirror-less vanity, her knees still boneless. She ran her hands through her wild hair, twisting it into a knot atop her head.

Liora grabbed a handful of loose hairpins she kept there to keep it in place. Her fingers fumbled, trembled, and slipped as she pinned the wild strands to her head. Her gaze turned to her next stop.

The closet was already open. She scurried inside and quickly found her leathers. Returning to the bedroom to finish up.

She dressed with military finesse. Leather and steel—the armor of a woman who’d gutted a King for lesser insults than Ashton. Each snap of leather, every clinking buckle, was a recitation of her sins.

Memory lashed, gold and bioluminescent veins glimmering in her neck and wrists. His frost-kissed fingers inside her, her back bowing off the bed."

Feed,” he’d growled. And she obeyed.

“He’s nothing,” she said. Spitting it at him.

The succubus laughed.

Nothing? Darling, you moaned. You howled. Howled when he touched you. I counted.

Liora ignored her, too busy not looking at Ashton asleep in her bed. Her shadows contorted in the windows, clawing at dawn’s first grey light as it bruised the city.

They draped themselves over his ankles. Black ribbons stroking the vampire’s morgue-gray skin. His usual coloring, warm olive, gone as her venom kept him sedated.

She glowered and muttered admonishments at her dark snakes until they retreated. They did, but not before they traced VIII on his torso.

There one second, gone the next.

Just a mirage, she told herself, a trick of the light or her overtaxed mind. The reassurances left a bitter taste. She fled the room, her thighs burning with the memory of their relentless climb toward ruin. Liora didn’t look back.

He should wake to her frigid absence. Let him choke on his victory.

Yet, as she strode down the fire escape, her talons crunched through rusted iron, leaving grooves too deep.

Mirage, she repeated in her head, heart rabbiting as she stared at the carnage. It wasn't a confession.

It wasn’t.

But her palms crawled where she’d gripped his hips, his shoulders, or flattened on his chest.

But her cunt clenched with the memory of him, betraying her attempts to block him out, stop him from igniting the first real orgasm she’d had. She was used to tremors.

Slight climaxes that barely took the edge off. He’d given her a damned earthquake and it was a nightmare come to life. Her shadows coiled too close, whispering in a tongue even she couldn’t translate.

Her mind kept trying to convince her to stay. Her succubus echoed it.

But he...

“No.”

She leaped into the alley, coat flaring behind her like raven wings. It reeked of hastily cleaned blood, jasmine, and dead hunters. The city sprawled before her. Her lip curled as she surveyed the land, it was a concrete and steel carcass pickled in LED and decay.

Soulless, she hated it, but it would serve her now. Cities were a monster’s best friend. Effortless to get lost in, hide in. Rife with easy prey.

Mortals shuffling to work or home, their pulses plump, ripe, like tomatoes sagging on the vine. Her rushing blood calmed at the sight of them. Heart slowing to its usual languid thud.

She could take a dozen, drain them dry. Erase the bergamot with their sweet rot. A better idea had come to her as she’d dressed. Hunters lurked here.

The Iron District would be teeming as they hunted for Ashton. Some would surely know what he’d stolen from their vaults. Databases, manifests, secrets scrawled in witch ink—whatever it was, she needed it.

Her hands fisted, teeth grinding and jaw cracking, a jolt of adrenaline bursting through her system. The Iron Districts Legion.

They were the same incompetent ilk who’d once pinned a werewolf pup to an altar, laughing as they skinned it alive. “ Balance,” they’d said, though the child had harmed no one.

The Accords she’d brokered meant nothing to them. Just another script to twist. Now, they’d choke on their hypocrisy.

They’d scream Ashton’s truth and beg for mercy. She wouldn’t have to deal with him to gain the information anymore. A slow, cruel smile spread across her face.

Yes. Hunter’s blood would do just fine. The claret in their veins ran thin. Sour, tainted by their unearned bravado, but it beat returning to her suite.

The spectre of Ash’s voice taunted her even as she schemed."

Yep. Starving. Drink. I’ll handle this."

Her entire body reacted, heat flaring bright, and gooseflesh spreading like snow over her leather armored flesh.

The demon purred.

You could crawl back to bed. See if he’ll let you bite harder this time.

Liora gagged her, called her magic close, and vanished into the gloom, chasing a hunger that now tasted of rot and penance. Somewhere high above, a star burned too bright.

A monsters forgotten plea woven into its dying light. Back in her hotel suite, Ashton smirked in his sleep. Unbeknownst to her, he wouldn’t let her get away that easily.

Not when he’d finally found something worth the fight. Three words, uttered like a vow, echoed through the fabric of the Shroud.

Game on, demon.