13
The chills returned the moment he left, and with a vengeance too. Teeth chattering so hard I thought I might actually turn into a human Popsicle, I snatched up Kemen’s oversized sweater and attempted to put it on.
Only having one good hand was bad enough, trying to actually shove that mangled-up thing through a sleeve just about had me passing out. Gasping for breath on the pillow, I stared at the ceiling, feeling weak and pathetic.
Sex would speed up the process, but even without it, I should be healed already. Not only was I not healed, the wounds were raw and wet looking and seemed worse by the minute.
Heart racing like a rabbit on crack, I grabbed my chest as dark spots danced in and out of my vision.
I had no underwear on, no socks on my completely frozen feet, and a sweater three times too large for me only halfway on. I’d definitely looked better. But already the magic of Kemen’s warm scent of patchouli and dreams was soothing my frazzled nerves.
“Damn zombies,” I hissed, grumpy at this forced confinement. The more alone I was, the more my mind kept racing.
Zombies, creatures that had pretty much always taken a hard-line stance on not ruffling feathers, had descended on our carnival in a murderous stampede, running roughshod not only over humans but also the Neph.
I’d had no idea they were as powerful as they were either. That they could kill one of us. I shuddered, squeezing my eyes shut. It wasn’t easy to kill a Neph; it required an extreme amount of violence and force because you had to twist our heads off, then stab us through the heart. Demons were the toughest SOBs on the block, but tonight, I hadn’t felt so tough.
The moment those teeth had chowed down on me, it’d felt like not only were they sucking out my life’s blood but my strength right along with it. I’ve been disemboweled, shot up, stabbed (through the heart, no less), lit on fire (that was really not fun, the scent of burnt hair was probably worse than the rest of it), hung—hell, I’ve even been racked. And nothing, nothing had felt like this.
I was covered in open wounds that refused to heal, my blood felt like flowing lava in my veins, and I couldn’t get warm enough.
I don’t mind dying; I fully expect someday it’ll happen to me. What I don’t want to do though is suffer through it.
Granted, only a little was truly known of zombies. They were such a secretive bunch, but something about this whole damn night just wasn’t making sense. What would cause a zombie hive to suddenly go active the way there were?
And what the hell had been up with the ones in the carnival tonight? They’d looked like mangled chew toys. The few zombies I’d ever seen had been much better preserved than that. These guys were straight out of a horror movie, splattered in gore and piss and reeking of all sorts of nasty.
I shifted in the bed and shuddered when the open wound on my ankle rubbed the sheet. Why had that zombie taken my mark?
All Neph were born with the mark of our heritage, a shredded moth’s wing. We didn’t all have it in the same place; mine had been on my ankle.
Once, I’d hated that birthmark. Hated that it marked me as an abomination against humanity. But through the ages I’d learned that that marking was as much a part of me as Lust was. That moth’s wing had been my constant reminder to be more than what I’d been born to be, to try to reach for better. When my demon side would rage, I’d look at that thing to remind me that there was more to me than rage and hate and evil.
Now it was gone and I couldn’t even begin to fathom why. That zombie hadn’t eaten it. It’d taken its bauble and run.
“Why?” I growled.
But thinking about this shit was making my head ache. My butt was going to sleep and my back was twinging. But there was no way I’d be rolling over. The constant aching throb in my wrist had me wishing narcotics worked on my kind.
I’d dump a pound of crack down my throat right now if it would work... anything so I wouldn’t have to feel this.
Kemen would tell me to breathe. That the only way to escape the pain was to accept it, not fight it, to breathe through it and forget it.
That demon had been too smart for his own good.
Taking two deep breaths, I thought about Asher and couldn’t keep from chuckling even though it made my sides ache. That man was always coming to my damn rescue; it was actually beginning to get really annoying. And I would be so much more ticked off about it if he hadn’t looked like some delicious, swoon-worthy god bearing down on the undead the way he had.
I toyed with the loose threads in Kemen’s quilt. The man had been terrible at home maintenance, preferring sleep over home improvements any day.
“Oh, Kem.” I sighed, wishing my greasy-haired Jack Sparrow was back. “I miss you so much.”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Vyxen’s green eyes swirled with thinly veiled hostility. Her stench of sulfur permeated the room when she traced in. Hand making the universal symbol of my being a nag, she yanked a chair over to the bed and gave me sneer. “You done feeling sorry for yourself t? Not like you’re the only one to get dinged up, ever.”
Dressed in neon-green tights, wearing a cotton-candy-blue wig, and sporting her perpetual cat ears, the Visual Kai knew how to make an entrance. She’d clearly had a chance to shower and change before coming here.
God, I hated her.
I squeezed my eyes shut, totally being dramatic about it as I tossed my good hand over my eyes. “Anyone ever tell you that green and yellow clash? ’Cause they totally do. Take that acid-trip shirt off before I go blind.”
I laughed when her face turned a bright shade of red.
“What-the-fuck-ever.” She stared at her hot-pink, round-tipped nails. “Oh Kemen, oh Kemen, come save me. You’re so pathetic.”
I hated Luc. And clearly he hated me. Why he would stick his cock into this black hole of gross was a great mystery to me.
“Yeah, you can go now. Thanks. Tell Luc I don’t need a babysitter.” I rolled my head to the side, biting down on the inside of my cheek so as not to let her glimpse my grimace. Hot tears gathered in the corners of my eyes.
Memo to me: stop moving.
She laughed and the sound was as evil and nasty as she was. “You know the more you say you don’t want me here, the more I wanna stay, right?”
Vyxen was an Envy demon. Living in a constant state of perpetual jealousy had to be a real bitch, and if she were anyone else, I might have cared. Her? I just hoped she suffered. A lot.
Turning back to her slowly, I narrowed my eyes.
Her rosebud lips quivered and then she was laughing uproariously like I’d just given her the best punch line in the world. “You look awful!”
I hadn’t looked in a mirror since coming back to the trailer because I hadn’t wanted to see my face. I figured if the rest of me was this mangled, I shouldn’t look; I’d spare myself a few bad dreams.
“What exactly do you want, Vyx? ’Cause we both know you wouldn’t be here unless you really wanted to be. Luc’s never had that type of control over you.”
Her jade-green eyes swirled with fury. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
With anyone else I would have sworn that’d sounded an awful lot like her coming to his defense. But I couldn’t believe it, not with her.
“Oh really?” I snorted. “Yeah, you’re a regular girl scout.”
In a flash her face was inches from mine, and there was a menacing vibration snarling from her throat. “You never got him. Never understood him. You just took and took and took, trying to fashion him in your own damn image. Don’t you dare talk to me about Luc.”
Now I was hot, and I finally felt the stir of the demon inside me, not Lust, but Pestilence. He loved a good catfight. My nails elongated—one wrong word and I’d be dragging them down the kitten’s face.
“What, you think screwing him for a week or two suddenly means he’ll be sending you a box of roses? Wake up! Luc’s not built that way, so if that’s your dream, then tough break, sister, it ain’t happening.”
Her lips spread into a wide, satisfied smile. “Is that what he told you, a week or two? Try two years.”
“What?” I shot up in bed, almost screaming when my wounds scraped against the sheets. Sweat peppered my brow. “You’re lying,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
Shaking her head, disgust etched into every line of her face, she rolled her eyes. “Now who needs to wake up? I let him play with you because he always came crawling back to me. You know what the best part about all of this was, Dora?”
I couldn’t even speak—my head was a shamble of pain, hurt, and white-hot rage.
Obviously taking my silence to mean she was cleared to continue twisting the blade, she smiled. “That you didn’t know. That he didn’t love you enough,” she spat out, “to ever tell you about me.” Almond-shaped eyes narrowed to thin slits. “I’ve been screwing his brains out for years, and every time he comes, he screams my name.” She tapped her chest.
My stomach was churning again, but this time it had nothing to do with bites and everything to do with Luc.
For so long I’d always felt partly responsible for the way our relationship had soured. But obviously I’d been the only one to ever actually consider it a relationship. Truth of the matter was, Luc and I had been having problems for much longer than two years—try a thousand, if not more.
But always in the back of my mind was the possibility that one day he’d open himself to me. So even though our demons demanded we take sex from others, I’d always done it knowing the partner with me meant nothing. I’d never had sex with the same male twice because my heart had always yearned for Luc to set things right.
To know he’d shacked up with Vyxen... Not only was she my biggest rival in this whole stupid place, she was freaking VYXEN! If he’d wanted to hurt me, or get back at me, that would be the way to do it.
“It just kills you, doesn’t it?” I whispered so low no mortal would have heard it.
“What?” Her nose curled as she slowly straightened.
As much as I wanted to rise above it, to not let her words cut me, I could only take so much nasty.
“That you’re not me.”
When the bands in her eyes swirled hard, I knew I’d gotten to her, so I dug in deeper. “It must suck, always wanting what you can’t have. Luc didn’t keep you secret to hurt me.” I laughed, the sound full of dripping contempt. “He kept you secret because you aren’t me.”
Nostrils flaring, her fingers curled into fists and I was drunk on that pain. Lust was loving this. Finally the whore was waking up and I laughed.
“You think I give a fuck who he screws? Luc means nothing to me, you hear me? Nothing. Screw him all you want, make him shout your name...” My fingers began to radiate with the warmth of Pestilence’s energy.
The demon was feeding off my pain, sick bastard. Both my demons were awake and some small yet sane part of me realized this was probably not going to end well for either Vyxen or myself. But I just couldn’t keep from digging the knife in deeper. For years Vyxen had gotten off on hurting me, and now it was my turn.
If I hadn’t already been feeling like crap and in so much pain, I would never have done this, but the demons were awake and my anger was making this pain go away, and I was to drunk on it to care. I grinned at her blank, empty stare.
“And when you touch him, make sure to drag those claws of yours down his back until he bleeds, ‘cause that’s how he really likes it—a little dirty and a whole lot raunchy.”
“You bitch,” she snarled and my body buzzed like a living tuning rod, the gathering energy of Pestilence’s power was building like a sealed steam valve, even Lust was joining in on this, her heat throbbing through my pores.
The pheromones Lust gave off that caused anything living to notice me forced Vyxen’s eyes to stay glued to mine. Her breathing was ragged and heavy and I could sense that she was completely enthralled. My entire body began to glow green, just like it had when the zombies attacked.
“What the hell is happening to you?” Her eyes widened in shock.
“Power, Vyxen—raw, visceral power. You don’t know who you’re screwing with, little girl, so don’t even try.”
Her eyes no longer glowed, they sparked, and I knew the second her crazy mind decided to take what was mine.
“Vyxen, don’t!” I screamed the instant she clamped her hands to my arms, sucking my energy dry.
But it was too late, and the only thing to do now was to ride out the aftermath.