In Pursuit of Prey: Of Gods and Consorts, Book 1 (8 page)

Dropping the drapery against the heat, I close myself off from all the worlds like I wish I could close my heart off from one single man.
 

I plunge into the shadows of my Temple. The light of my eyes reflects from the magickal seals on the hidden niche in my wall. A potion so strong I keep it hidden, even from myself. The only time the seals are visible is in times of need. Apparently, my magick recognizes heartache as the ultimate need. I pass a hand over the seals, whisper an incantation and the façade covering the niche falls away.

A single bottle sits within, carved of a ghostly white, nearly translucent alabaster, its sacred contents similar to no other. Contained within are the waters of Nun, the primal void from which all life sprang. I save that holy water only for rituals that blend past and present, loss and love.
 

Power vibrates through the stone when I slip my fingertip through the ring of the neck and carry it to my cabinet. There, I retrieve a black bowl carved from solid onyx. I carry these to my sacrificial altar and pour the sacred waters into the bowl to scry its depths.

I breathe my power on the surface. Then, whisper magick charms and wave my hand over the bowl’s edges.
 

“Show me my soul mate.”
 

Blurring my mind, I focus my vision on an indeterminate point in its depths. My hands cup the bowl’s edge, the water’s vibration thrumming in the stone. I blend my magick to it, then force my red light into the depths with savage intent. My reflection bounces back, distorted, eyes flaring like liquid flame.
 

“Show me,” I command. A low purr takes up in my chest.
 

The surface clouds at first, blood and fog in the black night of the bowl, then it snaps into a vibrant image.
 

Mace sits on a divan, picking out a tune on his guitar. His voice, full of siren power, pulls at me from out of time and rides the tide of our shared heartbreak. I lean in, focusing my power, losing myself to my realm to become in tune with the vision. Lyrics burble from the depths of the bowl, watery and unclear at first, then clarifying, until I can hear him sing as if he were onstage again, and I in the crowd.

Beauty in the burning

Her eyes of liquid flame

Beauty in the burning

This broken heart to tame

His loss, his regret ring in the words, chimes on the cord in my soul only he can strike. Amplified by the holy waters, everything comes through, his voice, his emotions, his beautiful image. A true, undeniable emotion exists in him—despite his physical response, Mace loves me.

“This broken heart to tame,” I echo.

A tear wells up and plummets, disrupting the surface of the water, and unwittingly begins a process I cannot reverse. The vision wavers and dissolves, but the truth of the moment settles into my heart. A sweet, sweet pain I savor.
 

He loves me.
 

I saw it on his face, felt it in his song.
 

I love him too.

And with that simple truth, my ultimate decision is made.
 

My prey is injured. Whichever death is required to join him, I will commit it.

Magick pulses with my heartbeat through the stone sides of the bowl. It melds and tugs on the power in my palms as I carry it to the door of my Temple. Once more, I step outside through the magick portal and into the modern desert wasteland. Heat oppresses my flesh, stings my eyes.
 

I will suffer it all and more to be with him.

Sunlight blares from the water’s surface when I raise the bowl. The holy waters pour down my face, my hair, my neck. I smooth the waters through my hair, then wipe them down my body, rubbing it into my feet and hands. Tilting my head back, I call on the powers of Nun, chant words of permanent possibility.
 

Powers more ancient than my own swirl in glittering halos around me. The lights rip and drag and pull from me my sacred leonine form, until two complete Sekhmets stand within the ring. I spin the bowl, curve up and crash it down over the anamorphic form, shoving it from existence.
 

I shall be the lion-headed goddess no more.

Leaving this realm is too easy. I scarcely belong here anymore. With the thought of returning to Mace, my body turns to mist, seeps through the puddle of Nun waters on the sand and disappears…

An unwelcoming, familiar energy skates my nerves when I crash into Mace’s time and into the room I’d seen in the scrying bowl. I spin to see a horrid sight, one I’d thought never to repeat in my immortal existence.
 

A succubus crouching over my mate, feet on his chest, trapping him in sleep paralysis. A dark aura circles her, filled with thin needle-like threads digging closer and closer to his skin.

We’ve run over this ground before. Isfet, chaos itself, seems bent on crossing our paths over and over, drawing us to the same man. Passion and pain, giving and taking—this bitch and I have constantly butted heads since my ancient days. But Mace is mine. And after what I’ve sacrificed, I will not allow her to ruin it. I bristle. Hackles I no longer have rise and prickle in the skin of my human neck.
 

“Naami!”

Her head pops up. A demon tail falls from her short skirt. Her high-heeled shoes morph into clawed talons, and her face is a mix of demon and human when she looks at me. The one thing missing is surprise on her angular features.

“I wondered when you would show up.” For Naami, possession is the only law. As if to emphasize, she pushes the clawtip of each toe into Mace’s skin. “I smelled you all over him the other night.”

Her bravado is short-lived. She hisses in pain. Foul stink and smoke rise from her toes, and Naami jerks her claws back out. Now the tattoos make perfect sense. They are his subconscious trying to protect him from soul-sucking predators like Naami. They create a map of protection, keeping away those who would take what he doesn’t willingly give.

Still, she squats on him, eyeing me, her black aura buzzing in greed and hate.

“He asked for me,” she lies. “I told him I could take his hurt away and erase you from his life.” She strokes a hand with unnaturally long claws over his face, not scratching him, but threatening me with it all the same. “His last thought before sleep? Me.”

“You will leave him now, succubus,” I command, “or I will make you leave this realm entirely.”

“Oh,” she sighs, “I think not.”

Her fingernail grazes his cheek, leaves a bloody welt on its way to his throat.

“Get off my man!” I roar. I may not be lion anymore, but I kept all its power.

“Who’s sitting on him?” She waggles one claw at me, keeping the other above his throat. “Possession is everything. And I will have his life. His siren essence is so much more powerful than his human blood. But I will have it either way.”

Her black threads scrape his skin everywhere.

And I can’t allow that.

Snarling, I fling myself at the succubus. She grunts when I slam into her, and then we pitch over the side of the divan and crash onto the floor.
 

“I had him first,” she barks, snapping her jagged teeth at my face. “He’s mine.”

Hot pain tears across the skin of my arm when she slashes her claws across my human flesh. I smack her face in answer. Crimson trickles from her lip, and she smiles. Her eyes roll to completely black, lid to lid, and when she lunges I know this will end in someone’s death.

I fling my arms around her, clenching her scratching, biting demon form to me and pull us into the in-between where Mace won’t be harmed or be aware of the battle for his soul.

Black light surrounds us, muting my all too human sense of direction. The succubus lets out a shriek when I cling to her writhing body and scrabble for a hold on her neck. Her claws swipe and puncture, my blood runs. When she sinks her teeth into my wrist, I find her throat. Grabbing her chin with my captured hand, I drive my other fist into her face. Hot, wet stench fills the void when her nose breaks and gushes blood.
 

Forced to gasp for air, the succubus relinquishes her grip on my wrist. I spin in her arms, slick with my own blood, and clamp both hands around her neck. She writhes and bucks, claws and slams my back with her knees. Pain and hurt flood my human body, her demon ichor setting my skin and vessels afire. Shaking my head, determined to end this cycle, I slide to a sitting position on her chest much like she’s done to her victims. Despite the weakness weighing my limbs, I intend to take her life too, even if it kills me. Mace will be safe from her, either way.

I squeeze until Naami’s cheeks puff and breath whistles. I squeeze until her black eyes bug like insects. I squeeze until I feel all the stolen lives bleed from her.
 

“He’s mine,” I snarl.

Her body goes limp. And the fight leaves mine. I remain upright on the force of my will alone. Soon, Naami’s body will fall to ash and her soul can flee. Channeling my magick into action, I drive her own claws into her chest and tear out her demon’s heart.
 

Struggling to remain conscious, I squeeze her heart too. The chambers burst, and the organ catches fire in my hands. I trap the black blaze in my hands until it dies. With a shudder, her body collapses to a pile of ash.
 

“Hell hath no fury,” I quote Mace.
 

And I have no strength left to return to him. Fever from her tainted blood rages in me. Every cut feels like lines of flame. Breaths shudder in my chest. Two lights—my life and Mace’s connection—circle each other in my soul, repelling the sickness, refusing to succumb. The black of the in-between swallows me.

Chapter Ten

The Prey

Light shines at a really wrong angle, penetrating in red flares through my eyelids. Fire eats at my cheek and sits in stinging puddles in my chest. I’m awake, in pain, and my ass and shoulders are still asleep, feeling pretty numb.

My eyelids drag up like they’re riding over sandpaper. In an instant, I know why my butt and back are dead. I’m on the floor and must’ve been here for a while. The underbelly of the couch stands in front of me, legs pointing at me like accusing fingers. Somehow, I ended up on the rug and the couch on its back, cushions splattered all over the floor.

A hint of flowers and spice tease my sinuses, but an overbearing smoky smell reaches through my nose and tickles my gag reflex. Points of fire scream over my ribs when I move to rub my cheek. My fingers come away coated in crusty blood, and when I look down, two semicircles of red-rimmed puncture marks go through my shirt.

What. The. Fuck?

The drained feeling, plus the smoky stink, add up to a visit by Naami. But the flowers and spice? Was the goddess here?

Then the dream comes crashing back… Naami woke me and crawled on top of my chest. Paralysis spread through me in a cold flush until I lay locked and frozen, begging my lungs and heart to keep working. She cussed and swore and called me everything left of right, and promised she was going to rape me of my memories.
 

The crazy bitch thought she would be helping by erasing the days I’d spent connected to Sekhmet.

Even if the succubus could manage stealing my past instead of my future days, there was no way to dig the blonde bombshell out of my heart. Memories are one thing, the heart is something else.

In the dream Sekhmet appeared, knocked Naami off me and bowled the couch over in the process. I hit the floor, and they vanished.
 

It wasn’t a dream.

I scramble to my feet and look over the toppled piece of furniture. No one there. No evidence of either of them being here except the smell and the cuts on my skin. After hooking a hand over the couch’s corner, I yank the thing back upright, then drop my now pins-and-needling ass to the cushion-less couch.
 

Why did Sekhmet come here? Was she willing to talk? She saw Naami, I reason, so she must understand why I had a hard time with the goddess/divine form/other realm all in one day.

Even now, that’s a lot of otherworld shit to take in.

With my luck, Sekhmet did come to work things out, then saw the succubus on me and flipped to the wrong conclusion. And, being the vengeful goddess she is, got jealous and let it take over. She probably couldn’t stand seeing another woman with me and didn’t want me anymore after seeing it.
 

My cell phone comes alive, doing the mambo across the end table. I snatch it before it lunges over the edge and gets lost in the pillow mess.

The display screen reads
Jazz Watson
.

I push the Talk button, and say, “What’s up, Jazz?”
 

“You have any idea what time it is?” His voice is edgy, sharp like it always is when he’s frustrated. Instruments echoing in the background make my gut turn over. He’s at the sound check. And I’m missing it. “You’re the front man and we can’t check your mics and shit if you aren’t here.”

“Sorry, man.” The couch creaks when I stand. “I’ll grab a shirt and be there in a few.”