Shadowglass (10 page)

He sucked harder, dizzying, and pushed his fingers deeper into my willing flesh. My head swam, drunk. The thudding music faded, distant, hiding behind the inescapable thrust of my pulse. His body tensed against my back, mirroring my own reaction as my excitement grew. My wings twitched against him, tight and sore. His cock swelled, hard like glass in the cleft of my ass, and I wanted to purr. If he’d lifted my skirt and buried himself deep, I couldn’t have cared less.

This monster was swallowing my blood. It hurt like poison. I didn’t care. I just wanted the sensation, here and now. Not tomorrow or consequences or cost. Just now. Me and him, this rapturous agony that made me feel alive.

Abruptly, his teeth ripped from my flesh, stinging hard. Blood splashed my dress, shimmering silver in naked strobe lights. I blinked, groggy. “Huh? What?”

His hand slipped from me, leaving me hot and empty. “Fuck. Sorry, man. Didn’t know she was one of yours. No disrespect.” And he slurped and melted away from me.

Dizziness dissolved my thoughts to mush. I realized that bodies no longer crushed around me, that a distinct space separated me from the crowd on all sides. Either my dancing had scared everyone off, or . . .

Icy fingers fastened around my wrist, and too late I smelled storm clouds.

Hard demon body, cold against my back where the vampire had grown so wonderfully warm. Bumps tweaked my skin, and I shivered, dismayed. His hellweird voice quivered my eardrums, soft yet audible in the din. “You’ve something that belongs to me, strawberry girl.”

Rust-stained glass flashed and jolted in my memory. I tried to yank away, knowing my strength was useless. But he let me go, and I spun around, off balance, jerking my wings to hold me upright. “What did you go and do that for? I mean, nice knowing you and everything, but—”

“You’re welcome.” Kane stared at me, beautiful and impassive as ever, and stretched out an elegant finger to wipe blue blood from the gash in my throat.

I squirmed under his black gaze. His cold finger on my raw flesh was more than I wanted of him. “I’m sorry, did I misunderstand? Didn’t you just piss me off?”

“For keeping you alive.” As if I hadn’t spoken. “You don’t really want to die, Ice. You’re just bored.”

“Whatever. Just leave me alone, okay?” Dizziness swirled pleasantly in my skull, and I laughed, light-headed. I felt glassy and bright inside, like I’d polished myself. Twenty bucks got me a better high than I’d anticipated.

He rubbed my blood between his fingertips, watching it sparkle in smoky rainbow lights, and smiled. “Looked into my glass, didn’t you?”

“Dunno what you’re on about.” But hot anxious fingers scraped in my guts, and I wiped my bleeding neck. It wouldn’t stop. I wiped it again, smearing my palm with warm inky wetness. So much blood. Not counting what had ended up in sweetheart’s mouth.

My pulse cracked into a gallop, and my newfound courage fizzed away like snowflakes. Hot terror flooded my skin. Fuck. He drank my blood. My fucking blood. He could have infected me. I could have died. What the hell was I thinking? Nausea dripped down my throat, and I stumbled, my high heels scraping my ankles raw.

Kane caught me, freshly sharp claws cruel on my elbow. He dragged ash-coated lips to my ear, his voice grating like razors. “You took my mirror. Where is it?”

Blue sparks showered from his hair, and ash crackled hot on the tops of my breasts, smearing in blood and sweat. Smoke wisped. My skin wriggled in disgust. I wanted it off, but I didn’t dare wipe it away. I gulped, my lungs tight. “Dunno. Got rid of it. Nasty thing.”

“You can’t get rid of my mirror, Ice. It gets rid of you.”

My stomach sloshed with briny fear. Blaze was right. The squidgy had poisoned us.

All my fault.

I stopped struggling, and Kane’s grip loosened to a caress. He didn’t have to fight. He knew he had me.

Slowly, I swallowed, and rested my temple on his forehead, searching for some small comfort I didn’t understand. My lips trembled. “What’s happening to me?”

He didn’t pull away. He didn’t care enough to be unsympathetic. He smiled, his charcoal breath evil on my cheek. “My mirror magnifies desire. It lets you be who you really want to be.” He sniffed my cheek delicately, and with a burning flush I remembered him licking me there, everywhere, pinning my wrists to the sheet, his body light and warm on me, inside me, making me come. Dark loathing crusted my heart like rust, but he wouldn’t let go. “So many regrets because you’re so afraid. All those delights you’ll never taste, because you shouldn’t. My mirror consumes
shouldn’t
, Ice. Think about the potential. No more conscience, and your best effort is to have some grubby little insect suck out your life? Surely there’s something you want more than that?”

I trembled against his searing lips, my vision shimmering blue with tears. Something I wanted more? I didn’t want any of this. I’d fought with my friends, wrecked our con game, almost broken our most sacred rule. Not to mention those icky suicidal impulses from a moment ago.

Disgust and belated terror mixed a watery mess in my stomach. Christ, I’d be dead if not for Kane.

And demons won’t even spit on you for free.

So now I owed him. Inevitability scoured my skin like sandpaper. I owed a demon. How the hell did that happen?

I shuddered in his half embrace, too afraid to look him in the eye. “What do you want from me?”

“I want my mirror back. Do that, and I’ll cure you. Even though you deserve everything you’ve made, you little liar.” His eyes grew distant, like I’d hurt him.

Shoulda known it wouldn’t be that simple. But hope crawled in my bones, humiliating, and it was all I could do not to fall to my knees and beg for his help. “You can cure me? Really?”

He shrugged, his silken suit raw against my skin. “That’s what I said.”

He wasn’t exactly filling me with confidence. “But . . . I gave it away. It could be anywhere by n—”

“Soon, strawberry girl. If you want to survive much longer.” He brushed ashen lips on my cheek and wandered off. Calm, unfluttered. Infuriating.

Music exploded back into my ears, shudderingly loud. I shook myself frantically and rubbed my cheek, trying to shed any remnants of his touch, his beautiful scent, that feral ash that followed wherever he went. Around me, dancers forgot he’d been there and closed in, closer, closer until no space remained between them and me.

Fear smothered me like wet cotton wool, fighting the horrible alien exuberance that already bubbled again under my skin, threatening to betray me. My treacherous nerves tingled, and I tried to calm them with deep breaths, but my lungs hurt, my limbs quivering and jerking like an angry caged rat.

Hands brushed me, bodies pressed against me, hair and nails and fragrant sweat trailed over my skin, and my pulse dissolved in rapture. I loved it. I wanted to jump, twist, dance until I dropped, strip off my skimpy clothes and bathe naked in this wonderful sultry air, the warm wetness of random pleasure.

My hands shook, and tears rippled my vision, underwater blue. If I stayed here, I’d do something stupid. Attract the wrong guy and get wired to a streetlight and fairyslashed for my trouble. Pick a fight with a speed-crazed banshee or some gangster’s human squeeze and get my ass kicked to mango pulp.

Give my blood to a vampire and die, just because it might feel good.

Terror stained my soul black, and I ran.

Tripping, stumbling against hard sweaty bodies, heedless of my wings, sliding on wobbly ankles until the dance floor was gone and I fumbled in green neon solitude, my sweat-drenched reflection flashing in a wall of spooky mirrors.

The warm dimness soothed my agitated pulse. Beside me a pale human boy with bruised wrists and a metal-spiked banshee in a white vinyl catsuit swooned against the glass, kissing, their bodies slicking together in a rain of sweaty pink hair, her long blue nails slicing delicate cuts into his skinny rib cage. Another death wish cousin. I swallowed tart sickness and turned away.

I looked strange in the glass, oddly shaped, not quite right. My reflection was still bleeding, the dark blue mess stark against my green-lit skin, the creature’s teethmarks already bruising black. My hair clotted in it, rude orange locks stained dark, the rough pin-up job I did at home tumbling out in untidy hanks. A creeping ache still tore at my throat and clawed down into my back. What the hell was I thinking?

I pressed my hot cheek against the cool glass, and it sizzled. My fingerpads stuck, and my palm prints smeared blood and sweat, lustful moisture still sore in my lungs. My tears washed the glass blue, and I whimpered, my breath steaming in wisps. Guilty pulse thudded in my throat. Me and shiny things. Why’d I have to look? Why couldn’t I just keep my stupid fingers to myself?

A tall shadow tinted the glass black, and my skin shivered at that metaldark scent. “Ice? Are you . . . Is everything okay?”

W
rapped in sultry shadow beneath the mezzanine, Akash watches Kane walk away from the yellow girl. Sensation crawls under his skin, unpleasant but compelling, and Akash labels it apprehension and savors it like fruity nectar. Delectable. His favorite so far is longing, that sweet hot pain deep inside that makes him shiver, but that one’s fickle and hard to come by.

Kane spears a swift dark glance around as he leaves, and Akash ducks back into darkness, for all the good it’ll do. Though if the demon can smell him, he’s giving no sign.

He scrapes his dark hair back for the hundredth time, just to feel his stolen body move. The physical rewards are constant yet shifting, depending on fatigue, hunger, sensory arousal, and mood. The effects are countless. He’s used to uniformity, predictability, sameness. Fascinating.

Fascinating, too, this yellow person Kane threatens. Akash remembers her from last night, on Kane’s lap with pleasure sighing from her lips. Akash can’t hear their present conversation, but a demon either threatens or seduces, and she doesn’t look seduced, not this time; her face loses color and denial glazes her honey-gold eyes.

Akash knows honey. They have honey at home, and it’s the color of her eyes, though they’re flashed now with rainbow lights like starfire. He knows seduction, too, because he’s watched it here, watched them play and tease and give each other pleasure, reluctant or eager or disgusted. He’s getting better at copying their expressions, figuring out what they mean. Seduction looks like color and warm sweat and hot breath, and this yellow person exhibits none of those.

“She looks afraid.” Beside him, Indra strokes a finger along her thigh, watching the skin bumps rise. She’s still wearing the short leather skirt. She likes it.

So does Akash. He’s never thought about what she’s wearing before.

“Yes. Well done.” His eyes swivel back to the yellow one, and he’s oddly pleased by the way his gaze lingers on her. She means something to Kane, even if it’s only as a minion. He fingers his necklace, the skulls pleasantly warm and angular on his fingertips.

“And sad. The water on her face means sad. Or angry.”

“Yes.” Indra does well. She’s already begun their collection as he ordered. He needs to examine these creatures, figure out how Kane exerts such power over them. They have a warehouse a few city blocks away to hold their specimens for interrogation and experiment. Separate boxes to keep them clean, one of each if possible. He wonders if the colors matter. “That one knows about Kane. She could be useful. Do we have a yellow one, Indra?”

“Not yet.” Indra licks her finger. “Salt.”

That tickles his interest. “Really?”

She offers it to him, with a passable happy smile. Lips curled, eyes bright, brows slightly raised. She, too, has practiced facial expressions. “Try it.”

Something inside his body tightens, like he’s tied with invisible cord. He takes her wrist and slides her fingertip between his lips. Her skin glides across his teeth. Vibration tingles his mouth. Interesting sensation. He licks her finger. Her skin is smooth, and bright salty tang tweaks the very tip of his tongue. Delicious. He lets his lips close around her painted fingernail, and on impulse he pulls with his tongue and her finger slides into his mouth up to the knuckle.

His tongue stings, aroused, and hot sensation stabs deep into his blood.

Swiftly she pulls away, her face changing color. “Don’t. It is not permitted.”

Akash swallows, licking the raw spot on his lips where her finger passed. He shifts, compelled, and movement is uncomfortable. Her human taste still fires in his mouth, the rapid hot delight of it making him wonder if he’s broken some hidden rule. He tries to speak and finds his throat dry. “What is not permitted?”

“It.” Indra looks away and sticks her finger out to let it dry.

Akash stares into the crowd, but he’s not seeing anything. He concentrates on his body, memorizing every last flush and tingle of this new sensation. He wonders if they all feel like this, so wild and uncertain and eager. It would be easy to forget purpose, feeling like this. Easy to discard higher things and wallow in wet sensory gluttony.

Understanding washes him, warm, and he laughs, the smoky air and rippling muscles pleasant inside his chest.

Sensation is the key to Kane’s power.

Feed them with heat and sex and substances until their minds weaken. Clever, this sneaky demon lord. Far cleverer than Akash’s masters supposed. Shadow told Akash this would be an easy victory. Shadow was mistaken.

It doesn’t seem possible. But it’s true. Shadow was wrong. Akash must adapt.

But how to fight Kane, when he lures their souls so powerfully? How to defeat an enemy who gives the creatures exactly what they want?

“There she goes. Look.” Indra nudges him, cautious.

“What?” He blinks, distracted. The yellow woman wobbles past him, blind with tears and rage.

“Unhappy.” Indra confirms her diagnosis.

“Kane did not please her.”

“Why not? He is a demon. The prince of lies. Is it possible—?”

“—That he failed to convince her?” Akash frowns.

“Possible. Not likely.”

“Then it is she who refuses to please him.” Akash thinks hard, the electricity pumping in his brain tickling. “She disobeys him. This may be a weakness. We shall find out. Come.” He takes Indra’s hand, the contact a pleasant flush of warmth, and together they follow.