Page 19 of Speak No Evil
As we make our way north through the center of the city, the scent of blood and desire thickens, and I can’t help thinking about opening Jade’s lovely skin to make her bleed for me. And the straps I strung her up with as Vrahs interrogated her.
Oh, the beautiful noises she made, brow creased with equal parts ecstasy and agony.
My pants grow tight across the front, and I redirect my thoughts to something less... stimulating.
Vrahs roars next to me, stopping in his tracks. His pupils are pinpricks of black, gaze far off.
“What’s wrong, brother?” I ask, daring to touch his arm as an anchor.
Vrahs’s knees buckle. He would have gone to the ground if Thorne and I hadn’t caught him.
We share a single terrified glance over Vrahs’s bowed head.
Vrahs takes a breath and, with a quiet, small voice so unlike him, says three words that make my blood run cold. “They’re torturing her.”
An icy sheet of calm flows over me as my thoughts fall into order, calculating the next move to find Jade and turn her abuser into a quivering, bloody mass of bone and pulp.
“How much farther?” I growl at the cat.
He turns to face a modest, two-story office building, tail straight in the air, quivering like a rattlesnake’s.She’s in there.
The three of us stare at the building for several moments and I feel—
Vrahs rises and charges the door horns first.
Like a giant red goat.
You might want to...
Chonk’s voice drifts off into what I’d swear on my last hand-carved dildo sounded like quiet laughter.
Instead of sliding open, the automatic doors eject Vrahs several dozen feet backward.
They don’t shatter. They don’t open.
More chittering feline laughter infiltrates my mind as Thorne and I watch our brother skid across the pavement, red ass first.
Vrahs lets out a growl, drawing a few bleary-eyed human gazes, and I allow myself to soak up a portion of his darker emotions. Frustration dances like electric eels fighting under my skin. A white-hot coal of anger sizzles in my middle. But the prevailing emotion I pluck from the air around Vrahs is the oppressive skin-tight cloak of fear. I don’t know if it’s because he’s in his true form or because I don’t have access to my power or something else entirely, but there’s something different about the way Vrahs’s emotions settle in me.
If I were a full incubus, feeding from Vrahs would restore my magic while also relieving him of the weight of his darker feelings. But as it is, I only glean pleasure from siphoning. Hardly a hardship, but less than useful in this situation.
As I was saying, the building is warded, so you might want to wait until I’ve untangled the spells. Although I do love watching you plow headlong into an immovable object.
Chonk - 1, Vrahs - 0.
Vrahs growls at Chonk, and Chonk hisses right back. I can’t help but snicker at the cat’s sardonic wit.
“Since when can you unmake wards, cat?” Thorne asks.
Suspicion and cynicism roll off him in waves. I don’t usually partake in such things, but I let the jagged edges of the twin emotions flow into me this time because I honestly can’t think of a reason not to let every sumptuous emotion in.
And once I crack that door, there’s no room for second-guessing.
Since when can I unmake wards? I might ask you since when do you bother with such banal questions, demon?
Oh, nice. That’s another point for Chonk.
“Since my mate’s life is on the line, that’s when.”