Fairy Tales (Queer Magick Book 2) Read online

  “You’re drunk,” he said, breaking the kiss suddenly.

  “Not enough to make this kind of mistake,” I muttered, pulling him back. He seemed hesitant but I needed him full throttle again, even if all he had to give was the same hatred that had twisted into the lust that was fueling me. I shifted so I was the one pinning him and he seemed to relax, returning the kiss in earnest once more, our tongues sliding across each other, the taste of him washing out the stale beer and metallic blandness that kept me from truly tasting anything other than the stuff Locke dealt.

  He broke the kiss, but this time, he made his way down to my neck, his hands traveling up underneath my shirt. His skin felt so smooth and warm and mine so...dead. I shivered as his fingers ran up along my spine, and it was the first human response I’d had in so long that my eyes welled with tears and I buried my hands in his golden hair because I needed him closer. It didn’t matter what he wanted from me. Some things never changed.

  What he was doing to my neck was already unwinding me. He’d lick and he’d suck and he’d nip with those impossibly sharp teeth and then, when I was at the end of my resolve, he’d pull back, drawing the strings tighter until I felt ready to snap. He was on top of me again, somehow, his breath cool and seductive on my neck.

  “Dennis,” I groaned as he slipped his hand further up my shirt.

  “You said my name,” he purred in my ear, his voice low and husky. Heat surged to my cock in response. I usually had a hard time even thinking about sex when it had been this long since I’d fed, but it seemed that Dennis, as always, was capable of manipulating me in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. “I wonder what else I could make you say.”

  Anything. Just don’t stop touching me. I was desperate enough to think it, but not quite enough to say it, if only because I was far past the point of intelligible speech. He hadn’t even touched me yet, not the way I needed him to.

  His other hand slipped into my hair, gripping tightly as he bent his head and sank his teeth in deep. Panic surged along with memories of that night, in his office. He’d bitten me then, too, broken the skin and taken my blood, but I had forgotten. I’d walked out of his office in a daze and blamed it all on rage, not remembering what he’d done. I should have been irate, I should have thrown him off me, but I didn’t. Having his body pressed to mine, warm and close and familiar in all the most painful, wonderful ways was too good, too much to stop it now. I knew he wasn’t human, and vampire certainly hadn’t been my first guess, but I should have figured.

  I hadn’t thought about it much at all, or let myself, if I was being honest. But I wasn’t being honest. I was already indulging the lie that the man in my arms--the one feeding on my blood as I clutched him, desperate for more--was the same man I’d fallen in love with. What was a little blood between mortal enemies?

  He pulled away and looked down at me, his eyes filled with confusion and fiery red with bloodlust. The sight of it sent me into something like shock, but I needed the sensations he was stirring too much to succumb to it completely. There was blood that matched his irises on his lips and I knew I was twisted beyond redemption when the sight of it made me harder.

  I was two seconds away from putting my pathetic pleading into words when the confusion on his face turned to agony. He coughed, pressing a hand to his mouth as he rose off me. Blood started coming back up his throat, spraying through his fingers. He gasped like he was having a hard time breathing, and when he clutched his chest, I started wondering in terror whether it was even possible to perform CPR on a vampire.

  When he collapsed, I knew I had to try. I tried to roll him over but he pushed me away with such force that I was nearly knocked to the floor. He was coughing blood and scotch onto the carpet I’d bought to cover up Holden’s failed summoning rituals the week he’d been stuck at my place and I could only watch in helpless, useless horror.

  “Don’t,” he choked, holding out his hand to keep me back. “Don’t touch me.”

  “I’m trying to help. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Your blood,” he gasped. He seemed to finally be able to breathe, but he was still an unnatural ashen shade. I couldn’t be sure if it was just my shitty lighting or not, or the glow of the TV screen I hadn’t bothered to switch off after the last game I’d played, but it looked like he was turning blue.

  “Locke!” I cried. I knew I was fucked if I was desperate enough to call for the demon. He was always around when I least wanted him, so I figured it was worth a shot to try and hope that he might come when I actually needed him.

  One moment, I was watching Dennis struggle for breath, the next, Locke was standing next to me. “You really know how to kill a weekend, don’t you?” the demon asked, looking boredly at Dennis.

  “Help him,” I hissed.

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “You raised me from the dead, figure something out!”

  Locke eyed Dennis doubtfully and sniffed the air. “He drank your blood.” It was a statement more than a question.

  “Yes, he fucking drank my blood and he’s been like that ever since, can you help him or not?”

  “I can,” he announced, his cat eyes narrowing to slits. “But it’ll cost you.”

  “Of course it will,” I said through gritted teeth. “Just do it.”

  Locke knelt and grabbed Dennis’ blood-stained chin, gazing apathetically into the eyes of the dying man. It wasn’t just my imagination. Dennis was turning a light, hazy sheen of blue that seemed to roil and glimmer like fog in the dim light.

  Okay, so vampires did glitter. Never thought that would a bet I’d lose.

  Locke leaned in to kiss Dennis’ bloody lips and his wheezing stopped. His chest expanded and he broke away from Locke, falling to the floor with a ragged gasp. Dennis was still clutching his chest, but Locke pulled away and announced, “He’ll be fine.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  “I’m an incubus,” he announced for the second time. He’d yet to clarify what that actually meant. “I take souls with sex, I heal with sex, I make deals with sex. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed a pattern by now.”

  “Right,” I muttered. “Why the fuck did that happen when he drank my blood? What is he?”

  “Nope. No questions. One favor’s enough for the night,” Locke said, booping my nose. “And next time, use the sigil. I won’t always be within earshot.”

  With that, Locke disappeared and by the time I had turned back to Dennis, he was gone, too. Getting a straight answer from anyone in Stillwater had always been a chore, but this was getting ridiculous.

  I spent the rest of the evening sobering up while I angrily scrubbed the blood off my floor, which was becoming a habit. At least it was a distraction from the disastrous turn my night had taken. Son of a bitch, I really couldn’t get laid if my life depended on it. Good thing I didn’t have one anymore.

  Two

  HOLDEN

  “What did you do?” I demanded as Locke sprawled across my bed to flip through the pages of a magazine I didn’t even subscribe to.

  He had been out all night and I didn’t care that I was acting like an overprotective parent with someone I couldn’t even stand. He had barely given Nick and I any time alone over the last month now that his big construction project across town was complete. It had been nonstop needling, whining, pressuring and threatening, anything Locke thought would work to get me to agree to move in with him. Unfortunately for him, his desperation had tipped me off to the fact that if he could force me to move, he would have.

  It was an important lesson, and the only part of our infernal contract that worked to my advantage. It all hinged on free will. Locke had reluctantly admitted that he couldn’t force me to do anything, just like he hadn’t been able to force me into working with him in the first place. The fact that Daniel was undead was proof that Locke was willing to do whatever it took to get around that contractual restriction and manipulate me into doing his bidding, so I com
plied with his whims most of the time, but not with this.

  Demons gave away more in what they didn’t say, and I knew from the way Locke had obsessed over every detail of the project without blathering on about it like he did about everything else, this was important. I also knew that the moment he got what he wanted and I moved into whatever gaudy structure he’d erected in the middle of the woods, it would be the event that set the slow ride to the apocalypse into motion. I had to hold off, if only to give the others more time before his ritual began.

  I really knew something was up if Locke was ignoring me when I’d scarcely gotten a moment’s peace all week. Until whatever the hell had happened last night, at any rate. “I asked you a question.”

  “Yes, I heard,” he replied casually, folding back the page in his magazine. “My turn. If you could only date one celebrity ever, would you pick John Rals, Matthew Smith or DJ Rakesh? I think I’d pick Matthew, but only so I could marry him, divorce him and take his penthouse…”

  I snatched the magazine from his hands and flung it across the room. It was always a dangerous game to play, baiting Locke’s temper, but I knew he needed me alive to complete the ritual and I had reached my limit of tolerance with him. Nick was at work and he seemed as fine as he ever did, and I had seen patients coming in and out of Daniel’s office that morning, so I knew he was okay in his own way. I still hadn’t heard from Dennis, but he was usually in Burlington over the weekends and he rarely answered his phone during the day. Still, I knew Locke had done something, and I really was out of options if I was willing to stoop to asking him directly.

  “I know you didn’t just disappear for no reason last night. You’ve been up my ass about this stupid house all month, so what is it?”

  “You exaggerate,” he said, standing only to disappear and pop up sitting on my counter across the studio apartment we shared. “I need your V-card intact for the ritual, remember? Nothing’s going up there unless the stars are properly aligned.”

  I grimaced. “I know you did something. Just tell me what it is.”

  “You’re awfully demanding for someone who doesn’t have any leverage.”

  “Don’t I?” I cocked an eyebrow. “I’m your Whore of Babylon and you don’t have an understudy. The way I see it, I could just go out now and fuck some random guy and you’d be shit out of luck.”

  He disappeared again and this time, he was standing in front of me when I turned around, cornering me against the wall. His green eyes were hard and cold and entirely devoid of the mischief that usually shone within them.

  “Listen, you ungrateful brat,” he seethed, tilting my chin up with a pointed black nail that seemed to lengthen and dig into my neck. “I let you have the degree of freedom you’ve enjoyed up until this point because I’m a generous soul, but don’t mistake my lenience for weakness for one second of your fleeting human existence. If I have to lock you up or fit you with an iron chastity belt, I will, and if you keep acting entitled to an account of my comings and goings, I will take great pleasure in doing so. Do I make myself clear, little witch?”

  I swallowed and his sharp nail broke the outer layer of flesh. “Crystal.”

  “Good,” he said brightly, his entire demeanor shifting as he drew his finger into his mouth and sucked off the blood. “Mmh. Once you’ve had time to marinate in magic for a few more centuries, you’re going to make a delicious meal.”

  I shuddered. I was still holding out hope that all his talk of eating me was just another example of his twisted humor. “Please just tell me they’re not going to find another body in the river with its skull cracked open.”

  “That was thirty miles from here. You think I’m so lazy I’d hunt in the same state to keep your side piece’s ex well-fed?”

  “I’m not even going to pretend like I understood that.”

  “No one died. As a matter of fact, I saved a life last night,” he said proudly.

  “At what cost to the owner of said life’s soul?”

  “Must you always assume the worst of me?”

  “You did kill Daniel to manipulate me into giving you my soul, so it’s a fair question.”

  “Hm. I suppose it is, but this time, the answer is nothing. I did it as a favor for a friend.”

  “You have friends? Mrs. Marrin doesn’t count, considering she only knows cat-you.”

  “Old women and cats. It’s a thing,” he said with a shrug, pouring himself a glass of my wine. “And I have other friends, you know.”

  “Like who?”

  “Daniel, for one thing.”

  “Daniel is your fuck buddy. There’s a difference, even I know that.”

  He scowled. “I have others.”

  “Other friends you haven’t fucked?”

  He opened his mouth to answer and I added, “Or who haven’t fucked you.”

  He shut his mouth.

  The phone rang and I lunged for it, but Locke beat me there. “Hello, Adams residence, home of the great harlot himself. Locke speaking, can I take a message? Oh, Dennis,” he purred, leaning on the counter as he twirled a strand of bone-white hair around his finger. “How are you feeling after last night?”

  My eye twitched. It was becoming a tic and Locke was the trigger. I knew he was just trying to get under my skin by implying that he’d slept with my sort-of boyfriend, but I had been struggling to find an excuse to let Dennis down easy ever since things had gotten more serious with Nick. Short of tossing him and Daniel into a room and breaking off the doorknob, it was hard to think of a way I could have been more obvious about it, but sometimes I got the feeling Dennis was willfully ignorant when it was convenient for him. He was too smart for there to be any other explanation.

  “Sure, sure. Here he is,” Locke said, passing the phone to me. “It’s your other lover boy. The one with the better job.”

  I snatched the phone from his hand and took a deep breath. “Dennis. Hi. I’m so sorry about that, you know how my cousin is. There’s one in every family.”

  Locke thrust his middle finger up at me. It wasn’t a great cover, but it had been the only one I could come up with when Dennis had dropped by unannounced to bring me an office plant a client had given him and witnessed my “cat” lounging around in hot pants. I still wasn’t sure if they were hot pants or just long briefs, but either way, I didn’t want Dennis thinking I had a random sex partner when he and I had yet to get to third base.

  Dennis chuckled, but he sounded tired. “Locke is quite a character, isn’t he?”

  I turned around so I couldn’t see him getting undressed to go into the shower. He was showing off unnecessarily, and I was pretty sure he could just twitch his nose and be clean if he wanted to. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much, I’m just feeling a bit under the weather, and I was wondering if you’d hate me terribly if I had to reschedule our date?”

  “Date?” I fumbled through my desk for my calendar. As a witch, I always knew what moon phase it was, but days of the week were a mystery. “Right. Yeah, dinner at Shea’s, of course.”

  “You forgot, didn’t you?”

  “I did. I’m so sorry, Dennis. Between Locke visiting and the surge in orders ever since Carla had my shop featured in that… WASP magazine, I’ve been pretty disorganized.” He didn’t need to know about all the Magick 101 training Locke was putting me through to get me “up to par” to be his witch.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m calling to reschedule anyway, after all.” He meant it, too. That was the problem with Dennis. He was so fucking nice and understanding. I still had feelings for him, but my feelings for Nick were developing so much faster and he was someone who could actually handle the supernatural shitstorm my life was about to turn into. Unlike Dennis, Nick had signed up for it--literally. He wouldn’t tell me exactly what agreement he and Locke had come to, but the two of them had formed a tentative alliance to keep me safe, and I knew that the longer I kept things going with Dennis, the more he would end up on Locke’s radar. That was nev
er a good thing, but since my desire to avoid socially awkward situations far exceeded my ability to be a decent person, I had just settled for hoping that Dennis would come to realize what a shitty boyfriend I was and dump me himself.

  But he didn’t. He understood.

  “Make it up to you next week?” I offered. “There’s um, something I needed to talk to you about anyway.”

  “Sounds good,” he said in a tone that made it clear he had no idea this was going to be a breakup date. Knowing me, I’d find a way to drag it out another few months. Because I was just nice enough to be a complete dick. “I’ll call you later in the week and we’ll set something up.”

  “Y-yeah. Hope you feel better soon.”

  “I appreciate that. Goodnight, Holden, and tell Locke I said...well, goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” I mumbled. When I looked up, Locke was silhouetted in a plume of steam, a towel barely wrapped around his waist, revealing every inch of his perfectly toned body. He looked so willowy in clothes, it was easy to forget how muscular he was. I realized I was gawking, but by the time I found his eyes, it was too late. They were positively twinkling.

  “Enjoying the peepshow?”

  “Please,” I scoffed, turning back to the plants I’d been pruning before Locke showed up after going MIA all night. “As far as sexual objects go, you and the toaster are on the same level.”

  “Because we both make things pop up?” he asked innocently.

  “Do you ever think about anything besides sex?”