Page 16 of Hellish Witch (Playing with Demons #3)

Chapter 15

I ducked beneath the water, scrubbing my hands over my clothes and through my hair. Dark blood swirled through the pale liquid, barely visible even with the penetrating moonlight. I surfaced quickly, drawing in a deep breath.

The cool river left me shivering as my adrenaline waned, but at least I was clean.

My sodden boots squished in the soft mud as I dragged my carcass to the high bank and hauled myself up.

Bloodied bone-kin corpses littered the grass, leading right into the bleeding tree-line set several paces back from the river’s edge. Tufts of once white fur dotted the sparse trunks, thick grass pushing between creeping roots. Glowing wildflowers bloomed in patches between the bodies, already soaking up the nectar of their lifeblood.

Squeezing the excess water from my hair, I finger-combed it out as best I could, knowing full well it was going to dry into frizzy curls rather than the smooth waves I preferred, even though the humidity was still low this time of year.

I peeled up my wet shirt, inspecting my side where the bone-kin had caught me. The wounds were nothing but shallow scratches of red against my pale skin. At least my magic still healed my own wounds.

I let the soggy material slap back down, stifling a cringe because I was meant to be a competent demoness.

My attention drifted to the two creatures I’d almost hurt with my magic.

Alpha sat patiently on the bank, scanning the surrounding forest. Cookie, on the other hand, radiated smug aloofness as she sat on her haunches, licking a paw clean. I stifled a grimace at the dark blood she lapped up.

The feline may trash my cabin like a mischievous pet, but things like this reminded me of what a vicious predator she was. Not only had she clawed several bone-kin to death, biting through their defensive bones like they were twigs, but she didn’t have a single scratch on her.

Just the blood of her victims.

That she was now sipping.

She eyed me, pausing mid-lick just to taunt me. Her dagger-like fangs framed her pink tongue, smeared with inky blood.

“What are you two doing here?” I murmured before offering a sheepish smile. “Not that I’m not grateful for your help.”

Alpha barked, tossing his huge head in the direction he’d come before staring at me pointedly.

I frowned, convinced I could understand the gist of what he was trying to tell me.

But I’d also thought I could take on the Bloodwood alone in the dead of night.

I snorted. “You can go home and tell Zoella one vicious guard dog is enough.”

At least Rex and Zoella hadn’t turned up themselves though.

Cookie let out a rasping purr that was definitely a mocking laugh. I shot her a glare. She stared right back, unblinking.

Shifting towards the hellhound, she flicked her tail, swiping it through the blood soaking Alpha’s wide jaw.

The hellhound snapped at her, but she didn’t even flinch, letting his fangs snap closed a hair from the furred tuft. She stared the great beast down, blood-red eyes swirling ominously bright in the gloom.

Alpha turned his back on her in clear dismissal. He yipped at me, shaking his head sharp enough for his long ears to sway adorably.

“I know, and I’m grateful for your help, and Cookie’s… But I need to do this alone,” I said, my voice dropping to a quiet whisper.

Alpha cocked his head, and jerked his muzzle at the hellcat in question as if to say, “What about her?”

I frowned. “Isn’t she with you?”

A chuffing laugh rumbled from the hellhound.

“Chatting with the beasties of the Bloodwood, kid?” Killian’s amused rasp had me startling.

He stalked from the bleeding trees with a wicked smirk and my pack in hand, the hilt of his dark sword peeking above his shoulder.

I swallowed thickly.

Could I actually understand the furry pair like they were saying things? Maybe some part of my mutt self had an animal affinity. Like Zoella.

I hoped so. Because if not, I was going crazy.

And my fractured psyche was too fragile for another blow.

I grinned wide, baring my fangs. “They’re less irritating than the alternative.”

“Hmmm, if only that were true.” He jerked his chin further along the exposed riverbank, and I followed, pulling a face behind his wings.

Picking my way past the fallen creatures, I tried not to trip on logs at the distracting sight of Killian’s back, the heavy muscles bunching and flexing under the weight of his neatly folded wings with each step, half-hidden by the broadsword resting along his spine.

The wind picked up, the breeze chilling my damp skin. Or at least, that was what I told myself the shiver was for.

The incubus set down my pack beside a fallen log and made quick work of dragging over a bunch of dry branches to stack together.

Alpha prowled over and slammed his dark paw on the ground. Lilac flames burst to life around the black fur. He pressed his paw to the wood, and his hell-fire swallowed the logs, casting an eerie purple glow.

“Thanks, Alpha.” With a relieved smile, I hurried closer to the demonic bonfire, right beside the huge log Killian rested on, my pack by his booted feet.

The hellcat sauntered over too, ignoring us all. She flicked her tail, and the tuft caught alight, stealing the lilac flames from the logs in an impressive trick.

Cookie looked at me and blinked slowly, as if to say, “I am impressive.”

She sat beside Alpha and lifted a paw, licking the enormous claws she’d unsheathed, as if her tail wasn’t softly crackling with deadly fire.

Her red eyes blazed with power, cut through with vertical pupils of the darkest night. Her fur absorbed the light until she was more shadow than creature. Long fangs threatened to rip out the throat of anyone stupid enough to get close to the beast.

I dug around inside my battered pack until my fingers closed around a small wax-lined pouch. I pulled it free, holding my leathery prize aloft. “Ah, here it is!”

Killian quirked a brow, kicking one ankle over the other as he leaned back on the log. His wings hadn’t been dunked in the river long enough to become fully waterlogged, but they’d still dried a little fluffier than usual, warmed by the pretty lilac flames before us.

The incubus looked like a demon at one with nature, relaxing in the great outdoors like he hadn’t almost died half an hour ago. Some of the deeper claw-marks still wept blood, but most had stopped.

I made my way over, gripping my salve bag tight. A frisson of nerves cascaded through me at the thought of laying my hands on Killian.

He barely looked up at my approach but widened his thighs as if I were going to stand between his muscular legs. At the last second, I chickened out, plonking myself down on the bark next to him. I fumbled with the pouch, dunking two fingers in and scooping out the cool paste. It tingled against my fingertips as I brought it to the first gash on Killian’s forearm, trying not to let the silver chains wrapping his forearms in ink mesmerise me beyond concentration.

It didn’t work. And all I could think about was how much they’d flexed when he held me down in my dream.

Every second crawled by as I desperately clung to the most unsexy thoughts I could summon while rubbing in the medicine.

The pus that came out of Hubert’s crusty horn after a nasty infection.

The hunter that tried to seduce me while I was in captivity.

That furball Cookie coughed up in my sink.

Rex in big frilly knickers.

“I know what you’re doing, sweetness,” he murmured, his attention on the side of my face like a warm palm cupping my cheek.

I swallowed thickly, fighting a one-sided blush. “I’m putting a salve on your open wounds so you don’t get necrosis. You already smell bad enough.”

His lips twitched, kicking up into a smirk with his unshakeable confidence. “You don’t have to keep giving me handouts.”

I stilled, and some of the chalky paste dropped from my hovering finger to splat against the log beside his hip.

He cocked a brow, that infuriating smirk still gracing his lips.

“What?”

“You’re throwing off enough sexual energy that I’d almost think it was more than just a healer helping her patient.” His eyes glinted with a dangerous edge. His forked tongue swiped his lower lip as if he were wondering how I’d taste if he ever got his teeth into me. “But I know you’re just being nice. Good girls don’t tease monsters. Do they, sweetness?”

Even my heart stopped. For a single moment, reality suspended and I could have sworn there was an invitation in his words. A hunger in his demonic eyes.

The faintest hint of burned caramel traced my tongue. Energy teased through me with the lightest charge in the air.

Heavy silence dragged on, and the stormy oceans shuttered a breath later, averting from me.

Whatever madness gripped me shattered.

He was giving me an out. A way for us both to shrug off my embarrassing crush.

A forced laugh spilled from my lips, the sound raking my skin like claws. “Well, I can’t help you heal in my usual way…”

I could have choked on my own bitterness. I just hoped it hadn’t leaked into my tone. My cheeks probably rouged enough to match my hair though.

He was literally telling me to stop salivating over him like the prime cut he was. Despite how it was strengthening him with every sip he took.

Even for me, that was a new level of embarrassment.

I pressed the salve a little harder than necessary into the next set of fang marks on his bicep, ignoring the way his muscles flexed under my touch.

“There.” I swiped one final smear on the top of his forearm before peering around his wing to check his back. I’d noticed it was unscathed when I was ogling him earlier, but I was meant to be a professional healer, dammit, and he already thought my crush was pathetic. “All done.”

“Not going to kiss it all better?” he purred.

I pulled a sour face at his taunting. “In your dreams.”

“And yours.” He smirked.

I rolled my eyes so hard I almost fell off the log.

He leaned back on his palms, showing off his toned abs like that was meant to help me stop doing his energy levels a favour. “We need to talk about your new gifts.”

I fumbled with the ties to the leather pouch, stowing it in my bag to give myself a second to get composed before meeting his intense stare. “What gifts ?”

The word tasted foul in my mouth. I knew exactly what he was referring to, and you’d have to be an unhinged lunatic like Killian to consider it anything close to a blessing.

Killian levelled me with his “stern” look, brow furrowing ever so slightly and the faintest tightening at his mouth.

I eyed the hellcat and hellhound lounging on the other side of the fire, seemingly uninterested in our conversation. But I had the strangest certainty that they were, in fact, lapping up every word.

I huffed. “More like a curse.”

“I’m going to ignore that because you’re having a rough day,” he said. “What does it feel like when it rises?”

Only Killian would call almost getting mauled to death and drowned by a pack of monsters as a “rough day.”

I fanged my lower lip, trying to put the foreign sensation into words. “It’s…like there’s something dark inside me. Something vicious and… hungry .”

A shudder crawled down my spine, and I dug my claws into my forearms, hugging my middle like I could physically hold the evil inside me.

Instead of looking horrified like a sane person, Killian canted his horns, the feather-patterned waves as stunning as the rest of him. He seemed to mull over my words. “Maybe it is.”

I frowned. “Maybe it’s what?”

“Hungry.” His voice dropped an octave, low and husky.

My lips pressed together, preventing anything stupid from falling out.

“Do you feel stronger afterwards?” he asked.

I threw him a sour look. “You mean when I fainted in your arms last night? Not particularly.”

“Such a brat,” he tutted with a roll of his storm-blue eyes. “I meant after . What about when you killed that merchant? Did you have more witchy magic then?”

Unease dripped down my spine like ice water. Because I had felt stronger in a way, my magic fuller, wilder.

“But my magic and demonic energy are linked. I’m like a glitch in nature because one side of me can feed the other.”

“And have you been feeding your demonic half lately?” That same whisky purr rumbled his throat.

Suddenly, I was parched. My tongue swiped my dry lips. “That’s none of your business.”

Especially not after he’d told me to stop throwing myself at him.

His eyes narrowed the smallest fraction. “Everything about you is my business.”

“Right. Because Rex clicked his claws, and you came running.”

His narrowed stare held, but his tail reached for something in his pocket. The familiar sound of scraping metal had me frowning. Somehow, he pulled a rolled-up stick of haze from the tiny case he always had on him, using the coils of his elegant slate-purple tail. He dipped the end into the fire and brought the dark drug to his lips.

Killian took a long drag, the haze tip glowing hot. His cut chest flared wide a second before he blew shadowy smoke into the air, blending into the night.

The gesture reminded me how bland and human he must see me as. I had no tail to casually help me smoke. No wings to lift me into the night sky. Barely any length of horns or claws to defend myself with.

No. My one gift was healing magic. And that was going about as well for me as being a succubus.

A weight crushed my chest until I struggled to take a full breath.

Was this why my birth father had abandoned me? Long before I’d found my mother in a pool of her own blood, too useless to save her. Why my aunts had beaten me for years before they got bored enough to throw me to a brothel for a few silvers? Why the mage I’d been infatuated with had sold me out to hunters?

Even my own magic turned on me.

“Hey.” Killian’s voice yanked me from my spiral. “What’s going on between those cute horns of yours?”

He sucked in another smoky lungful.

I gave him a rueful smile. “Nothing. They’re too small. What could fit?”

He chuckled, and smoke trickled from between his lips like a dragon. “You’re the smartest person in our kingdom.”

“What realm do you live in?” I scoffed. “I’m our useless human ,” I muttered, scratching at the bark on my seat, half-hoping he wouldn’t hear my embarrassing self-pity.

A low snarl ripped from Killian’s lips. He pointed a claw at my face. “Don’t ever say anything like that again.”

I blinked rapidly, taken aback by his sudden intensity.

“Why the fuck not?” I snapped, irrational anger igniting like hell-fire. “My magic is twisted,” I hissed. “Broken. Just like the rest of me.”

To my horror, angry tears blurred the edges of my vision.

Killian leaned over, forcing me to bend back on the log, or that salve I’d carefully applied to his chest would smear mine.

“Fires burn it, Eve.” Killian snarled, gripping his precious drug tighter with his tail. “You’re not broken .”

I glared at him, blinking rapidly as my stupid emotions churned like a dark ocean. “How can you say that after all I’ve done?”

Guilt rose up to tug me down into its murky depths.

The incubus straightened, one vertebra at a time, lethal precision in every slight movement. “Because.”

I huffed a bitter laugh. “Because what?”

His eyes pinned me with the sharpest focus, slit pupils like blades. “Because you’re perfect. Every damn inch of you. Inside and out.”

He might as well have roared the words. His measured intensity was overwhelming and all the more captivating for it.

Because I felt every syllable like he spoke them against my skin.

He puffed a lungful of blackness into my face. Fragrant haze muddied my senses, and when the smoke cleared, he was gone.