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

Chapter 2

I lurched away from the feral hellcat, but my feet slid out from under me, and I landed in the blood-soaked grass with a squelch.

The beast’s jaws locked around my forearm, fangs puncturing my skin.

I yanked out of her maw with a yelp, shoving her off and scrambling to my feet.

“Ow, you fuzzy traitor!” I clutched my arm and bared my own fangs. “Why?!”

Poison rushed through my veins, straight towards my chest in a wave of heat.

The hellcat licked her chops, swiping traces of my blood as she sat back on her haunches with what could only be described as a self-satisfied grin.

I glared at the smug beast.

She rose, turning her snooty cat butt on me, and whacked me in the face with her deadly red tail puff.

I clutched my cheek at the ticklish thwack, but thankfully, the pierce of a stinger was absent. At least the evil furball had only poisoned me once.

She sauntered towards the Bloodwood, and I hissed after her retreating form, “Ungrateful ball of fluff!”

I clamped my mouth shut.

Probably best not to shout in the middle of the night at my own crime scene.

Warmth throbbed along my arm from the fresh wound. A neat ring of pointy marks cut my wrist but, oddly, didn’t bleed. Even with my rapid healing, a bite this deep should have. Instead, it shimmered, an almost glittering crimson.

The warm tingle of her poison worked its way to my chest, pooling around my heart. The adrenaline rush left me strangely energised. Whatever she’d intended for the venom in her fangs, it didn’t seem to have worked.

Another toxin I was immune to, I supposed, thanks to my witchy healing magic.

I blew out a shaky breath and forced myself to deal with my real problem.

Blood and cuts covered so much of the body at my feet that it was hard to tell what he really looked like. The familiar metallic scent was at least partially covered by the sharp booze from the bottle shattered beside him.

Guilt bit me harder than the hellcat. He’d clearly been a mean drunk, but had he deserved to die in such a painful way?

Maybe, maybe not.

It should have been a conscious decision though. You shouldn’t just murder people by accident.

I might have been raised in the alternating neglect and violence by my cruel aunts, but even I’d learned that lesson.

An uneasy feeling swam through my middle as I thought of how I’d killed him. There was something wrong with me. Twisted. Broken.

Had been for months now.

I stuffed down the fear and grabbed the demon by his ragged boot. Heaving with all my might, I followed the sassy hellcat, dragging her captor towards the woods.

The bastard was heavy given how lithe his frame was, and his curled horns kept snagging clumps of mud, soft from the day’s rain.

It took me long minutes to haul the corpse through the grass to reach the dark tree-line. Minutes where I was convinced any of my neighbours would look out their cabin windows and see me. More than a few hybrids had great night vision, and some were even nocturnal.

The darkness of the forest cradled me as I finally passed the first bleeding tree. I took a second to catch my breath, searching for a way to make a fully grown male disappear.

The betrayer waited for me.

The hellcat who’d bitten me lounged along a low branch not a few paces away. My eyes narrowed, but she held my gaze, unblinking, for a long moment, before looking pointedly to the base of the tree she was snoozing in.

A large hole had been clawed out near the roots. Not big enough to roll the body into, more like an animal’s den had been widened for better access. I frowned at the hellcat, but there wasn’t a speck of dirt on her precious paws.

I didn’t have long. Someone else might be taking a late night-time stroll like me. Or another creature of the forest might be hungry enough to finish the job the hellcat had started.

I heaved the body to the hole. Cursing under my breath, I shoved the demon in head first.

A faint hissing hack, almost like a cough, sounded above.

“Oh yeah, laugh it up, fluff face!” I shot a glare at the beast lurking on her branch above me, laughing at me kitty-style.

She licked her paw, tufted tail dangling down and swaying above me, just out of reach. Another taunt. I was half-tempted to jump up and snatch it, yanking the rude furball down into the mud with me.

“First you bite me, and now you’re mocking me,” I huffed, trying to shove all my weight down on the corpse, but his damned shoulders wouldn’t fit through the hole. “You could at least be a little grateful I saved you from becoming an accessory.”

A vague sense of amusement seemed to radiate from the hellcat, blood-red eyes glowing with mirth.

I glared harder.

I wasn’t sure how I knew the hellcat was a female, exactly. Maybe it was the bitchy energy she radiated. Only a female could mock their saviour with such ruthless efficiency without a single word.

Or maybe I was projecting because I had mommy issues.

Well, I had a lot of issues.

Like accidentally ripping a person’s flesh apart with magic until they bled out and died on me.

“Need a hand?” A sultry voice purred behind me.

I screamed, dropping the bloodied leg and leaping back. The body splatted against the mud, head stuck in the hole, leaving his spine bent at an unnatural angle.

A rich chuckle filled the night.

I whirled on the newcomer, heart in my throat.

Killian rested his toned shoulder against the trunk of a tree, a wicked smirk gracing his sculpted features. His hands were tucked casually into his trouser pockets, arrowhead tail held loosely along the line of his muscular thigh. The dusky purple of his skin blended with the night, until he resembled a dark god of shadow and sin, contrasting the angelic wings at his back. He shuffled his feathers, the wing-tips brushing the tree roots at his booted feet.

I gaped at the incubus, unable to move even to pick up my jaw.

Mirth swirled in his eyes, glinting with flecks of silvery light. He nodded his elegantly waved horns at the man I’d killed. “Doing some late-night gardening, are we? Your flower seems to be wilting.”

A surprised chuckle slipped from my lips.

All amusement dried up in an instant as the seriousness of my situation hit me.

I chewed my lower lip, letting the sting of my fang ground me. “You’re going to take me to the holding cells, aren’t you?”

“Hmmm…and why would I do that, kid?” He flicked an imaginary piece of lint from the fabric wrapping his chest in a warrior’s cross. It left a glimpse of his sculpted abs visible, covered in ink that almost blended with his shadowy purple skin.

I canted my head, unsure what game he was playing. “Because…you’re an enforcer?”

He flashed me his pearly white fangs, viciously long. “So?”

I looked down at the body slumped at my feet, half-stuffed into some wild animal’s den. Blinking hard didn’t suddenly make it disappear.

Killian threw his head back and laughed, a deep sound I heard so rarely from him. For a second, I forgot all about the body and being caught and my horrifying power. Killian had always devoured my focus. Ever since he’d joined the Hybrid Kingdom six years ago as a blood-soaked teen, only a year after Rex had taken me in too.

Reality slapped me in the face as the hellcat lounging above us did her chuckling cough noise and slunk away, disappearing higher into the tree.

I scowled at the incubus, ignoring the mocking furball. “I know things are a slower pace since you’ve started finding grey hairs, Kill, but I’m kinda in a hurry. So if you’re not going to lock me up, then get out of my way.”

“Grey hairs, huh?” He mused, running a clawed hand through his wavy dark locks. “Do my white feathers bother you too?”

He was only a few years older than me, in his mid-twenties, with not a single grey in sight, but since he kept calling me kid, I’d keep calling him old.

I poked my tongue out at him like a mature adult.

His mirth simmered to an alluring chuckle, and he reached past me to lift the dead demon by his trouser leg like he weighed nothing. I barely resisted the urge to lean into him and inhale his smoky caramel scent like the creep I was.

The enforcer ran a critical eye over the demon’s muddy face and followed the trail of destruction I’d left down my victim’s body.

“Damn, kid.” He whistled low. “You did this?”

I bit my lip, dropping his questioning gaze. How could I tell him, of all people, what I’d done?

That bloodthirsty sensation taking over… It hadn’t been the first time. My breathing shallowed. It probably wouldn’t be the last either.

“So vicious,” he purred, breaking my guilty silence. His eyes twinkled with amusement and something I couldn’t quite name. He shrugged his enormous wings, the snowy arches rising and falling gracefully. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose.”

I wet my lower lip, trying to stuff down the panic. “Because you’re taking the evidence straight to Rex and the other enforcers?”

I didn’t think they’d punish me harshly given the male had been trying to torture an animal, but I’d still killed someone. Questions would be asked.

Like how I’d managed to inflict hundreds of strange wounds on a fully grown pureblood male.

Killian quirked a brow in silent question, the same charcoal shade as his artfully messy hair.

I threw my hands up, whisper-shouting at the frustrating incubus, “Has my brother fired you or something? You’re. An. Enforcer.”

Silver lit his eyes like the flash of a blade. “And yet I’d break every rule for you.”

This was why I had trouble pining after the seductive incubus. One second he was calling me “kid,” reminding me just how he saw me, and the next he was borderline flirting.

It was infuriating.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked.

“I don’t need a reason. If I find you with a body, I’ll bury it for you.”

My eyes shuttered. “So you’re not going to force me to tell you what happened? Why I killed him?”

“I don’t need to.” Mischief curved his lips into a smirk. “Especially because I know a lie would spill from your pretty, pouty lips. So let’s just hide the body. If it makes you feel better, you can owe me one.”

I felt like a naive summoner making a deal with a hungry demon, but I was a fully grown demon-witch with blood under her claws. I lifted a hand, inspecting said glossy tips as if I hadn’t a care in the world.

“Deal.”