Page 6 of Hellish Witch (Playing with Demons #3)

Chapter 5

M agic slunk from my chest. Growing and expanding, it took a deep breath.

And struck.

Whips of power hooked into the three pain demons crowding me against the floor. Their screams were beautiful, harmonious cries. Murag’s tails dropped my wrists, and I yanked Jessa’s from my neck, crushing the pale length of bone and muscle in my grip.

Vanita staggered back against the tiled bathroom wall.

Red smeared her ghostly skin, darkened by the bloody hue edging my vision. Slashes opened up, blooming cuts and bruises on every visible inch of her.

“Stop!” Jessa hissed. “You f-fucking freak!” She tried to swing her spiked fist at me, but the damage to her was almost as much as to Vanita. She tumbled to the floor, twitching as more and more wounds split and bruised her flesh.

I rose, feeling oddly light. High on the magic pulsing out from me.

“Killing us,” Murag snarled, already prone on the tiles. “Help!”

Horror turned my stomach as I watched the three hybrids writhe in pools of their own blood. Dying on the bathroom floor, exactly how I’d found my mother.

I was a healer , dammit. Not this monster.

A whimper escaped me as I fought to keep myself in check. Darkness scrambled my thoughts, writhing outwards as I struggled to reel it back.

But it was no use.

If I didn’t get away, they’d die. Right here on the floor.

“Fires in Hell,” I groaned.

I staggered to the door, flipping the lock and tumbling out into the dim corridor. I slammed into the opposite wall with a grunt.

A stocky male I recognised from classes snickered at me from the middle, blocking the way and flexing his muscles as he ran a hand over his shaved head. “Can’t handle your brew, Eve?”

I hissed through clenched teeth, feeling that awful darkness surge in his direction.

He sucked in a breath. “Ow, shit!” He gaped down at a bruise purpling his ribs, peeking out from the white fabric crossing his torso.

Panic stabbed my middle as I lurched away.

“Hey, widow-witch! Wait, you need to fix this!” he yelled, but I was already stumbling down the corridor.

I ran to the furthest room, shoulder barging the door. The lock gave under my desperation, cracking through the wooden frame. Red hazed my vision like smeared blood.

I slammed the door behind me, unable to think. Chest heaving, I fought the darkness leaking from the depths of my soul into my flesh.

Hungry for violence.

A familiar demon, clad only in skimpy lingerie, whirled around in a flare of pine-coloured locks, her pouty lips parting. A bed loomed at the back of the room, a winged figure sprawled in a chair at its base, half-hidden behind Zahara’s voluptuous frame and wild hair.

The sight was so unexpected, even my vicious magic paused.

Shock bled to cunning on Zahara’s face as she cocked a hip, looking me up and down and finding me lacking. A single candle, atop the dresser by the wall, cast a ghoulish light across her pretty features.

“I know you’re jealous, but that doesn’t mean you can keep following me.” She shooed me towards the door with perfectly painted golden claws. “Run along now, human. Me and your friend were in the middle of something.”

I frowned, but my focus turned inwards, frantically trying to lock the monster back in its cage before I hurt anyone else. The sensation of something twisting under my skin lessened, along with the bubbles popping in my chest, making me jittery.

“We’re not friends.”

Hurt sliced through my middle, and I sucked in a sharp breath. I knew that voice.

It haunted my fucking dreams. Whispered to me in that lilting accent, teasing and seductive.

Zahara smirked, victorious. “Oh, that’s right, Killian. The widow-witch has no friends.”

Evil threatened to spill from my fingertips once more, writhing in my veins, polluting my blood.

Killian’s chosen hookup was the exact opposite of me in appearance. Zahara was everything a succubus should be, and I was barely considered a demon most days.

“Leave,” Killian snarled.

Pain hollowed me out. I turned, stomping away to do as my brother’s best friend demanded. That invisible darkness thrashed harder. My heart pounded as I lurched for the door.

“Not you, kid.”

I froze.

Zahara stiffened, tail snapping angrily behind her before she pasted on a sultry pout for the incubus. “But I’m about to go into heat, baby. You’re gonna want to ease me through it. You won’t be able to help yourself.”

My insides pinched at the thought. After maturity, most sexual-type demonesses had an annual heat. Instinct could force one too, if things were dire enough that an influx of energy was needed to survive. Since your enemy could become your lover if they were willing, it was thankfully quite rare for a non-cycle heat to occur.

Partaking in someone’s heat was considered quite the prize, though, and Zahara never let me forget that I wasn’t demon enough to have one.

Killian chuckled, a dark sound that stroked me like one of his feathers. “You think I can’t resist a succubus in heat? Your pathetic pheromones mean nothing. Scrape up what’s left of your dignity, and run along. I need Eve.”

His words spiked a longing deep into my chest. Whatever he meant by that statement, it wasn’t what I craved in the dark corners of my battered heart.

“You’re a real bastard,” Zahara sniffed. She stalked past me, shoulder barging me as she left the room with a slam of the already cracked door.

I staggered, expecting pain, but the claw-marks that should have curved around my collarbone had already healed.

I frowned down at my bloodstained dress in the hazy darkness of the room. The evidence was there. It had been real and not another bloodied nightmare or break from reality.

The distinct, sweet floral scent of haze reached me, perfumed with metallic blood.

Peering through the drugging smoke lingering around the room, I sucked in a gasp as I finally got a good look at the enforcer, sprawled in a chair like it was a throne.

Scant moonlight pooled through the window at his back to cast his face in shadows that danced in the candlelight. The straight ends of his rich charcoal hair fell across his face to graze his angular cheekbones. His eyes glowed silver, seeming to pierce right through me.

Angelic wings draped on either side of him, the feathers splayed dramatically, the only light thing about the dark demon.

Red smears stained his purple-grey skin. Deep gashes lacerated his muscular chest, left bare.

Panic strangled me. A glazed look had entered his eyes. Given the stain on his lower lip and the rolled-up stick of haze perched between his knuckles, it could either be the drugs or the damage.

The monster rattled inside me, not done with me yet.

I clenched my jaw, struggling to call on the healing light in my middle and fight back the slithering evil that battled for its freedom.

Killian’s handsome features creased as he watched me. I probably looked constipated, face scrunched up and fists clenching.

I lifted my hands and stepped towards him.

He looked away, voice a dark rasp of smoke. “You shouldn’t touch me.”

I ignored the sting of his words. He never let me heal him. It was only if he passed out from the severity of his injuries that I’d get to save the stubborn idiot’s life.

No warm light lit my hands though.

If anything, a crimson shade seemed to make my fingertips glow. Like I’d dipped my claws in fluorescent blood.

My heartbeat thundered too loud in my ears.

Control slipped through my grasping fingers. The violent thing inside me lashed out, turning my emotional pain into a more physical one.

But not mine.

Killian quirked a brow as the wounds on his chest widened like gaping maws, spewing blood down his skin in thick torrents.

Hollow and clawing, my invisible darkness latched onto the seated demon even as I scrabbled to hold it back.

He pushed to his feet, unhurried, eyes raking me. A small crease formed between his brows, the only outward sign of emotion despite him being torn open, bleeding out on the floorboards.

Something flickered in his depthless eyes. “Eve? Are you okay?”

Only he would be bleeding to death and ask if I was okay.

I swayed in my heels, and he reached out his hands as if to steady me, hovering on either side of my shoulders without touching.

“I…” It was all I could garble out as the red misting my vision darkened like lifeblood.

I was vaguely aware of his lips moving in response, but the rushing in my ears drowned everything else out.

Power churned and twisted, making me dizzy with the push and pull through my chest. The world spun with the angry tide. It tunnelled until Killian’s glowing eyes were the only thing I could see.

I collapsed face-first into his waiting arms.