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Chapter 5

Malcolm

“ Y eah, but this one’s alive,” a voice was saying as Malcolm swam back to consciousness. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

His arms ached, and when he tried to move them to alleviate the strain, he realized the problem was that they were tied in place. Tied to the headboard of an old metal bed, for fuck’s sake. The rope was thick and coarse, already chafing his wrists, holding them together over his head.

He blinked his crusty eyes open, and everything was dark and wavy, like he’d had ten too many drinks—or, as the memory came flooding back with a suddenness that made him feel sick to his stomach, like he’d been jabbed in the neck with some kind of drug.

“I don’t get it,” another voice was saying. Jimmy, from before. One of the kidnappers. “Why’s he worth more alive? He’s still an incubus either way. Ain’t they just gonna cut him up and sell him the same as the other?”

Malcolm’s stomach rolled again.

Cut him up? Sell him? Same as the other? What other?

What, for... for parts? Incubus organs couldn’t be worth that much on a market. They didn’t need organ transplants like humans did, so other incubi had no reason to steal them.

“Nah, that’s just a last resort,” the other man answered. “Like, you know, like Spanish fly. Oh look, it’s genuine incubus. Hell, it probably doesn’t even do anythi?—”

For a moment, he couldn’t hear the man over his own breath and heartbeat. They were going to cut him up and sell him as a fucking aphrodisiac? What the fuck was wrong with people? He hoped anyone snorting his desiccated body choked and died of it.

This was insane. It didn’t even make sense. Why kill a perfectly healthy incubus when you could... okay, well that didn’t summon up any better options, really. Was it actually better to be alive if you were a monster’s plaything? Malcolm might not have anything, but at least he was free to do as he wished.

Mostly.

“So basically, he’s gonna be, like, the world’s most expensive sex toy?” The not-Jimmy asshole asked, sounding more fascinated than disgusted.

Sure, because he wasn’t the one they were discussing.

The room was freezing, and Malcolm’s hands were practically numb. But that was good. He could use that. Summoning all his strength, he pulled his wrists apart. He wasn’t a bodybuilder or anything, and incubi didn’t have any really significant magical strength, so the ropes didn’t burst open, freeing him. But they did give, at least a little.

That spurred him on, pushing just a little harder. When he stopped, panting, the two jackasses were going on about some video game, and thank fuck. Malcolm did not need more color commentary on his future as the sex slave of some old man with ED. Bad enough listening to them talking about “poning” each other in some game, what the hell ever that meant.

After a few tries, he’d finally loosened the rope enough to slide one hand out, and then the other came out easily. The ropes on his feet were another complication, since he was still muzzy from the drugging, and his hands were almost numb from the cold. Picking at the knots didn’t do much, and it was hard to dig around and find the end of the thing while he was tied up in it.

His hands were raw and stinging by the time he worked his way out of the ropes, and he was still faced with a major problem: the two idiots just outside the room.

They were clearly guarding him for exactly this kind of thing, so they weren’t just going to let him saunter out the front door of whatever hovel they were keeping him in.

The room did have a window.

The glass was filthy, but they seemed to be on the second floor, and not, say, the fifteenth. He could probably handle a ten-foot drop without breaking anything.

Even if he couldn’t, the other choices were fighting two guys, or being an “expensive sex toy.” Like he wasn’t even a person, but a thing. And not even a nice thing. A glittery, hot pink piece of vibrating silicone.

Batteries sold separately, he thought, and had to hold back a hysterical giggle, clapping one freezing hand over his mouth.

The problem with the window was that it appeared to have been painted shut at some point. He let the claws slide out of one hand and scratched through the connecting paint easily enough, but there was no telling how well the window would actually open.

Only one way to find out.

He checked to be sure it was unlocked, grabbed the handle, and yanked.

The squeal it gave was deafening, and he almost cringed away and dropped it, but no. He couldn’t do that. Couldn’t afford the time wasted, the opportunity lost.

“The fuck was that?” tweedle-dee from outside demanded, followed by thumps that almost certainly meant that his guards were on their way to cut off this escape.

Time to find out if he’d been right about being able to drop a full story without dying, then.

The door to the room slammed open, and at the same moment, Malcolm slithered out the window, feet first, eyes jammed shut, and all his fingers and toes crossed. Well, not really. He needed those fingers and toes to hopefully land on his feet, and not on his face.

The drop was the most exhilarating, terrifying thing he’d ever felt in his life. It was like the first drop on a roller coaster multiplied by a thousand because of the adrenaline of running away from fucking kidnappers.

He landed on the pavement below the window, and it didn’t hurt too much. A little twinge in his ankle, and his hand made an unfortunate sound, but he couldn’t feel whether the crackling noise had just been a joint cracking, or an actual bone breaking.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was escape.

There was yelling behind him the whole way, but he ran as fast as he could. Unless they also wanted to jump ten feet, they were going to have to go the long way down the stairs, right? Could a human jump out a second-story window and then run?

But then, the reason for the yelling became apparent, when the giant mountain of a man came around the corner of the alley, looking confused and annoyed. His eyes landed on the window first, and the man behind Malcolm yelling, then they tracked down to Malcolm, and narrowed.

He pushed himself, picked up speed and managed to slip past the mountainous creature in the mouth of the alley.

Surely, he was faster than a man built like a tank, right?

He could do this. Escape and make it to safety. Where was safety? Who knew? He certainly wasn’t trusting anyone he saw on the street again. Not turning his back on?—

Suddenly, there was a man in front of Malcolm, jaw clenched, eyes hard and cold, pointing a gun at him. Where had he even come from?

“Turn around and go back inside, little incubus. I get paid whether we sell you as a slave or as ashes, so I got no skin in this game. I’ll shoot you in the fucking face and not even be a little sorry about it. Dead product’s less of a pain in the ass anyway.”

This man was what people meant when they said someone had shark eyes. They weren’t dark. They were some light color, indistinguishable under the streetlamp—gray or maybe light blue. But there was nothing resembling an emotion in them, and Malcolm knew at that moment that his words weren’t a lie, or an exaggeration. Oh, maybe he’d make more off Malcolm if he were alive, but he didn’t care. And in fact, he’d probably like to kill him, just for the sake of convenience.

“But Tak, the boss said—” came a whine from behind Malcolm.

“Shut up,” the man answered without letting his gaze stray from Malcolm’s. “Boss ain’t here to fix your fucking mess, I am. If the incubus decides to die now, the incubus decides to die now. Not my problem.”

Finally, some tiny part of Malcolm’s brain recognized where he was. Sort of. The brick building he’d been running toward was that damned nightclub, Phaze.

And out the back door came two people, one a woman, slumped and exhausted, stuffing a cigarette into her mouth even as she slunk out into the night, a ratty dark hoodie pulled tight around her shoulders. The other, the one who actually turned and fucking looked, by all the worst luck in the fucking universe —Malcolm’s own luck, really—was that damned bartender with the gorgeous everything.

He paused, his eyes going wide at the sight of Malcolm—gods, he must be a mess—and then of the gun.

Then arms came around Malcolm, hefting him up and tossing him over a shoulder, to be carted back into the building like a sack of potatoes. All he could see as he was carried was the bartender watching it happen, looking... what, confused? Annoyed?

It didn’t much matter, did it? The one person who’d seen that Malcolm needed help was the one person who thought Malcolm was just some spoiled scion of Elrith, unworthy of his time.

Fuck his entire life.

Not that it was going to be much of a life anymore.