Page 15 of Tortured Soul (Soulless #1)

Lola

I used some of my remaining power to shift my clothes into guards uniforms. No need to change my face or body type as it was well hidden under the thick dark leather and helmet.

Finding my way out of the camp took some time, but no one stopped me as I walked out the front gate and kept marching forward until the camp was far away at my back.

“Alright,” I whispered to myself, shifting back to my usual form, casting wary glances around.

I needed to find where the Divine barrier started. If humans were roaming around the camp, they had to be outside of it.

When I finally felt the cool, dry water and small pebbles brush my skin, I knew I’d been walking for at least half an hour, in near total darkness, my path only slightly lit by the full moon in the sky.

It felt like a weight had been lifted from my chest and my shoulders. A weight I didn’t notice until it was gone, probably because of my disastrous arrival. Maybe if I hadn't been assaulted the second I stepped foot inside the barrier, I would’ve felt what it did to me and my power.

That it was probably the reason it was depleting this fast. Were other Hellrisers affected? Did it take some time adjusting to it?

I could feel the well of power becoming more stable. Constant.

So I smiled and turned myself into something I’d been forbidden to do since Lilith created the second generation of Succubi and Incubi; I shifted into nothingness.

There were not a lot of things that were prohibited to demons. After all, all our different species were given their specific powers for a reason.

It was different for the first of each kind.

We were the trial run. The model they used to create the rest of the species.

As the first Succubus, there were a lot of things I could do. A lot of power running through me. After watching me for a decade, Lilith had decided to adjust a few things on the next generation of my kind. Since she couldn’t adjust my power, it simply became forbidden for me to use some of it.

Now, I was untied. Free.

And completely invisible.

I never knew why Lilith decided that the Succubi that were created after me had to be less powerful. That somehow, being able to become invisible was too much.

We could have been so much more than just sex demons. So much wasted potential…What about amazing spies?

I kept strolling away from the camp, looking around for any human activity, confident now that I knew no mortal eyes could see me.

It took barely ten minutes before I spotted one of the cabins Marcus mentioned earlier, a faint light visible through the window.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, focusing on the person inside it, letting my powers get a feel of him.

His name was Darren. Human. Male. Twenty-two years old. Virgin .

My eyes opened as I moved closer on instinct. I needed to see his face. Look into his eyes. Just once .

The cabin was a simple square with only one window, shutters closed just enough that I couldn’t see him properly.

“Shit,” I muttered, circling the cabin to check for other windows, another angle, anything.

My steps stopped abruptly. The door.

I could try and barge in…

No. Too dangerous. What if my power somehow didn’t grip his mind fast enough? What if…

You’re fucking invisible, dumbass. Just do it.

Right. Invisible. It’s been a while…

I knocked on his door and stepped to the side, waiting. The faint noises coming from inside the cabin stopped. A chair rolled softly.

I knocked again.

“Who’s there?” His voice was forced in a harsh tone, masking fear.

I didn’t answer and knocked a third time.

He moved then, but not toward the door. I circled the cabin, following the sound. The shutters opened just the slightest bit and I caught a glimpse of his face. Come on, lift it higher. Give me your eyes.

I felt my mind shift then. Euphoria. A pleasant buzz in my head.

His eyes were a rich brown and an open window into his mind and soul.

And what a twisted mind for such a pure soul…

It took only a second to dig my claw into his very essence. To absorb everything that made him him and search his mind, his memories, his beliefs.

A psycho hiding behind a “nice guy” facade.

So much violence in his head. A desire to kill. To hurt. To rid the world of any Immortal.

A highschool sweetheart back at home a few hundred miles away. They decided to wait until they were married to have sex. She decided. He spends so much time jerking off to twisted fantasies of her he could run a marathon on his right arm only.

“You sure you want to wait?” he rasped in her ear. He was so hard it felt like he might burst out of his jeans.

“It's only a few more months,” she breathed out, raking her nails against his scalp, grinding herself against him. “We’ve waited this long…”

He didn’t want to wait. He wanted to tie her up and fuck her helpless body into the mattress, the carpet, the wall. He wanted to see the tears run down her face as he took her mouth.

“What if I don’t come back?” he pressed. “What if a monster kills me and—”

“You will. I know you will. Come back, and then we’ll be married. Then , we can make love.”

Make love…No. What he had in mind was far more depraved. He wanted to ruin. To po ssess. To own.

Slowly, the invisibility faded and my face tingled. My limbs stretched. My hair shortened and curled. I didn’t have to look at myself to know that I was now the spitting image of Malory, his fiancée.

Sweet, innocent Malory.

His gaze landed on me. On her .

My claws dug deeper.

He wasn’t in a cabin in the middle of the Arizona wasteland anymore. It was his home. The large shed that his parents built in their yard to give him privacy before he could finally move out.

“Lory?” he asked, jaw slackening.

I only smiled, taking a tentative step forward.

“I texted,” I said shyly. “My parents are out of town for the night. I thought you’d answer and join me but—”

“I didn’t hear my phone…” His shoulders started to relax. I held my control over his mind. Open the door , I thought. Let me in.

“I figured, you always keep your phone on silent.”

He exhaled slowly, taking me in. “Right, I—do you want to come in?”

My smile widened into a grin. “I’d love to.”

“Why do I feel like I missed you when we saw each other this morning?” he panted in between kisses, his hands firmly attached to my ass.

I was caged between this twisted man and his cabin door. But I didn’t care. Because as twisted and bad as he was, he was still technically innocent and untouched, and his life force was strong . Stronger than anything I had in a long while.

I needed this. Especially if being in the camp was draining me faster.

“Fuck, Lory…I—Do you still want to wait?”

Would it sound suspicious if she suddenly changed her mind? Probably.

“I—We have to. We promised,” I said, raking my nails on his shoulders, moaning into his mouth when him grinding himself against my stomach sent a burst of energy through me.

“Tie her up. Fuck her good. She’s just fighting it for show, she’ll like it,” he thought to himself.

His grip on my ass tightened and the next second, my legs were wrapped around his hips.

“No one has to know,” he said. “That’ll be our secret…”

I let out a long, conflicted sigh and he bit my lower lip. “I’d know…It wouldn’t be right…We’ve—”

“I love you,” he continued, pulling my core against his hardened length. “That makes it right. I’m tired of just touching you through our clothes, I want you. Come on, Lory…For once, I just want to actually feel how wet you are. How tight you feel, how—”

He groaned and stilled against me. The moan that came out of me had nothing to do with pleasure or his words, but with his sudden, probably unplanned, orgasm, which released a final burst of his energy so strong that I would probably have collapsed if he wasn’t holding me up.

Why did he come? Were my pheromones already too strong? My hold on his mind was deep, but I didn’t even amplify his lust…

“Fuck, I’m so tired of this,” he said in my neck. “This keeps happening because you take too much time to make up your mind.”

Huh?

“You keep riling me up for nothing and when you’re about to say yes it’s already too late. Why won’t you just spread your damned legs from the start, huh?”

Oh.

He was even worse than I thought, then.

“I’m—”

A loud scream from outside interrupted me. A broken scream. Pained moans.

Darren’s brown eyes were wide. His pulse quickened.

His mind started to fight me, but losing that much energy weakened him.

“What— Traps . Malory, you need to hide,” he said, letting go of me suddenly. He stumbled backward, barely catching himself on the small desk next to the wall. “There are monsters,” he slurred. “It’s not safe, I—”

My eyes caught a stack of paper on the surface he held onto. Names—familiar ones. People from the camp.

He nearly fell again, his legs starting to wobble. The corner of my lips stretched up in a cruel smirk.

Our eyes met then. Mine proud, his confused.

“Wh-what are you doing here, Malory? You—”

In a blink of an eye, I took another feminine form. And another, as I watched his face fall and contort in exhausted rage.

“You’re weak. Your Virgin energy is strong,” I corrected myself, “but your mind and your body are weak.”

He stepped back only to trip over his own foot and fall on his ass.

“You didn’t even fuck me and you’re already almost passing out,” I giggled, taking a step forward before I crouched in front of him. “You’re going to be sleeping for a while. Maybe I’ll send people to capture you before you wake up.”

Horror pulled at his face, but I knocked him out with my fist before he could say anything.

“Ouch,” I groaned, standing up, shaking my hand.

Maybe I’ve hit him a bit too hard. But the bastard was still breathing and it was good enough for me.

I turned around and grabbed the whole stack of paper. There was no time to go through them. I could still hear the person outside moaning and screaming with a raw, distorted voice.

I changed back to my usual appearance, making sure to create dark and fitted clothes to blend in at night, and slid the folded documents in my back pocket.

Catching my reflection in a mirror, I adjusted my hair to ensure my ears were still hidden beneath my usual braid and took a second to check myself out.

Damn , black leather looked good on me.

Once out of the cabin, I ran, following the screams.

Until I reached them.

Francesca and Savi were on the ground. A five inch silver spike speared through Savi’s leg and a pool of golden blood under them.

“What happened?” I asked, throwing myself on the ground next to them.

Francesca’s face was drenched in tears as she tried to pull out the spike while still holding her sister in her arms.

“Don’t!” I said before she started to pull on it again. “We need to bring her back to camp like this. I don’t know how far we are, but if the sun starts to—”

A strangled sob escaped Savi’s throat. She weakly tried to nudge Francesca, but her sister batted her hand away.

“You need to go without me,” she signed.

Francesca shook her head dismissively and stood to lift her up.

“Hold on,” I said, grabbing her other arm to place it over my shoulder. She winced in pain. “Okay. Let’s go.”

The walk back to camp was long as we moved slowly. She muffled her sobs as much as she could until we reached the barrier to avoid alerting any wandering humans. Once again, the second we went through it, I felt my energy and power draining faster than usual. I’d have to talk about this to someone.

Barely two minutes later, guards were running toward us. The next minute, Savi was in their arms and transported back to camp.

Francesca and I were left behind. She wiped her eyes with a trembling hand.

“ What happened? ” I signed as we walked, our pace slower.

Her breath was ragged but her shoulders more relaxed. Savi was going to be okay. She was going to reach the camp long before sunrise, and she’d recover quickly.

“ I’ve never seen this kind of trap before, ” she answered, moving her fingers erratically.

“ We were walking and she must have stepped on a hidden detonator or something. One second, everything was fine. The next, she had that huge thing going through her leg. It was attached to some kind of chain that was easy to rip out but I couldn’t move her before and — and then you showed up and …

I’m sorry, it’s just that so many of us have gone missing by now, I thought we were going to be taken too. ”

“ You’re fine, ” I signed, before placing one hand on her shoulder and giving her what I hoped was a reassuring nod. “ Now that you’ve seen this kind of trap, maybe you’ll be able to detect it. ”

“ Yes. I’ll make the report to Carrie and the day team will try to look for it. ” She stopped abruptly. “ What were you doing out there? ”

Her head was tilted to the side in wonder. I nibbled on my lower lip .

“ My power is draining fast here. I’m not sure why. I was…hunting. Recharging in a nearby cabin. ”

She let out a loud gasp.

“ Are you insane? Did you tell anyone you were going out? What if something happened? How did you get out? I doubt any guard would have let you walk through the front gate unaccompanied so early after you just arrived. ”

I pulled her arm so we could resume our walk back to the camp.

“ I was perfectly fine. And look how it turned out? I got the little boost I needed and was close enough to where you girls got attacked. Win-win .”

Still all about small victories.

She narrowed her eyes in response but didn’t answer, her skeptical eyes studying me.

“ You feel different, ” she signed after a few minutes.

“ Have you ever met any of my kind? ”

“ Briefly, not long before the war. He was an ass. ”

I chuckled. “ I believe you. Even I don’t like my peers. When we met earlier, my power was somehow drained. When it is, it releases pheromones meant to lure people to me. Think of it as a survival mechanism. I probably don’t release any now, so that might be why I feel different to you. ”

She snorted and shook her head softly.

“ You mean that when you’re weak, people desire you more? ”

“ Basically, yes. ” I shrugged. “ But as I’m a Succubus, it’s meant to be stronger toward men or women attracted to other women. ”

“ Is that why you were anxious at dinner? ”

It was my time to stop in my tracks. She halted too.

“ Was that why Savi looked at me strangely? ”

“ Well, your pulse was strong and your blood smelled nice. So maybe it was a little bit of hunger and confusion. ”

A sigh escaped my throat and she grinned.

“ I’ve been on edge about my unstable pheromones since I got here. Living with unbinded and untied Immortals is stressing me out a little. ”

Her smile softened then.

“ Don’t worry. If anyone in that house feels like ripping your clothes off for a bit of fun, we’ll know something is off and we’ll tell you to go fuck someone. And not in a mean way. ”