There was only so long I could jack off in that vile concrete room before I began to feel more than a little feral. Demons have needs: the drive to hunt pleasure, to seek stimulation, is as necessary as food and water to a human. So as much as I hated the man, when Kent told me I was to guard the university campus when the semester started, I could have kissed his goddamn boots.
Could have. I didn’t. But it had been far too many years since I’d felt so free.
Kent’s sacrifice hadn’t just stirred his God. It had awakened the Eld, the ancient beasts of the forest who were sustained only by blood, magic, and pain. The God’s awakening was making them restless, and soon enough they would begin to creep from the darkest depths of the forest to hunt.
Kent didn’t need panic sweeping through Abelaum. It was my duty to keep the Eld away from the students, away from town. I was to dispose of the beasts when I found them, which wasn’t an easy task, but it wasn’t as if I could refuse Kent’s orders. I’d gladly kill any Eld I laid eyes on if it meant having their hunting grounds for myself.
The Eld would consume the flesh of humans if they could, but I would consume them in another way. Through pleasure, pain, and blood. Corruption. Temptation. Utterly perverse intoxication. Humans were the most pitifully willing prey. Too many of them lived such constrained lives, binding themselves to moralities that only served to limit their enjoyment of their short mortal existence.
Offer one an easy path to perversion, tempt them with pleasure’s darkest desires, and they made for easy prey. A feast of curious college students had been put before me, and I intended to eat well.
They were all wary, at first. Primal instinct told them what their eyes did not: I was dangerous. A predator. They kept their distance from me even when they couldn’t keep their eyes from roaming over me. It meant that the steps up to Calgary Hall’s closed doors, where I had set up my primary post to watch everyone milling across the quad, remained vacant.
Until she skipped up the steps without a care in the world, wide-eyed, vibrating with energy, smelling of sage and mint and warm skin.
She didn’t even glance in my direction, as if whatever primal instinct that drove her fellow students was utterly vacant from her, the feral guardian for self-preservation shrugging its shoulders and letting the little thing run wild. She was little — in stature but not in energy. She had a large camera held close beneath her chin, as if she was ready to lift it to her eye at any moment. Her black denim jacket looked too large, as did the leather boots on her feet and the stuffed book bag she carried. She wasn’t tall enough to reach my shoulder, but beneath her oversized jacket I spotted the pleasing curve of her breasts, her hips, thighs that begged to be gripped and left bruised.
Heat flushed through me. If I wasn’t careful, if I let myself give in too quickly to that need to hunt, to pursue, to tempt, my human disguise would slip and these poor mortals wouldn’t just be giving me space — they’d be running, screaming.
But I wasn’t about to let her simply walk away.
“Are you fucking lost?”
She turned slowly, wide brown eyes now narrowed, to look me over skeptically from behind thick-rimmed glasses. Her eyes lingered, her body’s sudden flood of nervous hormones turning the air pungently sweet.
Perfect.
“Not lost. It’s hard to miss the bright yellow tape pasted across the scene of a murder.”
She’d tried to sound bothered, but her tone shot up in pitch and betrayed her lie. She was nervous, intrigued. Just frightened enough to be wary. The bitchy smile she plastered on those black-painted lips was yet another falsehood.
I rather liked liars. It meant they were afraid of telling the truth, and I loved making humans face their fears.
I smiled back, and it seemed to awaken that sleepy primal guardian of hers. Instinct finally kicked a bit more fear into her as she caught a glimpse of my teeth. She probably saw them a bit sharper than she should have, but I was excited, and maintaining a “normal” human appearance was difficult.
“Oh, good, you didn’t miss the tape. Then I’ll take it that you just can’t read, since you decided to hang around.”
Would she push back, despite that instinct to flee? There was something vicious in her stance, like a cornered cat prepared to fight. She was sizing me up, her eyes moving slowly over me. A bitchy attitude couldn’t mask fear, and it couldn’t mask desire. Her voice grew sharper, just a little bit more desperate. “I’m pretty sure the tape says Caution, not Stay Back 20 Feet. I don’t see a sign telling me to stay away.”
There was a spark of hellfire in her. Bratty. Brave. Oh, I liked that.
Have you ever wondered why humans buy their dogs toys that squeak? It’s because the squeak mimics the sound of an animal fighting for its life, and the dog gets excited.
Sometimes those squeaky, desperate sounds of struggle just make a predator want to bite even more.
Her face fell as I climbed the steps toward her. She folded her arms and shuffled her feet into a wider stance as I stood over her and leaned down. We demons couldn’t control the minds of humans, but we could nudge them. We could implant influences to stir feelings or sensations. Easy enough to ignore if a human tried, but not when they were so distracted as she was.
Her eyes kept wandering, naughty little thing. I nudged her mind just enough to let her imagine a subtle squeeze around her neck.
“What’s your name?”
She was fidgeting now. Nervous, aroused, confused. If I’d touched her, she might have combusted, and that was exactly how I wanted it. The pursuit was no fun if the victim wasn’t willing, and the longer she lingered in the tease of it, the temptation, the more curious she’d be.
“Alex.”
Liar.
“No. It’s not.” A little bit more of a squeeze, a little more of a nudge. I did love making brats quiver — certain former lovers would attest that it was because I was a brat myself, but those former lovers would be wrong. I only gave her mind a push, and her imagination did the rest. Confusion flickered across her face, and she gulped. A curious mind would begin to wander in the direction of dark lusts, the sins they’d tried to hide. What were hers?
“It’s Raelynn,” she said, and this time, she wasn’t lying. “If you’re going to be such a dick about it, I’ll just leave then.”
Raelynn. It suited her, felt right for her. Satisfied, I widened the gap between us and stepped aside, giving her an easy escape. She hurried down the steps, body tight and tense, her scent wafting over me again.
“Watch where you wander, girl,” I said. “Curiosity can get you in trouble.”
Her shoulders tensed even more. She flipped her short hair over her shoulder, stomping her boots across the grass as if I’d just ruined her morning.
Brats need to learn their lessons somehow, don’t they?
I didn’t push her. I just nudged her mind in the direction it was apt to go anyway. Unfortunately for her, she was already rather clumsy.
Her feet tangled, and the jolt made the strap on her bag snap. Books tumbled across the grass and papers settled into lingering puddles, her coffee burst and sent its contents dribbling everywhere. I had to clench my jaw to hold back the laughter that wanted to come out. Posted up directly in front of the steps she’d just left, I folded my arms and watched her attempt to crouch down in her skirt, one hand awkwardly clutching the back of it to keep it down. Her head twitched back, curious eyes searching, and they met mine for only a brief moment before she looked away again.
She looked even cuter with her freckled cheeks reddened in embarrassment.
Her friend came to collect her, and they left together. I watched her walk across the quad, but my eyes narrowed as she reached her group and sat down. The Hadleighs — what in Lucifer’s name was she doing with the Hadleighs? I’d never seen her with them before. Did she even have any idea who they were? What they were capable of?
It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t have mattered. She’d be my prey regardless. But the peculiar urge to warn her needled at the back of my mind. It was an urge I quickly shoved away. I hadn’t earned a reputation as a guardian, I was known only for one thing among human kind.
I was a killer. A hunter. Not a protector. Not even for tiny mortal girls with no sense of self-preservation.
It was evening when I found her again. I’d gotten away from the monotony of the quad for a while and walked through one of the far corners of the campus. Benches and tables were scattered under the trees, where students sat hunched over their laptops. I recognized her immediately, sitting cross-legged at a picnic table with her laptop open in front of her. There was now a massive knot in the strap of her book bag, and she had yet another coffee in her right hand. Did this girl run entirely on caffeine? No wonder her heart rate was so high.
Maybe I’d make it a little higher.
I lingered behind her, just out of her line of sight. Her internet browser was open to a webpage with the title Mass Deaths, Madness, and Cryptids: Abelaum’s Creepy History. She rubbed her eyes before she went back to reading and highlighted a passage that she copied and pasted into another document.
Abelaum is host to a menagerie of haunted locales and historical monuments, it read. One such place is St Thaddeus Church, located one mile from the infamous White Pine mine shaft, where the survivors of the 1899 disaster were freed.
What the hell was she looking into St. Thaddeus for?
“History homework already?”
She jumped at the sound of my voice, and turned her head to look up at me. That nervous glance, the uptick in her heart rate, the rapid blink before she looked away — it was enough to make me suck in my breath and hold it in an effort not to move in any closer.
I’d been locked away far too long if a mere glance from a human was having me feel this way.
But I’d had plenty of glances. Plenty of longing looks. It was her gaze. Her scent. Tempting me. I wasn’t usually the tempted one.
“How do you know it’s for history?” she muttered. She turned the laptop slightly, as if to hide the screen from me, and her hand clenched on her lap. Maybe I’d get to see that little bit of hellfire come out in her again. Her hackles were already raised.
I shrugged, sauntering over to the table to lean against it, my shadow looming over her. Fuck, she smelled good. Warm blood, mint and sage, coffee and something like granola. This girl was flat-out dangerous to be around. “Just a guess. Maybe you like researching condemned churches for fun.”
She slammed her laptop shut. The glare she directed toward me brought a smile to my face. “Are you fucking lost?” she said, echoing my earlier words to her. So much sass in such a small body.
“Unfriendly little thing, aren’t you?” I said. “I patrol the whole campus, doll. It’s my job to check secluded corners.”
“Okay, well, patrol away. That way, preferably.” She made a show of pulling out her phone and turning her back to me, but she was just idly scrolling through text messages. As if she could dismiss me that easily. It was too fun to watch her squirm to leave now.
But besides the fun of it, unease had grown in me to see her looking into that damned church. She was already spending time with the Hadleighs, which was bad enough, but something told me this woman didn’t have the slightest clue what she was meddling with.
“You’re not from here, are you?” Even if they didn’t know the true nature of it, locals would steer clear of St. Thaddeus and White Pine. Too many legends. Too many stories.
“Why do you say that?” she said suspiciously, slowly turning back to me. At least she was wary. She needed to turn that wariness on her little friend group.
I shrugged, and tucked my hands into the pockets of my pants. “Oh, I don’t know. You smell different.”
“I smell different? What does Southern California smell like, hmm? Brush fires and avocado toast?” She ended her outburst with a wince, as if she regretted giving that little bit of information away. Flustered, she shoved her laptop into her bag and got up, keeping her back turned to me. Her skirt brushed against her thighs and her movement flooded me not just with another whiff of her shampoo, but a faint and far more primal scent.
I grinned wider. Stubborn little thing, resisting her own arousal. That was why she was trying so hard not to look at me. She stalked off, bag slung hurriedly over her shoulder, boots stomping. I lingered near the table, but called, “I can’t say St. Thaddeus makes for a good tourist attraction. I’d stay away from the church, if I were you.”
That made her stop. She whirled back around, snapping, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were the campus guard. Are you the church guard too?”
Goddamn, every time she snapped it had my mind spiraling into all the ways I could turn those snippy words into moans. I should have been more focused on that, rather than whatever white knight crusade had me saying bullshit like, “It’s a dangerous place. Condemned, locked. Any local would know better than to visit there.”
Something about this unassuming new girl casually involving herself with the most dangerous parts of Abelaum just didn’t sit right with me. Victoria and Jeremiah were popular, certainly, but they rarely showed anyone special attention.
What did they want with this girl?
She was nodding, slowly. Her anger had moved into confusion, but there was a curious gleam in her eyes. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep that in mind.” She kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk, and added casually, “What else do you know about the church? What have you heard about it? Have you been there?”
“I’ve heard it’s old, dirty, and not worth seeing.” And haunted by damned souls fed to a wicked God. But that was the last thing a curious woman like her needed to hear.
“But what about the stories?” She pried, betraying her enthusiasm. “About the miners and — Hey! Where are you going?”
I’d lingered there with her long enough, and I didn’t like the impulsive feelings that were poking against my ribs like sharp accusing fingers. I wanted her away from that church. I wanted her away from the Hadleighs. She was too ignorant, too curious for her own good.
But goddammit, that was not my responsibility.
“I’ve got a job to do, doll.” I gave her a little wave over my shoulder. Her boots stomped again, this time to rush after me and pop up at my side like an eager puppy. I fully halted in surprise, staring down at her. She’d pulled out her phone, and seemed to be recording.
“Look, maybe I could just get a quick statement from you about the church. A spooky story you’ve heard, something!” she spoke rapidly, leaving her out of breath. Fucking hell, she was one of those: a social media attention chaser who wanted everything posted, everything live. Now I knew she’d be trouble.
I snorted, side-stepping her to continue on my way. “I’m not interested in being in your little documentary, or whatever it is you’re doing. Stay away from St. Thaddeus.”
“Oh, come on.” Her tone changed. She’d lightened it — she was attempting to sweet-talk me. “It’ll sound more authentic coming from a local. You seem like the kind of guy who would have some great stories.”
It took no small amount of self-control not to grin. I had to hand it to her, she was determined. “Is that so? What kinds of stories do you think I have?” I stepped closer, and this time I couldn’t hold back the smile as her heart rate quickened. “Do you think I’ll tell stories of monsters in the woods? Mad old men who think they’re going to resurrect God? Ghosts of the long-dead and endlessly tormented?”
She was hanging onto my every word, eyes wide, sweet lips just slightly parted.
“Well, doll, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said softly. “But the only good story I have about that old church is about the last couple I took there.”
She blinked rapidly. “About…what?”
“If you’ve never been fucked bent over a pulpit with one man in your ass and another in your mouth, I’m sure the woman would highly recommend it. But if you’d like, I can tell you the story myself in graphic detail.”
She blinked rapidly, her brain practically steaming as she processed how to react. Hot and bothered as hell, poor perverted little thing.
“Is that so?” she said softly, and I was ready to see her erupt. Instead, she smiled smugly, and said, “Do tell. Sounds like a fascinating story.”
I shook my head. Goddamn, the things I wanted to do to her were obscene. I stepped a little closer, challenging my own self-control as I leaned down and whispered roughly, “I don’t tell stories for free, doll.”
Her face twitched, jaw clenched. “Yeah? What’s your price?”
I grinned. “You, on your knees, begging for my cock down your throat.”
There was a brief moment of hesitation before disgust contorted her face, and in that moment, I glimpsed all I needed to. Despite the fact that she shoved away her phone and glared at me with a scoff, I could smell her arousal. “Fuck off. Perv.”
“Aww, what, I thought you wanted to hear the story?”
She turned and stomped away, skirt swaying. But the desire was there. The need. She didn’t have to like me to want me. Hate sex was more fun anyway. The more these poor little humans despised you, the more they hated their desire for you, the more they would break when they finally gave in.
“Hey, asshole, I’m not a tourist either!” She turned back and yelled at me, fists clenched at her sides. “I was born here!”
She left, satisfied with having had the last word. Born here…interesting. That was very interesting. She had a greater connection to this damned little town than I’d thought. It didn’t make any real difference to me, but again, I was curious why the Hadleigh brats had an interest in her.
Maybe she’d stay away from St. Thaddeus — not that I cared. I shouldn’t have even bothered to warn her. If she ended up running head-first into trouble, that wasn’t my business. Humans were only to be played with and nothing more.
