Chapter Text
A succubus' body was her greatest weapon. Beauty and sexuality honed to a lethal, stunning, manipulative edge to seduce, and destroy their feeds.
Liora had spent centuries perfecting that weapon. She used it without mercy and with no remorse.
To survive, she had to. But it had grown tedious, very much a chore instead of bringing her release. Hooking in feeds had lost its lustre when the feeds only cared about their pleasure.
The man she'd chosen to help tame the demon screaming for sustenance tonight was no different. She always carried a tiny flame of hope that things would change for the better.
It guttered when he didn't engage in any foreplay. A clumsy fumbling was all she got before he drove inside her. The room reeked of sweat and desperation. It was all too familiar, rank.
And pitiful. The faint tang of her arousal—a specter of burnt sugar and saffron, barely enough to cover it. Liora lay beneath a nameless banker.
His salt and pepper hair, watery blue eyes glazed with lust, and the overwhelming stench of his cologne were the farthest thing from seductive. She fought a shudder off every few seconds.
Her shadows, usually wild and eager, pooled lifelessly on the bed, flinching away from the man. He couldn't see them. His Rolex glinted in the dim light as he panted into her neck, humid breath dampening her skin.
His hips jerked into her like a clumsy marionette, stoking nothing but friction. Her blood flowed colder than normal, pulse a steady drum instead of an electric thumping. The wetness between her thighs was pure venom.
The slippery essence of true sexual ardor had faded from her memory.
Pathetic, she said to herself. Her succubus agreed. Money can't buy skill, only bigger egos.
She stared at the ceiling, claws digging into the mattress to keep from shredding his spine. Her pulse stayed steady. She swallowed convulsively, bile climbing up her throat. His clammy hands groped her breasts.
Clumsy and greedy, uncaring of her preferences. His cock was a dull, useless ache inside her as she siphoned every grunt, gasp, and curse he let out.
She'd glamored him to see a fantasy when he'd stared lecherously at her in the bar near Wall Street. She had stolen his preferred look right out of his moneyed mind.
She appeared younger, softer, human.
It was a beautiful, vapid lie. Blond and green-eyed, she had aged herself down to twenty-four versus his forty-seven. But she was twenty-seven in mortal years.
And ancient in succubus measures. She was born long before his great-great-great-grandfather was a seed in his father's testicles.
He'd never know the demon beneath him.
She'd worn softer faces before. A Venetian courtesan's blush, a Weimar cabaret singer's smirk, and the faux innocence of a chambermaid. But this 'Allie' mask tasted like aspartame and cheap chocolate.
"Fuck, you're tight," he said, slurring, vodka thick on his tongue.
Liora's shadows coiled closer to her, hissing, and stiffening in disgust. Her muscles tried to lock. She forced them to remain loose. Hunger chewed at her nerves. Starved, always starving.
She barely stopped her lip from curling as she tensed her inner walls around the thin length jabbing into her. Pushing the banker to orgasm faster than she planned.
He groaned, moving faster. Lightning crackled in her veins, the Mad Monk's power seeking to obliterate the finance fool. She pushed a false moan through her clenched teeth, urging him on.
He fell for every part of her performance. His Rolex ticked away. She hated the damned things. It was a shackle for men who measured worth in seconds and dollars. He sobbed, chasing release.
Her own climax showed no signs of appearing. She feigned and forced the clenches of her cunt around his cock as he chased his end.
She doubted he could find her clit even if she drew him a damn map and handed him a compass. His rhythm turned erratic. His sweat dripped onto her bare chest.
Liora cringed, covering it with an arch of her back. It pooled in the hollow of her branded collarbone. It was a brackish baptism far removed from the gondola-drenched trysts of her Venetian years.
"Come with me, baby," he said. Heat flared through her, jaw gritting so tensely her teeth creaked, and she almost gutted him for it.
She endured another ten seconds of his jackhammer fucking. Mentally, she eviscerated him. The fleshy smack of his body meeting hers, muted by the ringing in her ears.
When he finished, a shout of her false name, Allie! She didn't give him a chance to collapse on top of her. Her heartbeat at last sped up.
Her claws slid free of the mattress. Shadows reared, her obsidian fangs forming as she gripped him by the hair.
His spend still spurted as she yanked his head toward her, talons scoring his scalp. Her demon rejoiced at the sanguine spill. She bit into his neck.
Savage, she drained him of his blood in three gulps.
He tasted of curdled milk and stale coffee. Ash coated her tongue. It was simpler to drain life force in this way.
She did not want to kiss him to get it. Letting him fuck her was already more than he deserved. Her veins pounded with stolen centuries, a gallery of phantom heartbeats preserved in venom.
She huffed, rolling his corpse off the bed, watching it crumple to the floor. Her cunt throbbed. Her inner succubus whined. She wanted to scour her skin with salt.
The gaping, grinding chasm within her cried out for something more decadent. Something that mattered. The wildfire heat beneath her skin simmered.
Heat spread behind her cheekbones, prickling her eyes until saltwater pooled. Every feed left her wanting, but emptiness was familiar. It was safe. Even if every part of her ached, bled, and roiled.
"Weak," she spat at the body, a shaking hand wiping her mouth. "All of you."
Her eyes flickered, amber fissures like the fault lines of a dying star fractured her borrowed irises. Her shadows wrapped around her. She slammed her fist into the wall to force her veneer back in place.
Hide the eyes, hide the freckles peeking through the glamor. She absolutely despised the lapse in control. Only relaxing once it solidified again. Her clothes reforged.
Shadow woven fabric forming around her. The glamor she'd worn for the banker melted back into the body she favored.
Still young, still beautiful, but all her own.
Her long copper hair shimmered under the lights as she stood and scanned the bedroom. She clicked her tongue, the urge to destroy the place rising in her. Typical of a man new to riches, everything was gaudy and inelegant.
Expensive furniture blurred against the white walls. Gold accents gleamed, drawing her narrowed eyes. She wrinkled her nose, ugly. Just like him. She instructed her darkness to clean up after her. Their tendrils slithered over to the dead man as she left the room.
She stalked through the doorway and into the hall. Her heels clicked against the tile and resounded off the walls as she paced the hallway. She muttered in Dutch. Her usual diatribe after these nights.
"Stupid. Stupid to think he'd be any different. They all talk a good game. They never live up to it. Stop falling for it."
The hair on her nape lifted, all her senses perked up just as a sudden high-pitched noise cleaved the silence. Her claws unsheathed on instinct, lightning crackled at their sharp tips. She jerked toward the sound.
The padding of tiny feet on wooden floors neared, and she spied a little kitten. The coppery stench of spilled blood was strong even here. Liora blinked. Her heart rate returned to its usual slowness. She cocked her head, huffing a brief laugh.
Its white face almost glowed in the dark. The animal perched feet from her. Its head tilted, appraising her. She moved as though to approach, and the cat leaped to its paws.
Its back arched, tail sticking straight up, fur standing on end. A low warning hiss echoed like a death rattle in the dark apartment. Liora snorted, claws clinking together as the kitten yowled.
"Don't worry, you're safe. Living with him," she said, jerking a thumb toward the pets master's bedroom, "was punishment enough."
The cat remained rigid, torn between confronting her and bolting. Liora chose for it, baring her teeth and hissing back. She refused to kill an animal just for existing.
Cats always reminded her of her own existence. They usually sensed something was different about her.
"Run along." Her murmur echoed through the hall.
It was a phrase she'd last growled to a tsar's hound before reducing his palace to cinders. Oh, those were the glory days. The cat scurried away, claws skittering on the floor.
She resumed her vigil as her magic devoured the corpse. Slower than normal, frayed by her failed fuck. If she'd orgasmed, she'd already be home.
Lounging in a hot bath. Not standing in this blasted hallway. Her shadows cleaned, but they also curated.
Bone splinters became Georgian cameos. His liver transformed into a macabre pâté served at a long-dead King's feast. The crunch of cartilage, bone, and squelch of flesh getting consumed soon ended.
If only it were so simple for her. Her hunger was a crown of thorns she'd welded to her own skull. She couldn't take it off. It ached like a broken bone.
It grew heavier by the day, and so did her duty. Her thankless, solitary duty had once been a source of pride and purpose. The modern era offered little in the way of challenge.
She shoved the thoughts aside as silence fell. The dark hall became a black hole as her shadows returned to her. She phased into them immediately.
But the air crackled with frost. Foreign and freezing, completely unwelcome. She spat venom onto the tiles. It smelled of rime-glazed citrus, wintry pine, and something that tingled the back of her throat. She couldn't decipher it.
The scent was not hers.
It vanished before it could linger. Darkness embraced her, and her muscles bled tension as its warmth cloaked her. The onyx void studded with explosive, glittering stars soon enveloped her. The hotel's neon sign flickered like a dream in her mind.
Its saint-white glow stained her thoughts. Her cunt was still slick. The empty ache inside her burned. Her magic carried her back to her own room.
The expansive mattress sighed as she perched on the edge, fingers gripping the smooth surface. Its silken sheets had slid halfway down the immense bed. She blew out a long breath.
"I'd have been better off fucking myself. What a waste of a glamor."
She muttered to herself about abstaining until she burned again. She shed her clothing, fabric whispered and rustled as it slipped free of her body.
Redressing slowly to allow the heat in her core to subside. Her hands still trembled as she tugged a nightgown up her strong thighs.
Water gurgled in the walls, pipes rattling behind the plaster. The jasmine fragrance she'd spritzed herself with before leaving still clung to the air.
Another waste. Her usual nightwear draped her body as she rose to her feet and let her shadows take her to the roof. Soft, damp grass compressed underfoot as she inhaled deeply.
Overripe orchids, a metallic and dry ozonic scent, and the burnt sugar of her own arousal infused her lungs. She'd have to ease it herself. A beetle scuttled across her path.
The glossy insect shimmered under the city lights. Its iridescent shell reminded her of a Faberge egg she'd crushed under heel in 1917.
Or perhaps it uncovered memories of the Tsarina's jewels she'd once melted into bullets. That had caused a riot. Fun, or maybe it just seemed that way now. It didn't matter.
They were dust. She was more. Her body hurt, heat roasting under her skin. Gold veins threaded her hands and wrists. Her demon howled for more to eat.
Liora leashed it, talons flexing as she swallowed thickly. The taste of rot, stupidity, and smoke loitered on her tongue. Her dreams would turn erotic now. She sighed.
Her shoulders slumped. Mouth twisting to the side. Coldness slid into her lungs. She was sick of herself. Sick of all of it.
Tired of the constant, repetitive nonsense that eternity had become. Of suffering treason after treason. For what?
What was the point?
Her head shook. There was no use in letting it haunt her. She'd either feed again, or let herself turn to dust for a few days.
She cleared her throat and focused on the view before her. The buildings stretching high above her head twinkled with lights. Man's arrogant attempt to outshine the stars. She scanned the glass, and steel contraptions.
Mortal silhouettes appeared in the windows. Some had left their curtains open, faces glazed by the glow of the rectangle in front of them. They'd all grown soft. Their ancestors would faint to see what humanity had become.
She shook her head, looking away from them. The city's heartbeat rabbited beneath the soles of her bare feet. It was a far cry from the drumbeats of revolutions she'd danced to centuries prior.
The sluggish sensation filled her screaming veins with a thrumming of fiery blood and wicked desire. She crossed the small oasis she'd created to escape the confines of her suite. Her taloned fingers trailed over tall flowers.
Liora's pulse dropped as she gripped the frigid metal railing at the roof's deadly edge. The chill burning off it was an unpleasant smell in the air. Cars honked down below.
Police sirens caterwauled, red and blue lights flashing atop speeding cars on a risky chase. Men catcalled twittering girls, levelled insults, and yelled at each other. Women laughed, hearty and loudly, and drunkenly.
Some would go home with a new or old bedmate. To indulge in their shared pleasure. Alcohol ripped away all inhibitions and turning it filthy—fiery and utterly consuming.
She sneered at them even though they'd never see it. Her ribs burned as the thought of them coming to harm rose in her mind.
She bared her teeth, neck cording as her hands itched to maim someone. She hated them for it. Hated how insignificant their lives were, yet they felt everything so potently, every moment became an eternity.
Eternity was a drag when her demonic spirit could never be satisfied. A thousand mouths lined her ribs, gnawing at her spine, waiting for her to give them a feast of desire to gorge on.
To finally let herself reach fullness. She shook her head, eyes turning to the moldering heavens.
Fullness was a grenade with the pin already pulled.
The starvation was her compass, her North Star in a world steeped in misery, greed, and mismanagement. Her inner diatribe made her lip snarl and her claws screeched over the railing she clutched. Her gaze whipped up to the sky.
Liora stared at the stars—ice-white and pitiless. Like a vampire's gaze. Blinking, winking, they dazzled. They reflected off her black irises in a dull mimicry of her true eyes beneath the glamor.
Her eyes blurred with the weight of unshed tears , chin trembling as her breath lodged in her chest like a jagged rock. The soreness it caused only worsened the burn of unshed tears.
She needed more. More of what, she wasn't sure. She needed... in a moment of vulnerability, of deepest insatiable need, she made a wish.
"Let me feel something..."
The light breeze twined through her loose hair. Its invisible icy fingers brushed her cheeks as the words resounded. A childish, weak, and pointless wish.
She cursed herself, face flaming with crimson heat. She glared at the sky and froze. The constellations had coiled into a smirk she didn't recognize.
Her brows knitted together, one question swirled through her mind. What did it mean?
It mocked her for a few strained heartbeats. Her hands were white-knuckled on the railing. A shiver trickled down her spine.
Her heart rate kicked up, and she went unnaturally still. Goosebumps scattered like jewels across her exposed skin as a breathless sensation sparkled in her chest.
It wasn't fear. No, it would never be fear. She couldn't remember the last time fright had entered her life. It felt like... Anticipation.
Liora scowled at both the sky and herself. She spun in a whirl of copper hair, black silk and handwoven lace. And halted before taking a single step. She stared wide-eyed as her dark magic writhed and hummed.
Her shadows knitted into a serpent, eating its own tail. Her head eddied out, breath catching in her throat. She abruptly wanted to flee.
She hadn't seen that since she'd destroyed the mortal hunters' archives. It was different now. No cross to be found.
Just the snake. The Ouroboros twisted and twisted despite her inner turmoil.
It pulsed, glitching in the air before it dispersed. Her umbral vipers returned. She laughed, forcing it through her clenched teeth.
"Since when do you make art?"
The darkness buzzed, its voice the flutter of moth wings against a chapel window. Wind whipped up, scattering her loose hair. It carried the frozen-citrus scent she'd experienced in the banker's house. Their snake forms dissolved into smoke, but their afterimage flashed.
It was a question mark seared into the night, lined with a shimmering frost. Her mouth dried out. It mirrored a symbol she'd once carved into a Romanov's bedpost.
It was a joke only ashes now remembered. Liora's tongue felt too heavy. Her bones had filled with intangible cement. Her eyes narrowed on her black tendrils.
She whispered, "I wished for fire."
Her shadows laughed.
So did the stars.