"Not great with the storytelling, Arick," I said, shaking my head.
"The girl then. I imagine she has many stories to tell," he added, smiling. "This woman worth going to war over. Worth risking your family for."
I hadn't thought about it like that.
If I were being honest, I hadn't given it much thought at all.
That wasn't who I was, a thinker.
That was why Ace was in charge, not me.
He thought.
I did shit.
But Arick wasn't wrong. Those were the things I was risking. A never-ending war. And losing the only beings I'd been close to for too many years to count.
For her.
A woman I didn't know.
A woman I'd only barely laid eyes on before I'd made my decision.
It made no sense.
But there was no going back now, it seemed.
"If I can't come back here, how will you ever get your story?" I asked.
"I have my ways," he said, giving me a smirk as he wrote something in the air with his fingers. And not a moment later, the door to my side opened, and the two women from the den came in.
"There they are," he said, giving me a look that said he'd somehow summoned them. "Show me how much you missed me," he demanded.
They didn't need more coaxing than that.
One of the women, the redhead from before, climbed up on the couch, making short work of getting Arick's dick in her mouth.
"Yeah, I see that," I said as Arick patted the back of the couch. The other woman shucked off her panties, hiked up her dress, and climbed up to ride his face as his hands sank into her ass.
And I took that as my cue to leave.
If you didn't know Arick, you'd have thought he used his Craft on those women. But I knew him well enough to know he simply didn't need to. I don't know if it was the palpable power that emanated from him or what, but women flocked to him. I'd literally seen two chicks come to blows over who got to suck him off first.
It was almost enough to make a man jealous.
But I had my own fucking shit to worry about.
I went ahead and took Arick's invitation to raid his house for a couple sets of clothes for me and Nova as well as some spare funds I saw laying around, shoving it all into a backpack I jacked as well.
Demons, well, we weren't prone to guilt about shit. And even if we were, stealing clothes and a few grand from a man like Arick was like taking a shell from a beach packed with them.
The man had money.
He had money from his art, from his music, from his random business ventures, and—most of all—from using his Craft to manipulate stocks in his favor.
He'd been around nearly as long as I have, and he had high eight figures to show for it.
And all he wanted in return for whatever I took—and to be clear, he didn't give a fuck what I did take, I could have walked out with a priceless antique or a spare toothbrush—was the story if or when we pulled it off.
If we didn't, well, he wouldn't miss any of it anyway.
On the drive back to the root cellar, I worked out my plan.
I would dose her up one more time if it was waning, then we would take off as the sun came up.
We could be to a club I'd dealt with a dozen times by the next day, stay the night, then head out again.
And again
And again.
Until the enthrallment snapped.
Until she no longer belonged to them.
What then, though?
Would she belong to me?
What the fuck?
No, she wasn't going to belong to me.
I had no interest in that shit.
That was for fucking Lycus and Ace.
Not me.
Or so I thought at the time.
Chapter Five
Nova
I should have liked being drugged.
It made everything slow and numb. It made my thoughts less invasive, less obsessive.
That was the problem, though. I was having trouble thinking even when I wanted to. And there were things I really needed to be thinking about.
Like what would happen if the drugs stopped working? If the pain came back?
Drex was right. Pain drove people crazy. It wouldn't be long before pain like that made my mind twist and bend until it broke.
I just barely managed to drag myself out of my pitch-black hiding place when nature called. Then promptly almost fell down the stairs on my way back because I couldn't quite feel my legs.
Or my arms.
Or my face.
Or anything at all.
As the minutes stretched to hours, I could feel the sleep pulling at my eyelids, begging me to sleep.
It wasn't long before there was no way to fight it anymore either.
"Nova," a voice called, sounding far away. "Nova!" the deep, masculine voice demanded again, this time with a shake that started to drag me out of the blissful nothingness of my unconsciousness. "Fuck. Maybe I gave you too much," he grumbled, giving me another shake.