“Pain does funny things to a girl,” Kiki says as I pour the coffee. “Can give a girl an insatiable hunger for more...if you know what I mean.”
I curse as hot coffee spills over my knuckles. I’m quick to grab a rag and clean up the mess I made. My pulse and thoughts jump erratically. She knows I’m a Succubus, which is terrifying enough, but to be speaking in code about it while everyone is milling about puts my nerves on edge.
“Just don’t forget, darling,” Kiki adds, her nails cool on my wrist. “Pain is sometimes how we find our people.”
Dame Kiki has swept off and out the door with her drink by the time I’ve swallowed down the knot in my throat. But I can’t digest what she’s said, because the music flips on at a blaring volume and the lights dim as another magical night at Poison Apple kicks off, and the doors open.
“And here’sour resident beauty, Aurora,” Genie’s voice rings out as the spotlight hits me. I twist and turn and put on the usual show as I do my Lost Girl introduction, but tonight my heart isn’t in it.
I’m angry. I’m devastated. But at least I’m full. Of Talon. That knowledge makes everything hurt all over again.
I lean forward, letting my breasts spill dangerously as I pour vodka straight into open mouths below. Cheers rise, but my focus blurs.
A ripple of warning zips up my spine before I lift my gaze. When I look further into the crowd of gyrating, swaying patronspumping their fists in time to the music, my attention fixes on a single face. Small. Still. Unmoving.
She doesn’t dance. Doesn’t drink.
Just watches.
An Asian woman. Hard to place her age—twenty or forty—but her heart-shaped face is carved from porcelain. Electric violet eyes stare back, unblinking.
It’s the dimples that betray her. The same as King Kaison’s.
Mal.
I swallow hard, pulling the bottle back up. I try to continue my little dance and shuffle across the bar, but Geanie’s booming words and the sound of the crowd muffle as panic roars in my ears.
Maybe I’m seeing things?
I turn to look again and she’s still there. My heart thuds so hard it bruises my chest.
I’ve never seen the woman, but I know it’s Mal.
The woman in the crowd tilts her head ever so slightly as if to say,so you do know me.
It’s too much. It’s just too fucking much.
All the rage and heartbreak I’ve felt over the last several hours boils over as I face the one who cursed my entire existence.
Power rises, low and furious beneath my skin. It stretches and pushes its way out of me, reminding me of this same sensation when I faced that vampire on the docks. It’s like finding a new muscle I didn’t even know I had, so I’m not even sure what it’s trying to do.
Until it surges forward.
A crack of pink light arcs from my chest, visible, unmistakable—an aura made of hunger and curse and wrath.
The hunger that has always stayed in my bones, that always has been called via touch stretches out of my body, hungry jaws open wide, directed ather.
It slices through the air like a whip of smoke and neon, fast and bright and impossible to ignore.
People cheer. They think it’s part of the show. Part of the Lost Girl act.
But this is no act.
I give the curse direction. I give it teeth.
The barest, almost imperceptible raise of Mal's eyebrows makes it appear as if she is more intrigued than afraid.
It slams into her, but instead of devouring Mal, it whiplashes back. That surge of power I sent at Mal crashes into me.
