Wildfire Gospel (Habitat) (19 page)

XO paused and blocked the door before I could walk in. “Don’t eat my fighters.”

I raised my hands in protest. “What? I wouldn’t do that.”

“You’ve got the taste for Fairies now. It’s a hard one to get over, but you’ll have to if you plan on living around Santeria.” XO moved his hand so I could walk through. “Not many have even heard of Umbutus. There’s only a few in this habitat. Many in others. That being said, keep your status a secret. Like the humans, Santerians kill things they don’t understand.”

“I don’t hunger for Fairies. That Spraggin was just a one-time thing.”
I think.

“They are tasty.” Graham chuckled.

“I can’t believe you just said that.” I shook my head. “Your daughter is half Fairy.”

“Lucky for you, her type of Fairy creates a sort of repellant in their blood stream. It’s to discourage other creatures in their realm from snacking on them. Lily and Lanore’s species evolved due to that.”

“What are they?” I kept Graham’s pace as we walked down the corridor.

He ignored my question. “Did I ever tell you how we met?”

“No.”

XO laughed. “This is a good story. Go ahead and tell him. The fighter is on the second level. It’ll take us several minutes to get to him.”

Graham rubbed his beard. “It was the 1970s in this realm. I’d been selling skin for almost ten years. On this day, I wore the skin I’m wearing now, which I didn’t do much then. Brown skin wasn’t exactly the favored color during those times. But I had an old Army jacket on and some Were-bullcrap badges sewn in. Most humans figured I was a Vietnam War veteran and left me alone. The few that didn’t were the anti-war hippies, which consisted of a good bit of Earth Witches, but that’s another story. Anyway, I’m tracking this human male. He had the prettiest skin, milky white and real soft.”

“How did you know it was soft?” I asked.

“I touched it.”

“What?” I couldn’t picture Graham touching any male.

“We were on the Greyhound bus. It’s this brand of buses that would take people all over the country, from city to city. I asked the man for a cigarette and got a nice feel of his skin. Anyway, this man is on the bus for days. Where he’s going I have no idea, but the man never goes anywhere alone when the bus stops. He goes to the bathroom and it’s full of other men. He grabs something to eat and it’s packed with people. I can never grab him.”

“Why not just kill him once they leave?”

XO laughed louder than ever. “A dead white man being seen in a room after a black man leaves … in the earth’s 1970s. Graham wouldn’t be here to tell the story if that had happened. Humans didn’t just make up the police force. Witches did too. Lots of them policed other supes too and some of them had that human mentality back then. They had the nerve to discriminate against skin color too as if they belonged to the human world.”

Their entire conversation seemed odd, but I said, “Okay. So you can’t kill him, then what?”

We rounded the corner.

Graham continued, “Three more days, the man is just traveling on the bus. The final day he gets off at some distant stop secluded from everyone. It’s on a dirt road with a solitary bench. The forest is all over. Me and the other passengers on the bus are exchanging glances and wondering why this bus stop even exists, usually the Greyhound stops at big stations with other buses. Anyway, the bus stops. The man rises to get off. I jump up with him and we leave.”

“Did the guy think it was strange you got off with him?” I asked.

“No. By then he was hypnotized. If I’d been paying attention and less salivating over that skin, I would have noticed one day before the man stopped getting off of the bus to eat or go to the bathroom. Urine and black spots stained his pants. He reeked. His eyes barely blinked. When the bus drove off, I tapped his shoulder, but he kept walking on. I asked him for another cigarette. He headed to the forest and said nothing. I’m still not putting two and two together. I’m just counting myself lucky that this will be an easy kill.”

We passed more gray metal doors with names. The further we stepped in, the more herbal scents assaulted me. I held no doubts that lots of Fairies sat behind those doors, probably getting ready for or recovering from fights. It was like I walked into a fine dining restaurant where a chef worked on his grandest meal. It made me sick to think that I would chomp on a Fairy if he or she stuck their head out of one of the doors.

“So the guy is not talking. Once we get deep into the forest, I pulled out my tool. It was this thin piece of metal, real tiny. I knocked the man out with one hit. Humans are easy that way. One slam to the back of the head and they’re down. The needle was for the brain. I stuck it in his ear and spoke a few chants. My tool zipped in with sparks and scrambled his brain with electric shocks. The organ would be mush by the time I peeled off all his flesh. I carried around a duffle bag with me at the time. It had all my stuff in it—knives, carvers, and bags for the organs. I had a nice side organ business too. Earrings covered the top of the duffle bag.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It was all his conquests. Every time he lay down with a female he took her earring.” XO clapped his hands. “I remember that bag. Whatever happened to it?”

“Lily destroyed the bag.” Graham’s expression faltered for a second. “Anyway back to the story, so I’m in the forest with the dead human. Lily materialized right as I started peeling the man’s skin.” He licked his lips. “She was naked, but those damn flower petals floated around her body covering all the best parts a Demon like me enjoys seeing. Wherever she strolled, those damn petals followed, hiding those … let’s just say I didn’t like those goddamn petals. It must’ve taken a week to get rid of them. Anytime I set them on fire to get a look, more came. It’s like Mother Nature didn’t want me to touch her. Oh man, but when Lily finally dropped her power over the petals to let me see—”

“Wait a minute.” I raised my eyebrows. Graham had jumped from one part of his story to another. “What did Lily say when she found you with the man, peeling away his skin?”

Graham held a distant look. “Huh?”

“What did Lily say when she walked up on you?”

“Oh, yeah.” He formed his lips into a huge smile. “She yelled, ‘You killed my Human!’ and then opened the ground under me with one snap of those pretty little fingers. She trapped me in piles of leaves, sticks, and dirt. Those damn Pixies helped her. She kept thousands of those little annoying insects around her. I tried to explain that I needed his skin, but when I opened my mouth, rocks filled it. After I got over the initial shock of some naked Fairy locking me away in nothing but nature’s elements, I took my time and showed Lily what a Demon does when he’s pissed.”

We arrived at a bronze door. XO opened and we went through. Cool air hit my skin. Carpet coated the ground. Massive floor to ceiling pictures in brass frames hung on the wall. There were only five people and I recognized two of them as we headed past. Zulu and Nona. My body tensed.

I formed my hands into fists. “What is this floor?”

“It’s where I put all my champions’ dressing rooms. You have to kill many to get here. These guys don’t lose. Once they retire, I put a photo up on the wall as motivation for the current ones.”

Graham scanned the pictures, but he would’ve never recognized Zulu because he wore his Prime form and didn’t even look at the camera. The photo captured the Prime staring off to the side with black pants on. Nona appeared younger in hers. Her frame was smaller as she held her fists up in a fighting stance and sneered at the camera.

We’d thought earlier that the person who hired my killer had a lot of money. We never considered the fact that the killer and the hirer may have been friends.

Nona probably wanted me dead. She knew Zulu was gone. She probably figured that if La La was without Zulu and me, then she would be easy to defeat.

“Lily and I battled for an entire day. We destroyed that forest. She had good control of that place too. I set a fire. She beat it down with dust. By nightfall, I was exhausted and she disappeared into a damn tree with the dead man. I screamed at the trunk and declared war.”

We stopped at a door at the end of the hallway.

“Sorry, Graham, but story time is over.” XO opened the door.

We stepped in.

A man sat in his chair, polishing a huge silver sword. He looked up at me with no recognition in his eyes of who I could be. But then again, I wore a different skin on the night he killed me.

Lanore

I lay on the ground and didn’t know what happened. I remembered fighting the Vamp with the demon fireballs, the flames came back to me, and then I fell to the floor in this pleasureful sea of hot lust.

What happened after that?

“Lanore?” Zulu’s voice was a faint whisper next to the sensations of the flames as they journeyed through me and made my body their home.

Am I still on the ground?

“Lanore? Lanore?”

I opened my eyes, not realizing I had even closed them. “Yes?”

“What the fuck was that?”

I looked around me. All the other Vamps lay in a pile of blood with holes in their chests. Zulu had killed the rest and done it super fast.

Or was I just out of it that long?

“Did I blank out or something?” I got up off the ground with Zulu’s help.

“Did you blank out? No. Not really. You fell to your knees, closed your eyes, and moaned like you do when I’m inside of you.” He dragged me to a shadowed area near the wall next to the Bottelli compound. “What was that? Your fire isn’t blue and it doesn’t burn like that. Whatever came out of your mouth incinerated that Vamp in seconds.”

“It did.” I smiled. Excitement must’ve swam in my eyes because it bounced around in my body.

Zulu didn’t seem as excited as me. In fact, a worried expression transformed his usual neutral mask. “That scared me and I don’t get scared too easily. Now I’ll ask you again, what the fuck was that?”

“It’s demon fire. I sucked it out of a spell at the Endo Family’s compound. Oh yeah, I entered the Shinto Habitat portal too.”

Suddenly, his worried expression shifted to fascination—his mouth opened, his eyes widened as he leaned toward me. “You entered the Shinto Habitat?”

“Yes. I walked right outside and looked up at the sky. The portal was in an alley. It’s cold there by the way.”

“You made it all the way there? How did you feel?”

“Like normal.”

“If you can get through the portal, then I can.”

“I think so.”

“This changes everything.”

“Which is why we need to get out of here and quickly. Dante planned on having us stay down here forever, at least that’s what I think. Sakura hinted as much. Even worst, Sakura mentioned that Dante always figured a species could possibly possess magic that would block out the humans’ security spells and allow them to travel through any portal. I’m pretty sure that’s us. Meanwhile, Dante has been testing supes and experimenting with them at different portals before, even Rebels have tried to go through.”

“Rebels?” Zulu raised one eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

The same realization I’d had glazed over Zulu’s face. “Then the Rebels and Dante probably have worked together before and may have always been working together.”

“Possibly. That’s what I came up with.”

“Let’s go.” His eyes transformed to black. His fangs extended. His skin darkened. Wings burst from his back and expanded out. He’d been wearing a new pair of jeans since he’d shifted earlier at the Feeding and must’ve put them on when he shifted back. The material ripped as his thighs bulged out and his legs grew. All of that lush blond hair sucked into his head. A black bald look appeared in its place as he shifted into the Prime.

Once he was done shifting, he said, “Don’t use that blue stuff unless you have too.”

“What? Why not? You already said that I finished the Vamp in seconds.”

“You also had an orgasm in the middle of a fight. That’s why.”

I blushed. “It wasn’t an orgasm.”

“It sounded like it,” he snarled.

“You sound jealous.”

“I have nothing to be jealous of, I’ve made you moan louder.” He headed toward the door. “As soon as we get inside, I kill and you stand back.”

“Like a good little girl?” I rolled my eyes.

He ignored me. “Are you okay with me just killing? I don’t want any of that peace talk in there.”

“I’m fine with it.”

“There won’t be any questions or discussions. No one lives if they have fangs and drink blood. I’m done playing it nice with these Vamps, especially since you told me that Rebels have been down here. Now it’s time to do it my way.”

I stiffened, but nodded. We were down here because I hesitated with killing Dante, not once but many times. Each time, I tried to think through the situation and search for a more peaceful alternative. Each time, we lost.

“Okay, Zulu. Let’s do it your way, but if your way doesn’t work, we try something else.”

“Death works. Trust me. I’ve never had any complaints.”

“No one was alive to complain.”

“Exactly.”

We stopped at the door. Zulu tilted my way and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I kill everyone and you stay behind me.”

Stay behind him? Yeah right.

We opened the door.

Around twenty Vamps lounged in the room on couches as they sipped whatever filled their glasses. Vamp-owned Mixbreeds lay next to them. There must have been five or so, all with dark skin and long black hair. Silver collars wrapped around their necks with the letter B dangling in the front.

The Vamp-owned are back so soon. Of course Dante lied. How did he get them all back so quickly?

“Don’t kill the Vamp-owned, unless they try to defend them.” The temperature in my body rose. “Other than that, let them go.”

Some of the Vamps gazed at us and then returned to whatever they were doing. To them, we were two weak Mixbreeds against a room full of pureblooded Vamps. To us, they were child’s play. Zulu rose in the air and dove toward the center. In a dark blur of motion he tore off two faces with his claws. Dark blood splattered. Someone screamed.

Two men pushed out their fangs and charged for Zulu. I ran their way, formed blue fireballs in my hands, and tossed them at the Vamps. They exploded into a mess of liquid flesh and disintegrating bones. The balls flowed back into me. This time I was ready for the sweltering sensations and battled with myself to not blank out into ecstasy.

Damn that feels good.

I gritted my teeth and did my best to ignore it.

“What happened to doing it my way?” Zulu growled, dived down, and snatched off another face with his claws.

“The plan was to kill everyone.”

“Not just that.” He kicked a female in the head. She flipped backward, but sprang back up in seconds. “I said stay back.”

“That was a suggestion.” I raced over to an area that was empty due to Vamps chasing the flying Prime, what they assumed was the most immediate threat in the room. I was starting to see that the best part about fighting with Zulu was that people always put their back to me and focused on him, underestimating my ability and power.

Good.

A guy jumped on the top of one couch and leaped in the air, targeting his extended hands Zulu’s way. My man twisted in midair and met the man with claws to his chest. Zulu’s signature move. A dark an ill-shaped heart lay in Zulu’s hands as the man with now a hollowed chest, fell and crashed into the floor.

Four more Vamps charged for Zulu. Flapping those black wings, he rose higher. I raised my body temperature and made the room hot too. Fireballs came next, blue, sweltering ones, with white sparks cracking at the edges. Zulu didn’t want me to join the fight or use my demon fire. He would have to be disappointed. The urge to make flames bubbled within me and begged to be a part of the game. It couldn’t be helped. Not to mention, I couldn’t just stand by like a meek little female as my man killed everyone in the space. I wouldn’t lose anyone else, especially him.

Zulu battled six Vamps by himself. His ability to fly gave him the best advantage. He floated above them, soaring down at the best opportunities, and clawing their faces. They jumped up after him. Some got a hit in. Others lost their balance.

I made ball after ball and slung them in the air.
Rise.
They traveled through the space, searching for someone to dissolve. Zulu dodged and darted them as he wrenched a battling Vamp up by his neck and tore him in two. Vamp-owned dropped to the floor. Smarter ones raced out of the area into the opening away from me.

I kept my back on the wall and continued making fire. Sweat dripped down my face. I was hotter than I’d ever been before. My heartbeat increased in my chest. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. I formed more and more. Ice blue balls rained down in the room, crackling and spiraling through the air. They smashed into unsuspecting Vamps too busy jumping at Zulu. Once the balls met Vamp skin, it was over for them. Like Zulu said, they melted in seconds. They collapsed into themselves within a blink of an eye, and I loved it.

All of you burn!

I laughed.

In no time, we destroyed all of them. Zulu by himself was a force, but Zulu and I together were well-calculated death with no escape. I almost smiled, until the blue fire began to soar on the Vamp-owned crouching on the ground and shaking.

“No!” I waved my hands. “Come back!”

The balls paused in midair, barely an inch from many of the Vamp-owneds’ faces and just like that swooped back to me in a buzzing motion. They crashed into my chest. All of them. I fell back against the wall, groaning in pleasure and digging my nails into the palms of my hands.

Fuck me. I can’t get used to how good this feels.

I leaned back into the wall and slid down to the floor, unable to even be embarrassed for myself. Zulu landed in front of me. The Vamp-owned that almost got burned scattered away with shrieks that hurt my ear and shoved tremors of guilt into my chest.
I almost killed them.
Yet, that thought wasn’t enough to stop my panties from moistening or body from spasming on waves of lust.

“Lanore?” Zulu extended his hands out to touch me.

“Don’t.” I bit my lip.

He dragged his gaze down to my chest as my nipples hardened under the thin shirt. “I don’t like this demon fire.”

“No?” I licked my lips.

He seized my waist. “I don’t think you have any control of it and when you do make this stuff it doesn’t react like regular fire.” He drew his wings together, picked me up, and slung me over his shoulders. I couldn’t help it, but I writhed on top of him, gliding my hands against his hard muscle and the downy surface of dark skin. He slapped my behind to stop me. That only garnered a groan so loud it surprised even me that I made the sound.

“No. I don’t like this blue stuff at all. You’re horny at the worst time.”

“It’s never a bad time to be horny.” I rubbed his black skin some more, reveling in the weird texture of it, so different from his smooth pale flesh. In some areas on his shoulders, back, and near his wings there were tiny grooves or more like a squiggly pattern of even blacker little lines. When I touched them, they widened and wisps of air brushed against my fingers.

“What is this?” I asked. When the air wisped by me again, I shuddered.

“I don’t know what they are. Ray used to say they were pores on my beast’s body. There aren’t many books on Primes in this realm. Enough about my beast.” Zulu’s voice came out low and dark. “Your regular fireballs evaporate into nothing. This stuff goes back into your body and gives you orgasms. Why?”

“It’s not … giving me … orgasms.”

“What are they giving you then?” He stepped over puddles of dissolved Vamps mixed with gray ash.

The sensations stopped rocking my body. I tried to climb off of him. “I don’t know, it’s a pleasureful reaction.”

“I don’t like it.” He carried me through the hallway and passed the bathroom we’d been in earlier as well as the door I recognized as his office. “Why don’t the balls evaporate like your fire?”

“I have no idea. I’ll have to ask my dad.”

“You don’t know, but you sucked it up?”

“It’s demon fire. Do you have any idea how special and hard to get it is? Of course I sucked it up.”

“Don’t drink anymore of this stuff until we know what it is doing to you.”

“Sir, yes sir.” I saluted.

“Lanore—”

“I’m listening and it doesn’t matter. I’m full of it. Stuffed. I couldn’t suck in anymore if I wanted to. Put me down so I can get the map out.”

“I don’t trust any map from a creature I don’t know.” He let me down and we walked through the hallway side by side while I dug into my pockets and pulled the map out. “I would rather go the way I came earlier. I don’t trust anything from that Dragonshifter. I don’t trust anybody or anything down here.

“Good point.” I still took the map out just in case. “Do you think you could get us back to the way you came in?”

“Your scent is still in the air in the hallways so I could follow that. Once I get to that banquet hall where I killed earlier, I know my way out. I made claw marks on the walls for when I got you and we escaped.”

“Good thinking.” I spotted the hollow hole on my left that had been filled with sick Mixbreeds as they dug in there. “So far we’re walking in the right place. Can you smell Angel?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to leave without her.”

“We’ll have to.”

“Zulu—”

“If she can burst out of thin air and reappear several feet away, she can get out of here.”