Page 25 of Vampire's Choice

“You adore him, I can tell. But I won’t rat you out. We have a couple performances in the Carolinas. Maybe we should get some of that pepper and return the favor.”

Ruth scoffed. “I got even a week later. When you get a chance, ask him how, and watch him lose his shit.”

Clara laughed out loud. The heads of the few people sitting nearby swiveled in their direction. From the pleased surprise they showed, touched with some concerning poignancy, Ruth determined Clara’s mirth wasn’t as common an event as it may once have been.

Though she’d have to guard against sentiment, she was already feeling drawn to the young woman herself. “I know Alexis,” she told Clara. “She and Dante have come to the island a couple times.”

While Adan and Dante talked magical sorcery stuff—obsessive workaholics—Ruth had shown Alexis around the sanctuary. They’d ended up hanging out in Ruth’s tree for a couple hours, talking about Alexis’s work with an ocean center in Florida and her travels with Dante. As well as her angel father and mermaid mother.

So often in their world, people were circumspect about their backgrounds, but Alexis had been refreshingly open. Ruth had liked her. She wouldn’t mind getting to see her again.

“Your cat sanctuary sounds like supernatural species central,” Clara noted.

Ruth chuckled. “You should hear my father complain about it. So…how long do we have to know one another for you to tell me what sex with an angel is like? In great detail.”

Clara had put a slice of peach in her mouth. Her startled reaction sent it down her windpipe and set off a burst of coughing. But the light in her eyes grew encouragingly more sparkly.

“Newest security hire lets VIP choke on peach and die,” she wheezed. “That’s going to suck on your resume.”

“I will engineer a cover up,” Ruth told her, though she shifted to tap Clara on the back until the peach was properly rerouted.

Clara sent her a watery-eyed look. “You’re really not what I’m used to from a vampire.”

“Impossibly scary or irritatingly stodgy?”

“You’ve met a few. Do all of them look at you like they’re determining where you rank in the food chain? Literally.”

“Well, it’s hard not to. We’re in the top ten in that chain.”

“Who ranks above you?”

“Angels for sure.” Ruth’s mind moved to the incubus male who also had some angel blood. His fighting skills, his strength, were far superior to hers. If Merc had gone all out, he would have killed her. She didn’t doubt that. But thinking about Yvette’s warning, she decided to test it out on her new friend.

“What can you tell me about Merc?”

Clara’s reaction was impossible to miss. Uneasiness and apprehension. Coldness gripped Ruth, the girl’s emotions triggering a punitive response. Irresistible sexual beast he might be, but she’d figure out a way to chop off those relevant parts if he’d done something to warrant it. “He’s harmed you?”

“Oh, no,” Clara assured her, though her gaze remained sober. “Not exactly. Merc is…difficult around women. We all know not to be alone with him. Not ever. Incubi…most of them, the pure bloods, they don’t live too long, not by human standards. The hunger for sexual energy drives them, and it keeps growing. Sometime around their thirties, it has a high chance of going from hunger to addiction. They start draining women for the high of it.”

She shook her head. “While most of us might say dying of an excess of sexual pleasure is one of the better ways to go, at that point, Guardians have to execute them.” Clara paused. “I’m not sure you could call whatever created incubi and succubi a loving deity, but I guess the clue is in what else they’re called. Demons. Sex demons.”

A different feeling gripped Ruth at the ominous words. “But Merc isn’t a pure incubus.”

“Marcellus doesn’t say a lot about it, but he’s told me Merc’s incubus side is at constant war with his angel side. Don’t get me wrong,” Clara added. “He’s way better at self-control than the first years I was here. Sometimes I think he enjoys making people think that grip is still far more of an iffy thing than it really is. But Marcellus warned me not to get complacent. He said though it might take a far stronger trigger than it once did, it can still be tripped.”

A shadow crossed Clara’s face. “There are those who say he wants to let it go. He doesn’t want to resist it. That the self-control is just an act.”

“Has he ever harmed anyone here?”

“No. The worst he did was before he came to the Circus, years ago, but it was pretty bad. Marcellus is in charge of him. Which also means in charge of his execution, if Merc crosses that line again. It makes their relationship complicated. Sometimes I think Merc likes yanking that chain. As if daring Marcellus to do it.”

“You’ve read him,” Ruth realized. “Merc.”

Clara lifted her gaze. It had that haunted tightness again, telling Ruth the source of her gauntness. Her abilities took a toll. “Once. I didn’t mean to, but something happened where he did scare me. It opened up the part that reads people. Really reads them, not what I do for the Circus. I saw…”

She stopped herself. “That’s not for me to share. It’s about him, and the things I see, yes, they come true a lot, maybe almost always, but sometimes I think, if there’s even a chance it won’t end that way or come to that, if I say it aloud, I destroy that chance. Does that make sense?”

It did. Though Ruth really wanted to know what she’d seen, she understood that feeling. Plus, she’d gained the information she needed.

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