Page 121 of Inflamed By an Incubus

Evelyn stripped off her coat, leaving it at the entrance of the largest building as she rushed into it. Fenix cast his off too, together with his gloves, using his teeth to remove first his left and then his right as he swapped his sword to his other hand.

“Speak,” Archer barked, his deep voice echoing down a stone staircase.

Evelyn was swift to change course and head up it, her blonde hair bouncing against her shoulders with each step. She stopped at the top and looked left and then right along the corridor there, and he lunged for her and seized her hand as he sensed the warlock off to his right.

Fenix tugged her in that direction, his heart pounding as the scent of blood filled his nostrils and the air chilled again. His breath fogged in front of his face as he ran for the open door at the end of the corridor, his fingers flexing around the hilt of the sword as he readied himself.

Archer swung his way when he burst into the room, a scrawny dark-haired male hanging from his right hand by the front of his coat. The young male’s fearful grey eyes shifted to Fenix and then back to Archer, his eyebrows pinned high on his forehead as the scent of urine joined the coppery tang of blood in the air.

Evelyn gasped and Fenix knew why.

There was a gaping hole in Archer’s shoulder, one that was slowly healing before Fenix’s eyes, knitting back together at the same pace as the holes in the front and back of Archer’s coat.

Fenix slowly edged towards Archer, his pace measured as he calmed his racing heart and eased around the remains of what he suspected had been another mage. Suspected because pieces of the body were littered across the entire library and Fenix couldn’t find the head. He sent a prayer up to whatever gods were listening, hoping that the male Archer had literally ripped apart hadn’t been the one they were looking for.

“Archer,” Evelyn murmured and his black eyes shifted to her, some of the darkness lifting from his face as they landed on her.

He moved his left hand behind his back. Attempting to hide the black claws that tipped his ashy fingers? He didn’t want Evelyn to see them. He could hide them from her all he wanted, but it wouldn’t change the fact his hands weren’t the only things different about him. His facial features were sharper, more angular, and his ears had grown pointed. Not just one point like an elf either. The tips of his ears had split into two points, the top one longer than the bottom.

And the male had fangs.

Teeth as sharp as Prince Oberon’s had been.

The bastard looked like he would be right at home in the Unseelie Court.

“I-I’ll t-tell you what-whatever you want. Just d-don’t d-d-do that to me.” The wiry lad still hanging from Archer’s other hand paled as the warlock’s black eyes edged back to him.

“Put him down, Archer.” Evelyn took slow steps towards him, lifting her hands so her palms were facing him.

Everything in Fenix roared at him to get her away from the warlock but he tamped it down, put a leash on it and reined it in. Evelyn had reached Archer more than once and he had every faith she could do it this time.

He really needed her to do it this time.

Because this male was now the only living thing he could sense in the area other than his own friends.

Archer grunted and released the male with a shove, sending him slamming into the wooden floorboards with enough force to shake the timbers beneath Fenix’s boots. The warlock paced away from her, muttering things beneath his breath again as he headed towards a window that looked out onto the mountains beyond the wall.

The male picked himself up, rubbing his hands up and down his arms as if he was freezing, and Fenix closed the gap between them at the same time as Evelyn. Fenix clutched the male’s shoulder as he hunkered down beside him, keeping him in place and hoping it would be enough to stop him from teleporting if he possessed that ability.

“I-I’m just a servant,” he mumbled.

“I know.” Fenix couldn’t sense a shred of magic in the male now he was close to him and he doubted that Archer had either, but the male had looked ready to go to town on him regardless of the fact he was just a human.

Archer slid him a look, his lip curling as if he had sensed Fenix’s opinion of him shifting back towards how it had been before they had teamed up, and then paced away. When Evelyn went to him, it was hard to stop himself from telling her to keep away from him, but he somehow managed it, choosing to keep tabs on her as he questioned the male instead of barking orders at her.

Fenix reached into his pocket and pulled out the silver frame, opened it and showed it to the traumatised male, not daring to hope he was going to get anything useful out of him. He was babbling to himself now, his dull eyes flickering between Fenix and the body parts just a few feet behind him.

“Have you seen this mage?” Fenix didn’t take his eyes away from the male as he sensed Rosalind and the others entering the room, shut them out as they exchanged whispered comments about the mess Archer had made.

Evelyn murmured to Archer, soothing him by degrees, making the chill in the air and the heavy sensation of his power gradually fade away.

The scrawny lad in front of Fenix nodded.

Fenix blinked. “Wait. You have seen him?”

He couldn’t believe it, not even when the male nodded again.

“Where have you seen him?” Fenix’s heart raced in his throat as he searched the male’s eyes, some part of him still refusing to believe the kid was telling him the truth.

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