Page 41 of Inflamed By an Incubus

Fenix’s first port of call upon leaving Hell via a portal to the fae town in Scotland was to teleport to the outskirts of a small town in rural England. He landed in the forest of a country estate, a quiet and secluded spot he had found after driving to this location, and got his bearings, giving himself a moment to steel his mind and his heart. As much as he despised having to be near mages after what they had done to him and Aderyn, he needed to question as many of them as he could in order to discover the whereabouts of the one who had cursed them.

During his travels over the last few months, he had worked his way through Hella’s leads and others he had found while looking into them. It had turned out more than half of them were no longer home to blood mages, a breed of witch who preyed upon phoenix shifters, capturing them and using the power contained in their blood for everything from spellcasting to keeping themselves young.

Now, he had four places where he knew mages lived still. He had visited them all, travelling by conventional means to places close to them so he could then teleport freely to the locations once he was ready to take a closer look. A few days ago, he had scouted the first of them from a safe distance, cataloguing the faces of everyone who had come and gone, glancing between them and the small portrait that was burning a hole in the pocket of his black jeans.

Fenix pulled out the oval silver case and opened it. He peered down at the painting it contained, one he had done himself, and sneered at it. He had gotten pretty good at sketching the bastard who had cursed him and Aderyn, had honed his skills over the years, refining this image of the mage. It wasn’t to remind him of what he looked like, because the male’s face was seared on his mind. He had painted it so he could show it to other mages when he was asking them about the one he was looking for.

He walked until he was at the edge of the forest, where it thinned to reveal a palatial sandstone mansion that would have been at home in any period drama. It put his own mansion in Scotland to shame and made him seriously consider hiring someone to sandblast the stone to give it a good clean, although it wouldn’t stop his house from looking grey in comparison. The local granite he had built it from was closer to dove-grey than golden like the blocks used to make this one.

Fenix shrugged it off.

His home looked moodier in shades of grey, fitted into the wild heather-strewn mountains and dense pine forest.

He liked it.

When he was as close as he dared to get, he hunkered down and studied the building with his senses. Hunger had them sharp and eager to detect a female within the elegant walls of the house, made it easier for him to pick out how many people currently occupied it—a lot—and something else too.

His eyebrows drew down as he felt the familiar power in the air.

Phoenix shifters.

The mages here had captives.

An urge to break cover and help them speared him, had him rising to stand again, but he tamped it down and forced himself to count how many other people were in the building, and how many of those were mages.

More than a dozen if his senses were right.

He was no match for two mages, let alone six times that number. Blood mages had a power, one that had made life difficult for him more than once when he had decided to take a mage he had encountered out for good, removing one of their vile kind from the world.

They could create copies of themselves, magical clones that they controlled like marionettes, pulling their strings to make them fight for them. One powerful mage could create dozens of these milky-eyed clones that resembled zombies and were as relentless as one too. During fights against them, he had stabbed and even dismembered them, and it hadn’t stopped them at all. It had only slowed them down.

But gods, the urge to help the phoenixes they were holding was strong. The thought of the mages tormenting them and stealing their blood, even going as far as killing them to drain every last drop of their power, sat heavily in his chest, weighing his heart down as his mind filled with his mate.

She had spent so long believing herself the only phoenix shifter in this world, that she was alone in this place, and he ached with the need to show her that she wasn’t. There were others like her here in the mortal realm and in Hell, and he had helped them whenever he could, had set many of them free in the past.

Just as he wanted to free these phoenixes too.

But attempting it would get him killed.

He hated himself for it, but he had to think of his mate. She needed him. He needed to focus on helping her. Once he had done that, he would rally some troops and come back for these phoenixes, and he was sure she would want to help.

He forced himself to watch the building instead, studying the mages that moved past the windows or passed time in the formal gardens, hoping to spot the one he was looking for. Hours ticked past as he put the faces of the mages he saw to memory and counted them in his head, and it was growing dark by the time he realised he had seen every male witch in the building, and none of them were the one he was looking for.

Fenix eased back into the woods, moving to a safe distance where the mages wouldn’t be able to sense him before he teleported to his next location.

It was still light on the east coast of the USA when he landed on a densely forested island in the middle of a large lake. His senses immediately stretched around him, charting everything nearby. There were some humans at a distance, and an animal or two, but nothing for him to be concerned about.

He gave himself a moment to recover from the teleport before following the trail that would lead him to a large wooden lake house that had been painted in shades of white and grey. If he kept teleporting, he would have to feed again sooner rather than later, and the last time he had been forced to feed had left a bad taste in his mouth.

Fenix rubbed his hand down his face.

Gods, he needed his mate.

He couldn’t go on like this, stealing energy from kisses that were never quite enough to top his tank up all the way, always had him skirting the edge of hunger.

Even his pills weren’t helping.

Resisting the allure of Evelyn was steadily growing more difficult, his incubus nature becoming a restless beast inside him as he forced himself to live on stolen kisses and pills, unwilling to do anything else with the females he encountered. As it was, kissing them turned his stomach, had him wanting to find his mate and apologise to her for what he had done.

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