Page 94 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

The demoness’ eyes bled the same color as the red liquid seeping from my freshly ribboned flesh. My blood perfumed the air.

Driven into a bloodlust state, she made another grab at me. This time, I was ready. Seizing her by the throat, I slowly rose to my feet and hauled her high over my head.

I glared up at her with a venomous smile as she wheezed against my grip. “Making an enemy of me for no good fucking reason at all, other than that you’re a petty bitch, is the last mistake you’ll ever make, Alexandra.” My monster form teemed with energy, all humanity and rationality shoved to the far recesses of my being.

Lexi’s eyes bulged, and her feet peddled futilely through the air at the way my voice modulated with a second chasmal pitch.

I threw her back, and unable to catch herself, she crashed into a crucifix headstone that had sunk into the ground at an angle. Her frame collided with one of the cross’ arms, and she slid to the mud, smearing the rough-hewn stone in her pitchy blood.

The raven feathers affixed to my shoulders thrashed in a mad rush of air, tangling with my hair in the swooshing breeze. I lifted my eyes, and my surprised gasp bled into a carnal purr. There, crouched on the crucifix like some kind of angel from Hell, was the bulky figure of my dark knight blotting out the moon.

He’d shifted, his impressive wings stretching out on either side of him before slowly folding between his shoulder blades. Since he’d shifted into a larger winged form, his t-shirt now hung in shreds off his sinewy torso, leaving a tantalizing glimpse of his tattoos and corded muscles. The moon backdropped his great wings and painted his silhouette in stark strips of umbral shadows and moon silver.

He didn’t make a move for Lexi. He watched me expectantly, waiting. Suddenly, this didn’t feel like revenge so much as it had the feel of an offering to this angel of Hell.

When I flipped her over, there was a blur of flailing limbs. A momentary struggle. With a rough shove, I pushed her so that she was belly first against the mud, and then I straddled her. When I got a good fistful of her black trusses, I wrenched her head back, making her tummy lift off the cemetery grass.

“I tried to be nice,” I snarled low in her ear. “Last time you insulted me, the worst you got was your head shoved in a toilet.”

When she tried to buck me off, I clamped my knees tighter around her hips and shoved her pelvis into the ground with my ass, all while pulling her back until her shoulder blades grazed my chest.

“You humiliated me!” she shrieked.

“Oh, please. Try being spoon-fed a lie the first twenty-plus years of your life, locked away and feeling like a fucking fool. Try getting kidnapped by an enemy coven, stripped naked in front of their four hundred members and thrown to a feral male like a piece of meat. You don’t know the first thing about humiliation…”

I caught Vincent’s expression in the outer field of my vision. His face was stony, and his dark orbs were blacker than Hell, even as the moon emerged from behind the clouds. He examined Lexi’s face, but he didn’t meet her eyes. His jaw went slack, the tips of his fangs shining through the night.

I gave Lexi’s head another hard tug backward, dislodging a scream from her throat. Vin’s muscles bunched, and his raven tattoos twitched, almost looking like they might take flight any second. He was feeding.

Bit by bit, I applied more and more pressure. When a certain angle was reached, I pulled upward on her head instead of backward to create more pain. Her skin made a gut-wrenching sound. Bones groaned. A banshee-like scream flayed her vocal cords.

In this form, I was a woman on a mission; no more playing nice. But witnessing myself slowly torture this woman like this, making her death so excruciatingly slow, I felt the beginnings of human compassion bubbling up.

Then, they were probably stamped back down when Lexi used everything she had in her to squeeze out two words. “Whooooore queen!”

That nickname was fine and dandy when it came from the guys’ mouths while they were buried balls deep inside me. But from Lexi’s forked tongue, it was made to make me feel inferior. That shit wasn’t going to fly anymore. Not from anyone.

I ripped into her throat with my fangs, groaning at the blood hitting my tongue. I was so hungry. Vampire blood was powerful. Dangerous. Corry once compared it to cocaine and Viagra and a million other drugs rolled into one. How accurate that was, I had no clue, since I was pretty sure Corry had as much experience with that kind of thing as I did.

However you wanted to describe it, it was intoxicating.

Lexi’s flavor wasn’t as good as my guys’, but it still tasted damn near euphoric. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.

I couldn’t stop drinking. The more blood I drained from her, the more I latched on.

Her struggles weakened, then she didn’t move at all.

Vincent observed me quietly, as drunk on this primal depraved moment as I was. While I fed on the succubus’ blood, he feasted on her pain.

When I’d had my fill of her, I tore off her head—you know, for good measure. There was a sickening crack of bones and a popping of ligaments. She gurgled, and a stream of blood bubbled past her lips. When the light—or what little there was—died in her eyes, I dropped her to the ground and gave her a shove with my boot to roll her away.

I’d just murdered a coven mate. Yes, she was an evil rat in the nest. And yes, at this rate, I’d ripped off plenty of heads before hers.

Something felt different with this one, though.

The concerning part was that I didn’t feel bad. Not even a little. I still had the wherewithal to know that Ishouldhave felt something resembling anything human. Like regret. If not for killing Lexi, then for disobeying Sterling and compromising his efforts to sort things out with the Elders in a nonviolent manner.

The only thing I felt was woozy, giddy, vile glee. The thing was, it didn’t feel like my glee. It was my monster’s.

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