Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

PIPER

The Styx was smack-dab in the middle of the most derelict street Piper had yet seen. The streetlights were broken, and the windows of every building were shattered or boarded up. Trash littered the sidewalks and piled up under the rusted-out skeletons of cars. The stench of old urine and spilled alcohol hung in the air.

A warehouse-sized building lit up like a runway, the Styx emitted a nonstop, bone-deep thump of music, audible from a hundred feet away. A short queue had formed in front of the open entrance.

Piper scanned the waiting patrons. She would’ve needed to cut several more inches off her shirt to blend in with that crowd.

Ash didn’t join the queue. He walked right past it, heading toward the bouncer beside the door. The big, beefy man did a slight double take, then waved Ash through. Piper followed on his heels, Lyre behind her.

The interior lighting was dim and moody, a feeling exacerbated by the pulsing, frenzied dance beat pounding in her head.

Ahead, the hallway doubled in width. On either side, long tables stood like sentries, draped in red velvet. Covering almost every inch of the tabletops were masks: stylized, jeweled, feathered, and beaded masks with long ribbons. Half of them were recognizable as animal countenances; the rest were fantasy creations.

Curved glass cases protected the masks, and an attendant stood behind each display. The male attendant, with a grinning snake mask, wore no shirt and had scales painted over one shoulder. He spread his hands invitingly across his display. The woman on the other side, wearing a feathered peacock mask, was already reaching under her table. She produced a black mask and handed it wordlessly to Ash.

Piper peered at the male attendant’s display. It had smaller, more feminine masks than the opposite side.

“Choose any one you’d like,” the man said.

“The Styx is an anonymous sort of place,” Lyre added, probably reading her uncertainty. “I’ll take that one.”

The woman handed him a rather boring indigo mask with a pattern of diamonds and long black ribbons. Piper looked back at the feminine masks with no idea what she should choose.

With a helpful smile, the silent male attendant selected a silvery mask with a delicate pointed snout and large, silky ears. He offered it to her.

“Uh… sure.” She reluctantly took the fox mask. “Thanks.”

Fumbling to tie the trailing ribbons behind her head, she followed Ash into another short hall—and then they stepped into the club.

Two colors of light dominated the massive space: red and blue. The red was everywhere, radiating dimly from under the bars, out of cracks in the walls, and from hidden pot lights. It suffused the air, subtly pulsing. The blue tones flickered and flashed from strobe lights and spotlights. Everything else was painted black to reflect the colors.

The club was packed. Bodies swayed and writhed to the music, and crowds formed dense clusters around the bar and what looked like a stage at the far end. Small tables with stools surrounded a wide dance floor, where a hundred bodies undulated in eerie synchronization.

Someone tapped her shoulder. Piper turned and her heart skipped. The man’s glossy black mask curved over his forehead but cut inward at the hollows of his cheeks to reveal strips of his defined jawline.

She blinked and realized it was Ash.

He gestured for her to follow him, and she kept close as he wove through the crowds of patrons. Lyre was right behind her, his mask on and hood drawn over his hair, even less recognizable than Ash.

Piper’s gaze darted in every direction, taking it all in. Some dancers wore tight jeans or short skirts, while others wore elaborate costumes to match their masks. There was everything from skimpy leather to heavy chains to corsets, ribbons, lace, and fishnet. The masked faces of the dancers swam through the pulsating light, anonymous and mysterious.

Maybe it was the masks or maybe it was the club, but the lack of inhibition seemed to be as much of a theme as the red and blue lights. Dancers were grinding on each other, touching, even kissing. When she passed a woman wearing a corset, thigh-high fishnets, and a dragonfly mask who was sandwiched suggestively between two men, Piper forced her gaze to Ash’s back.

He stopped at the bar to shout something to the blond woman behind the counter. Piper was staring in uncomfortable fascination at a couple in skimpy koi costumes when a man sauntered past. Her jaw dropped.

His mask was stylized like a white lynx face, but the furred ears that poked through his hair and his long, swishing white tail were as real as the rest of him. He was unmistakably a daemon.

She stared openmouthed as the daemon, without the slightest sign of self-consciousness, ambled onto the dance floor and was instantly surrounded by a group of hip-swaying dancers. One stroked his ear suggestively. Piper swallowed hard. Either the daemon had gotten real creative with his glamour or he wasn’t bothering with glamour at all.

Breathing a little too fast, Piper surveyed the club again more carefully. Lynx-boy wasn’t the only daemon there. She spotted a female daemon resembling a gold and blue fairy, a blond daemon with tawny wings, and a male with what sort of looked like snakeskin covering his limbs. The more she looked, the more daemons she picked out. Humans of both sexes surrounded every daemon, vying for their attention.

What the hell was going on with this place? Daemons did not walk around without glamour. They just didn’t .

Piper turned to shout a question at Lyre but found him staring at the dance floor.

She poked his arm. “Lyre?”

He jumped, looking alarmed as he swiveled toward her.

“Are you okay?” she called over the music.

Ash stepped away from the bar and waved at her and Lyre. Checking that the incubus was right behind her, she hastened after Ash to a curtained door guarded by two masked bouncers who nodded at Ash as he went through.

The hall stretched deeper into the building, but Ash took a sharp left into a private lounge with leather sofas and small drink tables. The same red lights glowed from the corners, and the eardrum-busting volume of the music was muted to a muffled thumping.

Ash stopped in the center of the room and pushed his mask on top of his head. “Lilith will join us shortly.”

Pushing his mask up as well, Lyre cast a dark look at the door, as though expecting the succubus to swoop in at any moment. Piper knew he hadn’t been excited about coming here, but the way he was acting, it seemed like he’d rather be literally anywhere else.

Piper pulled off her mask and tossed it onto a sofa. “What’s with the daemons here?”

“Some humans are really into daemons,” Lyre said, turning to her instead of glaring at the door. “Like, really into us.”

“Didn’t you say daemons don’t show off their true forms because we’ll never believe they’re human again?”

“The daemons here don’t want to be mistaken for humans. They want attention.”

“Have you ever gone around this club with no glamour?” she asked with arched eyebrows.

He grinned, though it was more subdued than usual. “I can get all the attention I want without cheating.”

“ Not using glamour is cheating?”

“Lyre is less attractive in glamour,” Ash commented.

Piper blinked in confusion. Why would Lyre make himself less attractive with glamour? Wasn’t being beautiful and irresistible the whole point for incubi?

Lyre smirked. “Did I hear that right, Ash? Did you just say you’re attracted to me?”

“You heard wrong.”

Lyre scoffed, then leaned close to Piper. “What about you? Do you want to see my real face?”

Her gaze flicked over his flawless features, then turned to Ash. What did his true face look like? Did the black scales she’d seen on his arm reach his face too? Was he monstrous or starkly appealing?

Ash’s eyes met hers, his gray irises churning like dark water. There was something different about the way he looked at her—something visceral and magnetic. Something that made her want to step closer… to reach out and touch him.

Except it was Lyre who touched her .

He caught her upper arms, pulling her into his body. She wrenched away and twisted toward him, an angry rebuke ready to fire—but the words died in her throat.

Lyre’s eyes were pitch black.

Piper recoiled, bumping into Ash. Why had Lyre suddenly shaded? What the hell was wrong with him?

“ Piper ,” he said, and his voice hummed through her, diving straight down to her core. “Come here.”

Warmth rushed across her body, her skin tingling with goose bumps, every nerve impossibly sensitive. She stepped toward him.

Ash caught her around the middle, pulling her back into his chest with a thump. The contact jolted through her, and her head cleared enough for her to realize that Lyre was enthralling her with aphrodesia—way more aphrodesia than he’d unleashed on the haemon woman back at the Consulate.

His black eyes locked on Ash, and he bared his teeth.

A low rumble vibrated through Ash’s chest. With her heart pounding in her throat, Piper craned her neck for a glimpse of his face.

Ash’s eyes had gone black too.

They’d both shaded in five seconds flat, and she was trapped between them. She was so dead.

Fighting for calm, she tried to ease away from Ash. His hand tightened on her waist, his fingers biting in with painful strength. His other hand cupped her throat, forcing her head back into a submissive pose.

Lyre snarled and stepped aggressively forward until he was pressed against Piper’s front and right in Ash’s face.

Shit, shit, shit . The word repeated on an endless loop in her head. Her breaths came in quick pants and she couldn’t get enough air. She was hot, burning wherever Lyre and Ash touched her. She needed to separate herself from them before they tried to kill each other—but she also wanted to rub against them, to tilt her head back even more for Ash, to arch her chest into Lyre.

“Guys?” she attempted.

She’d meant to sound assertive, but it came out breathless, almost moaning. Ash’s arm tightened around her, and she nearly whimpered at the visceral feel of heavy, hard muscle banded across her stomach.

She needed to get a grip on herself. “Let me go!”

This time it came out as a sharp command. Like spotlights shifting, the two daemons focused on her instead of each other.

She met Lyre’s hungry black stare and fear flooded her, cutting through the haze of desire. There was no recognition in his eyes. He didn’t see a girl he knew. He saw a female he wanted to possess.

“Lyre?” she whispered.

His empty stare didn’t change.

Ash’s hand on her throat flexed, then softened. She felt a sudden change in his breathing—a quick, deep inhalation. His arm unclamped from around her.

“Lyre,” he said sharply, “Lilith is here.”

Lyre didn’t react. One heartbeat, two, three—then something shifted in his eyes. The violent lust died, replaced by hot fury. He lurched back a step, then turned toward the door.

“ Lilith ,” he snarled—and the sound was exponentially more murderous than any sound she’d ever heard him make before.

A silvery laugh answered him. A woman swung the partially open door out of her way and stepped inside, a smile playing across her luscious full lips. Her amber eyes were huge and magnetic, her long, pale blond hair glossy and smooth. Her oval face was impossibly beautiful, eclipsing even Lyre’s, with such perfect symmetry of features that she almost didn’t seem real. Her soft bronze skin glowed from within, not a single blemish, not even a visible pore.

Her body was just as flawless, curvaceous but balanced. She wore fitted jeans and a white silk blouse that showed little skin, yet Piper couldn’t stop her eyes from tracing the contour of the woman’s waist and the way it flowed to her hips and then her thighs. It was mesmerizing. Piper couldn’t look away.

“I warned you,” Lyre said, his snarl shifting into a malevolent hiss, “what I would do if you ever enthralled me again.”

Lilith tilted her head guilelessly. “I didn’t use that much aphrodesia. It was just so unusual to see either of you with a girl.” Lilith’s gaze drifted to Piper. “I was curious to see whose toy she is. Yet it seems she stands between you, claimed by neither. How… daring.”

Piper had almost lost track of what the succubus was saying, bewitched by the sound of her voice. It was soft, warm, and enveloping, like a beam of sunlight turned to sound.

Clenching her hands into fists, Piper squeezed until it hurt. The pain cleared her head. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

Lilith smiled as though Piper were a small child proclaiming her independence, then turned her attention to Ash. “As enjoyable as that was, I know you’re not here for my entertainment. Are you here to entertain my customers, perhaps?”

“No,” Ash said, a growl still edging his voice. “I’m here for information.”

“Is that so?” The succubus’s amber eyes glittered dangerously as she gestured toward a sofa. “Then tell me what you need—and what you’re willing to pay for it.”