Chapter 21

These Eight words the Rede fulfill: An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will

– The Wiccan Rede

** Trigger warning – Violent rape **

The bath was a grand one set next to a floor-to-ceiling window so that as I lay within it, I had only to turn my head slightly to look out upon the city. The complementary bath salts were orange and clove scented. The aunts liked to make a similar scent at home and use it to cleanse surfaces after casting a spell. If we were feeling low, we would use orange salts in the bathwater as they soothed the spirits and healed the body. If someone came to us unlucky in love, out would come the oranges…

I needed the healing properties of oranges, that was for sure, I thought as I sipped the champagne and lazily used my big toe to stop the drip of water from the bath faucet, watching as the water oozed past the imperfect plug of flesh and ran down my calf connecting beads that clung to the skin.

So much had happened, and so quickly. I did not know how to begin to accept the changes that had been wrought overnight.

Ender was… gone. Lost to me. In invoking Mal to be my demon familiar, I had unwittingly entered into something that was far more complicated than I had imagined. A marriage, of some type. Maybe not a marriage, but certainly a commitment. I did not know what would happen if I broke it. I was furious with the Grimoires for not being clearer, and with the aunts for not warning me if they had known – and surely, they knew. They spoke frequently of their mother's familiar. And fondly. As if he had been a father figure to them…

Mal believed that I had agreed to his terms and that he had agreed to mine all because I had been foolish enough to get into a conversation about it when I was drunk. I could not even remember what had been said between us.

But my romantic problems with Mal and Ender could wait.

Someone had tried to kill me, and I was certain that person was Warren Jackson. I had to find a way to stop him before he hurt my family. I set the champagne down and pulled the plug. Mal had said he would be a couple of hours. It would be tight, but I could get to Mortensby and return. I needed to tell Warren that I knew he'd knocked me off my bike, and that if he didn't leave us alone, I would… What could I do? I did not know precisely.

Well, I'd work it out once I got there. If I could charm a jeweller out of a pair of diamond earrings, I could charm Warren into leaving my family alone, I decided as I pulled on my clothing. Mal's keys were on the table by the door. I took them with me as I left.

"Hold the elevator!" I called out as I saw a man in a suit enter one down the hallway. His hand caught the doors, and I ran, sliding in between them, slightly out of breath. "Thank you."

"Any time," he smiled down at me. "You're running late?"

In the gold-tinted glass, death's heads dwelt in the deepest shadows. I looked away, refusing to acknowledge the omen. "Yeah, I guess," I was distracted. I had been seeing death's heads since the little girl had died. Were they an omen, or a sign that Ender was watching? What did it mean if he did?

I was not ready to let him go. As exciting and vivid as it was with Mal, and as angry as I was with Ender for not helping as I lay dying, my demon familiar was not wrong. Ender owned the shadows of my heart.

"You smell…" The man in the suit was standing too close. Closer than the elevator, small as it was, warranted and he leaned in, audibly inhaling near my ear. "Divine…" He rumbled the word on a hummed exhale of desire.

Shit. I wasn't hungry, but thinking of Ender… I couldn't help but ache for him.

The elevator pinged as it opened on the ground floor and I leaped out, my heels clacking across the marble foyer as I hurried to the exit and out onto the sidewalk. The valet smiled as he saw me, his expression hopeful.

I dangled the keys. "I need the car, please." I saw his pupils dilate as he inhaled. Fuck.

"Now please," I insisted, thrusting the keys at him, wanting to get him away from me quickly. "Quickly."

He reluctantly took them and went to retrieve Mal's Porsche.

"Hey," the man in the suit had followed me out. "What a coincidence. Fate, I'd call it, that we're both waiting for the valet to bring our cars out."

I doubted that he had a car. "Mhm."

"Here's my card," he offered a subtle off-white card with a watermark. "What's your name, beautiful?"

"Nyx," I glanced anxiously to where the valet had gone. Please hurry, I thought to him. The card was still there, held out expectantly. I didn't want to take it, but I was also wary of openly rejecting it. Charity Vossen was evidence of what became of Vossen women who injured a man's pride. I took the card. Owen Paul was written elegantly across it.

"Nyx. What an unusual name. Is it short for something?"

"Elenyx," I held the card in one hand. I did not want to put it into my purse. If he saw me do so, he might take it as a sign of interest.

"And where are you off to, Elenyx?" His hand rested on my elbow. I moved it subtly away, breaking the contact, but the heat of his palm immediately returned.

"I have to run an errand before my boyfriend returns to the hotel," I said, trying to discourage him by offering another man that I belonged to. It was also, sort of, the truth, though I didn't want to think of the relationship with Mal being one of ownership. It wasn't meant to be. In the Grimoires, the witch was supposed to control the relationship with the familiar.

"What sort of man leaves a woman like you to wander the streets?" Owen Paul didn't believe me that there was a man.

"There you are Nyx," Ender appeared from the shadows. He crossed to stand beside me and looked down at Owen Paul, his expression neutral but his eyes intense. "Who is your friend?"

I wanted to be mad at him. I wanted to hate him. He had watched me bleed out onto the ground and begged me to let myself die. Even more, he had not warned me that I was in danger, that my time was running out. Someone who loved you was meant to look after you, to save you.

However, what I felt was a different sort of fire. I wanted him. I was relieved to see him again, and I wanted to wrap myself around him, to feel his cool skin against my cheek, to run my fingers through the dark silk of his hair, and to hear him moan my name.

"Owen Paul," I handed Ender the card, my hand shaking. Owen's hand fell from my elbow, his eyes locked on Ender's and his face paling. The draw of a succubus diminished in the presence of a grim reaper.

"Owen Paul," Ender's hoarse whisper made the name menacing. "We will meet again very soon."

"Excuse me," Owen Paul backed away towards the hotel, seeking safety and distance from Ender. "I forgot something in my room."

The Porsche pulled up before us and the valet approached me, his face eager. "Your car Miss."

I tipped him and got into the driver's seat. I was not surprised when Ender got into the passenger side. "I should be mad at you," I told him as I pulled out. "I am mad at you."

"Nyx… Mal should not have interfered."

"Did you arrange for him to be called away?" I asked. "So that I would be alone, and you could come to me? You won't come when he's here, will you? Because he is my familiar now, and he hates you. And you hate him."

"I don't hate Malachar," Ender sighed the words. "Though that is not mutual."

"Why, Ender?" I demanded, the pain bringing tears to my eyes. "Why wouldn't you help me?" The last word trembled on my lips, a pitiful sob of a sound.

"I couldn't," his expression was tender. "It is not my place to interfere, not in this realm, Nyx. In my own, I have a little more freedom. But here, I cannot change that which must be. You were meant to die on that road, Nyx. It was your time. Malachar should never have interfered. He did so to spite me."

"He saved me," I felt a tear run down my cheek. "He saved my life."

"He stole you from me," Ender replied, and for the first time that I had known him, there was a hard anger behind his tone. "Out of petty revenge. But… Nyx," his expression was pleading. "You can right the wrong. You are immortal only so long as you feed. Choose not to feed, and - "

"And die?" I shot him a frown through my tears. "I don't want to die, Ender. I'm eighteen years old. My life is just beginning."

He was silent for a long time as I navigated the streets, and broke free of the city, the road before stretching out into the darkness, and the streetlights falling away. When we were bathed in his comfortable shadows, my headlights leading the way down the road, and only the moon and stars above providing additional light, he reached out and covered my hand with his.

"Live life, Nyx," he said softly. "I will wait for as long as you need, and I will always be in the shadows if you choose to look for me."

"Ender," my heart was breaking. "Malachar will not agree to me spending time with you now that he is my familiar."

"Malachar does not own you, Nyx. That is not how invocation works. It is his nature to mislead or to let you mislead yourself. I cannot say more," he was regretful of that. "I have already said too much. I must go," he added. "I cannot stay. I am needed elsewhere."

"Will I see you again?" I whispered.

"If you wish it…" He had all but faded from sight, barely discernible from the shadows.

I swallowed hard. "I am still angry with you," I whispered. "But I do."

I felt the slightest caress in my hair – or perhaps it was just the wind. As I drove into Mortensby, I was alone, the streetlights sweeping over an empty passenger seat.

I parked out front of the bar where I had encountered Warren whilst Laurie and Dawson had challenged each other at pool. If Warren was there, I could hope to use the magic of a succubus to entice him into confessing that he had tried to kill me in front of the other occupants of the bar. That would be the best solution, I thought hopefully as I left the car and headed to the door.

As I entered, heads turned, and someone whistled. I felt my skin crawl under all the lecherous gazes. I did not see Warren amongst the patrons, though I searched their faces thoroughly before weaving through them to the bar.

The bartender was the same guy as before. John Renwright, I thought remembering how the aunts had made a poppet of him and compelled it to tell the truth - something which might be useful to me now. "I'm looking for Warren."

"Lucky Warren," one of the barflies commented and received appreciative laughter from his peers.

"Warren's not here," John replied, his eyes on the glass into which he was pouring beer from the tap.

"Where is he?"

"Keeping close to home. Police are looking at him. Missing wife and kid, and the bitches up the hill…" He broke off looking up - and frowned at me. "Hey… Don't I know you?"

"Where is his house?" I asked. I could see it in his eyes that he had realized who I was. "The address."

He did not want to give it to me, his expression concerned. "You'd better stay away," he told me sternly. "He's not in a good mood, especially with you Vossens."

"Yeah, I know," I said. I knew better than anyone how angry at us Vossens Warren was. "But I need his address."

He sighed heavily and wrote it on the back of a paper coaster. "I didn't give it to you. And if you turn up dead, it's not my problem," he told me as he slid it over the bar to me.

"Thank you," I was already turning for the door. One of the barflies slipped off his stool as I passed him and followed me to the door.

"Hey," he said as I crossed to the Porsche.

"I'm not interested," I got into the driver's side and started the engine.

"Fucking bitch!" He threw his beer bottle after me as I reversed out of the park onto the street, and it bounced across the bonnet of Mal's car, leaving dents on its surface. Fuck. Well, if the damage upset Mal, he was a demon – he'd find the culprit and make him pay in blood.

The address was in the poor area of the town, where gardens were overgrown, paint flaked, and windows were boarded up. Warren's house was at the end of the street, the garden merging with the tree line of scrubland. A dog, chained to the side, watched me with interest as I pulled up on the street in front of the house, and barked a warning to the man inside as I approached the door.

I did not need to knock. Warren was there, leaning into the doorframe, sneering down at me. He was not surprised to see me, and I had a moment's hesitation. If he had run me down and stood over me watching me bleed, surely, he would have some reaction to me appearing on the doorstep unharmed. Unless he had mistaken me for my sister or thought that he had run her over and not me. We were similar enough in appearance, with our dark hair and pale skin, that it was possible.

"What do you want?" He demanded, dragging me out of my thoughts.

"I want to talk," I told him trying to summon the appeal of a succubus, but fear had stripped me of hunger and desire. I had no idea what to say or do. But I knew I had to do something. I would not be bold enough to come again, and if I left now, it would be showing weakness. A man like Warren Jackson would seize on that and take pleasure in terrorizing me whenever he saw me around the town. "About your wife and daughter and about what you are doing to my family."

There was smugness in his gaze. "I'm doing nothing to your family, girl. If you could prove it, you wouldn't be knocking on my door, the police would. Run along with you now, I'm busy." He started to move back and close the door.

"I'm not leaving," I told him, catching at the door. "Not until you promise to leave my family alone."

He paused and his eyes roamed over me. His lip curled, and he stepped back. "If you insist," he said, gesturing for me to enter the house. Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly, I thought immediately. I knew that look on his face. A man who used his fists on his wife probably wasn't a stranger to rape. If I went inside, I knew that as far as the town and the police would be concerned, I would be all but consenting to be raped.

I hadn't thought this through, I realized. I hadn't been smart about this.

His eyes flicked to the side, and I followed his gaze. His overgrown garden hid the door from his nearest neighbors and the house across the street's front windows were boarded up – vacant. Even as the danger I was in sank in, he reached out, grabbed me by the hair, and dragged me inside.

He slammed me into the wall so hard that the air was knocked from my lungs, and I bit my tongue tasting blood. He closed and twisted the lock without releasing his grip on my hair grinding my cheekbone into the wall with the heel of his hand. I could hear the strands breaking and feel the cruel bite of my scalp as he used it to drag my face up, rasping the skin of my cheek painfully. His body pressed me into the wall, and I could feel that his cock was hard against my arse, and I thought my ribcage would crack from the pressure of his body weight against the bones.

"Stupid girl," he sneered and then pulled away abruptly, and threw me to the floor. His foot rammed into my side, the pain shooting through me sharply so that I screamed and gagged at the same time, instinct curling me into a ball. He did not kick me again, but grabbed my hair, and used it to drag me out of the hallway and into the living room.

I kicked and clawed at the floor, fighting to free myself, and tasted bile and blood as my struggles and his violence caused me to collide with furniture. One of my shoes went flying. He released my hair only to grip the front of my dress, pulling me up into a sitting position and slamming his fist into my face. I felt bone break, and the wet rush of blood down the back of my throat. Grey pulled at the edges of my mind, the pain seeking to carry me into unconsciousness.

"Not so pretty now," he let me fall to the floor as he felt the fight leave me and knelt over me. "Good thing I'm not interested in looking at you," he pushed my dress up. I fought to open my eyes and struck out at him weakly, trying to push him off me, to stop him.

He tore through my pretty underwear.

"Don't!" I managed to protest through swollen lips and a mouth filled with blood. "Stop."

He laughed and continued to laugh as he raped me.