Page 21 of Soul Redeemed

He needed to feed. Being close to Ava, taking in her scent, her body’s softness and curves, the sound of her sleepy sighs, it called to the primitive incubus inside of him—the one that yearned to feed off the sleeping innocent. His hunger would get worse—much worse—with the close proximity, so Calix slid to the edge of the bed, unraveling her body from his, and lifted his pants from the floor. He quietly slipped the jeans over his hips, while Ava continued to twitch in dreams.

Huffing out his frustration, Calix ran his hand through his hair and backed away from the bed. Touching her, feeling her skin against his, had penetrated to his very bones, and he needed some distraction. Something that would tamp down the desires that had him feeling like a cold-hearted bastard for whatever it was that she’d already suffered.

He exited the room, padding quietly down the hall, and when he reached the top of the staircase, he noticed Gavin’s office light on.

Down the stairs, he strode across the foyer and knocked twice as he entered his brother’s study.

Instead of finding Gavin, his muscles flinched when cascades of red drifted over the slim shoulders of his brother’s mate, Sabelle. Her gaze shot to his, while she sat hunched over papers scattered across Gavin’s desk.

“Sorry, Sabelle.” Calix took a step back toward the door.

“No, wait. It’s okay, Calix. You might be able to help.” She waved him over, inviting him to sit in the chair across from her. The female had become much more regal in Calix’s eyes since mating with his brother. Like the queen she was meant to be, if Gavin would choose his birthright as the ruler of all Wrath demons in Obsidius.

He knew Gavin would rather rot in Stygius, though, than take on the added responsibilities of royalty. Still, his mate held herself as something more than the courtesan status her birthright offered her. And just like royalty, Calix was proud to honor and protect her, would lay down his life for her and any one of her children, because that was the code that he and his brothers lived by.

Sabelle huffed and sat back in Gavin’s chair. “You’re an incubus.”

“Half.” Calix rolled his shoulders at the part of his being that he wished he could cut right off his bones. “Half incubus.”

“Right.” The warm and knowing expression on Sabelle’s face told him she’d been handed her own barrage of bullshit throughout the years. Being sex workers for the underworld sucked balls. “Your brother refuses to let me accompany him on his nightly crusade to find my sister. So I’m doing the next best thing—useless investigations that might offer a clue as to where she is.”

“How can I help?”

“Gavin seems to think she was taken and enslaved, based on visions he’s had. I’d … truly like to believe that’s not the case. But I’m preparing myself for just about anything. Are you familiar with the Seven-Level Club?”

The very word cast a shudder down Calix’s spine. Through no fault of her own, Sabelle’s question forced him back to the days of his youth, when he and his sister had been captured by the sadistic band of marauders who stole children, selling them off to corrupt high lords and royalty. Each child was trained for the seven levels of sadism—the worst being seven. Just like the seven levels of hell. He knew all too well about the club. In the underworld, it was a means of buying and trading supes beneath the radar of the authorities, like cattle at a steer auction. Incubi and succubi happened to be fertile as fuck, so whether for sexual slavery, or stud services, the auction served as an effective means of trading. And as they were virtually impossible to track down, the victims were never typically recovered. Calix had been among the very rare and select few who’d ever made his way back after being submerged in the darkness of that world.

His sister hadn’t been so lucky.

“How are you aware of it?” he asked.

“I actually stumbled upon it. A few wayward clicks, and you fall into a black hole.” Her eyes blanked as she stared off somewhere beyond Calix. “I can’t un-see some of those images. Those poor children.”

Frowning, Calix screwed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose to stifle the horrific visuals from his past stirring inside his head. He couldn’t afford them. Not at that moment. “You think they have your sister.”

“Denya is … an anomaly. Virgin succubus.”

Jesus. Anomaly wasn’t the right word—more like something of a mystical unicorn of succubi. Most lost their virginity at fourteen, fifteen years old. The slaves, even younger.

“If she remains a virgin, I’m afraid she’ll be one of the most sought after slaves in the underworld.” Fear glossed her eyes. “And then what, when she’s no longer virgin? She’s discarded? Left for absolute death?”

He sat forward, entwining his fingers. “They won’t de-virginize her immediately. She’ll be worth far too much. Fucking princes will pay to have her.”

Running her hands through her hair, she let out an exasperated breath and cupped her face with both hands. “Is she worth enough that they won’t hurt her?”

“Perhaps. It depends on her handler. If he happens to be a money hungry piece of shit, he won’t touch her. But if he becomes obsessed …” Even if the woman didn’t possess the ability to read minds, Calix still lowered his gaze for fear she might see right through him, into the dark and desolate parts of his soul that he couldn’t bear to look inside himself. “What makes you certain they have her?”

“Nothing makes me certain anymore. I’m grasping at possibilities. If I can accept what I deem the worst, then I can accept anything.”

“Absolute death isn’t the worst?”

“No. Where there is slavery of any kind, death is only a means to an end.”

The scars at his throat suddenly itched, and Calix shifted in his seat at his surmising that Sabelle thought her sister better off dead than subjected to slavery.

Perhaps she was right. The horrors never truly disappeared. He never stopped seeing them in his mind’s eye. He’d been offered a chance, by another very powerful incubus, to erase those memories, to completely blank out the first centuries of his existence.

Most incubi could only affect the short-term memories, but Sirius had powers no other possessed. With one wave of his hand, he could’ve taken the tortures, the starvation, the life Calix had lived shackled and used for the twisted amusement of his mistress, all of it could’ve disappeared like ash on the wind.