Too Many Demons, Not Enough Donuts
Too many demons in the kitchen spoils the soup. Or in this case donuts.
A batch of carbtastic sugary bombs of deliciousness sizzled away in the fryer, while Jada dreamed of all the decadent toppings she would put on them.
Chocolate frosting, check.
Maple cream, check.
Rainbow sprinkles. Ew, gross.
Toffee chunks. Yep.
Caramel drizzle, double check.
Some B positive, AB neg, or how about some good ol' O universal? Hells to the no.
That’s what Leon wanted. It was what he always wanted. But, not only for himself. For her too.
Her father shouldn’t be in the kitchen of the summer rental harassing her anyway. He didn’t even like sugar or cooking or kitchens. He didn’t like anything but sex and blood.
The scent of vanilla and cinnamon wafted through the air and smelled almost as good as the humans Jada waiting in the great room.
The rest of her coven was already playing with their prey. Seducing and taunting, testing and tasting, picking out the right one to satisfy their darkest urges.
The men and women Leon had lured to the ocean-side mansion were wanting and willing. A night of sexual carousing with the most sensual summer residents of the Cape was enough to tempt these unsuspecting humans to their doom. That and Leon’s hypnotic incubus allure.
Jada smelled their growing arousal already. Its dark, rich, deliciousness sang to her core.
Her heart jumped, racing to catch up with the others.
A pulsing beat pushed between her legs.
Her mouth watered.
She wanted to sink her teeth into… a donut. Pure chocolate glaze running down her throat, hot and sweet. She’d take the sugar high over blood lust all day, every day, twice on Sundays.
It was the little lies she told herself that got her through the days and long, long nights.
“Jada, why do you waste your time on these human treats when there are so many delicious humans to be our treats?”
God damn it. A few more minutes and the most perfect batch of her yumtastic feast would be ready. “Go away, Leon.”
He propped himself against the kitchen island and crossed his arms. “Now, now, is that any way to talk to your maker?”
As if he cared how she spoke to him. He only cared that her absence from the nightly orgies was sowing discontent amongst the coven.
He could take his fatherly disapproval and shove it up his donut hole.
“I’m not going to your Bacchanalia. Not tonight, not ever again. I’m done with human blood.”
“Yes, yes. You say that every few years.” He cracked his knuckles one by one. “And are you done with the pleasures their flesh brings you too?
Sex.
She’d had enough of it to last most succubae a lifetime, or two, and she was only half demon. But, she wanted more, all the time. Sex was going to be a hell of a lot harder to give up than the blood.
The kitchen timer dinged, and Jada ignored Leon’s question in favor of flipping over each of the half dozen beautifully browning cake donuts, revealing their perfectly fried underbellies. As soon as they cooled, she would smother them in rich chocolate ganache and sprinkle with chocolate chip cookie crumbles.
Three of those and a glass of milk to dunk them in were better than sex.
Almost.
“You can ignore me, fruit of my loins, but you cannot deny your true nature.”
“Ehhhh.” She made a sound like the buzzer in a Q&A game. “I can, and I will. Thanks for playing. Bu-bye now.”
She flipped him the bird and turned to the refrigerator. He was getting to her and he knew it.
So what if she’d tried to give up human blood before? This time she had a better plan.
Replace sex with food. Replace blood with… well she hadn’t figured that part out yet.
No way she waiting long enough to glaze the donuts. Chocolate milk would have to cool them off. She’d risk burning her tongue, the roof of her mouth, and her esophagus.
“If you won’t come to my little party, I’ll simply have to bring it to you.”
The bastard wouldn’t.
She ripped open the fridge door and accidentally crushed the carton of milk in her fist.
“Come in, young man. I want you to meet my daughter.”
Oh hell. Leon’s allure had every spark of arousal firing out of this victim. It wrapped around her and slipped into her mouth and nose. The prey was horny and hard already.
That pulsing between her legs picked up a new faster, deeper rhythm. A shiver snaked across her chest and shoulders.
Her fingers dug into the milk container and the liquid dripped down her hand. She was not beneath licking chocolate milk off her arm. Anything to quash the mouthwatering scent of the human man standing behind her.
“Let me help you with that, luscious vampire mistress.” The guy’s deep voice seeped into her ears. He took her wrist in his hand and pulled it back, raising it to his mouth. The second his lips touched her, a zing of pure need rushed through Jada, hitting her right behind the heart. Her fangs extended, ready to taste his pleasure.
Pleasure and pain. What this guy offered her was both.
She wanted him.
She needed him.
Even more than sugar, sweets, or even breathing. He would take her body, not understanding that she was taking his life. The sex would be phenomenal, and then he would die.
Because Jada couldn’t control herself. She would make him come, sucking up his sexual energy and then she’d drink his blood until there was only a husk of the man left.
He would taste better than Dunkin, Krispy, Horton’s, and Voodoo combined. The essence of his life would re-energize her, renew her, make her whole again.
Jada was so, so empty.
She’d tried for weeks to fill the gaping black hole inside of her with every comfort food the restaurants on the Cape could deliver to her. She’d tried for years to ignore the wounds her very existence continually slashed on her soul.
The only thing that came even close to the high sex and blood gave her was mounds of sugar.
She understood how millions of Americans were literally addicted to the stuff. It lit up all the right parts in the mortal half of her brain.
Not in the same way as the aroused naked man licking his way up her arm.
Maybe just one taste.
She’d be able to stop this time.
Only a little blood. If she kept the emotions buried, the human part of her that came with sex, she’d be able to control herself, only take what she needed, less if she really concentrated.
Jada let the guy kiss her shoulder, then her neck. His cock was pressed into her side, hard and ready for so much more. Lust and need poured out of him.
It was seductive, delicious.
No, blood only.
No sex.
No emotion.
It was the only way to control herself. Leon had been trying to teach her that for years.
She turned in the man’s arms and he pushed her up against the refrigerator. She didn’t even mind the handle jabbing her in the back. That didn’t matter. Only the sexual energy pouring out of him and into her.
The scent of his carnal nature taking over was overwhelming her.
No. She wouldn’t take any of it from him.
Not tonight. Not ever again. She wouldn’t allow it.
“You vampires like it rough, don’t you?” He shoved her hands up over her head and bit at her neck, pretending to be something he wasn’t.
Another foolish human, falling prey to the legend of the vampire, not understanding the truth behind it.
Thousands of years of demons. Exactly like her.
The sting of his teeth and the way he sucked at her flesh was far from the violence she’d do to him. But, not before he got his rocks off. That made the blood, the energy, the kill so much sweeter.
Jada shifted her hips and wrapped one leg around his waist. He was so ready to go that she didn’t even need her own hypnotic allure. He took her bait and began thrusting against her, dry humping her like he was made for it.
How she wanted to strip her yoga pants off and shove his hands, his mouth, and his cock between her legs.
She turned her head to the side and closed her eyes, pushing away any thought of her own pleasure. This had to be enough. This was the only way she could keep it together, keep him safe.
The rest of the humans were likely already dead. Sucked and fucked to death.
Murdered by the demon hunger.
A couple of deep breaths and she was able to open her eyes again. That was a mistake. It put Leon into her line of sight. Disgusting.
His chin was tipped up and he breathed the sexual energy in from across the room.
Didn’t matter that he was her father, that it was ten-levels-of-hell wrong to be watching her and this man together. None of that meant shit to him. All Leon cared about was siphoning the lust pouring off the man as he humped her leg. That’s what an Incubus King did.
Enough.
Jada yanked her hands from the man’s grasp and grabbed his head. Saliva dripped from her fangs. She pushed his head sideways and scraped her teeth across the artery in his neck. The blood vibrated under his skin, calling to her.
He groaned and lost his rhythm, thrusting at her frantically. “Yeah, baby. I’m close. Bite me. I’m gonna come.”
She already tasted the edge of his orgasm, hot like the most intense spices. She wanted more.
The evil inside of her needed more.
Jada sunk her teeth into his neck and sucked the first drops of blood down like the finest wine.
“Fuck, oh, fuck. I’m coming. Ahhh.”
The spicy flavor of his blood and orgasm shot into her cells. She went from sipping to gulping. Taking everything she could from him.
“Yes, Jada. Take him. He is so delectable.” Leon crooned his own gratification.
He was more than delectable. He was life.
The man’s head lolled to the side, and still she drank. She wasn’t yet satisfied. He could give her more.
A squawking beep beep beep jumped into the room, invading her consciousness, making her cringe at its assault of her ears. Wisps of acrid smoke circled the air and the scent of burned sugar permeated the room.
The donuts. She’d forgotten the donuts.
Thank god.
She pulled her teeth from the neck of the man, and he slumped in her arms.
“Hey, hey. Buddy, uh, dude.” Shit, she didn’t even know his name. She slapped his cheek, trying to rouse him. He fell to the floor in a giant heap.
The muscles in Jada’s chest contracted, pulling tight around her heart.
No, no, no. She’d killed him. Killed another one.
Fuck. She should have known better. She’d never been able to control herself before. What made her think she would be able to stop this time? Donuts?
They might be manna from heaven, but she was from hell.
The man at her feet groaned.
Holy shit. He was still alive.
Jada dropped to the floor and patted his chest. His skin was clammy and much too pale. “Hey, guy, hey, wake up.”
“Don’t be stupid, Jada. It’s too late. Finish him.” Leon towered over her. His skin was flushed, in so much contrast to the man near death.
Leon stretched his arms wide and smiled like he’d woken from a long-needed nap. He’d enjoyed every minute of the act that made Jada now feel sick to her stomach.
Deeper than that. She felt sick to her soul.
She couldn’t do this, couldn’t keep on killing. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t right.
The revulsion bubbled up, burning the back of her throat, until she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She bolted to the sink and hurled into it.
Red blood splashed against the shiny steel.
Never again.
“Why do you insist on torturing yourself? This is who you are, little girl. This is what you are. Why are you always fighting it? After all these years, I’m growing tired of your antics.”
Three hundred years. Countless lives lost so that she could live.
There had to be something more out there. In the past few months, a change worked inside of her, tugging at her psyche, pushing away the banal existence she led. It made her want that something more from life, more than death.
The empty pit in her stomach widened. She could never have whatever it was.
Without responding to Leon, she rinsed the blood down the drain and walked to the kitchen door.
“Leave now, and the life you spared will be no more.” Her father’s tone darkened, the demon snarl dominating his statement.
If she left, Leon would kill the man. If she stayed, Leon would kill her. Not directly, not by force, but by an eternity of his twisted form of preservation.
Jada saw that now. She would never be able to resist the call of sex and blood, and Leon would never let her.
Pure demon was what he was. No emotion, no compunction about killing innocent humans he lured to their deaths.
Taking more lives would kill her, but so would not taking them. At least if she left, she could make the choice of who and when and maybe how much.
If she couldn’t leave, there was one last life she could take and end it all.
Being half human had to have some advantage.
Guilt clawed at her for leaving the guy to the mercy of Leon and her brothers and sisters. She would regret not getting away from the coven even more so.
She’d gotten as far as the kitchen door. Now, all she had to do was walk through it and out of this way of life. But, she was afraid. Without a coven, without Leon she would have no one. A succubus on her own was a dead succubus.
Dead inside or dead.
She took one step.
“I’m talking to you.”
She didn’t care or she didn’t want to Not anymore.
“You walk away from me, and I won’t be able to protect you.” Leon’s voice was somewhere in between pissed and concerned.
She kept going into the hallway, and up the stairs. Leon followed her all the way to her bedroom door. She tried to slam it in his face, but he caught it.
“I don’t need your protection. I’m a big girl vampire now.” She said the taunt in her best snotty little kid voice. Leon loved to play into the façade humans had invented to explain their kind.
“You have no idea, Jada.”
Nice threat. She folded her arms and rolled her eyes at him. He always hated that. She was the only one of his offspring who wasn’t in awe of him, who didn’t think he hung the moon. It was one of the only things she still liked about herself.
He grinned, the evil inside making him look more creepy than happy. “You’re being hunted.”
Haunted was more like it. She tapped her foot. The more she annoyed him, the sooner he’d leave her alone.
“Demon dragons have attacked our coven a dozen times over the past few months, and we’ve kept you in the dark about it, and thus safe.”
Demon dragons. After her. “What are you talking about?”
Demons didn’t attack each other. Each faction was focused on what they needed from humans. They had enemies of their own to worry about. Hunters tried to destroy the children of Lilith and dragons warriors kept the Black Dragon’s plague at bay.
Leon studied her face and pushed at her consciousness to see if her reaction to his news was genuine. “What is bringing this resurgence in your reluctance to connect with the coven?”
Jada shifted from one foot to the other. This was an old fight between the two of them. Leon never got why she wasn’t like the others.
He narrowed his eyes. “I sent Portia to the continent to keep her from telling you about the demon dragons. May she finally learn her lesson about being loyal to coven and not the individual.”
Jada wished she had that same ability to know when someone wasn’t telling her the truth. She’d inherited a lot of Leon’s abilities, but that wasn’t one of them. She’d have to guess. “You’re lying to keep me here.”
“I’m not. Ask your sister when she returns. She’s fought off more of the beasts than anyone else. Leave this house and risk your life.”
Jada’s life wasn’t worth much anyway. Maybe death by demon dragon was the way to go. Her only regret was leaving Portia behind. She was the only other person in the coven who ever understood.
Hopefully, her sister would understand her decision to leave too.
“I think I will.”
Leon shrugged. “Fine. I’ll be here when you need to come crying back to daddy.”
Ew.
Jada shoved some of her favorite clothes into a bag, grabbed the money she’d been hoarding to buy human food, and searched around until she found the courage she’d been lacking for hundreds of years.
Succubae didn’t survive on their own. That’s why they formed covens under the succubus or incubus who created them.
The fastest way to kill a succubus wasn’t a stake through the heart, or daylight, or garlic, like in the misinformed legends. It was banishment.
She’d basically banished herself.
Hell’s big sweaty balls.
Jada hit the street running. Okay, not actually running. That would require moving her muscles more than her jiggly butt was capable of doing. Too many donuts. She did hurry along though.
Without a coven, she had no place to stay, no place to eat.
Except the donut shop out by the golf course but, it didn’t open for a few more hours. Like eight.
It would take half that long to walk there anyway.
“Hey, baby. Where you going? Need a ride?” A convertible filled with horny twenty-somethings pulled up beside her.
She kept on moving, even though she could live off their combined sexual energy for a week. “No, you need a swift kick in the ass?”
“Whatever fatty.” The car screeched away, the gaggle of dickheads laughing like they’d told the funniest joke ever.
Sigh. Jada had ninety-nine problems, but her curves weren’t one.
That very minute every single one of those problems showed up.
Appearing out of the shadows, demon dragons formed into their black slithery snake-like forms around her.
“Alone?” one of them hissed . The sound of its voice creeped her the hell out.
Jada backed away, only to find another one right behind her. She held out her hand, like that was going to keep them from killing her. “No, my coven is, uh, meeting me here. So, you’d better get away from me.”
“No.” The beast in front of her sniffed the air. “No demons here. Only you.”
Well, shit. She was completely defenseless. The only weapons she’d ever had were her teeth and her hypnotic allure. But it was to attract prey, not keep from being prey.
Demons didn’t fight with other demons, and humans were food, not threats. She had never needed to defend herself.
“I know kung fu.” More like kung food. She raised an fist in the air and took a Karate Kid stance. Her fangs extended, responding to the adrenaline coursing through her. She might not know anything about self-defense, but she could bite their faces off.
Hopefully, they wouldn’t taste as bad as they looked. She wasn’t into blackened lizard-skin.
The demon dragons snarled and launched into the air coming at her. She ducked and rolled, narrowly missing the outstretched claws.
There was a tree ten yards up the road. Maybe she could scramble up it. What, like demon dragons couldn’t climb? She made a mad dash for the tree anyway.
A quick glance over her shoulder showed them closing in on her. Then a great flame burst out over her head and the demon dragons went up in flames one by one, squealing and dissolving into black smears of ash on the ground.
“That was a close one, dear. We almost didn’t find you in time.”
Whoa. A woman, in a white flowing dress straight out of the Renaissance festival, sat in the tree above her.
Beautiful didn’t even begin to describe her. Long flowing dark hair, gorgeous olive skin, rosy cheeks, and a Mother Nature vibe made her absolutely stunning.
For a moment, Jada suspected the woman was a succubus. She was that good looking, that sensual. But a succubus’s allure didn’t work on one of their own kind.
Had she burned up the demon dragons? Jada didn’t see a flame thrower anywhere.
“Uh, thanks? I thought those creepazoids were going to kill me.”
The woman climbed down out of the tree, in a floating, graceful sort of way. “I’m rather fond of the term, douchecanoe. My husband says I’ve got a potty mouth, but secretly he likes it.”
No succubus Jada had ever known had a husband. Her kind didn’t mate. This lady wasn’t a mere human either. Being afraid would probably be the smart thing to do. She wasn’t though.
An aura of comforting, nurturing, motherly vibes surrounded the woman in white. A sensation Jada hadn’t known for a long time. It hurt.
The emotional ping from her brain sent spikes of pain to her chest and settled deep in her gut. Ouch.
Hell, she was so broken.
The woman walked around Jada, or rather floated as if the wind gently carried her. “I’ve got something for you.”
“You do? That’s kind of weird.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to leave that house, those demons, so I could give it to you.”
Stalker much?
See, should have been scared.
Jada took several steps back. She was wearing tennies and yoga pants that had never been to yoga, and the woman in white had that voluminous gown on. If she didn’t have to go far, she could outrun her. “Thanks again, but, I’m gonna go now.”
“Here.” The woman held out her hand and let a necklace with a glowing charm, hang from her fingers.
Jada couldn’t take her eyes off it. She reached her hand out to touch the shining object, mesmerized by its light.
“Let me put it on you.”
Jada nodded, knowing that was the best idea she’d ever heard. She bowed her head and the woman slipped the necklace around her neck, chanting a few words.
The second the charm hit her skin, Jada’s world exploded into the light of a thousand suns. It blinded her and knocked her on her butt.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, only feel. An energy more powerful than sex and blood zipped through her, changing her from the inside out.
It completely overpowered her until darkness crept in around the edges of her consciousness. Damn it all to hell. She was going to pass out, and then who knew what this woman would do to her.
The woman knelt next to her in the grass. “Don’t worry, Jada. You’ll be fine. Even better when he finds you.”
Another figure loomed behind the woman. Bigger, with an entirely hungry, masculine, alpha energy. He was going to eat her, she just knew it.
Instead he spoke. “It had better be soon. Kur-Jara is on the move.”
Jada tried to scream or get away or even move her eyes. She couldn’t.
The woman in white touched Jada’s brow, strengthening the darkness, taking her consciousness. “I know. But Kaiārahi will come for her. He won’t be able to resist. And this time, I added a little protection spell, so the little white witch won’t connect to it for a while.”
“I love your cunning mind, my heart.” The man picked Jada up like she was a little butterfly. “Come on, let’s get her to Ninshubur before any of those Galla dragons or the demons she surrounds herself with stumble upon her.”
The rest of her kidnappers’ conversation faded along with the light and the remainder of her awareness. She could only pray she woke up again tomorrow.
The scent of coffee, frosting, and freshly made baked goods permeated her brain, and Jada sat straight up in her bed.
No, not her bed. Not her room. Not her anything.
Curtains were drawn across the windows, but sunshine leaked in and shined a spotlight a tray on the bedside table. A steaming pot of coffee, three donuts, and a note sat there.
She grabbed a donut, sniffed it, and bit in. Mmm. Sugar. A blessing from the gods. Then she picked up the note. It had only one line.
Always be yourself, unless you can be a dragon, then be a dragon.
Was that supposed to be inspirational?