The apartment, dim and drafty, was my escape. I mean, it was my only option. It had been abandoned for a couple of years and since I had returned, I found it was the only option I could afford. Which… was a place I didn’t need to pay for at all.
Dolores had found it and we had spent the nights huddled together, seeking warmth and peace. Dolores was a low-class demon, she had an abusive father who she had escaped from years ago and she kept to herself. I knew she used her body to make what little money she could to survive. When I told her I’d been thinking of doing the same, she refused with more force than I’d ever heard her use. Dolores had a gentle nature, but being a few years older than me, she’d become more like a substitute mother to me. Or a big sister. Every night when she returned, she slowly wiped her makeup off, staring into the small piece of a broken mirror. I saw her sadness, her pain hidden underneath the mascara and blush. She never said it, but she didn’t want me to become her. She didn’t want me to sell my body.
And, I didn’t want to either. But money had always been hard to earn for low-class demons like us. So, you did whatever you could to feed yourself.
I thought of our promise to each other. That we would never abandon one another, that we wouldn’t leave each other like everyone else had in our lives.
My stomach twisted in pain. I couldn’t stop searching for her. I couldn’t give up and abandon her.
Because deep in my bones, in the whole of my soul, I knew she hadn’t abandoned me. She hadn’t left of her own free will.
I lit an old candle, the wax almost melted down to the base and wrapped my dad’s old wool sweater around my shoulders. I told myself I could still smell him in the wool; his warm peppermint scent invading my nose. I pulled it tighter and glanced at my worn backpack, one strap broken. It held everything I owned, everything I cherished. My life was squashed into a tiny, broken backpack. Some nights I wandered the streets, just to feel not alone. When I sat up here, in the darkness, memories crept in and held me hostage. Memories of my mother before she left us, memories of my father telling me to stay low and wait for him. Memories of the day he didn’t return.
Shadows played off the damaged wallpapered walls and I laid back, noticing there had been some water damage to the ceiling.
I’d never felt safe when I had stayed at housing for recovering demons in the past or in the complexes they had for low-class demons. I felt safer by myself, alone in a tilted apartment building.
I closed my eyes and let my hands wander up to my neck—where Beau’s rough fingers had touched. The slight memory stirred the heat inside of me.
I only had a flame, burning dimly inside the pit of my stomach, but it ached, it ached for me to find that spark. To ignite. And out of everyone I’d been around, Beau’s dark soul had been the one to call to me. I laughed bitterly.
My fingers pressed to my bottom lip and imagined how he would taste, how he would feel. The anger, the bitterness, the wrath of Beau. I wanted the intensity. I wanted to feel the high of his emotions rushing through me. Feeding me. As incubus got high off of sexual energy, I got high off of people’s emotions.
Months ago, I had been captured and tortured and starved. I hadn’t let myself feed since then, I hadn’t indulged, hadn’t let myself loose.
Beau awakened something I had hidden, deep inside myself.
I’d waited for it to make itself known, blooming, seething, and now I wanted more.
I wanted to learn how to fight, how to protect myself, I needed to go back to the Pit to find any clues to where Dolores was, but I also wanted to be close to him.
One taste, I told myself. Just one taste of his essence.
He would never let me.
And I smiled into the darkness, because of course, it had to be him.
The pit was silent when I entered its gloom again a week later. All the mess of alcohol, dirt, and blood had been cleaned off the cement floors. I had waited an entire week before entering its darkness as I knew Tensley would watch me closely. I had spent the week acting as if I was happy. Acting as if I had my life together in front of him. Now I came back to the very place I had been banned from entering.
How this place vibrated with raw power and greed at night and seemed so… calm during the day fascinated me. Looking at it now, I decided I liked the Pit in all its facets.
It spoke to that hunger within me, desperate to feast on its intensity but also on its gloomy tranquility. Souleaters found large groups of people powerful and dangerous. I tried to avoid bars and clubs—anywhere emotions were heightened, and an increase of people gathered there. But I wanted the intensity of the Pit—I wanted that high—and I wanted it mostly from Beau’s intensity.
I walked farther in, my ears picking up on the sound of someone hitting a punching bag. Glancing at the level below, I recognized the fighter whose fists kept flying through the air and colliding on the bag with vicious strength.
It was the woman I’d fought the previous week.
I didn’t know all that much about fighting, but it was obvious she was a great fighter. She had great stability on her legs, flawless coordination, she was intelligent and fearless with her moves. Plus, she had one hell of a punch, I remembered as my fingers touched my healed side as if making sure the bones beneath my skin were indeed still intact.
She’d more than earned my respect.
Maybe she’d be able to teach me how to hold my own in a fight…
“Can I help you?” a flat voice said from behind me, taking me out of my thoughts. I turned toward it, seeing the bartender behind the bar staring at me. His hands were moving fast, cleaning glasses from the night before with a wet rag. If I wanted to find Dolores, I needed to get a job here. To be inside. To ask questions, to observe, and get answers.
“I’m looking for a job,” I told him with what I hoped was a friendly smile as I approached the edge of the bar. But the closer I got to him, the better I could see his features. An unruly beard framed his face and hid his mouth. He had a slightly crooked nose and thick eyebrows that were set in a deep frown, casting a shadow over his dark eyes. Eyes that did not seem friendly and welcoming at all.
His gaze traveled down my body and back up, assessing me, before his frown seemed to crease his forehead even deeper. He was clearly displeased by my looks.
Asshole.
“We don’t hire teenage girls,” he said with a bored tone as he continued cleaning out the glasses and slamming them down onto the counter before moving to the next.
Why did everyone think of me as a fucking kid? I was young, but I wasn’t that young.
I pinched my mouth into a straight line. “Look, I really need a job. I was here last week, and I saw you had waitresses. I could do that, or I could—” I glanced around the room, spotting a woman wiping the floor with a mop. “I could clean the place.”
He just stared at me, not amused.
“Jackson isn’t the right person to talk to, honey. If you want to get hired, you should talk to Danny,” a girl said to my right. She was much taller than me with flaming red hair and a tall, thin frame. Shimmering eyeshadow coated her lids and each time she spoke, her long, fake lashes fluttered wildly at me. “He runs this place. You should be able to find him in his office.” She gestured to a dark hallway and I nodded at her in thanks.
“Fiona, we shouldn’t let her—” Jackson started but was stopped by Fiona’s sharp retort.
“If the girl wants to ask for a job, Jackson, she can ask for a damn job,” she snapped, and her eyes were several shades colder now. Jackson’s turned troubled, but he stayed quiet and went back to cleaning the glasses in front of him.
Weird.
There was probably some undealt with history between the two of them, I thought.
I walked down the dark hallway, toward the door I’d been told was the one to Danny’s office. The closer I got to it, the louder the voices grew behind the door. By the sound of it, they were arguing.
“For fuck’s sake,” a voice bellowed, and then the door shook and swung open before me.
A man—in his late thirties—stood in the doorway. He had dark brown hair that was slicked back, making the twisted scar that started at his cheek and went all the way down to his jaw bone perfectly visible. He halted at the sight of me, his eyes scanning me fast.
Almost as if quickly assessing if I was a threat and then recognition seemed to shine in his pale, empty-looking eyes.
“I—uh, I’m looking for a job,” I told him after he continued to trace me. “The girl back there told me to come here to talk to Danny. Is that you?”
His eyes shot up to my face, only to go to my lips. “The very one.” Then he paused, lips twitching. “You fought last week. I remember you.” A smile spread across his mouth and he straightened, again scanning me from head to toe. I didn’t like the weight of his gaze on me. Whereas Jackson’s appraisal had been nothing but bored, this one seemed to drip with interest of the wrong kind.
I bristled, folding my arms in an attempt to add an extra layer on top of me. “Yeah…”
“You’re the girl Savage took out of the ring,” he added. “Seemed like you two know each other.”
The mention of Beau sent a shiver through me, but I ignored it and dug my nails into my palms, forming fists. “Not really, no.”
His eyes scanned me again and his brow hiked up. “I watched you fight a week ago.” He squinted, a hard glint to his eyes. “I thought you’d be more bruised, more damaged.” His eyes found mine. “Someone must have healed you…?”
I didn’t like the way he said that. Like he wanted me to say Beau had, but then it would tie me to him.
“Looks like they missed a spot,” he said as his eyes seemed to flash with curiosity at my wrist.
I swallowed. I didn’t need to ask what he was talking about, I knew. It was the one spot Beau hadn’t let his hands or mouth touch, hadn’t healed, and it still ached like a motherfucker.
Danny laughed. “The newbies always think it’s easy. That is, until they see the fighters who rule over this place and make the ring their bitch.”
I nodded again, unsure how to respond. I hadn’t come here and fought in the hopes of winning. I wanted to find Dolores, but I hadn’t expected the rush it gave me to fight. The adrenaline.
He hummed, one hand going up as he rubbed his bottom lip with the tips of his fingers. “And you’re looking for a job…here?”
“Yes,” I told him, flushing at how eager my voice suddenly sounded. He was being creepy as hell, but I really needed an in to stay at the Pit to ask around about Dolores. And if it meant I got to experience the high of the Pit, got to learn how to fight, and get closer to Beau, then it worked in my favor. My only work reference was Scorpios, but I didn’t want to bring that up. So many of the low-class despised Scorpios and their rule over them.
And I had a feeling he was one of them.
“Tell you what. Since you seem so enthusiastic, we’ll do a trial run tonight. Waitress?” he asked, and I nodded. “If you can keep up, then you’re hired,” he finished and moved closer to me.
“Thank you,” I said, nodding fast. “I can do the job.”
He grinned. “I’m sure you can.” He looked over my shoulder. “Fiona, show—I apologize, what’s your name?”
“Lex,” I told him.
And the slow gleam in his eyes made my stomach drop. “Show our little Lex over here around would you?” he told Fiona, but his eyes never left mine.