Wild Game (Codex Blair Book 4) Read online

  WILD GAME

  BOOK FOUR OF THE CODEX BLAIR SERIES

  IZZY SHOWS

  CONTENTS

  Mailing List

  Also by Izzy Shows

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Also by Izzy Shows

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 Izzy Shows

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC

  BookflyDesign.com

  For my father, who never once questioned my dreams and always believed in me. My mother, who taught me the freedom found in creative pursuits. For Josh, my boyfriend, my biggest cheerleader, and my most devout fan. I couldn’t have gotten here without any of you.

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  ALSO BY IZZY SHOWS

  THE CODEX BLAIR SERIES

  Grave Mistake

  Blood Hunt

  Dark Descent

  Wild Game

  1

  "You have to try harder," I said, all but snapping the words out at Lilith.

  It had been one week since we had taken her and chained her up, and she hadn't made a lick of progress. Was I wrong to expect so much from her? I admit it, I had a short fuse when it came to addicts.

  I had known too many bad ones to have any patience with them.

  "Blair..." Mal spoke up from behind me, placing a hand on my shoulder. I jerked away from him, shrugging him off, side stepping for good measure. We still hadn't talked about what had happened last week—when he kissed me. And if I had my way about it, we weren't going to. For a minute, I thought that talking about it would make it easier to move on, but sleeping on it had made me change my mind.

  Now if only I could get myself to go back to normal and pretend it had never happened. Mal didn't seem to be having a problem with it, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. My normal nightmares now replaced by haunting dreams of his lips on mine, his hands roaming my body and bringing me to life.

  Ironically, instead of talking to Mal about it, I had talked to Shawn. The man was ridiculous, not a jealous bone in his body, and he found the entire scenario hilarious. He didn't understand why I got so worked up about it, even though I'd broken down and confided in him that Mal was Fallen. He didn't see the big deal, had even told me that maybe if I just shagged him it would get him out of my system and I could move on.

  Part of me agreed with him.

  The saner part of me knew that was a horrible idea and that I was just going to have to practice some self-control, which would be a lot easier if Mal's version of getting back to normal didn't include hitting on me. But that was the way it had been, and I was going to have to get used to that again.

  "No," I said, heaving out a sigh. "She's going to learn."

  I crouched in front of her, looking for any sign of life in her drug crazed eyes, and lifted my hand so that it hovered between us. "Sicco." I clenched my hand into a fist.

  She screamed, an understandable reaction, because I was pulling her essence out of her. I felt it, ripping through her skin piece by piece, and flowing into my hand. It was a horrible spell, a dark spell, that I should have never learned. Fred hadn't wanted to teach it to me, it had taken a lot to get it out of him, but it was the only way I could see to speed up this process. I didn't have centuries to spend with the succubus, and I didn’t fancy the idea of leaving her in Mal's care.

  A demon could only be trusted so much.

  Lilith raged against her chains, gnashing her teeth together, and screaming bloody murder.

  Pain was a part of it. Necessary, so that she would associate my essence with pain and never want to touch the magical stuff again. She had become addicted to magical energy, feeding on the community to the point of killing several people, and had almost died because of it. At my hands. It was only her relationship with Mal that had saved her, that and my soft spot for mythological history—she was the Lilith, the original wife of Adam who had turned her back on everything in the name of equality. How could I erase her from the face of the Earth when there was an opportunity to save her?

  So, I was hurting her. Taking from her what she had taken from others without the glamour of pleasure that she was able to provide—I suppose there might have been a way for me to alter the spell so that it didn't hurt so much, but that would rather defeat the point of this exercise.

  "Enough, Blair," Mal said, his voice firm and final.

  I let my hand drop, releasing the spell. Lilith collapsed against the wall, whimpering, her chest heaving with the effort it took for her to breathe.

  "Please, no more..." Her words were barely a whisper, I had to strain to hear her, and she refused to look at me.

  That was one of the downsides to all of this; she was going to hate me by the time it was over. I dearly wanted to talk to her, get to know her, find out what her life had been like and learn what the world had been and how it was to see it grow over time. Sure, these were questions I could ask Mal, but his experience would have been wildly different from hers. And he was very guarded about his history, it had been hard enough to get him to tell me that one story about the earrings he'd stolen.

  I knew now that I wasn't going to get that opportunity, which made this a bitter experience, but I was determined to save her. If only to prove to myself that an addict could come back from the edge.

  "Lilith," I said, glaring down at her. "Look at me."

  "Give her a break, Blair, you just yanked twenty years out of her. She needs to rest."

  "She needs to learn."

  I reached out and gripped her chin, forcing her to look at me. Rage took the place of psychosis in her eyes, venom lying there in wait for me. I wouldn't say it was pure hatred, but it was damn close.

  Closing my eyes, I reached inside of me for my power. I called it forth, wincing at the pain of using my own energy instead of relying on a focus, and allowed it to permeate every piece of my body.

  The rage dissipated from her eyes, replace
d with hunger. She struggled against it, clenching her teeth, turning her head to get away from my hand though she couldn't quite break eye contact with me.

  "That's good, Lilith, fight it. You're better than this," I said, coaxing her to remember what it was like to be in control of her body.

  Not all succubi are like this, unable to control themselves in the face of a meal. Most of them only eat when they want to, and are often very picky about the people they feed on. Lilith had dipped so far into her addiction that she couldn't turn away from any offering in front of her, couldn't control herself to be picky like her brethren, couldn't fight the call of my soul.

  Her chest rose and fell, her breathing becoming shallower and shallower, and I heard a whimper escape her. I tilted back my head, watching her through narrowed eyes. She was going to fail again, I could see the weakness in her eyes, the desire to give in.

  "No," she said, sobbing, tears tracking down her cheeks. "Get away from me, please, just get away, don't hurt me, just get away while you can."

  "Fight it, Lilith. You can do it." I refused to back away from her, that wasn't the point of this.

  I guess it could be counted as progress that she had the presence of mind to warn me away from her, that she no longer wanted the feed in her conscience mind, but that wasn't the end goal. The end goal was for her to not have to warn me away.

  She broke, lunging for me. I jumped up and scampered back, tamping out the magic I had been permeating, and shook my hand—she'd almost bitten me. That was a new development. Succubi don't have to break skin or otherwise mar their victims to feed, they pull your soul out through your mouth. It's very elegant, but also very painful. If she was biting at me, it was an act of rage and desperation.

  I sighed. "Damn it, Lilith. You were so close." I walked towards her again, but Mal gripped my arm.

  "Blair, don't do it again," he said, pleading with me.

  I looked over my shoulder to glare up at him. "You should be thanking me, that I'm doing any of this. Need I remind you that this was all your idea? You wanted to fix her, well, I'm fixing her."

  "She's going to break if you keep draining her. And what do you think using that spell is going to do to you? You were scared of the mark, but you're not scared of a spell so dark Druxglieqfredhelic didn't want to teach to you?"

  I wavered, more than aware that he was right about that. It was a dark spell. I could feel it tainting me every time I used it, weakening me, leaving chinks in my armor that the mark on my wrist fed through to garner more control of me. But I'd learned that my soul repaired over time, usually a good amount of eating and sleep replenished where it had been tainted. I didn't know the ins and outs of what souls were, but I was thinking of it like a liver. You needed one, but it could grow over time if parts of it were taken out. Regenerate, so to speak.

  Which was good, because this spell wasn't good for me.

  Yet another thing that I didn't want Emily to know about. What did it say about me, that I did things I was afraid my paladin friend would learn about? I was bad news. She was going to hate me one day; I just wanted to put that day off for as long as was possible.

  "Leave it, Mal," I said at last. "I have to do this while the feed is still fresh in her mind, else it doesn't matter and we've wasted our energy. This will be the last one."

  He didn't relax his hold at first, his eyes searching mine as if he didn't recognize me.

  That was fair, I didn't recognize me either. I didn't know when I had become this hardened person, capable of hurting people if it met a goal. Capable of killing when I decided it was justice. Capable of magic I had never dreamed of.

  No, I didn't recognize myself at all. But I didn't talk about that, not with anyone. Raven was the only person I could even think about talking about this with. They knew so much, and they had sworn to protect me, I didn't think they would turn on me, especially since they knew so much about what I was and what I had done. They knew I was protecting London, they knew about the mark on my arm. For all I knew, they knew the magic I was using even now, I didn't know what they were capable of seeing or knowing without being present. But I couldn't stand the idea of disappointing them. I was just going to have to learn to live with it.

  Mal dropped his hand and I turned and walked over to Lilith again. I crouched in front of her and lifted my hand.

  She shook her head violently. "No, please, no, anything but that. I'll be good, I promise, I can be good. Just please don't hurt me again."

  "It's for your own good," I said, gritting my teeth.

  Gods, who am I?

  "Sicco." I clenched my fist, pulling her essence out of her. Mal was right, she was going to be too weak to do little more than sit here and cry once I was done with her this time. She was going to need to feed tonight, and I hated the idea of that. Mal would go to Serenity to find someone willing to be fed on by a succubus, so it wasn't like he was sacrificing innocents to her. Still. It was repellant to me, and not something I wanted to be involved in or associated with.

  Little pinpricks of blood formed on her heaving chest as the magic tore through her skin, separating her essence from her body. It flowed into me, I would dispose of it in a minute here, now that we were on the final session. I would be a liar if I said there wasn't an appeal to this spell, but it was disgusting on an intellectual level. The reaction was entirely primeval, something my body couldn't deny. Like a succubus, I was taking her power from her and pulling it into my body, inflating my own power and leaving me feeling like I could take on the world.

  Maybe I was so hard on her because now I could understand how she had become addicted to this. I didn't know what would have happened to me if I had kept her power to myself, but I was damned glad that I had talked to Mal about it as soon as I'd realised it the first time. Disposing of power without using it is a painful promise, basically a more violent version of making yourself vomit, but it was necessary. I associated the pain with the process, just like I was teaching her to do.

  After several minutes, I was unable to bear her screaming anymore and dropped the spell. She curled into a little ball, as best she could with her hands chained to the wall, and whimpered there. My heart squeezed at the sight of her, I wanted to comfort her, apologise for the necessity of what I had done, but I couldn't find any words that would sound genuine to her.

  "You should get her a blanket," I said quietly.

  "Why?"

  "Because I just sucked her energy out of her of course." I looked over my shoulder to glare at him. "She's shaking, Mal, she doesn't have anything in her. She's cold and hungry. Get her a bloody blanket."

  He left the room without another word, leaving us alone together.

  I cleared my throat. "I'm...I'm sorry, Lilith."

  She peeked up at me from behind the arm she'd been hiding under. She shook her head wordlessly.

  "I am. I know it doesn't seem that way right now, but I am. I don't want to hurt you. We just don't have the luxury of time to wait out this process. It would hurt no matter what. I've seen addicts before, I've known a few who died from withdrawal. I don't want that to happen to you. Please don't think I'm trying to kill you."

  "I don't," she said, her voice hollow. I was surprised she had talked at all. "I think you're going to keep me here and torture me for an eternity. I wish you would kill me."

  I jerked back, staring at her.

  It shouldn't be such a surprise, but it was. I hadn't expected her to wish for death, hadn't thought that would happen.

  You’re torturing her. How would you feel if someone was doing this to you?

  I'd want to kill them, that was for damn sure.

  "Not forever, Lilith," I said, swallowing hard. "One day, you're going to smile and walk in the sun again, and you're going to understand why I did this."

  The blood drained from my face as soon as the words came out of my mouth

  ‘You're going to understand why I did this.’

  The exact words many an abusive foster paren
t had said to me at one point or another.

  I opened my mouth as if to take them back, then shut it and shook my head. I turned and fled from the room, shoulder bumping hard into Mal on my way out. I threw myself onto the couch, shaking.

  Had I done the unthinkable and turned into the people who had hurt me?

  No, I didn't enjoy it, I didn't want to hurt her. Did I?

  No!

  Had they wanted to hurt me, or did they think they were only doing it for my benefit? I didn't know anymore, and the idea of being like them made me sick to my stomach.

  "Blair? Are you OK?" Mal had come out of the room at some point or other, shutting the door behind him. He was standing beside the couch now, and an upward flick of my eyes showed a concerned look on his face.