The Scumbags Guide to Enslaving Demon's

He didn’t.

Austin took one step towards the back office before he crumpled beneath his own weight. His legs wouldn’t hold him.

Elena caught him before his head hit the marble floor. She’d seen this happen before. She was twenty-seven years old and had spent half her life dragging broken adults down stairwells and through shattered storefronts and flooded basement rooms. So when she wrapped her arms around Austin’s midsection and hoisted him bridal-style, she expected resistance. Instead, she was surprised by how heavy he felt.

Yesterday Austin would have buckled easily beneath her grip, all elbows and hollow cheeks and bone- sharp need. Now he felt solid and thick-skinned beneath her fingers. Heat radiated from him in waves.

"Seven," Elena growled, forcing one of Austin’s arms over her shoulder. "Help me."

The enforcer angled his bone mask towards her.

"He’s going to pass out."

"I know."

Seven lurched into motion. Its violet-veined hand slid under Austin’s other arm without squeezing around it. Together they shuffled him through the door behind the reception desk and into what appeared to be the manager’s office.

The space had aged much better than the lobby. A beaten up metal desk sat beneath wooden boards covering the windows. A water cooler leaned against the opposite wall, dusty and empty. Someone had shoved a cracked leather sofa into the corner at some point, probably as a place to sleep on overnight shifts. Elena and Seven lowered Austin onto it.

His eyes fluttered open but did not focus.

"Guard the lobby," he said through clenched teeth. "Don’t let anyone in until I say so."

Seven’s eye- slit illuminated. "As you command, Master."

The enforcer stalked out, shutting the office door with unnecessary force.

Complete silence fell over the room, aside from Austin’s ragged breathing and the distant thrumming of the vines beneath the floorboards.

Elena hovered awkwardly next to the sofa, unsure what to do with her hands. She’d seen feverish humans like this after demon exposure before. Most of them screamed until their voices went hoarse. Some begged to be slaughtered. But none of them looked at her like Austin did when his gaze flickered upward to meet hers.

His pupils had consumed nearly all of the brown from his irises. A thin ring of violet danced around them.

"Don’t."

She stopped. "Don’t what."

"Run."

She stilled at his quiet command. Saying it made the air feel heavier around her ears, electric and close, like eyes on her back. Austin had banished that same sensation to the lobby wall when he slammed his fist through the vines, but it was sharper here. Louder.

Buried in Austin’s subconscious.

Light blinked from a pale window at the corner of Austin’s vision.

[Warning: Cognitive levels critical.]

[Assimilation: 4.8%.]

[Aura Dominance feedback loop initiating.]

[Host must be stabilized immediately to prevent aggression adaptation.]

Austin squeezed his eyes shut. Those words weren’t his. The heat crashing through his veins was.

The Hunter-Killer left behind a thousand fractured pieces of himself when he assimilated inside Austin’s veins. The hotel’s root system clawed at Austin’s consciousness now, demanding entrance, greedy and desperate. They showed him everyone in the lobby; terrified survivors clutching loved ones, Seven guard duty, black tendrils slurping demon ichor through cracks in the tile.

It was pure noise until she walked into view.

Her heart pounded erratically beneath her ribcage. Her scent was sharp underneath the dust and desperation. She was scared. Petrified, maybe. But she hadn’t abandoned them.

Fear fueled the blaze raging through his blood, but so did something else. Hope. Humanity.

"Maxine?" Austin attempted her name, but the syllables snarled against his teeth.

Elena raised an eyebrow.

"How old are you?"

He ripped his attention back to Elena. "Twenty-seven. What?"

"I need you to listen." His voice was scratchy. "Don’t interrupt."

She crossed her arms defiantly like that younger girl she had spotted on the stairs. "Okay. I’m listening."

"The System is telling me that I need to stabilize."

"I don’t know what a System is."

"It’s what’s talking to me at the moment telling me that I’m less human than I used to be." He winced. "Don’t @#$%ing lie to me." He sighed. "It’s not wrong, per se."

Her eyebrows knitted together.

"I can hear everything," Austin said. "The hotel. People. Their fear. Just...everything."

Elena regarded him silently for several heartbeats.

"What I hear," he continued when she didn’t speak, "I want to use."

"You will not."

He rolled onto his hands until his fingertips braced him upright. Pain radiated from the movement. Large purple veins slashed across his throat for an instant before dissipating beneath his skin.

"There’s this voice," Austin said and waved vaguely at his head. "In my head telling me that I shouldn’t give into what I can do right now." He shook his head. "But Elena. It’s wrong." He paused, swallowing thickly. "What I can do is help everyone here."

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. Thick as the fear pooling underneath Austin’s skin. Elena didn’t spring forward to hug him or collapse across his lap. She took her time choosing her words.

"That’s not for you to decide."

"I can’t do it by myself."

She cocked her head to the side. "Why are you telling me all this?"

Austin chewed on his bottom lip. "So you can make that decision."

"You need to stabilize."

"I don’t know how not to—"

"Shh."

Something lodged in Austin’s throat, but didn’t keep him from speaking. Heat blossomed across his spine, tracing the familiar texture of her palm sliding down his back.

Elena squeezed her eyes shut, leaned in closer, and parted her lips to tell Austin every cruel, reasoned word she had practiced before her fingers connected with the rapid pulse in his throat.

Words escaped her.

Instead she kissed him.

His mouth was hot and angry. Human.

The contact clouded his senses. One side of Austin wanted to tug Elena closer, fill her lungs with precious air and keep her there just like this. The other side hated him with new vigor and wanted to wipe that fire from his tongue with his fist.

She pulled away.

"You don’t have to answer me." She left a quick kiss atop his forehead. "But you want to."

"You saw what I did to-"

"You lied to me." She muttered around a yawn.

"You saw."

"No." Elena shook her head, most likely chastising herself for giving in to him. For kneeling beside him while he was clearly ill, probably dying of whatever this was. "Lying isn’t the same thing as explaining."

"I wouldn’t lie to you."

Elena tucked a stray lock behind his ear. "What happened?"

His skin crawled under her fingers.

"It’s happening to me now." He jerked backward. "I need to stabilize!"

She stepped backward, eyes flicking to the pistol strapped at her hip. "I’ll give you a minute."

Austin slouched against the sofa cushions. As much as he wanted to continue holding her there, to breathe her fear and compassion like it was raining manna from Heaven after years of drought, he had to do this. For her. For everyone.

Elena wouldn’t leave him like this.

Not again.

Not after she’d tasted him.

He reached for the bottle at his side.

"Don’t."

Austin froze, trapped halfway between his objective and Elena’s solid form behind him. Her eyes bored into him.

"What?"

"You heard what Seven said. You can’t exactly rinse another guy’s brains out while people are still dying out there."

"But –"

"No." She crossed her arms over her chest, shutting herself off from him. "You told me."

His throat seized. Elena’s eyes dropped to the graffiti-etched label around an empty water bottle. She frowned at it, running a hand through her mouth. Something clicked.

"What?" Austin growled.

"I’ll go." She said slowly. "Get some rest." She kicked the pistol across the room in disgust. "Try not to kill anyone when you wake up."

Anger bloomed beneath his ribcage. Stay with me, his sympathetic whispered. Please.

Elena exhaled loudly, stepping around the sofa. "Unless you want to tell me what’s going on."

Austin waited until she reached the office doorway to extract himself from the sofa.

By then it was too late.

"I’m not crazy," he called after her voice.

The door clicked shut behind Elena.

He would not share his demons.

Heat flooded his mind then, a thousand voices whispering words he could only describe as relief.

[Veyra accepted your apology.]

[Immediate action recommended.]

[Absorb foundation will suffice.]

Austin lurched backwards. Panic replaced adrenaline. Horror squeezed tight along his nerves.

Fuck.

The bottle crashed to the floor. Glass shattered.

...Ignoring exterior variables would prove- Shit!

A scream ripped through the hotel lobby behind him.

They had found her.

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