Lethal Blow: (Succubus Hitwoman Book 2) by Eliza Hendrix (love books to read TXT) 📕

Will she be okay?

She reaches for my face, her fingernails tickling my cheek. “See you soon, darling.”

And with that, she walks into the portal and disappears.

Chapter 5

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“Holy crap,” Rachel says. She clutches hard at her Book of Origin and gazes around the hotel room, mesmerized.

Yeah, it’s luxury. This is what happens when you stay at the Dark Hall. You pay an arm and a leg, but you’re protected from virtually everything.

“So, there are no humans here?” she asks.

Reaching into the oversized fridge, I pluck out a cold beer. “No.”

“How do you know it’s safe?”

“This whole place is enchanted, Rachel. Feebles don’t know about it. They can’t see it. And the whole point of having a shadow dweller-only casino is to encourage different species to get along. The most powerful beings of all time put this place together, so you can bet your ass nothing bad happens here. They have a zero-violence policy. No conflict at all. And apparently, anyone who has exhibited violence of any type gets cursed to a hell-like dimension for eternity.”

Rachel swallows so hard I hear the gulp.

“Yeah,” I say. “They don’t fuck around. When I tell you that your book’s safe here, it is. But this isn’t a permanent solution. We need to find Zerachu.”

Rachel covers her mouth and giggles.

I don’t even bother telling her she’s being immature, laughing at some woman’s name. She can have her laugh. Whatever.

Drax walks around, looking like a kid himself. Every time he finds some electronic gadget, or some fancy decoration, he points at it and turns to me with a grin.

I get it.

This place is to die for.

I walk across the room’s marble floors, taking in the massive Jacuzzi, the eighty-inch television, and the ginormous windows that open up with a simple voice command. This place is even more luxurious than the Bellagio, but it’s also ten times the price.

Two grand per night.

Good thing I’m a multimillionaire now.

With my beer in one hand, I reach for a bottle of Patrón on the liquor rack, open it with my teeth, and chug several shots’ worth. Maybe if I drink enough, I’ll stop focusing on Veerka.

Or maybe drinking isn’t what I need. Now that I think about it, I’m fucking hungry.

“You guys stay here,” I say.

“What?” Rachel says. “Where are you going?”

“To find Zerachu,” I say.

“Can’t I come with you?” she asks.

Drax plops himself down on the leather sofa, pulls out a rolling paper, and rolls a joint. When he catches me watching him, he says, “What? You don’t need me. Go do your thing. I’ll be right here.” Then, he reaches for the TV’s remote, turns it on, and squeals like a kid on Christmas morning when the high-definition screen lights up the room.

“I’d rather you stay here,” I say, turning toward Rachel. “I’ll come back to get you if I need you.”

She looks bummed out.

“See that fridge?” I point to the one I pulled a beer out of. “It’s an Apparitious 4000.”

One of her reddish-brown eyebrows pulls up. “What’s that?”

She doesn’t know what it is, which should be no surprise. She’s a newbie to the world of magic.

“Think of it as the magic genie of foods.”

“Holy shit,” Drax says, almost as if only tuning into my voice now. “Is that an Apparitious 4000? I thought those things weren’t even real!”

He leans forward as if on the verge of getting up, but his blunt remains his priority.

“All you have to do is think about what you want, open the fridge door, and there it is,” I say.

“Like, magic?” Rachel says.

No, like mathematics.

“Yeah,” I say.

She’s a witch. Why does the idea of a magic fridge surprise her?

“You wanted a beer?” she asks, staring at the bottle in my hand.

I shift my eyes sideways like I missed the punch line. Isn’t it obvious? Why even ask me that? I always want a beer.

“Try it out. Have fun. Eat whatever you want. I’ll be back,” I say. Before exiting the hotel room, I turn around with a rock-hard finger pointed at her. “And don’t even think about trying to get anything other than food out of that thing. You’ll get an explosion of magic, and trust me, it hurts.”

She gulps again as I close the door behind me.

The Dark Hall Casino is like any other casino—full of bright lights, cold air pumped with oxygen, and massive crowds of people with drunken grins plastered to their faces. Now and then, someone gets upset and smashes a fist against a poker table, which is immediately followed by, “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to get upset”.

I’ve been inside the Dark Hall about five times in all of my existence. It’s an awesome place, but it’s so damn expensive. Think of it as a reserve for the elite.

Everyone is friendly, at least on the surface. People know better than to express their discontent. Some shadow dwellers gamble for money, but it’s more typical to find people bartering for weird shit like jars of eyes, fingernails, bright gooey green stuff… You catch my drift.

As I walk through crowds of odd-looking fae, I have no desire to gamble any of my money.

What I want is to feed. Correction: what I need is to feed. As much as I’ve enjoyed my hot, steamy nights with Veerka, it hasn’t satisfied my succubus side. How can I feed off the living dead? Don’t get me wrong—I love it. It means we can fuck nonstop without the risk of anyone getting hurt.

But now I’m left feeling hungry. Hungry me tends to be irritable… like an explosion is lingering right beneath the surface, waiting for the right opportunity to tear someone’s face off. After that comes a sense of depletion