Desire Unchained

“Congrats, bro,” Wraith said, slapping him on the back on his way out the door. “Better you than me.”


With that, Wraith was gone. Eidolon started after him, his worry over Wraith’s new condition coming off him in waves. Wraith was an unpinned grenade ready to blow.

But at the door, his brother paused. “I’m happy for you, man. Just don’t ask me to babysit.” Eidolon grinned, and he was out of there.

Shade drew in a shuddering breath and framed Runa’s face in his hands. “Are you okay with this? With everything that’s happened to you because of me?”

A slow, radiant smile lit her face. “I’m more than okay, Shade. For the first time in my life, I’m alive. And you gave me that.” She trailed a finger down her dermoire. “Guess you’re still cursed. Cursed to be with me.”

“I can live with that,” he croaked, his eyes stinging again. Runa brought out the best in him when he’d believed there was no best in him.

Being cursed to love Runa was the best curse of all.





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One





When you are dining with a demon, you got to have a long spoon.

—Navjot Singh Sidhu





There were three things Wraith did well: hunt, fight, and fuck. He was going to do all three tonight. In exactly that order.

Crouching on the rooftop of a shop run by immigrants who had probably come from such a shitty country that the violence in the streets of Brownsville, Brooklyn, didn’t faze them, Wraith waited.

He’d spied the gang members earlier, had scented their aggression, their need to draw blood, and Wraith’s own need to do the same stirred. Like any predator, he’d chosen his target with care. But unlike most predators, he didn’t go for the weak or the aged. Screw that. He wanted the strongest, the biggest, the most dangerous.

He liked his pint of blood with an adrenaline chaser.

Unfortunately, Wraith couldn’t make a kill tonight. He’d already met his one-human-kill-per-month limit set by the Vampire Council, and no way in Sheoul would he go over. He hadn’t once since learning that his oldest brother, Eidolon, paid the price when Wraith went over his allowance—E’s martyr complex at work.

Both Eidolon and the Council had refused to negotiate new terms now that Wraith knew the truth. They figured that with E taking the punishment, Wraith would be more careful about breaking the rules.

They were right, but given Wraith’s history, they’d taken a risk. Ten months ago, Wraith had happily gone through his s’genesis, a change that should have made him a monster who operated only on instinct—an instinct to screw as many demon females as possible, with the goal being to impregnate them. An added bonus of the s’genesis was that male Seminus demons became so focused on their sex drives that they cared little for anything else. But, in Wraith’s case, he was also a vampire, so killing things was in his blood. So to speak.

Eager to get started with his new life, Wraith had found a way to bring on The Change early. Unfortunately, it didn’t change a damned thing. Oh, he wanted to screw and impregnate females, but that was nothing new. The only difference was that now he could impregnate them. Oh, and he also had to shapeshift into the male of their species to do it, because no female on Earth or in Sheoul, the demon realm, would knowingly bed a posts’genesis Seminus demon. No one wanted to give birth to offspring that would be born a purebred Seminus despite the mixed mating.

So yeah, a few things had changed, but not enough. Wraith still remembered the horrors of his past. He still cared about his two brothers and the hospital they had all started together.

Figured that although insanity ran in the family, he hadn’t inherited any of it. Eidolon hypothesized that Wraith’s mother’s human DNA was responsible for mellowing out the s’genesis effects, and naturally, E and Shade thought that was a good thing, and couldn’t understand why Wraith disagreed.

Wraith scented the air, taking in the recent rain, the rancid odors of stale urine, decaying garbage, and spicy Haitian cuisine from the hovel next door. Darkness swirled around him, cloaking him in the shadows, and a cold January breeze ruffled his shoulder-length hair but did nothing to ease the heat in his veins.

He might be the epitome of patience while waiting for his prey, but that didn’t mean that inside he wasn’t quivering with anticipation.

Because these weren’t your typical gangbangers he was hunting. No, the Bloods, Crips, and Latin Kings had nothing on the mercilessly cruel Upir.

The very name made Wraith’s lips curl in a silent snarl. The Upir functioned like any other territorial street gang, except those pulling the strings were vampires. They used their human chumps to commit the crimes, to provide blood—and bloodsport—when needed, and to take the falls when the cops busted them. For their service and sacrifice, the humans believed they would be rewarded with eternal life.