I wanted to eat and drink and shag myself silly. Just standing on my own two legs was damn near a religious experience. And the scents…Herswas the first to hit me.
Maeve smelled of sugar and lavender soap and fresh air. I couldn’t gulp down enough of her aroma. It filled my lungs and, suddenly, I burned with the need to touch her.
My hunger for her was an ache in my brain, my bones, my balls—an itch in my blood, instant and ferocious.
It was an urge I couldn’t act on. Not yet.
As soon as I touched her, she’d die.
Ignoring the pit in my gut, I took a step toward her, then another. She flinched when I kicked one of the bodies of the cultist’s from my path, but she didn’t run. Too bad, I was hoping for a chase.
“Do you know who I am, wee one?”
I had a feeling she knew exactly what I was. She knew the legend. She’d even jokingly called me by name.
Now I loomed over her, proof that the story she’d grown up hearing was more than a fairytale. Balor of the Evil Eye wasn’t some fairytale villain. I was violence and vengeance in corporeal form.
With every step I took toward her she scooted back, until we were in the alley and out of sight from the road. Good. This was a quiet neighborhood this time of night. No one had seen what happened.
No one was coming to help her.
When her back hit the trash can of the next shop over, she stared up at me, the blue pools of her eyes swimming with loathing. “I know what you are.”
“Say it girl. Say my name.”
“B–Balor. You’re Balor of the Evil Eye. Now tell me where my fucking store is.”
That look on her face. It did twisted things to me.
It was agony not touching her. She was so damn beautiful. With one brush of my bare flesh against her, she’d be set ablaze.
I wasn’t ready for her to die yet. Not when tormenting her was the most fun I’d had in eight centuries.
“Your store?” My grin stretched wide, and I could make out the glowing embers of my beard in the reflection of her eyes. “Oh, sweet little misfortune. You’re looking right at it.”
I tugged the lapel of my jacket, made from the mismatched furniture patterns that had collected dust in the store for years, and waved my fingers, flashing the gems and gold that had been on display on the shop’s register counter. “McCrum’s was only an illusion, created with the magic your family stole from me.”
“My family didn’t steal shite from you!”
I opened my mouth to unleash the truth, when the cowardly male darted from his hiding place beside the trash bins at the end of the alley.
“Where do ya think yer going, ya wee gobshite?” A blast of fire shot from my eye, igniting at the mouth of the alley, cutting off his exit. It spread, forcing him back toward where I stood. A sobbing pathetic mess.
I stooped down, grabbing him by the front of his jacket and hoisting him in the air above my head. “What kind of milk dribblin’ feck-smear uses a woman as a shield?”
He choked and wept, and by the dark spot in his trousers, wet himself.
Fire licked up my arm, consuming the boy in moments.
I breathed in the fumes and released a satisfied sigh. I discarded the boy’s corpse to the floor, crouched to pry the skull loose from the charred heap, and turned to face a horrified Maeve.
“Whether you like it or not, IamMcCrum’s, girl.” I stretched my arm out to her, offering her the skull with a dark smile bending my lips. “Welcome home.”
Chapter Six
Maeve
The story was true.
