Vex
Lucifer wanted that baby's soul. I had almost had her, but Balthazar interfered. Then lied to Lucifer.
Something I wouldn't forget.
I stood outside Crescent Manor. It was warded. Archangel warded, thanks to Raphael. Or maybe the baby herself.
I needed to wait until the baby left the Manor. Then she was mine.
But I needed intel.
Someone on the inside. Someone no one would suspect. Someone I could manipulate.
That's when I saw him—Steve DuPont.
Long dark amber hair fell past his shoulders, wild and untamed. Blue eyes. Sharp cheekbones. He had the look of a rock star—the kind of pretty that made people trust him when they shouldn't.
Joy DuPont's brother. Which meant he had access to Angelo's world—the enforcers, the Manor, the inner circle. And Red Rose Academy, where his sister had trained.
Two birds. One stone.
I smiled.
I had possessed him before when he was human.
Now I’d have some fun with him being a vampire.
Chapter Two
Rocco
The alarm buzzed on my phone, dragging me out of a dreamless sleep. I slapped the nightstand, fumbling until I found it and killed the noise. The silence that replaced it wasn’t much better.
Sunlight crept through the threadbare curtains, painting a strip of gold across stained carpet that might’ve been beige once. The Mardi Gras Hotel. Half the letters on the sign outside had given up years ago, leaving behindAri S—which, if you knew anything about demons, wasn’t exactly the kind of welcome mat that invited sweet dreams.
Not that Ari himself would’ve claimed this place. The Dark Demon had taste. He preferred the best of everything—silk sheets, rare blood, penthouse views of the Quarter. This? This was the worst of everything. Peeling wallpaper. A mattress that sagged in the middle like it had lost the will to live. The faint smell of mildew and someone else’s cigarettes baked into the walls.
A vampire prince of Fandor Citadel, and this was where I’d landed.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and the springs groaned beneath me like they were in as much pain as I was. Through the thin walls, I could hear the couple next door already arguing, their muffled voices rising and falling like a tide of misery. Down on the street, a car horn blared, followed by someone shouting in a mix of Creole and English that would’ve made my mother flinch.
I dragged a hand over my face and stared at the water stain on the ceiling. It looked like a map of someplace I’d never been. Someplace better than here.
But here was all I had.
I turned on the faucet. The pipes clanked and shuddered behind the wall. A trickle of rust-colored water sputtered out, then cleared to a weak stream that stayed ice-cold no matter how far I cranked the handle.
Ten minutes. I stood there with my hand under the spray, waiting. The water finally stopped biting.
I lasted two minutes before I was out and shivering, grabbing the thin towel off the rack. My teeth chattered as I yanked on the dark blue polyester uniform. The grease smell hit me before I even got it over my head—deep in the fibers, permanent, like the shirt had given up on ever being clean.
The name tag saidRocky. I’d stopped correcting people a week ago.
Three blocks to Bernie’s. The morning sun was already cooking the French Quarter, pulling up the stink of last night’s beer and piss from the cobblestones. A woman with a stroller crossed to the other side of the street when she saw me coming. I caught my reflection in a shop window—unshaved, hollow-eyed, shoulders hunched like I was bracing for a hit.
I looked away.
My phone sat heavy in my pocket. I’d checked it six times before leaving the hotel.
