Micaela’s Big Bad by Tijan

7

Ribbit!

You’re an asshole.

Yes. I am.His voice came to me in my head, and I jerked at the intruder, shocked.

I mean, I couldn’t jerk far, but my head did move a centimeter to the side.

His head was lowered, and the whole smoldering bedroom effect was happening with his eyes.

He spoke again in my head. I’ve been sensing you, and I can’t discern what you are.

I’m an energy sensor. Duh.

No.

I froze. I mean, I froze more, or I would’ve if I could’ve moved.

What do you mean?

I can taste your fear.

That’s disgusting.

You’re scared of your own power. That intrigues me.

He moved closer to me, his head cocked to the side and his eyes turned almost soft. This was why I was reacting so much to him. He was inside of me, sensing me, studying me, dissecting me.

I felt violated. And not in a good way.

You’re more than just an energy sensor. You have a unique taste that other energist’s don’t.

That blew wide open a whole new level of uncomfortableness. He was tasting me?

There’s an ancient power in you. Maybe you don’t even realize it, but I do.

Abruptly, as if he discovered something he didn’t like, he withdrew. Everything. My insides were no longer cast in a throbbing inferno, and I fell from the wall. Landing, I caught myself, my elbow banging into the wall.

Damn. It was the same elbow I chafed at Nikki’s too.

I felt way more orientated now and not as embarrassed.

I glared at him. “You didn’t have to do all of that.”

He gave me a cocky quirk of his top lip, but his eyes were cold. “You are in a building that is filled with demons on a dissension night where four of the six masters are rising.”

Cold dread started to trickle in, filling the void that had been left by him.

I gulped.

I hadn’t known it was a dissension night. They only happened once every six years.

He kept on, “Your kind has a long history of being taken as personal weapons…or worse. I would be very careful about how many insults you cast my way because your friend is gone. The demon has taken hold of her tonight, and I am the only thing powerful enough to get you out of here. Alive.”

Dissension night was a night where the full moon was directly above us. And he was right. Every single demon lost their humanity, but what was worse was that it was also the night their masters surfaced and were given presents by their servants.

Every single demon had a master. There were six total, and the type of presents given?

There was a reason this place was filled with humans.

RIBBIT!

The frog was back, and the frog was shitting itself.

“Why would you help me?”

He was the Big Bad. That went against all universal and species’ laws.

He gave me another scornful look, and I thought I saw him flick his eyes upwards. Actually, I was sure I did.

I had no idea.

I felt like he did.

I would’ve if I were him.

But his face was back to the same stoic mask from when he’d been analyzing me only moments ago.

“Do you have any other option right now?”

“You could be lying.” I raised my chin up. “I could call your bluff, walk out there, and there’s no dissension happening.”

“Your friend would still be sleeping inside of her body.”

Right.

Because that happened before he showed up on the scene.

Damn.

“What’s the plan, Jeeves?”

He frowned. “Don’t call me Jeeves.”

“What’s your name? I could call you that.”

His eyes narrowed at me. They were pretty much staying that way.

He gave me one more long and measured look before there was a beep behind him. He walked to a panel in the wall and pressed it. A back door swung open (that was where it was! It was covered in blue velvet so it was camouflaged. Also, there was no doorknob.) and a female walked in who could’ve been a supermodel. Long legs. Thin body. High cheekbones. Disdainful eyes.

Vampire.

(The ones who look that beautiful and that disdainful were always vampires.)

They were staring at each other, and I knew she was telepathically reporting on something.

He gave a small nod, and she turned right back around. I got the coldest glance ever before she was through the velvet door. It swung shut right behind her, and before my eyes, the blue velvet smoothed over. The door completely blended in again.

“You had a witch do that.”

After he pulled out his phone and was looking at the screen, he glanced up at me as I moved closer to inspect where the wall had been.

That was when I realized the room we’d been in was large. I’d been so focused on him that I hadn’t even noticed my surroundings save for all the blue velvet.

He’d been clear across it for most of our little interrogation, until now.

I closed the space and was within five feet of him to look for the door the vampire had just exited.

Trying to focus on the door, I couldn’t. I was assaulted by waves of his power. It was exuding from him, over and over again. Like it was pulsating from him, but wait. I turned and trained my eyes and my mind to look at him in a different way.

His power was pulsating from him.

Over and over again.

That’s how he was shifting so his energy was never on him, but I could see the waves now, and it was as if I could suddenly see what was normally invisible even to me. There was a small layer of energy sparking right next to his skin.

If he had that there, then I had power.

“Don’t.”

My eyes snapped to his.

We were staring at each other in another challenge.

He didn’t get it.

I didn’t have any other choice.

I went for his energy.

I was in before he could stop me, and whoa.

Whoa!

I was sucked in, but I was all the way in now, not just partially.

I—it was like I was in another dimension.

There was darkness everywhere.

An echo.

Like I was in a cave.

I smelled water.

I could hear the rush of a waterfall next.

I was at an opening, and I was airborne.

I was flying.

The wind was startling, whipping into me.

I tried screaming, but no sound came out.

I was up and around. I was dipping.

I was soaring.

I was free, but I was terrified at the same time.

A shadow was underneath me, not my own. I was going over the ocean.

We rotated, the shadow and I…and I started struggling.

There were large wings.

They spread out as far as I could see.

I felt a rumbling behind me. Inside me.

Then heat. So much heat.

It was unbearable.

It felt like I was in a volcano.

More rumbling.

It was growing. Building.

Something was happening.

I didn’t want what was going to happen, to happen.

No, no, no.

A voracious roar and there was fire everywhere.

The earth was being scorched beneath us. The air around us.

Embers were falling everywhere.

I was in a vacuum.

—I came back to the room.

I looked up.

He had his hand wrapped around my wrist, his eyes blazing. I saw the same embers there and knew that’d been him.

A wave of his fury hit me, actually physically slamming into me, and—I heard a muffled curse—then nothing.