Nadya/Nadia Ch. 04

"After a month I was the size of a teenager, and they must have started growing suspicious about why I might still need her. They drugged me and took her away. I woke in a black place. I couldn't feel anything, not even my own body. When I tried to talk my voice disappeared. I couldn't see anything either, but I heard my mother's screams in my mind when they tried to take her magic. She didn't have any magic anymore, though, because she'd given it all to me."

"I escaped from the black place somehow. I still don't know how. One second I was there, and the next I found them hurting her. She told me to run, to get out, but I didn't go. I held on to her so tight they couldn't pull me off, so they beat me, whipped me, and cut me. I fought back, but I couldn't fight all of them at once and protect my mother. They hurt me for a long time, but I was glad it was me and not her, so I didn't let her go.

"They finally left us alone and locked us in. I thought we would be okay then, but that's when I heard the first wolf howl. When they opened the door again three wolves and a man came in. The man was an alpha and he tried to order me to let my mother go, but I wouldn't. He was angry when he couldn't make me do what he said, and he ordered the wolves attack us. They bit me, but they weren't really interested in me, I was just in the way. They wanted to bite my mother so they could try and dominate her into doing what they said.

"I wished so hard for us to be somewhere else and then we were, but I didn't know where. I'd never been outside of the place the mages kept us before. I'd never even seen the outside before. My mother told me where she had hidden a bunch of her things when she knew the mages were coming for her. She was weak and couldn't walk, so I carried her until I found a house. I went to find some food, and then I don't know if it was something I did when I wished us away from the wolves or something the mages did, but my mother went to sleep and she never woke up.

"I buried her and left the next day. At the time I didn't know I was an incubus, just that I was a part demon, but it was easy for me to get women to help me, especially when they saw my back. They fed me, gave me clothes, and helped me until I found my mother's things. Eventually I met a witch that knew what I was and she helped me learn what I could do. She knew of another woman, some sort of seer, I think, that can tell when mages are getting close to a woman, and those are the women I drain without their knowledge or permission. She's the one that sent me to find you.

Elijah shook himself out of his memories and gazed steadily at Nadia. "So, is what I'm doing wrong? Probably. Did I do the wrong thing with you? Yes. Have I done the wrong thing before? Very likely. Will I keep doing what I do anyway? Yes. Because even if women remembered me, I would rather use the incubus that was forced into my soul and have you hate me, have all the women in the world hate me for using pleasure to drain them, than know I could have saved any of them a fate like my mother's and did nothing."