The wound was poisoned.
Without my demon, I don't think I would have lasted more than an hour. Even with its support, I was having trouble staying steady. The pain was horrible, and my whole body poured sweat even as I shivered with cold. The Hunger can usually overcome any kind of foreign substance-but while my demon might have been a powerful one, it was not well fed, and I'd been using it hard all night. It had little strength left with which to fight the poison.
It was difficult, but I persevered for three hours.
That was how long it took for me to track the Stygian and catch her alone.
The sweep of my kukri had missed her head-but not the hairs growing out of it. And while my grasping fingers had not found her eyes an instant later, they had snatched those hairs out of the air before they could fall. The tracking spell the skull had taught me had been good enough to let me find the Stygian, despite any countermeasures she might have taken.
When she entered her hotel room, I was half an inch behind her. She never knew I was there until my lips touched the back of her neck, and I unleashed my demon upon her.
She let out a sudden gasp, as my Hunger, starved for so long, rushed into her flesh. Though she might have had the mind and thoughts of a dozen alien beings, she had a mortal life force and a mortal body-a woman's body, and, as I had told the skull, a rather lovely one at that.
She tried to struggle for five or six seconds, until her nervous system succumbed to my Hunger, until the first orgasm ripped a moan of equal parts ecstasy, need, and despair from her throat.
"Shhhh," I told her, my teeth gently finding her earlobe and my hands roaming. "It won't hurt. I promise."
She cried out in despair again, as her body began moving in helpless acquiescence to desire, and my own reservations flickered and died before the raw, aching need of my Hunger.
I spend most of my life fighting my darker nature.
Most of it.
Not all of it.
I bore the Stygian to the floor and fed her to my demon.
Lara would help me get rid of the body.