The door to my apartment had barely swung shut behind me before Cindy was climbing up my body, wrapping her arms around my neck to pull herself up and plaster her lips to mine. I staggered back and bumped into the wall beside the door frame, under sudden assault as the blonde demon’s tongue pushed past my lips, hot and hungry.

My mind was still reeling from both the suddenness of the confrontation, and the rage that had overtaken me when Vittorio threatened to hurt the women around me, but it was difficult to focus on reflection as she wrapped her legs around me. The tiny demon moaned into my mouth, and I found myself closing my eyes to kiss her back as all of the adrenaline that had been pumping through my system suddenly found another outlet. My hands slid down to cup her ass, and I pulled her in as she writhed against me to press as much of her body against my own as she could.

A few moments later, the door brushed against my arm as it opened to admit Rose. She gave a quick once over of Cindy trying to shove her tongue down my throat, let out a little giggle to herself, then stepped in front of me. Reaching down below the Sin Demon, the curvaceous Fairy dexterously unzipped my pants and carefully fished out my erection. My body had already responded to having a gorgeous woman literally throwing herself at me, and having a different one slide her hand around my cock to free it from my pants ensured I was at full mast. Rose gave Cindy a gentle pat on the back and playfully admonished, “You’re aiming a little too high,” before turning and walking further into the apartment.

I was left gasping for air as the tiny blonde pulled back from our kiss before quickly slithering her way down. She slipped out of my arms, dropped onto her knees in front of me and began to nuzzle the side of her face against my dick. Her deep purple lips found the side of the shaft and she spent a few seconds delivering hot, wet, sucking kisses to it, then pulled back and wrapped her lips around it.

I groaned in ecstasy when she began to bob her head as she sucked at me. Her motions were aggressively hungry as she devoured me with enthusiasm. Cindy took advantage of the fact that she had no need to breathe—she was fueled by Sin, not oxygen—by plunging my cock into her throat repeatedly. Her hands wrapped around the backs of my thighs for leverage, and the Sin Demon proceeded to fuck her own mouth with my cock without my needing to do anything more than relax back against the wall and let her work.

Her lips were wrapped around the very base of my cock a few minutes later when the door opened once more to admit both Zarina and Aubrette. The latter’s fair skin immediately reddened in a bright blush when she realized what was happening, but by now we were all comfortable enough with each others’ presence that we otherwise didn’t miss a beat.

Cindy certainly didn’t care—the Sin Demon would have gladly performed the same act in the center of Times Square if I let her—while Zarina seemed only concerned with making sure that I was well. The wizard locked the door, summoned some kind of golden energy that settled in to reinforce it, then walked over towards me.

She looked down to watch Cindy swallow my cock a few times, then cleared her throat and reported, “The vampires are dealt with, and no one who walks through the parking lot will be any the wiser. The apartment is already warded, but I’ll put some additional protections in place around the area tomorrow once it’s light out.”

Cindy’s blowjob was loving only in that she clearly loved doing it. Past that, it was a furious assault on my dick with her lips, tongue, and throat as her weapons of choice.

As hot as it was to have the kneeling blonde shove my dick down her throat, though, I preferred to be a little more active. Cindy froze at the touch of my hand on her hair, then moaned her approval when I wrapped my fingers through it. Her purple lips formed a seal around my dick and her tongue lavished attention on me as I moved her head back and forth like a sex toy.

Even once I’d taken the initiative, though, I was close to my limit. I was well familiar with Cindy’s limits—or lack thereof—by now and it wasn’t long before I was holding the back of her head as she swallowed repeatedly around my shaft. Her throat milked me as I pumped a load of cum straight down it, all while she let out a throaty hum of approval.

* * *

I collapsed back against the couch with Cindy still pressed against my chest. Her aggressive blowjob hadn’t been enough to sate the minx and she wound up riding me to a second orgasm on the couch. Casual sex in front of others had become more the rule than the exception in the last several months of my apartment’s history, so Zarina and Rose having each claimed one of the armchairs I got at an estate sale recently didn’t come as a surprise. The latter had taken the time to change first, while the former had simply stripped down to the sports bra and yoga shorts that she’d had on under her outerwear.

Once I caught my breath I looked down at the blonde still in my lap. She was all but purring as she snuggled in close to my chest, and while Cindy being affectionate wasn’t a surprise, there was usually quite a lot more Lust to it. Her acting like an affectionate kitten—albeit one that already got two servings of cream—was new. “What’s gotten into you?”

She let out a deeply pleased languid hum and nuzzled against my chest, and didn’t respond until I nudged her with one arm. “Mmm. Taste good. Full. So much Wrath.”

Having had Cindy jump me the minute I got through the door had pushed the fight from my mind, but it came back full force with her words. I still couldn’t remember the full details, but images of sharp white fangs and claws stood out clearly, as did the white hot rage that had overcome me. “I got—everything he said, acting like he got to just come and tell us what to do, like it was OK for him to just come and take Aubrette…”

A quick glance revealed the redheaded Sidhe in the kitchen, doing her best to pretend she hadn’t been intently watching me and Cindy. “I just got so angry.” The words brought another hum from the Sin Demon. I’d put on some height thanks to all the magic flowing through my body until I had a couple inches on even Aubrette. The blonde in my lap was more than a foot shorter than me now, and she appeared set to take full advantage of that by attaching herself to me like a limpet.

“I’m not sure if you realized it, Master, but you were actually leaking Wrath from your eyes towards the end.” Zarina’s voice was quiet and contemplative as she spoke. The wizard naturally tended towards a ‘wait and see’ approach to most problems, rarely rushing into action. The fact that there was concern in her voice at all meant we were probably dealing with something outside of her experience. If it was something she knew about that was a problem, she would have told me that immediately rather than talking around it.

“No, I didn’t—honestly, between the Wrath and my Gift, I kinda lost myself in the moment. It was effective at killing Vittorio, I guess, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing I’d seek out.”

“Technically you didn’t kill him, I did, but I take your point.”

My eyebrow shot up at Zarina’s statement, and she calmly explained, “Most vampires require fire or silver to put down. Magic can be a substitute, and for the weaker ones dismemberment will work, but in this case he would’ve recovered eventually. Perhaps not in time to retreat from the sun, but I saw no reason to find out. None of these vampires will rise again, nor will they report to the one who sent them.”

“On that topic—this wasn’t a gang working alone, this was part of a larger organization. What do we do to stop this from escalating further?”

From against my chest, Cindy immediately murmured, “Kill them all.”

I opened my mouth to deny that as a possibility, then paused. “I’m not going to say no out of hand, but do we have any other options?”

My eyes shot to Zarina as our expert on the local supernatural scene, and she responded with a shrug. “Maybe. Killing them is potentially within our reach. ‘Duke’ Cherto is a regional power, not an international one. The vampires we killed today won’t have been his best, and he has many more, but his numbers aren’t unlimited. I wouldn’t recommend it as our first choice, though. My family have always tried to avoid escalating conflicts with vampires, because a cold war is better than a hot one. Any given wizard is usually a match for dozens of vamps, especially if we have some forewarning, but it takes decades to properly train a wizard, and days to make a new vampire.”

She paused and gestured at the naked woman in my lap. “Unleashing Cindy on them would obviously make a dent in their population, but she can’t be everywhere at once. Even if we found where Cherto sleeps and I managed to contain them while she worked—which might not be possible—that’s unlikely to represent all of their forces. Whichever ones we didn’t catch could flee, regroup, and return with a fresh batch of new victims.”

As we talked, Cindy had started to undulate slowing in my lap in an attempt to get me to rise again. It would probably have worked if I gave her a minute, but instead I picked her up and set her down on the couch beside me. “Not now, we’re talking. And actually, on that topic—How do vampires make more vampires? Like, should we all be checking ourselves for bites, or…?”

Zarina shook her head. “The process is more involved than that. In short, the victim needs to die with sufficient vampiric blood in their body to turn. Normally that means being drained to the point of death, getting fed vampire blood to charge them with Vitae, then getting drained again. While it could happen accidentally it’s unlikely that any vampire who knows what they’re doing would allow it. We’re fine.”

She paused there, then added softly, “I’ve heard some of the truly ancient ones can turn someone with little more than a drop. In a fight with Cherto himself that might be a concern, but otherwise it’s not anything to worry about.”

She looked up as Aubrette approached. The redhead held out two steaming mugs, offered the first to me and the second to Zarina. A sniff at the contents as I took mine revealed a rich smell of chocolate, and I let out a happy sigh. “Thanks Aubrette. Alright, so we don’t have to worry about being turned ourselves—not by accident, at least—but an army of fresh recruits isn’t out of the question. So, thoughts? Fight, run, or something else?”

“Fight.” Cindy’s response was simple and straightforward, and not a surprise.

“Run.” Zarina’s was a little more unexpected, and drew several shocked looks from around the room. She shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be forever. I’d rather not risk any harm to you, Master, and I know how hurt you’d be if harm came to any of us. It’s the safest option. We can just leave and set up somewhere else.”

“I’d rather not—my parents are here.” Rose sounded uncharacteristically morose at the prospect, and I nodded slowly.

“We’ll leave running on the table, but I’d rather not pull up roots immediately. It’s not like I couldn’t start again somewhere else, but I’ve actually started to build up a business here through word of mouth. I’d be giving all of that up.” Eventually I shook my head. “It’s late, we’re tired, we’ve had a long day. Let’s get some sleep, we’ll figure it out in the morning.”

By the time I woke up the next morning I was alone in bed. It felt as though I’d slept in more than I intended, so I rolled over to grope at my nightstand until my fingers closed on my phone and haphazardly tugged at it until it disconnected from its charging cable. The display informed me that it was just before nine in the morning, which was later than I usually got up but not as bad as I had feared.

The sound of voices from the other room told me that while I might have been the only one in the room, that wasn’t true of the rest of my apartment. I rolled out of bed and stretched, then pulled a black and red silk robe over my shoulders. It had been a Christmas present from Rose—something the Puca had made for me herself. At the time I had felt a little uncomfortable with it, especially since she had drawn a deliberate comparison to Hugh Hefner, but I eventually decided that I was pretty sure she was teasing me.

Ultimately what had won out was that it was comfy, surprisingly warm, and the silk fabric felt nice on my skin. I tied the belt shut at my waist and wandered out to find the source of the noise.

The kitchen was crowded when I emerged. Aubrette—her glorious red curls bound loosely behind her head—toiled at the stove and added another pancake to a stack on her right as I watched. Rose and Cindy both had empty plates in front of them that spoke to carbs already devoured, and both women were paying close attention to Zarina.

The wizard was wearing a robe of her own. While she did actually have quite a few sets of proper wizard robes, woven of exotic materials and enchanted to assist her with her magic, this one had more in common with what I was wearing. The yellow silk barely clung to her shoulders and where it draped open in the front, it revealed a substantial expanse of her deep cleavage.

She was mid-sentence when I approached, and her words were obviously intended for the guest at the table, the only other mortal. “-unlikely for anyone else in the complex to be in any danger, but if you can help me find a couple spots to inscribe wards where people won’t mess with them I can lower it further.” The wizard turned her head and offered me a sunny smile despite the obvious serious conversation going on, and I leaned in to kiss her cheek.

“Well, I was going to ask if this visit was business or pleasure, but I’m afraid that answers that,” I said to my landlady.

“Ugh. I was just going to check in on how your search went yesterday, but then Zarina told me what happened. Don’t forget that latter option, though, I have a test coming up on Friday. You, Mister Magic Man, are going to put the whammy on me as soon as I get done and back, and I expect you to spend Friday night making sure I’m good and relaxed. If I come out of it on Saturday and I didn’t cum on your dick at least three times I’m raising your rent.”

I stepped around the table and rather than kissing Sara’s cheek, my lips found her ear. They brushed it softly, then I asked, “If I can double it, does that mean you’ll get me a discount?”

She had the authority to make deals with the residents of the apartment complex to an extent, but she was employed by a company her uncle owned rather than running things herself. I hadn’t let her actually take anything off of my rent in a while, since I’d been able to afford it more easily, but the idea of fucking the fit brunette until she felt compelled to find a way to pay for the privilege had its own appeal.

“Maybe. You’ll just have to find out.” Sara turned her head to give me a searing kiss. By now, everyone in the apartment had not only seen each other naked, they had been present in some kind of sexual encounter with each other. That Cindy, Aubrette, Rose and Zarina had all watched Sara as she bounced up and down on top of me with my dick buried in her ass the week before meant she saw no particular reason to be shy about delivering affection in front of them, but to allow Zarina to return to the previous topic of conversation, she kept the gesture somewhat brief.

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re up. I was telling Sara that I think open conflict like the night before is unlikely, at least for a little while. The gang that attacked us was an opening gambit, but given how one-sided that was, they probably won’t try it again. It’s possible that they’d come back in larger numbers, but if I had to guess, the next move is going to either be subtle, or a surprise.”

Zarina’s tone was crisp and confident as she spoke, which made it all the more conspicuous when she glanced at the Latina woman next to her and added, “To be safe, though, you should spend the night here. The next few nights, in fact.”

As intelligent as the wizard was, she had something of an obvious blind-spot in her social skills when it came to me. The spell that affected her had made her view me as something like the coolest and most important person she had ever known. It left her perpetually somewhat starstruck, and while her attempt to bring Sara into my grasp was a nice gesture that harmed no one, everyone in the kitchen—Sara included—could immediately tell what lay behind it.

The thought of actual conflict with a bunch of vampires was concerning. The fight last night had been a sudden affair and I hadn’t had any time to dwell on what was going on, but they had obviously been more than willing to kill us. That the badasses I lived with had barely slowed down as they took down a bunch of bloodsucking assholes meant we had come through the other side of the fight largely unharmed—even my knuckles had healed overnight—but that didn’t mean we would always get that lucky.

Nobody was invincible, with Cindy—whose body had yet to show a single permanent change since she’d been summoned—as the only possible exception. Neither the demon’s hair nor nails grew, and while I had—at her insistence—delivered more than one firm spanking to her taut little butt, I couldn’t get her pale skin to show a single mark or blemish.

The Sin Demon had torn through the vampires in a very literal sense, and the only reason she wasn’t covered in blood at the end was that their remains had immediately turned to ash.

The women who lived with me could take care of themselves, but that wouldn't protect everyone. While Zarina might not have believed Sara was at risk, my landlady was just an ordinary human. She was fit, smart, and aware of the supernatural, which put her a head above most other normal mortals, but it wasn’t enough to protect her if a vampire cornered her in a back alley.

She wasn’t the only one that came to mind, either. There were several customers I worked for on a regular basis, and if Cherto’s lackeys had tracked me here, there was every chance they had already mapped out my regular movements.

I couldn’t afford to just stop working, even to protect people—while I was doing pretty well financially, it wasn’t as though I had somehow become rich overnight. While all the women did their best to contribute—Rose by selling handcrafted lingerie, Aubrette with the cleaning service she provided, and Cindy through helping me manage the services I offered—that wasn’t enough to offset the expenses of renting two apartments.

“Is there anything else we can do? It sounded like you were talking about some kind of ritual magic of your own. Can we hang wreaths of garlic, or pick up some recreational Catholicism or anything?” I kept my tone light, and it drew a laugh from Zarina that scrunched her nose up adorably, but she gave the question a moment of serious consideration before she answered.

“Garlic, no. While there are some protective rituals that make use of Allium flowers to defend against undead of all kinds, eating an extra helping of lasagna won’t do anything by itself. I know the Catholic Church maintains a small army of exorcists, but the emphasis there is on ‘small.’ I’m not sure we’d want to get messed up in that anyway. Rome has politics of its own that stretch back millennia and things might get messy in a hurry if we pulled on that particular thread.”

She bit her thumb in consideration before she continued. “The thing that would make the biggest difference is a change in location. When I was living on my own, it was simple enough to ward my apartment to give myself a small haven to retreat to, but I wasn’t ever worried about getting ambushed on the street. Nobody fucks with a wizard if they don’t have to. The problem is that there’s too many of us, and too many people in general in these apartments. If you had some land somewhere, I could take the time to fortify it properly and give us a real base of operations. There’s a big difference between picking a fight with someone in a parking lot and attempting to assault a magically defended fortress.”

“Zarina, we’ve been through this. I know you said that everything of yours is mine, but there’s a difference between letting you put some effort into magic and actually withdrawing cash from your bank accounts. I’m not comfortable with that. Now, if it looks like it’s the only way forward I wouldn’t object to taking a loan—either from you or from your family, if they’re willing—but anything I take that way I’m going to have to pay back.” Not only was the topic not a new one, but it was one that she revisited about once a week.

It took a few weeks after Zarina’s spell bounced off a protection ritual that had been lying dormant on me for months that I discovered that her family was wealthy. It was a few weeks after that before I figured out that when she said her family had money, what she meant was that they were quietly some of the most influential people in the world. Or they could be, at least, if they cared to leverage their assets.

Most of it didn’t exist on paper—sometimes because it predated the printing press—but in the form of magical vaults filled with piles of actual gold coins. It was enough to flood the world market if they spent it all at once, but even letting people know they had it would have had globe-shaking effects. Those might even have been literal—the Malle family didn’t keep gold for its own sake, but because they could use it to enhance certain rituals. The property in central Africa that their patriarch—Amari—called home was apparently not only nigh-unbreachable, it was basically undetectable if you didn’t already know where to look.

The fact that he had determined, on his one and only—surprise—visit to my apartment, that I wasn’t to be held to blame for Zarina’s condition was probably the only reason I was still alive. Even Cindy wasn’t sure if she could beat him, and that was without having anyone more vulnerable than her to protect. If Amari hadn’t decided that removing me would be worse for his granddaughter than allowing me to live, the vampires wouldn’t ever have had the chance to take their shot.

“As you wish, Master.” While I hadn’t asked the wizard to call me that, she had been holding my dick the first time she tried the word out and had felt it jump in her hand. No matter how I tried to convince her that it had more to do with having her lips an inch away from my cock than the word she used to refer to me, I hadn’t been able to stop her from using it. “If you won’t take money from me, though, may I at least recommend that you find an alternative path towards home ownership? I wouldn’t mind buying a house of my own that you and yours could live in.”

She frowned slightly, then added, “Though, given what I understand of traditional vampire politics, you would get more mileage out of owning it yourself. For obvious reasons, vampires tend to be old-fashioned, and Cherto was born in an era where the only people worth talking to were the nobles who owned land and had holdings.”

By then I was sitting between Sara and Zarina with a mouthful of Aubrette’s pancakes. I chewed and swallowed before I answered, which gave me time to do a bit of rough mental math.

At the rate that I’d been earning money with my newly expanded services—thanks to the magical rituals I’d mastered from the tome Mycah had left behind—I could probably get enough cash put together for a decent down payment on a house in six months to a year. It wouldn’t be anything to impress a centuries old man who called himself a duke, though, and that assumed the vampires just let me keep my head down and work normally for that entire time.

Just as I swallowed the mouthful of syrup-soaked goodness courtesy of one fairy to answer, a different one spoke up and preempted the conversation. “We should rob a bank.”

All eyes turned to Rose. The Puca had been quiet since I’d arrived, but while the expression on her face was slightly mischievous, there was also something triumphant in it—as though she’d arrived at the obvious solution to our problems.

Before I could shoot the idea down, Zarina commented in a disconcertingly off-handed manner, “I looked into Cherto when I first moved to St. Louis. There are a number of banks that he uses to launder money, and the like. He probably has plenty of cash reserves somewhere else, but if we could manage to take away some of his capital and use it to build you up, it would make a powerful statement about your capabilities. You’d be showing that not only could you take things away from him if you chose to, but that the only reason you hadn’t already was that he hadn’t yet caught your eye.”

“The fact that he struck first in this conflict does put you in the moral right, my liege.” Aubrette set Zarina’s plate of pancakes down before the wizard as she spoke, then turned to finally prepare something for herself. When I’d asked her once why she was working in the kitchen rather than tapping into her magic to feed the household, she’d informed me that there had been times in her service to the royal court that she had missed having the chance to simply cook for herself. Living in my household, there was never a shortage of mouths to feed, and she enjoyed doing it.

The Sidhe’s sense of morality was sometimes far removed from mine, but at others she seemed all too human.

“That’s a good point—I think I remember who they were talking about, but what was the deal with the woman at Halloween? I was a little drunk, and also riding a crazy Puca at the time that all went down.”

“Tall goth chick. Hot, but she wanted to bite and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I made her stop.” Cindy’s response was short and to the point.

“Fair enough. So—seriously? Robbing a bank?”

“It’s not actually the worst idea.”

To my surprise, of all the people in the room the comment came from Sara. She’d finished most of her pancakes, and was in the process of gathering up the last of the syrup from her plate by dragging the final morsel around with her fork, but despite her apparent distraction she sounded confident.

“Don’t judge-“ She shot me a quick look to reassure herself, then continued, “-but a couple of months ago, right after Aubrette showed up, an idea occurred to me. You guys had just showed me how she was using her power to make a whole extra room in the third floor apartment, and could pull small things out of the air, and I got to thinking. There’s basically no way you could get caught if you decided to just make some money by selling the things that she conjured, right? Like, if you just went to a pawn shop, you could just sell them a load of gold jewelry that you said was from your recently departed grandmother—or whatever—and walk away with cash.”

Aubrette nodded her head easily. “Those with my mantle have done that in the past. I believe there are still stories of ‘fairy gold’ circulating to this day if certain books are to be believed.”

Sara turned her head and nodded quickly in excitement. “I mean, it’s basically stealing, since you’re taking something for nothing, but like if your target was someone you didn’t care about hurting, there’s not a lot of risk to you. You’d be long gone before anyone figured out what was up. Eventually someone might put two and two together, but how are they going to prove anything? You gave them an item, you got paid, you left. If something happened to it after that, that’s on them. Here’s the thing, though-“

She turned and lifted her chin towards Rose. “You can look like other people, right?”

“I can. It takes quite a lot of Glamour though, so it’s a pretty new development. Shifting to my natural forms is easy, mixing things up a little is harder, and looking like a specific person is a real challenge. Ever since I’ve been bonded to Jack, though, I’ve had more Glamour than ever, so I can manage it if I have to. Why?”

Rather than answering the question, Sara turned to Aubrette and asked, “How much work is it to conjure a bank statement or, for example, a withdrawal form?” The question rocked me, because I could immediately see where she was going.

The Sidhe noble answered without turning around. “It would depend on its availability. I’m not familiar with the forms you speak of in particular, but if it’s standard paperwork, I imagine it would not take a great deal of effort.”

The last piece of pancake disappeared between Sara’s lips, though it left a small trail of syrup on her chin in the process. She frowned and did her best to wipe it clean with a paper towel as she chewed and swallowed, and I stepped in to draw her ideas all together.

“So rather than handing over a note that tells them to give us all of their money, we have Aubrette conjure up a withdrawal form and fill it out. Rose goes in while looking like whoever the account owner is and hands it over, and no one has any idea what happened until long after it’s over. They’d have to comb through hours of bank security tapes looking for anything weird, and even then it would just show the person who made the withdrawal walking in and taking the money. Fuck, we could do that again and again if we had the right information…”

“If we are doing this not just to earn you a house, Master, but to hurt Cherto, we can take the ruse one step further.” Zarina had a slightly malicious smile on her lips as she cut in. “I already have some information on key figures in his organization. If we take the time to observe them and see how they operate, we can most likely pick our targets. While the impact of withdrawing money from random accounts is not to be underestimated, if we were to simply take the vampire’s blood money for ourselves directly, it would avoid unnecessary harm to bystanders.”

She paused for just a moment, then added, “My information might not cover the people who do the actual banking, so we will need to do our due diligence first. Most banks aren’t open during standard vampire operating hours, so they tend to work through ghouls—mortals empowered with a dose of vampire blood with lesser versions of their gifts—in the day. Those have a unique arcane signature though, so if I—please forgive the pun—stake out the bank, I can identify them at a distance. We could then carry out Sara’s plan, and the only people getting hung up to dry are vampires and their once-trusted servitors.”

I couldn’t help the feral grin that spread across my lips.

“Fuck it. Let’s rob a vampire bank.”