Possession

by J. R. Ward

  With a curse, Jim tried to collect his shit, to concentrate, to throw out some kind of magic, anything that would help him control this mess. And it should have worked, goddamn it. Ever since Eddie had taught him the how-to's, he'd been able to take care of things the I Dream of Jeannie way.

  Except ... fuck, it hadn't worked back on that street. And as he tried again ... and again ... and again ... and nothing happened ... he knew it wasn't working now.

  "Get back in that bed, sir," the orderly said. "Or I'm going to put you there myself."

  Through his haze of pain and frustration, Jim figured there were two obvious options: Lie down like a good boy and wait for the CPD to crawl up his ass ... or let Colin take care of things.

  He picked door number three.

  Wheeling around, he grabbed the chair Sissy had been sitting in and hauled it at the plate-glass window across the way. Just as contact was made, he took one last go at the magic routine--and things must have come together somehow, at least slightly: The four-by-five-foot section blew outward, exploding into the night and letting the cold air plow into the room.

  Jim traded places with the dark breeze.

  Diving through the opening, he went into a tuck as he hit a brief free fall. Then he rolled out on the gravel-topped roof of the building that was one story down from where he'd been.

  Man, thank God for the jigsaw-puzzle architecture of most medical centers--he'd only guessed there would be a roof to catch him; he hadn't known for sure.

  As he took off at a sloppy run, he had a momentary communion with Adrian and everything that other angel had to deal with. What a painful pain in the ass this broken leg was, the shocks of incredible agony making his heart thunder in his chest and his head go fuzzy. But he refused to let the physical stuff matter. In fact, it felt like old home week as he put aside the problems within his body and gunned hard for the far edge of the building.

  He prayed there was something at that end that he could use to get to the ground.

  He also prayed that Sissy understood he wasn't deserting her. Not for long, at any rate. The bottom line, however, was that Colin was with her, and Jim knew that Devina wouldn't go anywhere near the archangel. He also knew that for all the angel's annoyance? He wouldn't leave an innocent to fend for herself; he just wouldn't.

  All Jim needed was enough time to regain some of his power because shit knew he was useless in that sea of humans in his current condition--

  Off in the distance, shouts broke out behind him, echoing down from that hole he'd made in the building.

  Sorry, fellas. But look on the bright side, that window was one last thing for the cleaning staff to disinfect.

  Shuffling along, he headed past some industrial fans and was, thank you, baby Jesus, provided with a way down: Over at the corner, dull security lights illuminated the curled arms of a ladder.

  As soon as he got over to the thing, he swung himself up and around and then slid down like he was on a pair of ropes. Landing in a heap, he had to catch his breath, his leg hurting way more than his head, his eyes sweeping around, looking for an opportunity through an irritating haze.

  He knew he didn't have a lot of time. Hospital this size? It was going to have a big security force that was jacked into a central command.

  Dragging himself up to his feet, he cut through a rear delivery courtyard, navigating thanks to halogen lamps set up high on the concrete-block walls--

  As sirens began to wail, he was willing to bet they weren't ambulances. Try the real police coming to look for him, too.

  Fucking hell, why couldn't he find a car to break into?

  Coming around a corner, a set of squealing tires had him skidding to a halt--just before the heavy steel body of a Mercedes wiped him out.

  The passenger-side window went down, and the one female on the face of the planet that he never wanted to see again smiled at him.

  "Trouble in paradise?" the demon drawled as she leaned across the leather seats.

  "Fuck me..."

  "Get in and I will," she told him with an evil smile. "Otherwise, guess you'll take your chances with the CPD."

  As Sissy's hobbling, pissed-off savior launched himself out of the window he'd busted, she bolted forward like maybe she could catch him and pull him bodily back into the hospital room--and she wasn't the only one with that crazy idea.

  Unfortunately, the hospital staff got there first, crowding the view, blocking her out.

  Oh, God, if he couldn't survive a car accident without ending up here? Falling five floors down to the ground was probably going to kill him--

  Okay, so maybe he was already dead, but whatever. Angels in the real world could obviously still sustain broken bones and injuries that were more than cosmetic. And maybe there was something she could do to help him--

  Frantic, she pushed into the knot of nurses and doctors who were shouting and arguing in front of the gaping hole, forgetting that she wasn't really there, that she was no longer "human," that she was--

  It was hard to say what happened exactly.

  One moment, she was shoving against someone, and the next ... she could see out of the window, visualizing the one-story, not five, drop to the roof below.

  And that was what she'd been after. The trouble was, it was from a different height. And her sense of color was off. And her body felt really weird.

  Bringing up a hand to rub her eyes, she froze...

  And then screamed.

  Instantly, everyone turned to her. "Mary? What's wrong?" somebody said.

  "Move her to the bed. Get her on the bed! For God's sake, this is how her brother died--"

  "I don't have a brother," Sissy mumbled.

  "Shh," one of the nurses soothed. "Come here. Sit."

  Sissy lifted that hand again and found that it was still ... not her own. Pudgy, wrinkly, with a set of wedding rings that needed to be cleaned, the thing was under her control--she was able to flex the fingers and turn it over to see the palm--but it was not hers.

  Looking down, she saw that she was no longer in the loose baggy shirt and rolled-up sweats Jim had given her. Instead, she was wearing a set of blue scrubs and had a pair of laminated IDs on a lanyard around her neck. Picking them off a chest that was about eight sizes bigger than her own, she stared at a picture of a fifty-year-old woman named Mary T. Santiago.

  Wheeling around, she confronted the other angel, the one who had come in before Jim had gone out the window. "What am I?"

  The Englishman's haughty, hard face registered a momentary shock. "You are ... not supposed to be able to do that."

  "What did I do?"

  One of the male orderlies stepped in front of her and there was real fear on his face. "Mary, you're okay. You're all right..."

  "What did I do!" she shouted around him.

  The first of the female nurses addressed her. "Mary, you didn't do anything. You weren't even there when he jumped. Mary, oh, Mary..."

  As Sissy was encased in a hug, she smelled a faded perfume, and some kind of astringent, and felt ... well, mostly an incredible sense of support. Out of reflex, she put her arms--or Mary's arms, as it were--around the other woman, her mind scrambling to understand how this was possible.

  "Just step out of her," the Englishman said crisply. "That's the way it works--or so I've heard."

  "Step ... out ...?" she mumbled.

  "Shh, Mary, it's okay." The nurse started in with some soothing strokes of Mary's hair--which Sissy felt as clearly as if it were her own. "Just breathe with me."

  For some reason, maybe because she needed a hug and the nurse was damned good at giving them, Sissy closed the eyes that were not her own and gave herself up to the comfort.

  "That's it. I know this is hard..."

  Dimly, Sissy was aware of some others arriving in the hospital room--blue-uniformed officers who had security badges on their sleeves. She then felt herself get inched away so that she wasn't anywhere near the black hole in the room.

  As she breat
hed a little easier, she became aware of a psyche other than her own. It was in the background, thoughts and feelings and memories of another person, suppressed by God only knew what.

  Step out? she thought. How was that going to work? If she had any impulse to move, the other woman's body responded.

  "Will yourself free," the Englishman said. "Just decide to separate."

  Sissy listened to the command like she had the ones her coaches had given her in field hockey, ordering herself into an action that was more interior than exterior.

  As she broke away from the nurse, she watched as the shorter, older woman she had just inhabited went down like a stone, fainting dead away. Immediately, Sissy lunged forward to catch her, but her arms had no substance, and Mary Santiago slid onto the linoleum floor, going through Sissy's attempt at throwing out a hold like water through thin air.

  Sissy backed away until she felt the far wall come up against her back.

  "I don't understand any of this," she said, panic twitching her face, shaking her hands. "I don't ... know where I was. How I got in there. Why I got out."

  She looked at the man in white. "I need answers."

  It was an accusation--as if he knew, and was deliberately keeping her in the dark just to piss her off.

  The man--angel, whatever--drew a hand through his black hair. "Bugger. Fucking ... bugger."

  "I'm not sure what that means exactly, but if you think this all sucks? Then I'm right with you--and while we're bonding? Do you have any idea where Jim went?"

  The Englishman crossed his arms over his sizable chest and glared at the broken window. "Don't get me started on him right now."

  As he stayed silent in the midst of the chaos, anger boiled deep inside of her again, sharpening her tone. "Okay, well, how about you help me with myself, then."

  When he transferred that narrowed stare to her, she noticed that his eyes were a color she'd never seen before--and wasn't that a good reminder that she was dealing with something way outside of normal. Maybe something dangerous.

  For a split second, she thought about backing down--except then she reminded herself that she had nothing to lose: She'd already been in Hell, and her life as she'd known it here on Earth was over.

  So what the good goddamn could he do to her.

  "I'm waiting," she snapped.

  Chapter

  Twenty

  "You know, I'm more than willing to nurse you back to health."

  When Jim didn't reply, Devina glanced across the seat. The angel was steaming pissed, big-time banged-up, and in the most pathetic excuse for a hospital johnny she'd ever seen--and he was still captivating in a way that made her think of her OCD.

  She wanted him that badly.

  "You could come and stay with me for a while," she said.

  He glared over at her, the glow from the strips of blue lights that ran down the Mercedes's doors making him seem deliciously evil. "I already have roommates. You killed one of them, remember?"

  She batted that stupidity away. "Please. Eddie should have seen that coming, and because he didn't, he got what he deserved. How is the dear boy, by the way? Still smelling like a rose?"

  Jim just looked out the front windshield, that jaw clenching, his hand curling into a tight fist.

  Yummy.

  Coming up to a stoplight, she began to get excited. They were together again, alone at last, and how could all kinds of dating scenarios not go through her mind? Maybe they could head back to the dirty part of town, park the car, and go see some after-hours porn? The strip clubs were closed, which was a bummer--then again, she wasn't sure she wanted to be around him while he was looking at naked women. She was liable to kill the bitches.

  Yeah, seeing porn movies in public sounded like a great idea--with some live action between the pair of them as a chaser. With that annoying vestal virgin around, she wanted to filthy him up. Get him nice and nasty so that when he went home and little Sissy-Two-shoes looked up at him with those big blue eyes, he felt ashamed of where he'd been and what he'd done.

  On that note, maybe she should just pull over and blow him?

  When he kept quiet, she checked him out. The angel was still sitting there, looking incredibly bangable--as well as hostile. And wasn't that the perfect combination. For her, aggression and hatred were Molly and oysters, baby.

  And she wasn't the only one who was into that shit. Jim liked it, too--in fact, she thought fondly of their last private time, down by the river, in that boathouse. The two of them had been so pissed off and sexed up. So hot. So fucking hot...

  Try giving him some of that, Sissy Barten.

  "I'm surprised you got in the car," Devina said in a moment of weakness.

  "This way I know where you are."

  The demon put a hand to her collarbone. "I'm touched."

  "Don't be."

  Oh, wasn't that his way, she thought with a smile. Fighting the inevitable with everything he had--even though he had to know he was going to give in, in the end, and let them have what they both wanted.

  At least ... she had to believe that he would, even with that girl in his possession.

  Surely that wasn't going to change things.

  Right?

  Abruptly unsettled, Devina drove around the junkie part of town, passing by abandoned houses, and storefronts that were boarded up. Her Benz got noticed, the humans who were lying against the buildings and propped up at the bases of cracked stairwells looking over as she went by--and not just because hers was the only car on the street.

  Jim still wasn't saying anything.

  And that made her feel unstable.

  "There's a knife in my purse." She nodded at the Gucci sack between them. "If you're feeling like you have to let something out."

  Some hard-core foreplay was probably just what the doctor ordered for the pair of them--oh, yeah, she was getting hot just thinking about it--

  "I'm not going to kill myself over you."

  She glanced back over. "I was thinking you might like to come at me--or in me, even better."

  "Never going to happen."

  Devina bore down on the steering wheel. "You know, you don't treat me very well."

  The laugh he let out was a curse if she'd ever heard one. "You're fucking incredible."

  Devina smiled. "Why, thank you."

  "Not a compliment."

  "I'll take it any way I choose."

  She stopped at a traffic light and thought, Hmmm, maybe if they went classy, she'd have more success.

  Hitting the directional signal, she doubled back and headed for the world-famous Freidmont Hotel. Located in the heart of Caldwell's business district, it was the grande dame of downtown, a place where the old ways were still preserved: the doormen wore white gloves, the concierge was available at his desk in the lobby twenty-four hours a day, and the tub in your suite's bathroom was deep as an Olympic swimming pool.

  Romance. She could use some romance. And she'd still have her knife with her if they wanted to get a little kinky.

  Ten minutes later, she pulled up to the regal facade.

  Jim looked over. "What's this for?"

  "I thought we could get a room."

  "For what."

  Devina frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "You don't actually think I'm going to fuck you."

  Feeling like she'd been slapped across the face, Devina had to blink her vision clear. "I don't understand what the problem is."

  "You actually think I'm going to spend the night with you--"

  "I just want us to be together--"

  "Then you are totally delusional, bitch."

  Losing her temper, she spat, "I'm trying to make this work, Jim. Even after everything you've done to me!"

  "What exactly have I done to you? Other than save your sorry ass with that trade we just did."

  Devina was vaguely aware that she was breathing heavily, and that, tragically, Jim was not focused on her heaving breasts.

  Talk about criminal. Her
bustier was red as blood and fit more perfectly than the skin she was in. How could he not look?

  At that moment, a uniformed doorman came around to her.

  Not wanting to be rude, and hoping that there was still a date possibility open somehow, she put her window down. "We'll just be a second."

  The guy seemed confused--oh, right, Jim wasn't showing himself.

  Devina smiled. "I mean, I'll be a moment."

  "Of course, ma'am."

  As the doorman went back to his station just inside the entrance, Jim leaned into her, but not for a kiss. "Listen up, sweetheart. You and me? We don't have a relationship, and we're not fucking anymore. Ever. No matter what you do, or where you take shit, or how this cocksucking game shakes out? I'm not tapping that again."

  Devina recoiled. She'd seen him in a lot of moods over the last four rounds, but never like this. He wasn't being pissy or showing off or playing hard to get.

  Bedrock. In his eyes, there was nothing but granite.

  He went for the door handle before she could hit the locks, and then he was out of her car, limping along with that cast, his hospital johnny opening from the back and flashing his ass.

  The motherfucker didn't look back. And he was going home to...

  The demon's stiletto slammed on the accelerator without her being consciously aware of it, and she aimed the Mercedes right at him, her headlights becoming gun sights, her car a bullet.

  Her target, seen only by her.

  As Jim wrenched around, his face showed nothing. It was as if he were already dead--duh.

  In the instant before impact, he closed his eyes, but not in a bracing kind of way: He was trying to concentrate himself out of there.

  It worked. Tragically.

  Just before he disappeared, there was a bump, like she'd hit a pothole--but then he was out of her sight ... ghosting away to his other life, the one that pitted him against her.

  Devina hit the brakes, and her car behaved perfectly, coming to a complete stop just before she hit the curb. Yanking at the handle, she shoved the door open and got out. Someone whistled at her--and God help them, literally, if they decided to follow through on any of that goddamn shit right now. She was liable to eat them alive.

  Coming around to the front of the Mercedes, she checked out the grille. Not a mark. Both headlights were totally intact and functioning. No dents in the hood.

  She'd hit him, though. Surely, she'd--

  Yes, she had. The iconic circular symbol of the carmaker was ever so slightly crooked ... and when she snapped the thing free and examined it in the bright white glow of her high beams, she saw there was a red stain on the stainless steel--but it was simply a surface imperfection, nothing more.