by S. M. Reine
Time passed, and the fires outside the window continued to roil. He moved down one hemisphere of her back, and then the other, until there were two broad stripes on her skin that ached pleasantly. The third went straight down her spine and hurt more than the others combined.
She lolled in the sensations. Under normal circumstances, she might have fallen asleep.
He finally spoke again when he reached the small of her back.
“I need…” James coughed. “I need more room. More skin, that is.”
“Where? My chest?” Elise pushed up on her elbows.
“No. Your legs.”
She sat back on her heels. Her hair swung over her chest, but it didn’t conceal anything; she was totally bare, with rivulets of blood trickling down her back to pool in the dimples at the base of her spine.
James mashed the pestle into the mortar harder, twisting his wrist to grind what was already fine powder into dust.
His eyes were inscrutable, but there were other ways to read what he was thinking, even without the barrier of the rings between them. The pressure of the blood in his veins was increasing, and his heart rate was elevated. It sounded like the thudding of taiko drums.
Elise watched for a reaction as she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her pants and slid them down over her hips.
James’s face didn’t change, but something sparked deep in his brain.
It had been years since she’d studied basic anatomy, and reading his signals was much more confusing than reading illustrations in a book. Yatam would have known what was happening inside James’s head, and what it meant, but Elise felt like she was listening to a conversation in a foreign language. And what was even more confusing was that she couldn’t read James’s thoughts. They didn’t skim the surface at all.
Elise pushed down her pants. She sat back to kick them off, leaving her completely naked.
No response. Not the slightest visual change. But the signals in his brain were going wild.
James glanced at her, as if to make sure that she was done. His pupils were dilated, but his face was impassive. “Lie down again. I’m going to start on the back of your legs.”
How could he speak so calmly when his skull was full of fireworks? Was she misreading him, or imagining things?
But then she saw the flush of blood sweeping over his muscles, and heard the thrum of his growing arousal, and she realized that James was lying. He was lying with every fiber of his being. She never would have known without the powers of a demon.
He was a good liar. A very good liar.
Elise didn’t lie down.
She rested her hand on his wrist, stopping him in mid-motion as he mixed a new tablespoon of ink. His heart skipped a beat, and hers skipped with it. Elise’s fingers curled around the inside of his arm, resting on top of the pulse point at the top of the scar that bound them. “Wait,” she said when he tensed.
“We can take a break if it’s hurting you, but I still have another dozen marks to tattoo,” James said. His head was swimming. “And we don’t have much time. We should leave for the Palace as soon as we know that Hannah and Nathaniel are gone.”
She slid her hand up his arm and onto his chest, splaying her fingers over the beat of his betraying heart. Her body mirrored his reactions. The flush of heat, the swell of blood. Elise felt like she could reach out, touch his nerves, and play his reactions like the strings of an instrument. She could suppress his arousal, or heighten it.
Her fingers slid up to the back of his neck, and James grabbed her hand. “Stop that. What are you doing?”
“What’s going on in there?” she asked, stroking the gray at his left temple. He pushed her arm away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Lie back, Elise. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re naked, and we have work to do.”
“I know I’m naked, and you know it, too. I’m a demon, not a moron.”
“Don’t say that,” James said.
Elise let her hands fall into her lap. “What? That I’m a demon? Or that I can see that you’re thinking very hard about my body right now?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. So much blood running through his body.
“You’re not Elise,” he said. “My kopis wouldn’t…” He trailed off. Closed his mouth. Picked up the mortar and pestle, and measured out more pigment.
He still didn’t believe her.
“What do I have to say to convince you?” Elise asked. “I look the same. I sound the same. I know everything that I should know—like how you found me in Russia. Near Oymyakon. We called the woman who owned the house that we stayed in Babushka, and she fed us soup for a week before I could walk. She was terrified of me.”
James shook his head. “No.”
“We went to the Middle East for a while, and you insisted on teaching me how to dance. I hated it. But the dancing turned into sparring, and my fighting improved for it.” Elise searched for something else, something that nobody but them could have known. “You were there when I was diagnosed with androgen insensitivity. Afterward, we burned down Mr. Black’s house together. And you were with me the first time that I broke my femur, but the second time was when I went hunting an overlord without you. I killed him with a battle axe.”
He was still shaking his head.
“When I got a parasite from a tepid lake in Bolivia, it took you three days to write a spell that could heal me. I spent the whole time throwing up. Afterward, I laughed at the idea of getting killed by a bug instead of a demon, and you got mad at me for thinking that it was funny.”
“Any nightmare could learn that by stalking me,” James said.
Elise’s eyebrows lifted. “You have nightmares about that?”
“Not lately, but…” He seemed to realize that he had responded to her, and her mouth shut.
She threw her hands into the air. “We’ve been everywhere together, James. What do I have to say to convince you? Do I have to talk about the first time we piggybacked at the hospital in Denmark? Or talk about the details of the first offer we made on Motion and Dance, and how the owners were so insulted that they countered by raising their price? Do you think a nightmare could learn that by stalking you?”
“Elise,” he began, but she wasn’t done.
Now that the frustration had risen with her, it triggered a torrent of other emotions, and it was feeding off of James’s stress, his anxiety.
“Do I have to tell you about how much I hated Stephanie, and how angry I was that you two bought a house together without telling me?” She grabbed a fistful of his shirt—not to pull herself against him this time, but to force him to look at her. “And right before I left you to defeat Yatai…”
She stared at his mouth and at the magic lingering at the corner of his lips. Speaking so many words of power had permanently etched the spells onto his skin.
I kissed you.
James’s eyes roved over her face, like he was trying to memorize every changed line. The silence between them was powerful and weighty.
“I wouldn’t have done it if I knew I wasn’t going to stay dead,” Elise said.
Something about that worked where nothing else had. A line appeared between his eyebrows, and he reached up to pull a lock of silky black hair between his fingers. “Don’t apologize.”
Elise put her fingers over his, stopping his hand. “I wasn’t planning on it.” His gaze dropped to the place they touched, and she realized that the glimmer of the ring had caught his eye.
“How?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. I think Yatam must have done this to me. He had a sculpture of the goddess that turned him from a man into a demon. I died at her feet. I think that’s what brought me back.”
“So maybe there’s a cure.”
Her heart felt heavy. “I don’t think there is.”
“God, Elise,” James murmured, sadness etching the lines of his face. “I missed you. I missed you so damn much. When I thought you were gone…” H
e closed his eyes. When he looked at her again, the sadness was gone. “And then you came back, and for about a half a minute, I was relieved.” He picked up the bowl of pigment again. “Lie down on your side, and for God’s sake, cover yourself.”
Stung, she grabbed another robe off of Abraxas’s chair and then returned to bed.
James continued to tattoo lines of ink down her hip.
She watched the fiery pit behind his back for a long time, struggling not to let annoyance overtake her. But it wouldn’t be ignored. Tension clenched in her gut, and after several minutes, she knew that she had to say something. “I came to Hell for you,” Elise said. “I saved you and Hannah.”
He finished etching a symbol onto the flesh of her thigh. “And I’m grateful.”
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
“How do you expect me to react? I warned you that your collusion with demons wouldn’t end well. Give me your other leg. Just a few more marks left.”
She rolled onto the opposite side so that her back faced him and adjusted the robe to protect his delicate sensibilities. “If I hadn’t been colluding with demons, I really would be dead right now. Would that be better? If I was a dead human instead of a living…whatever the fuck I am?”
James’s hand moved down her leg slowly, tracing a line of fire parallel to her femur. “If you hadn’t jumped out of that helicopter in the first place, you could have evacuated with me.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Elise said. It was easier to argue when she didn’t actually have to see him. She wouldn’t have to feel guilty for digging in deep. “And it’s not like there was anything waiting for me if I did evacuate. Maybe I wouldn’t have died in the first place if you had supported me instead of being a condescending asshole that rejected my lifestyle choices. Did you think about that?”
The bone needle stilled. The point pressed hard against her skin.
When he finally replied, the anger had vanished from his voice. “Yes. I thought about it a lot. I’ve had plenty of time to dwell on my regrets, Elise. Trust me.”
It was easy to forget what he must have gone through when all Elise had known was a moment of darkness, and then rebirth. She almost felt bad for snapping at him. Almost. But he had started it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am.”
James cleared his throat, finished the last mark, and set the needle down.
“There. Done.” He pressed a fingertip into the marks to activate them. Another flare of pain, another rush of magic. “You’re a skeleton key to the Palace of Dis. Congratulations.”
Elise went to the mirror in the corner, slipping the robe down her shoulders and twisting so that she could see her back. There was a strange beauty to the marks, even though he hadn’t managed to completely wipe away the rivulets of blood; it left stains on her shoulders and hip like splatters of ink. The curves emphasized her pale figure and destroyed the purity of Yatam’s form.
Good.
She could see James watching her in the reflection. As soon as she turned around, he hurried to clean up.
“It’s okay to look,” Elise said. “I’m not going to shatter under the weight of a glance.”
He absorbed himself in the task of putting the now empty bowls and needle on Abraxas’s desk. “It’s not the looking I’m worried about,” James muttered, wiping the blood off the tip of the needle onto his robe.
She lifted a questioning eyebrow, but he didn’t elaborate.
He walked out into the office again.
Elise picked up her clothing, discarded the underwear, and shimmied into her leggings. She had to drop the robes to pull on the bustier. She latched the buckles, tucked the square of paper magic into her shirt, and grabbed her sheath before following him into the next room. “Do we have a problem, James?”
“A problem?” He gave a short laugh. “No, there’s no problem. But now that you’re…” He gestured at her body, then paced across the room, running a hand through his hair. There was that increase in his stress hormones again. “Jesus.”
It was fascinating to watch the internal battle play out in James’s mind, even as his expression remained fairly opaque. He was arguing with himself. Trying to make a decision.
She didn’t realize that she had stepped in close to stare at the play of light and color over his aura until he held up a hand to stop her from getting closer. “What does all of that mean?” she asked, stopping beside the desk. She pointed at his skull. “All of that…activity.”
She saw it the instant that he came to a decision. It was like a hurricane suddenly dissipating, leaving the tumultuous waters of his mind calm and focused.
“It means that I’m only a man, and my self-control isn’t infinite,” James said, and he sounded defeated. He tossed the bone needle onto the desk.
“I don’t understand.”
“I said that I’ve had plenty of time to think about my regrets, Elise,” he said, mouth drawn into a frown. It carved deep lines on either side of his lips and between his eyebrows. “And my God, are they numerous. I’ve thought—what would you do, if you knew you were about to lose someone you care about?” He sighed and cupped her jaw in his hand. “What would I do differently if I knew I was about to lose you ?”
Elise wasn’t sure if that was a rhetorical question or not, but her silence only seemed to frustrate him.
“I’m trying to tell you something here,” he said.
“You’re going to have to be clearer than that, James.”
The muscles in his neck worked as his jaw clenched. “Fine.”
And then he grabbed her arms, pulled her against him, and kissed her hard.
There was a moment of pure shock where she only managed to stiffen and think a few swear words. Elise was certain that if she could have seen the activity in her own mind, it would have been red and flashing, like an alarm bell.
She shoved him and took a big step backward.
Her fingers flew to her mouth, feeling the blood rush to her lips and cheeks. Her demon flesh was happy to kiss James—more than happy. But the human parts of her that remained were somewhere between confused and hurt. “What the hell was that supposed to be?”
He didn’t look hurt by her rejection, but guilt colored the flashes in his brain. James rubbed a hand down his face. “I have so many regrets, and the number only keeps growing.” He dropped his hand to his side and moved closer to her again. “What do a few more mistakes mean after that?”
“Is that what that was? A mistake?”
“Not exactly.” His brow knitted, and his thumb traced the edge of her bottom lip. “I never should have let you leave.”
It was hard to catch her breath enough to speak. “You are confusing the hell out of me.”
“Sorry,” he said, and she thought that he meant it.
She couldn’t read his thoughts or understand his emotions. In fact, the more she saw from James, the less she understood him. It was like he was an open book written in a language that she didn’t understand. Elise felt helplessly illiterate.
Which, she decided after a moment, didn’t matter all that much.
Ten years. Elise had been waiting for James to notice her for ten goddamn years . She’d have to be stupid to reject him when he finally seemed to have woken up.
“I think incarceration in Hell has probably driven you insane,” she said. Her hands found their way to the back of his neck, linking together so that she could pull herself against his chest.
His hands curved over her waist. “Unfortunately, I feel very sane right now.” He gave a shuddering breath. “I wish I didn’t.”
She stretched onto her toes, and, very hesitantly, brushed her lips over his. It was hard to trust that he wasn’t going to pull away again. But he didn’t.
The shift in her weight made him unbalance. He stepped back, bumped into Abraxas’s claw-footed chair, and sat down hard. Elise followed him, climbing into his lap. It was a big chair. There was enough room for her knees on either si
de of his legs.
It was physically easier to kiss him when they weren’t standing and didn’t have twelve inches’ height difference between them. But it wasn’t any less strange. Elise had to stop to breathe. She hadn’t even realized that breathing was still a necessity until she suddenly couldn’t do it anymore.
James only gave her a moment before pulling her down to crush his lips against hers again, like he was afraid that if he stopped for too long, she would think better of what they were doing—or maybe that he would be the one to lose his nerve.
Maybe one of them would have come to their senses if they had a few more minutes alone in Abraxas’s office, but they didn’t get a chance to find out.
The door creaked open.
“Uh,” someone said. Someone that sounded a lot like a ten-year-old boy.
Elise straightened to see Nathaniel standing in the doorway, his features slack with shock.
The visual of what was happening inside of him was a thousand times worse. He had been having daydreams of his parents falling in love again, getting married, and completing their family, only to find his father—with whom he had still not had a single real conversation—kissing another woman.
It was like she could see his heart breaking.
She stood on bare feet and took two steps toward the door. “Nathaniel…”
Anger flashed through his eyes. “Don’t,” he said, and then he fled.
15
Elise pushed past the nightmare guards and entered the workroom just as Nathaniel activated his circle of power. Lightning arced between the symbols around the circumference and joined at the center, splitting the air with a sliver of impossibly bright light.
She lifted a hand to shield her eyes and stepped back reflexively. It wasn’t just a reaction to the brightness. The sense of magic in the room was overpowering, as if the air had been replaced by liquid electricity.
Hannah hadn’t noticed Elise’s entrance. She was too busy smoothing down the collar of Nathaniel’s shirt and flipping the hem so that it laid flat. “Don’t you want to say goodbye to them?”
“No.” His face was very, very red. “Let’s go.”