The door at the end of the corridor was closed. Not unusual, considering this place was supposed to be secure, but something about it felt wrong. She shoved her bag at Davyn, jogged warily to the door, and yanked the handle.
“It’s locked. From the outside.” Probably the security guard they’d seen earlier. Keira took off in the opposite direction, brushing past Davyn on her way to the other exit. She tried that door handle, shook it, and then started cursing.
“Is there a problem, hunter?” he asked calmly, coming up behind her and setting down her bag.
“It’s locked. He locked the damn door.” She scanned the hallway for another way out. Nothing, not even any windows. “Hey!” she screamed, pounding on the door. “We’re still in here!” The building was designed to keep people out not in, but the effect was the same.
“Your great plans for revenge, thwarted by a door lock. That’s really fucking sad. I wish I had a camera—you should see the look on your face, and I should have something to refer to if I ever get sappy again. Hey”—he looked up to the corner where the wall met the ceiling—“we’re in luck. They have cameras. Wanna fool around? Come on, let’s make some nice memories, then we can swipe the videos on the way out.”
“Stop being so damn calm, demon! It’s annoying as hell.”
“Nothing is as annoying as hell.” He eyed her bag. “Did you bring anything to eat?”
She groaned and then kicked the door handle. “Can you break it down?”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding offended. “But I couldn’t fix it and broken-down metal doors tend to make humans curious.” The whole collateral-damage thing was a pain in the ass Keira didn’t need. “But I could do the old-school demon thing and pop on out of here with my fancy magical powers.”
Oh, right. “You’re so amusing, demon. Just don’t forget to unlock the door once you’re on the other side.”
“Why would I do that?”
She glared at him. “Because we made a deal.”
“Lame reason. You should’ve used my dire need to get into your pants again. Something like, if the door doesn’t open, the pants don’t either.”
“Davyn, knock it off! You can tell bad jokes later.”
“That’s not a joke. I really do want to get into your pants again, and having your taste on my tongue is a pretty powerful incentive.”
“Inappropriate commentary, Davyn. Right now, try to think with your other head.”
“Come on, it’s a beautiful day, and I’m locked inside a modern-day fortress with a beautiful woman.” He backed her against the wall without touching her. “So what do you think she wants to do?”
“She wants to get out of here!” She pushed his chest so he’d give her a little space.
“In a bit,” he said, blowing her off. “Since I have your full attention in here, tell me something about yourself. Anything.” Why was he wasting her time? For the same reason he hadn’t wanted her to leave his place earlier. No way was he going to keep her stuck in here until dusk.
“If you really care, let’s talk about it somewhere else.”
“Here’s good.”
“You’re such a pain in the ass.” Which he fully acknowledged and probably took pride in…even though pride was a sin. “I tell you something, and you get me out of here.”
“Perfect.” He brightened at the opportunity to make a deal—his demon nature something she could always count on, even in a world as unpredictable as theirs.
“Um…” She leaned back against the concrete wall and tried to think of something amusing or even interesting. Her life prior to becoming a seer had been uneventful—good home, decent student. “My life was pretty boring.”
“No human life is boring—they’re too short. Try being immortal for a while.”
She considered what it would be like to be immortal, how she would fill all that time. Even obsessed hunters and mercenaries had days off. Once she’d cleaned her weapons and folded her laundry, there wasn’t much else. Davyn was a weapon and he probably dry-cleaned all his clothing. So what did he do? Aside from eating a lot.
Oh. “You can have sex with any kind of super, right?”
He arched a brow. “Yeah. Anyone who isn’t human. Why do you ask?”
“Just trying to think of ways you might keep yourself busy. And feeling slightly intimidated by how much sex you’ve probably had.”
“Have you?” he asked after a minute, an unreadable expression on his face. “Had much sex?”
She shrugged. “Some. But my life’s been kinda complicated for the last few years, so relationships aren’t a priority. I’m too busy killing things for anything lasting.” She tried to laugh, but it came out too weak to be called that.
“Tell me about your first time.”
“Seriously?”
“Am I not supposed to ask?”
“No, it’s…um…” Unpleasant to think about. But she trusted him. “Okay, my first time.” She looked up, trying to remember the facts without the feelings. “Picture this: Senior year of high school, which means I’m almost eighteen. It’s about three months into my life in the Heights, but I don’t know it yet because the angels missed me. I’m with a friend at a football game, but we’re not watching the game. We’re in the parking lot smoking and drinking cheap-ass wine out of a Big Gulp cup.” She glanced at him, needing a sign he was listening, that she wasn’t going through all this for nothing.
His body was as relaxed as always, but his eyes were their most intense—he was definitely interested. And was waiting for her to go on.
She took a breath. “This car pulls up and stops right under the floodlight. Like jaw-to-the-floor hot car. Same thing with its driver—he was perfect. I don’t really think about it too much because my friend says she knows him. We both jump in the car, excited because we’re being bad.” She shrugged. “Or stupid, I guess. Blah-blah-blah. Then I realize he’s a little too perfect.”
“A vampire. Your first lover was a vampire?”
Lover? Was that what he’d asked? “No. My first kill was a vamp.” She tapped her hand on her thigh. “Do you want to know more?” She waited for his nod. “From the second I got in his car, I had this awful feeling that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. But I didn’t care and was self-destructive ’cause, you know, I’d just died.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’ve never been human, let alone a teenager. They never make sense—it’s a hormonal thing. Plus, I was screwed up because I kept seeing things that weren’t real, like a guy’s eyes completely change color, glimpses of what I now know were demons, and shit like that.
“Anyway,” she continued. “I didn’t start trusting that feeling until he’d taken us way out of town. As soon as we got out of the car, we got our first really good look at each other. He must have been young because I don’t think he’d figured out I was a seer until then. Maybe because I hadn’t figured it out either. I knew something awful was about to happen, but I hesitated. We might’ve been able to get away if I’d trusted myself. When I saw his fangs come out, I got it—what I was seeing was real, and it was about to kill me.”
Keira felt her heart speeding along, keeping up with every word of a story she’d never shared before, because she’d never had anyone who she wanted to let in, to know who she was and why.
“My friend saved my life. She jumped on the vamp’s back, totally clueless about how dangerous he was. Because she couldn’t see him. While he was…um…killing her, I got to a piece of wood and prayed I could stake him hard enough. I did.”
“You can’t feel guilty for killing something that would’ve killed you.”
“Now? No way. I wish I could go back and kill him a few more times. But back then? I don’t know—it’s different being on the outside. I was just a stupid, confused teenager. What did I know about life, or death, or monsters?” Or either of the worlds she lived in.
“It was total luck,” she said. “A brand-new seer shouldn’t have been abl
e to dust a vamp. But then something grabbed my hair and hauled me away from my friend’s body.”
“Lamere.”
She nodded. “They’d planned a double-date-slash-murder. But he didn’t kill me, and he didn’t feed from me. He took me.” She cleared her throat. “The first person I had sex with was a shithead named Blake who I dated for a while junior year. Lamere was the second, obviously not by choice. And now that you know all of my torrid past, it’s your turn.”
“For what?”
“To tell a story.” She shook her head when he started for the door, not in the mood to hunt anymore.
He switched direction and headed straight for her, stopping himself from getting too close. “I don’t remember my first time—sex or kill.”
“I bet that sucks for a guy like you.”
“How many guys like me have you known?” A darkness crossed his face unlike anything she’d seen before. So dark she regretted bringing it up. “Until recently, I would’ve said not remembering that was the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to me. Both were in the lower levels of hell, and no memory from there is worth keeping.” He paused. “If you’d known me then, or when I—” He slammed his lips together and looked over his shoulder towards the door.
“When you what?”
It took him some time and, evidently, some effort to speak, which didn’t bode well. “When a demon starts a new tour above the crust, he’s the full, evil cliché, minus the tail, hooves, and general ugliness. For the Fosfers, at least. My kind are strong and smart, which means a lot more of us make it to Level One than any other breed, but we have a weakness—we pick up human characteristics while we’re here. Over fifty years, we change, become more like you, some of us more than others. Me more than any others. I’ve always hated that.
“But this—” He motioned between them. “I don’t hate this. I might actually like it. Because I feel…better. It’s hard to explain because it’s so opposite from anything I’ve ever felt before.”
He struggled with his words, with a way to express himself, without being insulting and rude. “Thing is, I’m still a demon, and that comes with certain rules and requirements. Those requirements make some things I want impossible, and I don’t know how to deal with that.”
“I don’t either.”
This relationship—or ‘thing,’ as he liked to call it—wasn’t supposed to be. A seer and a demon bonding. You couldn’t find two more screwed-up people to stick together. Maybe that’s why it was happening—somehow they’d forged a bond built on each of their biggest weaknesses.
“Davyn, do you wish our thing had never happened?”
“No,” he said easily. “I wish it could be more. I wish I could have you, all of you. I wish being together wouldn’t hurt you, because I can’t think of a single other reason not to. But it doesn’t change anything.” He sighed, long and slow. “The end of this isn’t what I want, Keira. I need you to understand that.”
“What end? What are you—?”
Instead of answering, he disappeared.
Thirty-One
“Are you serious?” Keira yelled at the place Davyn had just disappeared from. “You run away because you don’t want to answer a question? Chicken shit!” Then she had a moment of panic. What end? He wouldn’t dare leave her in here, would he? He could’ve done this—played with the security guard’s mind to lock her in here so he could go after Lamere alone, in some stupid protective thing. Or maybe he’d just leave her in here because he couldn’t deal with this anymore.
Wow, the novelty of a human sure wears off quick. She tried the door again. Still locked. Bastard. “Davyn! Let me out!” She pounded her fists against the steel. “Help! Anybody. I need help!”
After another few minutes of yelling, the lock clicked. Without caring what she might be walking into, she shoved the door open and took off towards the parking lot.
“Hunter, wait! Keira!”
She spun around, fuming. Davyn just stood there, as if this was normal or not confusing as shit. “That wasn’t funny.”
“Good, ’cause I didn’t mean it to be.” His brows came together as he tilted his head. “I ran into a little snag.”
“What snag?” When he nodded towards her feet, she looked at her boots. Was he going to make fun of her shoes again?
“Behind you.”
Halfway through the turn she saw it: a white line running across the ground until it met another going a different direction, a burlap bag tossed to the side, next to the security guard’s body.
Oh, shit. “It’s salt, isn’t it? He made a ring of salt after locking us inside.” Hard to call that an accident.
“Yeah,” Davyn grumbled disgustedly. “Which means you may have been right about getting out of there earlier. But since I didn’t trust him to begin with and the salt was meant for me, you’re the one who gets to be pissed off.” Who got to be mad at whom wasn’t the biggest issue right now. “But the guard and I had a nice chat, and—”
“Before you killed him.”
He paused, his jaw tight. “Turns out he’s not a big fan of demons. It’s pretty rude considering he’s never taken the time to get to know one of us. But I didn’t kill him over it. The human mind is great at blocking out things it fears and, even though demons can’t erase memories, we can encourage that, push someone to believe what he wants to believe versus what actually happened. After a little nap, the guard will think seeing us here was just a crazy dream. It is crazy, you know—a seer and a demon hanging out together.”
“And the snag you ran into…” What kind of idiot trusts a demon? Counts on a demon? Cares about a demon? She tasted blood. “You ran into it because you were walking away from the door, not towards it, not to let me out. Were you just going to leave me in there?” She took a long step over the line, careful not to break it. Then she glanced towards the exit he would’ve used. To run away. To leave her behind. “Well, I guess you were right about this being the end.”
“Don’t,” he said.
“Why not? That’s what you were going to do.”
“Lamere is a psychopath, and he’s playing with you. How can you still not understand I want to keep you safe? I need to. When I saw the salt, I assumed it was the psychopath not a random idiot.” He threw his hands into the air. “So shoot me for being wrong. But know I wouldn’t have left you in there for more than two minutes.”
She stepped backwards, laughing bitterly. Disappointed in herself so much more than she was in him. “Demons lie. You freely admit it.”
“I was lying.” There was humor in his tone, a dare.
“You’re on the wrong side of the line to be making jokes.”
He still hadn’t moved, standing ten feet from the line, staring at her as she slowly walked away. “Stop, Keira. Seriously.”
“You don’t need me to get out of there. Just go through hell and come back up wherever you want to be.” Far away from her.
“I can’t go back. Not now,” he said quietly before raising his voice to pissed-off, impatient volume. “Keira. It’s not a joke. I can’t go back to hell now. If I do...”
“If you do, what?”
He paused, ran a hand through his hair. “Break the line.” Why was he so nervous? She’d never seen him look this uncomfortable, and that said a lot considering how uncomfortable they’d been making each other for a while now.
“If you do, what happens? What are you afraid of? Level One’s your hometown, your alma mater. What’s down there?”
He stared at her, his eyes pleading. Why, when he could just sink through the earth and be rid of her?
“Is this the end you didn’t want, Davyn? Me telling you to go to hell before you said it to me?”
“No, that’s not what I want. Shit. Okay, fine. My tour is almost over. If I go back now, even to use the portals, my clock restarts. And when I come back up—” He looked up. “Fuck, Keira. Just break the goddamn line.”
The desperation in his voice sent a shiver thro
ugh her. “What happens? Tell me.” When he didn’t answer she yelled, “Tell me what happens when you come back up!”
“I won’t be the same. Nothing about me will be the same. When a demon is re-forged, all the humanity we’ve accumulated is scraped out of us. All of it. I’ll be a demon and nothing else. And you won’t be safe.”
“Explain that.” She stayed put, unsure about…everything.
“I’ll lose all that I feel right now. I’ll see you only as a bad memory from my past tour, a mistake, a weakness I’ll want to erase. I won’t be able to stop myself because the being I am now, the one you know, won’t exist anymore. I’ll be cruel, conniving, and merciless.” He put his hand on his chest. “I won’t be like this again for another fifty years. No, that’s not right. I’ll never be like this again. Because I’m not mortal.”
And she was. “In fifty years, I’ll be wrinkly and you’ll still be gorgeous.”
“If you think I’m just in this for your ass, you’re only partially right,” he said, shaking his head, annoyed. “Even if I didn’t exist, fifty years from now, you’ll be long gone. Because you’re so fucking stubborn and will never understand how valuable you are. You’ll keep taking risks and eventually one of them will get you killed. By the time I’m capable of feeling like this again, you won’t be here to make me.”
He clenched his jaw, not wanting to say more, but she heard it anyway. Because the same illogical words were floating around her mind.
“Your memories of me…of you and me…will all be corrupted by hate.”
He nodded slowly.
She’d known something like this would happen, but he was immortal and their timing was all screwy, so she hadn’t thought about it seriously. It’s funny the things you can pretend don’t exist if you try hard enough.
There was an expiration date, and whatever they had wouldn’t matter. And even though she might see him from time to time, his new self would hate her. For fifty years, if she stayed alive that long.
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