by Nora Roberts
“Yes.” She sniffed. “It smells very good.”
He set the pizza box on the coffee table. “I’ll get some napkins—we’ll need them—then you can see if it tastes as good as it smells.”
When he came back she was sitting on the floor, the lid of the box open, poking a finger at the crust. “It is very colorful. Is this a staple of your people’s diet?”
“It’s a staple of mine.” He lifted a slice, flicked strings of cheese with his finger. “You just pick it up with your hands and go for it.” He demonstrated with an enthusiastic bite.
Following suit, Kadra brought a slice to her lips. She bit through pepperoni, through pepper, through onion into cheese and spicy sauce, down to the thin, yeasty crust.
The sound she made, Harper thought, was very like one she’d made during sex.
“I like this pie called pizza,” she stated, and bit in again. “It is good food,” she added, her mouth full.
“Baby, this is the perfect food.”
“It goes well with the beer. It’s like a celebration to have kissing and joining, then pizza and beer.”
He knew it was ridiculous, but his heart simply melted. “I’m crazy about you, Kadra. I’m a goddamn mental patient.”
“This is an expression?”
“It means I’m in love with you. I go thirty years without a scratch, and in less than a day I’m fatally wounded.”
“Don’t speak of death, even as an expression. Not before battle.” She reached out, closed her hand tight over his. “It is bad luck. When it is done . . . When it is done, Harper, we will talk more of feelings.”
“All right, we’ll table it—if I have your word that when it’s done you let me make my pitch.”
Baffled, she frowned at him over what was left of her first slice. “Like in the battle of baseball?”
“Not exactly. That you’ll let me tell you the way it could be for us.”
“When it is done, you will make your pitch. Now tell me more of the subway.”
“Hold on.” He switched his attention to the televised news bulletin.
The reporter spoke of the attack at the zoo, the murder of the guard and the mutilation of several animals. Witness reports were confused and conflicting, ranging from the claim of an attack by a dozen armed men to one by a pack of wild animals.
“They don’t know what they’re up against,” Harper said quietly as the newscaster reported that the police were investigating the incident and that the zoo would remain closed until further notice. “They don’t have a clue. I call them with the truth, I’m just another loony.”
“It is for us,” Kadra told him. “Rhee has said that we would fight this battle together. He must be destroyed here or driven back where he belongs. There must be balance again.”
“Here.” Harper rolled his shoulder where a demon had dug its claws. “We finish it here. New York style.”
Kadra pondered the images on the television, the moving paintings of the zoo. “This subway. Does it go near the place where they keep the animals? Where we battled today?”
“There are possibilities.”
“Sorak would like a lair near prey. It will be dark soon,” she said with a long look at the sky through the window. “Then we hunt.”
7
SHE balked at changing her hunting gear for jeans a second time, claiming they restricted her. He let it pass, figuring the long coat would cloak most of her . . . attributes.
The thing about New York, Harper thought, as they passed a guy with shoulder-length white hair, two nose rings, and a black leather jumpsuit, was there was always someone dressed weirder than you were.
He wore his ripped jacket, for sentimental reasons. And for the practical one that if he was going up against a demon again, there was no point to sacrificing another garment to the long blue claws.
He had his Glock in a shoulder holster, a backup .38 in an ankle holster, a combat knife sheathed at his back, and a switchblade in his left boot.
He’d have preferred an Uzi, but what he had on hand would have to do.
“I like my work,” he told Kadra. “And I like to think it makes a difference to some of the people who come to me with problems.” He paused to take a good look at his neighborhood—his city—his world. “But this heading out to save the planet stuff brings on a real high.”
“You were born for it.” When he glanced over at her, she shrugged. “This is what I believe. We are born for a purpose. How we live, how we treat others who live with us forms our spirit and determines if we will fulfill that purpose or fail. We were meant to face this night together. Meant for it from the moment we were created.”
“I like that. And I’ll take it one step further. We were meant for each other, too.”
Meant to love each other, she thought, and to live alone in two different worlds. Her life had been filled with sacrifices, but none would bring the sorrow of the one she had yet to make.
Harper led Kadra down into the station for the train heading uptown. She would have vaulted over the turnstile if he hadn’t blocked her.
“You have to use a token, then you walk through.”
“These are very flimsy barricades,” she pointed out as she bumped through. “Even a child could get over them.”
“Yeah, well, it’s . . . tradition.”
“Like a ritual,” she decided, satisfied. She heard the roar, felt the floor vibrate. “The earth trembles.” She was prepared to drag him to safety when he grabbed her hand.
“It’s just a train coming in.” Still holding her hand, he pulled her onto the platform, where she studied the other waiting passengers.
It was a huge cave, strongly lit. She had never seen so much life, so much motion and magic in one place. “Your people have so many colors of skin. It’s beautiful. You are blessed to have such richness of person, such variety.” When she glanced back at him, she saw he was smiling at her in an odd way. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” He leaned toward her, and to her utter shock, kissed her mouth.
“We cannot join here,” she said in a hissing whisper. “It is a private activity.”
“It wasn’t that kind of a kiss. Remember, there are all kinds.”
“I thought you were pretending.”
“Is that a polite word for lying? On this side of the portal, people kiss all the time. Lovers, friends, relatives. Complete strangers.”
She snorted. “Now I will say you are lying.”
“Locking lips is practically a global pastime. And this one’ll get you: people pay a fee to sit in a big, darkened room as a group and watch other people’s images on a screen—a larger version of the TV, where you saw baseball. One of the things those images often do is kiss.”
“I think you are a harper after all, because you tell fantastic tales with great ease and skill.”
“Nothing in those knowledge banks about movies?”
She frowned, but tipped her head and searched through. When her eyes widened, lit with delight, he knew she’d hit on it.
“Movies.” She tested the word. “I would like to see one.”
“It’s a date.” He heard the rumble of the approaching uptown train. They had another date to keep first.
She liked the train that flew under the earth. She liked the way people crowded inside, bumping together as they clung to metal straps. There were colorful drawings to study and read. Some spoke of magical liquid that gifted the user with shiny, sexy hair. Another advised her to practice safe sex. There was a wall map provided for lost travelers, and yet another picture that boasted its elixir could transform the skin to make it sexually attractive to others.
Kadra leaned close to Harper’s ear. “Is sex the religion of your world?”
“Ah . . . you could say a lot of people worship it. Why are you whispering?”
“No one is speaking. Is conversation permitted?”
“Sure. It’s just that most of these people don’t know each other. They’re strangers, s
o they don’t have anything to say.”
Kadra considered it, and finding it reasonable, she tapped the shoulder of the woman standing beside her. “I am Kadra, Slayer of Demons. My companion in this dimension is Harper Doyle. Together we hunt Sorak.”
The sound Harper made was somewhere between a laugh and a moan. “Rehearsing,” he said with what he hoped was a nonthreatening smile. “New play. Way, way off Broadway. Honey,” Harper said to Kadra as the woman edged as far away as the press of bodies would allow, “maybe you should just talk to me.”
“Making introductions is courteous.”
“Yeah, well, you start chatting about demons, it tends to weird people out.”
The train stopped. People poured off, people poured on. Kadra scowled and planted her feet. “As you said, how can they defend against Sorak if they are unaware of him?”
“I’ve thought about that. Thought about going to the cops. The National Guard.” Frustrated, he dragged a hand through his hair. “Nobody’s going to believe us, and the time we’d waste trying to convince them we’re not candidates for a padded cell would only give Sorak more of an advantage.”
“You said there were demons in this world, that you put them in cages.”
“There are plenty of them. But they’re a different type than you’re used to fighting. They’re not another species, they’re us. People come in a variety pack, Kadra. Most of them are good—at the core, they’re good. But a lot of them aren’t. So they prey on their own kind.”
“To prey on your own kind is the greatest sin. You hunt these demons. Who else hunts them?”
“Ideally? The law. It just doesn’t always work out. It’ll take more than a subway ride for me to explain it to you. I don’t always understand it myself.”
“There is good and there is evil. The good must always fight the evil as the strong must always protect the weak. This is nothing that can change by walking through a portal.”
He linked his hand with hers. Her vision was so clear, he thought. And her spirit so pure. “I love you,” he murmured. “I love everything about you.”
The warmth poured into her, flooding her belly, overflowing her heart. “You only know one day of me.”
“Time doesn’t mean a damn.” The train jerked to a halt at the next station. “We’ll be getting off soon. Whatever happens tonight, I need you to believe what I’m telling you now. I love you. My world was incomplete until you came into it.”
“I believe what you say.” It felt strange and right to press her lips to his. “My heart is joined to yours.”
But what she didn’t say, what she couldn’t bear to say, was that her world would be forever incomplete when she left him.
“You’re thinking that when this is over, we won’t be able to be together.” He put his hand on her cheek now, kept his gaze steady on hers. “That I’ll have to stay in this world, and you’ll have to go back to yours.”
“There is only one thing that should be occupying our minds now. That is Sorak.”
“When we get off this train, we’ll worry about Sorak. Right now, it’s you and me.”
“You have a very domineering nature. I find it strangely appealing.”
“Same goes. When this is over, Kadra, we’ll find a way. That’s what people do when they love each other. They find a way.”
She thought of the globe in her pouch. The key that was hers only until the battle was done. The weight of it dragged on her heart like a stone. “And when there is no way to be found?”
“Then they make one. Whatever I have to do to make it work, I’ll do. But I won’t lose you.”
“I can’t stay in your world, Harper. I am a slayer, bound by blood, by oath, and by honor to protect my people.”
“Then I’ll go with you.”
Stunned, she stared at him. “You would give up your world, the wonders of it, for me? For mine?”
“For us. I’ll do whatever has to be done to have a life with you.”
Tears swam into her eyes. She would never have shed one for pain, but one spilled down her cheek now. For love. “It is not possible. It would never be permitted.”
“Who the hell’s in charge? We’ll have ourselves a sit-down.”
She managed a wobbly smile. “It would take more than a subway ride to explain it to you. There are balances, Harper, that must be carefully held. I am here to right a wrong, and am given entrance by the power of Rhee’s magic. When I have done what I’ve been sent here to do, I’ll have no choice but to return. You will have no choice but to stay.”
“We’ll just see about that. Here’s our stop.”
“You are angry.”
“No, this isn’t my angry face. This is my if-I-can-fight-demons-I-can-sure-as-hell-fight-the-cosmos face.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “Trust me.”
She trusted no one more. If she had been permitted to take a lifemate, it would have been Harper Doyle. His strength, his honesty, his courage had stolen her heart. She would miss, for the rest of her life, his strange humor, his bravery, his skilled mouth.
When they had defeated Sorak, she would go quickly and spare them both the pain of leaving. And now she would treasure the time they had left as companions. She would relish the great deed they were fated to accomplish together.
The first order of business, Harper thought, was to get down on the tracks and into the tunnels while avoiding detection by the subway cops. He explained the problem to Kadra as they moved down the platform away from the bulk of the waiting commuters.
“Very well,” she said, and solved the dilemma by jumping down onto the tracks.
“Or we could do it that way,” he grumbled. He flashed his ID in the direction of a couple of gawking businessmen. “Transit inspectors.”
Hoping they subscribed to the New York credo of minding their own business, he jumped. “Move fast.” He took her arm. “Stay out of the light. Once we’re into the tunnels our main goal is to avoid being smeared on the tracks by an oncoming train. Then there’s the third-rail factor. See that?” He pointed. “Whatever you do, don’t step on that, don’t touch it. It’ll fry you like a trout.”
He pulled his penlight from his pocket as they followed the track into the tunnel. “There are some areas in the system where homeless people set up housekeeping.”
“If they have a house to keep, they cannot be homeless.”
“We’ll save the tutorial on society’s disenfranchised for later. Some of the people who manage to live down here are mentally unstable. Some are just desperate. What we’re looking for, I figure, are the maintenance areas. Off the main tracks, where there’s room to establish a lair.”
“There is no scent of people or demon here.”
“Let me know when that changes.” He felt the vibration, saw the first flicker of light in the dark. “Train. Let’s move.”
He doubled his pace toward the recess of an access door, and pulling her up with him, he plastered himself to the door. “Think thin,” he advised.
He held on as the roar of the train blasted the air, gritted his teeth as the air pummeled them. Through the train’s lighted windows, faces and bodies of its passengers blurred by.
“It is more exciting to be outside the box as it flies by than to be inside it.”
He looked over at Kadra as the last car whizzed past. “One of these days you’ll have to tell me what you do for entertainment back in A’Dair. I have a feeling I’ll be riveted.”
He tried to keep a map in his head as they wound through the labyrinth. Twice more they were forced to leap for a narrow shelter as a train sped past. But it was Kadra who swung toward a side