Shit.
She didn’t know if the door was locked or it if mattered one way or the other, and she wasn’t going to wait to find out. She squeezed tight with her left hand and pulled the trigger at the same time the door flew open. The recoil shoved her shoulders back, but she was ready for that. The muzzle flashed in a flower pattern that burned into her retina; then her ears hurt as sound exploded around her. All that data got processed while she lowered her hands and moved them back to the left so she was recentered for her next shot.
One of the demons went down with a crash that shook the floor, but she was already firing at the other one. He wheeled back but didn’t go down. The sound he made wasn’t even remotely human. She recentered again and her fingers were squeezing the trigger when Iskander dropped down into the doorway. She pulled away at the last second and her shot went into the ceiling.
Before she could even blink or come down from the terror of thinking she could have shot Iskander, the demon she’d shot first launched himself at her. She tumbled back, her spine hitting the wooden floor hard enough that she couldn’t breathe. All she could think was that she had to get the gun back up. She had to fire again. Her left elbow smacked the floor and her entire arm went numb. The demon’s mouth was open, but if it was making any noise, she couldn’t hear it. She braced for the mageheld landing on her. But he didn’t and she couldn’t figure out why.
In the next instant, Iskander was in her field of vision. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and his eyes glowed an inhuman blue-flecked green. His hand blurred toward the demon’s chest. A spray of red mist flash outward. The sharp scent of blood made her scuttle backward.
By then the other demon was up. From the floor, she aimed one-handed, squeezed, saw the muzzle flash again, and then a hole appeared in the left side of the demon’s forehead. Iskander released the demon he held. The body fell to the floor and didn’t move while at the same time, he grabbed the one she’d shot in the head. The demon’s body quivered once and then again, even though he had to be dead. She leveled her P232 again, but Iskander had one hand up and his mouth was moving. She couldn’t hear over the high-pitched ringing in her ears. She managed to lip-read the words don’t shoot him.
He took a step toward her and made some sort of complicated motion with his hand. Scowling, he pressed his thumb to her forehead. Pressure built up in her head; then his eyes flashed a brilliant green and her ears popped. Just like that, she could hear.
The demon she’d shot in the head went from limp to quivering to alive in the space of about five seconds. Something clattered to the floor behind where Iskander stood with the demon—the misshapen bullet she’d fired into his brain. The demon’s eyes opened, and while she watched, the hole in his head disappeared. Only the blood was left behind.
Iskander hauled the demon to his feet. “Call your witch and tell her to get her ass in here. If you don’t, you’re dead like your buddies. Come on,” he said when the mageheld shook his head. “Choose to live another day. Call your witch. If you don’t, I might take my time ripping out your heart.”
Considering the reaction that got from the demon, the threat meant something.
She kept her P232 aimed at the demon’s chest, but he shook himself once and nodded. She saw no reason to get off the floor. If the mageheld tried something, she had a better-than-decent shot from right where she was. The demon made the phone call. Two or three minutes later, the blond woman from the café walked up the front steps.
Iskander turned toward the shattered door, still holding the demon. “Paisley, make sure you’re aiming at her.”
“Got it.”
He was back to his easygoing self. All smiles and friendly manner. It scared the bejesus out of her. “Nikodemus isn’t going to like it when I tell him you sent magehelds after her.”
“I was to have been safe, fiend.” She put a hand to her chest and with the other pointed at Paisley. “She damaged me.”
With a glance back at Paisley, Iskander said, “She still a screamer?”
“No.”
The inside of Paisley’s head froze solid. She took a breath and discovered there wasn’t any air. The witch had figured out that she was resistant and was going for the simple solution of taking away the air around her.
“I want it back,” the witch said. “All of it.”
Iskander broke the mageheld’s neck. The body dropped while he flowed forward until he had the witch by the throat. He squeezed. “Stop now or you’re dead.”
Paisley gasped, inhaling a shuddering lungful of air.
He released the witch to kneel over the dead mageheld. He’d left bloody fingerprints on the witch’s neck. He did something with his hands that made the air around him shimmer. After a moment, he rose. “If it were up to me, I’d kill you right now and free every last mageheld you have left.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me. You have the magic you were born with.” His voice went low and dark. “If you think I give a shit about you losing power you murdered my kind to get, you’re smoking crack. You clear?”
The witch retreated. “Crystal.”
“Good. Now, I’m not diplomatic like Nikodemus or Harsh, so you listen up. If you’re not out of here in the next ten seconds, I’m going to take that as a threat and my girl will shoot you dead. There’s thirty thousand acres of dairy around this house, and I know all the good spots to bury a body.”
Paisley leveled the P232 at the witch. Now that the feeling had come back to her left arm, she could use a two-handed grip.
The witch blanched.
“Come near either one of us again,” Iskander said, “and you’re dead. That’s not a threat. It’s a fact.”
The witch looked at the floor where the dead magehelds lay and pointed at the one Iskander had just killed. “He has the car keys.”
Iskander fished them out of the demon’s pocket and tossed them to the witch. “Get the hell out.”
The woman’s mouth tensed, and she stared hard at Paisley. When she spoke, however, it was to Iskander. “You can’t be trusted. None of you.”
“Says the murdering bitch.”
The witch turned and walked into the night.
“Cupcake,” Iskander said into the silence. “You were fucking awesome.”
About then, Paisley realized that Iskander’s arms were red up to his elbows and he was covered in flecks of blood.
CHAPTER 17
A few minutes later, a motor turned over. Iskander listened until he was satisfied the witch was driving away. “Are the magehelds gone?” he asked.
“I don’t feel anything.”
He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out Paisley’s phone. He pressed the speed dial he’d entered so she could call Harsh. His fingers slipped on the case and left red splotches all over the keypad. “Damn.”
He looked up and found Paisley, still on the floor, knees up and her gaze fixed on the phone. She held the P232 in one hand, muzzle pointing at the floor. At some point blood had dripped from his hands onto the floor between them in crimson splatters.
“Shower,” Iskander said into the silence. Now that he looked, he saw he was covered in blood. A lot of it. The expression on Paisley’s face, a combination of horror and, yeah, that was probably fear, reminded him she was human. For the most part, they got along so well, he just didn’t think about that as something that separated them. More like the opposite, really, given the affinity of male fiends for the human female. The mating instinct was there for him. “I need a shower.”
“Yes,” she said. She sounded normal. Maybe a little tired. “You do.” She nodded in the direction of the damaged front door. “Do you think she’s going to come back?”
“Nah.”
“Good. Because I don’t think we were ever going to be friends.” She flicked down the P232’s safety, then popped the magazine. The other two were still in her back pocket. She hadn’t wasted a single shot unless he counted the one that went into the ceiling,
which he didn’t since otherwise she would have plugged him one.
He extended a hand and helped her up. Her fingers were icy against his, slippery from the blood now, too. She stood there, staring at the smears on her hand. Not good. Not good at all.
“This is what my life is like,” he said. “This is what I do for Nikodemus all the time. He needs a monster like me. Ready to kill and fucking crazy—”
“You’re not crazy.” She looked up and her eyes were fierce.
“I’m good at it. The killing.”
“You don’t need to explain anything,” she said. “I understand what you did and why you had to do it.” She lifted her free hand like she was going to touch him, but then she didn’t.
“You’re a hell of a shot, Paisley.”
She dropped her hand to her side. “Show me where you keep the guns and I’ll try to clean up in here while you take a shower.”
“Most of this will go away on its own.”
“Then we’ll see what’s left after I’ve cleaned the gun.”
He glanced at the bloody floor. A drop of crimson blood covered most of his big toe. “Right.”
He showed her the cabinet where Harsh locked up the guns, then headed upstairs to the shower. He didn’t bother with the lights. Paisley’s magic echoed in the back of his head, and he didn’t think he was wrong that his sense of her as a witch was stronger than it had been. He started the water, stripped down, got in, and started scrubbing.
He made his call to Harsh before he came downstairs, clean of the blood and dressed in some of the clothes he’d left behind. The leather tie he used for his hair was tucked into his front pocket. He found Paisley on the couch, watching television.
Over by the door, the floor was damp and now clean of the mess. He could still smell blood. Traces of magic lingered in the air, too. His. The witch’s. Paisley’s.
He sat down next to her and plunked his bare feet onto the coffee table. There was a strong aroma of chocolate in the air and underneath that the scent of the soap she’d used to wash her hands and face. “Anything good on?”
“The news.” She handed over the remote. “Dessert’s ready. Want some?”
“Sure.”
She headed into the kitchen and came back with spoons and a tray with two containers of puffy chocolate things.
“That smells awesome. What is it?”
“Chocolate soufflé. Careful, the ramekins are still hot.” When she put down the tray, he got a flash of her wrist. He grabbed her arm above her wrist.
“Let me have a look at that.” The scar looked pinker than he remembered. He brushed a finger across her skin. She hissed.
“Hurts?”
She bent over her lap with her head down. “Oh, sweet Jesus, yes, that hurts.” She sat up and let her head fall back against the couch. “Give me a minute.”
“How long has this been bothering you?” He made sure his fingers on her wrist didn’t get anywhere near the scar. He didn’t like this. Not at all.
“A couple of days.” She turned her head sideways to look at him. “Lately I’ve been feeling like someone’s trying to get inside my head. Like there’s someone outside, pressing in, trying to break in. Is it Rasmus, do you think?”
“It’s not something one of the magekind can do.” He picked up the TV remote and turned off the sound. “I think it has something to do with that mark on your wrist. I don’t know for sure if a mage can lay down a pathway that a fiend could use to indwell from a distance, but maybe that’s what he’s trying.”
She studied him and leaned forward over the coffee table to pick up one of the spoons. “I keep forgetting you’re not human.”
“No,” he said in a low voice. “I’m not.”
Paisley stood up, opened her mouth to say something, and didn’t. She sat again. “Mostly I feel you here.” She touched her upper chest. But this”—she touched the side of her head—“it hurts. Like the inside of my head is about to go up in flames.”
His heart kind of crumpled. “You’re a resistant.”
“Explain that to me so I know exactly what you mean.”
“It means I had to really work to fix your hearing.” He shifted on the couch so that he was facing her and explained what he knew and surmised about her resistance to magic and, more important, to an indwell, since that’s what he suspected Rasmus was trying.
Her eyes went wide. “Possession like in The Exorcist?”
“That’s an exaggeration.” He touched her cheek and got a spark of arousal even though he hadn’t been going for that. “You don’t need to worry about me. It’s against the rules for one of the kin to get into a human’s head without permission. I won’t do that to you. Not unless you say it’s okay.”
She picked up her soufflé and one of the spoons. She needed a break, something normal and familiar to her. He leaned forward, seduced by the smell of chocolate.
“Give me a taste of that?”
She held out the spoon. Instead of taking it, he ate the bite off the silverware. The taste spread over his tongue, rich with chocolate and smooth as silk. He closed his eyes for a minute. “Jesus, Paisley.”
“More?”
“Oh, hell, yes.” He took another bite from her and slumped onto the couch, eyes closed. He groaned. He wasn’t faking it. He was in heaven.
“Better than sex, huh?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her with all the lust in his heart and soul and then some. “No. But it’s a goddamned close second.”
“I’m crushed.” With a teasing smile, she held out another spoonful, and he sat up to take it from her.
He didn’t sit back afterward. Instead, he swept her hair behind her shoulders and left his fingers at the side of her face. He enjoyed the hell out of the sizzle that went through him at the contact. She fed him another spoonful, then took a bite of the soufflé herself. He watched her lick her lips.
“Better than sex,” she said.
“Cupcake, this is amazing.” He slid closer to her. “Fantastic. But if you think it’s better than sex, you’re doing it wrong.”
She lifted her head. “Prove it.”
He put his arms around her and spent ten seconds contemplating what he wanted to do versus what he ought to do, and the good guy didn’t win. “My pleasure.”
He brushed her lips with his, and the anticipation just from that touch was like lightning. He pulled back enough to whisper, “Good?”
At first, she didn’t move. Her eyes fluttered open and met his, and he held his breath. He prepared himself to be told no. Her eyes were soft when she looked at him, and so was her mouth, all soft and sweet. “You taste like chocolate,” she said.
“You too,” he said, and her smile made him feel strange. Like he’d do anything to make sure she always wanted to smile like that around him. He kissed her again. A real kiss this time. Softly at first and then not, and he still felt strange, because Paisley mattered to him in a way no one had since Fen.
They ended up stretched out on the couch with his body over hers, and while he was French-kissing her for all he was worth, he thought dirty thoughts about Paisley and sex, but he kept coming back to thinking up ways to make her want to stay with him.
CHAPTER 18
How long had it been since the last time she’d had sex? Too long. She hadn’t slept with anyone since Urban, and that meant three years. Even she knew the sex had been bad in the last year of their relationship. Iskander kept kissing her, and Lord, he was good at kissing. All she could think was this was Iskander and he was beyond hot and he was kissing her right out of her mind.
To be fair, she was kissing him back. Her body had different ideas about what was good for her, and right now she felt very selfish. She arched up, one hand on his shoulder while she swept her tongue into his mouth, and he made this soft groan in the back of his throat, and she could feel his erection against her belly. His hand slid underneath her shirt, spreading out over her bare belly and slipping upward, and she wanted m
ore, even though this was a terrible idea because she wasn’t in any kind of control of herself.
She held his head between her hands, and she could swear her skin tingled where her flesh touched his tattoos. His hair fell forward, and in the uncertain light she could see blue highlights, as if his hair was tattooed like his body. He drew back and she whimpered because she didn’t want him to stop touching her. He put his fingers on the top button of her jeans and thumbed it open. He had one hand propped on the sofa just above her shoulder, and he was pulling down her zipper with the other. Was she going to let him do that? Just unzip her jeans like it was no big deal?
“This okay with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because there’s things I want to do to you.” He dropped his head and kissed the side of her throat. “Dirty things. Wicked things.”
She grabbed his head and whispered in his ear, “You are a very dangerous man.”
He laughed softly and slid his fingers down her belly. “As dangerous as they come.” A shiver slid down her spine, and then the light just went away. She blinked. The room stayed dark.
“What did you just do?”
“Mmm.” Iskander kissed her collarbone. “I took away the light.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s safer for you.” He drew a circle on her stomach. “So. Can I keep touching you? Getting you hot?”
She threaded her fingers through his hair. The thing was, she wasn’t so out of control she didn’t know exactly what she was doing. She wanted to get laid, and she wanted Iskander to be the one she had sex with. “I will shoot you dead if you stop.”
“Then I won’t unless you tell me to.”
“Good.”
His hand slid around her to her shoulder blades, and without much effort, they ended up so that he was sitting with his back against an arm of the couch and she was facing him, straddling his lap, with her jeans gaping open. She gripped the back of the couch with one hand because it kept her oriented in the blackness. She could see only the barest shadow of him. He took her right wrist in his hand, which didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as it had before, and traced a finger along her forearm. He was careful not to touch the scar.
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