by Sarah Fine
Eli silently obeyed, wondering if she shuddered with disgust as he brushed past her, focusing his attention on his work so he didn’t have to see it if she did. Cacy pulled the rig up to the curb and joined him in the back, her movements precise, quick, and calm. He couldn’t help being haunted by her intoxicating scent. Then he opened the rear door and saw, lying on the sidewalk, a very familiar-looking beaded green purse.
He and Cacy hopped down from the back of the rig, and the firefighters cleared a path for them through the crowd. One of them explained what had happened: A crane had broken loose from one of the upper floors of the apartment building at the corner. It had fallen several stories, dragging with it the attached load of steel beams. All of that had landed on the sidewalk, and bystanders said there were at least two people buried in the rubble.
The firefighters had already shifted several of the beams and part of the crane wreckage using their ladder truck as well as some of the construction equipment on the scene. Cacy made a sound low in her throat as she reached the edge of the wreckage and saw what awaited them. She shouldered a burly firefighter aside and knelt by a limp, crushed arm. The hand was upturned, fingers curled in on themselves like a dead bug, sparkly green fingernail polish chipped and flecked with drying blood. Cacy took a pulse and shook her head. “Where’s the other? You said there were two.”
Eli stepped back, his chest caving in. He had done this. He had somehow caused this disaster and brought about the deaths of this young couple. Karen and Daniel. Their names echoed in his head.
A cool hand closed around his wrist, and he jolted back into awareness to find Cacy looking up at him with a solemn expression. “Two fatalities. I need your help to load them up. There were a lot of close calls, but no one else was hurt.”
She squeezed his arm, and somehow her touch made it possible for Eli to get back to work. He and Cacy carefully loaded up the almost unrecognizable bodies of the couple while the firefighters continued to clear the rubble. The clang of the rear doors closing had a disturbing finality to it.
Cacy was quiet on the drive to the hospital and didn’t once glance over at him. Which was good, because one look from her and he might have disappeared, might have wished himself deep into the Veil, far from anywhere she’d ever think to find him. Not that she’d look. How could she be anything but glad if he disappeared? He rubbed at that now-familiar pain in his chest and wondered if his missing soul was like a phantom limb. Maybe it would hurt him for the rest of his existence.
At the hospital, they unloaded the bodies and delivered them to the morgue. Cacy drove them back to the station. As soon as she parked the rig, Eli was up, planning to grab the cleaning supplies and sanitize the rig to keep his mind busy. But Cacy put her hand on his arm as he tried to get out, and he froze.
“We have other things to do,” she said softly, looking at him like he should know what she was talking about.
She sighed. “I have to go guide those souls, Eli. I can feel them waiting for me. And I can tell by the way you’re acting that you Marked them. You should come, too.”
He slumped in the seat. “Why? Don’t you think I’ve done enough?” he asked bitterly.
“No, I don’t think you have. You have to come get your commission.”
“I don’t want it.”
Her fingers tightened over his arm. “You’re coming,” she said fiercely. “That recovery took forever, and our shift’s almost over. I’m clocking us out early. Wait here. And don’t you dare disappear.”
For some reason, he obeyed her.
She came back less than a minute later and practically dragged him into the back of the rig. She unsnapped her Scope from the chain around her neck, opened the portal, and held it out. “Get in there. Unless you want to travel on your own?”
He could have, but he wanted to spend every possible second in her presence. He poked his head through the portal and stepped into the squishy, chilled gray world of the Veil. Cacy followed him. She opened another portal, and both of them stepped out into a street. Karen and Daniel were standing next to a storefront. It was a bakery, and in the window was a ridiculously enormous wedding cake. It was the store they’d come out of when Eli first started following them. He’d never felt more vile.
Cacy walked up to them. “Hi, folks,” she said cheerfully. “I’m here to show you where to go.”
She flipped her Scope so that the set of scales was facing up and brushed her thumb over its surface. Blinding, shimmering white light appeared at its center, and Cacy smiled. Eli watched her with a hopeless hunger, wishing he could smother his desperate desire to touch her.
She stepped in front of the couple. “You’re going to love this,” she said with a wistful expression.
She pulled her Scope wide, and Karen and Daniel gasped, their faces lighting up as they saw where they were going. They hugged each other tightly, tears of joy streaming from their eyes. Daniel took Karen’s face in his hands and kissed her gently. “You first, baby. I’ll be right behind you.”
Cacy held the Scope for Karen, lowered the ring over the woman’s body, and held the ring in front of her so she could catch the heavy gold coin that came flying out a second later. Then she turned to Daniel, who thanked her and stood still as Cacy lowered the ring over his head and captured the coin that flew out in his wake.
Cacy compacted the Scope down to pendant size and snapped it back onto the chain. She flipped one of the coins at Eli, and he caught it by sheer reflex. It chilled his palm and felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
His reward for being a killer.
Judging from the frustrated look on her face, Cacy was reading him like a book. “You have to stop beating yourself up and get used to this, Eli. This is what we do, and it’s not wrong or bad. Do you know what happens to people who are fated to die but don’t? Have you thought about that?”
Eli shook his head. He hadn’t had much time to think about anything.
“They rot inside,” she said. “They become like living corpses, unable to accomplish anything, unable to love, unable to be happy, unable to do good. They clog and warp the future, because they aren’t part of it. What we do is necessary. We make what is meant to be happen. You’re part of that now.”
“Want to trade jobs?” Eli snarled, shocked by the sick, hot anger rising within him. Her compassion was almost more painful than disgust or hatred would have been.
She seemed to sense that, because she got right in his face, and even in the Veil her eyes sparked with vivid color. “Do you want me to feel sorry for you? Look, I am sorry. You got handed a truly shitty deal. And I am going to live with the fact that it is entirely my fault for the rest of my existence. But now you have a choice. You can choose to be miserable, or you can choose to fight your way through it. You can choose to be connected, or you can choose to be isolated. You can choose to be evil, or you can choose to be merciful. It’s up to you.”
Eli stepped back, needing space. It wasn’t that she was yelling at him; it was that her scent was making him crazy. “It’s not up to me to be merciful,” he said. “Apparently, if I am, people will turn into walking corpses, and I’ll walk around feeling like my insides are going to explode. For all I know, they will actually explode. Moros doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to mess around with.”
“That’s not what I meant. You do realize you were merciful to that couple, right?”
He tilted his head up and stared at the moon, low and heavy in the gray-black sky. It was tinted with red, and he knew his eyes were probably glowing bright and evil. He turned his back to her. “I killed them. A young couple, blissfully happy and planning the rest of their lives together, and I killed them.”
He flinched as she put her hand on his back. “It was quick. They probably didn’t see it coming. They didn’t have a chance to get scared. Death was instantaneous, and they were together. There’s nothing more merciful
than that, Eli.” Her fingers curled into his uniform.
Eli’s breath was coming hard and fast. He could feel her behind him, her body close to his. He folded his arms over his chest to keep himself from embracing her. “It doesn’t feel merciful.”
“That’s because you’re still thinking like a human. But you’re not human anymore.”
“I know!” he roared, his control snapping completely. He spun around. “Look at me, Cacy. Don’t you think I know that? I’m a monster now.” He laughed, and even to him, it sounded insane and brutal. “I was a monster before, too. You just didn’t know it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Eli tried to tear himself away from Cacy, but she was ready for him. She clung to his uniform, knowing he could disappear forever if she let go. “You aren’t a monster, and you never have been. You protect the people you love. You’d lay down your life for them. I know that’s the only reason you became a Ker. I know you.”
Eli flashed his teeth at her, his canines sharp as daggers. “I don’t know me, Cacy, so how can you? What I do know is that I’m dangerous.” He stared down at his clawed hands and muttered, “I think I’ve always been that way.”
He backed up, but Cacy followed him. “Why? Because you took the law into your own hands in a city where there’s been no actual police force for at least ten years? You took the guys who raped your sister off the street.”
“Permanently,” he snapped.
“Yes,” Cacy agreed, “because they hurt her. And they’d probably hurt other women in the past, and they were probably going to do it again.” She’d thought about this a lot since Moros had told her. At first, she’d been stunned. Eli had seemed so gentle. He saved lives. But Pittsburgh was lawless and violent, and he’d struck back against that violence, unwilling to allow men who committed such brutal acts to roam free. She couldn’t blame him for that.
She reached for his hand, and he jerked it away, but he stopped backing up. She knew she was getting to him. “You were dangerous before you became a Ker, Eli. You’ve always been dangerous. That doesn’t mean you’re evil. It means you’re powerful.”
He shook his head like she wasn’t hearing him. “Look at me now,” he said raggedly, spreading his arms and letting her see his claws. “Why are you even here with me? I’m a Ker. You hate the Kere. I’ve heard how you talk about them . . . us.”
She shook her head. “I don’t hate the Kere. I hate creatures who revel in the suffering of others. But you don’t. You never have. I could never hate you.” She took a quick step closer to him, enough to feel the heat rolling off him. His eyes were blazing red, like embers in a fire. And . . . he was still Eli. Still beautiful. Still looking at her like he’d die for her if she’d let him.
“When Moros took your soul, did he take your heart, too?” she asked.
His arms dropped to his sides. The glow in his eyes faded a bit. “No,” he said hoarsely.
She inched closer, prepared to tackle him if he tried to disappear. “You still feel something for me.”
He looked away, refusing to meet her eyes.
“You want me.” She put her hands on his chest, but only had a moment to savor the heat, because he jumped back like she was the one who’d burned him.
He jabbed a finger at her. “Don’t. Don’t push me, Cacy. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She closed the distance between them quickly. “You won’t hurt me.”
His hands closed over her arms, holding her away from him. “Stop.”
Her fingers closed around the front zipper of her uniform, and she slowly drew it down, enough to reveal her throat and the swells of her breasts. She shivered in the chilled air. “You won’t hurt me,” she repeated, her breath coming quicker as she watched his glowing eyes catch fire again, now glazed with something more than anger. Desire.
She smiled, hope blossoming in her heart. After seeing what he’d done tonight, how he was desperate not to hurt anyone and how he refused to let the Marked suffer in their deaths, she knew he was good. And she wanted him as badly as she had before. He was scared. He needed her to stand by him now, and she trusted him enough to try. Her fingers played with her zipper as she watched him. “Should I keep going?”
He ran his tongue along his bottom lip. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Was mind reading another nifty power you got when you became a Ker?”
He frowned. “No.”
She pulled the zipper down another few inches, and Eli’s fingers tightened around her arms. “Then you don’t know what I want. Good thing I do.” Another few inches.
He pulled her to him, enveloping her in heat despite the frigid air of the Veil. His arm swept around her back, and he lifted her off her feet, up to his waiting mouth. Cacy wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight as he kissed her like he was starving for her. She ran her tongue over his fangs, reveling in his wildness, desperate to show him she wasn’t afraid.
Because she wasn’t. Not much, at least.
She could feel something coiling beneath the smooth surface of his skin, a barely restrained chaos, ready to explode. Whether in passion or destruction, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t because he was a Ker now. That was just part of Eli. Becoming a Ker had only intensified it, but it hadn’t changed him. And his feelings for her hadn’t changed, either. She could feel it. She could taste it. She ran her hands over the muscles of his back and wrapped her legs around his waist as Eli’s fingers curled over her thighs and held her against him.
She was hit with a blast of swirling wind, first cold then hot. Eli’s grip on her tightened. She opened her eyes and saw that, somehow, he’d transported them from the Veil to his bedroom. Without lifting his lips from hers, he reached out and yanked the zipper of her uniform all the way down. His hand cupped one of her breasts, raising beads of sweat wherever he touched. She pulled her uniform open even more, needing to feel his heated mouth on her body.
He didn’t disappoint her. He ripped her uniform off her shoulder, tearing the fabric down her arm, something no normal human could have done to bulletproof material. His mouth closed over her nipple, and he sucked hard, and Cacy didn’t try to hold back her cry. It felt like everything inside her was being drawn toward him, into him, and that was exactly where she wanted to be. She buried her hands in his hair and held on tight.
Then one of his teeth scraped roughly against her breast, and she flinched. Eli reared back like she’d slapped him, his eyes flashing red, the glaze of desire bleeding into a look of horror. He set her on her feet and took a few steps backward, his chest heaving. “I’m sorry,” he rasped. He put his hand over his mouth as he stared at her chest.
Cacy looked down at the red mark on her skin. It had surprised her more than it had hurt her. “I’m all right. Come back here.”
She reached out to him, but he was running his fingers back and forth across his teeth like he believed he still had fangs. Cacy knew if he bolted now, he’d never come back; of this she was certain. He’d be convinced he was nothing more than a monster, and she would lose him permanently.
Slowly, she finished unzipping her uniform, peeling it away, never taking her eyes off his. She unlaced her boots and kicked them off, then pushed the uniform down her hips and legs before stepping out of it. Eli watched with hooded eyes, his hands fisted at his sides.
“Come back here,” she said again, now standing naked before him.
He tore his gaze from her and held his hands up in front of him, staring at his fingers with a grimace. He was still getting used to being a Ker, going in and out of the Veil, appearing human in one place and inhuman in another. He looked convinced that he had claws, but outside the Veil, his hands were just ordinary hands. Hands she desperately wanted on her body.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said in a low voice.
She leaned back on the bed and lay on her side, pro
pping herself up on an elbow. “Then why did you?”
His breath hitched as she drew her heel along the sheet, arching one of her knees, opening herself to him. She’d never felt this vulnerable, but she’d also never wanted anyone more. He remained frozen in place, trembling with tension. He was right on the edge of giving in; all he needed was a little push. So she trailed her fingers from her chest to her belly then between her legs. Even from across the room, she saw his pupils dilate as she stroked herself, imagining what his touch would do to her. “I want you here, Eli. Don’t make me do this by myself.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
At the sight of Cacy on his bed, running her fingers through the slick pink flesh between her legs, the thread holding Eli to his logic snapped. All his arguments about why being with Cacy was a terrible idea and doomed to failure became white noise in his head, drowned out easily by one thing: the need to bury himself inside her body.
He made it across the room in two long strides. His molten hands closed over Cacy’s hips and flipped her over onto her stomach. He yanked down his own zipper and ripped his arms out of his sleeves, craving the feel of skin on skin. With his uniform hanging from his hips, the hot, rigid length of him pressed between the soft mounds of her ass, the tattoo of the raven on her back undulating as she pushed herself up on all fours and writhed against him, Eli was lost in a haze of passion. The only thing that mattered was now. This. Her.
“Eli,” Cacy begged. “Now.”
His fist slammed onto the bed next to her shoulder as he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her back against him. His hand stroked down her belly and delved between her legs, following the same path her fingers had taken seconds earlier. Cacy put her hand over his, urging him on, until he circled her clit and then slid a finger inside her, groaning at the sensation. She wiggled against him, deliberately provoking him in the sweetest way. His entire body was vibrating with tension; it rippled through him as he arched over her and ran the head of his cock along the seam of her body. He drove himself inside her in one deep, devastating thrust that lifted her knees from the bed. She was so soft, so slick, surrounding him with heat, sending shocks of it through his belly and legs. Lost in that feeling, Eli opened his eyes.