by Jenna Black
“We will continue this discussion at some other time,” Der Jäger said. Then he grabbed me by the hair—a neat trick when my hair was so short—and slammed my head into the floor.
I didn’t lose consciousness, but my head swam. I felt the weight of his body leave my back. I made a feeble effort to grab at his ankle—with my left hand, where all the fingers were whole—as he moved past me, but it wasn’t like I could have stopped him even if I’d managed to get a grip.
Dizzy and nauseated, I raised my head and watched as he made his way casually toward the back of the house, where no doubt he intended to slip out the back door. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, trying to find the strength and will to shout some kind of warning at the police, but I was too shaky, so I collapsed.
From the back of the house, I heard a shout, then a gunshot. I lay on my back on the floor and held my breath, knowing just how much effect a gun would have on Der Jäger. I flinched when I heard a man’s high-pitched scream. Then I tried to get up again, and this time the blackness took me.
CHAPTER 10
I came to seconds later—too fast for Lugh to fix anything—when the police broke down the front door. I would really have liked to get the hell out of there—I didn’t think the police were a complication I much needed—but though I managed to push myself up onto my knees, I knew my legs weren’t ready to hold me yet.
Nausea roiled in my stomach, and my broken pinkie throbbed like a sonofabitch. When I looked at it, I saw it was bent at an unnatural angle, and for a moment I seriously thought I would puke. Then I thought about what would happen if they took me to the hospital. Hours of my life ticking away while I waited my turn. X-rays. Poking and prodding. Realigning the bone, then splinting the finger. That didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, so I carefully slid that hand into my jacket pocket. Even that small movement made me whimper.
A gun-totin’ policeman appeared in the doorway to the study. The moment he saw me, he aimed solidly at my chest and started shouting instructions at me—you know, the whole “put your hands on your head” routine. He looked seriously freaked out, like he might shoot me if I took a deep breath. I realized that with my hand in my jacket like that, I probably looked like I was going for a weapon.
I gave him woozy eyes for a moment, wondering if there was any way I could get out of showing him my hand. I was just determining the answer was no when Adam appeared in the doorway behind the cop.
“Stand down,” he ordered. “I know her. This is her parents’ house.”
“Sir?” the officer asked uncertainly.
“Put your weapon away,” Adam said more slowly.
The officer didn’t look like he was too happy with the idea, but Adam outranked him, so he did as he was told. He kept a wary eye on me as he holstered his weapon and backed out of the doorway. I didn’t look up, but I swear I could physically feel Adam glaring at me.
“You and I are going to have a long talk,” he told me.
“Peachy,” I said. I was so not looking forward to this conversation.
He came farther into the room, offering me a hand up. I ignored it and struggled to my feet. The motion jarred my finger, and the flash of pain almost took me back to the floor.
Adam frowned at me. “What’s with the hand?”
I supposed it looked pretty suspicious, me keeping my hand buried in my jacket like that. I lowered my voice so that only Adam could hear me. “Broken finger, and I don’t want anyone splinting it, if you know what I mean.”
As long as no one knew it was broken, Lugh could fix it as soon as I got somewhere private and managed to lose consciousness. I’d have to put a splint or bandage on it so as not to let Der Jäger know I was possessed if—or, more likely, when—we met again, but I could do that after the break healed. More sirens approached. Adam regarded me with interest and speculation in his eyes. Frighteningly, I knew him well enough to guess what he was thinking.
“You turn me in to the EMTs, and I will feed you your balls.”
He grinned. “It might almost be worth it.” The grin faded. “But I don’t think our little chat can wait until after the emergency room is done with you.” He moved closer still, and I had to fight an urge to back away.
“Let’s see how bad it is,” he said.
I considered my options and realized there were none. Reluctantly, carefully, I extracted my hand from my pocket. Every movement brought a new wave of pain. I didn’t want to look at the damage, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself, even though seeing my finger bending that way made me want to pass out.
Apparently, I didn’t know Adam as well as I thought—either that, or I was too addled by the blow to the head to guess what was coming.
He moved with lightning quickness, grabbing me, turning me around, and hauling me up against his chest. One hand clapped over my mouth, his fingers biting into the bruises Der Jäger and my father had left on me.
“Hold still,” he hissed in my ear. “This’ll be over in a second.” Then, still covering my mouth, he reached for my injured hand. I tried to jerk away, but he was too much bigger and stronger than me. He pulled my arm up against my body, then used his other elbow to pin me there. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, knowing I would not win this battle.
A white light flashed behind my closed eyes like lightning when he straightened my finger, realigning the bone. I was glad he had his hand over my mouth, because despite my gritted teeth I would have screamed my lungs out if I could.
“There,” he said, still holding me against him. “Now no one has to know it’s broken.”
He let me go, but not before I noticed he had a hard-on. And no, not because he thought I was such a hot chick that he couldn’t help being turned on by the body contact. I wanted to tear into him, but at that moment another man in blue came into the room, and they started doing the cop-speak thing.
Adam pulled a lot of rank to hurry me out of there with only a cursory statement, which he “took down” himself. I was sure he’d fill me in later on what I supposedly told him. He extracted me from the crime scene, guiding me to his unmarked. I’d ridden in the backseat before, but apparently I’d gotten a promotion and now got to sit up front.
I looked back at the house as we were pulling away and saw EMTs swarming over something in the back. I remembered the scream I’d heard when Der Jäger escaped. I figured some poor guy had been covering the back door, having no idea that what came out of it wouldn’t be human.
“Is he dead?” I asked Adam, craning my neck to keep the house in sight.
“No,” Adam said brusquely, turning a corner. “Not yet, unfortunately.”
I shuddered. I didn’t really want to know, but I couldn’t help asking. “What happened to him?”
Adam glanced at me from the corner of his eye, then fixed his gaze on the road once more. “He spilled his guts. Literally. Of course, he had some help.”
My stomach roiled at the image, my face going first cold, then hot. “Stop the car!”
He didn’t ask any questions, just pulled over to the curb and idled. I shoved the door open and puked into the gutter. I’m sure the nearby pedestrians were just thrilled with the show, but I couldn’t help it. I heaved until there was nothing left in my stomach.
When I thought it was safe, I slumped back into the car and pulled the door shut. I was shaking and sweating, exhausted like I hadn’t slept in weeks. And let’s not forget the persistent, throbbing pain that pulsed in time to the beat of my heart.
Adam handed me a handkerchief. “Sorry I don’t have any water to rinse out your mouth.”
I closed my eyes and laid my head back against the seat. At the moment, I had absolutely nothing to say. I didn’t even have the good sense to ask Adam where he was taking me. I tried to relax through my misery, hoping I could drift off long enough for Lugh to patch me up, but no such luck.
I didn’t open my eyes again until Adam brought the car to a stop. I looked around and saw we were in a parking garage.
I made the logical assumption that this was the garage for my apartment building, and I thought longingly of my bed.
But of course I still had to have my “conversation” with Adam.
“How did you end up showing up just in time to save the day?” I asked.
“A call came in about a possible burglary in progress. The caller said a six-foot, red-haired woman seemed to be casing the house, then snuck in when the occupants left. I recognized the address and made an educated guess who the six-foot woman was. I figured whatever you were up to, it wasn’t something the regular police needed to know about, so I thought I’d swing by.”
I guess I hadn’t been too subtle when I hung around that little grocery store. Not that subtlety had ever been one of my strong suits. “I’m only five-nine,” I commented, but Adam didn’t seem amused.
“What were you up to? And what went wrong?”
The cat was well and truly out of the bag, so I figured there was no point in keeping the information to myself. I told him everything—about my mysterious hospital stay, about the files, about the letter from Bradley Cooper, about the pile of ashes, and about Der Jäger. And I tried not to think about the scream I’d heard, the scream of a man having his guts torn out by a demon. I swallowed hard and thanked my lucky stars my stomach was already on empty.
Silence reigned when I was finished. I stared out the windshield at the gray concrete wall and concentrated on breathing. At least I tried, though the steady throbbing of my finger was something of a distraction. And I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about Der Jäger’s parting shot. He and I had unfinished business. Oh, joy!
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this yesterday?” Adam asked. “We could have worked something out, gotten to those papers before your parents burned them.”
I turned my head to look at him. “Maybe I didn’t want to risk having my parents tortured to death if you weren’t satisfied with what you learned.”
“Ah,” he said, “this is still about Valerie.”
I reached for the handle of my door—with my left hand, of course—but Adam hit the locks.
“You’re never going to forgive me for that, are you?” he asked. “Even though you know I had no choice.”
I let out a heavy sigh. “My head knows you had no choice. My heart doesn’t give a shit.”
Would he figure he had no choice but to interrogate my parents now? And if he did, was there anything I could do to stop him?
I knew there wasn’t. God, how I hated feeling helpless! And I’d been feeling helpless far too often lately.
Once again, I reached for the door, hitting the unlock button. But before my hand got to the handle, the locks snicked shut again. If I wanted to get out, I’d have to use both hands simultaneously, and I couldn’t bear the thought of moving my right hand more than absolutely necessary. I glanced down at it and saw that while, thanks to Adam, the finger was straight, it was swelling up like the proverbial balloon.
“What are you planning to do now, Morgan?” Adam asked. “You can’t just go back to your apartment and resume life as normal. Not with Der Jäger still hunting you.”
I shuddered. “Like my life has been anything like normal lately.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know.” I turned to face him. “What would you suggest? What can a puny human being do to protect herself from a rampaging demon?”
“Well for one thing, you can come stay with me and Dom.”
My eyes widened. I’d gone that route before—not of my own free will, I might add—and I hadn’t enjoyed the experience. “Yeah? And you’re going to hang around and guard me 24/7? Might get in the way of your job just a bit, don’t you think?” He didn’t have a quick comeback for that one, so I continued to press. “Look, I live on the twenty-seventh floor. The only way Der Jäger can get to me is through my front door, right? He can’t fly or climb up the outside of buildings like a spider.”
Adam nodded his reluctant agreement.
“Remember, I have a Taser. And for the moment, I have a roommate. As long as we guard the door, there’s no way Der Jäger can get to me without getting zapped.”
Adam looked like he still really hated this plan—or lack thereof—but he didn’t seem to have a better suggestion. “Don’t leave the apartment without me,” he ordered. “I’ll come back as soon as I’m off duty and we’ll see if we can cobble together a plan.”
I didn’t much like his tone of voice, but for once I managed to stifle my rebellious response. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could take on Der Jäger and win.
“Okay,” I said.
Adam gave me a suspicious look. “That was too easy.”
I shook my head. “I’ve met Der Jäger up close and personal. I so do not want to meet up with him again in some dark alley.” I forced a bit of a smile. “Besides, I’m getting better about accepting help when I need it.”
The look he gave me said he still didn’t trust me, but this time when I reached for the door, he let me open it.
“I’ll walk you to your apartment,” he said, getting out of the car.
Again, I had to swallow the urge to tell him to back off. I reminded myself that I didn’t have a Taser on me, and I didn’t have a death wish.
“Thanks,” I said through gritted teeth. Then, as we walked toward the elevator, a very disquieting thought struck me. “Could you beat Der Jäger in a fight?”
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and saw the sudden tightness of his expression.
“I don’t know,” he finally answered. “But I could at least hold him off long enough for you to get away.”
There wasn’t much to say after that, so we walked the rest of the way to my apartment in silence.
CHAPTER 11
I discovered it’s incredibly hard to fall asleep at five o’clock in the afternoon when you’re in constant pain—even when I knew falling asleep would allow Lugh to heal the worst of it. I’d have to keep the bruise from yesterday’s encounter with my not-father, but today’s injuries could soon become nothing but an unpleasant memory. If only I could let myself drift off.
Outside my bedroom door, I could hear the TV going as it no doubt had been all day. I’d come home to find Andy sitting listlessly on the couch, staring at the TV but not really seeing it. He’d snapped out of it long enough to ask me what had happened during my ill-fated break-in, but when I’d stopped talking, the animation left him and he was back to staring. I had to hope he had enough brain cells functioning to shoot anything that came through the front door.
I was in too much pain to deal with his issues, so I’d gone to the bedroom to lie down. But as I lay there failing miserably at my attempt to sleep, I couldn’t help worrying about him.
Andy might not be catatonic anymore, but he wasn’t exactly back to normal, either. He had a fragile vulnerability that was so not in keeping with my mental image of him. Had Raphael damaged him irreparably? Was there anything I could do to help?
Eventually, I realized I wasn’t getting to sleep without help. I raided my medicine cabinet and found an old, expired bottle of sleeping pills. I downed a couple, hoping they’d still be effective after the expiration date, then went back to bed and closed my eyes.
I don’t know how much longer I lay there awake, my mind cycling through my impressive list of problems, but eventually I drifted off. I hadn’t been sure if Lugh would talk to me now, or if he still thought I needed cooling-off time, but I awoke in another version of his dream world, one I had visited only once before, when he’d healed me after Adam had finished “playing” with me.
I lay on my back on a sumptuously soft bed, my body draped with a crimson silk sheet that clung to its contours like a wet T-shirt. Naturally, I was naked under that sheet, and I was keenly aware of the texture of the silk against my skin.
Lugh sat beside me on the edge of the bed. He’d toned down his wardrobe for this conversation, ditching the S&M getup for a plain black T-shirt that hu
gged his spectacular chest. He still wore his trademark black leather pants, but not the heavy black boots. One bare foot was tucked under the opposite leg, and I had the strangest urge to reach out and touch it. Then I remembered I was furious with him and nipped my arousal in the bud.
I glanced down at my body, noticing that despite my supposed anger, the thin sheet did little to hide my decidedly perky nipples. I scowled.
“Why do I have to be naked?” I grumbled. It was hard to have a good, knock-down, drag-out fight when you were naked as the day you were born. Then again, maybe that was Lugh’s intention.
He smiled at my anger. “Perhaps because I like you that way?”
I struggled into a sitting position, clutching the sheet tightly against myself. “Well I don’t! Put some clothes on me.”
His smirk told me in advance things weren’t going well. I no longer felt the sheet against the skin of my torso, but when I looked down I saw that I was wearing a barely there teddy in a sheer black mesh that didn’t exactly hide anything. I shoved the sheet away, fighting down my embarrassment.
“Fine!” I snapped. “If you’re going to be childish and take advantage of me again, there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”
His brows drew together. “In what way am I taking advantage of you? I reside within your body. I know what you look like naked. I even know what you look like in the throes of passion.”
My blush burned my cheeks. There was little about these dreams to help me remember they were dreams—even when lingerie suddenly appeared out of thin air. I crossed my arms over my chest, hiding my breasts while the sheet hid the rest of me. I was letting him distract me from the real issue.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” I asked, and there was no way in hell he didn’t know what I was talking about.
The teasing smile left his lips. “I needed to speak to my brother. Since you won’t let me in when you’re conscious, my only chance to do so was while you slept. But you started to wake up at an inconvenient moment, so I had to give you some incentive to stay asleep.”