Forged in Fire

by Juliette Cross

“One of our buddies?” asked Fabio.

  “Yeah. A demon-boy like you.”

  “Tried to kill you?”

  “Redundant much?”

  My bravado almost convinced even me. Why, oh why hadn’t I listened to Jude? Shucking off the trembling sensation in my gut, I focused on who would do what first, trying to find my moment to act.

  Fabio turned his head to say something to Pit-bull boy. I took that second of distraction to make my move. Leaping in two bounds, I punched him at the base of the throat, jabbing two keys into his windpipe. He bent forward and grabbed his throat. I spun and double-elbowed him in the ribs and face. Pit-bull boy lunged for me, leaving his groin open and vulnerable. Stupid move. I kicked him fast and hard like I would a soccer ball. He fell with a groan.

  “Bitch,” he growled.

  “You have no idea.”

  I spun fast. Scary spiky dude was nearly on top of me. Ducking his attempt to grab me, I sprinted for the car. I wouldn’t have enough time to open the door, hearing his steps right on top of me. Turning, I kicked up toward his chest. He caught my leg and twisted. I fell face-first to the pavement. He landed on top of my back to keep me still. Hell no! I elbowed up into his ribs over and over again. He shifted a little, and I thought I would be free, but Fabio was there. Damn!

  Spiky flipped me over, holding my legs, while Fabio sat on my chest to keep me still. “Feisty one, aren’t you?” He grinned as blood dripped from his nose and down his chin.

  He wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand. I think I broke the cartilage in his nose. Good.

  “No worries. He likes a little fight. Makes things more interesting.”

  “Listen, Fabio. Don’t you dare bleed on me. No telling how many diseases you have.”

  He gripped my throat. Oh, come on! Did they have any other move?

  “I see someone has been here before me,” he said, rubbing his thumb over Sandy-hair’s bruise. “Who was he? Why did he try to kill you?”

  “Get off me, you smelly bastard!”

  I pushed, but he was heavy, almost unmovable.

  “Oh really? What are you going to do?”

  Someone cried out. Pit-bull boy? Fabio glanced over his own shoulder, still holding me down. Spiky released my legs. I heard scuffling and the sound of steel on pavement. Thankful for the diversion, I planted my feet and rolled my hips up hard. Fabio tipped sideways, releasing his grip on me to catch his balance. I rolled over and scrambled to my feet. He was up and in front of me just as fast, blocking my way.

  “Going somewhere, sweetheart?” He pulled a long knife from a hidden sheath inside the front of his jeans. “Why don’t you come quietly, like a good girl?”

  Seriously? “I don’t think so.”

  A sudden high-pitched scream drew our attention. Behind him, there was Jude, in all of his masculine glory, holding a long sword thrust deep into the chest of Pit-bull boy. Wait, a sword? What century was I in?

  His victim screamed while Jude chanted something under his breath. He held his other hand out, palm flat in the air toward Spiky, who railed and beat against an invisible wall he could not pass. As Jude chanted, a faint reddish-gold light haloed his body, similar but brighter than the first night I met him. Electricity snapped in the air, raising gooseflesh on my skin. Then it happened again. The flaming light took form around Jude’s body. Wisps of gold swept into rippling arcs around his frame. So beautiful.

  Was this for real? I knew I was standing there like an idiot, mouth agape, but I couldn’t move. My brain tried to process what I was seeing. Jude continued chanting inaudible words, his fiery aura growing brighter. Pit-bull’s body combusted into orange flames, shriveling and shrinking into a charred husk. With a wave of his hand, Jude swept the remains of ashy bone into the wind. He fixed baleful eyes on Spiky, who stopped beating on the invisible shield still protecting the demon hunter. Spiky staggered backward and ran.

  I finally came to my senses, spinning a hard kick up toward Fabio’s head. He swiveled back to me, slicing out with his knife. It cut through my tank along my abdomen. Searing pain burned across my stomach. I screamed. Jude stalked toward us, swinging his sword in an arc, fixing a murderous gaze on Fabio, who stared wide-eyed at Jude for two seconds, then disappeared after Spiky.

  I stumbled. Jude caught me in his arms before I hit the pavement. He lifted and carried me toward my car. His aura had vanished, and his eyes flashed storm-black. I marveled at how easily he held me. I’m not a small girl, never have been, but Jude lifted me like I weighed nothing. Funny the things your mind thinks of in traumatic situations.

  Blood seeped through my white tank. A wet trail trickled along the line of my waist to my back. I couldn’t think straight, feeling my mind pull away. The worst injury I’d ever had was a broken arm from falling off the trampoline when I was seven. I had cried all the way to the hospital, still hurting when we left. That night, my mother settled herself beside my bed and painted Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” all the way around my cast. My arm became a piece of artwork for everyone to admire. Pain cradled in love.

  “Where are your keys?” Jude’s gruff voice pulled me back to the present.

  “Dropped them,” I whispered.

  I’m not sure how, but he managed to bend and scoop up my keys without ever letting me go. I glanced over his shoulder, seeing nothing but a blackened spot of soot where Pit-bull boy had fallen.

  Jude put me in the passenger seat, disappeared for about ten seconds, then slid into the driver’s seat, tossing the sword in the back. As if he’d owned the car all his life, he shifted from first to third gear in seconds. We zoomed down St. Charles, heading into the heart of New Orleans.

  “You missed the turn for the Medical Center,” I murmured, watching a pool of crimson seep across my tank, coloring my blue jeans purple. “You’re going the wrong way.”

  “We’re not going to the hospital.” He punched into fifth with violent force. “We’re going to my place.”

  Chapter Four

  My reservations about this guy suddenly escalated from wary to holy-hell-I’m-being-kidnapped.

  “Jude—” I focused on breathing in slow, steady breaths. “I’m hurt pretty bad. You need to take me to the hospital.”

  His eyes never left the road as he hung a hard right onto Canal Street.

  “I know how badly you’re injured.” His voice was eerily calm. “I’m going to take care of it myself.”

  “Listen, Dr. Demon-hunter. Your philosophy degree doesn’t qualify you with the skills to stitch me up.”

  “I have many skills, Genevieve.” A searing glance. “Including the ability to tend your wounds.”

  Was I suddenly dizzy from blood loss or his enigmatic statement? Not sure. “Why won’t you just take me to a hospital?”

  “Because the two demons who got away know you’re injured. They’ll be searching for you.”

  “How would they know which hospital I went to? Let’s head to one farther out.”

  “It wouldn’t matter. They’d find you.”

  “How?”

  His eyes slid to mine, scanning my body in a millisecond. “You’re like a beacon now, shining in the dark. They can sense you.”

  Feeling faint, I let my head fall against the headrest, trying desperately to understand all this. Did this mean I would always be looking over my shoulder? That I would live in a constant state of fear?

  Careening down Decatur, he barely missed a group of tourists in front of Jackson Square. I winced at the growing pain in my stomach. My vision blurred. We passed under a street sign, Ursulines, taking a sharp left onto Dauphine. He squeezed into a spot on the first block. I barely realized that we’d stopped before the passenger door opened, and I was in his arms again. Not that being in such a position hadn’t crossed my mind once or twice, but somehow I had envisioned something more romantic and less, well, bloody.

  He carried me through an open brick archway into a dark alcove, stopping at a tall, wrought-iron gate. Leaning agains
t the wall for about two seconds, he fit his key into the lock. The gate swung open and clanged shut behind us. We passed through a smallish courtyard, water gurgling somewhere. My head felt heavy, falling onto his shoulder as he opened the door to the house. The small foyer led straight up a flight of stairs into a spacious living room.

  He set me down on a plush, tan sofa. A shiver ran through me as he walked with long strides down a hallway. The décor was stark but beautiful in warm colors of brown, red and gold. An old fireplace was set in the far wall, the cherry mantel in Baroque style with an elaborate roaring dragon curling along the top of the fireplace. French doors stood behind me, most certainly leading to a balcony overlooking the courtyard. I pivoted onto my side to get a better view, wincing with pain.

  “Damn.” I hissed in a breath, lifting my red-soaked tank.

  A six-inch slash cut through the skin and muscle from my belly button down to the top of my jeans. Jude settled beside me, placing some kind of kit on the mahogany coffee table. Adrenaline shot through me anew. Perhaps from seeing the injury or Jude’s sudden closeness, I wasn’t sure.

  “Lay back. Relax.”

  “Do you really know what you’re doing? I don’t want to get butchered.” My voice quavered, not as confident as my words.

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “I don’t even know you,” I protested. My stranger-danger antenna kept popping up, then lowering at random. This guy could be a killer. Hell, I knew he was. I just watched him stab Pit-bull boy to death on the street. Of course, he was apparently possessed by a demon and was trying to kill me at the time, but that didn’t mean R-and-B was truly on my side. Then again, there was that strange aura of fire. What was that all about?

  “How did you know I was in danger with the demon guys?”

  “It’s my job to know.”

  “It’s your job to know when I’m being attacked by demons?”

  “It’s my job to know when someone is in danger from demons. It’s my job to expel them.”

  “So, am I the only one in this city in danger, or are you following me?”

  “Genevieve, you’re currently a magnet for every kind of spawn of hell. I knew it wouldn’t take long for them to find you.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  He dabbed my wound clean, not meeting my eyes.

  “Try to stitch it closely. I don’t want an ugly scar across my stomach.”

  “Would you rather continue arguing while you bleed to death, or would you like me to close the gaping wound in your abdomen?”

  I scowled, reclining back at the same time. My pride clamped my stupid mouth shut.

  He pushed my tank up a little higher. I shivered, wondering if it was the injury or something else. He spread his left hand along my ribs and stomach, flattening the wound evenly. I found myself holding my breath, trying to ignore the effect of his hands on my bare skin.

  “Relax.”

  His deep, soft voice eased the tension from my rigid body. Ironically, a good bit of that tension came directly from his touch. After wiping the blood clean around the wound and dabbing antiseptic with a gentle hand, he took out a needle and vial, then leaned close to the cut.

  “Good thing this was done with a knife.”

  “As opposed to?”

  “Claws. Teeth.”

  “Yeah, good thing.”

  What planet was I living on? Geez. He gave me one of those looks saying I had no idea what I was in for. He was right. I was in way over my head, and I wasn’t afraid to admit it at this point.

  “This will sting, but I need to give you a local anesthetic to dull the pain of the stitching.”

  I nodded, biting my lip and closing my eyes. I tried not to think about his hand splayed across my rib cage. The sting of the needle jarred my wayward thoughts. I didn’t cry out, squeezing my eyes shut tighter.

  After a minute, the pain subsided. A numbing sensation traveled over my body from the wound. When I opened my eyes, Jude was gazing at me. My pulse launched into racing speed. Damn my crazy heart.

  “What?”

  The intensity of his gaze scattered every sarcastic remark from my brain. I could hardly function when he looked at me that way.

  “I’m waiting for the anesthetic to take effect,” he said, still and observant.

  “It’s working. You can start.” I tried to keep my words even.

  The tension between us felt thick, tangible. His next move made it even worse. He unbuttoned my jeans and folded the flaps under to reveal the end of the cut more clearly. My heart decided she was done with this and just about stopped altogether. But then he leaned over and set to work like a surgeon—all focus and precision. I didn’t feel an ounce of pain. Now whether that was from the anesthetic or from the gallons of adrenaline flooding through my body, I’m not sure.

  “These are dissolvable stitches. Keep the area clean, and it will heal well.”

  I felt the slight tug as he tied off and snipped the ends. I wasn’t interested in stitches right now. I wanted answers.

  “You murdered that guy, Pit-bull boy.”

  Yeah, the guy was trying to kidnap me, but murder seemed an extreme punishment. Jude’s brow creased together as he snipped the other side close to the skin. He continued pressing and taping a thin bandage along the cut in silence for a moment.

  “That is one way to see it.”

  “There’s another way?”

  “Of course. I expelled a demon from this world, keeping the monster from doing further harm to the human populace.”

  “Human populace? Who says that?”

  He glanced at me as if he didn’t understand the question.

  “Okay, whatever. But you didn’t expel him like you did with that little demon at the club.”

  “Lower demon, not little. There’s a difference.”

  “You killed Pit-bull boy.”

  His mouth quirked on one side as he put his surgical things back into the kit, seemingly unperturbed by the accusation.

  “You have interesting nicknames for people, Genevieve Drake. I’m intrigued to know what name you might have for me.” Dark, exotic eyes focused their full attention on my face, cheeks, lips, then finally on my eyes.

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  “Stop changing the subject,” I snapped.

  “You don’t understand.” He draped one finely muscled arm along the back of the sofa. I wasn’t cold anymore. The shivering was long gone. “Pit-bull boy, as you like to call him, was fused with the human. There was no other way to expel the demon.”

  “Fused? Like permanently?”

  “I have never seen a fused demon separate from its human host. The only way is to expel them both.”

  “By death.”

  A slow nod.

  “So you mean, Fabio was just a helpless dude flipping his pretty hair, working his model day job when along came a demon, jumped in and fused to him?”

  His mouth quirked up on one side. “The host must accept the demon’s presence, which requires more time than the average possession by a lower demon, but yes, that is correct.”

  “So Sandy-hair, I mean that guy at the club on my birthday, he wasn’t fused.”

  A shake of his head.

  I chewed my lower lip. “So now Fabio is basically condemned to death. Once you get a hold of him, that is.”

  “And I will,” he countered quickly.

  “But that’s not fair.”

  “Life isn’t fair, Genevieve. Surely you know this by now.”

  My mother. I sighed. He shifted on the sofa, breaking the silence.

  “No one is purely innocent who is fused to a demon. A demon, lower or high, cannot enter any being that is not, shall we say, receptive to the dark lure. That includes a Vessel.”

  He said the last with such emphasis I felt the weight of his words heavy in the air. Almost like his very breath held power, forcing me to comprehend something still out of my reach. A strange energy passed between us. Obsidian pools swir
led with shards of amber, glinting impossibly with sparks of light. I couldn’t have seen that.

  I was suddenly struck by the profound notion that this man was unlike any I had ever met—not because he was pinch-me gorgeous, not because he was a demon hunter or slayer or whatever, and not even because he was the product of some sexy European cross-breeding. My eyes traveled to the slope of his shoulders, remembering the aura of light stretching wide as he chanted the demon back to the netherworld. He watched me, waiting. Infinite patience, this one. Those blind birds were fluttering around in my stomach again, bouncing off every wall, making themselves stupid-dizzy.

  “So, tell me,” I found myself nearly whispering. “How did you become a Dominus Daemonum? Where does one fill out this kind of job application?”

  “One doesn’t.”

  “So, how did you—”

  He abruptly stood up and disappeared down the hall. Okay. Note to self—Jude is touchy on his demon hunter origins. I heard a cabinet open and close. A medicine bottle popped open, pills rattled, and a faucet turned on for a few seconds, then off. He returned with a glass of water, passing it to me with a small blue pill I’d never seen before.

  “What’s this, Morpheus? Will this take me down the rabbit hole into reality? Because I’d totally like to wake up from this nightmare.”

  He made no inclination that he got my Matrix reference, but pushed his pill on me again.

  “Never watch sci-fi?” I asked.

  “Yes, Genevieve. I’ve seen The Matrix. Unfortunately, this isn’t Hollywood. And reality is quite a bit less glamorous and more dangerous. Now, take this. It will stem the pain.”

  “I need to get home. My roommate, Mindy, will be worried. She might call the police or something.”

  He motioned for me to take the medicine again.

  “Are you trying to drug me?”

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Yes. I saved your life from demons. Twice. I drove you away from danger and took you into my home, then stitched up your bleeding wound so that I could poison you with a tiny pill.”

  I giggled. “You’re kind of funny.”

  “Take the pill, Genevieve,” he grumbled, though his tone had softened.