by Slade, Jessa
Niall jumped on the note of reserve. “I told you this war is changing.”
As if he didn’t have enough to deal with. Archer cut him off. “You might also notice, I changed my security codes. Don’t send anyone here. Don’t contact me until this is over.”
Niall clicked his tongue. “I want updates. Bookie thought he’d record the last stages of an ascension.”
“Thinking and wanting just don’t have much place in what’s going down.” Archer’s breath fogged the win dowpane except where the print of her hand cleared the glass.
Wanting might still be a problem.
He scowled at the imprint. “I’ll call you when the possession is complete. Either way.”
“Good luck.” Niall’s soft voice barely registered down the line.
Archer hung up without answering.
The water cranked off. In the charged silence, he realized he’d invoked his demon-boosted perceptions. Listening for the last droplets to fall. Tasting the tang of warm, moist flesh. His heightened nerves prickled in anticipation, keen for the faintest pulse of air as she moved through space.
Cursing even more softly than Niall’s parting words, Archer clamped down on his control. He rifled through the armoire beside the bed for a fresh shirt.
He’d wait for his shower until she slept. God knew, those glass blocks barely hid a damn thing even from purely human eyes.
He stripped off his torn shirt. His twenty-four-hour dry cleaner had commented once that pinning a note over stains would ensure spots were properly treated. Archer just gave him everything in a duffel bag stenciled with the word “stained.” The man had blanched, but his daughter was a tidy seamstress who’d saved his trench coat more than once.
He turned sideways to the mirror, tracking the wound that curved around his shoulder. Only a little worse than the bloody nose. The demon was as efficient as his seamstress.
Sera’s gaze found his in the reflection. “That was definitely the feralis’s fault. I don’t have claws like that.”
He reached for his shirt. “Not seven in a row anyway.”
“Don’t you need to bandage it?”
“It won’t kill me.” He should be so lucky. “Let the demon earn its keep.”
She shook her head and marched back to the bathroom, returning a moment later with a soap-bubbled washcloth, a roll of gauze, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
She hefted the bottle. “This is all you have for first aid supplies?”
“I use it to soak out the worst of the stains.”
“Out of your skin?”
“Out of my clothes.” He waggled the shirt in his hand. “My dry cleaner has convinced himself I’m a butcher.” Archer started to slide into the shirt. “I guess he’s right.”
Sera plucked the shirt from his hands. “Not until you disinfect.”
He opened his mouth to tell her off, knowing the demon’s wariness of close quarters would lend its double-octave warning to keep her distance, to not distract them from its mission of atonement. But nothing came to him. He blinked. “Fine.”
She sat him at the kitchen island under the pendant lights. “These gashes go right through the dermis into the subcutaneous fat.” She swabbed at his shoulder with the soapy cloth. “Not that there’s much fat on you.”
He held himself straight, struggling not to lean into her hand despite the twanging pain. “You sound like Bookie.”
She wiped away the suds. “Who’s Bookie?”
“The Bookkeeper, our records keeper and historian. We call him Bookie.”
“Imaginative.”
“It’s an honorable title, passing down centuries of study. I’m sure he could whip out a damage-infliction chart categorized by demon subtype.” He hissed as she upended the bottle of peroxide over his shoulder. “Burns worse than ichor.”
She caught the runoff with a towel at his elbow. “Are you always such a wimp about cleaning up?”
“Never been cleaned up before.” He glanced up from the bubbling scratches and caught the momentary softening in her eyes. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he warned.
“You’ve been hurt worse than this. I see the marks on you.” She traced one finger near his spine. Though the demon lay dormant in him, still strangely undisturbed by her closeness, he couldn’t stop the shiver that wracked him at her touch. “Even with preternatural healing, you must’ve been laid up for weeks with this one.”
“I don’t remember.”
“How can you not remember a wound that almost filleted you?”
“It was a long time ago.” At the thought of how long, he slipped out from under her hand and grabbed the roll of gauze. Might as well keep the oozing blood off his clean shirt. “Flesh heals. The scar remains, faintly. Bookie has theories why the demon can’t take away the last of the scarring. Or won’t.”
She watched him wind the gauze awkwardly around his shoulder. “Maybe it’s supposed to be a reminder.”
“Not to get mauled? Thanks. Next time, send a memo.”
He was glad, at least, to see the snap back in her gaze. He didn’t need her pity. Or her help. He gritted his teeth as he fumbled the gauze over his shoulder.
“I meant,” she said coolly, “a reminder that you aren’t immortal.”
“Oh, but we are.”
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CHAPTER 6
Sera gasped. “Immortal?”
“We can be killed, in case tonight hasn’t made that obvious. But until the demon leaks out with our last drop of blood, we endure.”
He knotted off the end of the gauze, and the bitter twist to his lips made the last word a curse.
“Exactly how long have you been doing this?” She waved toward the wall of weapons. “Inducting wayward women into your demon-slaying hall of maim?”
“You are the only female possessed in living memory.”
Considering the immortality thing, that was saying a lot. “Are demons sexist too?”
“Bookie’s working on a theory. Maybe it’s just long odds. Possession by the teshuva is rare. The last man joined our league almost thirty years ago.”
“Thirty—” She shook her head, bemused. “How old are you?”
“Old enough.” He eased into the new shirt.
She told herself she was trying to guess his age as she let her gaze roam the hard planes of his chest, the curls of dark hair funneling down to the button fly of his jeans. A man in his prime, certainly, despite the shadowy collection of old scars. Her pulse tripped a beat for each rippled muscle in his abdomen.
The doppelganger demon had come to her as a whitewashed version of this: smooth and cool, unmarked.
Apparently demons didn’t know everything about perfecting temptation.
Archer turned abruptly to face her, and heat rushed to her cheeks. “So,” she said to cover her embarrassment at being caught gawping. “I’m going to live forever.”
“Most likely you’ll be killed in one of your first fights. War’s a bitch. And I’m not sure you’re enough of one.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Gee, thanks.”
“Assuming you survive—”
“The next few days,” she chimed in. “Yeah, I remember. You’re taking a lot of the fun out of this.”
He looked at her a long, long time, as if he had to translate her words from some foreign language. “Fun?”
Her cheeks heated again. “I was teasing.”
“Teasing.”
She wondered again exactly how long he had been at this. “I’ve had end-stage patients cheerier than you,” she muttered.
“They got to die.” He retreated to his office space, where he hunched over his computer, with his back to her.
Okay, she could take the hint.
After a restless circle of the room, she thumbed through the books stacked on the end table by the couch. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Homer’s Odyssey. A collection with Macbeth, King Lear, Othello.
She set them aside. No wonder he was suc
h a grouch. She’d have to get him a few good romance novels, something to reawaken his faith in hope, his sense of humor, his desire for . . .
Her gaze strayed across the room to linger on the breadth of his shoulders. But broad shoulders weren’t reason enough to fantasize about being the one to soothe his tortured soul. Other not-good-enough reasons included lean hips in fitted jeans, sculpted abs, a faded Southern drawl. . . .
Maybe romances weren’t a great idea right now when her own emotions seemed so . . . aroused. Maybe later.
“Maybe if I survive the next few days,” she muttered. She realized she’d been compulsively running her pendant back and forth on its cord and forced herself to calm.
She’d slipped the cord over her head before she left her apartment a million years ago. She couldn’t say why. All it did was conjure up disturbing memories of the demon’s pale eyes.
As she lifted the stone, a spark leapt across the inner curve. Just a trick of light. Or maybe not. She’d had enough weirdness to make her question everything, even if—especially if—her common sense said ignore it. The pendant had come from a demon, after all.
She half closed her eyes, so the darkened apartment was like a tunnel, the gleaming stone a light at the end. So easy to drift down toward it. Not like she was doing anything else.
Just waiting to be consumed by her demon.
She blinked, and the world went gray.
“Oh, damn it. Here we go again.”
But this wasn’t the lakeside pier. The gray was softer, vaguer. She’d been focused on the light, as she’d done in a therapy session once. “Did I just hypnotize myself?”
A low sound, half moan, half whisper, echoed back. The hair on her arms prickled.
She wasn’t alone.
She turned a tight circle and caught a glimpse of some misshapen form, its outline half eaten away by the mist. Her heart thudded. A feralis? It faded back before she could tell.
No wooden stakes here. No Archer either.
“Nothing can happen to me in hypnosis that I wouldn’t allow in my waking life,” she reminded herself.
Of course, in waking life she’d been half paralyzed, half addicted to painkillers, more than halfway to despair. Easy pickings for a demon.
Another whisper-moan behind her. “Sera.”
She whirled.
It was right behind her, pallid and gaunt. Its single weeping eye fixed on her with appalling hunger. The eye was hazel, same as her own.
Bony fingers reached for her. “Oh, Sera.”
She screamed, a gurgle of terror.
“Sera! Sera, come back.”
Warm hands cupped her face. Warm and wide. Not skeletal.
She pried her eyes open. Not the gray stone hanging in front of her, but a worried, blackened bronze gaze. Archer’s.
She blinked. The real world stayed.
“What?” Her voice was a strained croak. “What happened?”
“The demon realm. I see the fog in your eyes. Now you know why they want out.”
She shivered. “It was reaching for me. Not the demon. It was me.”
He let go and sat back on the couch with a frown.
“I saw myself there,” she insisted. “I was looking into the stone, and then everything went gray.”
“What stone?”
She lifted the pendant. The rock, twisting at the end of the cord, winked once.
“I would have given you topaz and peridot,” he said. “To match your eyes.”
A flush of warmth swept through her, as potent as if he had touched her again. “You do have better taste than your doppelganger.”
That sharpened his gaze. “The demon gave you this? Nothing tangible crosses the Veil.”
“This did.”
“Ugly.” When his eyes shifted violet, she knew he’d called on his demon. “And tainted with an etheric overlay. Curiouser and curiouser.” He released the pendant with a frown.
Despite the heat of his skin, the stone lay cool on her neck. “Is this the demon’s link to me?”
“The demon doesn’t need a physical leash.”
“A mirror then.” She shuddered. “When I looked into the stone, I saw myself, sick and hurting. It—I—it tried to grab me.” She scrubbed her hands down her face and caught his skeptical expression. “I’m not crazy,” she snapped. “And I’m not being Freudian either.”
“I was thinking Jung,” he murmured. “The shadow self.”
She stared at him. “If you’d had some light reading, I wouldn’t have been in that place.”
She was being unfair, but he inclined his head. “You shouldn’t be alone with all your questions. Higher mental functions like that get you into trouble every time. The demon hijacks you at the base of your ancient reptilian brain.”
She blinked at him.
“Fight and feast,” he explained. “And fuck.”
“I know what the reptilian brain is. I’m just surprised. . . .” She stopped before she insulted him.
“Yeah. What do metaphysical garbagemen need brains for anyway?” He pushed to his feet. “Never mind the mystery stone, you need to stay anchored in this realm. Come on.”
She wedged herself down in the pillows. “Where are we going?”
“To get something to eat and drink. Maybe listen to some good music. Nail you down to this world.” He held out his hand, reven-marked and calloused but gentle on her cheek as he’d called her back.
Had she seen what she was doomed to become? What she’d been doomed to become, if not for the demon’s tempting power? Suddenly she understood what Archer meant about the dangers of questions. She could no more stop herself from wondering than stop herself from breathing.
Except, apparently, that might be the price she paid.
She put her hand in his and he pulled her upright.
“I thought I was a menace to society in this state,” she said as they gathered their coats.
“Seems you’re more a hazard to yourself. I’ll keep watch.”
He led them out through a back hallway that took them through the adjacent building to an alley exit. “What’s your favorite cocktail?”
“This feels like speed dating. I thought we had all the time in the world.”
“Maybe the world doesn’t have as much time as you’d think.” He picked up the pace again.
“Spanish coffee. Lot of calories but oh, so tasty.”
“Calorie counting is the least of your worries. Your metabolism amps up to match the demands of the demon’s energy.”
She huffed out a laugh. “See how you keep forgetting to mention the pluses of possession? Lose your soul, lose the weight, on the damnation diet.”
The harsh curve of his mouth gentled into an almost smile. “Who knew souls were so heavy?”
“Is it a good idea to get my demon drunk?”
“Alcohol dilates the blood vessels and eases inhibitions. Simplifies the demon’s ascension. At least according to our Bookkeepers.” He glanced away. “Maybe it just makes it easier to forget.”
Encouraged by his momentary candor, she put her hand on his arm. “How did it happen for you?”
Muscles flexed under her fingers. “Ancient history.”
“As old as the stories on your end table?”
His expression hardened. “Nobody makes it that long.” He slipped away from her. “Nobody’d want to.”
She dragged her heels. “You mean you don’t want to. So why don’t you just kill yourself and get it over with?”
Her challenge echoed on the concrete and steel.
He let the reverberations fade without answering, but from the flicker of violet across his gaze, she knew she’d pricked him. “Let’s save the chitchat for our drinks.”
The signboard outside the club read MORTAL COIL, with a hooped snake through one letter o and down through the other to eat its own tail. Inside, the crowd was loud and close, the chill of night banished by body heat and laughter tinged with wild desperation. Appropriate enough
, she thought.
He brought her drink, mounded with whipped cream. His own tumbler brimmed with something clear on the rocks. Black coffee, unmixed drinks, blank loft walls. The devil took the blame for any number of human excesses, but somebody certainly wasn’t indulging his inner sinner.
How many years before the extras fell away, before all that remained was . . . What? The demon? The stark business card he’d handed her—@1? Oh, please.
She drank deeply. The tingle of heated vodka and Kahlúa sped through her veins. Damn questions.
A thumping bass beat drowned out casual conversation. Not that they could really do casual since everything they had in common involved supernatural possession.
She took another hit off her drink with a bracing sugar-shot of cream. The crowd milled around them, too hip for their own good. She stared narrowly at a trio nearby who shook small caplets out of a glass vial. The white pills shone with startling luminosity under the black lights. Sera remembered Betsy complaining about the new club drug. What had her friend called it? Solve or something. As if they’d solve anything that way.
She wrinkled her nose. If only they knew. “I feel like the oldest thing here,” she shouted over the sternum-rattling beat.
“Get used to it.” The low thrum of his voice carried under the chatter, rumbling in her chest in counterpoint to the music.
She frowned at his world-weariness. She finished her drink in one long draught and licked the cream off her lips, not caring that his gaze followed the suggestive motion.
She shoved to her feet. “Let’s dance.”
Ha. That cracked his composure. He stared at her until she grabbed his hand.
He pulled back. “I don’t dance.”
“Really? I never would’ve guessed.” She tugged. “Don’t worry. I haven’t danced in forever. I won’t show you up like I did in the alley.”
He scowled and rose. “If you’ll recall, I killed the feralis.”
“While I distracted it. And if I hadn’t been distracted by it”—by his kiss, that was, but she squelched the thought—“I would’ve gotten away from you.”
“To your everlasting regret.”
“According to you, my regrets will be everlasting anyway.”
They stepped onto the dance floor where the bass made even shouted words pointless.