I shifted, uncomfortable, but his gaze was boring into me, intent, willing me to understand.
‘Part of me… likes Cain, for all his cussedness, and believes that, if you scraped through the shellac of his suspicion and hostility and his general disdain for anything in the world that is not you, he reciprocates that feeling.’ I must have looked disbelieving, because he smiled. ‘A little, at least. And yes, I do want him as a man may want other men, Cassandra. He’s an attractive man, and I enjoy sex with attractive people, and see no embarrassment in such desires. But…’ he closed his eyes for a moment. ‘It is far more than that.’
Well, great.
‘Who he is, what he is… it appeals to that dark side of my nature. I care for you, Cassandra – far more, I think, than it is convenient for you to acknowledge. But he stirs something primal in me that is to do with both of our natures. I would happily break myself against him just to see what it would take to do so. Part of me – a real and powerful and very present part of me – would see the ideal outcome of our union as me fucking him within an inch of his life and then tearing his throat out and licking his insides dry… as fatal as that would be for both of us.’
I stared, appalled, and it took me a few moments to respond.
‘Then you’ll understand that I’m not particularly comfortable with that,’ I said, taking refuge in the formal, but Laclos’ gaze cooled.
‘And you will understand, adore you as I do, your comfort is not my priority in this matter, any more than my comfort was yours when you fled from my bed to his arms or, indeed, his was when you left him bleeding in your sheets to succumb to my embrace in this very room.’
‘OK, when you put it like that it does sound bad,’ I admitted, faux-sulkily, which at least made him smile. I sat back with a sigh. There really was nothing that wasn’t fucked up about all this. ‘Look, Laclos, I’m not saying "stop fancying my boyfriend". I’m not pretending I have the right to tell you who to be attracted to or…’ I swallowed my own distaste. ‘Or…to judge whatever… fantasy you have about them.’ He raised an eyebrow at that. Fine, I was judging.
‘I would hope not. Frankly fantasy is all I have to keep me going right now. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to be this good looking and have both of the people you want most turn you down? I am virtually swooning with sexual frustration!’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Laclos, I bet it has barely been a couple of weeks.’
He looked outraged.
‘Exactly!’
I felt like this conversation was becoming somewhat derailed and struggled to get it back on point, which was to stop Laclos winding Cain up to fatal levels.
‘Look, I just… Cain’s clearly not… at his calmest, right now, Laclos. I think he won’t admit how shaken he is, but you know that makes him punchy. I just don’t think any of us want to face the consequences if he finds out how you feel about him.’
At this Laclos laughed properly, which wasn’t annoying at all.
‘Darling, you think he doesn’t know? Cain is quite aware of the nature of my desire. But he also knows me well enough to know that me acting on that desire would require his enthusiastic participation. It’s not my lust that is making him angry.’
‘Then what is it? Because it feels like we’ve gone through an awful lot to keep you alive and it’ll be a bit of a waste if he tears your head off.’
He at least looked mildly chastised at that.
‘You’re right. I will be more careful. But that’s not what is fraying his nerves, Cassandra. He… you cannot share that much blood without creating a bond with someone. And with a being of Cain’s power… the effects have been dramatic. How do you think I knew what he was? I have been given an insight into his soul, Cassandra, and given how private a man he is, you can imagine how he feels about that. Frankly I’m a little surprised he hasn’t tried to kill me more often.’ He paused, and gave a bitter laugh. ‘Don’t you understand that part of the reason I am being such… I believe you would call it "an irritating prick" around him is I am trying, perhaps clumsily, to return to our delightfully mutually antagonistic relationship. Because he has opened a black hole inside me, and I am terrified I might disappear within it.’
Well, that was cheery. I’d been feeling petulant about being shoved out of my own love triangle – the flirting was bad enough before all of this ‘profound bond’ bollocks – but whatever jealousy I felt, which was confused and conflicted by the fact I wasn’t sure which man those feelings were aimed at – seemed suddenly petty in the face of Laclos’ admission.
‘Will it… wear off?’
He rubbed his eyes, tiredly, his voice weary.
‘I hope so, Cassandra. Or I fear it may be the death of me.’
Chapter 12
We sat in unhappy silence. What he said about Cain made me deeply uncomfortable – frankly, the whole nature of their relationship, including Cain’s punchiness about it, made me deeply uncomfortable – but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Laclos. I thought of what Cain’s power had done to my Sense, how trying to read him had nearly broken me, and imagining not being able to switch that off made me feel nauseous. At the same time, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of the two men I was closest to and who remained frustratingly opaque to me, with facts about their lives doled out sparingly like sweeties to a needy child, now having an access-all-areas pass to one another’s psyches. It felt like when you introduce two friends who start hanging out without you: you know it’s ridiculous and pathetic, but part of you worries that they like one another more than they like you.
Still, the one good thing about life being spectacularly in the shitter is that you don’t have time to dwell, and barely had I got the streamers and balloons out for my pity party than I heard heavy footsteps thudding up the fire escape, followed by something I thought I would never, ever hear in my life. It was Cain, and he sounded scared.
‘Laclos! Help us!’ he kicked the door off its hinges – my kitchen! Again! Reinforced or not, nothing was going to stop him: he was so frantic he would have kicked through the wall. And it was obvious, in an instant, why. In his arms he held the limp form of his wife, her face…
‘Oh my God, what happened to her eyes?’ I screeched, horrified at the sight of the scorched, bleeding orbs. Cain brushed everything off the table in one swoop of his arm, laying her down gently, the sword she held loosely in her grip clattering uselessly to the floor, its glow dimmed. He grabbed the astonished Laclos and pulled him towards her as a breathless Jonesy, clearly struggling to keep up with his speed, arrived on the stairs behind him.
‘Help her!’
Laclos, stunned, looked helplessly from Cain’s face to the woman prone before him, trying to pull back but held too firmly in Cain’s grip.
‘I… I can’t, I’m not sure… ‘
‘What happened?’ I asked Jonesy, who shook his head, in dismay or disbelief.
‘This wasn’t a vampire…’
Cain glared at him, but, as if stirred by his words, the Valkyrie reached out for her husband, her hand shaking, her voice hoarse, grasping at where she thought he was, her ruined eyes blind. He went to her in an instant, trying to help her sit, but she was clearly too weak.
‘They have found you, husband. I saw them watching… you know how they fancy themselves… observers. I thought I could stop them,’ she coughed, raggedly, and blood trickled out of her mouth. ‘I failed you. I am sorry.’
She slumped back, and Cain crushed her to him with a sound that was more animal than human, a keen of grief and rage that pushed us all physically back from them like the shockwave from a bomb. I staggered as the room around us shook, bricks and mortar trembling at his fury, and for a moment I thought that if she died, so would we, as he would bring the whole building down around him in his loss.
‘Help her!’ he roared again at Laclos, who almost fell back under the force of his voice.
‘She’s not human… I don’t know.’
‘Laclos,’ C
ain begged, and he sounded utterly broken. ‘She’s my wife.’
‘I…’ The protest dying on his lips, Laclos nodded weakly and stepped forward. I could Sense his anxiety: the fear that this would fatally weaken him fighting against the terror of what Cain might do if he failed. But he tore at his wrist in a practised swipe, and gently put the wound to her open mouth. Cain lifted her head gently – a much more careful cradling than he’d granted the vampire – and there was a moment’s resistance. I could Sense her disgust as the viscous liquid touched her lips, and she tried to struggle, but Cain held her fast. Then she succumbed, taking long, ugly gulps, one hand grasping Laclos’ wrist to stop him withdrawing this nourishment, even as he looked ready to faint away with the effort. But then, mercifully, she stopped, her hand loosened and she slumped back into Cain’s arms. Laclos half fell backwards, leaning on the countertop for support, looking forlornly at Cain.
‘I don’t know if… it may take time to…’
Cain gave him a curt nod and scooped his wife up from the table with the utmost gentleness. Then, to my surprise, handed her to Jonesy.
‘Go put her in the bedroom. Right now.’
He spoke with such urgency that, despite his obvious confusion, Jonesy obeyed, and Cain almost shoved him out of the room before striding across the kitchen to grab me, folding himself around me like he was shielding me from a grenade.
‘They’re not coming. They’re here.’
And then the room went white and I was blinded.
Chapter 13
Have you ever been to the seafront when the mist comes in? Those sudden, startling mists that descend in moments and the whole world disappears? For a second, you can only stare, not trusting your senses because there now is nothing where a horizon should be. This was like that. Not a flash of light or radiance, but an abrupt, absolute blankness where sight should exist. It lasted only an instant, but when it was over I was slumped in Cain’s arms, Laclos huddled on the floor beside us, both of us trembling in shock. Only Cain seemed unmoved. He casually righted me against the kitchen counter, then turned back to the new arrivals like they were unexpected Jehovah’s Witnesses and he was trying to be polite.
For a moment, no one spoke. Laclos dragged himself shakily to his feet beside me, but I could tell he, like me, was almost too scared to look at them, fearing what they might do to our unprotected gaze. My Sense had pretty much shut down, shorted out by the surge of power, and it was only by assuring myself that Cain would have warned me not to look if to do so held danger that I found the courage to lift my eyes.
I have to say, I was a little disappointed. Two men, both wearing expensive looking suits, both handsome in their way but rather ordinary – I don’t know what I had expected, but they looked like a better class of insurance salesmen. Both were middling height, well built, and dark skinned in a way that suggested a vaguely Mediterranean or South American heritage without being identifiable as either; in fact, there was something ancient in their looks, as if they were modelled on a people who no longer existed. This was perhaps emphasised by the fact that the taller man had a profile that looked like it should be embossed on a coin, and was sporting a deeply unflattering Caesar-style haircut, though even that didn’t manage to diminish his regal bearing. The other had longer hair that curled to his shoulders and glimmered with hints of copper, and startling blue eyes blazed out against the bronze of his skin. It was this man who spoke first, stepping forward with something like a smile.
‘Cain,’ he breathed, the warmth in his voice surprising me – this wasn’t what I expected from the punishment party. His hand twitched at his side, as if wanting to reach out, and I got the feeling he was stopping himself from embracing him. There was no answering warmth, however, in Cain’s reply.
‘Aeylith. Baelam.’
Cain’s face was unreadable, and his entire focus on them, which I thought was deliberate: Laclos and I were huddling behind him like scared children, praying our silence might bring us salvation. I hoped Jonesy had the good sense to stay out of the room.
‘Before we start on this, I need to know what you did to my wife wasn’t personal.’
‘Your wife?’ Aeylith echoed, shocked, and the angel Baelam shot him a glare, annoyed at this reaction. His own tone when he answered was business-like, almost bored.
‘You know that with us, nothing is ever personal.’
‘You are married?’ Aeylith frowned, clearly still having trouble with this concept. Maybe angels never usually tied the knot. Cain ignored the question, a curt nod in response to Baelam – obviously nearly killing someone is fine as long as, y’know, you didn’t mean it personally. But Aeylith, still twitchy, plainly hadn’t got the ‘strictly business’ memo. He stepped closer to Cain and, to my astonishment and Cain’s visible annoyance, reached out a hand and gently touched his face, his expression almost one of wonderment.
‘So… much has happened, I see, in these intervening years. It has been far too long,’ he murmured, almost to himself, marvelling at Cain’s features as if they held some revelation. He dropped his hand, lightly, leaving it at rest over Cain’s heart. Cain’s gaze flickered downwards for a moment, but his voice was the kind of calm that it only ever gets when he is very, very angry.
‘I’d rather you didn’t touch me.’
Aeylith tilted his head, almost playful.
‘You didn’t always feel that way.’
Again, no reaction, which was more than could be said for me and Laclos, who were now openly goggling.
‘That’s before I knew what those hands were capable of.’
At that, the angel looked at his hands as if he’d never seen them before, turning them palms up, examining them.
‘I think of you sometimes, still,’ he said, voice wistful. ‘I imagine I can feel you struggling against me. In my mind, I hear you screaming, and when I look down at my hands I see your blood. It haunts me still.’
Baelam grimaced, furious, but Cain looked almost bored.
‘Gotta say, as the one who was doing all the struggling and the screaming and the bleeding, don’t really have a huge amount of sympathy for you on that.’
Aeylith’s voice flared in fury.
‘I had my orders!’
‘You know the humans stopped accepting that as an excuse a few decades back, right?’
‘If I had not done it, they would have. I could not have stopped them.’
A nerve twitched under Cain’s eye, and I realised how much this calmness was costing him. And I thought of those long, terrible, unhealing scars on his back, and I thought I knew what Aeylith was talking about.
‘They would have, yes.’ Cain admitted, slowly, with a shrug. ‘But that wasn’t the point. The point was, you did.’
‘You would have done the same.’
Finally, anger tightened in Cain’s voice.
‘No. No. I would have fought. I would have died trying to stop them. I wouldn’t have let them do to my worst enemy what you did to me.’
Aeylith let out a bitter laugh, looking to Baelam as if for back up, but found nothing but disdain in his companion’s face.
‘You really would have, wouldn’t you? And here you are again, flouting authority with abandon. You really haven’t changed, Cain.’
At this, Cain actually laughed.
‘Can’t say the same for you.’
For a moment, Aeylith looked puzzled, then chuckled, almost coquettish.
‘Oh – this old thing?’
Whiteness again, a wall of it, and when my sight returned, I was clinging to Laclos like he was a life raft, but where Aeylith had stood there was a woman, even more striking than her male counterpart had been, curves now straining at the suit. If it hadn’t been for those fierce blue eyes, I wouldn’t have realised it was the same person.
‘My. That’s… handy,’ murmured Laclos. Baelam looked like he was about to combust with anger, his mission clearly side-tracked by this little reunion, and Cain seemed as unimpressed as ever. So
metimes I wondered if he practised.
‘This, I believe, is more familiar to you? It was something similar, if I recall,’ her voice would have been coy, flirtatious, if the memories of Cain’s scars didn’t render it obscene. Cain clearly agreed, because when he spoke his voice was so clipped with fury that she flinched at his words like they were blows.
‘You maimed me, Aeylith. You stood and you watched as they broke me and beat me bloody and then when I was lying face down in the dirt choking on my own teeth and blood you knelt on my back and you maimed me. You let them maim me.’ He cast a fierce glare at Baelam. ‘And don’t think a change of body has made me forget your presence at that little mutilation party.’ Baelam frowned, unhappy to be rumbled – he looked almost nervous, but Cain had turned his attention back to Aeylith. ‘And, what? You think you can pull on a body that reminds me of what we were and I’ll… forgive you? Flirt with you? You think you can somehow make this better? Just deliver whatever slap on the wrist you intend to and then get out of here and leave me the fuck alone.’
‘I have a question,’ piped up Laclos, and all three angels turned to him, astonished, as if one of the kitchen tiles had started talking. He looked at Cain, all innocence. ‘Can you do that body thing? Because if so, darling, you really have been holding out on us.’
I stared at him in alarm – don’t make the scary people notice us! – though I was also trying not to imagine how much fun Laclos would have with a lover who could swap physical forms at will. I was curious myself as to whether Cain had any of these angel tricks up his sleeve, but at least I had the sense to wait until the bad guys left to ask him. But to my surprise, I saw Cain’s face twitch in a grin, and as Laclos stepped in front of me I realised what he was doing, though the stupidity of attracting their attention became obvious very quickly.
Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3) Page 11