by Selena Scott
“I remember what you were like then as well,” he told her. He wasn’t sure if he was wanting to get the spotlight off of himself, or if he was trying to wound her. He wasn’t proud of either alternative.
She was quiet. She didn’t take the bait. It irritated him.
“You were exactly the same as you are now,” he told her caustically. “Lonely. Just skilled enough to keep this game going on and on. But never skilled enough to actually slay the demon.”
Martine did nothing but watch him with those steady green eyes of hers. She said nothing. Eventually, she sat up, and her hair sparkled in the sunlight. There was much more gold than he ever would have guessed.
Looking at her stirred something in Arturo’s gut and it hurt. It was an old feeling. Ancient. And it was painful to experience it.
He strode toward the door of her room but paused there, his chin over his shoulder. “Why haven’t you shown them what you can really do?”
In a rare show of temper, she lifted her hand in a slice across the air. A ball of glowing golden energy flung across the room toward Arturo. He barely had time to manifest his own blue energy to deflect the golden ball. Their mixed energy turned a spring green and was gone.
“Be gone, devil,” she said to him.
And he disappeared through the door.
CHAPTER TWO
“Jesus!” Tre hollered as, for the tenth time, he tripped on another threshold between two rooms. “Would it be too much to ask that there aren’t booby traps in this damn Airbnb?”
“I wouldn’t call them booby traps,” Celia said, stooping to help her friend up from the floor. “But yeah, I can’t imagine this place is up to code.”
“I like it,” Caroline pronounced as she set a salad on the dinner table. She turned and grinned in Tre’s face, popping an olive into his mouth and, like magic, the scowl dissolved from his expression. He couldn’t help but drag her happy little self into his body and kiss her.
Arturo wanted to puke. Everywhere he turned there were two people staring into one another’s eyes, sitting on each other’s laps, copping feels left and right. Part of him couldn’t believe that he was beholden to this group of humans. They’d freed him from his connection to the demon, and yes, they were most likely Arturo’s only hope of slaying the demon, but still. Moments like this he wished he were anywhere else.
They passed the dinner with conversation about the house, and eventually, about their impending battle with the demon. Their theories and thoughts were painfully naive. Arturo waited for Martine to cut in, coach them into more intelligent lines of thought. But, he saw, she simply sat at the end of the table, methodically eating the food on her plate.
Something was off with her. For a moment, Arturo wondered if his words in her bedroom had truly wounded her. But no, she didn’t seem injured. She simply seemed… separate. Held even further away from the group than she usually was. As the two beings at the table that had the ability to summon and utilize internal energy, his blue and hers yellow, Arturo could always sense a sort of low-lying hum from Martine. But tonight, she was particularly muted. It was almost as if she were trying to slip away unnoticed.
Dinner wrapped up, the dishes were washed and the group paired off and disappeared into their house, into their separate rooms.
Arturo, unsettled for reasons he didn’t care to articulate, sat in the dark living room for a long time. The shadows turned silvery blue in the moonlight and all the pleather and mirrored decor looked even crappier.
Unsure of what he was even waiting for, Arturo descended into the sub-basement in a foul mood. Another night of sleeplessness or disturbing dreams awaited him. Oh, joy.
He closed his bedroom door behind him and the room was almost pitch black around him. He took one quiet step toward his bed and froze. In the room above him there were noises. Passionate ones. Rhythmic thumping and whispered words followed by non-whispered moans.
Arturo sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Right. Love. There was no escaping it even in the dead of night.
He turned on his heel and headed back out into the dark house, mindful of the uneven floors and mirrored walls that confused the eye in the dark. He’d sleep on the couch in the living room if he had to.
He was just stepping through the kitchen when something on the other side of the window caught his eye. It was a movement more than a color. One shadow melting into the next. His eyes pinned on the unseeable thing, he slipped silently out a sliding glass door and padded across the grass in bare feet. The air was chilly but the ground was insanely warm, still holding the sun from the day.
Arturo melted into the shadows just as the thing in front of him did. He skirted quickly around it, headed it off and grinned rudely into Martine’s face even as she held a dagger to his throat.
“Where are you headed this late at night?”
“None of your business, Arturo,” she said, sheathing her knife and holding herself perfectly still. He knew she was doing her best not to be distracted by his presence. She was taking the temperature of the air, filing away every small noise and scent. Her entire body was ignoring him and searching for evidence of the demon, however small.
He found he didn’t want to be ignored.
“You’re doing rounds?” he asked, but frowned at the pack on her back. “No. You’re not.”
Arturo took a step into her space and plucked at the strap of her bag.
“What’s this?” he asked accusingly.
“My belongings,” she responded drily.
He took another step into her space. “You’re leaving,” he said, with a rude incredulousness in his tone.
“I’m not doing any good as a part of the group. I can’t afford to be distracted. I’m not willing to wait for the demon to show his face. I’m going hunting.”
“Fine. I think I’ll join you. I’ve had it with those morons back at the house anyways.”
Martine slammed a hand to his chest, holding him at bay, their energy crackling for a second in response to the other. Blue and yellow so bright and fleeting it slashed their night vision. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“Watch me.” He took another step closer to her.
“Arturo, you’re one of the seven, you know this. If you abandon them, you’re breaking the only magic they have to protect themselves. They can’t fend off the demon without you.”
“I’m not staying and sitting in some clown house while you go off and hunt my mortal enemy. I’m coming.” He slapped her hand off his chest.
“You’re staying!” She shoved him back and he stumbled before he recovered his footing. “You and I are not the same!” she hissed into the night. “We don’t have the same roles in this journey. We aren’t even the same type of being! You cannot do what I do.”
“Is this about what I said earlier? That you were weak?” He breathed hard, his nostrils flaring.
“You were right. I failed to protect your first group of seven because I tried to be part of the group. I got distracted and sentimental and it won’t happen again! I refuse to let it happen again.” She moved to step around him.
He moved with her, blocking her way. “Either I’m coming with you or you’re not leaving.” Arturo crossed his arms across his lean, but wide, chest and held his strong stance. Pulled up to his full height, he was a foot taller than she was. Shadows cast across every feature of his face, and he looked as if he could draw a cloud across the moon if he so wished.
Martine merely rolled her eyes and flicked her wrist through the air. Her golden energy cracked like a whip and had him yelping and stumbling to one side, his palm pressed to the six-inch section of his ribs she’d just singed.
By the time he held his palm up to the moonlight, searching for blood, she’d already melted into the tree line on the far side of the house. Arturo took off after her. And this time, his own energy was already crackling at his fingertips.
Simply because of the fact that his legs were longer, he overtook her in the shadows.
He didn’t touch her, he just raced along beside her, a foot of space between them. In the distance, cars raced along the highway in a kind of shuddering hum. “I’m coming.”
Martine shot golden energy at him and he swiped it out of the air as she took off through the woods, determined to leave him behind. He bounded after her and his breath caught tight in his chest. He’d never forget the sight of her, framed by the towering white cliffs behind her, bone-colored in the moonlight. Martine leapt into the air, into a tight spin and shrank away. Out of the neck of her shirt came an amber hawk, gold in the eye and as dark as a raven.
He’d never seen her shift so quickly and it stunned him. But two could play that game. Arturo felt his clothes tear at every seam as he was suddenly a bear. Horrifying and augmented by a hundred years of evil, his fur stank of midnight and his canines were shining with spit, the length of a child’s forearm.
He jumped and swiped one enormous paw in the air, scuttling Martine’s hawk right out of the air.
She cawed. The indignant scream of an arrogant animal taken down a peg as the bear who hugged her to his chest shielded their fall and rolled them across the dusty red dirt below them.
Their colorful energies crackled through the air like doll-sized lightning as she scratched at the bear’s face with her talons and beat her wings hard in a lift-off. But the bear merely swiped her out of the air again, gingerly holding her tight.
Arturo felt rather than saw her shift. He’d never touched another shifter mid-shift and it was a strangely electric feeling. He’d never forget the vibration of her body against his. The stretch and tremble and bloom of her pressed so firmly against him. Her golden energy seemed to strike right through his heart. His breath was crystals of ice within his lungs. Before he could think or stop himself, he was shifting too.
In a spear of mixing energy, blue and gold and green where they touched, hawk and bear were suddenly woman and man again. The two of them grappled against one another, naked and smudged everywhere with the red dust from the ground. There was frustration and anger in their movements as they rolled and Martine gained the upper hand. She straddled over top of him, one hand clamped around his throat and her other hand cocked back, a ball of golden energy swirling menacingly in her palm.
She breathed hard. So did he. She could feel the thrum of his energy rolling off of him like heat. The bang of his pulse was knocking against her palm as she gripped his throat.
His irises were ringed with his blue energy but after a moment, they faded back to his normal, velvety dark eye color. What was she doing? Killing Arturo would solve nothing. It would only put the others in more danger from the demon. She didn’t want to kill him. She just wanted him to listen to her. She just wanted to make him… do something.
There was a clenching in her gut when she realized that she couldn’t exactly finish that sentence. She was panting and naked and dirty and crouched over top of Arturo and she desperately wanted to make him do something but she didn’t know what it was.
The ball of swirling energy in her palm unwound itself and instead of zooming at Arturo’s heart, it started a slow spread over Martine’s own skin. She felt herself tighten and heat every place where her own energy touched over her.
Arturo stared in confusion at the muddy woman straddling his naked body. She was suddenly glowing gold in the night. She was perfect, untouchable, beyond gorgeous.
And obviously spitting mad at him.
He couldn’t have controlled his reaction to her even if he’d seen it coming.
Martine blinked for a moment and then turned around to peer behind her at the warm, hot thing that had just thwapped up into her butt.
Her brows knitted and then raised as comprehension slowly dawned. Though she was used to seeing the male shifters naked, she wasn’t used to seeing that particular body part look quite like that. Slowly, she turned back around to face Arturo, who now seemed to be holding his breath, his eyes darker than she’d ever seen them.
The two of them simply stared at one another for a moment. Perhaps they were both briefly hypnotized by a different reality. One that neither would let them have.
Arturo’s hands, in fists on the ground, slowly uncurled. Martine’s eyes followed the movement. Was he about to touch her? The thought panicked and thrilled her in equal parts.
She could no longer ignore the insistent hot nudge of his manhood at her back.
Martine frowned at him. “Such a man,” she told him. “We were fighting, not making love.”
“Trust me, Wings. Sometimes it’s the same thing.”
With a look in his eye like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or scowl, Arturo placed two firm hands on Martine’s waist and set her to the side. He immediately leaned forward onto his bent knees and let out a long breath. It might have ended on a laugh or a groan, it was anybody’s guess.
Martine sat on her knees next to him, staring at his dark profile. She barely moved or breathed, as if she were nervous about putting a match to kindling.
“Well,” Arturo finally said. “That was interesting. And unexpected.”
Martine said nothing.
Scrubbing a hand down his face and wishing he weren’t naked with an unexpectedly human fervor, Arturo turned to peer at her through the darkness.
What he saw there quieted and inflamed him in equal measure. She still glowed a faint gold, her strawberry hair was messy and tumbling, red dirt streaked over her skin like paint. She sat on her knees and her fingers rested nervously on the ground on either side of her legs. Her chin tipped slightly down and she watched him with those big, insanely green eyes. Every color of her was muted in the dark—she was the nighttime version of herself. Ethereal and mysterious and glowing. She looked otherworldly and tempting and so fucking innocent.
Not for the first time in his centuries on this earth, Arturo wondered about Martine’s romantic life. Did she take lovers? Were there others of her species that she preferred? Other demon hunters? Or would she take a human as a lover?
He couldn’t help but replay the zinging thrum of her energy as it touched him. Would it feel like that in every place he touched her? Tasted her?
As if she could read his thoughts, her face became even more bashful, more innocent, more confused. He realized, with a jerking tug in his gut, that there was a chance she was so innocent that she didn’t fully understand what had almost just happened.
Had anyone ever told Martine about the birds and the bees?
Arturo gave a pained laugh and looked away from her. That way lay madness.
He needed space from this beguiling creature and he needed it yesterday. But he also needed to make sure that she didn’t go charging off into the darkness on her own. He knew that she was an incredibly skilled demon hunter. But he knew this demon very, very well. The idea of Martine facing him alone was enough to plant sickness deep in Arturo’s belly.
Arturo rose up quickly and held a hand out to her. “Come,” he said.
Martine, still crouching, peered up at him through the darkness. Her eyes dropped down to one particular body part of his that she happened to be eye level with.
He went from partially calmed down to raring to go in about two seconds.
“Jesus,” he muttered, turning his back to her. He stared down menacingly at his own erection, feeling distinctly foolish and embarrassed and aroused. It was a potent cocktail of emotions that he hadn’t felt since he was a mortal.
He turned halfway toward her, to preserve whatever modesty either of them had left, and held out that firm hand again.
She stared up at him.
“It’s late, Martine. One more night in the company of those fools won’t kill either of us. If you’re determined to go, go tomorrow, all right?”
She rose up, ignoring his outstretched hand, and started padding back the way they’d come. He followed her through the dark, the pale hourglass of her figure swaying hypnotically in front of him.
They were shifters, they’d seen one anoth
er naked many times before. It was just a fact of life. But he couldn’t quite figure out why he’d never really noticed the particular curve of her form before. Whenever he saw her toned triceps and calves, he just thought athletic. But there was also an undeniable softness to her figure. She was… curvy. And alarmingly alluring.
It wasn’t that he’d never noticed her attractiveness before. It was that he’d never allowed himself to be attracted. He felt like she was a cool mountain lake that he’d casually observed from a distance. Tonight, he’d been allowed to dip a hand in that lake and now he kind of wanted to go swimming.
She stooped and picked up her clothing and her pack that she’d dropped when she’d shifted.
It bothered him a great deal that she’d been so anxious to get on her way that she’d left behind all of her belongings, all of her equipment and tools. He thought again of Martine battling the demon on her own and he cringed. He had to find a way to convince her to stay. Or to let him come along.
They reached the house again and Martine paused in the shadows of the driveway for a moment. She cocked an ear then slipped backwards, disappearing into a sliding side door of the house. Arturo peered after her, wondering why she’d gone that way. Until, ah, he realized she hadn’t wanted to be spotted by Jean Luc, who was standing just inside the front door, peering out the glass into the dark.
Arturo pushed past Jean Luc into the darkened house.
Jean Luc glanced at Arturo’s nakedness but said nothing. It merely meant that Arturo had shifted.
“Sorry for breaking curfew, Dad,” Arturo said to Jean Luc, striding into the kitchen and pouring a glass of water. He gulped it down in two huge swallows. The coolness on his throat grounded him, dulled the flame that Martine’s glowing form had ignited within him.
“I’m not going to ask what you were doing because I’m sure you wouldn’t tell me,” Jean Luc said quietly, in that deep voice of his.
Arturo said nothing. He set his glass in the dishwasher only because he had a soft spot for Caroline and she was usually the one who did the dishes.