by Cynthia Eden
After she’d taken a little souvenir. What kind of freak job was he dealing with here? “Niol told Gyth we were after a human.” A human who’d taken to carving up the demons in his city and stealing body parts? Shit, what would he have to deal with next?
Sometimes, he could still remember the good old days. When humans killed humans and supernaturals kept to the shadows.
Not anymore.
Nathalia paused near his one window. “Guess we can all be monsters deep down, huh?”
His hands clenched. This was a sore point for him. Nathalia was freaking beautiful and perfect and…human. For a time, he hadn’t believed she’d want him, not if she knew the truth about him.
He sure wasn’t beautiful. More like scary. He’d been called that a few times. Perfect—uh, that was another word that would never fit him and the shit that was his life.
As for human…not quite.
Even when he held Nathalia late at night, when she was beside him in bed and he could feel the soft beat of her heart, he worried he’d lose her.
Because he was a monster, too. And no matter what that crap in storybooks said, Beauty didn’t want to spend her life shacked up with the Beast.
She wasn’t looking at him now. Just staring out the window with her shoulders slumped. “When I…first found out about the Other—”
He winced. That had been a brutal introduction, and just thinking about the attack she’d suffered made him want to kill.
“—I thought all supernaturals were evil. Even though Gyth saved my ass, my head—” She glanced back at him and McNeal thought he managed to wipe the desperation from his face. “—it was all messed up.”
An attack by a psycho could do that to a woman.
“It’s okay.” His voice sounded gruff. He hadn’t planned that. He’d wanted to sound soft and comforting, but his voice was always like gravel. “You don’t have to—”
“That girl—Kim. When I saw her, I didn’t think about her being human or Other. I just saw a victim.”
Because that’s what the girl was.
“Monsters, humans—we’re all a tangled mess, just trying to survive.” Her eyes held his. “And I’m not afraid anymore, Danny. I’m not afraid.”
That cracking was his heart. Breaking—no, bursting, because dammit, he loved her. A woman who’d walked through hell, but could still understand the monsters.
He walked to her, slowly, even though he knew she wouldn’t frighten off. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore.” He’d never let her be in danger. Never.
“But others do. Kim. Holly Storm. They have to be careful.” She turned fully to face him. “This killer is smart and she’s good.”
She’d sure managed to clear out of that house fast. Gyth and the crime scene guys had been poring over that place and they’d found jack shit. A guy with a nose like Gyth’s wouldn’t miss anything.
Which meant there was nothing to find.
And it meant they had three dead bodies.
And one live victim.
Thanks to the demon king of the city. Owing that guy stuck in McNeal’s throat, but he’d make sure he paid his debt.
McNeal always paid his debts.
After the killer was caught, and he would catch the slicer, he’d handle Niol.
Her eyes were grainy from crying. Because, yeah, she’d cried like a baby when she’d been in that ambulance with Kim. Cried and prayed—prayed like she hadn’t prayed in years—and used every bit of her strength to will Kim to live.
And so far, she had.
So far.
Holly climbed from Niol’s SUV, her knees shaking and her calves trembling. Her stomach was one hard knot. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten and she just wanted to crawl inside and wash away the blood staining her fingers.
Just wash it away.
“Holly…”
Niol’s voice. Tense.
She didn’t stop walking. She didn’t know what to say to him then. The guy confused her too much. She wanted him. She needed him and—
And if she wasn’t careful, she’d lose her heart to him.
Because she knew Niol wasn’t the staying kind. Or the loving kind. He’d warned her of that, himself.
Her steps were heavy on the sidewalk. She wasn’t paying attention to—
“Holly?” Not Niol’s voice. Feminine. High. Screech-level.
Her head lifted. Her gaze searched the darkness and saw the figure standing on her porch.
Mom?
Oh, damn.
“Tried to tell you.” Now Niol was talking. Quiet. Whisper-like. “We aren’t alone.”
Her mom was there. Since when did her mom pay her late-night visits? Or any visits?
Click. Click. Click. Her mother’s shoes on the steps. “I’ve been waiting here for hours, Holly Ann Storm. Hours. I called your cell at least a dozen times and you couldn’t be bothered to answer.”
She’d had to turn the cell off in the hospital. Frowning, she dug around in her purse and, after a moment, felt the cool touch of the phone. Forgot to turn it back on.
Holly continued walking, one foot in front of the other. She passed her mom and pulled out the house keys. “Sorry, Mom, I was—”
“Out. With a man.” A sniff. “You sounded like you needed me, Holly Ann. I came all the way from Birmingham and you weren’t even—”
Holly shoved open her front door. The alarm beeped as she flipped on the lights and punched in the security code and—
“Oh. My. God. Is that blood?”
Yeah, and a lot of it. She’d scrubbed as hard as she could in the hospital, but her fingernails were still stained red and her shirt, though dry now, had Kim’s blood coated on the front. “It’s really been one hell of a night, Mom.”
Her mother had followed her inside. The lights flickered off the red of her hair, a shade softer than Holly’s own, one that had a bit of professional help. Her mom was in her early fifties, but could easily have passed for a woman just hitting her mid-forties.
Holly dropped her bag onto the sofa and thought long and hard about collapsing next to it. Her mom seemed stunned, staring at her with wide eyes—a perfect shade match there—and parted lips.
Niol loomed in the doorway behind her. Holly wasn’t sure her mom had even seen him yet. “Uh, it’s not my blood, Mom.”
“You take these dangerous stories. You stay out all hours with strange men—” She finally glanced back over her shoulder at Niol as she snapped, “It could be your—No!”
The last was gasped. And that horrified gasp was full of recognition. Recognition that a human who’d spent the last seven years living in Birmingham, Alabama, shouldn’t have for a demon in Atlanta.
Holly got a really, really bad feeling in her gut.
No, no she wouldn’t have kept this from me. Not all of these years. Not after Peter—
Her mother still had her eyes glued to Niol. He lifted a brow and his own black eyes stayed locked on her.
“S-send him away.” Hoarse.
Holly blinked. “What?”
Her mother’s head turned toward her. Very slowly, as if she were afraid to take her gaze off Niol. Her mother had always been smart. “Send him away.” Stronger now.
Holly glanced over at Niol. No expression there. She took a deep breath and said simply, “No.” Then she motioned to Niol. “Shut the door so the alarm will kick in.” And she walked away.
Silence behind her. Then a hand caught her arm. She swung around and met her mom’s wild eyes. Used to be so calm. Not anymore. “You don’t know what you’re doing! This—this man, he’s not for you! Go back to that nice doctor you were seeing. He was a good man, safe. He was—”
“Screwing around on me.” Which her mother already knew. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Niol walked past them. Made himself comfortable on her couch.
Her mother’s nails dug into her skin. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
But her mother obviously knew Niol.
Holly kicked off her pumps and heard the whisper of relief from her feet. “Niol, you didn’t tell me that you knew my mother.”
His gaze swept over her mother’s figure. Kelly Storm kept herself trim from a vicious workout routine. She’d been working out every day, for at least an hour a day, since her husband had passed away from a heart attack just over two years ago.
“Never met before.” He offered a smile, one that didn’t look reassuring.
“I know who you are.” Kelly’s voice was arctic. “And I want you to stay away from my daughter. She’s not your kind. She’s—”
Holly’s heart slammed into her ribs. She gazed at her mother and just felt…sad. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Enough crap. Enough tension.
Kelly blinked. “I don’t know what—”
Her hand waved toward Niol. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Lies. “Are you a demon, too, Mom?”
“No!”
Such a fast denial. “Who, then? It has to be someone in the family. Dad? Was he—”
“I will not talk about this.” Her hand fell away and her thin shoulders straightened. “This is nonsense. Ridiculous. There are no—”
“I’m a demon.” The first time she’d confessed. Made her feel…strange. Right. “Peter was, too. But you knew that, didn’t you? When he started talking about the voices and the things he’d seen, you knew what he was and you said nothing!” Rage bubbled up, hard and too fast. Rage. All those years when her mother had been so distant with her. Those years when she’d watched her brother slipping away.
Wasted years.
When she’d known.
A tear slipped from the corner of her mother’s eye.
Holly had seen her mother cry three times in her life. Peter’s funeral. Her father’s hospital bed and now.
“Easy, Holly.” She jumped. When had Niol moved to her side? He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. “Easy, love.”
Shit, she was crying, too.
One hell of a night.
“You should have told me.” The rage was gone. Now she just felt tired. “I could have helped Peter, I could have—”
“You were a little girl.” Whispered. “There wasn’t anything you could do. I-I didn’t know, not until it was too late…”
Peter’s face flashed before her.
No.
Kelly licked her lips. “I-I don’t guess I need to ask how you—how you found out.” Her eyes darted to Niol.
“Holly’s not a half-breed.” He spoke with cold certainty, but his hold on her was warm. “Not you. Not her father—”
“Her grandmother.” She looked so frail then. So small. “George’s mother was a-a demon.” Her gaze turned back to Holly. “I swear, baby, I didn’t know what she was. She died before I married your father and he seemed so normal. I-I thought he was. Until Peter…”
A swallow. Loud in the quiet room. “George thought you were both just like him, that the demon trait or gene—or whatever the hell it is—had just passed you by. God, baby, I prayed it had passed you by.”
Her head pounded. “You knew and you let Peter—”
“I did everything I could for Peter! I loved him! He was my son! Mine! Demon, human—it didn’t matter!”
She’d never heard such passion in her mother’s voice.
“I sent him to doctors. One after the other. For days. Months. They tried every treatment, every therapy but nothing worked. He slipped away from me while I watched because nothing worked.”
My boy’s goin’ into the dark.
And it was happening again.
“Then he left me and I was so scared you’d leave me, too.”
So she’d started to shut me out. “You weren’t ever going to tell me, were you?”
A shake of her mother’s head. “I just prayed you weren’t—”
Like him.
A fist squeezed her heart. A cold, clammy fist that just tightened and tightened.
“Peter had a…sickness.” Niol, his voice softer, pitched with sadness. “We call it the Dark Touch in the demon world.”
Kelly’s lips trembled. “Could you—could you have helped my son?” A pause, so brief, then. “You’re strong. Some say maybe the strongest born this century.”
Well, that was a new one for Holly.
“Could you have helped him?”
Her mother’s words twisted with Jon’s. You got to help my boy.
Holly looked up at him, saw the clench of his jaw. “Not then. No, I couldn’t.”
Brutal honesty.
“But I’m sure as hell working to make sure no more kids go Dark.”
The fist eased its hold. Niol glanced down at her with eyes cloaked in so many shadows.
He looked worried. For her.
Niol pressed a kiss to her lips. “Talk to your mother. Get past this. It can’t eat you up anymore.”
He would know all about being destroyed from the inside.
His head inclined toward her mother. “Interesting meeting you, Mrs. Storm.”
Her mouth parted.
Then he walked away. Calm, slow steps. In moments, the door clicked closed behind him.
Holly stared at her mother. Two feet between them, but it sure seemed like so much more.
Do you hear the voices, Hol?
“He…he’s not what I expected.”
A cold-blooded killer. She knew that was what most people expected. “There’s more to Niol than just—” His reputation for death. “What you see and hear.”
Her mother crept forward, hesitated.
Holly couldn’t move.
“I didn’t know how to tell you. There weren’t any signs, I thought it had skipped you—”
It. There was no it. She was a demon. Blood, bones, and soul.
“You’re afraid of Niol.” Her voice sounded rusty. Of course, most folks were rightly afraid of Niol. “Are you—are you afraid of me, too?” Because of what I am.
Another inch forward. Her mother’s hands lifted, then fisted. “No.”
Holly wanted to believe that.
“I’m not afraid of you, baby. I love you.”
Holly couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard those words.
One more inch. “But I understand just how dangerous this world is, especially for you.” An inhalation of air that sounded too loud in the room. “I just want you to be safe.”
With a demon-hunter on the streets, that wasn’t going to be an easy order.
Her mother’s gaze searched hers. “You…care for him, don’t you?”
That damn fist was back, but Holly managed to nod.
“I saw it, in your eyes.”
Had Niol seen it, too?
“I always wanted you to be safe, with a man who’d protect you.” Her mouth lifted into the ghost of a smile. “Guess Niol knows how to protect what’s his, doesn’t he?”
Holly opened her mouth to answer and—
“He’d better,” he mother continued, that smile vanishing, “because if that demon lets anything happen to you, I’ll kill him.”
Then her mom threw her arms around her, squeezing so tightly that Holly struggled for breath.
Dr. Emily Drake sat behind her desk. Her gaze darted to her watch. Nine twenty-eight a.m. Her first appointment would be checking in soon. A charmer.
She liked the charmers. They were the most easygoing of the Other. Actually, most of their trouble usually came from their creature companions. Communication issues.
She tapped her pen against the top of the desk. Yes, her patient would be here any minute and she was glad for that fact because she needed a distraction.
She couldn’t get the demon-hunter case out of her head.
Colin had come to her just before dawn. Eyes stark, the scent of blood on his body. He’d told her about the young demon they’d found and the horror she’d endured. McNeal had already sent orders that as soon as the girl woke up, he wanted Emily in that hospital room with her.
But Emily did
n’t think Kim would be in the mood for talking right away. No, the rage and the fear would be too strong at first.
She’d survived. Barely.
The first victim to live through an attack by the hunter. She was lucky, but Emily wasn’t certain Kim would feel that way when her eyes finally opened. She didn’t know if—
Her office door swung open. Emily glanced up, pasting a smile on her face.
“I said you can’t go in there!” Vanessa’s voice, reaching shriek level.
But the man in her doorway didn’t flinch. His legs were braced apart, his arms loosely at his sides, and his black eyes zeroed in on her.
Niol.
Well, damn.
Her palms started to sweat. She hadn’t seen Niol in months. She’d stayed out of Paradise and he’d stayed out of her way. Fair enough arrangement.
She and Niol didn’t exactly have a good history between them.
And she knew that her wolf shifter lover really wanted to kick the demon’s ass.
“Tell the witch to back off.”
She wasn’t the least bit surprised that Niol knew about her assistant’s Other powers. The guy always seemed to know everything.
But he’d never come to her office before.
Emily rose to her feet and cast a glance at Vanessa. The woman was pale, with wide eyes—she knew about Niol’s reputation—but she wasn’t backing down.
“It’s okay. I can talk to Mr. Lapen for a few moments.” A glance at her watch, a deliberate and fake one this time. “My appointment will be here soon—”
A grunt. “Shaughnessy won’t be here today.” A smile that made the hair on her nape rise. “He had a…change of plans.”
Niol knew too much.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Treat my friends well, witch.”
His friends?
Oh, this couldn’t be good.
Vanessa gazed back at her and Emily managed a nod. Her glasses felt too tight, as if they were pinching her nose and a dull ache had begun behind her left eye.
Always happened around Niol. His power was so strong it seemed to lap at her.
The door closed with a soft click. Emily didn’t sit down and Niol just kept staring at her.