Familiar Stranger

by Michele Hauf

  “Oh, goddess,” Mersey said on a gasp under her breath.

  “Listen, Mersey, I know you think I’m all about the blasting and killing.”

  “And you’re not?” It was difficult to concentrate now that the demon’s name hummed in her brain.

  “Mostly, yes. And that I’m following you because I’ve been ordered.”

  “You’ve made that clear.”

  When he took her by the shoulders, the scent of him, overwhelming and spicy and tainted with remnants of their lovemaking, wouldn’t allow Mersey to step away. Her tough act faltered.

  “I’m concerned about you,” he said. “Every time we get together it’s like fireworks but then it leads to misunderstandings and someone storming out.”

  Plunging into him, she wrapped her arms about his chest. “I’m so confused,” she said. “There’s so much happening in my life right now. And we’ve only just met. But it feels like you’ve been waiting for me forever. I like you, Jack. But you keep sending me mixed signals.”

  “Me?” He stroked her hair. I possess you, the move said, as if she belonged to him. And that wasn’t a horrible thing to imagine. “I’ve been confused, too. What are we going to do?”

  “Truth only, Jack.”

  He nodded against her head. “I agree.”

  “You’re not hiding anything else? Because truth means putting it out there.”

  “Cross my heart. I’m a familiar. There, I said it. Feels weird though. Is there any way to control it? To get away from the demon’s influence?”

  “Not until the demon that tapped you releases you. I’m sorry, Jack.”

  “Take me home with you and we’ll work everything out.”

  “I can’t invite you into the Cadre, Jack. It’s against the rules.”

  “I understand. Really, I do. And I won’t force you. But would you…” He spread his palm under her breast to press flat to her ribs. “Could you invite me in here?”

  It must have taken a lot for him to ask such a thing. To expose himself like this to her. It felt good. It mirrored Mersey’s feelings. But that she’d snagged such a confession from the one man whom she shouldn’t have contact with disheartened her.

  She should not have anything to do with a P-Cell agent. But she’d meant it when she’d said it felt as though he’d always been waiting for her.

  “I…” How to completely give herself to him? She wanted to. But she couldn’t. Not when everything in the world currently plotted to put them at opposite sides.

  And not when she knew he could never truly be the one. Why hadn’t the rings tingled upon their first meeting? What was it about Jack Harris that she didn’t need protection?

  “I should go.”

  She pulled away from him, and in doing so, saw the crestfallen look on his face. Don’t look back. Turning, Mersey strode purposefully toward her car.

  “And don’t follow!” she called back. “Because if you do, you’ll get lost, and these woods are thick. Difficult to find one’s way out without a guide.”

  “We can’t avoid the truth forever, Mersey!”

  So now she was the one running from the truth?

  He’d follow. And he’d get lost. Jack was as stubborn as she was. Well, she had warned him. “I’ll see you…soon.”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  She returned to her car and slid behind the wheel. Jack revved the engine as she sat there. “Be gentle with him,” she said to the guardian demons that protected the borderlands from unwelcome visitors.

  This exposing-his-feelings thing was so new to him. He couldn’t be doing it right. Every time he opened his heart a little more for the woman, she ran. What was he doing wrong?

  Jack slammed his palm against the steering wheel as he shifted into gear and began to follow the white Volkswagen.

  “Cheeky bird.” He tracked Mersey easily as they traveled through the forest.

  She had said she’d liked him, too, and in doing so, had reached into his heart and pulled out the truth. Mersey would not allow Jack to shrink back from his emotions. She had earned his respect. Now, he hoped to earn hers.

  The fact they worked for opposing organizations? A trifle. Of course, any and all reports Jack brought back to P-Cell about the Cadre would ultimately affect Mersey. He didn’t want to get her in trouble; yet, he had never in his career turned his back on a direct order. What he needed was more information. What was P-Cell’s reason behind locating the Cadre headquarters? P-Cell wasn’t against humans studying OEs, unless those humans were aiding the denizens of the dark realm. If P-Cell believed the Cadre to harbor dangerous OEs, then of course, he would enter and eradicate the situation.

  The road was lined to the verge with tall, flaky birch and twisted oaks. Very little moonlight passed through the leafy canopy. A few thick snowflakes buffeted his windshield.

  Jack braked gently. Snow? This time of year? It had snowed in September before—when he was a teenager—but more like a light flurry than actual flakes.

  “This is unusual.”

  Maybe it was ash flakes? Was there a fire in the forest? He bent to study the sky above the treetops but the dark canopy did not emit moonlight.

  The snow began to pick up. The glare of Mersey’s red taillights flickered as she turned a curve in the road.

  Reaching to flick on the heat, Jack couldn’t believe how quickly it had become cold. He hadn’t had the heater running since last winter and the thing huffed and hissed out musty air. “What the bloody…”

  Clicking on the wipers spread the thick, wet snow across the windshield. It quickly became a blizzard. Except that blizzards were usually small, icy bits of snow, not this huge fluffy stuff forming on the car’s bonnet even as he drove a good clip.

  Said clip rapidly slowing. Jack slowed the Range Rover to twenty miles per hour and scanned the road. No sign of Mersey’s VW. He stepped on the gas. The car swerved and the tires couldn’t find traction. Before he could turn back into the skid, the back tires slipped and the car slid off the road. His door hit the line of trees with a forceful crash. Jack plunged to the passenger side to throw off the impact.

  He pushed open the passenger door and scrambled outside. Snow pelted his shoulders and head. He wore a thin summer sweater, and tugged down the three quarter–length sleeves, but it did little against the insistent chill.

  His research on the Cadre had turned up something about the woods being enchanted. Outsiders could never access the Cadre, no matter their methods.

  “So this is the best you can do?” he called out to the sky. “You’re not scaring me off. I can wait!”

  He got back inside and closed the door. The atmosphere had changed. The heater couldn’t have warmed up the car so quickly, nor made it feel so…humid. Jack twisted about and peered into the backseat.

  “Thought I smelled something niffy.”

  Two red eyes materialized in the backseat and offered Jack a deadly yellow grin.

  Mersey tossed the wet towel she’d used to dry her hair into the laundry basket. Plopping onto the bed, she stared up at the ceiling. A shard of amethyst sat on her nightstand and she placed it upon her forehead, over her third eye. It was a catalyst to meditation, a method she’d learned during her studies on how to utilize crystals in healing and healthful living.

  Tomorrow morning she would have to confess to Lady Aurora that she had picked up a curious P-Cell operative. It was the right thing to do. It would probably result in Mersey being taken off the London retrieval job, or worse, expulsion. The Cadre was very firm on its secrecy. Could she risk not seeing Jack again?

  Would you invite me in here?

  Touching the spot below her breast where he’d made an indelible impression, Mersey closed her eyes and sighed. It still lived there, the dark glimmer that had surrounded her heart the first night she’d met Jack Harris in the warehouse.

  And now he’d asked her to open her heart to him. It all sounded so romantic, and certainly she wanted romance and to have a man car
e for her. And to make love to her. Again. It was what she needed—a hero. But he wasn’t the one.

  She held up her right hand and moved the remaining rings up and down her fingers.

  Why couldn’t she simply fall to her desires? It wasn’t as though she believed her mother’s portent would come true. If there was a man out there looking for her, surely he would have found her by now. Catching the amethyst in a palm, Mersey slid off the bed and leaned before the vanity where the etched mirror held a snapshot of her mother and father, always witness to her moods.

  As green as emeralds, her father had once remarked on the color of her and her mother’s eyes. Reflecting all the treasures of the world. Straightening, she hooked her fingers at the neck of her T-shirt and tugged it down to expose the top of her left breast. There, the crescent-shaped witch mark she’d had since birth beamed a bright red. When Jack had touched her there, she had flown.

  She wanted that experience again. And only from Jack. Because she did feel safe with him, protected. Desirous. Giddy. Angry. Intrigued. Enchanted.

  “Oh, my goddess, is this love?”

  Jack woke with a shiver. He sat up quickly, his limbs shooting out for balance and not hitting any obstructions. He wasn’t in the Rover, buried bonnet-deep in a freak snowstorm. It wasn’t cold, nor did a demon sit in his backseat, gnashing its sharpened grimace.

  He touched the cotton sheets. Warm, slept in. This wasn’t a dream. He wore but his boxer briefs. The clothes he’d worn earlier were neatly folded on the dresser to his right.

  Folded? Had he? Or someone else? Something else?

  He glanced to the floor where his toppled boots sat. A dark puddle of dirty snow seeped into the carpet. Beside them lay his car keys. He’d driven home?

  “Why can’t I remember?”

  He twisted to eye the digital alarm clock—7:00 a.m. He’d last been in the forest after midnight. There was no date function. He sure hoped he hadn’t lost any days.

  Scrambling out of bed, he dashed into the living room to check the date on the answering machine, but he didn’t make it that far. Seated on his couch, and brandishing the M4 carbine rifle, sat the dread demon.

  Beryth grinned a decadent sneer. “We’ve some talking to do, Jack.”

  Chapter 19

  T his was the demon Mersey had seen in his eyes. Brave woman. To not have fled at the sight.

  Certainly, as a familiar, Mersey must have seen many in her days. Brimstone suffused the room. Beryth appeared in human form, though the limbs and face were hardly humane. The flesh remained leathery red and the tight red muscled brows protruded over blackest eyes without a hint of white in the orbs. Though it wore a black suit, the shoulders bulged along the seams to the thick neck. Horns along the shoulder bone? Razored spikes? Likely both.

  The demon sat with crossed legs. Thin legs ended in overlarge brown leather shoes, the toes bulging as if stuffed with appendages not meant to be enclosed.

  A woozy trickle rode Jack’s scalp. He tried to keep his focus on the M4 in the demon’s grip. No disguise there. The red fingers were multijointed and tipped in long black talons. One clawed appendage tapped the trigger.

  The scar on Jack’s chest burned. He didn’t want to react, to slap his hand over the itching reminder of his bond to this creature, so he clenched his fingers into fists near his thighs.

  Closest weapon was down the hallway in the cubby. The demon might blast him to bits before Jack could dash out of the living room. Worth the risk. Besides, what could a salt grenade do to mortal flesh, beyond tear it? Unless the demon aimed the shot right for Jack’s heart.

  “So talk,” Jack offered. “What do you want from me?”

  “I’ve already explained, I need you to gain access to the Cadre. Thus far you have failed miserably. Is this the skill and cunning that saw you inducted into the spook trade?”

  “If you know so much, why not apport into the Cadre yourself?”

  “There are supernatural barriers about the insufferable place. A glamour to keep the uninitiated out—or rather, the ostracized. Though the forest does provide a neutral ground, I can only enter if my familiar is there first.”

  “Ostracized?” Jack questioned.

  The demon jerked its head dismissively. “I was once a favored consultant to the bloody ingrates. Until I was falsely accused of murder.”

  “False? I’ve witnessed your crime, Beryth. There was nothing whatsoever false about it.”

  “Ah, my unknowing familiar. You’ve just now figured we’re attached?”

  Why answer the obvious?

  “Want to kill me, Jack?”

  “More than I wish to live.”

  “Ah, so heroic.”

  “I’m no one’s hero.”

  “Ooo, a hero. Is that what she thinks of you? Poor girl. She’ll be tragically disappointed. I suppose you’re biding your time, marking the perfect moment when you’ll have the kill shot.” Beryth lifted the gun and aimed.

  Right for Jack’s heart.

  Jack stretched back his shoulders, lifting his chest. He avoided the demon’s gaze—there lay madness—instead focusing on the glisten of black talon that tapped the trigger.

  Against all better judgment, Jack took a step forward. He didn’t want to move and yet his left foot stepped again. He moved until he pressed his chest right into the gun barrel. He winced at the cut of hard steel into his flesh.

  Much as he wanted to slap away the danger, to step back, he could not. His fingers clenched, shaking as he tried to resist. Sweat pearled down his scalp.

  “You. Are. Mine,” Beryth said in a deep, hollow voice, void of humanity.

  “It is dread you crave, and dread you shall have.”

  “I don’t crave it,” Jack spat out.

  “Ah, but you do. It is what called me to the warehouse. Your dread over the woman.”

  “I didn’t feel that dread until I saw you rip out her heart. You were there first.”

  “Just so.” The demon grinned. “You know it cost a fortune to have a passage opened. Had to trade a pact of never-ending malice to get those ridiculous sidhe to work the spell.”

  “So I didn’t lead you here.”

  “Yes and no. I’ve had my eye on you for a long time, Jack the Demon Frightener.”

  The only other time Jack had heard that moniker was from the woman in the field when he was a child. And yet, he’d thought of it ever after.

  “You know, Jack, I can make you reach down and pull the trigger, if I so wish.”

  Cringing against the movement of his hand, up, toward the rifle, Jack spat out, “Go ahead! Blast me to bits. Then who will lead you into the Cadre?”

  “You’ll do it?” The gun barrel fell from his chest. The persuasion released, Jack stumbled backward. The demon set the M4 aside on the couch, picked up the glass ball and tossed it a few times. The glass hit its red leathery palm with a smack. “No more mistakes?”

  “’Course not.” Catching his palms on his knees, Jack heaved against the exertion that had been required to keep from touching the trigger.

  “Whatever you want.” Arsehole. “But it’ll take some time. She’s not going to lead me in.”

  He didn’t mean a word of it, but appeasing the beast required the lie.

  “She will, Jack. You just have to step up the seduction. Shall I send another lust demon?”

  “Sodding hell, that was you?”

  “One of my many minions. Though you didn’t seem to have difficulty yesterday evening. She does purr sweetly when she comes.” The demon held the ball up to the lamplight, considering. “You are aware this thing has no power, Jack.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Oh, I’ll fuck something. Something that means the world to you. Like she did.”

  Fighting the rising dread, Jack tried to remain impartial, to not give the demon any fuel. Is that how it held its connection to this realm? By committing heinous acts and feeding on the dread of tapped familiars, like him?

  “Our comi
ng together wasn’t coincidental,” Beryth said. “It’s never random, Jack. You led me to her.”

  Jack shook his head vigorously.

  “You once gave up on believing. Remember that, Jack, boy? When you thought to cause oh, so many horrors? But then this thing brought back the belief.” It tossed the ball high, almost touching the ceiling. It landed in Beryth’s palm with a hollow smack. “You remember now, what it’s like to believe. To know? To feel? To believe in dreadsome nightmares and all that cannot be altered? I merely followed that belief. Her heart was…delicious.”

  “Damn you!”

  “Good, Jack. Let it all out. Soon enough you won’t need me.”

  “I never asked for you. I didn’t call you to me!”

  The demon tilted its horned head. It had begun to change, to become more grotesquely exaggerated in every portion of its structure. The suit seams began to rip away over the expanding red muscles.

  “You did, Jack. I have breathed in your dread, and I find it most tasty. Catch.”

  It tossed the ball and Jack caught it. His flesh smoked and he dropped the thing onto the carpeted floor. Welts formed instantly on his palms.

  “I’ll be watching you.” A talon snapped out and tipped Jack beneath the chin. He felt his flesh open and out oozed the dusty scent of blood. “If you do not please me, Demon Frightener, well then…I shall have to break the lovely Miss Bane’s neck.”

  The beast twisted its claws to demonstrate the breaking of a human neck.

  “You’re not thinking this through correctly, Beryth. With both Mersey and I dead, then how will you get inside?”

  “There’s more than one mortal in this world. Dread abounds. I’ve merely to tap into it.”

  “What is it inside the Cadre that you need?”

  “What I want is revenge. What I need no longer exists. The Cadre is responsible for that. They will suffer, one and all of them. Including your Mersey.”

  Muscles tight and pulsing, the sweat rolled from Jack’s head and chest. Again, the response was uncontrollable. He really was the demon’s bitch. Better that way. That meant there was not an innocent mortal having to deal with this monster.