by Tes Hilaire
And for that, both it and its master were going to pay.
“Tell your master no one touches my woman.” He laid his hand on the creature’s chest. “Now, go rot in Hell.”
Chapter 8
Logan didn’t bother to watch as the creature beneath him melted into the oily tar substance of Hell’s black lakes and began to seep into the cement floor. The center of his focus was the prone woman who lay five yards away. Her eyes were no longer open and she looked so…still.
He lurched up and then stumbled back to his knees beside her, his innate Paladin grace stolen with a mix of fear and fatigue.
“Jessica…Jessica!” He pressed his fingers against her throat, panicking a bit when, at first, he didn’t feel the reedy pulse, but when he did he sagged with relief, rubbing his face with one hand. “Damn it, Jessica. You scared me.”
She was alive, but unconscious. The question was what did that mean? What sort of damage had the demon managed?
He touched her cheek, wincing at the abraded skin beneath the layer of sticky blood. It was a nasty looking wound, but one that should heal fine with a bit of cleaning and ointment. No, it was her internal injuries he worried about. Most specifically what Lucifer’s creature might’ve done to her soul.
“Goddamn it!” What should he do? Logan had no idea how to measure that sort of injury. The Paladin had no healers anymore and this was not something a human doctor could fix. The only person who he dared call who had the ability to see how extensive the taint of evil might be was…
“God save us both.”
***
Logan whipped into an open street spot near his brownstone in Greenpoint. The windows were lit, indicating his guest had already let himself in. The door opened, the spilling light outlining the one brother he never thought he’d willingly call upon: Valin. The Black Knight folded his arms, tilting his head as he watched Logan extract Jessica from the passenger’s side seatbelt.
“My, my. Isn’t this becoming a habit?” he said when Logan drew near with his burden.
Logan grunted.
“So what exactly happened?” Valin asked, moving back to let Logan into his own home. “You were a little vague on the details.”
Logan had been too concerned with getting Jess away from the garage and into someplace warded to bother filling in Valin. The newest attack left his mind swirling. It wasn’t often demons paired with vampires and set an ambush for a human. Not without the go-ahead from Ganelon or Lucifer himself. The thought sent Logan’s protective instincts into overdrive.
“It involves a demon,” he told Valin when the front door was closed.
“A demon this time?” Valin’s brow rose. “What is it about your cop that would cause so much interest?” He reached out, running a caressing thumb from Jessica’s temple down to her lips.
“Back off,” Logan warned, his grip tightening on Jessica, drawing her closer to him.
Valin jerked his head up in surprise, his eyes narrowing. “Interesting indeed.”
Logan’s reacted with a growl that rumbled in his rib cage, his lips pulling back in a snarl.
Valin took a step back, smart man that he was, and folded his arms across his chest, his easy tone belying the tension in his body. “You sure you want me doing this, Lite-Brite? I am going to have to touch her, you know.”
Lite-Brite? Logan glanced down at himself. Damn, he was glowing. He drew in a deep breath, centering himself as he carried Jess to the bedroom and put her into his bed.
Valin hovered in the doorway. “So, I gotta ask, why’d you come to me?”
Logan shrugged. “I needed someone who could read the darkness in a person’s essence.”
“And I was the top of your list?” Valin scoffed. “How flattering.”
Well no, but everyone else was out for various reasons. “Valin. We don’t have time for this.”
“Right.” Valin pushed off the door frame, stepping over to the bed. “And right now you need my help. Or rather, she does.”
Logan nodded, then gritted his teeth as he watched Valin run his hand over Jessica’s face and down her neck. Valin grunted, removing his hand and folding his arms across his chest. Long seconds dragged out while Logan anxiously waited for Valin’s assessment, but all the Paladin did was spend those moments staring first fixedly down at the occupant of the bed, then up at Logan.
“Well? Do you sense any darkness in her?” Logan demanded after one such scrutinizing stare at Jessica ended with Valin pulling at his bottom lip thoughtfully as he glanced over at Logan.
“Well, she’s not housing any demons.” Valin dropped his hand, folding his arms again. “So I’m assuming they didn’t have any sort of lengthy chat.”
Logan sighed, his muscles tightening with his remembered failure. If only that were true. He dived into the story, filling Valin in on why he’d followed Jessica and then how he came to realize he wasn’t the only one doing so. Logan glazed over his fight with the vampires, only filling in enough to tell Valin how he’d been busy with them when the demon appeared and sank its claws into Jessica…literally.
Valin sucked in a breath.
“What is it?” Logan asked anxiously.
Valin reached out again, his eyes narrowed as he pushed back the sleeve of Jessica’s jacket to get a good look at the puckered wounds in her arm. They weren’t deep, just angry looking. “How long was the demon attack then?”
“Too long. I couldn’t focus to pull enough light and—”
Valin looked at him sharply. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. I guess I panicked and then I was too angry.”
Valin’s brow winged up. Logan’s gut churned. If she suffered any permanent damage because of his failure…
A hand closed on his arm; he blinked at Valin, surprised by the contact. “It’s all right, Logan. She’s going to be okay.”
“How do you know?”
Valin dropped his hand, stepping back quickly as if he too had been shocked by his action. “Because there’s nothing really wrong with her. Bumps and bruises, cuts and scrapes.”
“Then why is she still unconscious?” Logan snapped, his voice, empowered by fear, lashed out like a whip through the room.
Valin stiffened, darkness fuzzing the edges of his figure. Almost as quickly, his edges solidified as a look, suspiciously like compassion, crossed his face.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what? This?” Valin opened his mouth, de-solidifying the soft tissue of his face so that, for a split second, he looked amazingly like an Etch-A-Sketch rendition of a screaming skull.
Logan took another handful of deep breaths. Trust Valin to be a dick. Normally Logan didn’t stoop to his level, but obviously tonight he was giving Valin a run for his money as five-year-old of the year. “Sorry. I just don’t understand this.”
Valin shrugged, taking back up his cross-arm pose. “Not sure I do either. But I suspect she’s unconscious because she’s undergone a traumatizing ordeal. Her soul was attacked by a demon and the way she survived was to draw inward…as far as she could.”
Logan looked down at Jessica. She was so still, so pale. If he didn’t know better, if he hadn’t felt the faint pulse for himself, he would think she was dead.
“So,” he swallowed. “She just has to decide to peek back out?”
“Kind of.” Valin frowned, working his upper lip with his teeth. “Think of it as a concussion,” Valin went on. “Her soul has been bruised. Not bad enough for permanent injury. It will heal naturally. However, it’s going to take a little time.”
“How much?”
Valin shook his head. “Hell if I know. I’m not exactly a doctor.”
No, the Black Knight wasn’t. Quite the opposite in fact. It was his pair mate who’d been the Paladin equivalent of one. And she’d
died. She and Valin’s unborn child slaughtered by vampires.
God. It could have been Jessica’s fate too. If he hadn’t been following her. If he hadn’t snapped out of his panic.
He sat on the edge of the bed, carefully checking over Jessica’s hands, checking the abraded palms, then gently touched her jaw and cheek. “Did you bring the stuff I asked you to?”
“Yup.”
Valin turned and disappeared out the bedroom door. In less than a minute he returned, a plastic bag from the local drugstore dangling from his fingers. Logan took it from him and immediately starting digging stuff out. Hydrogen peroxide, iodine, ointment, bandages. Logan began cleaning the wounds, flinching each time new blood sprung up from her abrasions where they’d been hidden under the gravel and dirt.
“Are you going to let her wake up here?” Valin asked as Logan carefully set aside the jacket and gun holster he’d removed so he could better see the punctures on her arm.
Logan twisted to look at Valin, who’d moved back to one of his favorite spots—leaning in the doorframe. Logan never figured out if Valin did this because he liked options of escape or if he simply didn’t like being around other people that much and the doorway left him with the option of going or staying as he pleased.
“This is one of the safest places for her, barring Haven. And you know I can’t bring a human there.” Though, damn, he wished he could. But one had to have at least a drop of Paladin blood to reach Haven. Either that or Logan would have to remove the protective relic from its home in the sacred hall’s altar, which was something he’d never do. Not when it would mean Haven would fall from its perch between realms and solidly into this one. Talk about serving up his brothers on a platter.
“How far back did you take your wipe last night?” Valin asked.
Logan frowned down at her, unsettled by how pale she looked against his navy blankets. “Back to the moment we came along.”
“So she only knows you from the police station.”
Logan nodded. “And now this.”
Valin was silent, his gaze traveling from the patient in the bed back to Logan. “Maybe she shouldn’t remember this.”
Logan stilled, even his heart seemed to pause for a moment as the meaning of Valin’s statement fully sunk in. “You mean I should block her memory again.”
No, not block all her memory. There would be no explaining the cuts and bruising, so that meant Valin was suggesting Logan simply cut off her memories from the point where the vampire had first knocked her down, dazing her. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to convince her she’d fully blacked out. And then, something, or someone, came along, scaring off her attackers.
She just wouldn’t remember the someone was him.
And why did that bother him so much? He wasn’t a Paladin for the glory of it. Ego had no place in their order. In addition to being contrary to the character makeup of the angels they were descendant from, there were reasons why the Paladin did their best to remain low on the radar. Their fight against evil required a certain amount of secrecy to be effective. Humanity, as a whole, tended to cling to the logical and scientific. To swallow the whole concept of evil walking among them and the idea of heavenly warriors protecting them would be a stretch. There was a greater chance they’d be totally freaked out by their angelic saviors and would be as likely to persecute them as revere them.
Nope, being incognito was by far the best option, which meant the logical thing to do was to eliminate yet another portion of Jessica’s memory.
But then what would you do? Dump her back in that garage? Take the chance Ganelon might’ve already sent another demon after her?
“I’ll think on it,” he mumbled, knowing he wouldn’t. Knowing he’d already made up his mind. He was going to keep Jessica safe. No matter the cost.
Valin turned his gaze fully on Logan. “It’s what the council would call for.”
“You will not tell the council!” He didn’t even realize he’d leapt up and crossed the room until he found himself, one hand bunched in Valin’s shirt, the other arm pressed across his throat as he pinned the Black Knight to the doorframe.
“You’re glowing again,” Valin choked out, his gaze steady on Logan’s as he made no move to fight.
Logan blinked down at himself, surprised to see that Valin was right. He dropped his arm, stepping back as he quickly pulled in the power that was slipping out of him, capping off the pathway to His light. “Shit. Sorry.”
Valin shrugged, fixing the neckline of his shirt. “It’s okay. Not like it would hurt me. It’s just…”
Logan hung his head. Valin didn’t need to finish the sentence. It was just odd. And as alarming as his actions of a moment ago. Logan prided himself on his control and twice that night he’d lost it. Once back in the garage when his emotions had spiked, preventing him from drawing from His light, and now here when his emotions caused him to attack a brother without even realizing what he was doing.
Logan was not used to losing control. As future leader of the Paladin, he could not allow volatile emotions to screw with him and what needed to be done.
Valin’s softly spoken words interrupted his train of thought, drawing his attention back. “I’m just suggesting you think on it, Logan. Not telling you what you have to do.”
“You just said I should.”
“I said that the council would tell you to,” Valin pointed out, then with one last glance at Jessica shook his head and took himself out of the room.
Logan waited for the outer door to the brownstone to close before he sat back down on the edge of the bed, his fingers twining in the tight locks of silken hair spread over his pillow. The chest-punch reaction that her silky hair had on him was not good. Not at all.
Why? Why her? What was happening to him that this simple human, though admittedly beautiful and intriguing, could cause him to fuck up so badly?
Valin was right. It was his duty as a Paladin to ensure that who and what he was stayed secret. To do that, the demon must also stay secret. And if he were honest with himself, erasing her memory wouldn’t mean abandoning her to the wolves. He could easily drop her off at a hospital. Let her wake there thinking it was some anonymous Good Samaritan who’d brought her in. Really, did it matter who she believed saved her?
He fisted his hands. “Yes it does. Because it was me.”
It took him a moment to realize he’d said the thought aloud. He forced his hands open, rubbing them down his stubbled face. By even considering leaving her memories intact he was behaving selfishly and, worse, not thinking at all as the future leader of the Paladin should.
It shouldn’t matter what she thought of him. That it did meant one of two things. That he was either turning into an egotistical maniac who had no place leading his fellow Paladin or that… shit…she mattered too much.
Tell your master, no one touches my woman. It’s what he’d told the demon before he banished it. At the time he hadn’t thought much of what he’d meant by those words other than, of course, the implied stop fucking around with me and mine. But now?
His woman. As if there could be a bond. Which was not possible. She was human. With almost three hundred years under his belt, Logan had taken human lovers before. Some gifted, some not, but none recently. And none of them had drawn out these kinds of visceral and primitive reactions from him. He ached with the need to curl up with her in his arms, feel her warmth sink into him, the beat of her heart, and shift of her ribs assuring him of her health. And they hadn’t done more than flirt over candy bars—and that had ended with an exchange of wary glares.
Logan had had pairings with humans—compatibility pairings, pairings from desire, some that were truly based on love if only in a very simple human form. But a full bond? A true mating where they shared every aspect of their body, heart, and soul?
Only one other Paladi
n had bonded fully to a human mate. And look what happened to him.
Insanity followed by a betrayal excused as revenge. That man sat by Lucifer’s side now.
Ganelon’s spiral into insanity had started before his mate’s death, though. His unyielding drive to “save” her turned him again and again to the path of darkness. But nothing he did worked. She still died. And though Ganelon seemed to accept it on the surface, deep within laid a barren wasteland of anger, hatred, and greed, those emotions eventually leading to the moment he fully turned his back on both the order and his God.
Ganelon’s betrayal became a lesson to all Paladin: Serve God’s children, but don’t become attached to the point where one could be compromised. And always, always, hold one’s duty to the order first.
Logan sat back on the bed, forcing his hands away from Jessica as he looked up at the stucco ceiling.
“Why? Why would You ask this of me?”
Chapter 9
Jessica’s dreams were filled with nightmares. Dark parking garages, men who turned into creatures right out of a horror flick, and a web of evil that smothered both light and reason. She couldn’t fight that sort of thing. Didn’t know how.
And it really pissed her off.
She thrashed out, striking at the dark web that encased her, determined to shred her way out of the paralyzing blanket of terror. Understanding didn’t have to be part of survival.
Hands grabbed her shoulders, hot air branding her face. “—kay. I got you.”
Not for long. She arched up, hands pushing against the massive chest above her, a war cry worthy of Xena erupting from her throat as she tried to get enough room between her and her captor to inflict real damage. The hands on her arms shifted, and like solid bands of iron they clamped around her wrists forcing her arms above her head. A man’s body pressed down on her, entrapping, leaving no room to maneuver. Except for her head.
Unable to pinpoint more than a vague outline of the man in the dimness of the room, Jess went on instinct. She jerked her head forward as hard as she could, pain splitting through her skull and blurring her already compromised vision as her forehead connected with her attacker’s face.