Deliver Me from Temptation

by Tes Hilaire

  He didn’t get it. Mr. Hastings’ credentials had checked out and though he didn’t take on many cases there were a few on record. By all appearances, he seemed legit.

  Frustrated, Mike exited the building, got in his beat-up Corolla, and drove to the station. He was so damn tired. A fact he blamed on his errant partner. He should have known better than to leave her to her own devices, but he’d been pissed and needed the space. He wasn’t sure what pissed him off more: that she went out without him and got injured or that her little adventure had been somewhat fruitful. He’d found witnesses who said a certain red Mustang had been sitting in that spot for ages, but by the time he got the warrant and went inside the garage, there was no Mustang. Just an empty spot and a wet oil drip. Mike ordered the scene processed anyway, despite the fact that he didn’t expect anything to come of it. Definitely frustrating. Though not nearly as frustrating as the disappearing act his partner had done.

  Mike had tried to call Jessica and tell her the good news/bad news but she wasn’t answering her damn phone. Nor had she called. He’d headed back to the station with the hope that her cell phone was dead and she’d headed in or had at least checked in and left a message for him there, but she hadn’t. He then tried her home again, even stayed well into the night, making phone calls and promising all kinds of favors to get first priority on their crime scene samples, which sucked seeing how it made almost forty-eight hours with practically no sleep. His frustration over the case had kept him up the first night, and his new worry over Jessica kept him up a good portion of the second, eventually driving him back to the station a good three hours before he was officially on the clock.

  Oh the joys of being a cop.

  He pushed through the back doors of the station, and was blasted with the stale heat of sweaty cop, burnt coffee, and desperation. The thermostat was broken again. Oh yeah.

  He removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and headed back through the narrow walkway to his desk. A mountain of sticky notes and jagged-edged notebook paper stared back at him: the research he’d done between all those phone calls last night. He’d meant to file them, but practically fell asleep on them instead, so he just shoved them into a pile on his way out.

  Grunting, he slid into the seat, waited for the antiquated chunk of machinery that masqueraded as a computer to boot up, then started transferring the various notes into something resembling a cohesive report. He knew Jessica’s focus had shifted after seeing Tom’s car in the garage, but he couldn’t help but feel their original suspect was still the best. Something about Roland set his teeth on edge, as did the man’s lawyer. That niggling feeling is what sent him digging up what he could on Alexander Hastings. Mike honestly hadn’t thought to check out the friend, Mr. Calhoun, having not had any interaction with him until a comment from Jessica tweaked his interest. According to Jess, Mr. Calhoun was related to their suspect by marriage. Only, from what Mike had dug up, Ms. Donovan didn’t have any siblings. Though wasn’t she a person of interest herself?

  On paper, Karissa Donovan looked like a victim of life: orphaned at a young age, taken in by her grandparents, one of whom had passed while she was still quite young. She adjusted well enough, going to college, working at the phone company, until one day almost two months ago when she up and disappeared. It was a week before a missing persons report was filed—by the employer—and her home was searched, revealing a scene that indicated horrific violence. Miss Donovan popped up a few weeks later. Telling the police she’d come home one night and been attacked. She managed to get away, but ran. According to the lead detective’s notes, her grief had seemed genuine with regard to her grandfather’s disappearance, and the fact he was presumed dead. So the case was still open with little to go on and a staggeringly small pool of suspects. Which, gee, sounded familiar, didn’t it?

  More ironic? Ms. Donovan met her husband during the panicked flight, and, more interestingly, they weren’t actually married in the legal sense but through some obscure religious ceremony. Unusual and suspicious. And the biggest common thread? Their suspect. A suspect Jessica no longer liked for the crime.

  Mike tapped the desk with his knuckles, shaking his head. Compared to his supposed sister and best friend, Logan Calhoun was downright boring. An expert on antiquities—namely religious artifacts—his background was almost as obscure, yet just as squeaky clean as his lawyer pal’s. Mike didn’t trust squeaky clean. Especially not on men who looked like they could kick the collective asses of the NYPD.

  With a curse, Mike saved the file and started the computer on its molasses-paced shutdown routine. He left the thing chugging ominously and stalked over to Damon’s desk, ignoring the itchy tingle at the back of the neck. What Jessica saw in the guy, Mike would never understand. Mike didn’t like the man. Didn’t like how he did his job. Didn’t like how he slinked around the edges of a room listening in on others’ conversations or how he plastered on that cocky grin and sweet talked his way around to get whatever he wanted. Most of all, Mike didn’t like how the man shuttered up when Mike was around, making excuses almost immediately that would take him anywhere else.

  Probably realizes there’s something off about me, too. Probably feels threatened by it, even if he’s not sure what that something is.

  Didn’t matter. Damon wasn’t the first to feel that way. Hell, his parents kicked him out with nothing but what he could carry in his backpack. No biggie. He’d managed to repress the something that was within him all on his own. Had made a life for himself despite it, though, damn, sometimes that life was lonely.

  Especially when the one person in the station who he even halfway considered a friend was trying to get herself killed.

  “You see Jess recently?” Mike demanded as he ground to a halt before Damon’s desk.

  The other detective didn’t look up, though his pen hesitated on the report he was filling out. “Nope. Not since Wednesday.”

  Wednesday morning was when she missed her meet and greet, and the presumed time their latest stiff had died. Mike stifled another wave of frustration. He still couldn’t believe she went into that part of town, at that hour, for something that involved their case and didn’t call him. When he was assigned to work with her, he was warned that she had a string of less than admirable partners, which might impede her desire to work with another one. She also had a reputation for being headstrong and an equally big one for worming her way into and out of some really shit-fan-level situations. But to cut him out of their case?

  Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Jessica, having been forced to partner with him for over a month, had begun to sense that there was something not right about him. Maybe she was cutting him off not because she was a damn stubborn fool, but because she didn’t want to be in his presence.

  Well, that was fine. But like it or not he was her partner and he’d be damned if he allowed her to run off alone and get herself killed.

  Damon shifted back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head, the movement easygoing in contrast to the tension around his jaw. “What’s up? Why you asking?”

  Mike ignored that. “What time did you see her that day?”

  There was a flicker of something in the man’s dark—and frankly creepy—eyes, but then he shrugged. “Morning. After my shift. We were supposed to go to breakfast but she’d had a late night and wasn’t up for it.”

  A late night, huh? More like she’d spent all night waiting for a dead guy. Mike debated saying anything. Taking out the fact that Damon had always rubbed him wrong, he was a cop. Anyone else probably wouldn’t hesitate to enlist Damon’s help on something like this, but Mike did. He’d seen him in action once and something in those dark, normally fathomless eyes, had sparked…like he enjoyed the violence. Then again, who was Mike to talk? He climbed the ranks working undercover in narcotics. One had to be an adrenaline junkie to make it there.

  Or have a death wish.

>   “Why? What did Jess do now?”

  Mike’s jaw hardened, not liking the implication that his partner had a penchant for trouble. Sure, he’d thought it himself, but he was her partner, not her supposed boyfriend. Whatever. What Damon thought wasn’t Mike’s problem, it was Jessica’s if she actually wanted to get serious with this guy.

  “Sorry, that came across wrong, didn’t it?” Damon flashed him a repentant grin. “She’s an excellent detective. Just sometimes too absorbed in getting her man. Of course, that’s the jealous boyfriend in me talking.”

  Mike grunted and decided to give the guy a break. Jessica wouldn’t be easy to date. Idly, he wondered if Damon had even seen Jessica since her misadventure last night. Probably not. Not if he was sitting there joking about her getting into trouble.

  The grin slid from Damon’s face, his brow furrowing as he sat up straighter in his chair. “Why all the questions about Jess? What’s going on, Mike?”

  Mike sighed, settling into the seat across from him. “I’m worried about her, Damon. I think you’re right, she’s gotten into something and this time she might just be in over her head.”

  ***

  Jessica remembered everything.

  Logan scrubbed his face with his hands, knowing the time to stall was long past. It was his own damn fault he was in this situation. He knew what had done it, of course, what it was that finally broke down the last of the memory shield he’d put on her. Unlike a pair bond that needed ceremonies and rituals to form a connection, those who were mate bonded could hide nothing from one another—their emotions, their thoughts echoing through the bond, becoming stronger and more pronounced the longer they were together. And though he’d yet to actually perform the bonding ceremony that would bind their souls together for eternity, there was no denying they were meant to be.

  He shouldn’t have touched her. One kiss and everything was fucked.

  Not that he could have resisted. When she’d spoken of that Mike guy his entire body had tightened, adrenaline pumping through him, overpowering him with the urge to go out and pound something—this Mike had come to mind—and then return to his woman and go all caveman on her.

  He was a little bit more sophisticated than that. Not much, but a little. So though he didn’t grab her by her hair and drag her back to his cave, he had to prove she was his. Hence the stupid challenge. Kiss me. As if he didn’t know what that would lead to.

  From the first moment he saw her he’d been acting irrational. But that hardly compared with how he felt after their night together. Because no matter how beautiful he thought she was before, having locked gazes with her as she came undone in his arms…damn, he’d never seen a sexier woman in his life. And he knew he never would again.

  He couldn’t, wouldn’t lose her.

  Which meant, duty be damned, he was going to have to tell her the truth.

  But how did you tell someone something like that? Where did he start?

  “Nothing to say?” she asked, as if she could read his mind and knew he was having trouble coming up with the words. And though he sincerely doubted the reading his mind bit, he wouldn’t be surprised if she could sense his frustration. She may be human but he was a full Paladin. It would figure that his emotions were pressing at her from across their bond—even if it wasn’t completely formed yet.

  Or maybe she was just astute. Probably had to be, being a cop.

  “It’s kind of a hard thing to explain.”

  She folded her arms across her chest, her eyebrows rising. “How about you start with the woman. You know, the one that you weren’t chasing.”

  “I never said I wasn’t chasing her.”

  “You said—”

  “That I wasn’t chasing a helpless woman. Emphasis on the word helpless.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded her head. “Go on.”

  “Actually she wasn’t exactly a woman either. Female certainly. And one of his. Other than that I’m not sure what she was. Part succubus certainly but there must have been something else there for her to be so strong.”

  “Succubus? One of his?” She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

  He took a deep breath, silently cursing his inarticulate tongue. He obviously wasn’t going to be able to do this with any finesse so…Band-Aid method. “I’m talking about demons. And Lucifer. Though you probably know him better as the devil.”

  She blinked her eyes, her mouth opening and closing a couple times before she swallowed, hard. “Demons.”

  “Among other things.”

  “Wow. Okay then. Thanks for that because…” she coughed, “uh, that explains everything.”

  Her gaze traveled frantically around the room, landing on the clock. “Oh gee, look at the time. I’m going to be late…again.” She smiled at him, all big and bright and fake. “I have your number though, so I’ll give you a call later, ’kay?”

  Logan frowned at her. He wasn’t a fool, and that was the most tired line in the history of the world.

  Her smile slipped a bit. She pulled the sheet tighter, shifting on the bed so her foot was planted on the mattress, ready to make a break for it, or just as likely, try and kick him in the head. He laid a hand on her knee, causing her to jump a bit and suck in her breath. But at least she didn’t go for the knock out.

  “Five minutes. That’s all I ask.”

  He could feel the tension in her leg muscles as she studied him, her gaze traveling over his face and settling on his eyes. Something she saw there must have reassured her because she eased back down to a more comfortable position on the bed.

  “Okay. Five minutes starting now.”

  “Good.” He took a deep breath. “You see…”

  He trailed off, because the truth was, she couldn’t see, and that was part of the problem. She was human and had no ability to sense the otherworldly creatures around her. And he knew, just knew, that no matter what he said it wasn’t going to matter because no sane person, even having had some of those creatures reveal themselves, was going to believe him. They’d pass it off as a dream, or a hallucination, or even their own insanity, but there was something about the human psyche that would not allow them to believe. And with Jessica’s cynical view of God and divine judgment? Yeah, he was so screwed.

  She stared at him expectantly. The clock ticking its irreversible countdown across the room. And he was at a loss of words.

  Something hard and horrible tasting rose in his throat. It took him a moment to understand what it was: despair. Because even if he could convince her—which was looking doubtful—it didn’t matter whether she believed. Belief, acceptance. What did either of those things really fucking matter? He’d have what? Twenty? Forty? If he was damn lucky maybe sixty years with her?

  She was human. Sooner or later she was going to die.

  But I have her now. I have her this moment. And damn if I’m not going to fight for another.

  As he grasped on to the thought he closed his eyes, drawing to him the memories of their night together. The average female in this country had eighty years or more. That meant that if he could keep her safe, fifty-four of hers could be with him. Piddling really, but calculated out that meant he could have her for 19,710 days which equaled 473,040 hours or, still further, 28,382,400 moments. And that number didn’t seem nearly so bad.

  “I know it’s hard to believe,” he began. “But there are demons. Just as there is a devil.”

  He opened his eyes, knowing his eyes shone, and that if she looked, she would note that his skin glowed as well. She didn’t gasp or scream or say anything, but she sat before him, her eyes wide and round, the sheet clenched tightly in her hands, one hand raised slightly over the other. Yup, that was his little warrior, confronted with a possible threat, she brought out the fists.

  “The good news is there is als
o a God and even though He can’t help directly for fear of freeing Lucifer from his banishment, He cares enough to have sent His angels to help.”

  Logan lifted his hand, curling his fingers through the air as if circling a ball. Pulling the light, he formed a globe of light in that space of air. The gesture wasn’t needed, of course, but he wanted to emphasize the fact that he did it so that later, when she began to doubt what she’d seen, she’d have no choice but to admit that he was the cause of it.

  This time she did gasp, her chest rising and falling in time to the pulsing flutter at the base of her throat. He hated that he was the cause of her anxiety but could see no other way.

  She had to believe. She had to understand. Because no matter what she might wish or what his father would claim was his duty, Logan would not block her memories again.

  Not when it meant abandoning her. Not when it meant cutting himself completely from her life.

  “How did you…What is it?” Her voice was trembling, but there was a quality of awe to it that gave him some hope. If she could open her mind to what most humans would consider to be impossible, then they had a chance.

  “Touch it. It won’t hurt you.”

  She reached out tentatively, like a child trying to touch a bubble. When her fingertips met the light it fluxed, shining brighter. She jerked her hand back, and rubbed her fingers.

  He frowned. “It shouldn’t have hurt.”

  She shook her head. “It didn’t. Not really. It tingles though. Kind of felt like an electrical zap.” She frowned. “Actually, it kind of felt like when you first touched me.”