by J. K. Beck
He slammed his fist against the molded plastic wall in frustration, then forced himself to be calm and to reach out again. Once again, he felt her need, felt her silently calling to him despite what her actual words had said.
He had just chosen her above everything else. No matter what she had voiced, he would not stay away.
He’d followed his own heart. Now, he would follow hers, too.
Swiftly, he transformed into mist, then slipped beneath the curtain into the cabin. She’d moved to a different seat, and her legs extended into the aisle. She wasn’t asleep, but she wasn’t truly awake, either.
They’d melded together before as mist upon mist, but now she was in her human form, and her flesh had power. Because of that, he didn’t stroke her skin, but twined himself around her body, over and around, slipping between her thighs and over the swell of her breasts.
He remained only over cloth, and stayed only as mist, but he knew when she felt him. When she realized he was there and that he was touching her, stroking her, taking her.
She moaned, a small smile coming to her lips, and he wanted to never see it leave. He wanted to tell her that whatever she’d thought before, she was wrong. He wouldn’t leave her any more than he would cut off his own limb.
He’d tell her now, though not with words. Instead with caresses, and soon he sensed the quickening of her pulse. The rise and fall of her breasts. The arousal and the pleasure.
With a soft sigh, she slipped one gloved hand between her legs, stroking herself through her jeans. The other hand cupped her breast, teasing and touching her nipple through the cotton.
He was only mist, but that didn’t ease the pull of desire. He craved her, wanted desperately to touch her, and twined sensually around her hand, urging her on, taking his own pleasure by easing her closer and closer to hers until finally—finally—her body trembled, and he felt her pleasure ricochet through his consciousness as she cried out with release.
Slowly, he twined away from her, then came back to form in front of her, standing and looking down at her flushed face and full lips. “Wow,” she said.
“You’re mine now,” he said, needing her to understand this fully. “You’re mine, and by the gods, I am yours. And I will keep you safe.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, but when he reached the cockpit, he turned back around once, and found her looking back with a smile on her face that went straight to his heart.
CHAPTER 26
The thick foliage of the Bois de Boulogne bent under the strain of the wormhole that opened among the trees. Marie, strung out on meth and looking for another quick fuck so she could buy another hit, tottered on nail-point heels and stared, baffled, at the swirling column of wind and color.
In the tallest branches of the trees, birds squawked their protests.
But the girl and the birds didn’t run. At least not until the monster came through, its huge form filling the void, its eyes glowing red, its skin tinged crimson, as if it had brushed too close to the fires of hell.
With massive effort, it pushed itself out of the hole, everything about the way it moved suggesting exhaustion. It climbed to its feet, and the birds flew away, their flapping wings echoing the wind in the night.
Marie wavered, part of her mind playing with the pretty, swirling colors, part of her mind screaming for her to run. And part of her wondering if this fucked-up male was up for a twenty-euro blow job, because twenty would get her easily through the rest of the night.
The huge male crawled to its knees, its head rolling like someone stoned or completely wiped out. It held its hands out in front of itself, and the prostitute saw how big they were, and wondered what they’d feel like touching her.
Then it jammed them down, so hard and fast its fingers sliced into the earth like hot knives into butter. It sank in all the way to its elbows, and it closed its eyes as if in ecstasy as power rippled up its arms and shimmered over its entire body.
Marie gaped, her feet rooted to the spot, her mouth hanging open as her chemically charged brain tried to process what the fuck was going on.
She never managed. Hell, she never had time.
The creature was on her in a moment, her death, her blood adding even more power to a creature that was already overflowing.
As it dropped the body, limp and lifeless to the ground, the call filled it, urging it to the next place, the next taking of power.
It lifted its head, sniffing out the way. And as it loped toward the next kill, the blackness within it rose and spread … and the daemon—buried deep within what had once been a vampire—curled up and purred.
It was still hours before dawn when they landed in Paris, and as they stepped out of the plane, Petra was struck by the simple fact that as long as she traveled with Nicholas, she wouldn’t feel the sun upon her skin. Still, the night sky was open to them, a black void that seemed deep enough to wrap them up and hide them away. Even the stars were hidden, their feeble light no match for the lights of Paris.
“It’s like a cloak,” she said.
“I’ve always thought so, too,” he said, and she turned, surprised. “What?” he asked.
“Really?”
He laughed, the sound warm and soothing. “I’ve always thought of the night as protection. Even before I was changed and had no choice but to think of the night as a friend or spend my eternity mourning the loss of the day. Even then, I used to wander the night, slipping from shadow to shadow, observing the world.”
“Did you really?” She could imagine him, actually. Hiding just outside of doorways, peering inside rooms, wanting only to satisfy his curiosity for what was going on inside. The world would have been darker then, lit by candles rather than by electric light. “Do you miss the stars?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But there are still places in the world where you can find the darkness, and then it’s like a gift. I’ll show them to you sometime.”
He smiled when he spoke, and she felt warm. Protected. He’d said from the beginning that was his role, but to offer to show her the stars—that was like offering her the world.
That was, she realized, exactly what he was doing. She remembered his words on the plane: You’re mine now. He hadn’t told her he loved her, but he hadn’t needed to. Something had grown between them, something sweet and wonderful, and she cherished it. Maybe that made her a fool, but she didn’t care. Maybe her heart and her body were inexperienced and overwhelmed, but she didn’t think so. Nicholas was hers. And while she was still a little fuzzy on the details of how that had happened, she knew that she wasn’t about to deny it—and she sure as hell wasn’t going to push him away again.
She was still basking when Nicholas hailed a taxi to take them through the center of Paris toward the sixteenth arrondissement. On the way, they passed the Eiffel Tower, and she hugged herself with pleasure, not quite believing that she was actually in Paris. It seemed special. Romantic, even. Despite the fact that they’d come here in a futile attempt to lift a curse and with the Alliance surely nipping at their heels.
“Do you think they’re here? The Alliance, I mean?”
A shadow crossed Nicholas’s face. “I do. I have reason to believe that Tariq is on his way here. May already be here, in fact.”
“An Alliance agent?”
“A tenacious one,” Nicholas confirmed. He shifted in the seat to face her straight on. “Have you felt any more of Serge? Do you know if he’s here?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never felt where he is, only the rising of … I don’t know … evil.” She drew in a breath and fought a shiver. “And I feel that all the time now. It’s like a low electrical hum that spikes sometimes. It spiked not too long ago, about the time we were landing.”
“But no thoughts?”
“No.” She cocked her head. “Can’t you feel it, too? You can feel me, right? Through the blood. Can you feel Serge through me?”
“I can’t,” he said automatically, but then quieted himself
, and she watched his face go slack as he tried again. She closed her eyes, feeling inside, wishing that she could experience the sensation of him inside her, and frustrated that the blood connection didn’t run both ways.
When she opened her eyes, he was looking at her. “No,” he said. “There is you, and the warmth you feel toward me, the fear you feel from those following us. But my friend isn’t there.”
Her throat went dry. “But he is. If you can’t feel him, too—what does that mean?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe that you’re feeling him through someone else. A conduit. If there was another to whom I was blood connected, they wouldn’t be able to feel you through me. That’s the only explanation that comes to mind, but I have no way of testing it.”
“Maybe,” she said, but she was frowning. She’d created Serge, so how could it make sense that she was only a conduit, feeling him through someone else? “Who?” she asked. “Who else could there be?”
“I haven’t any idea,” he said. “Right now, it doesn’t matter. We have larger problems to face.”
She heard the tenseness in his voice and matched it with her own. “What’s going on? What haven’t you told me?”
“He’s killing,” he said, and her body went cold. “He’s started with the Alliance. Dirque and Trylag are dead. We have to assume he’s coming after the others. There’s a prophecy. I don’t know the actual words, but it’s about the monster killing off the Alliance members.”
“Oh.” She tried to process his words. “Oh God. They know? The Alliance members, they know he’s targeting them? They’re hiding? Staying safe?”
“Yes. But this is the monster we’re talking about, who steals power and grows stronger every day. Is there truly anyplace safe?”
She opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t find words that were adequate.
“Gunnolf is in Paris, Petra. Serge could be here, too. Somehow, I’m going to make sure it ends here.”
Somehow.
Serge was killing. He was killing because she had made him a killer, and yet she was shying away from the one thing that she could do absolutely. She could stop him.
Yes, the idea was scary, but maybe there was a time to surrender to death. To welcome it, even. She wasn’t an immortal like Nicholas. Someday, no matter what, she would die and he would live.
If she died today, how many lives would she save?
How unfair that today came now, when she’d found someone to love.
Dear God, could she do it? After having just found Nicholas, did she have the courage to leave him? To step up and do what needed to be done?
She drew in a deep breath. She had to. Somehow, she had to find the courage inside.
They’d arrived outside of le Cimetière de Passy, and Nicholas paid the driver and thanked him in French. Then they were standing in a rough street, facing a stone wall, the Eiffel Tower rising at their backs in the distance.
Nicholas started to take a step toward the gate.
Petra drew in a breath, clenched her hands into fists, and whispered, “Stop.”
He turned. “Are you okay?”
“No.”
He was at her side in an instant, not touching, but so close that she could feel his comfort. Dear God, how she would miss him, she thought, and then wondered if the dead missed anyone.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you have a knife?”
He tilted his head, his eyes seeing more than she wanted. “I do.”
She nodded, the gesture more to gather her courage than any sort of acknowledgment. “Will you do something for me?”
She saw his face go wary. “That depends on what you want.”
The unexpected response knocked her off her rhythm and she struggled to find her way, the path all the more difficult since she didn’t want to walk it. She didn’t want to die. But if she could save these people … hell, if she could save the whole shadow world …
“I want you to take my life. Wait,” she continued, before he could interrupt. “Do that, and Serge will be free. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I was scared. I was … I was a coward. But he’s killing, Nicholas. He’s killing, and I can stop him. You can stop him.”
“No.”
That was it. That was the entire answer. And it was so damned unexpected that she actually stumbled backward. “What?”
The slightest hint of a smile touched his mouth. “No.”
“But—” She cut herself off, then searched his face. She’d expected surprise. Anger that she’d kept this from him. Instead, she saw acceptance. More than that, she saw expectation. “You knew. You knew I could stop him and you—how long have you known?”
“Since the flight,” he said. “Luke radioed and told me.”
“Luke?”
“The Alliance knows, too,” he said. “They wanted you dead before so you couldn’t create a monster. Now they want you even more so that you can cure a monster.”
“And they’re right.”
He looked at her. “Do you want to die?”
“No.” The word came automatically. “No, I don’t, but—”
“We will find another answer.”
He sounded so positive. She wanted to be positive, too.
“We’re here to see Ferrante, right? The answer may well be under our noses.”
“But—”
“No. We will lift your curse, and we will either cure Serge or recapture him. And that is the way of it.”
She licked her lips, something warm and soft filling her up. Hope.
Love.
And then the warmth turned to ice as she remembered the dead. “But the Alliance members—”
“Have known since the day they took office that they could die at another’s hand. Think of the world in which they move, Petra. The shadows and politics, and those make dangerous bedfellows. There are assassins around every corner. Enemies at every curve. They chose a high-risk profession, Petra. And each has known of this prophecy for centuries, and yet none declined their position. They assumed the risk. Let them assume it a little longer.”
“You sound like a lawyer,” she said.
“Do I? Then let me sound now like your lover. I take the choice away from you, Petra Lang. I will not give you my knife, nor use it on you. I’ve told you we are in this together. Don’t doubt my word.”
He reached for her cheek, then halted, as if remembering the danger. As he did, she realized that she was crying, and brushed the tears away.
“Okay?” he asked.
“There may come a time when I have no choice.”
“No,” he said. “You did not create this curse. These deaths do not hang on your head. And I will not let you pay the price for them. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” There was nothing more to say.
“Good.” He cocked his head toward the gate. “Shall we?”
She couldn’t help her smile. “Okay.”
He tugged on the bars and found them locked. “Well. That’s a bit anticlimactic,” he said, and she burst out laughing, the tension of the last few moments bubbling out.
“Is a locked gate really that much of a problem for you?” she asked, feeling the wall’s rough surface. “Get in however you want. I’ll meet you there.”
His brows lifted. “Oh?”
She laughed. “Private investigator, remember? Trust me, I’ve scaled my share of walls.” To prove her point, she did just that, using the uneven stones for finger- and footholds, until she reached the top and sat on it, letting her legs swing down. “Easy as pie.”
“Apparently so.” And then, to her surprise, he followed her up. “And I’m not completely dependent on my vampiric gifts.”
She laughed, clutching the side of the wall so she wouldn’t tumble off. “No, I guess not. I’m a little surprised, though.”
“That I can climb?”
“Not that you can—that you would. Those are nice jeans, after all. And you might accidentally
rip your shirt.”
“Not to worry. We’re in Paris. I’m sure I can find a fashionable replacement for any item I ruin.” He looked her up and down. “Actually, it’s a shame we don’t have more time. I think we could do a lot better for you as well.”
She looked down at the jeans and man’s T-shirt she’d been wearing since Serge’s apartment. “Thanks a lot.”
“You look lovely,” he said, his voice so soft she almost believed it. “But what woman wouldn’t want to haunt the boutiques of the Champs Élysées?”
She smiled, imagining walking hand in hand with him along the streets of Paris, peering in shop windows and sipping café au lait in outdoor cafés while the twinkling lights of the city shone around them. A nice fantasy, but bittersweet, and with a single shove, she pushed herself off the fence and her fantasy out of her head. When she landed on the soft ground, she looked back up at him with what she hoped was a smug, confident grin. “A woman on a mission,” she said. “Coming?”
He was beside her with such speed that she never saw him move.
“Neat trick.”
“I have many of them.”
“You know where we’re going. Lead the way.”
He began walking, and she had to follow carefully, unable to see the path once they were away from the scattered lampposts. On either side of them, statuary loomed, the polished stone glowing eerily.
She wished she could take his hand.
Around them, the night seemed to curl about the tombs like a living thing, and the more they walked, the more Petra began to feel as if they weren’t alone.
Beside her, Nicholas slowed his pace.
“Do you sense it, too?” she asked.
“Someone near,” he whispered, stopping at the intersection of two cobbled lanes. “I do. But I’ve been looking in the dark and I see nothing.”
Since that really wasn’t reassuring, she turned in a slow circle to have a look for herself. Futile, of course, since her human eyes could see nothing in the dark. If she only had some light …
On a whim, she held out her hand. She’d managed a tiny fireball in Serge’s kitchen. Could she manage something larger now? Closing her eyes, she concentrated, picturing the earth, summoning the elements. Deep within the molten core, fire burned, and in her mind she drew it up, pulling it to her, willing it to follow her command.