Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2

by RS Black

  All monster kind broadcast a sort of low-wave frequency of power that was like a beacon to anyone who could pick up on it. But not the priests—it was part of what made them so dangerous. If you didn’t know the predator was around, you had no chance in hell of protecting yourself against it.

  Nothing about Asher screamed anything other than pathetic human. He was dressed in dark slacks, a gray shirt, and a crimson-red tie. Honestly, he looked like he belonged in a boardroom, not in the middle of a dusty town square.

  Giving him angry eyes, I swatted his chest and then turned back to a frowning Bubba, who was eyeing me, then Asher, then me again.

  “And you are?” The menacing growl in his tone was hard to miss.

  Sticking out his hand, Asher showed his dimple. Bubba stared at the hand like he wasn’t sure whether to eat it or just ignore it.

  Recognizing Bubba had no intention of taking it, Asher curled his fingers back to his side. “Asher.”

  “He’s my…”

  “I’m her sex toy,” he said, finishing my sentence with a mischievous smirk.

  I swallowed a laugh.

  “Oh, one of those, eh?” Bubba snorted, then twitched his brows at me in such a way as if to imply poor fool. “Just stay out of my way, mortal. I promise you don’t want to be anywhere near me. I’ve not been fed today.”

  Asher’s lips twitched and I couldn’t believe Bubba said that to him, but then again, he probably assumed I had my mortal tranced and ready to fulfill my every smutty desire and that once I was done, he’d have no memory of our time together.

  Grabbing Asher by the wrist, I yanked him away from Bubba’s booth and waved an apologetic good-bye. I hissed at him the moment we were out of earshot.

  “I don’t think you should go around trying to make friends with my family, Ash. They don’t know you, and if they”—I leaned in close and whispered beneath my breath—“were to ever find out who you really are, things would not end well.”

  “For any of them.” He glowered over his shoulder at the Norseman and I smacked his arm. “What?” He looked back at me.

  “Don’t threaten my family.”

  “They started it.”

  I laughed. “God, you’re such an ass. I don’t remember you being so—”

  Snatching the finger I was wagging under his nose, he gently nipped the tip until I had to remind myself to breathe and not let my eyes go all freaky glowy lavender in the midst of this crowd. It was one thing to let the demon out within the confines of a carnival where everyone’s minds were scrubbed upon exiting, quite another to do it in a location where keeping our secret under wraps was much harder. Bubba was so lucky that his eye color never changed.

  “What? Sexy? Divine? Mysterious?”

  He stepped into me, and the air that’d been so balmy a mere second ago now felt stifling and hot and charged with volts of pure, raw lust.

  “Or how about…” He dragged his hands down my arms until he could thread his fingers through mine. “Yours.”

  His lips were less than an inch from mine. He was bending over me, staring at me like he was dying of thirst and I was his water. I gulped, completely lost to the moment.

  “Get a room.” Vyxen’s voice was like the grating of nails on a chalkboard, setting my teeth instantly on edge.

  Her hands were on Asher’s shoulder and she shoved him harder than necessary.

  Today she wasn’t dressed like an anime cartoon on acid, instead she wore a creamy lace dress that fell to her knees and looked almost moth ridden, but done in such a way as to be ghoul-sexy instead of ghoul-scary. She also wasn’t wearing a wig or seven-inch heels, rather she wore a large red rose tucked into her ear and her face was the painted skull of everyone else, but done in a type of stained-glass mosaic. She looked gorgeous.

  “Who are you?” She asked the same question Bubba had, but instead of it dripping scorn, there was a purr in it. She stepped in close, almost knocking me out with the overpowering scent of orange-blossom perfume she’d obviously bathed herself in. Batting fake eyelashes at him, she pursed her lips, full-on giving him the green-light signal that she’d be up for a little game of slap and tickle. She’d completely forgotten all about me.

  But when she reached out to yank on the end of his tie, I couldn’t stop my reaction. “Touch him and you die,” I whispered ever so sweetly.

  As if hearing me finally made her aware of my presence, Vyxen slowly turned her head. “Oh, Pandora, so I see we’re right back to where we started? But you know I know things about you now, things that…” She scrunched her nose, gave Asher droopy sex eyes (which looked as ridiculous as it sounds), and then shrugged. “You really don’t want to make an enemy of me. Just saying, sweets.”

  She grabbed his tie then and yanked it hard. Visions of me slamming her to the ground as I let loose years of pent-up anger flooded me, and just as I was ready to pounce, Asher stepped in front of me and pulled his tie back from her.

  “I don’t think you’re hearing my woman…”

  Holy. Shit. He’d just marked me, out in the open. Claimed me. I was so shocked all I could do was stand there and blink like an idiot, but I was very much enjoying the show.

  “…touch me again, Envy, and I swear to you, you’ll regret it.”

  Her green eyes flashed. “How do you know what I am?” She hissed, then looked and pointed at me with a red-tipped nail. “You know the rules, whore, no talking to the mortals.”

  Grabbing her shoulders, Asher gave her a firm shake. “Who said I was human?” There was no dimple in his smile now, nothing but teeth and cruel intentions, and man did that get my blood humming. “Now step away.”

  Visibly rattled and clearly not sure how to handle the fact that Asher hadn’t acted the tiniest bit intimidated by her, Vyxen took a stutter-step back. “Get back to work!” She pointed and then twirled dramatically so that her dress flapped around her legs, heading directly and unerringly toward a corner booth, which if I had to guess, was where Luc was at.

  The kitten was gonna tattle on me.

  “Asher, what part of keeping yourself on the down-low do you not understand?” I whirled on him, refusing to let him know for even a second how much of a turn-on that’d been for me.

  His eyes narrowed as he brushed at his tie several times. “I will do a lot of things for you, Pandora, but letting Envy ever think she can talk to me or you that way goes beyond what I can tolerate.” His lips curled as he studied his tie like it’d been vomited on.

  I snickered. “God, I like you.”

  I could sit and banter with him all day, but there really was work to be done.

  He jogged to keep up with me as I headed to the graveyard. The culmination point of the parade was there, where there’d be dancing, drinking, and whatever other pleasures one might desire that weren’t necessarily lawful.

  “What’d you find out at Grace’s?” I asked as I walked through the white wrought-iron fence.

  “She wants us to head back to the desert tonight. She’s been hearing rumors that something big is planned. Wants us to check it out.”

  I snorted. “Fat chance in hell. That sounds a lot like what she told me last time too, and we both know how that turned out.”

  “It’s not the same; you know that. She’s on our side.”

  “So says you.”

  He sighed.

  Graveyards in this part of the world were very different from many others. Bodies were buried not only below ground, but above it in ornate cement blocks. Sepulchers ran about a mile out in every direction. It was actually really beautiful here. There were baskets of wine and cheese and bread already set down on my gravesite. Flower wreaths in the hundreds draped tombstones so that everything smelled fresh and clean.

  Every grave was painted a different color so that the effect dazzled the eyes. There was pink, turquoise, lemony yellow, and white with red trim. On and on it went in every direction, but something I noticed this time that I’d not noticed before was the profusion of red
mums everywhere.

  Stopping, I snatched one up, staring at the hearty bloom in perplexity.

  “Pandora?”

  “Nothing. I…” Frowning, I blinked and then gave him a weak grin. “I don’t know, but I swear I’m either going crazy or something is weird about all these mums. I’m seeing them everywhere lately.”

  Looking around, he shrugged. “Why? They’re just flowers.”

  “Remember I told you about the one I found on my doorstep that night? And then yesterday right before my attack the old woman set a red mum right in front of me. This can’t be coincidence. Right?”

  Taking the bloom from my hand, he set it back down on the tomb. “Mums are the universal symbol for death. It could mean nothing or it could be a clue, but right now it’s just a flower.”

  “Yeah.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re right, just… Yeah.”

  Feeling kind of stupid, I tried to walk around him, but he wouldn’t let me.

  “Hey, we’ll keep a lookout. Why don’t you just hand over whatever responsibilities you have here to someone else, I vote Vyxen, and you and I go kill some zombies?”

  “You’ve got more of a sense of humor than I first gave you credit for. I used to think you had a giant stick up your ass.”

  “Funny.”

  Lips twitching, I shook my head. “Ash, I’m not gonna stop you from going there, but I don’t trust Grace as far as I can throw her. I just need time.”

  “Pandora.” He gripped my shoulders. “Do not forget the Order knows your every move. You’ve given Grace nothing to report back to them. If you don’t do your job, they’ll know we’re on to them. Right now we have the element of surprise. Don’t ruin it because of your…” He cleared his throat and thinned his lips, clearly not wanting to say what I knew was really on his mind.

  “History.” I finished his sentence and I was so damn angry that for a second I wanted to stab him with a stiletto all over again. But while my heart was stark-raving furious, my brain understood he was probably right.

  “You’re angry.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think right now it’s easier for you to give in to your anger than it is to try to reason through the truth, because you want to hate her.”

  “Shut up, Asher, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” I shoved past him, walking up to my grave. It was a small grave, no wider than three feet and about as long as my thigh. “And if I were smart, I’d be doing the same to you. You can’t just expect me to forget and move on—I’m not built that way.” Murmuring under my breath, I licked my front teeth but refused to look at him.

  There was a giant box of goodies one of the other Neph had set aside earlier this morning for me to unpack. I dropped to my knees, not caring if the grass stained my dress. My movements were stiff and jerky as I unloaded a giant box of dark chocolate, bricks of cheese, and several loaves of bread.

  “If you were human, I’d understand this, Pandora. Or at least I’d try, but we don’t have the luxury of time to figure things out,” he continued, and God, I wanted to rake my claws down his pretty-boy face.

  I slammed a wedge of cheese down, denting its side.

  “Hello,” he said.

  This time I made my actions deliberate so that he’d finally take the hint. I turned my face to the side. My heart was thrumming violently through my chest. My head understood what my heart obviously couldn’t. Yes, I might be a demon. But only part of me—the other part was most definitely human. I wasn’t wrong to feel as I did, wasn’t wrong to still want revenge, even if she’d actually been working with me. That wasn’t the point, the point was she’d lied to me and the end result was the death of Kemen and lots of innocent children. In what universe was that possibly okay?

  He snatched the bread out of my hand. “You planning to acknowledge this at some point tonight?”

  “No.” I yanked the bread back and slammed it down into the wicker basket, causing it to form a fissure down its yeasty middle.

  “Well too damn bad, because you just did.” He tugged the basket his way and held it away from me until I was forced to look at him.

  “Ash, give it back.” I held out my hand.

  “Not until you realize I’m not Luc or any other guy you’ve ever known in your life. You will not shut me out, you hear me? Being together means communicating and sometimes saying stuff that isn’t pleasant but that the other person needs to hear. I’m sorry about Kemen—as far as Nephilim went, I didn’t hate him.”

  I scoffed and tried to snatch my basket back, but he wouldn’t budge. “Ash, I’m tired, okay? Please, give it back.” I huffed because he was making sense, and how could you fight with someone when all they seemed to want was in your best interest? But he completely discombobulated me too, because I didn’t know how to do this. How to interact like a normal person should.

  I jutted out my jaw, and he tipped my chin up, careful not to smear the paint.

  “You know I’m right.”

  I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t. There was a betraying hint of heat gathering behind my eyeballs, making them ache and burn, and I was so not going to cry. I was sick of crying, of being this pathetic demon who couldn’t get her crap together, ever.

  “I’ll give you one more night, little demon. And then we go, together. And you will talk to Grace.”

  Clenching my fists, I squeezed my eyes shut and cursed the fact that the man was right. That I was acting like a big, fat baby about all this.

  At the end of the day, I’d been the one to take Kemen’s life, not Grace, not the Order. Me.

  “Fine!” I blew out a hard breath, glaring at him. “But you’re not coming with me to Grace. I have to talk to her myself and in my own way, and you just distract me.” I waved my fingers at him.

  His dimple poked out. “Deal.”

  “Now give me my basket and go away.” I snapped my fingers on my palm in an imperious gesture.

  He laughed. “I’ll give you the basket.”

  I sighed and this time it wasn’t anger causing my jaw to clench up tight, but laughter. Because Asher and I had just had our first official fight and the sky hadn’t fallen.

  Still upset, but curiously humbled by him, I tackled him to the ground. I wrapped my arms around him, surprising him enough that we fell together. But he twisted just in time to make sure not to land on me.

  “What is this?” he asked when I peppered his whisker free jaw with kisses. “You’re going to smear that stuff on me.”

  Sucking my lip between my teeth, I framed his face with my hands and we just stared at each other. I wanted to tell him thank you: thank you for standing up to me, thank you for not taking my shit, thank you for being there, and holding me, and forcing me to be better than I was. But I was still learning how to do it. While I’d always craved this level of intimacy, parts of me feared it too. Feared that someday I’d push him too far, drive him away, make him realize I was really nothing more than a lust demon who needed killing.

  His arms squeezed me tight. “Told you, little demon, you can’t scare me off.”

  “Sometimes I really don’t like you.”

  That damnable dimple peeked out. “I’m your favorite person—you just haven’t realized it yet.”

  Shoving off him, I shook my head because that wasn’t true at all. I did realize it. That’s why he scared me so much. Dusting off his shirt, he watched me for a second.

  But I had nothing else to say, so I started setting up my altar. After a second, he joined me. Grabbing short and long candles from the box, I lined the casket with them, propped up a couple of pictures of the Virgin Mary, and set a freestanding antique gold crucifix at its center. I then moved the basket to the foot of the cotton-candy-pink grave before tracing my fingers across the headstone.

  “Who did this grave belong to, Pandora?” His deep voice washed through me like healing waters. I was becoming addicted to the man.

  “Her name was Paz.”

  “M
eans peace, right?”

  I nodded and he squeezed the fingers of my other hand, which was resting on my thigh.

  “She died in eighteen sixty-three of consumption. She wasn’t even a year old.”

  Placing his hand above the one I had on the grave, he moved it so that we were both able to feel its scratchy texture rub against us.

  “Her grave looks remarkably well preserved. I remember your years in Mexico—that would have been around eighteen sixty-three, wouldn’t it?”

  I sniffed. “You’re such a stalker.”

  “Pandora.” He playfully swatted my hand before grabbing back on. “Read the damn book.”

  “Whatever. And yes, it was around that time. Influenza had hit the village hard, decimating the people. But Paz was so young that when she contracted it, it morphed and became twice as deadly to her. She didn’t stand a chance. Her family threw her out into the streets. Not an uncommon practice back then, sadly. I found her, and I held her until she died.”

  My lips thinned as the memory of that night came floating back, as vivid and bright as the day it’d happened. Me standing on the edge of a cliff, cooing and rocking the child as she’d coughed and struggled to breathe. I’d stood under the stars holding her because it seemed like a beautiful place to die.

  At the very end, Paz had curled her brown little fist around my finger and she hadn’t seemed to struggle, she’d simply let go.

  “How’d you know what her name was?”

  “I didn’t.” I shook my head and lovingly traced her grave once more. “I named her. Then I buried her and watched over the gravesite for years. A century later when this graveyard popped up, I transferred her remains over here and have been tending to it ever since.”

  “You’re remarkable, little demon.”

  He hadn’t said I love you or given me any promise of some fairy-tale future, but the words he’d said hit me harder than an actual declaration. I smiled and kissed his cheek. “I’ll go to the hive with you tomorrow. But I am going to talk to Luc first.”

  “You know I’ll support you no matter what. But maybe I’ll just join in on that meeting of the minds.”