Ink & Fire

by R. K. Ryals

  Something about his words stirs the Court members. They fidget, and I wonder just how many secrets the Court of the Sun and the Moon holds.

  I’m not sure I have time to care. If the nightmares I’ve been having the last few days and the claw marks on my flesh are any indication, I’m a ticking time bomb.

  Chapter 6

  Once the door closes behind the court members, Aunt Eloise spins, the alarm on her face turning into grim concern. “Maybe you should consider moving back in.”

  “No way!” The words pop out much more vehemently than I intend them to. “No.” Softening my voice, I approach her, head shaking. “I can’t.”

  “Not for good, Harper.” She tugs on her earrings, and I know if she doesn’t stop, she’s going to make herself bleed. “Just until all of this is over.”

  With a touch of annoyance, she glances at a spot over my shoulder. At the counter, Lucas pours another glass of scotch.

  “Don’t mind me.” He salutes us with the liquor.

  I ignore him. “If I come back now, I’m letting them win.”

  The monsters are not allowed to win. They’ve taken too much from me. Innocence. Youth. Magic.

  They won’t take my life.

  Eloise’s face reddens, and a tear trickles down her cheek. She swipes at it angrily. “I promised your parents I’d do my best by you.”

  She starts to grab me by the arms, and then stops, her hands dropping to her sides. It’s disconcerting to see her so upset. Aunt Eloise never cries; she sings Van Morrison and makes herbal remedies until everything in her world is right again.

  “I don’t know how to help,” my aunt admits.

  There’s nothing worse than feeling helpless. Nothing worse than not being able to rescue the people you love the most. Nothing worse than being afraid you’re going to hurt not only innocent bystanders, but the people you care about. It’s a nightmare I will never wake up from.

  “It’s better for her in the mountains,” Lucas interjects. “Less casualties if something goes wrong.”

  Eloise stares at him, her gaze intent. Minutes tick by like years. “Don’t fail, angel,” she says finally, voice wavering. “Please don’t fail.”

  “Levi was bound to find a way to get to me eventually. If not through your niece, then another way. I promise you, I fully intend to give him the fight he deserves.” He looks to me. “We should go.”

  “Together?” A million thoughts flood my head, and none of them are good.

  Me. Him. Strangers.

  Maybe he senses my unease because he comes to me, a sardonic tilt to his lips. “I like my coffee black, music that beats so hard you can feel it in your pulse, and gambling. But only if I know I’m going to win. I don’t do long walks on the beach, but watching sunsets from the clouds,” he shrugs, “it does it for me.” He offers me his hand. “Now that you know something about me, does that help?” Frustration colors his gaze, and I don’t know if I’m the reason behind it or if it’s the demon haunting me.

  After a moment’s hesitation, my hand touches his.

  He pulls me into him, startling me. Bright light flashes, and I shut my eyes against the glare.

  When I open them again, we’re inside my cabin in the mountains, his embrace cloaking me. He’s massive, his muscular frame making me feel much, much smaller than I actually am. His heart beats against my cheek, his chest rising and falling with each breath. It’s too intimate, and I have to fight the need to struggle.

  “You’re not used to being held, are you?” Lucas asks, head bent, his breath whispering against my neck.

  Shudders race through me. “It hurts.” Emotions, old and new, play a complicated game of hide and seek within me. To hide it, I push against him. “My stomach,” I lie, even though it does pain me.

  Immediately, he lets go. “Let me see it.”

  “What? No.” I back away from him. “It’s fine.”

  A smile flits across his face, the expression gone as fast as it appears. “Sit.”

  “Seriously, I’m good.”

  “No creams or medicines will fix demonic wounds.” He urges me toward the sofa. “I can help.”

  When he drops to his knees in front of me, I start to shoot up, but he grips my waist, holding me in place. His hand slips under the hem of my shirt.

  I look anywhere and everywhere except at him.

  Cool air rushes against my skin, aggravating the raw wound and making me increasingly aware that I am not alone. His fingers run gently over my ribs.

  I tense, electric tingles shooting all the way down to my toes. Birds flap frantic wings inside my stomach.

  “Relax,” Lucas soothes.

  He touches the claw marks, and I hiss. Beneath his fingers, cool heat flares, and the pain from the injury subsides. The pad of his thumb dips toward my navel.

  Hugging my middle, I fly off the sofa.

  From his place on the floor, Lucas watches me. “I make you uncomfortable.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “Do you want to have sex?”

  The question is so abrupt, so unexpected, that I’m pretty sure I squeak. “What?” My eyes widen. “Did you . . .” Pausing, I stare, inhale, and then, “Did you just proposition me?”

  I mean, did he?

  He stands, completely comfortable with himself and the situation. “I asked if you wanted to have sex.”

  A crazed laugh escapes me. “I don’t even know you.”

  He shrugs, unconcerned. “I don’t always know the women I sleep with.”

  My mouth falls open. “Are you serious right now?”

  “The pleasures of the flesh are an enjoyable way for you to get over this fear you have of being touched.”

  The hell?

  “I don’t have a fear . . .” I wag a finger at him. “You know what? I don’t like you.”

  “You’d like me much better if you had sex with me.”

  The snort that slips out of me is completely unrefined. “You know, that’s not even worth a response.”

  Turning away, I busy myself by trying to start a fire. Lucas joins me, nods at the hearth, and then steps back when the wood within bursts into flames.

  I glare, annoyed. “I could have done that.”

  “All you have to do is say no,” Lucas says, and I know he’s not talking about the fire.

  My chin rises. “No.”

  He leans against the stone fireplace. “You’re going to have to find a way to feel comfortable around me fast, Harper. The things that will happen to you won’t be pretty. You need to be okay with me helping you with that.”

  “By having sex?”

  “By opening yourself up in any way you feel comfortable doing so. Sex is just a fun suggestion.”

  Emotions swell like a tsunami inside of me, the strength of it threatening to knock me into the fire. “Do you have a lot of experience with things like this?”

  “Demons or sex?”

  I throw him a look.

  He grins, and then sobers. “I’ve done a lap or two around the demonic block. Dealing with demons is complicated. Sometimes the experiences are bad. Other times, they’re surprisingly good. I even call a few demons friends.”

  This, I find interesting. “The good demons? There’s a few in town. There’s one, she—”

  “There are decent ones. Never confuse decent with good.” Memories spark in his gaze, the resulting smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Or maybe it’s just the ones I’ve come into contact with. The demons I know wouldn’t appreciate being called good. I doubt they’d even appreciate being called decent.”

  The demon talk is becoming too much for me.

  “They call me a generational curse,” I blurt out, stepping back. Lucas keeps his distance, the flames from the hearth shadowing his face. “My father is psychic, but my mother was mortal.”

  Shut up, Harper, I tell myself.

  My heart couldn’t give a shit about what my logic thinks. I never
get a chance to babble, except with Eloise. Having Lucas here is like having a therapist I don’t have to pay for, who’s being forced to stay and listen. Bless him. “My parents had trouble getting pregnant, so it was this huge thing when they discovered they were having me.”

  Pausing, I go into the kitchen and pull out a loaf of bread from a box on the counter. It’s homemade sourdough wrapped just for me by the supe who works in the bakery section of our local supermarket. No labels. “Do you eat grilled cheese?”

  He told me to be comfortable. Grilled cheese makes me comfortable.

  Lucas’s brows arch. “What happened to your parents?”

  Sighing, I rest my hands on the counter. “Something went wrong with the pregnancy. I wasn’t going to make it. The doctors told her it would be best to terminate. For her sake.” My heart breaks for a woman I never knew. “My mother had a breakdown over it. She couldn’t accept the idea of losing me, so Dad took it before the Court and begged them to do something—a spell, a ritual, or anything—to save me. They refused.”

  I swallow hard. “You know, I hated the Court for that when I found out. By then, I was ten years old. My aunt sat me down and said,” changing my voice, I try to imitate Eloise, “‘You’ve got to understand, Harper. It’s not a simple thing trying to cheat death. It often hurts others worse than the person dying.’”

  Abandoning the bread, I move back into the living room. “My aunt is right. She has this uncanny knack for being right about things.” I cringe. “My parents heard of a sorceress in Louisiana who did black magic. So they went to her. She saved my mother’s pregnancy, but what she neglected to tell them was that, by doing so, my mother would be forfeiting her life and I’d be hounded by evil.”

  Lucas remains unmoving by the fire. He’s too still, as if he’s a sculpture rather than an angel. “And your father?”

  “When my mother died in childbirth, he blamed himself for her death. It was too much on him, so he left. My aunt raised me.” My chin dips, my gaze tracing the wood grain on the floor. “I tried to find my dad a few years ago. He’s in California. Married with two kids. He doesn’t remember Havenwood Falls, my mother, or me. The Court protects the town by ensuring people who leave here forget it.” My gaze finds Lucas. “It’s for the best. I think he’s happy now.”

  “He knows something is missing. A spell can’t take that away,” Lucas says.

  Swallowing past a sudden thickness in my throat, I ask, “How do you know?”

  “Because I have a lot of practice with magic and a deep history with witches.”

  He steps away from the fire. The afternoon light from the one window in the living room grazes his face.

  I haven’t bothered with turning on the lights, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m more comfortable in the natural light from outside or because I’ve grown used to dark corners.

  Firelight and slanted sunshine transform the room into something wholly unrealistic and yet entirely too real.

  Lucas stops before me. “Magic and the supernatural tend to make mortals uncomfortable. Even dangerous. No one likes feeling weak.” He glances at the window and at the snow-touched mountains beyond. White brilliance. “Those with differences have to protect themselves. They have to do things in order to protect their families, things that don’t sit well with them, but magic has its limitations. It can get rid of memories, but the emptiness the memories leave behind is always there, lurking.”

  “You sound like you should get along better with Saundra Beaumont—with all of the Court—better than you seemed to today.”

  Lucas’s gaze swings back to me. “Let’s just say we understand each other, but I’m less willing to confine myself to one place.”

  He leans forward, putting him so close I can make out every detail of his face. It’s unnaturally perfect, rugged and covered in stubble. Just enough to be sexy.

  He’s a mirage. I don’t know how I know it, I just do. Maybe it’s the psychic in me, the psychic I could have been if I hadn’t been cursed. Looking at Lucas is like staring at a man who never changes. A man who never has to sleep or eat. A man who never has to shave. A man who just is.

  “What kind of angel were you?” I whisper.

  “What kind am I?” he corrects. “Being fallen doesn’t make me any less of what I was.” His gaze searches mine, and then, “A Seraph. I am a Seraph. The best and worst kind of angel.” There’s nothing human in the way he looks when he says it.

  “What made you fall?”

  We are nearly nose to nose when he replies, “I murdered a man.”

  If hearts could stop beating, mine would quit. Instead, it races, as if beating faster can get it far away from the creature in front of me. Except my body traps my heart, forcing it to face a moment it wants to avoid.

  Hearts are cowardly things.

  Bodies are shockingly resilient.

  I don’t run. I don’t run because I’ve murdered a man, too, and although I wasn’t wholly responsible—hell, I’d only been a child—the guilt remains. I feel like I murdered him.

  “I can’t judge someone for something I’ve done,” I breathe, surprising him.

  He straightens, amusement lightening his eyes. “Bonding over murder. I’d say that’s a first.”

  He doesn’t ask me who I killed. Either the Court has supplied him with the information or he doesn’t care.

  I don’t care for the humor. “Did you mean to do it?” We may have something in common, but I never meant to hurt anyone.

  For a moment, I think he’s not going to answer, but then he touches my face, startling me. “I was trying to save someone not too unlike you. He was hurting her. I shouldn’t have interfered. I wasn’t supposed to interfere, but I did. He’s dead, and I’m fallen.”

  From the way he drops his gaze, I know he hadn’t intended to answer me. Maybe he’d planned to lie.

  “Thank you.” If I’m stuck with an angel who’s supposed to help me fight demons, I can at least appreciate his honesty.

  “What’s it going to be like when the archdemon comes?” I ask out of nowhere. “If I’m a portal for him, will he,” I look down at my stomach, “burst out of me?”

  If I’m going to be a conduit for a demon, then I want to go into it as knowledgeable about it as possible. Knowledge is power.

  Lucas laughs, the sound deep and thrilling. “You must read a lot of science fiction.”

  “Listen,” I correct. “I listen to a lot of science fiction. On audiobook.” My hands press against my stomach, and I know by the way it doesn’t pain me that the claw marks are gone. “Will it hurt?”

  I try to hide the fear I’m feeling, but my voice cracks.

  Lucas places his hand over mine on my stomach, squeezing my fingers just enough to be reassuring. “He won’t physically burst out of you, but he will torment you. Be prepared for that. He’ll use your energy to bring himself into the physical world, so he’ll need you near.”

  Relief is a pleasant feeling that’s all too fleeting.

  I won’t be giving birth to any grotesque beings, but the demon can harm me. As a psychic from a long line of psychics, I know enough about spirits to know they have the ability to harm someone they’re attached to. The physical stuff is rarer—it takes a lot of energy for a spirit to manifest—but it’s possible.

  I have another question, but I leave it unasked.

  If this demon is strong enough to nearly strangle me in Jeanine Turner’s office and claw me at my aunt’s shop, what’s to stop him from killing me?

  “How about that grilled cheese sandwich now?” I ask instead.

  Lucas smiles. “Okay.”

  Chapter 7

  The last thing I remember before falling asleep is the way the sun moved over the living room as it set, cloaking the house in darkness, the fire in the hearth crackling.

  Lucas sat on the end of my couch while I curled against the opposite end, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Empty plates rested on the kitchen counter, the silence
in the room a lullaby urging my eyes to close.

  I fought it, but in the end, weariness won out over wariness.

  The angel watching me couldn’t be any worse than the archdemon haunting me.

  On the heels of another nightmare, debilitating nausea wakes me, and I find myself in my bed, my bare feet tangled in sheets I’ve apparently been fighting. My room is dark, the window to the side of my queen-sized four poster bed revealing a snowy ground under a star-dotted sky.

  My breath comes fast, and I swallow the rising bile in my throat.

  The nausea worsens.

  Kicking myself free of the sheets, I tumble out of my bed, my knees hitting the floor hard before I drag myself toward the bathroom adjoining the bedroom.

  I gag.

  Hands lift me, and I struggle.

  “Shh,” Lucas’s voice soothes. “It’s me.”

  The bathroom light clicks on, casting a glow over soft yellow walls and ivory-tiled floors. Sunshine and sunflowers.

  My stomach cramps, and I fight the angel holding me. “Please.”

  He sets me down in front of the toilet just as the vomiting begins. It comes so hard and so fast, I can’t breathe through the heaving. Worse yet, blood gushes from my mouth. Straight blood, the metallic taste of it making the nausea sweep me in increasing waves.

  My hands grip the porcelain, desperate for the coolness.

  Lucas sits behind me, his long legs swallowing me, his thighs embracing me. Pulling my hair back, he fists it in one of his hands.

  “I’m dying,” I manage to gasp.

  “No,” he assures me, “but you’re going to feel like you are.”

  The cramps subside, and I sag against his chest, too afraid and spent to be embarrassed. Lucas leans away from me and reaches into a cabinet under the sink. A pile of folded washcloths sits on a shelf. Taking one, he squeezes it in his fist. When he places it against my face, it’s wet. The cool moisture feels so good against my heated flesh; I don’t even care how he dampened the material.

  “Have you been going through my house?” I ask weakly, accepting the cloth.