“No kidding,” Brynna said.
“Although it’s a little out of the ordinary, I’m not sure it falls under the we-have-to-check-this-out category. It’s just one guy—”
“That’s exactly it,” Brynna interrupted. “One guy. But not the one you think.” She stepped closer, using her finger to direct his gaze farther down the page. “Check out the next article,” she said, and began to read again.
Chicago—A young man pulled another man from a burning car on the Kennedy Expressway this morning. The victim, Jack Gaynor, was on his way home from an overnight work shift when his car overheated in traffic and developed a problem with the carburetor that caused the engine to ignite. His seat belt became jammed and he could not free himself, but he was savedy a nearby motorist who cut Gaynor’s seat belt with a pocketknife, then dragged him out of the vehicle. Gaynor was taken to Cook County Hospital and treated for second-degree burns, where he is in stable condition and is expected to be released in two to three days.
His rescuer left the scene without giving his name to authorities, but a teenager in a school bus two lanes over started videotaping the fire on her iPod and ultimately captured the entire rescue. “It was awesome,” said Chrissy Hopkins, the sophomore who filmed the incident. “He was so on it, like Spider-Man or something. The car started on fire and he was right there.” By the time she got to school, she had already uploaded the video to YouTube, and by the time of this edition, it had received several thousand viewings. The rescuer’s identity, however, remains unknown.
Eran had stopped and was frowning slightly as she finished up. “Same man?”
Brynna lifted one shoulder. “I can’t say for sure, but if I had to guess . . . yeah. I think it is.”
“I think I’ll check into that video after I get out of court,” he said as he carefully tucked the end of the tie into the loop he’d created. But when he pulled on it, Brynna saw that it was all out of whack, with the wider end halfway up his shirt and the narrow end hanging well below his belt.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said, and pushed his hands away. “Let me do that for you before you destroy it entirely. I’ve seen you in a suit dozens of times, but you’re acting like this is the first time you’ve ever had to wear one of these things.”
“I’ve never had to do it with you watching me.”
“Nice try, but you were already fighting with it when I walked in.” She flipped up the collar of his shirt and looped the tie around it, then quickly adjusted the ends to the proper length. “Basic black, huh?”
“It works. Covers everything from funerals to weddings.”
She didn’t reply as she finished off the knot, then carefully tightened everything down. “There.”
“Thanks,” he said, and before she could step back, Eran’s warm hand covered hers and pressed it against his chest. She froze for a moment as he held it there, then htiized she could feel his heartbeat beneath her palm, strong, steady, and just a bit on the accelerating side. Suddenly she could smell him, and the familiar scent to which she’d believed she’d become accustomed threatened to overwhelm her. It surrounded her and went into her mouth and her nose, saturating her senses with a lot more desire and strength than she expected. Too late she realized that she should have never gotten this close to him. Now her heart was racing, too, and both of them were breathing far too deeply as they unconsciously leaned toward each other.
“No,” she managed. His mouth was so close, almost touching hers. “This isn’t good, Eran—”
His other hand slipped behind her neck and pulled her head forward just enough to lightly press their lips together. “Let me love you, Brynna. Like before. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” she said, but her protest was weak. He tasted so good. “I’m too . . . addictive. You can’t deal with that.”
She wasn’t sure when exactly it had happened, but he was holding her now, and she was holding him. “I can,” he said. “I will. And if you’re the worst thing I’m ever addicted to, I just don’t think that’s too bad.”
She tried to reply, but her words and her thoughts ended up jumbled together inside her head, all mixed up with an overload of physical sensation and mental yearnings. How human she had become in only two months—not so long ago she could have easily let her true demon self move in and take over, allow it to gorge itself on everything about Eran Redmond, right down to consuming his very soul. But that side of herself was gone forever, or least she hoped so; now, as she felt herself surrendering to the hunger she felt for this very human man, she found that what she wanted was different from before, more organic and, what shocked her the most, psychological. Gone was her desire to see his human body die and to devour everything about him and see him suffer for eons to pay for the transgression of lust. There was no evil in what he felt for her, no darkness. Everything that emanated from his core to her was lightness and, God help them both—
Love.
Their breaths mingled as the gentle pressure Eran was putting against her mouth increased to a kiss that made Brynna’s head swim. He picked her up easily and carried her out of the bathroom, but they only made it as far as the couch; where his hands slid across her skin and felt like fire and water at the same time, a magnificent mix of the impossible. She had sworn this would never happen again after that first time in July back at her old apartment, that they would never have sex a second time.
But this was more than just sex, more than just that first copulation. This was a joining, the connecting of two people both physically and mentally, like reaching deep inside her mind and heart and patching a hole she hadn’t known existed. Was it love? Could it be? Was she even capable of that? Maybe. Whatever this was, this unnameable feeling saturating everything about her, it was undeniably something she had been missing over the entirety of her existence, the truth of what one person could feel for another. As much time as she had spent with him, as much as she had given up for him, Lucifer had never even come close to completing her like this human, fragile man. Brynna had spent thousands of years as Astarte and been considered the Queen of Hell itself . . .
But never before had she felt so utterly under the spell of someone else.
MAYBE IN THE ROMANCE books the man and woman could stay in bed for hours, talking roses and hearts and futures. In Eran’s world, however, there was a minor inconvenience called the Chicago Police Department and the Criminal Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County. In his current mindset, somewhere between bliss and near-exhaustion, he would have happily dozed away most of the morning . . . except that his cell phone went off at precisely nine o’clock.
The ringing brought him back to the here and now with a very unpleasant jolt. He and Brynna were still tangled together on the couch, and he sat up so quickly that he nearly dumped her onto the floor—only a grab at the couch throw that was wound around them kept her from landing butt-first between the couch proper and the coffee table.
“Oh shit,” he said as he tugged himself free and scrambled for the phone. “What time is it?”
“What?” Brynna squinted at him, then looked toward the window as though she could tell time simply by judging the daylight. Not much help there since he had the privacy blinds pulled. “I don’t know.”
He dashed out of the living room and snatched his cell phone off the kitchen table at the same time his gaze searched for the clock above the sink. No good—it had been destroyed in Brynna’s clean-up of their Hunter situation and he hadn’t gotten around to replacing it yet. “Hello?”
“You sou extremely awake for a man who is not where he is supposed to be,” came his partner’s always-polite voice. “In fact, I would guess by the anxiety in your voice that you are also cognizant of the fact that we must be in court in slightly less than one hour and we had planned to meet at the station to review the case beforehand.”
“Yes—right. Of course.” Eran spun back toward the living room. He felt suddenly embarrassed that his partner had caught him, litera
lly, with his pants not down but off, even if Bheru didn’t know it. “I’ll be there in a half hour—no, wait. I’ll meet you at the courthouse.”
“At the courthouse?”
“Yeah, that’s better.” Eran bent and scooped up his clothes. Brynna giggled at him and he scowled at her but couldn’t hold on to the expression—she was just too gorgeous, he felt way too good, and he had to look away or risk getting caught up in her all over again. “I’ll be there in thirty.” He hung up before his partner could say anything else. “You’re dangerous,” he told Brynna sternly. “I have never been late for court and you’re going to ruin my record.”
She shrugged. “Perfection is not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said. She stretched on the couch and Eran made himself look away again. “It leaves no room for improvement.”
“We could probably have a long and profound conversation about this, but the paycheck-providing job awaits.” He ducked into the bathroom and twisted on the shower, then sucked in his breath and stepped into it without waiting for the water to warm up. Just like back in his army days, when he and a whole barracks of the newly enlisted had mastered the task of getting head-to-toe clean in under two minutes. He was soaped, rinsed, out and toweling himself dry long before anything resembling hot water came out of the showerhead. “Don’t you have to work today?” he called.
“Nope,” she said from the bathroom door. “Today appears to be an entirely English-speaking day, at least among my usual customers.”
“That’s unusual,” Eran said. He risked a glance in the mirror and saw that she had slipped back into her customary jeans and T-shirt. What had she said? She was addictive. She wouldn’t have to tell him that again, and he was very glad she’d gotten dressed—it cut down his desire, at least a little. He was already re-dressed and working on his tie, a task which for some odd reason was now going quite well. “No depositions, nothing at the Industrial Commission?”
“Unless you have a witness or criminal stashed somewhere who speaks only Ngansan, I have a free day.”
“Really.” Ngansan? He didn’t even know what that was, much less the ethnicity of the people who spoke it. He knew what Brynna was and what she could do, but it was still astonishing to him that she could speak, read, and write any language in the world, whether it existed now or was extinct. He ran a comb through his hair a final time and straightened his glasses.
“Yep. I have nothing to do but relax and cuddle on Grunt.”
“She’ll like that.” He looked over toward the corner of the large bathroom, where his white Great Dane was sleeping soundly on a raised Kuranda bed. The sweet-natured deaf dog had tried to protect Brynna from the Hunter that had come calling and paid for it dearly when the creature had flung a fireball at her. Except for the deepest spot in the center, the horrendous burn was almost healed. The vet had even given him a break on the bills, which were damned steep, even though Eran had an inkling the man didn’t believe a word of how Grunt had gotten trapped in the midst of a kitchen fire. He accepted it, but only because Eran had a long record of taking excellent care of his dog.
“I’m out of here,” he said. Brynna moved aside as he hurried into the kitchen and grabbed his wallet, detective’s star, and gun holster. “I’ll call you later.”
Before he could give in to the urge to kiss her goodbye—a dangerous proposition—she gave him a single, slight touch on one cheek then pushed him out the door.
“YOU HAVE THE LOOK of a man who’s met his match,” Bheru said in a low voice as Eran pushed through the double doors and into the courtroom. The Indian man’s face was carefully expressionless but he and Eran had been partners for a long time and Eran was really good at reading between the lines.
“Sorry I didn’t make it to the station,” Eran said. They had gone around several times about the wisdom—or not—of Eran having Brynna move in with him, and now Eran decided it was better to let Bheru’s statement pass. Bheru held out the folder on the case they were here for and Eran flipped it open.
“It’s all good,” his partner said. “I went through the file on my own and everything’s covered. There was no need for you to be on time after all.”
There was no missing the jab, but again, Eran let it go as they made their way to the front and took seats in the witness row. “Good. Let’s do this and move on to something else.”
Bheru raised one eyebrow and Eran kept his grin to himself. Bheru wasn’t the only one who could do subtext.
“WHY ARE WE DOING this?”
“Because,” Eran said as he punched parameters into the YouTube search box, “Brynna pointed out that there’s something weird about these rescues.”
“Define ‘something weird.’ Are you talking a little out of the ordinary or Brynna-related abnormal?”
That made Eran pause. “I guess it could be either at this point,” he admitted. The image on his monitor changed as he hit SEARCH. “Here’s the video of the guy who got pulled from his burning car yesterday. Let’s take a look.”
The video was listed as being almost four minutes long, but the “meat” of it—the rescue itself—took less than sixty seconds. They watched in silence as the video started with the film swinging wildly as the girl who’d taken it tried to focus through the school bus window at the same time as she and her friends nearly shrieked with excitement—
“—see it? Over there!”
“Oh my God, the car’s, like, on fire!”
“That guy is stuck in there, he’s going to fry—”
“Look at that dude, he’s going to save him—”
It wasn’t a very good capture, but it was clear enough to see that the rescuer was a tall blond man in his twenties or thirties, and that he seemed absolutely fearless when it came to rushing up to a car that was fast becoming engulfed in flames.
“Most people would have been too afraid to help him,” Bheru observed. “They would be afraid of the car exploding.”
“Very true,” Eran said. They were into the third minute of the video and the rescuer had freed the driver and pulled him from the car, then almost effortlessly carried him some thirty feet away. What had been a jam-packed expressway had almost magically cleared as the surrounding drivers were suddenly able to find room enough to get their vehicles as far away as possible. The inside of the car was completely in flames. “According to this morning’s paper, the victim’s name is Jack Gaynor. Definitely his lucky day. There’s no way a fire truck’s going to get through that congestion. I’m surprised his car didn’t blow.”
“There’s why,” Bheru said as he pointed to something blurry in the video. Another few seconds and the moving spot became a man, probably a trucker, brandishing a fire extinguisher and sprinting between the cars. The video focused on him for a few seconds as he wisely aimed the extinguisher’s nozzle under the wheel wells where the chemical would coat the engine, then the girl’s camera swung back to the victim. “And there,” added Bheru, “goes the mysterious Good Samaritan.”
“I see him,” Eran said. “Fading into the sunset without even waiting to see if the guy he rescued is all right.”
“Strange.” Bheru stared at the screen, but the video had played itself out. “Even if they want to be low-key about it, most folks can’t help wondering if the person’s going to live or die.”
“Unless he already knew Jack Gaynor would be just fine.”
Bheru turned to frown at him. “Excuse me?”
Eran sat back. “Brynna says she thinks the rescuer in this video is the same man who saved that guy in the subway last week.”
Their desks faced each other inside their small, shared office space. Bheru went around and sat where he could see Eran face-to-face. “You’re talking about—”
“Glenn Klinger.”
“—the man who shot eleven people at his workplace, then turned the gun on himself.”
“Yes.”
Bheru’s dark eyes widened. “What makes her say that?”
Eran spread his hands as
he searched for the right words. His partner knew some things about Brynna, but what he didn’t know was a whole lot more complicated. What he didn’t know was the truth. “Your guess is as good as mine. It could be her belief that nothing happens because of coincidence, or it could be one of her feelings.”
“A premonition?”
“Something like that, although you know how Brynna insists she has no such ability.” Eran tried to keep his gaze level with Bheru’s. If he looked away now, it would be a giveaway that he wasn’t being entirely aboveboard. “I’m not exactly clear on it myself.”
“Then we should check it out,” Bheru said. He stood at the same time that Eran did. “Next stop, CTA Security.”
“OKAY, LET’S TAKE A look.” Dave Pickett, one of the security supervisors in the video archives office of the Chicago Transit Authority, had Eran and Bheru sitting on either side of him as he swiftly tapped on a keyboard below a triple row of computer monitors. Eran had worked with Dave before, and the number of cases was growing as more and more cameras were installed in the Chicago area. It was now the most closely monitored city in the United States, and Eran couldn’t help agreeing with most of the citizenry, who actually thought that was a good thing. According to widely held reports, most of the complaints came from people who were snagged for petty crimes and those who were upset because a camera wasn’t installed or hadn’t been working when a crime had occurred.
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