by Larissa Ione
Each breath was like breathing water, each step was agony. He welcomed the pain, encouraged it, because it kept him from passing out.
If he passed out, The Aegis would have him.
And he had a sneaky suspicion that if they took him alive, he’d wish he were dead.
Demons and netherworldly creatures rarely gave up the ghost without a fight, and tonight, Tayla was glad for that. She needed to cause pain. She needed to purge herself of everything that evil, lying demon doctor had said.
But no matter how much she pummeled the drekavac, a spindly, long-limbed demon with an oversized head and fangs as long as her forearm, she couldn’t get Eidolon’s words out of her head.
You are half-demon.
“No!” she shouted, and drove her heel into the drekavac’s midsection. The ugly creature crumpled to the floor of the abandoned warehouse, a shooting gallery for drug addicts, where she’d found it searching for humans to sicken with its breath. Beneath the demon, a dark stain marked the floor, and she wondered if it had been made by birth blood.
Hers.
Letting loose a roar of rage, she kicked the demon, kept kicking it, long after it was dead, until the sound of footsteps broke her out of her mindless violence.
“ ’Sup, honey.”
A man was walking toward her, his gait ambling but predatory, as though his body couldn’t quite keep up with his intentions. His glazed eyes gave nothing away except that he was stoned off his ass.
“You got some sort of dog, there?” Then he blinked, and she knew the drekavac’s body had disintegrated. Aboveground, all demons disappeared within moments of their deaths unless they died in an area specially designed to keep bodies intact. Aegis labs, for example.
“Worse,” she muttered, and stepped around the junkie as she headed toward the exit. She’d always hated this place, but it was a demon magnet and made for a rich hunting ground.
The man’s grimy hand closed on her shoulder. She froze, her fists clenched at her sides.
“Get your fucking paw off me.”
“Or what?”
“Or you lose it.”
The guy yanked her backward, and her tenuous hold on her temper snapped. She grabbed him by his ragged Army jacket collar and lifted him off the ground. With a hard shove, she drove him into the warehouse wall. He laughed, too shitfaced to realize the danger he was in.
“Take it easy, bitch. You want me, you only gotta ask.”
A shudder ran through her. This was the kind of guy her mother used to hang out with, the kind she’d always assumed had fathered her. She’d thought this was as bad as it could get. But now she knew the truth could be far worse.
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
“Bitch ain’t playin’ nice.” He started to struggle, but she shoved harder, felt the strain of his clavicle bones as they bowed, on the verge of breaking. “Ow, fuck!”
The scent of his anger, tainted with a touch of fear, got her heart pumping faster. Good. Because someone else should feel the way she did, as if their world had crashed in. Misery loved company.
“Does this hurt?” she whispered, and his glassy eyes went wide with terror.
The sound of multiple footsteps barely registered in her mind, but her body revved with adrenaline. She was ready to throw down and take no prisoners.
“Tayla?”
Frowning, she looked over her shoulder. “Kynan. Did you find—”
“Janet’s body was gone.” The three Guardians with him lagged behind as Ky moved toward her, his eyes on the junkie, his hand hovering over his stang holster on his chest. “Demon?”
She gasped. “What? What did you say to me?”
“Is that a demon? Tayla? Are you okay? Do you want me to finish it off?”
Oh, right. He wasn’t talking about her. Finish it off. She was an it. Because demons were its. So really, in a way, he was talking about her.
She turned back to the man in her clutches. His face had gone bloodless and pasty, his breaths rapid and shallow thanks to the pressure on his clavicle and trachea. Oh, God, what had she been about to do? He was human, not a demon.
You are half-demon.
“No!” she shouted, but she wasn’t sure if she was talking to the voice in her head or to Kynan. Still, she released the junkie, watching numbly as he slid to the ground. “No. He’s human. Scum, but human.”
The guy crawled off, muttering, “You’re crazy. Fucking certifiable.”
Kynan approached, cautiously, as though she might bite. “Why don’t you stay at HQ for a few days? Janet’s death has hit us all hard, and I think we need to be together.”
“You mean I shouldn’t be alone.”
“We’re all here for you, Tayla.” The warmth in his smile was meant to comfort, but it didn’t make her feel any better. If anything, it only emphasized how disconnected she felt right now.
Disconnected to what made her human.
“I–I have to go.” She brushed past him, turning a deaf ear when he called out to her.
“No hunting, Tayla. Not alone, and not until we clear you for duty.”
She fled. Fled her fellow Guardians, fled the warehouse where she’d been born. But the one thing she couldn’t get away from were Eidolon’s words.
You are half-demon.
Chapter 11
The transfusion worked. As the last of the second unit of blood drained into Eidolon’s body, the terrible lust eased, the maddening itch just beneath the surface of his skin died away.
Gods, he’d been strung out by the time he arrived at UG, his mind taking him back to being inside Tayla and then firing him up with new scenarios, all involving the slayer. He must have been writhing in the car seat, because twice Gem offered to ease him, her proposal nothing more than a physician’s obligation to relieve suffering, though the scent she gave off spoke of her state of arousal. He knew his body was giving off fuck-me pheromones in copious quantities, a fact that had been confirmed the moment he walked through the ER doors. Every female he’d passed had been drawn to him, some touching themselves without seeming to realize it. He’d been tempted, so tempted to take them all… individually, at once, he didn’t care.
Though he knew in his mind, he’d be thrusting into Tayla. Sex with her was pure adrenaline. Untamed. Raw. The kind of sex the demon in him had always wanted, but his logical, civilized brain had never allowed him to have. Entering her had been exquisite, a freefall of sensation that demolished coherent thought and left him with the ability to do nothing but feel when in the past, sex had been more about satisfying his body’s demands while his mind remained detached. He hadn’t known his mind could join in the sex act like that, so wholly.
It was amazing. Shattering. Terrifying.
He’d used a freaking knife on her.
He’d damned near gone back to her apartment.
Instead, he’d grabbed Yuri, made him promise not to allow Eidolon to give in to his needs. Not while the glyph was trying to break through on his face. Though he had no proof to back it up, he suspected that sex during s’genesis pangs would hurry the change along, if not complete it altogether.
So Yuri sat across from him in the lab, arms crossed, one foot propped up on a technician’s stool. “You got it together? Because I have better things to do than babysit you.”
“Yeah, I’m good. Thanks.”
Yuri stood and adjusted the stethoscope around his neck. “You should probably take time off work until all of this is under control.”
“Until the transformation is complete, you mean.”
“You gotta admit, it’s making you twitchy and unpredictable, and you’ve never been either. You’re acting like Wraith. Well, Shade, anyway.”
Eidolon removed the catheter from his arm and stanched the blood with a cotton ball. “This isn’t about my duty schedule, and you aren’t concerned about my performance. It’s about Tayla.”
“Tayla? You two so buddy-buddy that she’s not just the Aegi whore anymore?”
“Let it go, Yuri. Now.”
Yuri barked out a laugh, a high-pitched hyena yip. “See what the s’genesis is doing to you, Sem? It’s turning you into a pussy.”
“Excuse me?” Growling, Eidolon came to his feet.
“You didn’t want to turn her over to me. I get that.” Yuri moved forward, right up in Eidolon’s face. “But she wasn’t yours to turn loose. This was a matter for the Maleconcieo, and you should have taken her before it.”
The Maleconcieo, the demon U.N., a council formed of members of the most powerful of all demon species, would have salivated over the opportunity to question Tayla. Yuri was right, but that fact only angered Eidolon more. He’d told himself that he had let Tayla go so she could be watched, so she would come to them for help, but was it the truth? Had he been lying to himself and following his dick instead of his brain?
“Back off, shapeshifter. I know what I’m doing.”
Yuri grinned, his sharp teeth gleaming wickedly, but before he could say anything, the door to the lab burst open. Dr. Shakvhan, an ancient succubus who practiced Druidic medicine, gestured to Eidolon.
“It’s Luc.”
Yuri and Eidolon raced to the ER, where Luc was writhing on an exam table, blood flowing from various wounds as Gem and half a dozen nurses attempted to strap him down. His form kept changing from beast to human, flickering like a dying fluorescent bulb.
“What happened?” Eidolon nudged a nurse aside while Yuri ordered a vitals check and gloved up.
The nurse next to him cursed when Luc jerked his arm out of the restraints. “He came in like this. Stumbled through the ER doors and hasn’t said anything.”
Eidolon grasped Luc’s furry face, narrowly avoiding his snapping jaws. “Someone get a muzzle!” He tapped Luc’s cheek with his fingers. “Luc. Luc! Focus. Look at me, man.”
Slowly, awareness peeked through the pain in his dark eyes, and he turned human. “Aegis,” he rasped. “Killed… her. My mate.”
Mate? He hadn’t known Luc was mated, but then, he didn’t know much about the reclusive warg. Eidolon used the pads of his fingers to make long, soothing strokes along the skin of Luc’s neck, which seemed to calm him. “You’re safe now. But I need you to hold human form so we can talk. Can you do that?”
Luc roared, his wail rattling the equipment. “They killed her!Fucking animals… they smelled like animals… apes. Bastards!”
Eidolon nodded at Yuri, giving the unspoken go-ahead for sedation. “Luc, I need you to tell me what they did to you.”
Luc’s body thrashed, but his eyes caught and held his. “They weren’t going to kill me,” he said, and a tremor of dread shot up Eidolon’s spine. “They wanted me alive, doc. They wanted me alive.”
Chapter 12
Tayla didn’t bother going in to Aegis HQ the next morning. Unable to sleep in the bed that still smelled like Eidolon, she’d curled up on the couch with Mickey. As the first gloomy rays of cloudy daylight peeked through her kitchen window, the phone had started ringing.
She’d ignored it. But she couldn’t ignore the pounding on her door hours later. Kynan’s knocking had been soft at first, but had grown rapidly more violent, until he was threatening to break down the door.
She’d opened it, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
“We lost Trey and Michelle last night.”
Oh, God. Numb, she backed away from the door and collapsed onto the couch. “How?”
“They were tracking a pack of werewolves with Bleak and Cole. Got ambushed inside a house. They took out a female, but lost the others.”
Despair settled over her like a chilled blanket. With Janet’s death, that made three Guardians lost in the span of a week when they hadn’t lost even one in over a year. And Tayla… she’d been compromised.
“We’re losing, aren’t we? The battle. We’re losing.”
Kynan dropped to one knee and clamped a hand on her wrist. “Do not say that. Don’t even think it. The fight against evil has always been a marathon, not a sprint.” She tried to jerk away from him, but he held her in place, his grip firm but gentle. “Everyone is feeling the same way, Tay. But you’re a veteran fighter. You can lead the others and help our cell through this. Come stay at HQ, just for a few nights. It’ll be good for you. For everyone.”
For a moment she was tempted. Though she’d never been a social creature, right now, she felt more alone and out of place than ever. Still, she had a feeling that being among the other Guardians would only emphasize her loneliness. When she was by herself, no one looked at her as if she were a black sheep. No one talked through her instead of to her. Certainly, no one would look at her as if they knew what Eidolon had said and were trying to figure out for themselves if he had been telling the truth.
Join the club.
“I can’t,” she finally said. “I need to be alone.”
She also needed to be able to get up in the morning, check the mirror, and make sure she hadn’t turned into a demon overnight.
And on the subject of demons, she wondered if the tracking device she’d planted on Eidolon had led The Aegis to the hospital. Then again, if it had, Kynan would have told her by now.
“Ky… do you think there is such a thing as good demons?”
He blinked, taken aback. “Ah, well, there are eudaimons, benevolent spirits, but in most cases these are thought to be guardian angels.”
“But can other demons, like Cruenti, ever be good?”
“What? Tayla, what has gotten into you?”
Eidolon had. Twice.
“I guess… I just… what if they aren’t all bad?”
He felt her forehead with one hand, checked her pulse with the other, his medic training taking over. “I’m going to take you to the hospital. You’re tachy and a little warm.”
“I don’t need to see an Aegis doctor—”
“Tayla, you’re talking crazy. And it isn’t a bad idea to have you checked out. Who knows what was done to you at that demon hospital.” She pulled away, and this time he let her, but he moved up to the couch. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? They took care of you. Saved your life. And now you’re feeling sympathetic.”
“This isn’t some twisted form of Nightingale Syndrome.”
But the suspicion burned in his eyes, navy fire. “I’ll give you until tomorrow, and then you’re coming into HQ, and I will take you to see Dennis.”
He’d left, and she’d spent the next several hours doing nothing but napping and pigging out on marshmallows and oranges.
Now, curled up on her couch with Mickey in her lap, she dug her nails into the skin of a tangerine, working her frustration off on the poor fruit. She didn’t need a doctor. Well, she probably did; last night on the way home from the warehouse, she’d suffered another loss of function, the episode leading to people at a bus stop calling paramedics. By the time the ambulance arrived, Tayla had recovered and was long gone.
In a moment of extreme weakness, she’d thought about calling Eidolon on the off-chance that he’d been telling the truth about his ability to help her.
She’d gone so far as to say the words on the back of the card he’d given her, but when her breasts tightened and her thighs quivered at the mere thought of seeing him again, she’d thrown the phone across the room. If her hormones were that out of control when he wasn’t around, what would happen in his presence?
She hadn’t known her body could react like that to any man, let alone one who wasn’t human. If someone had told her a man could make her heart race, her breath catch, her sex ache, she’d have laughed, but that’s exactly what happened when Eidolon touched her. She craved him even while she hated him.
She was an addict, the same as her mom. The only difference was that Tayla’s drug of choice could be destroyed.
The phone rang, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Mickey shot under the couch, chattering indignantly. Something cold dripped onto her leg, and she realized that at some point, she’d squeezed the hell out of her
tangerine and now had juice and pulp oozing between her fingers.
Quickly, she rinsed her hands in the kitchen sink but didn’t bother drying them before picking up the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Tay.” Jagger’s voice made her tense. He rarely called, and when he did, the news was always bad. This time, though, he sounded almost giddy, which raised her alert status even higher. “Get over here.”
“I’m taking today off.”
“Trust me. You want to be here for this.” Silence stretched, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of asking about his cryptic response. “We caught your demon doc. He’s not in good shape.”
Tayla froze. Nearly fumbled the phone. “What… what do you mean?”
“I mean that if you don’t hurry, you won’t have a chance to watch him die.”
Tayla couldn’t afford a cab, but she took one anyway. She burst through the Aegis HQ back door, startling the half-dozen Guardians watching a movie on the big-screen TV.
Play it cool, Tay.
“Where are they?”
“Basement.” Excitement lit the expressions of everyone in the living room, a far cry from the depressed atmosphere Kynan had led her to believe had taken over. The Guardians were practically bouncing in their seats, throwing off anticipation and bloodlust.
The familiarity of it all came crashing down on Tayla. A demon had been captured and was being made to pay for the deaths of their three colleagues. They enjoyed knowing that Eidolon was being tortured. She’d have enjoyed it, too, a few days ago.
Sickened, she dashed down the stairs. Several Guardians practiced with weapons and fighting techniques in the fitness room, but their halfhearted efforts didn’t fool her. They were eavesdropping on what was going on in the Chamber—a room most, including Tayla, had never seen inside.
No, she used to hang out like the others, listening and laughing, because really, they were just demons. So what if they got slapped around a little before they were dispatched?