Caress of Darkness

by Julie Kenner

  “How much of the fuerie’s essence was in the man?” Liam asked as Dante passed Raine his glass. Raine took it gratefully and slammed back the last of his friend’s drink.

  “Minuscule,” Raine reported. “Kirkov was fucked up all on his own. Even so, having the fuerie inside him made it that much worse, and now they’re both dead. The human monster, and the sliver of the dark within him.”

  Raine stood. “So that’s it. Mission accomplished.” He held up Dante’s glass. “I’m going to go get us both a refill.”

  “Wait.” Mal spoke softly but firmly, and though Raine wanted to tell his friend to leave him the fuck alone, that wasn’t something that he could tell his leader. “Let me see your back.”

  “Dammit, Mal—”

  “Now.”

  Raine stiffened, taking the time to pull himself together. He knew the rules, and the biggest was that an agent didn’t put himself in a position to be killed.

  Fuck.

  He stood up and lifted his shirt, revealing the newly extended tail feather of the phoenix that marked his back.

  “Goddammit, Raine. Didn’t I tell you not to take any chances? And you what? Threw yourself over a fucking bridge?”

  “I’m still standing, aren’t I? I’ve still got my humanity, don’t I?”

  He watched as Mal’s expression hardened and he pointed at Dante and Jessica, both of whom stood and moved to the far side of the room. After a moment, Liam left as well. Which meant this was going to be an off-the-record conversation and not an official reprimand.

  Frankly, Raine wasn’t in the mood for either.

  “I’m going to crash,” he said. “We can do this in the morning.”

  He started to walk away, but the pain in his friend’s voice drew him back.

  “Dammit, Raine. I know you want to punish yourself for losing Livia, but it wasn’t your fault. You can’t keep going into the burn, because one of these days you’re not going to come out of it.”

  “But I will,” he said. “That’s what we are now, isn’t it? We can’t die. We can just be reborn in fire.” For millennia, he and the brotherhood had been immortal. Blessed—or cursed—with eternal life, death was not the end. Instead, like a phoenix, they were reborn in fire, and with each rebirth, the tattoo that marked them as a member of the brotherhood grew and changed. Raine, unlike his brethren, was almost fully covered with tats.

  “That’s bullshit,” Mal said. “Die enough and you’ll be reborn, but you won’t be alive. You’ll be a living shell. Your humanity burned out. And as many times as you’ve pushed—as many times as you’ve burned—you must be getting close to being hollow. To burning out everything human that lives inside you.”

  Mal spoke the truth. The brotherhood might have defeated death, but there was a price—burn too many times, and a man’s humanity could be burned right out of him, too. It was a not a slow process. Not a gradual descent into the void of madness. Instead, it happened suddenly, with little warning.

  It had happened two centuries ago to Samson, the most reckless of the brothers, and now he was nothing more than a cold, conscienceless assassin who lived out his days in the brotherhood’s German facility, called into service only in the most dire of circumstances.

  “Dammit, Raine,” Mal continued. “Do you want to end up like Samson? Do you think Livia would want that? Do you think I could stand it? I already lost one friend that way. Would you really have me lose another?”

  Raine closed his eyes, drew a breath, then sat back down. “Honestly, Mal, there was a time I wouldn’t have cared. When I welcomed each fight, and the more dangerous the better. When I craved a mortal wound. When I longed for death, because I wanted nothing more than to burn the pain out of me. That’s what humanity is, isn’t it?” He pressed a hand to his heart. “These bodies that are made to suffer. They are the essence of humanity, aren’t they? Love. Tenderness. Pain. The wild storm of emotions, and I wanted to simply end it.”

  “I know,” Mal said simply.

  “You must understand that.” He looked his friend in the eye, knowing all too well that Mal had suffered loss, too. Perhaps even more keenly than he had. Livia at least, was gone in an instant, or so he’d believed until just a few hours ago. But Mal was tormented over and over by the memory of all he’d had with Christina. And everything that he could never have again.

  Raine saw the pain play over Mal’s face, and he regretted his words. Still, he needed Mal to understand.

  Mal, however, was not taking the bait. “Wanted to,” Mal repeated carefully. “You said you wanted to simply end it. Past tense. Something has changed, Raine. Tell me what.”

  Raine ran his hand over his close-cropped hair and tried to figure out where to start. “She’s not gone. Mal, I swear to you, I’ve met her. I’ve held her.”

  Mal’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Livia. Her essence.”

  He saw the pain flash across Mal’s face. “We lost Livia, Raine. She was thrust into the void. We both saw it.”

  “We were wrong. Her essence is here, Mal.”

  “Raine...”

  “No. Listen to me. This isn’t grief or wishful thinking. It’s fact. And Livia’s essence remains. It’s in Sinclair’s daughter.”

  He watched Mal struggle to keep his expression bland. “The antiques dealer?”

  “I went by his store after I returned from Bulgaria. Sinclair had a lead on the seventh amulet—no,” he added, before Mal could ask about the amulet, “it didn’t pan out. But she was there, Mal.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Callie Sinclair. It’s her.”

  “You can’t be certain. Not yet.”

  “Yes,” Raine said, thinking of the way Callie came in his arms. “I am.”

  Mal leaned back, his expression making it clear that he realized exactly what Raine meant. That he’d already had this woman in his bed. That they’d reached climax together and in that moment when their energies meshed, he had been certain.

  “Well,” Mal said. “I always knew you moved fast.”

  “No jokes,” Raine said. “Not about this. Not about her.”

  Mal studied him, then nodded. “And the girl?”

  “She feels it too, Mal.”

  “She knows? She remembers?”

  “No.” He shook his head, wishing the answer were otherwise. “Not overtly. But she feels the connection.”

  “Then why isn’t she here?”

  His friend was too perceptive by half. “She’s human. Such intensity so quickly—it scared her.”

  Mal nodded. “As you say, she’s human. If Livia’s essence does live within her, it has mingled with the soul of Callie Sinclair. There is no way to untwine it. They are one. And while Livia may have once been your mate, Callie Sinclair was not.”

  “I was dead until I found this woman, Mal. And now she fills my heart and my head. I may have only just met her, but I know the core of her. She is the woman for me, Mal. And if she doesn’t yet realize that, then I will simply have to spend the rest of my very long life convincing her.”

  Chapter 6

  I walk for an hour, even though the store is only a few minutes away, and end up having to double back. It’s worth it, though. I needed to clear my head, and when I finally return to the darkened shop and let myself in, I’ve convinced myself that walking away was the right thing to do.

  I have a job in Texas, after all. A good job that’s important and that I love. There’s something satisfying about being part of a system that makes sure that evil is punished, and each and every time I get a conviction and some lowlife murderer or rapist gets put behind bars, that hole inside me fills a little.

  Maybe I don’t have a stellar personal life, but I have my work¸ and it’s valuable and important, and it is not going away.

  In the end, the only one you can count on is yourself. Haven’t I known that since the day my mother walked away? And isn’t that lesson being driven home now that my father is dyi
ng and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can do to change that?

  I can’t deny that I felt a profound connection to Raine, but that’s part of the problem. Because if it’s tearing me up this much to walk away after one day, how much of a wreck will I be when I lose him after a month? A year?

  Stop it.

  Christ, I’m acting like a skittish colt.

  I force myself to push away thoughts of Raine. It’s over. Done. I’m going back to Texas just like I told Nurse Bennett. I’m getting my father transferred there. And I’m shutting the door on the New York chapter of my life.

  And the sooner I finish inventorying the shop, the better.

  It’s late, but I’m spurred to action. I consider going upstairs to the apartment above the store and changing back into my yoga pants, but I’m afraid if I do that I’ll just get too comfortable and end up camped out on the couch in front of the television with a glass of wine and a book.

  So I stay down here, lost in the memories that this shop sparks. I spent my childhood inside this space. My father bought it before I was born, and when my mother left us when I was four, we moved out of the small apartment the three of us had shared and into the cramped little studio above the shop.

  I didn’t mind how small it was; I wanted to escape the memories of my mother as much as my father did, and having a tiny space seemed to help, as if it kept all my memories and fears boxed in close to me.

  I liked it so much, in fact, that my dad made me a playhouse in a faux window seat. He added a hinge to make it open from the front, and I would crawl into the tiny area, just big enough for a little girl to lay on her stomach with a flashlight and books and stuffed animals. I’d even sleep there sometimes, safe in that hidden space.

  Though nights were spent in the study and my playhouse, I whiled away my days in the shop, exploring the shelves and listening to my dad’s stories. He never considered himself a store owner but a knight. A man on a quest. “There’s something bigger than us out there, Callie my love,” he’d tell me. And I would sit enraptured—and I would believe him.

  He had a deep love of history, mythology, and folklore, and I used to wander the store, certain that I would find fairies living in jeweled pillboxes or angels dancing in the light split by a prism.

  I never did, but to this day I still look, and it makes me sad to think that all of this will be going away.

  With a sigh, I sit on a velvet-upholstered settee, then immediately realize my mistake. I’m tired, a fact that has become only too apparent now that I have stopped moving. I need to either go upstairs and go to bed or get to work on the inventory, but as I lay my head on the upholstered high back, the only strength I can muster is barely sufficient to keep my eyes open.

  Just a quick nap, I think. Five minutes, then a cup of coffee, and then I’ll get to work.

  Just five minutes. After all, it’s not like I’m asking for all the time in the world.

  Aren’t you?

  Though I look around for the source of the voice, I find no one. But the store seems to glow now, and I realize I must have fallen asleep, and the glow is probably coming from the rising sun.

  As for the voice, it must have been someone in a dream, though I don’t remember dreaming at all.

  I start to swing my legs off the settee, but I realize that something is wrong. I’m not in the shop at all. I’m in the middle of a forest, with tall trees and a tangle of underbrush, and everything is on fire.

  Frantic, I turn in a circle, looking for a way out. As I do, I see that there are all sorts of paths, and as far as I can tell, each one leads to safety. But I do not make a move for any of them.

  I realize that I’m not searching for an exit, but hiding. And waiting, though I am not sure what I am waiting for.

  But no one comes, and so I stay hidden in the fire, burning and burning until I am raw and scared and tired and alone and—

  Suddenly my ears ring with the clanging of bells, as if I’m surrounded by a ring of old-fashioned fire trucks.

  I look out toward the flames, and now I see a face.

  Raine.

  Relief and joy washes over me. He came.

  I knew he would come, and he did. How could I have doubted, even for a moment?

  And yet when he reaches for me through the flames, I am jolted awake by my phone.

  “Find the book.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Find the book, find the path. Look to yourself for the answer, and you will find it hidden in plain sight.”

  “Daddy? Wait. How are you calling me? What are you—”

  I jerk upright and realize that I am holding my hand to my ear. My phone is still on the table in front of me.

  I’ve been dreaming.

  With a sigh, I rub my palms over my face. A dream.

  But even so, I can still remember the joy that filled me when I saw Raine’s face. And in that moment I have to forcibly stop myself from running back to Number 36.

  Instead, I glance at the many clocks that litter this room. Noon.

  So much for my plan to only sleep five minutes. I’d slept through the rest of the night, and half of the day as well. No wonder my head is fuzzy and my dreams strange.

  I make myself a cup of coffee, then settle in to work on the inventory. I last about half an hour on that task, but then my mind wanders back to my odd dream.

  What the devil did he mean, “Look to yourself?”

  I cock my head, suddenly remembering my fifteenth birthday. He’d arranged a full-blown scavenger hunt. Was that what he was doing now?

  As soon as the thought enters my head, I cringe. What the hell am I thinking? It was a dream. A stupid dream, not my father actually calling me. Not my dad helping me out.

  I should just cash it in and work on the inventory, but now I feel like I’m on a quest, albeit a ridiculous and foolish one.

  Look to yourself.

  Callie Sinclair.

  Could it be that simple?

  I head to the bookshelves and look in the C’s. Nothing.

  I try the S’s. Same result.

  Apparently, no. It couldn’t be that simple.

  But then I frown. I’ve never used my given name; I’ve always been known by my middle name.

  But my first name is Olivia, after my dad.

  I go to the O’s.

  And there, among the tattered covers, is a book with nothing on the spine. Just faded brown leather.

  I pull it out, open it.

  The first entry is from 2012, and I realize that this is the most current of the series of journals in which my dad wrote his notes about the various pieces he tracked.

  The final entry is from last week.

  It’s curious by its lack of detail, noting only that he had been hired to find a rare amulet. Usually, my father included all known facts about any item he was seeking, including anyone who commissioned the search or who might be an interested buyer.

  With this entry, there is nothing other than an additional note scrawled on the bottom like an afterthought:

  C—find the rainman. Help him.

  With him, what is hidden will be revealed.

  I pull the book up to my chest and hug it, and as I do, I realize that I have sunk to the ground. I put the book down beside me and close my eyes.

  The rainman.

  My father is sending me back to Raine.

  And I don’t know if I’m relieved or scared.

  * * * *

  I didn’t take a good look at Number 36 last night, and now as I stand in front of it, I take the opportunity to study the red brick building at 36 East 63rd Street. Unlike the wide neighboring buildings with which it shares walls, Number 36 is narrow, with only two windows gracing each of its five stories. The first two floors are convex, as if the building consists of a box sitting atop a cylinder. The brick is a faded red, and the trim around each of the windows is molded plaster, now off-white from so many years of exposure to the elements.

  I stand on the s
treet, my hand resting lightly on the iron railing that surrounds the property. Like many brownstones in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the first floor is slightly below street level, and the railing makes a sharp turn and then slopes downward, guiding visitors down five concrete steps to a small courtyard filled with colorful, fragrant blooms.

  I have not yet descended those stairs, and yet I have walked past them five times in the last hour, making the trek back and forth between Madison and Park three times, and twice going all the way to Central Park.

  Each time I end up back here, as if there is an elastic band around my waist and it is tied fast to this red brick building and the man inside.

  Rainer Engel.

  It is clear from my father’s journal that I need to see him again. And yet, I cannot help the trepidation that grows in me, all the more potent because it is mixed with excitement, anticipation, and most of all, longing.

  As much as I have told myself it is best to stay away, to run, I can’t escape the simple, basic truth that I want to see him again. I want to touch him and be touched by him.

  I don’t know what that means, but I do know that I have no more excuses. I can put this off no longer.

  Then quit dragging it out. Just go.

  I grimace because there is no denying the reasonableness of my own advice. And so I bite the bullet and descend the stairs.

  Almost immediately, the din of early afternoon traffic fades and the stale miasma of exhaust and street-side garbage is replaced by the gentle perfume of lavender and jasmine.

  It’s like entering another world, and I’m honestly not sure if that’s good or bad.

  The courtyard is lovely, but I barely pay attention to the pots overflowing with flowering vines or the concrete benches set with precision so that there is always at least one seat in the sun and one in the shade. Instead, I move with purpose to the front door. It is solid wood, polished to a shine. A gold knocker in the shape of a bird is mounted at eye level, its trailing tail feathers acting as a handle.

  A brass plaque mounted to the brick facade to the right of the door reads:

  Dark Pleasures

  Est. 1895