by Brenda Huber
A smart woman wouldn’t wager on that fight.
At last, he heaved an angry sigh and turned away, jamming the phone to his ear. “What?” he snarled.
Phoebe jumped at the fury in his voice, thankful it wasn’t directed at her. She scrambled from the couch and returned to the basket of laundry. It took a moment to focus, but she eventually found a new bra and tugged it on, cursing the way her hands shook as she tried to hook the tiny clasps. She jerked a shirt over her head, and mentally kicked herself.
Dear God, what was I thinking?
How could I have let things get so far out of hand? Thank heaven for that phone, or we would have—
Right now we’d be—
She shook her head, and shoved her fingertips beneath her glasses to massage her eyes. Lord, she’d been so wrapped up in him she hadn’t even taken her glasses off. Resettling her glasses, she puffed out a breath and looked around her, tried to think. The foreign-feeling fangs in her mouth were still there. She ran her tongue down the length of one, testing it, and nicked herself again. Damn it. Panic began to rise again.
What had triggered this to happen? She’d been intimate before, she’d had sex. Before. But she’d never reacted so strongly to anyone else, never lost control, not like this.
She hadn’t been able to stop herself, hadn’t been able to hold back. Not with Sebastian. Just the reminder caused her gums to ache, her fangs to throb.
She turned away from him, worried that he might somehow notice, though her lips were still pressed firmly together.
Oh, why won’t they go away?
It had to be him. Something about him. Sweet Mary, she and Sebastian couldn’t do what they’d just done, not again. Not ever again. The dark urges that had come over her left her shaken. There at the end, she’d wanted to…to bite him, for God’s sake. She’d wanted to mark him. To put a stamp of possession upon him. Her possession.
It was insane. What if the rest of her changed the next time? What if she couldn’t stop it, couldn’t shut it off?
Drawn by the sound of his voice, she turned to watch him, unable to resist, and wrapped her arms around herself.
What if I’d hurt him?
“Slow down, Gideon,” Sebastian instructed the caller. He raked a hand through his hair and began pacing the living room. “Did you find him?”
A furious spat of illegible sound spilled through the phone. Sebastian stopped in his tracks and swore.
“Are you sure it belonged to him? Mikhail’s got a tattoo on the back of his right hand of a—”
Another explosion of agitated speech erupted from the other end of the call, then Sebastian said, “Yeah, just between the thumb and index finger.” Another spat of words from the caller, then Sebastian hissed, “Fuck.”
Sebastian resumed pacing, and Phoebe took up post near the couch, indecisive. Her fangs would start to recede, and then she’d look at Sebastian, and they’d push longer once more, throbbing uncomfortably. Okay, watching him pace a whole through her living room floor was a bad idea.
And yet that was what she found herself doing. Unable to look away for more than a few minutes. Irritated with her lack of self control, she snatched up a stack of papers and one of her father’s journals and shoved them into the backpack with her clothing before dropping onto the couch.
And she was back to staring.
Apparently she was bent on being the poster child for bad decision-making skills.
“I’ll come back,” Sebastian barked, and Phoebe sat up, her attention now on the call rather than the delicious muscles on display, tensing and flexing every time he moved.
“Yeah, I did,” Sebastian went on. “But—” More garble from the other end. “No, she’s here with me now. We can—”
A long stretch of conversation came from the other end, cutting Sebastian off every time he tried to insert his opinion. Phoebe studied his face, watched as frustration and anger mounted, darkening his expression. The changes in her own body had finally faded, thank heaven. The fangs were gone at last, the burning sensation in her chest receded.
“Fuck Xander,” Sebastian suddenly exploded. “I don’t give a damn what he thinks. You’re going to need me.”
More talking, but this time the tone was quieter, and distinctly female. Phoebe’s claws curled into the couch cushions as something dark and ugly coiled inside her wanting to spring free. What woman dared talk to Sebastian in such soothing tones? Her eyes began to burn, her fangs shot long once more, slicing into her lower lip this time. The salty tang of blood blossomed in her mouth.
At that moment, Sebastian turned in his pacing. He glanced up, looked away, and then his attention shot back to her face. His eyes went wide, and he frozen in his tracks, his mouth hanging open. All his attention was on her now, the phone in his hand all but forgotten.
Phoebe snapped her eyes closed and ducked her head. Breathe. Breathe. Just breathe through it.
“What?” Sebastian asked, his tone distracted now. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Just…the next time they go after him, I go too. Got me?”
She heard a faint beep and the rustle of fabric. A long silence stretched on. And then heavy footfalls crossed the room. The couch dipped beside her. She shot to her feet and darted across the room.
“Phoebe?” Sebastian asked slowly, cautiously.
“No,” she blurted, throwing her hands up, motioning him to stay where he was. She dragged in a deep breath, willing her body back under her control. Still, she held her hand over the lower half of her face, just in case. No way could she explain fangs. “Don’t. Just…don’t. That should never have happened. What we did. The kissing and… It will never happen again.”
“Like hell it won’t,” he barked, coming to his feet.
She finally risked looking at him. At least her eyes weren’t burning anymore. A quick swipe of her tongue to check her teeth confirmed those damned fangs had gone away. Finally. But the salty tang of blood remand, and she worried that the damage had already been done. She licked her lips and lowered her hand.
He was going to argue. She could see it all over his face. Something in her expression must have changed his mind. He drew a deep breath and fisted his hands at his sides.
“Sweetheart,” he said in a placating tone, “do you realize that just a few seconds ago your lip was bleeding, and your eyes were—”
“Who was that on the phone?” Please. Please, don’t press the issue. Please.
He stared at her, long and hard.
Please.
A deep sigh slipped from him. “That was Gideon. I’ve been waiting to hear from him for a couple days now.”
Phoebe smiled then, positive that gratitude was written all over her face, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
“I didn’t mean to listen in on your conversation, but it was hard not to.”
“It’s okay. You’re part of this now. You should be kept in the loop. Especially because the next time they call, I’m probably going to have to leave—”
“Leave!” Where had this crushing disappointment come from?
His hands flew up, and he motioned in a conciliatory way. “Only for a short while. And I won’t leave you alone, I swear.”
That didn’t help. He’d promised that he would be the one to protect her. Not someone else. And where this irrational, illogical fear had come from, she couldn’t say. Nor could she say she cared much for it. She was a grown, independent woman. So she squared her shoulders and strove to at least sound calm and rational. “Where will you go?”
He glanced around, his unease palpable. “I’m not trying to blow your questions off, sweetheart. But we really need to go. Are you packed? We’ve been here too long as it is. It’s probably a safe bet Stolas’s minions know about this place. I’d rather not be the welcoming committee if they show up, yeah?”
“I’m ready.” She in
dicated the bag on the floor near his left boot.
He picked the bag up and held his hand out to her. With a great deal of trepidation, and more than a few second thoughts, she placed her hand in his and closed her eyes. His hand closed over hers, firm and strong, gave it a gentle squeeze. The falling sensation was barely noticeable this time. Phoebe opened her eyes. She and Sebastian were standing in his bedroom.
“Why are we here?”
“I need to grab a few things too. It’s nice to have backup if I’m too weak or injured and conjuring isn’t an option.”
“Conjuring? Oh, you mean that thing you do where you make things appear and disappear?”
“Yeah, that,” he said over his shoulder as he headed to the closet, a dimple flickering in his cheek.
She walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, watching as he pulled what seemed like random items from his closet and dresser. He’d tossed them haphazardly into the duffle beside her and then go off to find something else.
“Are there limitations to conjuring?”
He paused for a moment, turning his attention fully on her. “Yeah, I guess so. Conjuring affects us each differently. Like right after we’ve morphed—changed from one form to the other—we’re usually too drained to extend that much energy. The morphing also creates a lot of stress on our bodies, so it’s hard to concentrate, can even be painful in certain circumstances. Morphing doesn’t bother me all that much, but it gives Niklas raging migraines and leaves Gideon drastically weakened.
“Anyway, conjuring. How big the item is that we’re conjuring determines how much energy we need to use. For instance, a shirt or a bottle of water won’t take much energy at all. But a car or a house would drain us to a critical level and leave us in a vulnerable state. So, as I’m sure you can imagine, we generally avoid those kinds of things if at all possible. And we can only conjure inanimate objects. Never anything living.”
She absorbed this in silence for a moment as he turned back to his scavenger hunt. At length, his muffled voice came from the depths of his closet, “It’s not all that difficult. Just concentrate, picture what you want in your mind. The weight of it. The textures. The taste or scent. The shape of it. Then call it to you. Will it into being.” The movement stilled for a moment, and his voice became coaxing. “Try it. Think of something. Something small at first. And call it to you.”
Conjure something? Her?
Now that was crazy. So crazy she wouldn’t even dignify it with a response.
She asked, “I’m still waiting for you tell me what that call was all about. Where are you going when you leave?”
He stepped from the closet then, and stared at her, long and hard for a moment. She pressed her lips together and lifted her chin, arching a defiant eyebrow at him. Shaking his head, he crossed the room, a pair of jeans in his hands. He tossed them in the duffle, and then sat beside her.
“I don’t know where I’ll be going, not yet anyway. We don’t have that intel, at least nothing reliable yet.”
“Who is we?”
“Xander, Niklas, Gideon and myself.”
“And who are you looking for?”
“Mikhail. The Demon of War.”
Were her eyes bugging from her head? They sure felt like it. She blinked. “You mean…not The Demon of War, right? Like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse War?”
Grim, Sebastian nodded.
“He’s one of your brothers?”
Again with the grim nod.
“Shit,” she whispered, then immediately blushed. She might slip in her head once in a while, but she generally made it a rule not to cuss out loud. But…
Shit!
“Stolas, the demon prince behind the plot to overthrow Lucifer? He managed to get his hands on Mikhail. We think maybe with a portal or something. I’m not too clear on that just yet, it happened while I was searching for you. Anyway, he has Mikhail, and the others and myself are going to go after him. As soon as we get credible info on where Stolas might have him stashed, we’ll move in. So far, the only place we’ve been tipped off about didn’t pan out. They’d already moved him by the time Gideon and the others got there.”
“How do you know he was even there?”
Now Sebastian rose, fidgety all of a sudden. Phoebe frowned, wary. “He just was.” Sebastian moved away and crouched down to retrieve a big pair of black boots.
“Sebastian.” She waited until he looked up at her. “How do they know?”
Anger radiated from Sebastian. Anger and pain and…guilt. “Because they found his hand.”
Her mouth fell open. “His hand?”
Sebastian gave a terse nod. “Nailed to the wall.”
Her mind whirled. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but…how do you know it was his?”
“After the Great Fall, we all lost our wings and the gifts that were unique to us. In return, Lucifer granted us—those of us who’d proven useful to his cause—special gifts. Mikhail received the ability to heal with a touch of his hands. When he received this gift, his palms were branded. The hand nailed to the wall bore the mark. He also has a tattoo on the back of that hand.”
“Wait, why would Lucifer give Mikhail a gift to heal? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”
Now Sebastian looked uncomfortable. Finally, he admitted, “In certain circumstances, taking a human right up to the point of death, only to revive him, only to give him hope, then take him back to death’s door, over and over, is far crueler than simply taking his life and being done with it. The more torment in life, the more despair a soul feels in death. Lucifer likes to toy with souls like that.”
Phoebe cleared her throat. “So, this Stolas took Mikhail’s gift from him, then, when he took his hand?”
Now Sebastian looked like he wanted to be sick. He shook his head. “No.”
“But you just said—”
“That he took his hand. Possibly both of them. Bastard probably kept the other one for a souvenir.” Sebastian swiped his hand over his mouth. “They’ll grow back.”
“What?”
“That’s one of the perks of our species, sweetheart. We regenerate. But it’s damned painful. After all, what better punishment is there than to have to continually regenerate the same appendage over and over and over?”
Oh God.
And then another thought occurred. “So if Stolas took his hands, and that’s where his ability was, then how do you know he won’t lose his gift anyway?”
Sebastian’s face turned to stone. “Because Mikhail lost a hand once before, long ago. When it regenerated, the gift came back with it.” He stood, hefted the duffle bag over his shoulder, and held his hand out to her. “We need to go.”
Phoebe didn’t know what to say. Could barely wrap her mind around the gruesome images now filling her mind. Poor Mikhail.
Poor all of them if Stolas could get his hands on a demon like Mikhail, a freakin’ horseman of the Apocalypse. If Stolas could torture and maim like that, without regret, without conscience…how could they keep anyone safe? Knowing someone like that wanted the sword, wanted to overthrow Lucifer and conquer a world full of innocent humanity? She shuddered.
She had to find where the sword was hidden. As soon as possible. Find it and hide it away once more and protect it at all cost.
She reached for his hand, then paused. “What were your gifts? The one you lost? And the one you gained?”
He smiled at her then, but it didn’t reach his eyes and it left her feeling cold, wishing she’d never asked.
“Once upon a time, I could hear a person’s deepest desires. Just by standing near them, I could read their soul and know exactly what they wanted more than anything else. In some cases, if the wish was pure, the soul true, and it pleased the Almighty, I was able to grant those prayers. Heal someone, bless a union, bring a child to the barren, that sort of thi
ng.” The look on his face was difficult to describe, lost somewhere between needful yearning and wondrous awe.
She couldn’t bring herself to ask what he’d gotten in return for defecting with Lucifer. She didn’t need to.
He turned haunted eyes her way. “After the fall, I lost my ability. And I just traded one pair of wings for another.”
Her brow puckered as she remembered the sight of him in that cave in all his demonic glory. And those massive, lethal, midnight black wings.
“Time to go,” he said again. Translation: subject closed. She had more questions. But how could she push him on this when she had secrets she would rather leave buried?
Chapter Eight
Sebastian watched her cross the dusty cantina and pull out a chair next to a squat man with a thin mustache. She’d taken all the information he’d given her earlier surprisingly well. He couldn’t help but admire her strength. Most in her shoes probably would have buckled beneath the strain long ago.
She spent the next several minutes deep in conversation with the man, her hands constantly moving, her face animated, while Sebastian leaned against the bar and waited. She was in her element.
Though he was ever-vigilant of their surroundings and mindful of the other patrons, his thoughts wandered back to only a few hours ago. Just the memory of how she’d felt in his arms, the taste of her, the silk of her skin, had him shifting uncomfortably and fighting to control his own body’s reactions. She was a champagne bottle shaken and ready to erupt, the passion building and building inside her until, sooner or later, it detonated. He intended to be the one to release the cork.
She took his breath away. But, more and more, the longer he was in her company, he was coming to realize it wasn’t just her body that drew him. She called to him on every level. Her dogged commitment to upholding her familial legacy. Her loyalty to her father’s memory. Her resilient nature.