Fall in Love

by Anthology

  I was in a spare room, and Zane was there, on a metal cot, his body covered by a thin blue blanket.

  I moved forward with stealth, then sat on the edge of his bed, my hand pressed flat on his naked chest, right over his heart.

  His eyes flashed open, the warrior in them fading to relief when he saw me. “We’ve been concerned. The portal closed, but you hadn’t come through. Then hours passed and you didn’t check in.”

  “How do you stand it?” I whispered. “How do you stand knowing that you can’t die but that you could suffer endlessly? That you could be hacked into bits and left for dead? But you wouldn’t be. Or buried in a cement vault for hundreds or thousands of years? How do you live with that?”

  I felt the sting of tears in my eyes, then the gentle press of his hand over mine.

  “I live with it, ma fleur, because I have no choice.” He sat up, revealing the rest of his bare chest and firm abdomen. The sheet fell around his hips, and I had a feeling that the rest of him was bare, too. “What has happened tonight, chérie?” he asked, his voice infinitely gentle.

  I pointed to where the knife had sliced through my now-battered skinsuit. “I was attacked. After the assignment. Poison on the knife. Something. I’m not really sure.”

  At the word poison, he’d tensed, leaning forward to look at the now-healed wound. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell exactly what happened.”

  I told, and watched as his eyes went hard and flat.

  “They did not know the truth about you, chérie,” he said. “But the greater truth—who you are and why you are here—that, they must know.”

  “That’s what I figure, too. End me, and evil takes a holiday.” I glanced sideways at him. “Then again, maybe they did know that I’ve sucked in your essence. Maybe they paralyzed me so that they could chop me into little immortal pieces.” I shivered at the thought. That really creeped me out. “But I got away.”

  “Possible,” he said, looking thoughtful. “Though it would not, I think, have been that difficult to locate you. It is after midnight now, and you left here before dark. Plenty of time to locate an unconscious warrior.”

  “Which is why I didn’t come here to slice off your head,” I said, giving voice to a suspicion that had been gnawing at me. His brows lifted, but I pressed on. “You would have known what to do. How to stop me for good. You would have found me, and you would have done that. But here I am. Which means you didn’t sell me out.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Although I am pleased to be off your suspect list, I had no knowledge of where you were. The portal reveals its destination only to you.”

  I frowned. I hadn’t realized they wouldn’t know where I was.

  “Beyond that,” he continued, “I would like to know why you would think of me as a traitor for even a moment.”

  I tilted my head, but never took my eyes off his. “You’re a demon. An incubus.”

  The hard edge to his eyes glimmered with amusement. “Am I?”

  I swallowed, certain I was right, but at the same time knowing it was one hell of an accusation, especially considering whom we both worked for. But it made sense. His immortality. His intense sensuality. The way he was able to melt me with only a look.

  And the way the heady power of that sensual fire now burned within me.

  He was an incubus. He had to be.

  He rose, the sheet dropping away to reveal his perfect, naked body. I stood firm, my knife held out, forcing myself to keep calm as he drew near. He might not have been the one who attacked me, but I couldn’t fully trust him. Not knowing the truth about him.

  He moved toward me, stopping his advance when his flesh touched my blade, a single drop of blood beading on that perfect caramel skin. “And what do you intend to do with that knife?”

  “Isn’t this what I’m supposed to do? Kill demons? Don’t I at least have to try? Even against the immortal ones?”

  He turned, ignoring my knife as he pulled on a pair of thin gray sweats. “You assume that is what I am,” he said, moving back toward me with slow purpose. “That this sensual buzzing and humming between us comes from a dank, dark place.” He’d pitched his voice low, and the thrum of my body deepened, all of my senses coming to life as he spoke.

  I forced myself not to touch him, though I desperately wanted to. “Turn it off,” I demanded, even though I knew that part of it now came from me. Our two natures—hot and quick and designed for pleasure—seeking each other out. Craving release.

  I swallowed, my mouth gone suddenly dry. “Turn it off now.”

  He ignored me, coming closer still. “So quick to condemn what you do not even understand. Tell me, Lily, what is it you think an incubus is?”

  “I already told you,” I said. “A demon. One who draws strength and power through sex and drains the victim in the process.” I glanced across the room to the cabinet that held the books I studied during breaks in physical training. “I’ve been doing my reading, remember?”

  “You forgot the best part,” he stated calmly, circling me as he spoke, his body mere inches from mine, his proximity working like static electricity and making my skin tingle. “An incubus makes love like no other. The pleasure he brings his partner is unrivaled, and his skills as a lover are unmatched.”

  “Back off,” I demanded, my skin heating and my senses tingling.

  “Ah, chérie. Sexuality is not about being ungodly. It depends entirely on how it is used. Pleasure?” he asked, running his fingertip lightly from my chin down my neck, and then brushing over my breasts ever so lightly. To my abject horror, I felt my nipples tighten and knew without a doubt that my panties were wet.

  “Or control,” he said, and before I could react, he’d cupped my ass and pulled me close, his rock-hard erection pressed against my Lycra-covered thigh. “There is a difference, no?” He released me and stepped back. I stood there, gasping for breath, the heat of this man starting a fire inside me.

  “Sit,” he said, nodding at the bed.

  “I prefer to stand.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He moved and sat, and I had to wonder if I’d made a mistake. He was half naked and on a bed, and I was in a libidinal fog. Possibly not the best move on my part.

  “You are right, of course. I am an incubus—or what human culture would call an incubus. But that does not make me evil, Lily. It does not make me a traitor. And it certainly does not mean that I am a demon.”

  “But I thought—”

  “You thought that the bedtime stories were true. They are not.” He reached for me, and without thinking I moved to sit beside him. “There is nothing inherently bad about those of us with sensual allure. It is only those who would control—who would use that allure for power and persuasion—who kneel at the altar of evil.”

  “And you?” I whispered.

  His hand stroked my cheek. “Sexuality can also be a form of worship, ma chérie. The connection, both physical and spiritual.”

  He sat back and drew in a deep breath. “Do not condemn me, Lily. I am not evil. Far from it. I am, in fact, much like you. Caught in the middle. We are alike, you and I, in more ways than the essence we share.”

  I pressed my lips together, feeling lost and foolish. As if I didn’t know where good ended and evil began. Something that should be the simplest question in the world, and now it seemed unduly complicated.

  “Poor Lily,” Zane said, looking at me with gentle eyes. “The world is not like the stories of your youth, n’est-ce pas?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “At least for you, it is simple. You hunt demons. Do not make it more complicated than it must be.”

  “But I’d always thought that an incubus was a demon—”

  “Forget what you know,” he said sharply. “You must let go of the old ways of thinking.”

  “I know! I understand. But—” I cut myself off, trying to form the thought that filled my head, demanding and yet amorphous. “Can a demon be good? You say kill them all. But are they all
evil?”

  The amorphous cloud in my head took form, and I concentrated on the floor, afraid Zane would see the reflection of my thoughts on my face: Deacon.

  “A most interesting question,” he said, his voice low and scholarly. If he had any clue as to the motivation behind my question, he kept it to himself. “Like all things, there is a hierarchy in the heavens, and the demons who thrived when the universe was a formless void drew back into the dark when God breathed light upon this world. The darkness shrank, shut out by the light. And the dark-dwellers—the demons—did not seek this new dimension. Not at first. Not until something new and wonderful appeared and walked there.”

  “Humankind,” I said. “Evil came into the world along with humankind.”

  “For whatever reason, humans are uniquely subject to the temptations of the dark, without in fact being dark by nature. And those that dwell in the dark are uniquely tempted by humanity. And so evil crossed over. The first evil. The serpent of mythology. And once the crossing was made, the path was forged.”

  “Is this real or mythology?”

  “If you are living it, it must be real.”

  I couldn’t get my head around the idea of a cognizant darkness or a powerful snake that was the embodiment of evil, but I tried to go with it, because underneath the parable was the story of what I was righting. “Go on.”

  “Once evil began to tempt humankind, it realized that evil could also exist within humans. Could merge. Could possess and influence. And with every human who took the dark inside, the dimension of evil grew larger.”

  “As evil spreads in the world, hell expands.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So that Goth girl. The Tri-Jal. She really was human. Just a really, really, really dark human?”

  He shook his head. “The flesh became so key to the dark-dwellers that some species of demon learned to create a shell. But it is only packaging used to cross to this dimension, because a demon’s true form does not blend in here, as you have seen.” I nodded, thinking of the Grykon. “Evil is best able to get a grip when it is subtle. When it looks and feels like that we know best.”

  “So it looked like a girl, but there was no humanity inside. Not like that human who was possessed. There was still humanity in him. Just trapped inside with the demon.”

  “Trapped,” Zane said, “and subjugated.”

  I stood up and wandered over toward the cabinet with the books as I considered everything he’d said. “If humans can suck in the dark, can demons suck in the light?”

  He smiled. “Ah, ma chérie, that is the question. If a single man can expand the dimensions of hell by aligning himself with evil, can God himself not be enriched by a child of the darkness turning to face the light?”

  “Can he?”

  “All in nature can be good. And all can be evil. Free will, chérie. But each of us, human and demon, has a true nature. And very few among us are brave enough to fight it.”

  I took that as a qualified yes, then licked my lips, wondering what my nature was. Wondering more if it had changed when I became Alice, and if it was changing still as I absorbed the demons day after day.

  “Do not question your nature, chérie,” he said kindly. “Your heart is good.”

  “And you? What’s your nature?”

  His smile was tight. “I fight on the side of righteousness. That much, I will swear to you. Though I do pay daily for my hubris.”

  “Hubris?”

  “In my youth, I wanted to live forever, a trait that is awarded only to the true angels and incorporeal demons. I acted rashly, trying to manifest a desire I did not truly understand and would not have wanted fulfilled had I considered the ramifications. I was punished for my foolishness.” He closed his eyes, sighed deeply. “And now you share my torment.”

  “But that means you got what you wanted.” I said, my voice a whisper. “Immortality.”

  “It would seem so,” he said. His smile when he looked up at me was wan. “There are times when I believe that hell is the place where all your dreams come true.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you know why I am down here, Lily? Down in this prison of concrete and metal?” he asked, and I realized that his voice was no longer accented. “Do you have any idea how old I am? How many lives I’ve had? How many places I’ve lived, wives I’ve had, years I’ve seen pass by as minutes?”

  “I don’t.”

  A sad smile touched his lips. “Neither do I,” he said. “But it has been far too many.”

  “Zane—”

  He lifted a hand. “No. Hear me. I have lived thousands of lifetimes, Lily, and I am tired. So tired, and I crave death. I crave the end of this life and the beginning of a new, in whatever form it may come. And yet I cannot have that which I desire. I cannot, because of my own foolish ambition. And so I have trapped myself in a nightmare of my own making.”

  “But what does that have to do with why you’re here in the basement?”

  “I made a deal. Long ago, I made a deal to train warriors. And in exchange, when the time is right, I will be granted freedom. I will be granted death.” He met my eyes. “And all I have to do is stay and teach and train.”

  “Stay?” I repeated. “You mean you can’t leave? You’re not allowed to go upstairs?”

  “I can,” he said. “And if I do, the bargain is over.” He stood, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. “Do you know what the real hell of it is, Lily?”

  I shook my head.

  “I have, time and again, been tempted to ride that elevator to the street.”

  “But then you’d break the bargain and you’d stay immortal.”

  He exhaled loudly. “After so long, I fear death as much as I crave it. It is,” he said with a smile, “a hideous conundrum.”

  I thought of him trapped down here in the basement, and realized that Zane was living my nightmare, albeit in a bigger box.

  “How much longer do you have to train?”

  “That depends on you, Lily. The fate of the world will be determined soon, and with it, my fate as well. The convergence,” he said, a hint of dread flashing in his eyes, “it comes closer every day whether we want it to or not.”

  “Zane. I’m—”

  “No. You of all people should not pity me. We are bound now, Lily. We share the same fate.”

  I frowned, disturbed.

  “But enough about theology and eternity. You came tonight because you feared I acted against you. But trust me, ma fleur, I wish you no harm.” His gaze grazed my face as I avoided looking into his eyes, afraid of what I might see there if I let Alice’s sight take over. Afraid also to let him know I had the sight at all. “No, chérie. I would never wish you harm.”

  His lips closed roughly over mine, taking without asking and leaving me breathless and needy.

  Needy, yes, but unwilling. Gently, I pushed him away, ignoring the desperate ache inside me begging to be sated. “No.”

  His eyes examined me, and I looked away, afraid my will would fail. He’d turned me on, yes. He’d fired my senses.

  But at the end of the day, there was another man who filled my thoughts. A dangerous man whom I wanted in my bed, despite my better judgment.

  He stepped back, increasing the distance between us. “You break my heart, chérie.”

  “Some other time, perhaps,” I said. “If things are different.”

  “Is that a promise, chérie?”

  I thought of the way I’d promised to always be there to protect Rose, and I had to shake my head. “I don’t do promises anymore,” I said, then turned away. Finally, it was time to go home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Clarence sitting on his little stool outside my door when I arrived back a few minutes before one in the morning. What did surprise me was the present he shoved into my hand, a small box wrapped in purple paper. I took it, confused.

  “Ain’t no big thing,�
�� he said.

  I frowned, but peeled the paper off, then tugged the lid off the box. A cell phone was inside, nestled in crumpled-up tissue paper. The phone itself was pink. With sparkles. I looked up at Clarence. “This would have come in handy earlier. Or not. Considering I couldn’t move my freaking muscles.”

  “Company plan,” he said. “Unlimited in-network calls, unlimited text messaging, unlimited e-mails. Gotta love technology.”

  I almost managed a smile as I shoved my key in the lock and let us inside. “Nice thought. Appreciate it. Not sure how I could have used it today—probably would have lost it in the battle—but here’s the thing: I failed.”

  I glanced at him, expecting a pep talk. Instead, I got nothing.

  “Right,” I said, suddenly uncomfortable. “Anyway.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, patting the pocket with the knife. “I ain’t here for this.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “But don’t expect platitudes, either, pet. Your failure may not have lost the war, but there’s only one battle left. The big one. And everything’s riding on you.”

  “Not that there’s pressure,” I muttered.

  “Hey,” he said, suddenly effusive. “You can do it right? Wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t. You just gotta be confident.”

  “I am,” I said automatically. Then I thought about it and realized that I’d spoken the truth. Despite my failure with the Caller, I’d survived. More than that I’d learned.

  And I wasn’t going to let evil win. I thought of Rose, and my resolve solidified even more. This time, I wasn’t going to lose.

  Already in the kitchen, Clarence tugged open the refrigerator, then snorted with disgust. “So how’s the arm? Anything new popped?”

  I shook my head, realizing that my arm would spark to life again when the Box was brought back into this dimension by a new Caller. I cringed, already anticipating the pain. Gee, it was fun being a map. Not.

  “I just got home,” I said. “You don’t really think it’ll pop again so fast do you?”

  “Time’s running out before the convergence,” he said. “They’re gonna act fast. Probably already have another Caller on the job.”