For too many years I had simply existed. Going through the motions, making more money than I could spend, eating, sleeping, drinking, killing, finding pleasure when I wanted it. But I had not lived in a very long time. I had not known companionship, tenderness, camaraderie, and a sense of duty or purpose. I had not known love.
Xander said I was ignorant. He said I knew nothing of myself, my people, or my skills.
And he was right.
So it was no big surprise that I went out looking for him as soon as the sun went down.
I traveled as my shadow self for both speed and cover. I don’t know why I thought he’d be at the warehouse, sitting on that damned throne in the middle of an empty building. So I shouldn’t have been put out when I didn’t find him there.
After that, I checked the town house. Not a single light illuminated the lonely windows, and though his scent lingered, he hadn’t been there for at least a couple of days.
Beleaguered, I went to The Pit. I didn’t want to sit in my apartment and stew, so I decided to seek out diversion in the crowds of humans who went out night after night, trying to define their fleeting lives with even more fleeting encounters.
The club was packed with humans celebrating the end of the work week. They played their usual games, rituals that centered on flirty gestures, suggestive conversations, and the occasional flash of skin. I leaned against the bar and watched, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. It would be only a matter of time before someone homed in on the faint glow of my eyes or my flawless porcelain skin and decided to throw their hat in the ring.
Levi, the bartender that night, slid a bright blue drink in my direction. The first one of the night was always on the house. Cute, preppy, and completely out of place, Levi looked like an Abercrombie ad. He also struck me as a good guy. He never came on to me and always flashed a friendly smile when I walked in. If he had any idea about my otherness, he never asked. He didn’t stare and gave me space, one of the main reasons why I favored The Pit.
The bar seemed to be the lake that most lonely single men fished from, so I left with my drink and gave Levi a silent toast as I walked away. I found a nice dark corner, and, with the help of my black clothes, melted right into the scenery.
Tyler showed up after I’d been there an hour. He must have had some kind of internal Darian tracking system, because he made a beeline for my table.
I looked away, watching the humans on the dance floor as if I were totally engrossed in their gyrations. Another thing I didn’t do. Dance.
I didn’t acknowledge him when he slid into the seat next to mine, and I tried not to pay attention to how great he smelled. Like an antsy kid, he fidgeted silently, waiting for me to look at him. I wanted to—those hazel eyes of his had a tendency to suck me in—but I’d learned pretty quickly that if you gave Ty an inch, he took about five miles. Oh, man, he smells good.
“Aren’t you going to talk to me?”
The sensation of his breath in my ear sent a zinging rush right through my center. I refused to admit that Tyler had the most delicious mouth I’d ever tasted, and I banished the memory of our passionate moment to the farthest recesses of my mind.
“If Xander always called you, how did you get in touch with him to set up the meeting last night?” I stuck to business. Business . . . business . . . business.
“He called me right after you left here. I guess he knew you’d be fired up to meet him.”
My jaw clenched like a vise. Xander’s recent disappearance really rubbed me the wrong way. I did not wait at anyone’s beck and call, and the least he could offer for the inconveniences he’d caused in my existence was a few answers.
Turning away from Tyler, I centered my focus on the dance floor again. A very young woman pulled up her shirt and tucked it underneath her bra. She stroked her belly like it was a magic lamp. The guy next to her rubbed himself up and down her body. It might have been sexy if either one of them had been more coordinated—or sober—but as it was, they just looked ridiculous. I cracked a grin as I watched them bump and grind, thinking wryly to myself that at one time, the Charleston had been considered lewd.
Tyler’s hands moved up my back by small degrees, creeping against the thin fabric of my T-shirt and over my shoulders. His thumbs rested at the nape of my neck, and he wrapped his fingers around my throat. As soft as a spring breeze, his cool fingertips caressed my skin, fanning out toward my collarbone. I found the contact so completely erotic that I had to stop myself from throwing boundaries to the wayside and laying him across the table.
I didn’t have it in me to explain why this thing he wanted between us was not a good idea. And so I passed into shadow, not caring about the other humans scattered around the club, and moved silently through their masses to the exit.
Tyler wasn’t the only one with boundary issues.
I returned to my apartment to find Xander in my living room. For an oh-so-important king, he seemed to come and go as he pleased with little thought to security. Maybe I was spoiled by my heretofore solitary ways, because I wanted to knock him across the studio for the calm expression on his face.
“What are you doing here, Xander?”
He gave me the same treatment I’d given Tyler at the club, basically ignoring me to get some sort of rise. It worked.
“Is that how you address your king?” he asked, staring at the wall.
My king? My ass. I still wasn’t excited by the idea that someone could hold dominion over me, no matter how much he insisted he could. I gave a quiet but derisive snort.
“My liege,” I began in my most regal voice, copying Anya’s from the previous night. “I am both humbled and honored that you have graced my hovel with your imperial presence. I am yours to command and wish nothing more than to serve you.”
The air in my apartment changed. Charged with energy, like a coming thunderstorm. Xander’s body became insubstantial, scattering in a violent pepper of black dust.
In a waft of sweet, fragrant heat, he reappeared to stand in front of me face-to-face, or, more to the point, face-to-chest. He stood so tall that I almost got a crick in my neck from looking at him. But I didn’t cower in the presence of anyone.
“You were looking for me tonight?” he asked.
With a movement so fast even I had a hard time tracking it, he ran his hands along my side, lifting up my shirt along the waist. My breath caught in my throat as he passed a warm palm along the gash in my side—almost completely healed, save for a thin white line.
“You’re healing well.” The sound of his rich voice lulled me, banishing any trace of anger. He pulled the shirt down and flashed a very unkingly grin. “What do you want of me?”
At that moment, I could have made a list a mile long and comprised of the different things I wanted of him. And then I came to my senses. I thought about Ty, sitting alone at the club, the things he’d said, the way his mouth pressed against mine, and my feelings for him, despite the rules I’d laid down for myself.
“I want to know,” I said, swallowing my considerable pride, “about who I am.”
“I can’t tell you who you are,” he said. “But I can tell you what you are.”
“What am I, then? How did I come to be this way, and why did Azriel leave me without teaching me anything? Why have I thought that I was alone for a century and that there were no others like me?” I paced as I rambled on, trying to form the questions my arrogance didn’t want me to ask. “What is it that I can and cannot do, and why do I do those things? Am I immortal or something else? And where is the magic blade that is the only thing that can take my life? Who has it? Do you?” I asked, remembering Azriel’s words to me.
I left Xander gaping after me and settled down in a chair, too flustered to continue. I suppose those were a lot of questions to bombard someone with. I hadn’t intended to let them all tumble out of my mouth like marbles rolling out of a sack.
He didn’t come to my side, and I was glad for it. His voice floated on the ai
r, and I listened with my eyes closed, out of shame more than anything else.
“You . . . are . . . nothing,” he said. “A creature that lives between the realms. You are made of twilight and shadow and move as the wind through the trees. You are Shaede.”
I reluctantly admitted to myself that his speech sounded eloquent and kingly. If only Azriel had been a millionth of that, I thought as bitter memories taunted me. Though he’d shared the king’s flair for dramatics (maybe it’s a Shaede trait), Azriel had never been one to lend me words of comfort. Merely a force of nature, he’d existed like the wind: fickle and unconcerned with the obstacles in his path.
“You won’t wither and die the way humans do,” he continued. “And even if your physical form is damaged beyond repair, you will only fade into shadow for eternity, never recapturing your solid self.”
Xander appeared before me, his eyes studying my face, right down to each individual pore. “If I had known about you, I would have come for you decades ago. Only a very powerful Shaede can make another, and Azriel was a fool to have left you.”
That didn’t exactly bolster my spirits—or answer any of my questions.
“How was I made?” I asked, needing to know the answer to this question.
“I told you last night that I require your services.” He changed the subject, I think, because he could tell I was becoming agitated by his lack of a straight answer. “You are an assassin by trade, and that’s what I need. What I hired you for.”
“Why me?” I asked. “Anya appears to be able to hold her own.”
“You’ll find out,” he said, standing. “Come to the warehouse in two nights’ time.”
My mouth twisted into a smirk. He sure snapped back into king mode pretty damn fast. “Why?”
“You need to begin your training.”
I opened my mouth to challenge him, but he had already left.
Chapter 6
I stripped down, changed into some comfortable clothes, and found a nice spot on the shag rug in front of the TV. Using the couch as a backrest, I pulled my knees up against my chest, hugging my body into a tight ball. I wasn’t thinking about Xander or the job anymore. He hadn’t answered any of my questions, more or less giving me the runaround. As if finding out after all these years that I wasn’t the only Shaede roaming the planet wasn’t enough of a shock, I had been assured by Xander that had he known of my existence, he would have come for me. The thought of knowing others like me, the freedom of being released from anonymity, frightened me. Truth be told, I only pretended to want nothing more than to be alone. Solitude was not what I wanted, though I’d been alone for nearly a century. And I had Azriel to thank for that.
I’d been human once.
I met Azriel in another age. A gentler age—a bullshit age, really. Women hadn’t learned how to empower themselves yet. Of course, there was a growing faction of females who were big into the suffrage movement. They were the first real feminists, ready and willing to embrace their true power. I think I could have been one of them.
According to my family, I was a sad excuse for a girl. Though I was winsome and lovely, my mouth could sometimes be my greatest flaw. My father had been fairly successful, a banker in a rising industry. And he wanted his daughter’s marriage to echo his financial status. They tried to peddle me off to every guy with a buck. None of the matches ever worked out . . . until Henry Charles. He was an up-and-coming doctor, upstanding and well liked by everyone. He made a decent living, and he seemed to adore me. So, of course, my father pushed me to accept his proposal. I was already twenty-one—old by marriage standards—and my family was dying of embarrassment that I had yet to find a suitable husband.
They were so anxious that they allowed for an unusually short courtship and married me off to him just weeks after our initial meeting. “Charming” didn’t even begin to describe Henry. I had high hopes for me and one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. I wanted to be loved, adored, and paraded on someone’s arm. Only my sharp tongue hinted that I was a less-than-docile female. But fiery or not, a girl wants affection. I dreamed of an equal partnership full of passion and tenderness. Life would be perfect.
In reality, our life was as far from perfect as one could get. Henry never wanted me; he’d actually never wanted any woman. His tastes ran a little more on the masculine side. Now, in this day and age, Henry would have had a better chance at happiness. The modern world isn’t perfect, but he would have found some of the acceptance he assuredly deserved. He lived a double life, slinking around, finding pleasure under the cover of darkness. And I was left to take the brunt of his anger at the card he’d been dealt.
I was a human punching bag. His drunken antics always ended in a beating. I suppose he was mad at me for being lovely and soft—all of the things society dictated he should love and yet didn’t. And so I took the abuse, day after day, week after week, until the years sort of faded into obscurity. My parents, glad to see me gone, never visited. They’d never truly understood me. I was the product of a blossoming female society, a generation of women who were finding their voices. But despite my intelligence and need for independence, I couldn’t find my voice when it came to my husband. Henry didn’t keep me prisoner. But thanks to the constant bruises, my own shame kept me safely at home lest some concerned community member question my routine injuries. Let’s face it: No one’s that clumsy.
I didn’t hate Henry; he was a product of his time and environment just as much as I was. I could’ve done without the verbal and physical abuse. Who knows? Maybe he didn’t treat his boyfriends any better. The fact of the matter was, no matter whom Henry loved, he was a lousy, abusive drunk, and an asshole’s an asshole no matter your creed.
The days bled into one another, and I wanted a new life so badly I could taste it. I wished every day that I would go to sleep and awake to a better existence.
Azriel gave me that gift.
“Darling, I want you to meet a friend of mine.” Henry had been just as shocked as I was when the knock came at the door. But he could be all grace and charm when the situation demanded it, and his new friend’s surprise visit required all of that and more. “Azriel, my wife, Darian Charles.”
No doubt Henry met him and fell head over heels. Azriel was something to behold. Dark, curly hair, dark brown eyes—beautiful despite their cruel edge—and russet skin that glowed in the firelight. He looked like a Roman god come to sit in our living room, and little did we know, it wasn’t too far from the truth.
“Mrs. Charles,” he said, bending over my hand. “I’m so very pleased to meet you.”
The touch of his lips on my skin sent a river of chills flowing across the landscape of my body. Of course, I sensed something different in him. And yet, I was as infatuated with him as my farce of a husband. “Will you join us for dinner?” I asked, glad to have Henry distracted for the evening. If anything, it would keep the abuse at bay.
Azriel stood, his eyes roaming over what I hoped he couldn’t see: traces of yellowing bruises that had not quite healed. I didn’t want this stranger to see the physical proof of my weakness. But he noticed. Azriel never missed a beat, and his pained look instantly tore at my heart.
“I’d love to join you for dinner,” he said. His fingers lingered on my palm as he pulled away. “Henry, let’s sit with your beautiful wife and enjoy her company while we eat.”
Polite and attentive, he hung on my every word. It made Henry jealous beyond description, but I didn’t care. I was falling in love by the second, hypnotized by his exotic beauty and soft yet intense voice asking me questions I didn’t feel worthy to answer.
Azriel seemed interested in the story of my life, my day-to-day activities, the goings-on in the city. Seldom did he address Henry, except every now and again when my husband would interrupt to gain Azriel’s attention.
I knew the consequences of my actions, but at that moment, I didn’t care. I didn’t care if Henry beat me to a bloody pulp, because it would all be worth it for
a few moments of Azriel’s undivided attention.
“You stupid bitch!” Henry railed hours after Azriel had gone. “You just had to get in the way, didn’t you?”
His fist landed squarely against my jaw, the popping sound making me sick as I crashed to the floor. The metallic tang of blood lay thick on my tongue, and I tried to shake the fog from my addled mind.
“Henry, I—” Words stalled in my throat. My head felt too heavy for my neck to support. God, why couldn’t he just kill me and get it over with?
His boot made contact with my ribs and I heard more than felt the crack. I wanted to curl up in ball, protect myself, but I didn’t have the strength for the simple act. “Do you even think you’d be here if it wasn’t necessary?” A sob broke through his chest. “I hate you!” His fist came down, bashing my chin. Another pop, blood welling from the split in my lip. The smell of the blood made bile rise in my throat.
Henry hauled me up by the collar of my dress and slapped me with his open palm. “He was for me!” he shouted. “You ruined everything!” He followed through with the back of his hand, striking my other cheek. “I should wring your scrawny, ungrateful neck!”
I looked up at the panes of the French doors leading from the parlor to our garden and caught a reflection in the night-shrouded glass. His dark and lovely form slid through the solid structure as if the doors hadn’t been there at all. An apparition. An angel come to take me to heaven.
“Get off of her, you coward!” Azriel shouted, pulling Henry away from me. “You have no idea what you’re doing, who she really is!”
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