6
My head was throbbing, and as I opened my eyes, the world spun in a quick circle. That was going to take a few minutes to sort itself out. So, I closed my eyes again and leaned my head back against the floor.
How did the floor get so wet? That didn’t seem right, even with the broken window the floor of the lab should have been drier than this. Reaching out, I touched the ground around me and felt the blades of grass. Then my hand splashed into a puddle.
What in the fuck was going on?
Warmth covered my skin, and a bright light was shining through my eyelids. I tried to open my eyes again, and this time everything was blurry, but at least the spins had stopped. Pushing myself into a sitting position it dawned on me that I was staring at the lab’s large broken window from outside of the house. That helped to explain the water and the grass. Of course, I had landed in a big fucking puddle. What else was new? At least the sun was shining, and for better or worse, Rain’s fate was sealed.
Climbing back to my feet took some doing, but my legs only wobbled slightly as I took the first few steps back towards the house. The sun felt good on my wet skin, but it wasn’t natural for a storm to pass by this quickly.
Was the demon that powerful, or had I been unconscious for longer than I thought?
If the demon had that kind of mojo, then there was no way a sorry sot like myself would have been able to deal with it. That didn’t say much for Rain’s chances at being freed. Still at the end, right before I had been blown outside, I could have sworn I felt something different, maybe even something divine.
I’d read the Bible. Shit, I could recite most of it in the original Latin. The holy word had always been something I used, a tool, and as much as I had wanted to believe in God and the angels, it just never seemed real. Sure, I was fighting demons, but the world had always shown me more bad than good. If God cared so much about what happened down here, you’d think he would have made an appearance or two by now.
I can’t remember the last time anyone reported seeing an angel. It just didn’t happen. They were about as real as the fucking Easter bunny. Demon sightings got reported all the time, they weren’t always real, but enough of them were that you couldn’t dispute the facts. People wanted to believe in miracles. Fuck, I wanted to believe in them, but most of the people peddling that shit were two-bit scammers at best.
While it always stood to reason there should be a heaven to match hell, the devastating silence we heard from the good side left me questioning if it actually existed. It was easier to assume the demons were tied into whatever gave me my power. That power came from something else entirely outside of religion. Fuck, they might not even be demons. That just may be the most convenient way for us to explain it.
It was one of those things I didn’t want to look too closely at. It was like how I could use my blood to amplify my magic. Blood magic had always been thought of as evil, and yet, I used mine to bring evil to its knees. Most of the world didn’t believe in magic. Hell, I wouldn’t have believed in it unless I could do it. Life was just simpler that way. And it wasn’t like those of us with powers could just go out and advertise them; the public would think we were crazy, and I didn’t fancy spending the rest of my life in a padded room.
A few shambling steps later, I was climbing the porch steps and making my way towards the door. I still wasn’t sure what had happened. I was going to have to ask David about it.
Fuck, where was David?
He wouldn’t have left me out here lying in the grass unless he was hurt himself. He better not have gone off and died on me. David was the only apprentice that ever walked through these doors that didn’t make me want to stab my own eyes out with a pencil.
I lunged through the house, still not confident enough on my feet to run. Instead of stopping at the lab doors, I slammed into them, falling to the ground on the other side. Scrambling back to my feet, I scanned the room for David. The lab was a disaster, it might have looked better if a tornado had gone through it.
The handcrafted devil’s trap lay on the ground split in two. There was no sign of Rain on the floor, but the hardwood was scorched where the trap had broken open. Had I failed again? One day back on the job and I’d already damned another person to hell. Maybe more than one if I couldn’t find David.
Anything not locked in a warded case was destroyed, including my favorite chair. I’d gladly sacrifice the chair as long as David was ok. Nothing that had been lost was irreplaceable, except for the Devil’s trap. Remi was going to kill me when he found out it had been destroyed.
Getting the room back in order was going to cost a pretty penny and take a lot of manual labor. It was the kind of thing that would make me have to work on my divination skills to secure some quick cash. As for the rest of it, well, that was just the kind of thing I needed my apprentice for.
A groan issued from the right. I saw an arm reaching out from under a shattered table. I pulled the table free and saw David. He looked ok minus a nasty bump to the head and a few cuts from the broken glass. It seemed like getting your head knocked about was the catch of the day. I helped him into a sitting position. David tried to struggle back to his feet, but I pushed him back to the ground.
I got David settled against the wall before I stood back up. “Take it easy, David. Whatever happened just threw both of us for a loop.”
David let out a little whimper as he tried to move. “How are you even standing right now?”
That was a damned good question.
I looked from the table towards the window and then outside to where I had landed twenty feet away from the house. A fall like that would have been enough to break something at the very least, and yet I was fine. Better than fine really. I felt damned good. It was almost like all of my injuries had been healed. Even my tricky left knee felt good, and that never happened—especially after a storm.
There would be time to dwell on what happened in the lab later. Right now, I needed to find Rain. Where in the hell could she be? Looking around the room, I didn’t see anywhere else for someone to hide, or anything that had been knocked over that could hide someone that was unconscious. Moving back towards the devil’s trap, I looked around the room more slowly. There was some blood on the floor, and the smudges looked like they were heading out of the room.
I patted myself down and looked at my feet. I didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere, let alone enough to leave smears on the ground. David hadn’t moved until I found him, so that just left one person they could belong to. I followed the blood out into the hall and noticed my own muddy tracks moving in the opposite direction.
How had I missed this when I came into the house?
Following the blood trail was easy. It moved down the main hallway and took a left into the kitchen. Three steps into the room and I found myself looking at a naked woman standing on one foot. She was trying to balance with one leg crossed over the other at the knee so she could remove something from her foot.
Even in that awkward position it was easy to tell that she was breathtaking. Whatever she did to stay in shape, it was working. I was letting my eyes linger on her body when she coughed to draw my attention back up towards her face.
“If you're done helping yourself to a show, a little help would be nice,” she said it with a grin, but it still conveyed the message to pull my head out of my ass.
Oh, yes, there was something I wanted to help her with, but thankfully I managed to stop myself before saying that out loud. Instead, I managed to mumble out, “Sorry,” as I moved towards her.
“You know, for some kind of magical big shot, you’re pretty easy to embarrass.”
“Well, it’s not every day I have a naked lady in my kitchen. I think a little flush of the cheeks might be mandatory when that kind of situation springs up.”
“Springs up?” She laughed, and the sound didn’t do anything to slow my beating heart. “Which set of cheeks was it that held you so captivated?”
I knew better than
to answer that question, but it did have the effect on me of making me blush just a little bit more. Slowly, I reached out, letting my fingers trail against the skin on her hips. When she didn’t flinch away, I tightened my grip and lifted her onto the kitchen counter. If this was one of those movies I kept in the back of my closet, then shit was about to get real.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t still knocked out and having the best dream of my life.
I’d done my best to keep my eyes glued to her face. Which really didn’t end up being much better for my libido. She bit her lip in a cute kind of awkward way as she watched me. It was almost as if she was unsure of what she wanted to do next.
Searching her features, the more I noticed that she didn’t really look like Gabriella. It must have been my guilt playing tricks on me. Ka’ua was a woman all her own. Her milk chocolate eyes seemed to be searching mine for something. I hoped she liked what she found there.
I slid my hands off of her hips missing the warmth of her skin almost instantly. She didn’t look uncomfortable, so I hadn’t lingered long enough to make her second guess calling me towards her.
Rain had me feeling all out of sorts right now. It’d been a while for me. Strictly speaking, dating wasn’t really my thing. In my line of work, dating had tended to have deadly consequences for the other person involved, so I tended to avoid it. Nothing was off limits to the demons, and using loved ones against you was right at the top of their playbook.
I lowered my eyes to Rain’s legs and gently slid my hands under her calves and turned her until her feet were over the sink. I looked back at her just to confirm she was doing ok. Rain had her arms wrapped around her chest, letting me know she had a little modesty after all.
I started to laugh. I hoped it was enough to break the tension that had been growing between us. It must have been weird for her. She woke up naked in a man’s house probably with no idea how she got there or how she lost her clothes. Something like that normally generated a call to nine-one-one not a little flirting in the kitchen.
It was going to be a weird conversation when we had it. Mostly because I had no idea how she had gotten naked. I’d been outside lying in the mud. David had no reason to undress her. Outside of the fact he batted for the other team, I had found him unconscious under a table. That would have been a hell of a trick undressing a lady while you were unconscious.
My best guess was whatever interceded in our exorcism, had burned off her clothes. I felt a little thankful that while her clothes had been burned away, her skin still looked flawless.
I rubbed her calf gently as I lifted it enough so that I could get a firm hold of her foot with my other hand. It was hard to tell exactly what had happened to her foot with all of the blood on it.
“I’m going to wash this off really quick.” I looked back into her eyes. “It might sting a bit.”
She nodded and chewed on her lip in that sexy way again. It was the kind of look that said she was nervous but also pretty comfortable with what was about to happen. Taking my hand off her foot, I turned on the tap. I waited until the water was warm to put her foot under the tap, and women thought chivalry was dead.
She tried to pull her foot back, but I held her calf in place easy enough. I knew from experience that the water wouldn’t have felt that good, but without it, I couldn’t see enough to determine how bad the cut really was.
Even now with the water running, there was no way to tell how big the shard of glass was. I could only see the end of it poking out of her skin. “Hold this in the water for me.”
“Do I have to?” she grumbled.
I turned and gave her a glare. “Man up. You just survived demon possession. You can handle having a shard of glass removed from your foot.”
“Well, when you say it like that, I feel like a pussy.”
That snapped my attention from what I was doing back to her face. This time it was her cheeks that were red.
“Poor choice of words,” Rain said with a little giggle.
“I don’t know. I happen to be quite fond of pussies; it’s a guy thing.”
Rain reached out and playfully slapped my arm. I knew there was something growing between us. I’d liked her from the second I laid eyes on her. The only thing getting in the way then had been my past. She was easy going and could take a joke, even when it was crude and probably not the time and place for it.
Never underestimate the value of someone with a sense of humor that matches your own. That’s a priceless gift.
Now that I had my mind back out of the gutter and focused on her bleeding foot, I continued to search my pockets with my free hand. My fingers closed around the talisman I was looking for. This should be enough to do the trick. It might leave her with a little scar, but at least she wouldn’t need stitches.
I placed the talisman against the skin of her calf and then wrapped my hand around it. Pulling her foot free from the water, I lifted it a little higher so it was slightly elevated and then called on my magic.
“Trahere.”
The piece of glass flew out of her foot with a gush of blood behind it. Rain let out a little scream, but didn’t pull her foot away. The shard had gone in further than I thought. The fucking thing had to be at least three inches long.
“Sana haec vulnere.”
I felt my power move through me and out of the talisman. At first, it seemed like nothing happened, but then the flow of blood stopped. Slowly, her skin started to knit itself back together. The wound completely closed and then the scar disappeared.
Well, that was something new. I’d been able to heal minor wounds for a while now, but not that cleanly. She didn’t even have a mark on her, not that I wanted her to leave here with any scars—mentally or physically.
I slipped the talisman back in my pocket and started massaging her foot under the water. I felt her tense as if she expected it to be painful, but she relaxed when it wasn’t. I told myself I was just trying to get the blood off her feet, but the reality was I didn’t want to let go.
“I bet you’d make a killing working as a masseuse,” Rain said drawing my attention back towards her.
Our eyes met, and I felt a little spark jump between us. Maybe it was just leftover energy from the exorcism, or maybe we had been joined in some way that I had yet to understand.
“That and I’m a hit at kid’s birthday parties.”
“I bet you are,” she said, sliding her legs around so they dangled off the counter.
She kept her eyes locked on mine drawing me forwards. I stepped between her legs putting my hands back on her hips. Every instinct I had said that I should kiss her, consequences be damned. Her eyes begged me to come closer. I started to lean in, and then someone spoke from behind me.
“Boss?”
Well, if that wasn’t the biggest motherfucker of bad timing.
“Yes,” I said keeping my eyes locked on Rain’s.
“You ok in here?”
Rain broke our eye contact first, and the moment between us was lost. Was I ok? Not any fucking more I wasn’t.
“Why don’t you help our lovely lady find something to wear?” I tightened my grip on Rain’s hips again and slid her off the counter. She brushed against me on her way past, and it sent shivers through me. “And then call someone to fix that damned window before another storm rolls in.” I growled in frustration.
David slipped a towel over Rain’s shoulders and started to escort her from the room. “Sure thing, Boss.”
My eyes lingered on Rain’s exposed legs as she walked from the room. I rubbed my hand on my face in exasperation. I didn’t know if I should kill Benny or send him a gift. What in the hell had I just gotten into? Whatever it was, it wasn’t done yet, and this woman was going to be a part of it. That’s what my gut told me anyway. I’d learned to trust those feelings a long time ago. Something big was on the horizon, and I was going to make sure she came out of it unscathed.
7
Now that I had the chance to stop thinking with t
he wrong half of my body, it was a little easier to put things into perspective. It would never work between us. She was younger than I was, and who would willingly sign up for this kind of life? She was free now, and the chances of another demon latching onto her were infinitesimally small.
That was, of course, unless she continued to hang around with me.
David had done us both a favor by interrupting what had been about to happen. We hadn’t crossed any lines that couldn’t be uncrossed.
A quick look at the floor showed that despite being clothed, I hadn’t been any less messy than Rain’s trail of bloody footprints. I was dripping mud all over the place. I quickly stripped out of my shirt and pants before wadding them up into a ball and heading for my room.
I always did some of my best thinking in the shower, and I hoped that today wouldn’t be any different. All of today’s events were just too much to be a coincidence. How would Benny know this was the right person to snap me out of my funk? That and it had escalated so damn quickly.
Frankly, all of us were lucky to be alive. Without whatever that bolt of bright white light was, I wouldn’t have been able to win. I had felt her slipping from me, and then all of a sudden it was over. She was demon free. I could feel it the second I touched her in the kitchen. I just didn’t know how it was possible. The only way I’d ever been able to end a case of possession that was that bad was with my soul blade. Once I’d figured out the true price for using it, I vowed to never use it again, even if that meant unleashing a demon on this city.
It took me a few moments to pull all of my trinkets out of the wad of muddy clothing. Once I was relatively sure that I had everything removed, I tossed the dirty clothes in the hamper. I’d gotten in the habit of rechecking the clothes for items before tossing them in the wash.
Possessed (Bozley Green Chronicles Book 1) Page 6