Nica looked down at me, and I swear I saw pity on her face. “All I know is once you’re in, there is no out.” Her bright smile was back, and the pity I thought I’d seen might as well have been imagined. “It was nice to meet you. I was expecting a bitter and twisted woman on the verge of insanity. You seem pleasantly coherent to me.”
I laughed, not entirely sure whether she was joking or not. “Thanks, I think.”
“Take care, and if you have any more questions, just give me a call. My number’s on the front of the file.”
“I have a question.”
“Oh?”
“What are you? You’re not demon. You referred to demons as my kind, so what are you? I’m just curious, is all.”
She chuckled. “Well, I’m just a personal assistant.” By the way she spoke, with the slight tip of her head and a glint of mischief in her eyes, she made it perfectly clear she was not just a personal assistant.
After she’d left, I browsed through the file on Stefan, absorbing and digesting every piece of information I could find. At least when we next met, and I was under no illusion—there would be a next time—I’d know who I was dealing with.
Chapter 5
Jonesy’s throaty purr resonated around my small kitchen. I envied my cat’s simple existence as I tickled him behind his ears. He chomped merrily through his bowl of kibble, oblivious to my turmoil. I’d made arrangements for my landlord to temporarily take him on, but I really didn’t want to leave him. I’d taken on the responsibility of having a pet, and it felt like failure handing him over to someone else—a little like how I’d been shoved from one owner to another. It didn’t sit well with me. While discussing the temporary ownership of my cat, I let my landlord know the electrics in my apartment appeared to be on the blink (not mentioning it might have something to do with the energy spike from a half-blood demon) and paid him two months’ rent in advance while giving him notice of my intention to vacate.
I lied and told him I’d secured a metalworking contract halfway across the country. He said he was sorry to see me go, and I believed him. In the three years I’d been there, I hadn’t once been late with the rent. I didn’t hold rowdy late-night parties and barely had any visitors at all. The model tenant.
That would all change if I stayed.
The few items I considered important fit into a shoebox. Photographs, mostly, and a note from Sam that he’d left at the workshop one evening, asking if I took commissions. He’d been recommended by a friend and had seen my work online. I didn’t sell swords from a website, I was pretty sure that would raise some eyebrows, but I did craft metal pieces for private clients. Gates, candlesticks, art. It paid the bills, and I was damn good at it.
I’d realized I could read metal during my time as another demon’s plaything. A curious skill, to say the least. I couldn’t explain it, not really. Some might call it psychic, but how can metal retain a memory? It can’t, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing the people who might have briefly come into contact with a metal item. Perhaps the metal creates a bridge between the past and present, and being an elemental demon, I can cross that bridge. Whatever it was, the demons who controlled my chains very quickly learned about my skill. At first, I’d thought it might afford me some respect, but all it did was give them another means by which to hurt me.
Reading metal requires a sacrifice of blood, specifically, my blood. To get any kind of image at all, I must bleed, and it just so happens that all demons ever want to read are weapons. Swords, daggers, axes. Demons aren’t known for their subtly. Make me bleed, make me read. It had been Damien’s mantra. Come see the curious half-blood who can read your past; bring your own sword.
I shivered just thinking about him, preferring instead to file those memories away in the “Do Not Enter” part of my mind. Damien, my ex-owner, was dead, my past and the woman I had been, long dead with him. If it hadn’t been for Akil, I might have still been there, sobbing at the end of those chains, my demon soul spent and my body abused.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
I yelped in surprise at Akil’s voice. He stood in my apartment doorway, leaning against the doorframe. He had never looked as wickedly divine as he did in that moment. He wore a perfectly tailored tuxedo, jacket unbuttoned over a fluid white shirt. His crooked smile topped off the sophisticated demeanor, so he simply exuded confidence. He held a bottle of red wine in one hand. A cocktail dress still inside its clear wrapping was draped over his other arm.
He sauntered over to me and deliberately stood a little too close, leaning past me to place the bottle of wine on the countertop. As he straightened, he made no attempt to move out of my personal space.
He smelled like cinnamon and cloves, like a fireplace on a cold winter’s day, and it was all I could do to gape up at him. His hazel eyes appeared almost black as he looked down into my wide-eyed stare. As he breathed, I felt the energy radiating from him and had to fight not to reach out and place my hands on his chest. I could soak up that power, draw it into me, but once I did that, I wouldn’t be able to escape the lure of his control.
I took a few light steps backward, extricating myself from his clear intent to distract me. “I er—I can’t stay with you, Akil. I just can’t.” Along that path, bad things slumbered. If I gave in to him, let him control everything again, it would be like walking toward a black hole, knowing it would swallow me whole but unable to break free. I couldn’t give up my control. It was everything to me.
“You can’t stay here.”
“I know that.” I gestured at the shoebox as though that explained everything. I sounded irritated, but I was in fact more annoyed at my traitorous body and the stirring of desire that did odd things to me. For a start, I couldn’t breathe properly.
I marched across the room and flung open the same window Stefan had escaped from the day before. Outside, the sun had dipped behind the high-rises, the warmth of the day seeping from the air as the dark of night loomed.
Akil stood beside me, leaning against the wall by the window and snaking his arms crossed. “Your little show of power melted the streetlights.” He was enjoying this, could probably read right through my stubborn attempt at denying I felt anything. “It made the news. A power surge. I’ve never seen a power surge melt the post. Have you?”
I shifted awkwardly. I could see one of the streetlights in question outside the window, just off to my right, its damaged head drooping low. No, that wasn’t normal. The elements of chaos are slippery, difficult to rein in, always demanding freedom.
“Every demon worth his name knows something happened here, Muse, and you’re right in the middle of it.” He closed the distance between us with a single stride and swept a fallen lock of hair from across my eye. “You can’t come back here. I can’t lose you again.”
I fell into his eyes again, my body possessed by the hunger he roused in me. A shiver of power danced across my skin, and the fine hairs on my arms stood on end. He might look human, but that was where the similarities ended. The demon inside his male exterior burned with primal needs. It devoured, it stole, it consumed. He was all greed and desire, always hungry, and I knew his real name. Mammon, Prince of Greed.
It was the human in me that resisted him, always had been. Perhaps that’s why he’d saved me. To my knowledge, I was the only demon, half or otherwise, brave or stupid enough to walk away from him. Most cowered at his feet.
I found myself moving away again. As if in a slow waltz, we drifted about my apartment, only to be irrevocably drawn back together again.
“You’re going out?” I squeaked, clearing my throat and cursing my female urges. Goddamn him. How was I meant to think clearly with this much power in the room? I planted both hands on the cool kitchen countertop, admiring the little red dress folded there, with its short ruffled lace hem. If he thought I was wearing that, he could go straight back to hell. Unless I could wear it with boots, of course.
“I was hoping you’d join me. A little human party I�
�ve thrown together.”
I turned my head, smiling. “I don’t think that’s wise. Do you? I’ve got a killer after me, not to mention all manner of demons who would like to take me down a peg or two, and you want me to party the night away?”
He raised an eyebrow and shrugged a shoulder, before retrieving the bottle of wine and beginning to search my cupboards, I assumed, for wine glasses.
“Nobody would dare threaten you in my presence.” He found the glasses and planted them in front of me. He tore the foil off the wine, paused as if briefly considering searching for a corkscrew, then decided not to bother and instead placed the palm of his hand over the cork, summoning it from the bottle with a satisfying pop.
I watched the red wine pool in the glasses as he poured. With a twist of the wrist, he straightened the bottle, and placing it on the side, he slipped the stem of a glass between his fingers and presented the drink to me.
“What do you want from me, Akil?” I smiled my thanks and took the glass. I’d asked him the same question many times over the years and had never received a satisfying answer. In my last few years by his side, I’d stopped asking altogether, but by then I’d stopped thinking for myself too.
“All I want is for you to be safe.”
“But why?” I tasted the wine, finding it satisfyingly warm.
He picked up his glass and tapped a finger on the dress. “Will you come?” His smile twitched as he saw me hesitate. “How long has it been since you really enjoyed yourself, Muse?” He leaned forward. “I mean all of you.” The delicious purr of his dulcet tones stole my breath.
What harm could it do? A human party, he had said. Nothing to worry about.
Leaving my wine on the countertop, I scooped up the dress, and casting him a playful smirk, I disappeared into my bedroom to change.
A party might do me some good, I thought. A chance to unwind, to forget about my would-be assassin and the abrupt end to my normal life. Perhaps I could treat it like a farewell of sorts. One last hurrah before I stepped back into the world of demons and their devious machinations.
After dressing in the little red number, I checked my reflection and reached behind me in an attempt to zip up the dress. I couldn’t do much about my pale complexion or the hounded look in my eyes, but with a little splash of lipstick, I might resemble a woman in control.
Akil’s reflection behind mine snatched a gasp from me. Before I could protest, I felt the press of him against my back. The aura of power that he wore wrapped its warmth around me as he trailed his fingers down the curve of my neck. I tilted my head to the side, my gaze locked on his, daring him to proceed.
He slid a hand around my waist. His palm pressed against my hip as he pulled me back against him. My own power unfurled, tentative ethereal tendrils reaching outward, entwining around him, through him.
He growled low in his throat and broke our stare by bowing his head. I couldn’t help leaning back against him while his lips trailed painfully delicate kisses down my neck. He slid the dress from my shoulder and nipped at my flushed skin, sending tremors rippling through me. The demon in me purred, slipping into my skin and spilling the heat of otherworldly energy across my flesh.
I heard him suck in air through his teeth, breathing in energy, and felt his body quiver. I watched his reflection as he dragged his stare back up to meet mine. To know that he, a being born of magic and chaos, an ageless and powerful Prince of Hell, wanted me was all the excuse I needed.
He saw my acceptance, or felt it, and turned me suddenly in his arms, pinning me back against the mirror. I laughed or growled or purred again. Either way, I was lost. He clasped my head in his hands. The sudden urgency made it difficult for me to breathe. I expected him to kiss me, for his mouth to hungrily devour mine. I knew where it would roam from there, the trail of wanton destruction it would leave across my body. I groaned for it, but he kissed me so gently, lips so frustratingly soft.
I snarled. His teasing just about drove me insane, and I lunged at him, tasting him, teasing him. Arms around his neck, I pulled him down to me, and this time he didn’t hesitate. When he drove me back against the mirror, the glass cracked. Hitching a leg around his thigh, I locked him against me, sinking my hands through his hair as his biting kisses skipped lower.
The phone in the kitchen rang.
He snarled something that didn’t sound human before finding my mouth again. My body baked in the heat rippling between us. Power spiraled around us like an entirely new force of nature. I knew what it meant to be lost in Akil, to forget the fragility of my human flesh and succumb to the overwhelming power he commanded.
The phone continued to ring, its shrill alarm sounding all the more persistent for being ignored.
Akil planted a hand against the wall beside me and met my stare. His dark eyes simmered with energy. An inferno raged within. He dragged every breath through clenched teeth, as though struggling to contain the energy broiling the air. I have to admit, it felt good to have him like that, knowing I could pull him back in. He might not be human, but the vessel he had chosen was, and I could give him one hell of a ride.
The ringing cut off, and my recorded voice jabbered on about not being home, please leave a message.
I leaned into him and licked at his lips, teasing my tongue ever so gently between them.
“This is a message for Charlotte Henderson. Charlotte, I’m Detective Mark Bergin. We need you to come down to the station. We have a witness who’s given us a description of a man we believe to have been at your premises shortly before the explosion and… well… we would prefer it if we spoke to you in person. You need to call me back. This man is potentially very dangerous.”
I heard the detective’s voice chattering away in the other room as he left his message. I’d have ignored it, but the mention of a man I could only assume was Stefan instantly doused my desire. Akil must have sensed my distraction. With a resigned sigh, he leaned against me, his cheek resting against mine. The power we had summoned between us began to fizzle away, crackling and spitting its displeasure as it retreated. I felt its departure keenly and ached to have it back, but the moment was gone.
When he pulled back, the swirl of power I’d seen in his eyes had vanished, and his smile was a little despondent.
“Tonight,” he promised. “After the party. We’re going to finish this.”
He said it like a threat, and my insides fluttered, a sliver of desire peeling the last little groan from me before Akil released me.
Chapter 6
Streetlights flickered on as Akil’s limo inched forward through the rush-hour traffic. The car was so well insulated that, while I could see the city bustling by us outside, I couldn’t hear a thing. Throngs of people flowed back and forth over the sidewalks in their rush to get home. They had no idea one of the most powerful demons ever to have existed sat a few yards from them, behind the limo’s black privacy glass.
Akil relaxed in the seat opposite me, leaning an arm on the wrap-around shelf. His gaze slid across the anonymous people outside. Lost in thought, we had barely spoken a word since leaving my apartment. I felt the tug of desire every time I let my gaze linger just a little too long. Occasionally, he’d flick his dark eyes to me, and I’d see that hunger slumbering there. He didn’t need to speak to make me squirm in the leather seats. It took every ounce of my human stubbornness to stop myself from pouncing on him. My imagination worked overtime to supply me with the sort of images that brought a rush of color to my cheeks.
“Would you like me to accompany you?” He leaned forward to reach for the door.
The unimaginative blocky structure housing the police department loomed outside as the driver pulled the car to a halt against the curb. I peered through the soundproof glass at the entrance, reaching for the door handle. My fingers brushed his. A spark of energy bolted between us, providing enough of a shock for me to snatch my hand back.
He held my gaze. Words were superfluous against the wolfish grin on his lips. He ope
ned the door, stepped out, and held it open for me.
It felt good to step from the car back into the bustle of city life. I breathed deeply, tasting the metallic residue of the city air on my lips. The clamor from the traffic grounded me firmly back in reality.
Akil looked at me as though waiting for an answer. It took me a while to remember what he’d asked.
I glanced up the steps at the police department doors. “No, I’ll be fine. Will you wait?”
“Of course.” He closed the car door and shrugged off his coat before sliding the expensive garment around my shoulders. He hesitated, bunching the jacket together below my chin and looking down at me. His smile faltered, and the briefest glimmer of concern tightened his expression before he retreated to lean against the car. Despite the chill in the air, he wore only a shirt. The cold wouldn’t bother him. Such human afflictions rarely did, and yet something clearly concerned him.
I climbed the steps and entered the building, feeling somewhat overdressed in my red cocktail dress and knee-high boots. In the cramped waiting area, plastic chairs lined one wall. A water cooler butted up against the reception desk. I registered my arrival with the uniformed officer at the desk and asked for Detective Bergin.
I didn’t have long to wait. Detective Bergin introduced himself with a handshake firm enough to bruise. A big man at six foot plus, he towered over me. A barrel chest and booming voice declared him alpha, whether he knew it or not. He was the kind of guy people instinctively moved out of the way for.
“Have a seat.” In an interview room, he gestured at the metal chairs before pulling one out from beneath the table and lowering his muscular bulk into it. The chair creaked.
The room was little more than a concrete box. A fluorescent light spilled a sickly glow on its four mauve walls. I couldn’t be sure whether it was the room or the man, but a slither of unease had worked its way beneath my skin.
[The Veil 01.0] Beyond the Veil Page 4