by J. R. Ward
"What are you remembering?" Mels asked remotely.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the rush of namesfacesplaces was a deluge he couldn't get out from under, the onslaught clogging his neurons, rendering him nearly unconscious. And as he sagged, he felt himself get eased back against the pillows, no longer the dominant one.
Bringing his hands up to his head, he cursed.
"I'm calling the doctor--"
Matthias snapped out a hold, catching her wrist. "No. I'm okay--"
"The hell you are."
"Just give me a minute."
He breathed shallowly and decided to try giving up the fight. This was the right answer; instead of slamming into him, the memories passed through, the process of the revelations easing. At least...until the end. The final recollection was of him with a...monster of some sort? Must be a nightmare he'd had...but, oh, God, she was hideous, and she was taking him as a way to own him in a dungeon at the base of a long, black well--
Panic acted like jumper cables, hitting Matthias so hard he jerked from the chest, his torso contracting tight. But he kept a hold on Mels's wrist, making sure she stayed with him instead of hitting the phone.
"Please," he heard her say.
"No...doctor...it's fading now..."
Eventually, he released her, ditched the sunglasses, and rubbed his eyes. "You'd think when things came back, it would be slow and easy."
"Can I please get you some medical attention?" She brought up a binder and put it in front of his face. "See? Hotel services has a Doc-in-a-box on call."
"No, honest, I'm all right. It was just overwhelming. I think we take for granted how much we store up in here." He tapped his skull. "Lot of information."
"What kind are we talking about."
He glanced away. "Well, I'm definitely not a virgin. And let's leave it there."
"Oh."
There was an awkward stretch of quiet. And then Mels cleared her throat.
"You know what, I think I should go."
"Yeah."
She got off the bed. Picked up her coat. Put it on. "Before I leave..." She came over and wrote something on the little pad on the bedside table. "Here's my cell again--"
A ringing sound came out of her pocket.
"Speak of the devil," he murmured, watching her finish the seven digits before she answered the call.
"Hello?" Her voice was brisk and professional, and he liked that shift of gears, that she could pull it together so fast.
Then again, he liked a lot about the woman.
Mels frowned. "Where? Do we have a 'who' on her? How did she die...Really. Yeah, I'm coming right now. I have Tony's car still--yup." She ended the call and grabbed her bag. "I have to go."
"Something's on the record?"
"And my boss must be having a change of heart. He's actually sending me to a crime scene."
"He doesn't recognize your skills?"
"Not the kind I want him to notice, no." She paused at the door. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"Have you always been a saint," he murmured.
"Not until I met you."
Just as she ducked out, he said, "Mels."
She turned her head over her shoulder, the light from above the door falling on her face. As their eyes met, he would have traded every one of those hookups he'd just seen for a single night with her.
I'm not coming out of this alive, he thought.
So if he ever got a chance to kiss her again, he wasn't going to stop. And who knew, maybe the second try would be the charm.
Assuming there wasn't another volume on his greatest-hits-that DVD.
"Wear your seat belt," he ordered in a low tone.
"Call a damn doctor," she tossed back with a little smile.
As the door shut behind her, he cursed at it. And then thought about how it had felt to kiss her.
Glancing down at his hips, he found himself wishing he was a whole man once again.
The bar in the lobby of the Marriott was named after the original hotel owner, Something-something Sasseman. At least, that's what the waitress told Adrian in a husky, come-hither voice while she took his and Jim's beer orders. She also found an excuse to drop her pen and bend over, and then walked off like her pelvis had recently been to Jiffy Lube and gotten over-oiled.
Then again, the rest of the clientele in here were leering businessmen likely on the varsity Viagra team, and she was a POA in her midtwenties.
Back in the Eddie days, he would have gone for her in a heartbeat.
Now? File the whole thing under "Meh."
The booth he and Jim were in was covered in red pleather and made sounds that were juuuuust this side of a whoopee cushion anytime one of them shifted positions. The thing was perfect for their purpose, however: It faced out through the fat aperture of the bar at the lobby. No one came or went without their seeing.
Although, given Jim's radar, they could have kept track of Matthias and that woman even if they'd been parked in the back lot: The angel had been sure to touch both of them, and even Ad could feel the tracer spells through the levels of the hotel. The pair were six floors up, close together.
Made you wonder exactly what they were doing.
Probably Parcheesi.
Yeah. Right.
As minutes ticked by and turned into a full hour, the background talk from the drinkers around them was the only thing that filled the silence. The beers they had turned into dinner. The time was...endless.
Man, immortality could be a real fucking drag when you didn't give a shit about anything. All you had was time. Great, yawning maws of hours that perpetually chewed on you with dull teeth, eating you alive even as you remained unconsumed.
Well, wasn't he a fucking party tonight.
And his mood didn't get any better as he looked down at his hands. The black stain he'd seen in the shower hadn't reappeared, but he couldn't help checking every second and a half to see if it had come back. So far, so good, except for the whole feeling-like-death thing.
It was literally as if his body had been hollowed out, nothing but the space inside his skeletal ribs remaining--
"She's coming down," Jim said, finishing up the warm inch of beer he'd been nursing. "The woman's left his room."
Ad didn't bother with the dregs of his draft. He hadn't liked it to begin with.
Better than Coors Light, though.
"You stick with her," Jim said as they walked into the lobby. "I don't want her on her own."
"Isn't he the soul?"
"I think so. And assuming he is, she's the key to this."
"You sure?"
"I've seen the way he looks at her. That's all I need to know." Jim nodded in the direction of the reporter who was stepping out of the lobby elevators. "Get on her. I'm going to wait for Devina to show up here."
Ad was not interested in getting foisted off on the GF. He wanted to wait for the demon. He wanted to stand nose-to-nose with her and pray for her to make another crack about Eddie--just so he could show her how much she wasn't getting to him anymore. And then he wanted to stare in her eyes as her frustration flared and she was forced to attack him physically.
At which time he could game-over it. Fight to the death. Go out like a warrior.
The bitch would no doubt beat him, but oh, the joy to take pounds of flesh off her. And the relief to have everything over.
"Adrian? You with me, my man?"
"I want to stay here."
"And I need you on that female. She's got to stay alive long enough to influence him. If Devina gets a goddamn whiff of that connection they're pulling? That woman's going to end up a floater in the Hudson--or worse."
As Jim stared at him, the subtext was based on logic--the strongest person had to face the demon, and right now that was not Ad. And not just because he didn't have Jim's extra flashy moves.
"Do you want to win," Jim said in a low voice. "Or do you want to fuck us."
Ad cursed and turned away, locking onto the trail of
the woman and jogging off in the conventional way--because it was too messy to disappear in front of even casual observers.
As she headed for the elevators to the parking garage, Matthias's chippie walked like she was on a mission, and he envied the purpose. Didn't envy her her ride as it turned out. The POS had an engine and a roof--other than that, there wasn't much to recommend the thing.
For shits and giggles, he disappeared himself into the backseat--and onto what turned out to be a Library of Congress's worth of old papers and magazines. The good news was that she picked just that moment to start the engine--but she still heard the noise of his invisible ass compressing countless pages of newsprint. Whipping her head around, she stared into the space he was taking up, and to be nice, he gave her a little wave, even though as far as she was concerned, she was alone in the damn car.
"I'm losing my mind," she muttered as she threw them into drive and took off.
Good driver. Quick on the gas pedal, efficient in her routing.
They ended up in the western part of downtown, at a motel that was only a step up from a dog kennel. After they got out--him remaining invisi, her clearly on the hunt--they joined a convention of cops and reporters who were focused on a room over on the left--
Adrian frowned and abruptly plugged into the scene for real. As the woman he was responsible for approached the badges holding the line at the yellow crime scene tape, he breezed past the flimsy barricade and penetrated the crowd of busy-busy at the door.
What the hell, he thought to himself.
Devina was all over the place, her residual stink hanging in the breeze as if a garbage truck had backed in and left a dump of loose-and-juicy all over the place.
Adrian pressed inside and had to cover his nose to keep from gagging from the stench that didn't reach the sinuses of the humans.
Hello, dead girl.
On the far side of four or five cops, a body was visible through the open door of the bathroom: pale legs, tattoos on the thighs, clothes that were twisted around her body as if she had struggled. Her throat had been slashed, the blood soaking the sparkly thing she'd obviously considered a shirt as well as the chipped tile she was sprawled on.
She was a blonde--thanks to L'Oreal: The remnants of a hair-color kit were all over the counter, and plastic purple-stained gloves lay in the trash. And her hair was straightened--thanks to the Conair dryer and a short brush that had dark strands at its core, lighter ones at the tips of the bristles.
"Damn you, Devina," Ad muttered.
"Is the photographer here yet?" a tired looking man barked out.
The CPDs glanced at one another, like they didn't want to give him bad news.
"Not yet, Detective de la Cruz," someone said.
"That woman drives me nuts," the guy muttered, cocking his cell phone and starting to pace.
As the uniforms clustered around the detective as if they wanted to watch the photog get her ass chewed, Adrian took advantage of the clear shot into the loo, going inside and getting down on his haunches.
Hoping he didn't find anything, Ad lifted the hem of the blood-soaked blouse. "Oh, come on..."
Underneath the sparkles, the pale skin of the stomach had been scored with symbols, runes not meant for the human she had been, or the men and women who found her, or the family who would mourn her.
They were a message from Devina.
That Ad was going to make sure Jim never, ever saw.
Casting an eye back at the knot of uniforms around that detective, Ad double-checked that the cell phone call preoccupation was still giving him some privacy. Then he passed his palm back and forth over the flesh that had been marked.
Fortunately, the skin still had some remaining vitality left in its cells. But the removal was sluggish.
"--get here, now," that detective bit out, "or I'll take the pictures myself. You have fifteen minutes to come on scene--"
Ad frowned in concentration, throwing everything he had into the effort. The runes were carved nearly a quarter inch deep in places, and they were rough, as if made by a jagged knife...or more likely, a claw.
"Come on...come on--" He looked over his shoulder. The kaffeeklatsching was over, and the detective was heading back.
Retracting his hand, he jumped to his feet--and then remembered that he was still invisi.
"Who touched the body?" the detective blurted. "Who touched this fucking body?"
Shit. The shirt was still up just below her breasts. Not where the thing had started out. And the skin was flushed in an unnatural way, given not just the victim's ethnicity, but also where she was in her dying process. Still, the objective had been met and that was more important than any confusion the humans were going to have sorting what was doing out.
What the fuck was Devina playing at now?
"That bitch," Adrian hissed as he walked out, "is going to pay."
Jim was so done with the people watching in the lobby, but he stayed where he was even as the night dragged on: Matthias was still hanging out in that room of his, and that meant Jim was all about the hurry-up-and-wait.
It was the life of an operative: stretches of total inactivity separated by bursts of life-and-death tap dancing.
Goddamn, this was just like the good ol' times--that hadn't been good, and didn't feel all that old at the moment because Matthias's backstory wasn't the only one he was thinking about. Ever since his new job as an angel had barged in and taken over his life, it was as if everything that had come before had been wiped clean--except that wasn't the case. Vital distraction was a kind of amnesia; didn't mean you had no history, though--
Looking up at the vaulted ceiling, he frowned. Matthias was on the move.
A minute and a half later, the elevator doors opened and the man stepped out into the lobby, relying on that cane of his, his sunglasses in place even though it was nighttime. All around, people noticed him--then again, it had always been like that, as if Matthias's power created a lighthouse effect even among the mercifully clueless.
Making himself visible, Jim stepped out into the guy's path. "Late-night appointment?"
Those Ray-Bans whipped around, but that was the extent of the reaction. "Babysitting me?"
"Yeah, and I'm not getting paid enough." Jim nodded at the revolving glass doors of the main entrance. "You off to somewhere?"
"Nah, just need fresh air. I feel..." Matthias dragged a hand through his hair. "Cooped up. I can't stare at those walls anymore-- What? Why are you looking at me like that."
Before Jim could think of a lie, he said, "You're so much more human now."
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
Jim shrugged. "Doesn't really matter. Mind if I tag along?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"You could always try to outrun me."
"It's not nice to make fun of cripples."
"Show me one."
Matthias laughed in a short burst. "Fine. Help yourself."
Outside, the night was unseasonably warm with a thick mist choking the air, the moisture hanging between the clouds above and the asphalt below like it couldn't make up its mind whether to be a downpour or not.
Taking out his cigs, Jim lit up and exhaled a stream of smoke. Between the mist, the Marlboros, and the resonant sounds of their footfalls on the sidewalk, the whole damn thing was film noir in real life...and that was especially true as they came up to a group of men who were striding along--or marching, as was the case.
What. The. Hell?
The six bastards were all dressed in black leather, which might have marked them as Goths--except the way they walked in formation behind their leader had a professional soldier vibe.
As they passed by, Matthias and Jim moved to the side, and the one in front glanced over.
An ugly son of a bitch for sure, with eyes that were pits of aggression.
Huh...in his old life, Jim might have considered them candidates for recruiting. They looked like they could kill anything or anyone in their path,
especially the guy in the lead.
But he was different now. And hopefully, so was Matthias.
"I remembered something," his old boss said, after the stretch of concrete was their own again.
"Yeah?"
"Just personal shit. Nothing I was interested in."
As the silence became as prevalent as the fog, Jim took another drag and talked out the exhale. "Waiting for me to fill the void?"
"You were the one who wanted to come along. You could at least make yourself useful."
"And here I thought I was decorative."
"Not for me, buddy." When Jim didn't comment further, Matthias glanced over. "So, I've been thinking about you."
"Not romantically, I hope."
"No, I used to like women. A lot."
"Used to?"
Matthias stopped and faced off. "What I want to know is--"
At the far end of the block, a figure stepped out into the sidewalk with the ease of someone trained to ambush, and the gun that was discharged in their direction didn't make a sound. All Jim saw was the brief flash as the bullet left the tip of the silencer.
With a cursing lunge, he tackled Matthias into an alley, the force of his two hundred and twenty pounds sweeping the other man off his feet, the pair of them going parallel to the ground in slow motion. In midflight, and with perfect synchronization, they took out their guns, trained their muzzles at the shooter, and pulled their triggers--and as their rounds left their silencers, Jim pivoted so that they landed on the damp pavement with him on the bottom, and Matthias using him as a mattress.
There was no time to fuck around, and he didn't need to tell his old boss that--clearly Matthias's preference in nooky wasn't the only thing the guy remembered: he was on his feet and ready to bolt for cover behind a van that was about three yards away--
More shots were fired at them, pinging off the pavement, the GMC's quarter panel, the wheel well. The shooter had followed them and was keeping to the shadows as he closed in.
That kind of stealth was another identifier. Their attacker came at them without sound, and not just because he was using the same kind of autoloader with a suppressor on it that Jim had against his own palm: No footfalls, not even heavy breathing; this was a trained killer, operating in his element.
XOps, Jim thought. Had to be.
With another curse, he looked around for options. The van wasn't good for shelter, because it had a gas tank: he knew where the lines were in terms of what he could survive, but he wasn't exactly sure where Matthias fell on the spectrum of untouchable, and a mushroom cloud over their cover was not a good way to test that shit out.