by Brenda Huber
“Who are you?” Her brows drew together. “Have we met before? There’s something about you that’s—”
“I am Niklas.” He weighed honesty against discretion. “We have never met before tonight.”
Well, technically, that was the truth.
“How did I get here?” She glanced around again. “I don’t remember.” Her focus turned inward. “After work, I walked home, through the park.” Her forehead wrinkled in the most adorable way as she rambled disjointedly through the succession of events. “I heard chanting. I followed the sound. And then I saw—” She broke off, shaking her head as her words came faster and faster. “I ran, and this dark shadow. And then—” Eyes wide, she peered at him. “And then. Then that huge m-monster—”
He didn’t want to give her time to dig herself further into the fear. Didn’t ask to which monster she referred—Ronové or himself.
“You aren’t crazy,” Niklas soothed. “This night and all you witnessed was all real.”
Now she looked at him as if he were the crazy one. She glanced to the door again. He could all but see the wheels turning in her head. Could she make it before he caught her? Would he try to stop her?
“You’ve seen something you shouldn’t have this night. Something not meant for human eyes.”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded in a placating sort of way. A weak smile pushed at her lips, thin and unconvincing.
A storm cloud of gray bled through her aura—darker, denser than before.
Heaving a sigh, he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. She might not be a screamer, but she had runner written all over her. That was just terrific. He had better things to do than chase her all over creation tonight.
Unobtrusively—at least, he imagined she thought she was doing it on the sly—her right foot slid back, angled, planted for traction.
And three, two, one…
Chapter Three
Niklas shimmered in front of the door a spare second before she got there. Her hand, stretching for the doorknob, brushed against his hip, perilously close to a certain rebellious part of his anatomy. A part that, until tonight, had been ruthlessly ignored. Until tonight—until her—Niklas had nearly convinced himself that his body no longer had those needs. Unfortunately, since he’d clapped eyes upon her earlier, that part of him seemed to have taken on a mind of its own, gleefully mutinying against any semblance of control.
What a misguided fool he’d been.
With a stifled shriek, she jerked her hand away and backpedaled across the room.
“Woman, you must calm down.” Holding his hands, palms out, in front of him, Niklas tried to moderate his voice, tried to soothe her into compliance. The walls of the apartment were paper-thin. If she screamed, would his neighbors investigate? Would they call the authorities? Damn, he could really use some help right now. “You must not become hysterical. We have much to discuss, and time is short.”
“Don’t tell me what I must and must not do.” She backed away from him carefully, as if she expected him to pounce on her at any moment.
Though fear clouded her eyes and gray still saturated the air around her, her tone held sparks of defiance and courage. And he couldn’t help but be just a little impressed.
“How? How did you do that?” She jabbed an unsteady finger toward the living area, though she never took her suspicious eyes from him. “Get from over there to over here so fast?”
“I can move quickly when I need to.”
“Right,” she said, disbelief etched all over her face. Somehow, in the middle of one of the most severe frowns he had ever seen, she managed to arch her brow. “How did I get here? Really?”
“I brought you here,” he said. “I found you in the park. I, ah, I carried you back here.”
When it looked as if she was about to press the issue, he held his hands up between them again to show her he meant no harm. “Look, you’re not crazy. And neither am I. You must not doubt what you saw earlier. Your life—your soul—depends upon it.”
“That’s insane. What I saw c-couldn’t have happened.” Denial, but yellow seeped into the gray. Hope. Did she hope she hadn’t lost her mind?
Or did she hope that by agreeing with him she might lull him into inattentiveness and then escape? He needed to convince her. But how?
“His name is Ronové, the demon you saw tonight.”
“Demon?” she blurted, incredulous. “As in Lucifer’s minions, cast from Heaven and all that?”
He nodded. “Massive, ugly beast. Red with black Cryptoglyphs tattooed on his flesh, black claws, black eyes, breath like sulfur.”
She blinked. Swallowed.
“And his minion, Dimiezlo,” he added. “Creepy little sucker. ’Bout yea high, goat legs, horns, snake tongue. Groveling disposition.”
Nodding, eyes glazing over, she dropped to the sofa.
“Woman”—he took a cautious step closer,—“you’re not going to faint, are you?”
“Carly,” she whispered. “My name is Carly. Carly Danner.” She lifted a shaking hand and shoved at strands of hair that had fallen into her eyes. And then her fingertips dropped to the base of her throat, where they rubbed fretfully at a small red mark on her skin. “I’m a paralegal,” she insisted, rambling to herself in a soft, dazed tone. “My life is routine. Normal. I like it that way.” Was she trying to convince him, or reassure herself? “Things like this just don’t happen. Not in the real world. Not in Iowa, for God’s sake.” Accusing brown eyes pierced him. “Not to me. This is unbelievable. Books. Movies. Not real life.” Her fingertips rubbed absently at the base of her throat as she shook her head and lowered her gaze to her lap.
“They do happen,” Niklas argued. “And what better place than a harmless town in an innocuous state? Who would think to look here, in Iowa, for rebellious demons bent on practicing forbidden rituals?” He returned to his seat on the coffee table. Her face was deathly pale. The colors swirling around her pulsed and changed so quickly his headache got worse just trying to track them. “You need to believe this is all real. You won’t know when, you won’t know where, or who. It might even be someone you already know. But he will get to you... If you leave this apartment without me, you will die.”
That caught her attention. She looked at him once more. Alarm flashed.
His focus dipped to the scratch she kept poking at the base of her throat. It was red and inflamed. “Ronové won’t stop until he has your soul.”
“My soul,” she croaked, cupping her throat, covering the mark.
Color continued to pulse and swirl around her. His head swam trying to keep up. And, strangely enough, weaving in and out of the fear whispered the faint tinges of—
Red?
The color of desire and attraction?
No. He couldn’t be reading her right. Something must be affecting him, influencing his sight. His own attraction to her had somehow manipulated his power, making him see things that couldn’t possibly be there.
“He’s a Collector,” Niklas explained, eager to focus on something, anything other than the strange anomaly occurring with his vision. At her curious murmur, he expounded, “Once a Collector gathers a soul, he offers it to Lucifer as a sacrifice. Every soul offered gains a Collector favor with the dark prince. The more souls he gathers, the higher his prestige in Lucifer’s army. Ronové is a greedy demon. And, once he has a target, he’s obsessed. He won’t stop until he collects you.” Niklas stood, crossed to the window. Gripping the window frame, he peered out into the night.
The thought of her falling into Ronové’s hands left him cold and shaken. The need to keep her safe, to protect her, had become vital to him so quickly it made his already pounding head nearly spin right off his shoulders. Not a pleasant feeling at all. This desire for her was an animalistic drive, stronger than anything he’d ever experienced before. He didn’t have any idea how to stop it.
He scrunched his eyes closed. Grinding the heel of his palm to his throbbing temple, he pushed those disturbing thoughts aside. But it was hard. So hard to rationalize. So hard to think.
“How do you know all this about collecting souls for Lucifer?” Her voice was quiet, subdued, yet level enough to tell him she might be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He was silent for several uncomfortable moments. Finally, he turned his head and met her doubtful stare. “Firsthand experience.”
“Right.” Nope, she wasn’t buying it. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “If he won’t stop until he has me—and he really is a demon”—she all but choked on the word—“then how will I ever be safe from him? Isn’t he like all powerful or something?”
“He’s a demon, Carly, not God,” Niklas stated flatly. “Yes, he has certain powers. But he has limitations too. All of u—all demons do. I’ll keep you safe. You must trust me on this.”
“Are you—” She broke off, drew a ragged breath. “Are you a demon hunter or something?”
“Or something,” he replied with a self-deprecating smirk.
“For heaven’s sake, will you please stop talking in riddles? If you expect me to listen to you, to stay with you, to trust you,” she gritted out, “then you damned well better start giving me the truth, straight up. How will you stop him, Niklas? How can you keep him from getting to me?”
He turned to her. “I’ll kill him.”
His response gave her pause. She stared at him for a long moment as a jumble of emotions flickered across her beautiful face.
“Demons,” she repeated. She shook her head, frowning. “Can demons die? I thought they were already in Hell.”
“Oh yes.” Visions of countless battles filled his mind and he thought of all the demons he’d already slain. All of his former brethren that he’d already sent to Oblivion. A cold void opened up somewhere deep inside his chest, because Niklas knew he could just as easily have been the one to meet the unforgiving edge of a blade. “It’s not easy, but they can die.”
“What happens? When they die, what happens? Do they go back to Hell? Can they come back again? I mean, they already were there once, and they got out, right? Are they like recycled, or something?”
A hoarse, mirthless bark of laughter broke free. “No. When a demon dies—truly dies, he doesn’t return to Hell. He doesn’t resurrect. And he doesn’t return to the Father. His soul is forsaken, and so he simply ceases to be. He is no more.”
“You keep referring to demons as males. Are there no female demons…demonesses? Whatever you call them?”
“Yes, there are female demons. But they are extremely rare. Very few of the female angels sided with Lucifer at the time of the Great Fall. What can I say, he was a chauvinistic pig.” Niklas shrugged. Lucifer really had been a jerk of the highest order. “And for reasons no one really knows, demon spawn rarely, if ever, turn out to be female.”
“Demons,” she whispered, visibly struggling to assimilate all he’d told her.
“Can you not look beyond the limitations of your imagination?” He stared hard at her, eyes narrowed. Suddenly, inexplicably, he felt the anger swell inside his chest. He didn’t have time for her disbelief. There was a very powerful demon gunning for her. One that would stop at nothing to collect her soul. And it was going to take every ounce of her cooperation for Niklas to keep her safe. “Do you not have faith?”
His temper sparked her own. Annoyance flashed in her beautiful brown eyes. “I do have faith. I do believe in God. But I just can’t believe that—”
“No. No buts. Believe, or don’t believe. There are no qualifications.”
“All right, Yoda,” she snapped.
Again with the sarcasm. It was as if her temper were the trigger and sarcasm her bullets. She seemed to have a never-ending supply. When Xander snarked like that, it was just plain annoying. But when this bewitching pixie did it, it was adorable. And sexy as hell.
Shaking his head, aggravated, he worked hard to refocus on his lecture. “If you can believe in God, then can you not believe Lucifer is also real? Or angels and demons? Can one exist without the other?”
She remained silent, chewing on her lower lip.
“Can you not believe in what you feel?” Losing patience, Niklas crossed to her. He grabbed her by the wrist and drew her to her feet. Charging to the small bathroom, he dragged her along in his wake. After pushing her in front of the mirror, he impatiently tugged the collar of her shirt aside and, doing his level best to ignore the beguiling expanse of creamy flesh he’d just exposed, pointed at the angry, red scratch on her throat. A scratch that had grown far worse in the short time that she’d been awake. “Can you not believe your own eyes?”
With a muffled cry, she pushed him aside and staggered into the living room. Sagging to the sofa, Carly raked her fingers through her hair. She wrung her hands together.
“Okay. Okay, I believe, all right? I know what I saw. I don’t know how you came to be involved in all this. I don’t know how you managed to save me. And I do appreciate your help. But I can’t stay here forever, Niklas. I can’t just hide forever.”
The sound of his name upon her lips sent a tremor of pleasure shivering down his spine. He gritted his teeth against it. The muscle in his jaw ticked. Desire pooled like acid in his gut.
“I have to go back,” she murmured. “I have a life I have to go back to. I can’t just hide.”
That took the wind from his sails, jabbing him with a hard jolt of something so dark and sinister, he clenched his fists in a bid for control. Again, the animalistic drive, only this time it urged him to seize. To ravish. To claim. The thought of her with another man, a boyfriend, or, God forbid, a husband—
Jealous fury shook him from the inside out. His vision blurred for a moment. His fangs began to stretch. His claws pushed longer. His muscles quivered. Sweet Christ, he was changing. Going demonic without conscious effort.
Her eyes widened and she backed up a pace. “Niklas? Are you all right?”
Closing his eyes, he turned away and shuddered, dragging in one gulp of air after another. He could not change. He could not change. He could—would—would control this. He would. What was happening to him? Why was he reacting like this? What was it about this one small woman that had awakened these alien urges inside him? Damn, his head was killing him. Pressing clenched fists to his temples, he fought the pain.
“If you return to your family,” he gritted out, “you will put them in danger. Ronové will stop at nothing. He’ll hurt anyone to get to you.”
“I have no family. I have no one,” Carly whispered. The raw anguish in her voice raked at him, and he peered over his shoulder. Orange flared, like a flash of lightning. Pain. “My parents died when I was twelve. I lived with my uncle after that. He passed away last year. I have no one else.” Sympathy swelled inside him, but she didn’t give him any opportunity to express it. “But I do have a job,” she added, lifting her jaw defiantly.
“No. If you go there, you’ll die. Damn it, weren’t you paying attention?” He rounded on her, nostrils flared in frustration and anger. “He will track you. He will send his minions after you. He will take great pleasure in torturing you, and he will kill you. He’ll kill anyone you come in contact with. Do you want to die that way?”
“No.” Barely audible, but acquiescence nonetheless. Carly stared at her hands for a moment. “How will you hunt this demon?”
“I have an associate coming to help out.” His lips twisted wryly on the term. “He’ll be here Thursday, so you just have to lay low until then.”
Licking her lips, Carly nodded. She looked so tiny, so utterly lost. Her blouse gaped as she rubbed at Ronové’s scratch. Unbidden, his gaze dipped to the pale pink lace. Without a word, she tugged the edges of her shirt closed again. A becoming blush stained her cheeks.
He could hav
e conjured a shirt for her. However, considering she didn’t yet realize who he was—or rather what he was—he didn’t think that wise. Not while he was still working on building her trust. Besides, he couldn’t risk weakening himself further. He was in bad enough shape as it was. His head felt as if someone had buried an axe deep in his cranium.
“Here,” he growled, unable to ease the edge desire had honed into his voice. He pulled his soft T-shirt over his head and tossed it to her. She caught the shirt with nimble fingers, and he turned his head away so she could change. He didn’t dare turn his bare back to her, or she’d have a whole new round of questions for him. Most likely beginning with, How did you get those hideous scars? The rustle of fabric grated on his nerves. And on his control.
“There was another demon, there in the circle with the others.” Her muffled voice came to him from beneath the folds of his shirt. “He fought Ronové, killed some of his followers. He was bigger than Ronové, faster, more powerful. And his eyes were exactly like—” She broke off abruptly, the sound of movement stilled. A pregnant moment passed before the sound of movement resumed. “He spoke to me. Told me I was safe. Who was he, Niklas? Who was that demon?”
He flexed his fists at his sides. The moment of truth had come much faster than he’d hoped.
He’d wanted to build a rapport with her, build her trust before he sprang that revelation on her. He turned to face her, preparing himself for what was to come, but his breath got tangled up in his throat. The sight of her wearing his T-shirt sent a jolt of raw lust straight to his loins.
Finally, for the first time in his life, he understood the ancient urges that reduced all men—be it the medieval knight, the conquering warrior, the bloodthirsty pirate, or the supposedly civilized modern man—into a primitive caveman obsessed with the need to claim a specific female for his own.
Clearing his throat, he forcefully redirected his thoughts. “Did you fear him? The demon that fought Ronové?”