That made me think about the copy of Sherlock Holmes I’d bought in Atlantic City. Was it still in my bag?
To my relief, it was. I grabbed a bottle of water and retreated to the worn couch in the living area, angling myself so sunlight from the open window fell across the yellowed pages. I read for a couple of hours, only stopping when I felt the burn of angry tears as I read about Charles Augustus Milverton’s downfall and found myself picturing Caspian in the villain’s place.
I set the book aside listlessly, staring instead at the pattern of bumps on the plaster ceiling until it all started to blur together. I must have fallen into a doze, because I woke to find the sun no longer illuminating the room through the east-facing window. Rans was seated in the chair set at right angles to the couch, watching me over steepled fingers.
I blinked several times in rapid succession and straightened self-consciously from my casual sprawl, feeling my muscles and joints howl in protest. Blue eyes tracked the movement, but I couldn’t read the expression behind them.
“This is stupid,” I said, my voice raspy. “And you’re being a bit of a creeper right now with the whole watching me sleep while you’re angry at me thing. I got enough of that kind of creepy shit from the faeries.”
His face darkened, and that expression was easy enough to read. Fury. Ah, well. We might as well have it out now rather than later, I supposed.
“Tell me what you did back there with the crystal,” I ordered, before he could open his mouth and remind me again how pissed off he was at me. “What the hell is a life-bond?”
His hands fell to rest on his knees, and those icy eyes narrowed. “It’s the thing that’s keeping your head attached to your shoulders. Now—your turn. Tell me why you went behind my back in an attempt to commit suicide. Or maybe suttee would be a better term?”
I frowned at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Suttee—the outdated Hindu practice of immolating oneself on a loved one’s funeral pyre as some ill-conceived act of solidarity.” The words were bitten off in that precise English accent, sharp as knives.
“That’s not what I was doing,” I said.
“Wasn’t it?” he asked.
Now I was angry. “No! Why the hell would you think that?”
The furrow between his brows deepened. “Why would I think that? Possibly because you disappeared while I was sleeping in order to go to a place where you knew your life would be in immediate and mortal danger, in pursuit of someone who is most likely incapable of giving a tinker’s damn about you or your wellbeing.”
I surged to my feet, ignoring the sharp pains in my knees and hips at the sudden movement.
“Fuck you, Rans!” I snarled. “I left to try and keep you safe—not just to find out what happened to Dad!”
He was on his feet and in my face so fast I barely registered the movement. “To keep me safe... can you even hear yourself?”
His voice was a cold growl as he loomed over me, using his height to advantage.
I shoved at his chest, suddenly enraged. Of course, I grew even more enraged when my shove failed to move him an inch. Instead, I was the one who stumbled back half a step.
“And how did that grand gesture work out for you?” he continued relentlessly.
I shoved at him again, with exactly the same result.
“I had it under control!” I practically yelled. “Albigard was going to try to get Dad out for me, and you were supposed to stay away!”
His eyes flared with inner light at the mention of Albigard’s name, and he caught my wrist when I pulled my fist back to punch him in the chest.
His tone was low and rough when he said, “I did not rescue you from Caspian in St. Louis just so you could seduce one of my few allies into betraying me, Zorah.”
Guilt and fury warred in my stomach. I hauled off and slapped him as hard as I could with my free hand. An instant later, I grunted as my back impacted the front door with a thump. Rans had swung me around in the blink of an eye and now held me pinned against the worn wood, my wrists held in an unbreakable grip above my head, our bodies pressed together from chest to knee.
“Fucker,” I whispered, right before his mouth crashed into mine.
SEVENTEEN
I GROWLED AND KISSED him back, feeling the sudden uncontrollable desire to... just... burn everything between us to the ground. His body was hard against mine. Unforgiving. I bit his lip with enough force to draw blood, and his dick twitched against my stomach. He wrenched away, pulling me with him, whirling me around to face away from him and pushing me against the back of the couch.
I gasped, my body folding in half at the hips over the back of the sofa—ass in the air, upper body splayed over the cushions so that my hair brushed against the worn fabric. I braced my hands on the seat cushions as fingers grasped the waistband of my loose shorts and yanked them down. The sound of a zipper behind me followed.
Jesus Christ. I was wet... so wet. I keened when Rans’ hard cock slammed into me, clawing at the upholstery beneath my fingers as the gaping pit of my need opened up and threatened to swallow us both whole.
I cursed and cried out at the brutal thrusts pounding into me, wanting to reach out with my succubus nature and rip Rans’ desire out of his body by the roots so I could drag it into mine. I wanted to draw and draw on it, until the pit of emptiness inside me was full of something besides my own fear and failure. His hands gripped my hips with bruising strength, holding me in place as my bare toes scrabbled against the slick hardwood floor.
It was hard to breathe... but I didn’t need to breathe. I just needed him to keep fucking me like this. When his movements slowed, then stopped, I groaned in protest, writhing against him as his upper body leaned forward to drape over mine. He was trembling faintly.
“Damn you, Zorah Bright.” The words were a low rumble against the back of my neck.
But if I was part demon, it meant I was already damned, didn’t it?
One of his arms wrapped around my chest. He used that grip around me as leverage to pull my upper body nearly upright while his lower body continued to pin my hips in place against the back of the couch. The angle of his cock inside me shifted, drawing a hard shudder from me.
He drew my arms backward, looping a forearm through the crook of my left elbow and across my back to grasp my right bicep in an unbreakable hold. My breasts jutted out as the position forced my shoulders back, but I forgot all about the strain when he rolled his hips, thrusting deep. The movement punched a breathless sound from my throat.
I’d wanted something to fight against. I’d needed it. So I struggled and panted against the hold restraining me, and the cock filling me up. The hand that had been wrapped around my chest grabbed one edge of the stolen shirt I was wearing and jerked. Buttons popped, some hitting the couch cushions, others falling to the wood floor with a scattering of tiny noises as they bounced and skittered in every direction.
A cool palm—rough with calluses—ran possessively over my breasts and stomach, claiming my body even as I squirmed and writhed. A hard shaft rocked into me, pressing my pelvis against the lightly padded frame of the sofa back. I could feel my body drawing on his—taking... taking... making me feel drunk with the heady mixture of anger, lust, and pain swirling between us.
Rans continued to run his free hand over my body, squeezing and kneading my tits, then sliding up to encircle my throat—daring me not to trust him with this. I swallowed, my head falling back, feeling the movement push against the cool weight of his palm. My pulse throbbed beneath the light pressure of his fingers and thumb.
Using the grip he had on my arms, he pulled my back flush against his front. Now every sharp thrust of his cock rolled my clit against the back of the couch, which was starting to scoot against the floor with a series of harsh squeaks.
I was floating, falling, dizzy with the need to tear both of us down until nothing was left. Rans’ cock pounded against my G-spot, combining with the pres
sure against my clit to drive me inexorably toward something ugly and devastating... and painfully, inescapably necessary. I could feel him rushing toward the same cliff, desperate and self-destructive.
He groaned—an animal noise. His hand around my throat dragged my head to the left. An instant later, his fangs sank into the juncture of my neck and shoulder with the unexpected abruptness of a striking snake.
I shrieked and struggled and came; fought and sobbed and came even harder, my pussy clamping around his dick while his jaws clamped around my flesh. Every muscle in my body went taut as I felt him follow me into release, pouring his animus into me as he growled against my bitten flesh.
We ended up in a sweaty heap, still draped over the back of the couch. Tears traced rivulets down my face, while two dribbles of blood trailed down my right breast from the twin punctures in my shoulder.
“I’m afraid I’ll get you killed if you stay,” I rasped eventually, my voice completely wrecked.
Rans rested his forehead against my back for a long moment. I felt cool breath sigh out against my skin, chasing shivers down my spine.
“Yes... well. It does seem rather unavoidable now,” he said. “Though it hardly matters if I stay or leave at this point.”
And then he was lifting me upright, steadying me on my feet, still holding me facing away from him, his arms wrapped around me from behind. I stood there, very still, with bruises on my hips, blood on my chest and my sex aching from the abuse it had just received. How fucked up was it that I now felt about a hundred times better than I had before?
It was really, really fucked up, I decided. But that didn’t make it any less true. Fresh strength flooded my limbs, the pain and creakiness in my joints a fast-fading memory. My mind felt clearer, my head no longer ached, and the insatiable pit lurking in my chest and belly no longer threatened to consume me from the inside out.
“Please talk to me properly now,” I whispered.
I felt the softening of his stance at my back—felt him giving in.
“I will, Zorah,” he promised quietly.
* * *
The shower in the little cottage might have been fairly lackluster, but the water coming from the tap was hot, and the old claw-foot tub was big enough for two. I lay back between Rans’ legs, resting against his chest and letting the water lap against my chin. With luck, the warm bathwater would help to soak away the chill of what I suspected I was about to learn.
Rans’ voice was low and even. “A life-bond is an unbreakable connection between two individuals. It’s forged through the exchange of blood, and sealed using a certain kind of crystal imbued with demon magic. It becomes permanent upon the destruction of that crystal.”
I swallowed. “So... when you talked about my death causing your death, you were being literal?”
“Very.” His hands didn’t move from where they rested across my belly.
“Where did you get the crystal?” I asked, as a way to avoid the question that I really needed answered.
“I stole it. From Nigellus. I stopped in Atlantic City on my way from Chicago to Dublin.” He paused for a beat. “Of course, I expect he’ll be quite cross once he notices it’s missing. Especially since I had the unmitigated cheek to ask for the use of this cottage right after I’d nicked it.”
Great. So I’d managed to drive a wedge not only between Rans and Albigard, but him and Nigellus as well.
I steeled myself. “I’m human, Rans. Well, mostly. Even if I don’t get killed before then, I’ll die of old age in fifty or sixty years. If we’re... magically tied together somehow, what happens to you then?”
His voice was level. “About what you’d expect.”
Denial suffused me, and I twisted in his grip. “Why would you do that?”
He met my gaze and held it. “Why would you sneak away behind my back and go to Dhuinne?”
I pushed away from his body, scooting around to sit at the other end of the tub, facing him—our legs tangled together under the water. Unfortunately, if I’d wanted space, a bathtub had probably been an unwise venue for the discussion, but oh, well.
“I told you,” I said. “I needed to find Dad, and I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t get killed trying to protect me when and if Caspian and his goons found us and descended in force.”
So instead, he’s going to get killed whenever I end up getting killed... whether that’s tomorrow or decades from now. Good one, Zorah.
My throat grew tight.
“You should have talked to me instead of running,” he said in a low tone. Then he sighed, and eased back, consciously relaxing his frame. “How did you manage it, anyway? You didn’t take money, or even Guthrie’s credit card.”
There was no point in trying to hide the details from him. Not now.
“When you gave me your phone after we left the newspaper office in Chicago and sent me ahead to the car, I thought it would be a good idea to transfer some of the important phone numbers to my burner phones for emergencies,” I explained. “You told me to call A.C. if you didn’t come back. That was obviously Nigellus. Guthrie was in there, too, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who Tink was supposed to be.”
“Ah.”
“It was pretty obvious that Nigellus and the other people you talked to that night weren’t going to be able to help us. Not without taking forever, anyway. You knew it. I knew it,” I continued. “My dad had already been in Fae custody for days. I went outside and called Albigard while you were asleep. It was sheer luck that he actually picked up his phone. I asked him if he could get me into Dhuinne and try to arrange some kind of exchange—me for my father. He said he’d try.”
“I will rip the points off his fucking Fae ears and pin them to his skull with rusty iron nails.” Rans’ voice was still even and low.
I narrowed my eyes. “Why? Why blame him for doing exactly what I asked him to?”
His blue gaze was hard. “Because it was mercenary and self-serving of him. If you think he was doing it as some kind of favor, you’ve got a lot to learn about the Fae.”
“I didn’t ask him for a favor! I asked him if he thought he could do it, and he said it was possible. It wasn’t like he was trying to lure me into going with him!” I insisted.
I wondered if being a vampire meant you didn’t have to blink, just like you didn’t have to breathe—because it was becoming awfully hard to hold those glacier-deep eyes with mine.
It became even harder when he said, “I woke up to find you gone, but all your belongings had been left behind. There was no sign of a struggle. Still, I could only conclude that the Fae had managed to sneak in and take you, while I lay insensate mere meters away, drooling on my pillow like some kind of lack-wit after I’d vowed to myself that I’d protect you.”
Guilt tugged at me with more insistence. “Well... a Fae did sneak in and take me, but only because I asked him to.” My gaze slid away from his, despite my best efforts. “I should have left you a note, or something. I’m sorry. I’d expected to have to sneak back inside the house to get money for a cab. But Albigard just... showed up, the moment I ended the call. Portaled right into the back yard, because I guess the mead I accepted from him means he can find me anytime he likes, now.”
“Yes,” Rans agreed. “It does.”
I swallowed. “Anyway, it happened so fast that I just went with him. I didn’t want to have time to start second-guessing myself because, not to put too fine a point on it, I was scared shitless by that point.”
He was silent for a few moments.
“Fear is there to keep you from doing stupid things,” he said eventually. “You should have listened to that fear instead of ignoring it.”
But I shook my head. “Maybe that’s true for normal people. People who aren’t messed up, I mean. But when you’ve spent a lifetime being afraid, you either learn to move past it, or you never accomplish a goddamned thing. You wither away until only the fear is left.”
He didn’t reply, so I continued.
&nb
sp; “Why did you come after me, Rans? I told you why I did what I did, but why did you do what you did? You accused me of trying to commit suicide, but you’ve just sentenced yourself to death within the next few decades by tying your life to mine.”
I was still having trouble holding his gaze, but I caught the way his eyebrow arched.
“You’re not worried that I might have sentenced you to death instead? It goes both ways, Zorah. If I die, so do you.”
I waved the words away, though. “You’ve made it seven hundred years, Rans. Black Death and shotgun blasts and all. Seems like most of the risk here is on your end.”
“It was a calculated risk.”
I wasn’t so ready to let it go. “Oh, yeah? About that... I might’ve been pretty far out of it, but it wasn’t lost on me that you didn’t know for sure about your survival being a treaty provision. What was it you said to the Magistrate? ‘I thought it must be something like that’?”
He shrugged, though I noticed that it was his turn to glance away.
“There are only so many reasons why the winning army in a supernatural war would leave one single member of an enemy race alive when they clearly have the means to snuff him out at any time.”
I digested that for a moment. “The winning army? I thought Nigellus called the war a messy draw.”
The bark of laughter Rans let out had nothing to do with amusement, I could tell.
“You’ve seen enough to form your own opinions about that, I’d imagine,” he said. “Fae are taking over your world, Zorah. More and more each year.”
“It’s your world, too,” I whispered. But he was right, of course. Admittedly, Nigellus was the only demon I knew, but he was holed up in a vice-ridden enclave with his aging butler, staying out of everyone’s way. And for all his obvious wealth and charisma, he hadn’t even been able to help us with getting Dad back. All of which was just a distraction from what was truly important in this conversation.
“So, you charged into the Fae Court and bound your life to a mortal’s because you thought that maybe there was a reason they hadn’t killed you yet, beyond luck or laziness,” I said. “I get that you’re angry with me. You have every right to be. But I’m allowed to be angry with you, too. You did the same freaking thing to me that I did to you—putting your life at risk to try and protect mine. And I still don’t understand why!”
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