“Is something wrong?” Abby sighed. “Surely no one thinks you need to watch me while I sleep so I don’t try to climb out the window? I’m the human one, remember? I don’t do stunts.”
Samantha shook her head. “No, of course not. It’s just—” She broke off and her expression turned even guiltier. If that were possible. “I brought you something else.”
Abby watched while the other woman reached into the pocket of her own borrowed sweatshirt and pulled out something small and silver and shiny.
She looked over her shoulder, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely more than a whisper. “I can’t leave the phone with you, but I can’t stop thinking about how worried my family would be if I disappeared and they didn’t hear from me. The Felix said you shouldn’t be allowed to make any calls, but I thought . . . you know. If you sent just one text message . . . at least you could let someone know you’re safe.”
Abby stared at Samantha and fought the urge to grab her by the cheeks and kiss her smack on the mouth—
Aw, yeah, baby! Now that’s what I’m talking about!
—Abby contented herself with a squeal and a big hug and grabbing the proffered phone like a lifeline. This was exactly what she needed, and she didn’t even need to think about whom to text or what to say.
She typed in the phone number she knew by heart and used a trembling thumb to pick out the one-word code she and her brother, Noah, had developed when they were kids.
“Thanksgiving.”
Vircolac didn’t stock enough brandy for Rule to get as drunk as he wanted to. Hell, he doubted even faerie wine would have offered him the oblivion he longed for tonight, but he was damned sure going to do his best to find some kind of substitute, even if it killed him.
At the moment, an untimely demise had a lot to recommend it.
What in the sun’s name had he been thinking? He would have been better off sticking his tongue in an electrical socket than in the mouth of Abby Baker. Not only was she human and apparently just pious enough to have bought into all the bad publicity her religious leaders had spent centuries concocting about his people, but she was also the key to defeating or being defeated by the most dangerous fiend it had ever been Rule’s misfortune to encounter. And to top it all off with a nice, shiny ribbon, she now resided quite securely under his protection.
Rule slouched in his chair and brooded, a large glass of brandy in one hand and his gaze trained on the flickering flames in the hearth. After Rafe and Tess and the others had left, Rule had remained at Vircolac and settled here in an upstairs sitting room he’d been told was often used for private meetings and gambling. He’d denied any interest in retiring to the bedroom he used while he stayed in the Above—or any room with a bed just then—and the night manager had offered Rule the library. The last thing he needed was to stare at the site of his own folly for a few hours, so instead he’d come up here to sulk in peace.
Too bad his mind wouldn’t let him rest. It kept reliving the feel of Abby’s lips beneath his, the warm, sweet taste of her, her subtle feminine scent filling his nostrils. If he had wanted to devise a particularly insidious form of torture to inflict on himself, he could not have chosen better.
The Watch had become far more than his job over the centuries he had spent serving in it. Perhaps part of that came from the fact that his father had served before him and his father’s father before him, back to the dawn of the order. Maybe it had truly come to be in the blood of Rule’s family. He knew for certain that somehow it had fused with his identity. He had become a Watchman in truth as well as in name. Protecting people from the evil of the fiends was his mission, the reason he continued to draw breath after so many long centuries of existence. Taking advantage of someone under his care, setting his own desires above the need to guard and defend, counted as the greatest heresy he could name. It went against everything he believed and everything he stood for.
So why the hell had he done it?
Groaning, he let his head fall back against his chair and scowled up at the ceiling. Was he going soft? At a thousand years of age, he should just be reaching his prime, but the prime he had imagined for himself had never involved taking advantage of a human woman under his care. It had never involved taking anything from a human woman.
Like most of his kind, Rule had grown up with a sort of acquired disdain for humanity. A primitive species with no magic to speak of and a clear but inexplicable desire to exterminate itself. They dabbled in forces they didn’t understand and abused the forces they did understand. They held about as much attraction for most of his kind as a common slime mold. Until this woman.
“If you were anyone else, I’d say I recognize that look.”
Rule glanced over his shoulder to see Graham Winters propped negligently against the wooden frame. He cast the Lupine a dark look and turned back to his mental self-flagellation.
“I’ve seen it too many times, my friend, on the faces of my friends and cousins, and in my own mirror to boot.” Cheerfully ignoring his lack of welcome, Graham sauntered into the room and settled himself into the armchair to Rule’s left. “In my world, that look only comes from one place. Woman troubles. I didn’t know your kind shared that particular vulnerability.”
In general terms, Rule liked Graham. He possessed a fierce loyalty, a ferocious honesty, and razor-sharp fangs that Rule knew personally came in handy in a fight. But right now, he would just as soon toss the Silverback Alpha out the window as have this conversation.
“Considering how little you know about my kind, that is hardly surprising.” Rule raised his glass to his lips. “But I fear you are mistaken. I do not have a woman to cause me trouble.”
“Then who exactly is upstairs sleeping in one of my VIP rooms?”
“I’m sure Rafael has filled you in on the current state of affairs.”
“Oh, he told me a pretty interesting story. Missy and I found him and Tess waiting in our living room when we got back from the movies.” Graham leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out to plant his heels on the low wood-and-metal coffee table. “But what he said doesn’t explain the look on your face. Or the eyeful Tess described seeing when they barged back in on you and not-your-woman in the library.”
Rule cursed, low and fluently, in the language of the Below. “That meant nothing.”
“Interesting. That’s a pretty different summary than the one Tess gave me. From what she described, I was thinking we’d be celebrating another mating around here any day now.”
That earned Graham a glare. “I am not a Lupine. I do not make a commitment to a female merely because my hormones become slightly unruly.”
“Then what does make a demon take the plunge? Presumably some of you do, or there wouldn’t be any little demons pitter-pattering around the Below.”
Rule’s shoulders shifted in a reluctant shrug. “Of course some do, but it isn’t like one of your matings. We don’t believe that one soul has been preordained to join with ours and make us complete. We forge alliances or partnerships based on mutual compatibility.”
“And lust.”
“That, too.”
Graham shook his head. “That sounds almost human, Rule. They pick their mates in the same arbitrary manner you’ve just described. I’ve always thought that’s why so many of them get divorced.”
“And I have always thought being tied to another for all eternity was the reason why so many Lupines die young,” the demon snapped. “But this conversation is pointless. I have no interest in the human woman. We certainly do not share the sort of similarities in mind and character that could forge a lasting relationship.”
“Just a lasting lip-lock, huh?”
Rule’s growl was succinct and illustrative.
Graham smirked. “Right. But it’s not woman trouble.”
“Not the sort you are imagining.” Rule tossed back the remainder of his brandy and rose to pour himself another glass. “I have no doubt the woman will be trouble, but that i
s because she is alone, afraid, and, I suspect, reckless. She doesn’t seem to comprehend the gravity of her situation.”
“Which is?”
“If Uzkiel locates her and wrests the solus spell from Louamides? The end of your world as it currently exists.”
“Bummer.”
Rule snorted and turned back to his chair. “I fail to understand how you mortals, with your finite life spans, can seem to regard matters like the destruction of your existence with such nonchalance.”
“We’re used to it. Christ, Rule, you remember what happened last year with Fiona and Dionnu. Before that it was the Light of Truth, and before that it was something else.” He shrugged. “It’s not that we take anything lightly; it’s just that if we panicked every time we were threatened with destruction, we’d all be dead of heart attacks.”
“And you all view where I come from as hell.”
Graham grinned. “That’s just because you guys don’t get ESPN.”
Rule shook his head and swallowed more brandy. He still didn’t even feel a tingle, let alone a healthy buzz.
“Seriously, Rule, I hear what you’re saying, but I still think you’ve got more trouble than you’re admitting to. Unless you tripped and fell on her lips?”
No, he’d tripped and fallen on his own damned idiocy. “Something like that. It was purely accidental, and not something I plan to repeat.”
The Lupine just looked at him.
“What?” Rule snapped. “I am perfectly serious. I have no intention of so much as touching the woman again, let alone kissing her. Not only is she under my protection, but she is mortal. Human. She is not at all the sort of female to interest me.”
Graham’s lips twitched. “Right. Just like I never in my life would have looked twice at a mousy human kindergarten teacher too softhearted to step on an ant at a picnic.”
Having met said kindergarten teacher and seen Graham’s inability to keep his hands off his mate for more than five consecutive seconds, Rule failed to appreciate the analogy.
“This is an entirely different situation. I am not Lupine, I have no pack succession to ensure, and there is no force in the Above or the Below that could possibly compel me to take a mate, let alone one so patently unsuited to me.”
Shaking his head, Graham rose and sauntered toward the door. “You keep telling yourself that, buddy. And while you’re at it, flip open the dictionary in the desk drawer. There’s one particular word you ought to look up. It’s called ‘fate.’ ”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Abby had to admit the service at the Vircolac club beat any kind of hotel she’d ever stayed at. She’d been served coffee, eggs, scones, and jam in a private dining room that morning almost before she’d so much as had a chance to tell the caller on the other end of the house phone line that she was feeling a little hungry. While Abby had eaten, her room had been ruthlessly straightened, the clothes she’d worn yesterday had been laundered with a speed that bordered on creepy, and she’d been asked no fewer than five times if there was anything else she required.
She had to give it to them; the Others ran a heck of a swanky club. But that didn’t change the fact that they’d be in for a surprise when Noah showed up and drove a tank through the front door of their little bat cave.
She wasn’t sure if Noah had a tank at his immediate disposal, but if he decided he needed one to stage her rescue, she had no doubt that he would find one. Just like she knew he would find a way to use her text message from Samantha’s cell phone to trace her location. Whether or not it would be quite in keeping with military regulations or the stated mission of his unit, she didn’t know, and at this point she really didn’t care.
I’m glad you have so much confidence in this brother of yours, Lou whined, but I’d like to point out that if you’re wrong about GI Joe, I’m gonna be the one paying the price.
“Trust me, as much as I hate to acknowledge this,” Abby muttered, “I wouldn’t do anything I thought would lead to you getting hurt. At least not while it’s my face coming between you and a well-placed fist.”
She felt Lou settle down for a sulk and shook her head. Not only because the fiend had turned out to have such easily hurt feelings for such a crude, uncouth little monster, but also because she realized she was beginning to be able to sense it inside of her. That feeling of being watched, she now knew, was a signal that Lou was aware and paying attention to her and her surroundings, even if he wasn’t talking. A few carefully placed questions over the last few hours had assured her that when that feeling faded, so had Lou. It couldn’t leave her, but it could settle into a different area of her brain and stop paying attention for a while, kind of like taking a nap.
Too bad that feeling didn’t come nearly as often as the first one.
The only luck she’d had in all of this nightmare consisted of the fact that her brother’s battalion wasn’t currently overseas. If it held even a smidge more, he wasn’t at his base in North Carolina but on leave somewhere closer.
A glance at her watch made her grimace. She’d sent the text message and marked it “urgent” at just about midnight last night. It was now after three in the afternoon. If Noah had been in the state, visiting friends or their parents in their hometown northwest of Ithaca, he’d have been here by now, which meant she would be home free. Since she was currently pacing a hole in the carpet of a very comfortable sitting room, he must have been at Fort Bragg. She just hoped he had leave coming to him. The last thing she needed added to her conscience was the knowledge that she’d made her brother go AWOL. It was already stinging to the point of needing a spiritual shot of Novocain, stat.
I still vote for bourbon. Neat.
“Only if you want to experience firsthand what it feels like for your host body to projectile vomit. I told you, I don’t drink. Even beer makes me queasy.”
If you were drinking American beer, I can understand why.
Abby gave up pacing and dropped onto the sofa, burying her face in her hands. She still couldn’t get over it. She’d kissed a demon. Shoot, if they hadn’t been interrupted just then, heaven only knew what else she’d have done with him. Just the memory was enough to make her blush. She hated to think what a repeat performance would do to her.
Abigail Miriam Baker! Get that thought right out of your head. You can’t go around fantasizing about having sex with a demon! Do you have any idea how many Hail Marys that would be?
Okay, she was reasonably sure that had been her conscience and not the fiend lurking inside her, especially since she doubted said fiend would be able to calculate the penance she’d be doing from her nursing home if she kept this up.
As if I’d care? I can calculate one thing for you, though. Your uptight quotient is like off the scales. You need to relax more than anyone else I’ve ever met, sweet cheeks. You ever considered yoga?
In the nude?
Abby very quickly and very deliberately conjured up a vivid image of grabbing the fiend inside her by the neck and stuffing a sock into its mouth. She thought she heard something like a muffled grunt.
Her trouble so far—the demonic rather than the fiendish kind—hadn’t been with stopping herself from fantasizing. When she remained fully conscious, she could force those oh-so-sinful thoughts out of her head. After five or ten minutes. The problem was with her degenerate subconscious. The minute she’d drifted off to sleep last night, it had begun bombarding her with dreams of the hot, heady flavor of Rule’s kiss and all the other delicious things he could do to her if he were just human.
It didn’t make sense to her, not that many things made much sense these days, but this really threw her. She’d always assumed, had built her life around the premise, that there was good and evil in the world and that some beings were inherently one or the other, like angels and demons. She considered herself a modern, liberal-minded Catholic. She didn’t think the entire global population of Buddhists was going straight to hell just because they didn’t see things quite the same way the church di
d, and she believed the same about the Others. If one lived a moral life and tried one’s best to help rather than hurt their fellow humans, she’d be the first to welcome them to the neighborhood. But there was a big difference between turning furry and chasing rabbits once a month and being a demon. She wasn’t sure her liberalism was quite so elastic as all that.
Her mind kept traveling back to the story Rule had told, which Tess and Rafael and Samantha and Carly had been happy to corroborate, that what most humans believed about demons and fiends amounted to a front-page story in the Weekly World News. Abby just wasn’t sure if she believed it. Could centuries—even millennia—of theologians have been wrong? Even worse, could they have been lying? Adjusting her worldview to encompass well-meaning werewolves and virtuous vampires was proving to be enough of a strain. Could she honestly make room for do-gooder demons as well?
And if she did, would it make it right for her to fall madly in lust with one, especially one who had kidnapped, manhandled, and generally been abominably rude to her?
Was there a name to the version of Stockholm syndrome that accounted for the captor being a six-foot, four-inch, outrageously sexy demon?
Sheesh, she had the worst luck with men. The last one had been an egotistical control freak of a financial analyst, and she’d sworn she’d never get mixed up with another one of those. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. Pretty literally.
The click of the door latch tugged her out of her funk and had her looking up from her morose contemplation of the carpet pattern. Samantha poked her head into the room and offered a tentative smile.
“Hi. The Alpha let me go early this afternoon so I could see how you were doing. Was there anything you needed?”
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