The Demon You Know

by Christine Warren

  “Uzkiel is not stupid. It will not be taken in by primitive tricks.” Rule crossed his arms over his chest and had the sinking feeling that if Noah possessed half his sister’s stubbornness, this fight could end badly. “This is one of the most powerful and most corrupt fiends I have ever encountered. It is immortal by human standards. It cannot be killed with bullets or holy water, and it will not shrink before symbols of human faith.”

  Noah snorted. “I wasn’t planning on attacking it with a palm frond and a string of rosary beads. And trust me, anything can be killed with bullets if you put enough of them in the right places. Fiends die when you behead them, don’t they?”

  “Their corporeal manifestations can be destroyed that way, yes. But the immaterial entity must be trapped in a proper vessel and destroyed magically.”

  “Fine. I’ll do the shooting; you do the chanting.”

  Rule scowled. “You are going to need something bigger than a handgun if you intend to injure Uzkiel seriously enough to destroy its physical body.”

  A slow grin spread across the man’s face. “Trust me. I have bigger.”

  That expression made Rule stop for a moment. A thought occurred to him. “I do not think you ever told me your specialty on your team.”

  The grin widened. “Nope, I didn’t.”

  “Well?”

  “Demolitions,” Noah answered with great good cheer. “I blow things up for a living.”

  Rule grunted just as the latch on the library door clicked open. “Funny. Your sister seems to do it as a hobby.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Abby paused outside the door of Rafael De Santos’s office on the second floor of the club and took a deep breath. The taste of crow was becoming a familiar one to her, but she couldn’t say she was learning to like it any better for all that. Since the incident in the park yesterday, she had apologized to Samantha, made her peace with Tess, and even managed to smuggle a note to Missy expressing her regret at getting the Luna in trouble with her mate. All of that had been easy compared to the lion Abby was about to beard.

  She rapped briefly on the door and decided the muffled grunt she heard in response would do as well as a command to enter. Her hand closed around the cool metal of the knob and she paused to say a quick prayer for courage—and patience—before she turned it and entered the dimly lit room.

  Rafael De Santos had apparently given over to Rule the space in which he normally conducted his business as head of the Council of Others. Instead of the Felix, the demon sat behind the massive walnut desk poring over sheets and sheets of yellowed and brittle paper with a kind of intensity that failed to surprise her in the least. She imagined he focused that kind of intensity on everything he did.

  In fact, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from imagining him focusing it on making love. . . .

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. That fiend’s dirty mind must be rubbing off on me.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Abby jerked her gaze up off the floor to meet Rule’s across the width of the room. The cold, controlled expression he wore made him look nothing like she remembered from yesterday afternoon, right before she had passed out, or whatever she was supposed to call it when Lou took over her body. Then Rule had looked positively feral.

  “Um, hi,” she began. He simply stared impassively. “I was just, um, wondering if . . . you had a minute. To talk to me.”

  “About?”

  “Yesterday.”

  He dropped his attention back to the papers spread before him. “I do not believe that is something we need to, or should, discuss.”

  Abby sighed. Not a single one of them was going to make this easy for her, were they? “I don’t agree. I think we absolutely need to discuss it. The whole thing demonstrated pretty clearly to me that this situation is even more complicated than I thought it was and that it’s not going to end nearly as quickly or as easily as I was hoping.”

  “Indeed.”

  He didn’t say, “I told you so,” but Abby could practically see the phrase floating between them, as if a pixie in a crop duster had broken into the club and written it in the air in plumy exhaust.

  “That being the case, I thought . . .” She rubbed her damp palms against the legs of her jeans. “I wanted to tell you . . . I’m sorry. For some of the things I said to you yesterday. Not the stuff about wanting to leave, or about finding this whole thing insane, ’cause those are both true. But I attacked you personally, and that wasn’t fair. So . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  Abby stood there a moment in silence while Rule continued to pore over his research materials, or whatever it was he seemed so engrossed in. She could almost hear the crickets chirping.

  “That’s it?”

  “What is it?” He shuffled some papers aside, pulled out new ones. Never looked up.

  “That’s all I get? That cool little ‘apology accepted’ and we both go on our merry ways?”

  Finally he looked up, but his expression said he wasn’t at all happy about it. “You do not want me to accept your apology?”

  “Of course I want you to accept my apology! You should accept my apology! You should—” Abby cut herself off and pressed a hand to her forehead.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Don’t beg my anything. I think it’s time we all decided no more begging.” She closed the office door behind her and crossed over to the desk, sinking into one of the chairs opposite Rule’s position of elegant authority. “My olive branch may be kind of wilted, but I swear, I came to make peace.”

  And since her stomach still insisted on fluttering and her heart on racing and her libido on shifting into overdrive every time she got near him, she figured it was a darned impressive gesture she was making, too.

  “We were never at war,” Rule dismissed, seemingly oblivious to the tension and attraction she could have sworn sparked between them. Maybe it was all on her side, a kind of latent teenage attraction to the ultimate bad boy. Because Rule didn’t look like he lusted after her. He actually just looked annoyed, especially with that muscle in his jaw twitching as if he were grinding his teeth together in irritation.

  “So why do I feel like we need to declare a truce?”

  “I am not qualified to speculate on your beliefs.”

  Abby felt her own jaw beginning to clench. “You know, I’m beginning to think that you want me to hate your guts, for some insane reason. That can’t be possible, can it?”

  “It is none of my concern how you feel about me. My only concern is to see you safe and to keep the spell you carry out of Uzkiel’s hands.”

  “Wow. I bet you have to beat the girls off with a stick, don’t you?”

  “I do not believe it benefits either of us to discuss personal matters.” His tone was cold and dismissive, but Abby saw something almost like anger sparking behind those pitch-black eyes of his.

  “You should have thought of that before you kissed me,” she goaded, her eyes narrowing. “ ’Cause that felt pretty personal to me.”

  Even before the words left her mouth she recognized them as a supremely bad idea, but by then it was too late to stop them. They fell between the two of them like an undetonated nuclear warhead. Abby could almost swear she heard ticking.

  “You humans have a tendency to read too much into simple tactics,” he said after a moment in which Abby could have sworn the atmosphere in the room visibly thickened. “You had launched into a tirade. I simply chose an expedient method of quieting you.”

  Something prodded Abby to her feet, moved her like a puppet, and braced her hands on the paper-strewn desk, urging her to lean forward until her nose was just inches from his. She tried very, very hard to blame it on the fiend inside her, but that would have been a big, fat lie. And what was worse, Abby knew it.

  She knew very well that the only one to blame for the challenging quirk of her eyebrow and the teasing parting of her lips was her. But she did it anyway.

  “If
all you wanted was to shut me up,” she murmured, her gaze falling to his mouth and lingering there, remembering the heat of it over hers. The rich, spicy taste of it. “Your hand would have done the trick, and you know it. That kiss was either overkill . . . or undertow. Which one do you want to lay your money on?”

  As if in slow motion, he reached a hand out to her, curled it in the knit fabric of her top, and began to pull her inexorably closer. “By the light of the sun, I swear I tried to keep myself from this.”

  “This” turned out to be another of those searing, mind-bending, toe-curling, heart-pounding, brain-scrambling kisses, and all Abby could do was sigh her pleasure.

  The fact that he tasted so incredibly good to her, that his lips could make her knees melt and her stomach flutter, only served to reinforce what a bad idea this probably was. Anything that felt this good had to be a sin, she reasoned through a blurry fog of arousal, and at that moment she didn’t care.

  His fist tightened around her shirtfront, tugging her across the polished wood of the desk, sending papers shushing to the floor, and ending with her tumbling off the edge and into his lap. She tensed for a moment, feeling suddenly trapped by his enormous body, his heavy, muscled arms closing around her. Nervous, she tried to ease back a fraction, but his lips just softened against her, teasing, beguiling, until she relaxed against him once more.

  Hard, gentle hands eased up the length of her spine, drawing shivers in their wake, before trailing back down in a long, fluid caress that left her sighing into his mouth. She leaned closer, let her tongue tangle with his, set her hands on his shoulders, her fingers kneading him like a cat. He made her feel as sinuous as one, as lazy and eager for petting.

  One large hand firmed on her back, slid down over the waistband of her jeans to cup around the curve of her bottom and pull her closer against him. She moaned softly, a deep throaty sound that took on a sharp edge of surprise when another hand slid up her rib cage to close with gentle purpose around her breast.

  This time, Abby didn’t even bother to stiffen. Rule’s touch felt nothing like the clumsy groping of the boy she’d slept with in college, the one and only other man to have touched her. Then, giving in had felt like an obligation. But this . . . this felt like heaven.

  It was Rule who finally lifted his head, staring down at her with those fathomless black eyes. “This is not wise, Abigail.”

  Shivering, his hands still holding her to him, warm and arousing at her breast and bottom, Abby leaned forward to nip at his chin. “I know. But wisdom can be highly overrated.”

  “As can my self-control,” he muttered.

  His hands slid away to grip her hips and lift her away from him. Abby blinked, as if she’d been in a dark room and someone had just turned on the lights.

  She shivered. “What’s the matter?”

  Rule set her on the edge of the desk and slumped back in his chair, running a hand through his disheveled golden hair. “Circumstances have thrust us together, but that does not mean we should allow ourselves to be ruled by these illogical impulses. We do not suit.”

  Abby’s breast, still tingling where he’d touched it, begged to differ. “Why do you say that?”

  He leveled her a long stare. “First, because you are under my protection.”

  “Euphemistically speaking.”

  “Also, We come from two different worlds, quite literally. We can have nothing in common other than this . . . strange attraction.”

  Abby crossed her arms over her chest. “You make it sound like some sort of disease. And I’m sure we have to have something in common; otherwise I doubt we’d feel anything for each other but dislike.”

  “What could you possibly believe we could share?”

  “Well, I think it’s pretty clear that both of us have a well-developed sense of duty,” she said, wondering why she was trying to convince this man, this demon, that he was wrong about their incompatibility when she’d been reminding herself of it for nearly twenty-four hours. “And we both seem to find Louamides deeply annoying.”

  “Every living creature on every plane of existence finds Louamides annoying. It is hardly a foundation on which to build a relationship.”

  Abby blew out a breath and pushed herself off the desk to stand on her own two feet. There was something reassuring about the movement. “I don’t believe I asked for a relationship,” she dismissed, ignoring the niggling in her chest. “I’m not trying to convince you we’re perfect for each other. I may be possessed, but I’m not insane . . . yet.”

  He looked up at her, his expression brooding. “Then what did you come here for?”

  “I told you. To apologize.” She wrapped her arms around herself and took several steps away from the desk and the danger that lurked behind it. “Which I’ve already done. And to thank you.”

  “For?”

  “For helping my brother. I know he’d just been holding a gun on you, so I’m sure helping him get back here to the club when you already had me to worry about wasn’t the top on your list of priorities. But I wanted you to know I appreciate it.”

  Rule shrugged. “He is human. It is my duty to protect him.”

  “See what I mean?” Abby’s mouth quirked. “Duty. Why do you think I haven’t found a way to scale the outside wall up to the roof and flag down a helicopter?”

  “Because you know I would stop you.”

  “No. Because every once in a great while, what you say almost starts to make sense. I figure if that starts to happen more frequently, I’ll go see my doctor.”

  “Once we have dealt with Uzkiel and can be assured of the safety of you leaving this club alone.”

  Abby laughed and headed for the door. “Right. And stubbornness. Did I mention that was another thing we have in common?”

  Rule watched the door click shut behind Abby and blew out a deep breath. Then he leaned forward and let his forehead thump down onto the heavy desk.

  Hard.

  What in the sun’s name had he been thinking? Kissing Abby once had been bad enough, but to repeat the exercise clearly indicated he had the common sense and the self-control of a chaos imp. He must be going out of his mind.

  “Wow. When De Santos told me I might find you like this, I thought he was kidding.”

  Rule looked up to see the brother of his current obsession standing in front of the desk. The fact that Rule hadn’t heard him open the door or approach the desk provided testament to either his skill as a soldier or Rule’s doom as a single male.

  “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Noah continued, his expression deadpan and his eyes twinkling. “You may not have noticed this, but Abby is a little . . . determined. The two best ways to deal with her are to either go along with her or to ignore her completely. I’m an advocate of door number two.”

  Right. And that had been working so well for Rule thus far. He pushed back into his seat. “Somehow I do not believe you have come in here to talk to me about your sister.”

  “Nope. I came to ask if you were up for shaking a few trees to see if our raccoon might just fall out.”

  The demon raised an eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”

  “A guy in my unit grew up on Avenue A. There’s a bar down there he says gets a pretty interesting clientele. The exact opposite of the cream of the crop, if you know what I mean.”

  “Well, if we were going to find info about Uzkiel in a bar, that sounds as if it would be the perfect one. Perhaps we should pay a visit.”

  “Sundown’s in two hours.”

  “Good. I think I’m suddenly feeling parched.”

  The bar turned out to be every bit as unsavory as Noah’s teammate had promised, a fact that he and Rule took an odd sort of delight in. Not because either of them was the type to hang out in seedy bars, though Rule at least had certainly been in worse, but because at this point, anything that smelled like a lead would be enough to get the Watchman as excited as a high school quarterback on prom night.

  The patrons of
the low-ceilinged, badly lit room had obviously never heard of the city’s smoking ban, but then, the owners had obviously never heard of soap and water, so Rule figured it might be a fair trade.

  He pushed through a haze of cigarette smoke and led the way to the bar with Abby’s brother trailing behind him. The soldier had traded his fatigues for a battered pair of jeans borrowed from Graham Winters and a well-worn chambray shirt softened by many washings. He didn’t look so entirely different from the other occupants of the bar, but then, neither did Rule, with his scruffy stubble, deliberately rumpled clothes and ball cap pulled low to disguise his features.

  It just went to show that appearances could be deceiving.

  They laid claim to a couple of rickety bar stools, and Noah managed to catch the eye of the hulking but less-than-enthusiastic-looking bartender.

  “Whaddaya want?”

  Noah met the man’s sullen gaze with a steady one of his own. “I got a friend says your beer’s good. Gimme two of those.”

  The bartender’s eyes narrowed. “What’s this friend’s name?”

  “Billy. But mostly we just call him Badass.”

  Rule watched the man closely and saw when the tension about him eased just slightly. He also saw that the man had the kind of craggy, rough skin and thick, dense build that marked him as the descendant of a stone giant.

  “How is the bastard?” the bartender asked, his small, dark eyes watching Noah steadily. “He still got that stupid heart tattoo on his chest?”

  “Badass has a lot of tattoos,” Noah said, “but the only one I’ve ever seen on his chest isn’t a heart. It’s a one-fingered salute.”