by C. V. Larkin
Sio's aura was pulsing, crackling with radiant shards of white fire to meet Tian's glowing spill. He propped himself on one elbow and lifted the other hand, sliding it into her hair.
The way he cradled the back of her head in that big palm of his was intimate enough to elicit a reaction from every damn person in the room. An unwelcome emotion was banging around Xavier's chest like a trapped bird.
Tian let out a shaking exhalation. It was a soft sigh, barely audible under the buttery baritone of Royal's incantation, but it changed everything. The sexual tension in the room spiked to suffocating; the inside of the circle boiled with it. Only it wasn't just sex, there was a purity to it. Sections of the spell became opaque as they peeled away from Sio's skin like they'd lost gravitational pull. The violet baby food went berserk, writhing and twirling, desperate to escape Tian's breath.
"Tian, if you don't move back there will not be any proof left on him," Royal's voice was strangled as he picked up one of the empty jars and collected a few of the rabbiting tendrils from the petrified gelatinous purple anemone. Royal looked as stricken as Xavier had ever seen him.
-Hey...-
Nothing.
Fucker was locked down tighter than Fort Knox.
Royal shoved the jar at Sio and started shutting the circle down hard. The energy imploded, consuming itself until all was quiet and breathing was once again possible. Royal uttered a few more sharp syllables and hit the edge of the chalk outline of the circle to break it.
"We're leaving."
Avery's eyebrows levitated into his hairline. He cocked his head to the side. "You sure?"
Xavier nodded. "We're sure," he answered.
Royal didn't say another word as they left, but the longing quietly threading its way through his aura was unmistakable.
Chapter 22
The Difference Between Wants and Needs
A big bag o'dicks.
That summed up how he'd felt the last time he'd been aware of coming to with his roll cage sandwiched between the colossal paws of some big ass Mexican with a skull trim and a soul patch. The guy'd been so up close and personal Loren had gotten the impression that he was having his spleen examined by way of his esophagus.
Whatever it was that had been exhaled into his open mouth had been salty, tasted like ocean and rainwater, young earth before the onslaught of pollution and global warming. It had congealed behind his teeth, swelling in his face like a mouthful of aerosol hair mousse. That breath had rolled on his tongue like liquid lightning, sliding through the waiting membranes of his skin and burrowing deep into paralyzed muddied synapses. The resulting emotional and sensory reactions had been...well, probably cathartic if he could recall anything after the initial onset of exhilaration. After the fireworks there had been nothing, fog maybe, or the muted darkness of dreamless stasis.
The first thing to catch on Loren's awareness as he sifted himself from the tatters of sleep was the surprising realization that he felt good. The world wasn't swimming. He wasn't about to blow chunks or die if he attempted to think too hard about what had happened to him. And he had no desire to analyze it, to ruminate in general lest he damage the glossy veneer of ignorance and moderate contentment. The things that had gone down after the T-Station were fragmented at best; surreal as if they'd been insulated or had happened to someone else.
He stretched out like a starfish, arms and legs all over the place, and enjoyed floating on a mattress cloud that was much too comfortable to be his own. He cautiously shifted his skull with his eyes closed, waiting for the telltale bright streamers of pain to flare up, declaring him an idiot for self-diagnosing and jostling the mud box.
The soft sounds of sobbing brought him to the brilliant conclusion that he wasn't alone. Loren peeled open his peepers, dropping his head to the right as he zeroed in on the source of the sound. There was a woman sitting in a high-backed ivory chair across the room. She had one knee pulled up to her chest and looked like a wet dream in lavender track pants and a gauzy wide necked gray cotton top that hung off the side of a mocha colored shoulder.
She was gorgeous. Scratch that, she was the most flawless woman he'd ever had the pleasure to ogle in person. He coughed, because he was at a loss for words and feeling like he was intruding on a private moment, an accidental idiot voyeur. He didn't know what else to do. Her head shot up. Pale green eyes still red rimmed from crying went wide in surprise. He felt his nerves bouncing around under her scrutiny.
Damn son.
"Bollocks."
He wished he knew what she'd meant by that. The fact that he didn't was the only thing that kept the hot ass accent from causing him to swoon like a hormonal teenage girl. Loren looked down at the flimsy layer of thread count that was migrating down his torso as he sat up and swallowed hard. He was naked. He eased himself back onto his elbows in a pathetic attempt to preserve modesty, knowing that the bourgeoning erection on his stomach was about as subtle as a neon sign.
"I'm Loren," he said, wincing at the gritty unused sound that had come shuffling up from his voice box. "I'd get up to comfort you...but given my, uh, current state that might more traumatizing than reassuring for us both."
The woman raised an eyebrow and suppressed a smile. "Pretty sure, if you tried getting outta that bed you'd be face first in the grass and I wouldn't be the one in need of comforting."
"Ouch." He cringed and let out an embarrassed chuckle. "I'm definitely gonna need comforting if you keep doing my ego like that, sweetheart. What's your name?"
"You really have some cheek, don't you?"
Goddamn, that accent was unfair.
She wasn't smiling.
"Look," crap, "I'm sorry, but cut me some slack here. I didn't mean to offend you. It was the sweetheart part, right? My manners are a lil shaky cause I think I just had my brains shit through a tube."
Way to be a gentleman.
She let out a short bark of laughter as she wiped the wet tracks along the pristine surface of her skin with three long elegantly tapered fingers from her right hand. "You and me both, mate... Ceyla."
"Your name?"
She shot him an incredulous look. "It's not my address."
At least she sounded like she was teasing him this time and wasn't completely blown over by his profound social ineptitude. He grinned. She may look like a supermodel, but there was some metal there under the surface.
"Why were you crying," Loren asked. He'd tried to gentle his voice as much as possible, considering he had no right to the answer. She looked at him, as if trying to gauge or define which internal quality he'd require in order to be trustworthy. He shrugged and tried to appear less invested in the answer. "What have you got to lose, beautiful? Much as I hate to admit it I probably won't remember this tomorrow anyway."
"You're probably right...even if you are only saying it to make me feel better." She chuckled. He was more than a little smitten.
"Whot would you imagine most women would be crying over at three a.m. holed up in a guest room in their own place with a bloke that's supposed to be unconscious?"
"PMS?"
She laughed outright. "You're ridiculous."
"I'm pretty sure you're not most women," he amended.
She snorted, pulled a cigarette from behind her left ear and a packet of bar matches from her pocket. Ceyla lit one with the nail of her thumb, and brought it half way to the hand rolled in her mouth before looking up at him and shaking it out.
"Damn, sorry," she said.
"I don't mind as long as you share."
She shook her head and stuffed the butt back behind her ear. "Smoking's crap for your system. It'll give you cancer."
"What, and you're immune?" He didn't like the idea that she was thinking of him as fragile because he'd been on his ass for the last...fuck, how long had it been?
"I am, actually."
Loren didn't know what to say to that and apparently neither did she. There was an awkward break in the
conversation as they both fell silent. Ceyla looked like she wanted to say something else, but she bit it back, avoiding his eyes and glancing toward the door. He needed to get things back on track, back to the comfortable camaraderie they'd had before it had gotten weird.
"You never did tell me why you were upset."
She took a deep breath and paused, letting it out slowly. "Over a guy, mate. Whot else." She sounded tired, heartbroken. He didn't like it, liked even less that he couldn't do anything about it.
"Did he hurt you?"
"Every damn time I see him. He hates me. So, where'd you come from anyway?"
He'd meant to ask if the bastard had laid a hand on her, but it seemed inappropriate after the casual way she changed the subject. Still, he wasn't in the mood to let the subject drop.
"He's an idiot."
"Actually he's a demon...half demon, and you don't really know me. For all you know I could be some raving lunatic bitch, couldn't I? You didn't answer my question."
He had no reason to take that statement at face value aside from the encouragement of the shadows in his brain, but that was how it registered. He didn't bother second guessing it.
"Worcester, but if you're asking how I ended up in your guest room it's hard to say. Like the morning after a real vivid dream you swore you'd remember when you got up and then lost track of. It's rough trying to dredge shit up when it feels like it's been insulated by about fifteen feet of bubble wrap. Now back to your demon..."
"Half demon," she interrupted.
"Why would you want that?"
She fell silent another minute before she answered and he got the distinct impression that she wasn't sure what was going to come out of her mouth when she opened it.
"Because I can't not want it. I'm a Draw. I have an affinity for demons, call them the way Necromancers call the dead. I told you, you don't know me. It's complicated."
So that's what's wrong with her. She's nuts.
Loren had no idea how to respond. Ceyla may have been crazy, but there was no denying the intellect in the jade green pools of her narrowed eyes as she assessed his reaction. "Don't look at me as if I'm off my 'ead. You can't possibly lay there after having been through some Slaugh debacle and think that demons are too fucking far-fetched to be real."
SLAUGH.
The word sent cold chills spilling through his system. He shook uncontrollably. The feeling of dread that had been lurking in the shadows of his awareness grew, spilling in brutal waves of adrenaline, blasting through his body like a night terror. It had a name. He couldn't breathe, every muscle fiber was frozen in the face of the resurfacing images. The memories flooded back, inundating him well beyond his capacity to process or accept them. Each recollection was a new form of torture, hitting his psyche like cement blocks thrown from a high rise roof top.
"Oh God," he gasped, wincing and squeezing his eyes shut against the visual and sensory overload.
His whole world was awash in nightmare shades of searing pain. He wanted to pass out, almost wanted to die, would have begged for it if he could speak, but the empty darkness wouldn't come. Ceyla was on the bed with him in a heartbeat, but he couldn't enjoy it. Loren groaned, gasping for air and balling the sheets in a desperate attempt not to find himself in the fetal position. The door burst open and the hard ass Mexican with the ice bright eyes was back and swearing. He was wearing a pair of sea foam green scrubs.
"I'm sorry," Ceyla said. She wrapped her arms around him and pushed the hair off of his clammy forehead. "I'm so unbelievably sorry, Loren."
"What did you do?" Skull trim snapped as he leaned over to check for the pulse that was about to break some sort of land speed record.
"We were talking. I didn't think and I said something I shouldn't have." Her voice came out strained through the thick membrane of her accent.
"You don't say," the guy responded before scrubbing his face with the wide palm of his right hand. "Damn, stay with him while I go get Tian. She said she'd donate. I didn't have enough energy to fix him. He was insulated."
The guy turned around and got about two steps before Ceyla shook her head, not that he could see it. "Good luck getting through Sio for that, mate. If I didn't know it was a lovely fiction I'd swear he was her Anamchara."
Loren groaned as the images those names produced fluttered in the back of his brain, tugging the corresponding chemical production centers for panic like he were a goddamned marionette. Skull trim turned back, blanched, and opened his mouth to comment.
"No," Loren panted through clenched teeth. "I can't."
He was FUBAR, trembling, sweating, blushing like crazy, and sporting an iron solid erection all over the inchoate flashes of incandescent blood like magma as it ran in rivers through the brittle channels of ancient bones.
"You can't," he said again, fighting the rising tide of gorge that had been propelled upward by the attempt at speech. "Their blood brought the bone circle back to life. I don't want to be one of the jigsaw rugrat nightmares."
By the time Loren had vomited the last syllable he was beside himself. Ceyla and Skull Trim were staring at him in dumbfounded shock.
"A little help here," Loren said when he had managed to suck down a breath along with the last of the stomach acid in the back of his throat. He was clutching at his torso as if it were about to unravel and straining to keep the tremors under wraps.
"I don't believe I'm saying this, Virgil, but you can use mine. Just do it fast before I change my mind."
Virgil...
"Your call," Skull Trim responded, sliding a hand up the side of her neck and shuffling her body around to face him. Ceyla was almost the same height, which either made her exceptionally tall for a woman or him less than imposing in stature for a man. Virgil had some intense presence though, maybe that was enough. That presence was positioned less than an inch from her mouth. The resulting pang of jealousy churned through Loren's intestines like rat poison. Virgil's mouth hovered over Ceyla's, an alien space ship blocking out the sky over a city slated for destruction.
The guy inhaled, working for it, as if he were one lung short and the air was too thick for him to get in. A shining mist flowed out in tendrils from between her lips. It was dragged out, unwilling to leave her body and Virgil sucked it down on a sigh as if he were consuming her soul. It was an intimate affair, almost carnal in its execution. The sight was disturbing enough to give the relentless barrage of fearsome images pause, or at least dampen the effect. Virgil leaned back, gray eyes locked into Ceyla's green ones. His face was a mask, so closed down it was unreadable.
"You okay?" he asked Ceyla.
She nodded for him, visibly shaken, and as it appeared, incapable of speech. Virgil escorted her to the chair she'd started out in with a thick hand firmly clenched around her upper arm. Once Ceyla was planted in the chair Virgil turned back to the bed. He strode over, looming like a burnished God seeking blood sacrifice. Loren fought not to strain against the large hands that took hold of his dome, forcing his body into a position that vaguely resembled sitting. He was so tense that he expected the spasms in his muscles to start snapping bones.
Maybe this is what rigor mortis feels like.
"Relax," Virgil said. "We've already done this once."
"I wasn't conscious then," Loren answered, panicked at the thought of being held down by the large male who was all but kneeling on top of him.
Virgil's eyes narrowed into slits, a look of utter vexation boiled to the surface of his expression. "As much as I'd enjoy putting you out, cabron, it'd be one more thing for me to heal. She doesn't owe you. She's giving you a gift, human. Now open your damn mouth."
The guy used the term human as if it were profane, as if maybe shit-head, rat-fuck, or cunt were too polite and he'd been searching for a noun more laden with meaning. Loren glanced back over at the chair and saw Ceyla sitting slumped over with her head in her hands. He opened his mouth, waiting passive like a baby bird. The lightning ca
me crackling back, surging through him, plundering his most personal moments, and spilling through the fragments of his life like a whirlwind. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was the first thing he'd seen coming to...Ceyla.
It had to mean something, right?
****
Tian stood nose to nose with the door and pressed both hands against the rosewood. It was warm, smooth under her fingertips, and she was close enough to see the grain. Her whole body hummed with unfulfilled desire. She took deep breaths to minimize the hypersensitivity in the antagonizing bastard organ that was her skin. The craving had expanded beyond the point of reason to become a constant nagging physical need.
She reminded herself of the plan to deal with the wizards, a way to organize the impending chaos and violence into a manageable, moderately predictable quantity. It was a decent plan. It would work, probably, and fucking Sio wasn't part of it. Too bad. Since the near miss in her workshop it had been all she could think about. She cursed, denying the urge to haul off and hit something like a petulant child. They had to find the marker. That was the priority.
Salvation is across the hall.
"No."
Her hands were shaking and it was hard to tell if it was because she was strung out with want or because Sio terrified her. Tian couldn't remember the last time she'd had this much of a persistent reaction to anything. It was like she'd been asleep...or dead. Yeah, it hadn't been good, but it had been easy. Being dead was safe, insulated. This, whatever the fuck 'this' was, balanced on the razors edge of entropy. She stumbled out of her room in a desperate bid to free herself from the unscratchable itch and found Sio in the corridor. The Goddess had a sick sense of humor.
When Tian saw him her heart bottomed out. It was a neat trick considering the stingy fucker was in a fury, pumping the blood through her veins with enough force she couldn't hear anything else. Sio hadn't realized she was there. He wasn't five feet away with his back to her. The blue black strands of his hair twined in a maddening disarray around his skull. Thick bands of striated muscle bunched and rippled under the tanned skin of his forearms where he held onto the decorative side table like it was a lifeline. He gripped it hard enough that the knuckles of his hands were white with strain. The wood groaned under the pressure he was exerting, warping, and threatening to tear apart like styrofoam.