by Mary Calmes
“Because when we’re out there doing our thing, we’re sort of lethal.”
“Uh-huh.”
But we were. We were scary if you were the bad guy. I let out a quick breath. “Now we can just concentrate on figuring out what we’re gonna do without worrying about them.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Giving this a shot.”
“My pleasure.”
“Raphael.”
The room went silent as Deidre stepped in front of us.
“Are you the kyrie that killed the demon lord Saudrian?”
He cleared his throat. “I am.”
“That was well done.” She nodded, and I saw her eyes fill suddenly as she reached up to put a hand on his cheek. “Saudrian, he took my warder Glenna from me, and because of that, her hearth David, later, as well.”
“He couldn’t make it without her, huh?”
“Sometimes the bond is too deep.” She smiled through her tears.
Raphael’s hand, still in mine, squeezed tightly. “I get that.”
She took a breath. “And his mate, the blood witch Moira. Does she live?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t get to her in time before I would’ve changed, and the portal…. I just, I didn’t want to get stuck and not be able to get back to—to see if maybe….” He stopped suddenly and shrugged.
“To see if you could claim a warder for your own.”
He lifted my hand, kissed the back of it, but never stopped looking at her. “Yes.”
“Well, you have my protection, the protection of a sentinel of the Labarum, as well as all my warders. They will be thrilled to know who severed the head of Saudrian.”
“Thank you.”
“No, dear, thank you,” she breathed out. “But you must be careful. Moira is a formidable enemy. I have faced her myself many times. She will try and break you before she comes for the kill.” She pointed at me. “You need to be mindful of your warder.”
I saw the truth of her statement hit Raphael, and instantly he tried to pull his hand free.
He was going to run. He was going to go back to my loft, grab his sword, and go find Moira. He would kill her, or she would kill him, but while he was hunting her, in the time it took to locate her, he would stay away from me, put distance between us so the witch would not come after me and I would be safe.
I held on and, with my other hand, grabbed hold of his jacket. “Don’t be stupid. She knows who I am. Whether you’re with me or not, she’s coming, and if you’re with me, you can protect me. So stay right here. Don’t run. You’re done running.”
He nodded fast, unsure, and I pulled my hand free and grabbed him. I hugged him tight, pressed against him, head down in his shoulder. I kissed behind his ear, in the spot I had found the day before that made his knees weak.
“Jackson.” He sighed out my name.
“And besides,” I told him, whispering, “you’ve got help taking care of me.”
“Yes, I do.”
He wasn’t alone anymore.
IX
IT WAS wet and cold, and I wanted to be home cooking, but instead I was outside in the rain because Rene Favreau had come to my office. I had looked up and found him, and then Cielo was there, too, not looking happy, looking really annoyed, and right before I opened my mouth to ask Rene why the hell he was in my office, he started talking.
Frank had changed so dramatically, was not himself; he was worried that maybe the man had endured some sort of nervous breakdown. I needed to check on him. Would I please just check on him? And I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just do it himself until he explained that he and Frank, just like Frank and I, had broken up. Rene was no longer in his life either. Funny.
So against my better judgment and over Cielo’s very loud objections, I went to check on Frank Sullivan for perhaps the last time. He had moved, again, but I found people all the time, so it wasn’t hard to track him down. The old warehouse, now converted lofts, was in an up-and-coming yuppie neighborhood in the city. As I stood in an alley, looking across the street at his window, I was trying to figure out the best way to get a look at him without him seeing me.
“What’re you doing?”
I smiled but didn’t look over my shoulder. “I thought you were hunting that fox demon for Mr. Sugitani.”
“Found it,” he grumbled, walking around in front of me. He smiled when he saw my grin. He couldn’t stop himself, and the fact that he couldn’t, that his reaction to me was automatic, thrilled me. “Now tell me what the hell you’re doing here when you’re supposed to be home cooking my dinner.”
We had developed a routine in a little over a month and a half, and even though neither of us had broached the subject of permanency, it was starting to feel like that anyway.
“I gotta check on Frank.”
His eyes went flat, and when he spoke, his voice ran cold. “Why?”
“Rene thinks he might be possessed.”
It was not what he was expecting, and the slow squint told me as much. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Okay, see, Rene came to the office today. You remember Rene—you were there with me when I saw them the first time.”
“Yes, I was there with you.”
“Yeah, so today Rene pops in and tells me that he and Frank are over but that he’s worried that there’s something really wrong with him. Well, I know that Frank’s not psychotic, but maybe, just maybe, something did follow him home, and now he’s possessed.”
“So you’re here to check.”
“I’m here to check.”
“But nothing else?”
I put a hand on his chest. “Nothing else.” I shivered.
He moved closer, hands on my face. “You’re gonna catch pneumonia.”
“No.” I sneezed suddenly, having started feeling like crap earlier. My bones were achy, and I was a little stuffed up. “I’ll be fine.”
“How is it that human beings can fly to the moon but not figure out how to kill a virus?”
“I don’t know.” I coughed. “Now go home and start dinner, and I’ll be right there as soon as I—”
“Shut up. I’ll check on him,” he said, flipping up the collar on my peacoat, taking off his own scarf and wrapping it around my neck. He pulled me back down the street, under an awning, and out of the drizzling rain.
“Thanks,” I said, lifting to kiss him, and then stopped, thinking better of it.
“Why don’t I get a kiss?”
“’Cause I don’t wanna make you sick.”
“Warder,” he said, having gone back to calling me by the name when we were alone. It turned out that he liked calling me that, more of an endearment than anything else. It didn’t matter to me; it was the tone of his voice, soft, sultry, that flushed me with heat. His voice made me think of sex every single time. The dark-haired, dark-eyed man turned me inside out.
“Warder,” he repeated.
“Sorry.”
“I told you before, I don’t get your stupid human diseases,” he told me, bending to capture my mouth.
I whimpered, and he smiled as he claimed my mouth.
It started slow and gentle and quickly became teeth and tongue and hands under clothes.
“Fuck,” he growled, shoving me off him. “I gotta get you home.”
I waggled my eyebrows.
“No, idiot,” he snapped, “your skin is burning up.”
“’Cause of you.” I leered.
He was scowling. “No, not because of me, because you have a fever, dumb-ass. Which one is his goddamn apartment, so I can check and we can go home.”
Home.
He was coming home with me.
Home to bed. Home in bed. Home where he lived with me.
“I wanna go home with you,” I said, my vision clearing with that shiny clarity you get when your fever spikes way up, right before delirium. “I want you to live with me and stay with me because I love you so much it hurts.”
His
gorgeous, smoky, topaz eyes lit up like I had never seen. “You love me?”
“Yeah, kind of a lot. Really, really a lot.”
He sucked in his breath and grabbed me and crushed me to the wall of hard muscle that was his chest and squeezed the air right out of my lungs.
I managed to get loose enough to free my arms so I could hug him back and sigh long and loud.
The man was ferocious and dangerous and untamed and just… perfect for me. I was head-over-heels crazy about him, and from the way he was when we went out, guarding me like I was made of gold, snarling at anyone who got too close, I understood that he was just as nuts about me. And now he was getting ready to nurse me through whatever I was about to get and seemed damn happy about it.
“I love you back, warder, more than you know, more than you can imagine.”
But I had a good idea.
He shoved me off him, glaring at me. “Which fucking apartment?”
I chuckled and told him. And I was going to make him promise to keep out of sight, but before I could get the words out, he was gone, having bolted down the street, charging through the rain. I watched him leap up from the ground to the second floor and higher until he landed on a balcony and climbed over the railing. It was too hard to see what happened next, too dark, the rain a distracting drizzle around me. Leaning back, I shivered in the cold, having done myself a disservice by not wrapping up in more layers. I inhaled the scarf around my neck and realized that what I was smelling was me. The man smelled like me, like our home, like our bed, like us. I tipped my head back so I didn’t cry.
I would never have another hearth, because he couldn’t be that.
He would be more, because we were equals.
In minutes he was back, and he took hold of my jacket and pulled me off the wall where I had been leaning.
“God, you’re burning up.” He was worried and put his arm around me to lead me down the street toward the next one where the cabs ran.
“So what?” I asked.
“He’s not possessed.”
And I hadn’t really entertained the thought. I had been checking more for Rene’s benefit than mine. “I didn’t think he was.”
“He is, however, entertaining more than one man in his apartment right now.”
“Oh.” I nodded, grinning. “Well, there ya go. I’ll report back to Rene that all is well and Frank’s just having fun, and after a while I’m sure he’ll settle down with just one—”
“Or two.”
“Or two guys.” I smiled. “I guess he’ll need a bigger house than he thought he would.”
“For the dungeon,” Raphael teased me.
I laughed. “Maybe I should call Rene tonight so—”
He cleared his throat. “I will speak to Rene. You’re done.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Really, whatever I say,” he said, pressing a palm to my forehead. “You’re hot.”
“Am I?” I smiled, leaning in, kissing under his jaw. “You wanna take me home and get in bed with me?”
“Oh that’s the plan, though not how you’re thinking.” He chuckled, tucking me close to him as we walked.
“Just so long as you come home with me, I don’t care what we do.”
“I don’t care, either.”
“Promise you’ll always come home.”
“You won’t be able to keep me away.”
And his fierce promise was all I needed.
I
SOMETIMES THERE were just not enough hours in the day, and no matter what I did, I could not get everything done. I had gotten extra pressure when my boyfriend—partner, the man I would take a bullet for—had told me we had to go out of town to his grandfather’s eightieth birthday party. Due to the fact that I was a senior associate at the law firm where I practiced, I had to work extra long and extra late to clear my schedule so I could get away. As a result of that, we had not been able to fly out together, but I had made sure we would be sitting side by side for the trip home. Holding the man’s hand during takeoff and landing—he was a nervous flyer—was really something I enjoyed.
Getting off the plane at the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, I made my way down the stairs toward the baggage claim. I turned my phone on as I walked and called my sentinel, Jael Ezran. Along with practicing law, I was also a warder, which meant I hunted and killed things that went bump in the night. I stood between people and the demon horde along with my fellow warders—five of us altogether—with our sentinel Jael Ezran. Every city had five warders and one sentinel to lead them. Every night we took to the streets in pairs, one of us rotating to have a night, or more than one, off. If there wasn’t much going on, only two went out. If there was a lot of activity, then Jael patrolled with us and we’d be out in teams of two or three. It just depended on the creatures from the pit.
But in the light of day, I would normally be at work doing the lawyer thing at Kessler, Torrance and Price. I would be a partner soon, Mrs. Kessler had told me. She liked me, the board liked me, and the fact that my caseload was the heaviest of the associates and my win record was close to perfect had put me over the top. And I was pleased—tired but pleased—that I had proven myself beyond a shadow of a doubt to be one of the men who would see to the firm’s enduring legacy. And now I had been told to catch my breath.
It was not in my nature to rest on my laurels once I had shown what I was capable of, but to my surprise, it was what the other partners at the firm wanted. Everyone strongly suggested I take on fewer clients, the consensus being that they wanted me around for the long haul, not burned out at thirty-five. They hoped I could now enjoy my time off, so that when I was at work, I would be 100 percent invested and not worried about missing out on time with my partner, the wonderful guy they got to see and talk with at every company function. Lately I had been offered time-shares, cabins in Aspen, villas on Lake Cuomo, and a cabana in Tahiti. They wanted me to stay, and they knew me well enough to know that if Joseph Locke was happy, I was happy too. Over the years, after seeing how everyone at the firm responded to the man I loved, I was so glad I had gone with my gut.
I had been courted by many firms out of law school but had decided on a smaller, more prestigious one many of my peers had promised would never promote me. I was gay, I was black—it would never happen. But I had sat with the managing partner and owner, Helene Kessler, and looked in her eyes, and her gaze was unwavering when she spoke candidly about my future and what she could see for me if I worked hard and made a believer out of her. She wanted me because of my brain. The rest—color, sexual orientation, even the car I drove—meant nothing.
As time passed, I saw that my decision had been the best one I could have made. I was proud that I worked for a law firm that had no concerns with the fact that I lived with and loved another man. I had heard horror stories from some of my fellow attorneys at other firms and could only say that, in my experience, there had been no problem with my homosexuality. Helene Kessler ran her firm based on performance, end of story. She didn’t really give a damn who you slept with… except for her brother-in-law Ray. The man in question was who I had just finished defending, and the people in his bed were of paramount importance to her.
I had been called to her office two days ago, and unlike our usual meetings, she was not sitting at her desk and inviting me to do the same. She was instead standing at her window, watching the rain pelt the glass. When she turned and looked at me, her eyes were clouded.
“Mrs. Kessler,” I said softly, gently, crossing the room to her side.
“Helene,” she corrected, as she had been lately.
It would be strange to start calling her by her first name, but as she had become insistent, I had to honor her wishes. “Helene,” I acquiesced.
Silently, she passed me a file folder, and I was surprised to realize I was looking at the arrest sheet of her sister’s husband. I started flipping through it immediately.
“He needs to seek treatment for sex addiction
and drug addiction,” she told me, her voice flat and hard like it never was.
I skimmed the contents. Her brother-in-law had been found with copious amounts of cocaine and with one—no, two— prostitutes, and—
“Ray was discovered with three escorts….” She trailed off.
“Where was—oh,” I said, because I finally saw the name of the third girl, woman—no, girl, just barely eighteen. Christ.
“Passed out, all four of them. The hotel manager called the police when there was no answer in the room after check-out time, and when he went in no one would wake up.” She took a breath. “Ray needs to be confined to a hospital so he can be treated,” she sighed. “His wife, my sister, is just….” She looked at me, saw me squinting at her. “Oh God, Marcus, we both know I was thinking of a judgeship, and now this? Jesus, I just need it to go away. I got it on Judge Rojas’s docket for the morning, so…. Just keep him out of jail, throw him in a psychiatric facility, and have them try and cure him of being a sex addict. Lock him up and throw away the key. I don’t give a damn, just—”
“I’ll handle it,” I promised, hand on her shoulder.
She nodded, covering my hand with hers for the briefest of moments before she started rubbing the bridge of her nose under her glasses, a quirk of hers when she was nervous.
“It won’t go away,” I said honestly. “But we’ll deal with it as quickly and quietly as we can. I promise you won’t have to deal with it. I’ll take care of everything.”
“I know you will,” she said. “You’re the only one I trust.”
I was pleased to hear it, and when I had gone straight to her office after court that morning, she had been waiting for me.
“It’s done. He’s in a treatment program, and he’ll do his time, six months, at that facility.”
She nodded, waiting.
“Your sister was there,” I said gently. “She cried a lot.”
“She’s an idiot.”
“You can’t help who you love.”
“Oh no?”
I shook my head. “You married the perfect man, and he died too soon, and I’m going to say this to you because we’re friends, aren’t we?”