Sacrificed in Shadow

by SM Reine

  Be with me, she said. Let me drink you.

  He had railed against her, screamed that she needed to stay away. The angel would kill him. He might kill them both.

  But she enveloped him in her arms anyway. It was sinful bliss. The kind of ecstasy no man was meant to know. Something had been watching their bodies unite, too—something darker than the night and taller than the deepest canyons.

  Another scrape at his door.

  Lincoln shoved his hat off of the alarm clock, which he used to dim the glow at night. Three o’clock in the morning—still almost two hours from sunrise.

  He had worked into the late hours of the night after Orpheus left the sheriff’s office. He had been trying to look at the case from a new angle—one that didn’t involve werewolves—and kept finding himself arriving at the same conclusions. Those bodies had been eaten. There were tooth marks on the bones. It had to be werewolves, no matter what the angel said.

  Lincoln had only surrendered to sleep an hour earlier, and it had been the longest, nightmarish hour of sleep in his life. It felt like he had been in Hell for eternities.

  Somehow, he knew that the scraping at his door was the Devil herself again.

  He pushed the sheets aside, grabbed his firearm from the safe—he had forgotten to lock it the night before—and loaded it as he approached his front door. His skin burned like the fires of Hell. He paused to jack up his air conditioner, even though it was already sixty-eight degrees. It was hot, too hot.

  Easing the curtains aside, he peered through the window.

  And then he flung the door open with a curse.

  Elise was collapsed on his doorstep. At least, he thought it had to be Elise. He couldn’t think of any other woman with black hair and black eyes that would visit him at three o’clock in the morning. But all of her sensual confidence was absent. She was drenched in blood. Vomit was puddled next to her. She reached for him with black-nailed hands, but not for sex.

  “Help,” Elise croaked. Her voice bubbled in her throat.

  “Mother of God,” Lincoln said.

  Orpheus had said that there would be consequences if Lincoln touched her again. If he’d had an ounce of sense, he would have shut the door. But as grave as Orpheus’s threats had seemed earlier that day, they were meaningless now with an injured woman on his doorstep. Lincoln had joined the sheriff’s department to save people. To help the folks that needed salvation. And here was the neediest soul of all, begging him for help.

  He gathered her into his arms. She was even lighter than she looked, as if hollow-boned.

  Lincoln glanced around at the other duplexes. There was no motion. That didn’t mean that nobody was watching.

  He stepped inside and bumped the door shut with his hip.

  Lincoln said a prayer as he ran the bath. The water heater was ancient; it took forever to reach a steaming temperature. He moistened a sponge and offered it to Elise. She shivered when she curled her fingers around it, though the water was scalding.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  Elise tried to respond. He saw her lips and tongue move, but only a croak escaped her mouth. When she tipped her head back, he saw why—her throat was destroyed. It was the kind of injury that he had seen on three of the bodies in the morgue. The kind of injury that nobody should have been able to walk away from.

  Lincoln was no pussy. He had experienced multiple compound fractures in his college football days, sustained a concussion, and watched one player knock out all of his teeth during training. But the sight of Elise trying to draw breaths through the flaps of skin at her throat made him feel faint.

  “Jesus,” he whispered.

  She gave him a hard look, as if to say, Really? Apparently, she didn’t like any of his favorite religious epithets.

  “Werewolf?” Lincoln asked.

  She nodded.

  He knew it. But the surge of victory he felt was bittersweet.

  “I’m calling an ambulance,” Lincoln said, standing. Elise caught his pajamas by the waist and tugged him down, shaking her head. “You’re going to die without medical attention.” Frankly, it was shocking that she wasn’t dead already.

  She shook her head again. Pointed at the door.

  He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  Elise pointed more insistently, and he realized that she was indicating the light switch, not the door. His duplex had been furnished to Mrs. Kitteridge’s taste, which happened to include a large vanity in the bathroom, with five bright bulbs the size of his fist.

  She had been trying to avoid sunlight all day. Could the vanity’s lights be hurting her, too?

  Lincoln flipped the switch.

  It was unsettling to sit on the floor between a bleeding woman and his bathtub, still running, without any lights. Her pale flesh gleamed through the streaks of blood, as if she glowed internally.

  “Is that better?” he asked.

  She nodded. One-handed, she unbuckled her spine sheath, dropping the falchion to the floor. Handed him the sponge.

  Lincoln turned to wet it down again. When he turned back, Elise was stripping off her shirt.

  He couldn’t see the mess of injuries in the darkness—only the outline of a black bra, the translucent globes of her breasts, the curve of her undamaged face.

  He’d been to a strip club for a bachelor party, once. The moron had been marrying at twenty-one years old, and Bud was still so new to legal drinking that he had wanted to get wasted while coked-out whores rubbed against him. The girls had fine bodies, even finer than some of Lincoln’s cheerleader girlfriends. The silicone tits and surgically flattened stomachs had reset Lincoln’s standards for female perfection.

  Those standards were getting reset again. There was nothing plastic about Elise’s body. She was silken flesh over tight muscle. She had to be missing ribs to have a waist that tiny. The gashes on her stomach almost looked like a strange gray tattoo that drew his gaze from her navel to her hips.

  She dropped her shirt in his trash can. Pale fingers flashed as she popped the button of her jeans open. She had taken off one of her gloves, but left the other in place.

  “Bath,” she said. Her voice was already clearer than before. “Help.”

  Lincoln shut his eyes and said a prayer, and then another, to be sure. He did it silently. He didn’t want to tolerate Elise’s pitying looks, as if she knew something about his prayers that he didn’t.

  He helped her to her feet, letting Elise cling to him as she shimmied out of her damaged jeans. Soon, she stood in front of him wearing nothing but her underwear: black boy shorts and a bandeau bra. Not exactly lingerie. But Lincoln’s blood burned, and he was all too aware of the place that her hands rested on his biceps.

  The thought of shoving her bra over her breasts, watching them bounce free of the spandex, was all-consuming. He wanted to taste them. Just thinking about it made him smell sulfur again, the way he had in the dream.

  “Camera,” she said. “Quickly.”

  He blinked, snapping out of his fantasies. “Miss Kavanagh…”

  “Elise.”

  It was kind of ridiculous to call a woman by her last name when she was naked in his bathroom. But Lincoln needed every last barrier between them that he could manage. “Why do you want a camera?”

  “Jaw radius,” she said, voice breaking on the second word.

  Realization dawned over him. She had werewolf bite wounds on her throat and arms. She wanted photographic evidence to compare her injuries to those on the bodies in the morgue.

  Lincoln was obsessing over what she would look like without the bra, and she was thinking about the case.

  “Quickly,” she said again. “I’m healing.”

  He set her on the edge of the tub and grabbed supplies: his long-neglected digital camera, fresh batteries, and a pen. He couldn’t find a ruler, so that would have to do for scaling the wounds.

  When he returned to the dark bathroom, Elise had lowered herself into the water, underwe
ar and glove and all, with her arms propped on either side of the tub.

  “I have to use flash,” he said, sliding batteries into the camera. “It’s too dark otherwise.”

  She nodded, consenting wordlessly.

  Elise held the pen beside the bite wound on her bicep as he took pictures from every angle. The blood was quickly washing away, forming billowing clouds in the water, but the wounds looked so much worse in the brief flares of light. She had been shredded. Her skin was like tissue paper. And the blood itself…

  “Is that blood?” Lincoln asked.

  Elise tipped her jaw back and held the pen beside her neck.

  “Kind of,” she croaked.

  “How can it be kind of blood?”

  “Long story.”

  Lincoln took a photo of the damage at her throat. It was already knitting together, but the tooth punctures were still clear.

  He sat back on his heels to go through the pictures. From the first photo to the last, there was noticeable healing.

  “You didn’t need my help to survive, did you?” he asked.

  “No,” Elise said. “But I needed you to take pictures.”

  She wiped at her arm with the sponge. The worst of the bite was already healed. Only the imprint of teeth remained.

  Lincoln couldn’t help but watch as she sponged off her legs, lifting them from the water one by one to wash away the kind-of-blood. It didn’t tint the water pink. It slicked the surface, more like amber-colored oil.

  “Thank you,” she said, drawing his gaze back to her face. Elise was wiping her partially-healed throat clean. There was still the circle of tooth marks on either side of her neck, but everything else had regrown as soon as she washed the wounds.

  Lincoln cleared his throat. “I’ll get you a towel.”

  He left fresh linens for her on the counter, then returned to his bedroom, pacing from the window to the door and back again.

  Elise Kavanagh’s soul was damned. Her body was sin. The angel was right—Lincoln should have stayed far, far away.

  His door creaked open.

  Elise stood in the hall, toweling off her hair. It didn’t look wet to him. It was the same as always: a silky black sheet that fell straight to her waist, framing pale shoulders. She was still wearing only her underwear, and there was no hint of self-consciousness in her expression. She was aware of her perfection, and without shame.

  Lincoln’s dream swam to the surface.

  Let me drink you, she had said, red lips curved into a smile.

  In reality, Elise didn’t say anything nearly so seductive. “I’ll need to borrow a computer. I want to send the photos to my friends in Vegas.”

  She may have been the Devil, but she sure was focused. Probably would have been a good cop in another life. “Sure. Spare bedroom,” he said, handing her the camera.

  Their fingers brushed. Elise didn’t pull away.

  Orpheus owned Lincoln’s soul, as surely as Hell owned Elise’s soul, and he knew that standing with her there, in that moment, was like dancing with fire. He was all but begging to be burned.

  His mouth operated independently of his brain.

  “I have pie,” Lincoln said.

  Elise lifted her eyebrows. “Pie.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Picked one up at Poppy’s over the weekend. It’s not as good when it’s not fresh, but…”

  “Cherry?” she asked. The word was filthy on her lips.

  Lincoln swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She took the camera from him, stepping back. A smile lingered on her lips. “I would love a bite of your pie, Lincoln.”

  Where technology was concerned, Lincoln didn’t seem to have joined the twenty-first century. A manual typewriter dominated the center of his desk. There was a computer to the left, which looked like it hadn’t been turned on in months—maybe years—and it booted up to a decade-old operating system. Elise had to play around with it for a few minutes to figure out how to connect the camera, since it didn’t wirelessly detect the device.

  Once she got it downloading, she opened the email client and drafted a message to McIntyre.

  Found the werewolves. There’s an entire pack. No deaths yet. Send money.

  Elise attached the photos and sent it.

  On impulse, she turned the camera around, snapping another photo of herself. The instant of light was like a jolt of electricity. Then she turned the camera around to look at the picture she had taken.

  There was a crucifix on the wall behind her. He had one in every single room. Her gaze tracked from the cross to the imprint of teeth still ringing her neck, unhealed.

  Worry crept over her.

  “Why aren’t I healing?” she whispered, paging back through the other photos.

  The places she had ripped—those were healed. But the direct points of contact between Rylie’s teeth and her skin had not.

  Elise had absorbed a lot of damage in her years as a demon. Only one wound had ever scarred, even temporarily. It had been inflicted by the iron chain of a basandere—a Basque spirit—that had taken up residence in the Las Vegas sewers. He had brought several crates of infernal drugs along with him. When Elise attempted to clean him out, he had tried to choke her to death.

  The bruises from the chain had lasted for an entire day, which was about twelve hours longer than any injury had lasted before. Elise had assumed that it was some special basandere skill. They were ancient creatures, part of the fabric of the earth, and there was no telling how her infernal body would react to mortal spirits. But here she was again, failing to heal from a wound.

  She felt strangely fragile. Like she might rip open at the bite marks and vanish forever.

  “I don’t know if you like it heated or cold, so I’ve got one of each,” Lincoln said, entering the room with two individual plates of Poppy’s fine cherry pie.

  Elise turned the camera off and set it on the desk.

  “Which one do you prefer?” she asked, watching him walk toward her. He had put on a muscle-hugging white tee, which left nothing to the imagination. Lincoln set the plates on the desk. He was sweating enough to dampen the shoulders of his shirt, and it filled the air with the musk of his scent.

  “Hot, with ice cream melting on top,” he said, with a husky edge to his voice. He shoved the hot plate toward her. “Try it.”

  Elise picked up a fork, weighing it in her fingers, considering the four equal tines. There was silver in the alloy. She thought about driving it through Rylie’s eye socket.

  Lincoln watched her expectantly as he dug into his own pie, waiting for her to eat. She had agreed to take a piece, but now that it was sitting in front of her, she couldn’t bring herself to take a bite. She set the fork down and pushed the plate away.

  “Nice typewriter,” Elise said, nodding at his desk.

  “The power’s not good in Northgate. I’ve still got to get work done during outages. The department’s standard forms don’t fit in a printer anyway.”

  “Have you heard of a laptop? They work when the power fails.”

  “It’s not nearly as charming,” Lincoln said. “Something wrong with your pie?”

  “I still don’t like it,” Elise said.

  His mouth slanted with mock disapproval. “Just when I was starting to like you.”

  She stood, and they were close—too close. She could feel the heat radiating from his skin. Elise traced her fingers through his short bangs, over the line of hair behind his ear, the stubble on the back of his neck.

  “Miss Kavanagh,” he began.

  “I have a present for you,” she said. “In the pocket of my pants. Twelve silver bullets. Hopefully, enough for you to kill a couple of werewolves. And, hopefully, you won’t ever need them.”

  He looked surprised. “Thank you.”

  “No problem. I’ll need to borrow clothing from you until stores open tomorrow. Do you have any female friends or sisters?” Elise lifted an eyebrow. “A girlfriend?”

  “No girlfriend.” Linco
ln coughed. “Sister’s at college, and I wouldn’t feel right asking Sheriff Dickerson to borrow her jeans. You know? But you can borrow anything I have.”

  “I already lost one of your sweaters.”

  “I have more,” he said.

  Elise took the plate from his hands—he had already eaten the entire slice—and set it aside. She reached into the neck of his shirt, pulling out the crucifix. His skin burned her knuckles.

  “Thanks for your help tonight, deputy,” she said. “You’re a good Christian.”

  No modesty in his eyes. Only pride. “I try my best, ma’am.”

  But when she turned away, Lincoln’s fingers brushed down her spine, and it wasn’t an innocent Christian touch. Elise closed her eyes, savoring the shiver that rippled across her skin.

  “What are these?” he asked in a low voice.

  It took Elise a moment to realize what he was talking about. She twisted around to look at her lower back in the mirror on his wall.

  There were rows of tiny brands tattooed onto her back, all the way down to her thighs. They had been crimson-black when she was first marked, but the ink hadn’t lasted; nothing but ghostly white scars remained.

  Elise remembered having those marks tattooed on her with the same unfortunate clarity that she remembered everything else. The needle had been excruciatingly painful. Its sting had aroused her in more ways than one—her adrenaline, her anger, her lust.

  Had it been the pain that she had reacted to, or the man doing the tattooing? Was Elise so fucked up that she could only enjoy pleasure when it came with torture?

  Everything with James had been torture. She knew that now.

  Elise didn’t want to think about him. She didn’t want to feel guilty for yearning for Deputy Marshall’s touch. She didn’t want her future ruined by James.

  She turned in Lincoln’s arms, pressed close to his chest.

  “I have more scars than you could possibly see, deputy,” Elise said, snaking an arm around the back of his neck, brushing his stubble again.

  His hazel eyes—so human, so innocent—were flooded with a very human emotion. He felt the exact same need that crawled over her now. “What made you like this?” Lincoln asked, his hands hot on her waist.