“No. Not yet.”
“You won’t find it,” the necromancer blurted out, his tone far too cocky for an idiot chained to a wall at the mercy of two incredibly powerful Demons, one of which was clearly in the mood to bash his head in.
“It does not matter. You will never again have the opportunity to use it,” Jacob noted smoothly.
“Brave words coming from a coward too scared to meet me on even ground,” the necromancer hissed.
In the blink of an eye Jacob had closed the distance between them, snarling in the magic-user’s face, displaying a rare show of normally retracted fangs.
“Brave stupidity coming from a coward who tried to use a female to trap me,” Jacob growled with clearly suppressed rage. “Do you know what my kind does to your kind when they threaten something so precious to them?”
“Whatever it is monsters do. I wouldn’t know,” the necromancer spat. “You make yourselves appear like us, but you’re fooling no one. I’ve seen what you really look like when you’re stripped of your disguises!”
Again, Jacob shot that brief look at Elijah. The warrior dropped his feet to the floor, standing up so suddenly the necromancer jolted in fear. When the Warrior Captain rose to his full height in anger, it had an effect that could quell any man alive. The blond behemoth looked as if he could crush the world between his hands, and his bright emerald eyes held the rage it would take to do it.
“Would you care to explain how you have seen that?” Jacob asked, his slick voice clearly hiding menace behind the politely phrased question.
“I’ve seen a lot of things,” the necromancer boasted. “I’ve seen vampires conflagrate in the sun, I’ve seen a werewolf implode from being shot by a silver bullet. I’ve seen your kind slavering and drooling entombed in a simple pentagram marked on the floor. This human make-up you wear starts to dissolve very rapidly after you’re summoned.”
“Actually, now that we are going to kill you, it does not matter what you know. It will die with you,” he stated, shrugging his shoulders and smiling with obvious enjoyment over the idea.
“Fine, but you’ll never get all of us. We’ve been prepared for getting caught.”
“I see. So we are some kind of association, are we?” Jacob smiled that slightly fanged smile again. “I am six hundred years old, necromancer. Do you have any idea how long that really is? I have seen your kind come and go. The Demon not a foot away from you has forgotten more ways of defeating your kind than you can ever imagine.” Jacob leaned so close to the necromancer’s face that the magic-user could see the grain of his irises.
He’d been told these demonic creatures had awesome power. All he’d needed was a name. It would’ve given him more power than any of the others had captured, the necromancer thought as he looked at his intended target. He knew the possibilities of power the vessel held, and his failure screamed with rage in his head.
“And yet, with all this longevity and all of our power,” Jacob continued, his tone deceptively intellectual, as if he were teaching a class, “we do not threaten other races. Unless an individual or society acting as a whole against us gives us cause. But your kind, attempting to pervert our powers for yourselves…to what end, I do not even wish to imagine. From what you say, ours is not the only race you hunt, destroy with malice and without justification. Tell me now, necromancer, which of us is the monster?”
“You want justification? Just look at yourselves! Look at how I found you!”
Jacob lifted a brow casually, not betraying in any way how much he wanted that particular bit of information.
“You say you don’t destroy—well, what about the earthquake in Dover that led me to you? Yeah, we know what things you are capable of, so we know that sometimes natural disasters aren’t all natural. Whenever there’s an earthquake, a tsunami, an unusually violent storm, a plague, or wildfire, we know there’s a likelihood one of you animals is at its epicenter. You’re so easy to track and you don’t even know it!” The necromancer barked out a laugh. “This isn’t six hundred years ago, pal. Technology has caught up with you. You can’t hide anymore. How much property damage did you rack up in that little quake you caused, demon? How many injuries? Deaths? That one was minor, but how many weren’t so minor? Why’d you even do it? Were you playing around? Showing off to your she-bitch?”
Elijah moved literally with the speed of the wind to place a restraining hand on Jacob’s shoulder when the necromancer’s reference to Isabella struck the Enforcer hard. Elijah was certain that normally the other Demon wouldn’t have been so sensitive to mere insults, but Elijah suspected the slim truths behind the necromancer’s conjecture were throwing Jacob off balance.
“That is so like a human,” Jacob said quietly, his voice low and wintry, “to pass judgment on a people just because they are different. You cannot take the time to understand them, viewing them as a threat just because they were born somehow a little stronger or a little smarter. Ignorance and fear, the age-old call signs of the oppressors of your species. You will not succeed this time. Not with us. And I will see to it not with any other race in the night world.
“From this day forward, your kind will no longer feel safe. You think we are so easy to track? Your stench carries for miles. Did you know that? We can smell you, necromancer. When you are shopping, playing, conniving, or rutting, you will always be vulnerable to us simply by your stink, something you will never be able to hide or get rid of. How many times have you caught one of us with these so-called technologies and wondrous tracking skills? Once? Twice? Because, somehow, by accident, one of us made the oh-so-rare mistake of losing focus, or one of our young has not yet learned total control over that which nature saw fit to give us?”
“You keep thinking that. It’s not the only way, and I know it as well as you, demon. A minute more and that soft-necked mate of yours would’ve been screaming your name from the rooftops, making you prey to any necromancer for the rest of your days…which I promise you could be as short or as long as we want it to be.”
This time Elijah had no hope of restraining Jacob. The Demon turned to dust in order to pass over him, rematerializing with a roar of outrage and a hand slamming into the necromancer’s throat, smacking his head into the unforgiving stone wall behind him.
“She does not know my name, necromancer! Our mates never do, for this reason in specific. And I swear to you, you will answer for the harm you have visited upon her. In ways you could never imagine no matter how long I leave your pathetic carcass chained to this wall. Mark me, magic-user. The next breath you take, and every one after that, is yours only because I decide you should have it. Remember that the next time you think to speak of my woman.”
With that, Jacob released the gasping necromancer, burst into dust, and left with a shattering of tectonic plates that nearly brought the cellar and the house above it down on the prisoner.
Isabella sighed softly, stirring between the sheets, enjoying the coming-awake feel of the warm and cold spots as she slid her limbs over the fabric. She stretched, yawning ferociously, feeling blindly for the warm male body that for some reason was not draped over her. When her search turned up empty air, she lifted her head from under the pillow and blinked against the sunlight pouring into the room. She groaned, covering her eyes with a slack hand.
“I see you have already become adjusted to the night.”
Isabella gasped, sitting up and twisting around at the same time to face the voice that had addressed her. A second later she remembered how she was dressed, or rather, not dressed, and yanked the sheet up over her breasts as she glared at Gideon.
“What are you doing in here?”
“A Demon of the Body can go anywhere he chooses.” He flicked that crystal gaze over her slowly. “And do not continue to try to sense me as you do others of my kind. I am too far away.”
Isabella blinked, trying to figure out how sitting in a chair at the end of the bed could be considered too far away.
“It is called ast
ral projection,” Gideon explained. “It is how we of the Body travel. The separation of the soul from the body, existing in two places at once. But, unlike the human conceptions of the insubstantiality of astral projection, I can touch, see, smell, hear, and taste anything I want to in this form.”
“That doesn’t explain why you’re seeing…I mean…sitting in my bedroom.”
“I needed to meet with you.”
“Says who?”
“No one. Yet. But it is only a matter of time before Noah and the others come to me and ask me to assess you.”
“And I repeat, you felt you needed to do this in the privacy of my room while I slept? Improperly clothed, I might add? This won’t go very far toward mending the rift between you and Jacob.”
The Demon’s eyes narrowed on her, and she suppressed a smug smile.
“What, exactly, has he told you about that?”
“Actually,” she confessed, “he didn’t. You did.”
“I?” That irritating lift of one silvery brow.
“Yeah. Remember, you said it was a good thing he was unconscious because he probably wouldn’t like you healing him? Which, by the way, he didn’t even think about when he learned of it.”
“No?”
“No. If I had to put a word to his feelings on the matter…he seemed accepting.”
“I see.”
Gideon’s eyes roamed over her slowly. She was far too small for a Druid. But he could see the mark on her clear as day; there was no mistaking it. And her power was growing stronger by the minute. Even in these few hours she had changed, become more potent in the ways she already knew and in ways she hadn’t yet discovered.
Gideon could also see Jacob’s brand on her, could smell him on her body, imbedded in her pores and her chemistry for all time. He hadn’t had time to notice earlier, but it was clear they were mated. The Enforcer had broken the very taboos he was sworn to protect. The ones he’d once upheld above his friendship with the Ancient. Not that Gideon hadn’t known, that painful eight years ago, that Jacob had been in the right in the actions he’d taken against him. The Enforcer had done what his duty called for. He’d put respect and friendship aside, had even faced incredible peril to his life, all to protect the human female who had become the target of Gideon’s momentarily warped reality. Gideon held no ill will toward the Enforcer, but his pride had been bruised and, for the first time in a millennium, he had discovered a fear of something.
It had brought him low to realize that one could have ultimate power, a millennium’s worth of knowledge and experience, and still succumb to the basest of behaviors. He had thought himself forever above such things. Now he feared himself like he never had before. His isolation had been to protect others, not to punish Jacob. It was calming to know that Jacob held no apparent grudges. What was disturbing was that the intuitive little hybrid woman had somehow known he’d needed to know that.
“I am here to speak of the matter of your existence. I apologize for what you clearly perceive as rudeness. I ask that you remember my culture is not yours. Privacy, though valued in our culture, is expected to be disrupted. You see, we do not use the technologies of your species, such as telephones and cars and the like. I am sure you have noticed.”
“I had noticed,” she said.
“So we come and go with a different convention in this culture. Most of us are born with our own inherent means of long-distance travel and communication.” Gideon indicated his presence. “You could call our lack of protocol for privacy a cultural weakness if you wish. Which brings me to you. You, apparently, are a sign of new weakness.”
“I beg your pardon?” Not only does he invade my privacy, now he insults me?
“Yes. It has always been foretold that a Demon mating with a human would bring about repercussions.”
“Those were fables,” Isabella countered. “I discovered a prophecy—”
“Yes, I know all about that. They are not fables. Not entirely. There is always a grain of truth in everything. You may take that wisdom with you as fact, from one who would know.”
Isabella nodded. The one thing she could not argue was that he knew a hell of a lot more than she did. “So tell me, what is so terrible about all of this? Will it hurt Jacob?”
It didn’t escape Gideon that she didn’t even think to ask about herself, even in the face of all the drastic changes and discoveries she’d been undergoing.
“Before we can discuss this, you must be willing to accept what I am saying to you as truth. As fact. Not as conjecture or guesswork. What I tell you, I know. Otherwise, I will not speak of it. It is my way.”
“Well, I suppose in the fifteen minutes total that I’ve been in the same room with you, I’ve found you to be an apparently candid person. Smart. Wise, if you prefer. Certainly old enough to know. Say, how old are you anyway?”
“That is irrelevant.”
“Oh.” Isabella rolled her eyes. “Okay, let’s just speed this up so you can go back to your own body or whatever. I’ll take what you say as fact until I hear otherwise.”
“No one can refute me.”
“We’ll see.”
It would have to do, Gideon realized. She was incredibly stubborn. Willful. It was a wonder Jacob tolerated her. He decided to test her mettle right off.
“You are immortal.”
Isabella opened her mouth to argue, thought better of it, and then pursed her lips together briefly in irritation. “How?” she countered.
“Druids are immortal. You are half Druid. Therefore, you are immortal.”
“I almost died as a child, when they were taking my tonsils out.”
“I did not say you could not be killed. Immortal, to us, means long lived. Not indestructible. Although I promise you, it will not be so easy to destroy you now.”
“And you know this so certainly how?”
“I thought we agreed you would not question me,” Gideon sighed, sounding very put upon.
“Humor me,” she parried.
“Immortals have a specific genetic code. As a Demon of the Body, I can sense that code on you. Just as I know that it is the waking of dormant DNA that is the cause of the changes you are experiencing.”
“It is?” Isabella asked, her surprise clear in her tone. “But why did it wake up?”
“An excellent question,” Gideon complimented, honestly pleased with her quickness of mind. “It woke the moment you came into contact with Jacob.”
“How?”
Isabella and Gideon both looked up at the deep-voiced question, seeing Jacob standing just inside the open window, feet braced apart, his expression tense.
“Jacob!” Isabella reacted explosively, bursting off the bed in a flurry of sheet fabric, catapulting herself at Jacob, who opened his arms to catch her. He wrapped her up in his embrace, lifting her feet up off the floor and swinging her slightly as he chuckled over her enthusiastic greeting. She reached for his mouth eagerly, banishing the other Demon from her thoughts completely.
Jacob couldn’t resist her, even though he was well aware of the ice-colored gaze studying him intently. He received her buss happily and returned it, but was very consciously wrapping fabric around her bare back, protecting her body from Gideon’s unwelcome eyes. For a moment, he basked in the feel of warm bare skin under loose, thin cotton. Then he scooped her dangling legs up into his arms and moved her back to the bed, seating himself on it, Isabella on his lap, and pulling a quilt from the foot of the bed to wrap her up in. She rested her cheek contentedly on his shoulder, snuggling into his ministering touch. Once they were settled, his hand went to her hair, stroking it in an absently affectionate manner.
Gideon watched all of this with no little surprise. He remembered having one or two discussions over the centuries with Jacob about how neither of them felt the desire for a female companion. Even if they had been so inclined, relationships between those who were immortal were complicated and taxing. If one loved and lived with a mate for centuries, the loss of that
mate was devastating. Gideon and Jacob both had lost large families, living to see parents and siblings and their siblings’ children all perish. Wars, Summonings, and hunts. Demons who’d survived the wars with the Vampires and the Lycanthropes, endured the strange trickery of the Shadowdwellers with its morbid outcomes and the most devastating obliteration of the war with the Druids, had to now face lives completely empty of those they loved. After so many centuries, it just became too difficult to take risks again. Why enter relationships and invest one’s emotions? Marriage was rare and sexual relationships sometimes limited only to the weeks of the Hallowed moons, when they were so compelled.
Love was left to the young and foolish…
And the Imprinted.
In light of the fact that it was a half-Druid female sitting in Jacob’s lap, Gideon shouldn’t have been so surprised. Still, she was completely outside of a culture that defined every part of who Jacob was. But there was no help for it. Forces far beyond even the power of Demons had made the match.
Jacob was looking up at Gideon now that he had settled his woman comfortably in the protection of his embrace. Gideon knew he was waiting for a response to his query as certainly as he knew Jacob was displeased at finding him in a room with his mate while she was unclothed. Gideon was unrepentant. He had his reasons, and he didn’t need to defend himself.
“You asked how it is that you awoke her latent abilities? Without going into too complex a list of details, there is a code written on your DNA that, when in proximity to hers, triggers massive systemic alterations in her DNA and similar ones in yours, though on a smaller scale.”
“In mine? I am no different,” Jacob insisted.
“You have noticed no new abilities?”
“No. I would recognize if something had changed.”
Jacob, you’ve forgotten something.
What, little flower?
You do have a new ability. You’re using it right now.
Jacob went still, his fingers flexing in her hair as he looked down into her face. Her eyes were full of encouragement, brimming with acceptance.
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