by Joy Nash
And, what about Lucas? Was her brother even alive? He’d left London for Texas six months ago. Three months had passed since he’d last checked in. Luc had always been a loner, but he’d never been out of touch for so long. It was hard not to imagine the worst. Especially since the Glastonbury massacre.
DAMNers were more zealous in the States than they were here in Europe. Had a DAMN demon annihilator blasted Luc to Oblivion? She broke her pacing and dropped onto the sagging couch. She was staring at the blank television, debating whether to turn it on, when the door to the flat opened and Artur stepped into the room. Their gazes locked. For several wild beats of Cybele’s heart, time hung suspended. Then Artur advanced, his leather duster billowing behind him, like a movie image that had just been taken off pause.
He shrugged out of the coat, tossed it over a chair, and stood silently looking down at her. The expression in his eyes told her nothing.
“I thought you might be out with Brax and Gareth,” she said at last.
“I wasn’t.”
“So I see.”
He strode to the sideboard where he kept his liquor. “Well, then. The two of us can enjoy a cozy night at home.” His sarcasm, as always, lit her fuse.
“You shouldn’t have sent Cade to Israel,” she said to his back, mostly because she knew it would piss him off.
He paused in the act of pouring his whiskey. “I don’t remember asking your opinion.”
“He’s angry about the massacre, grieving for his son.”
“Please. He hardly knew the child.”
“That’s what’s so terrible. On top of that, now you’ve bruised his pride. It’s not a good combination, Artur. He could turn violent.”
Her warning described Artur’s mental state more than Cade’s; surely Artur realized it. He shot her a glance, something ugly flaring in his eyes, and Cybele braced herself. He’d walk out the door now. Or retaliate with a cutting remark and a reminder of his dominance.
He did neither. He set aside his full whiskey glass. Lowering his tall body into an armchair and slumping against the cushion, he passed a weary hand over his eyes. “What else was I to do, Bel?”
She stared in shock. He hadn’t used the old nickname since . . .
“Cade was on the verge of challenging me,” Artur continued. “Sure, he backed down in time, but if I let him stay here, eventually he would have spoken the words. He wants you for a mate.”
“He knows that won’t happen,” Cybele said.
“Intellectually, maybe. In his gut, no. As long as he feels that way, he’s in danger of challenging me. And you know if he does that, I have to kill him. And despite what you think of me, I really don’t want to do that.”
The honest exhaustion in his voice set her heart to pounding. Blast it. She knew how to deal with Artur’s anger. She’d become an expert at deflecting his contempt. She had ready weapons against his sarcasm. But this? This glimpse of vulnerability? It was all she’d hoped for, but now, confronted with the reality of it, she found she didn’t know what to do. What to say. She didn’t even know if she liked it.
“Cade might still go for your throat when he returns,” she said at last, shakily, as if in consolation.
Artur, one arm flung over his eyes, laughed.
“That wasn’t supposed to be funny.”
“No,” he agreed, sobering. “I admit it’s possible he’ll try. Much less likely, though. He’ll have anchored a dormant. And he’ll be a slave master. His bond with you will be very much weakened.”
He seemed on the verge of adding something. He shook his head instead, as if clearing the thought from his mind.
“Still,” Cybele insisted. “You shouldn’t have sent him to Israel. He’s too new, too inexperienced.”
Rising, Artur retrieved his glass and took a long sip. Pacing the threadbare carpet, he paused at the window. He set his hip against the sill and said, “You worry he’ll hurt the dormant. He won’t. Much as I dislike Cade, I know he would never harm an innocent.”
“And if this unaware female isn’t innocent? If her power turns out to be greater than his? He might not be able to enslave her. She might enslave him.”
Artur leaned against the wall, cradling his glass in his hand. “An unaware in transition enslave a full adept? Impossible.”
“Cade’s only been adept for a year,” Cybele pointed out. “He was unaware before that. Acting as anchor is a lot for him to handle. Maybe too much. You should have sent Brax. Or gone yourself.”
Artur’s black eyes turned mocking. “What? You wouldn’t have minded? But no, of course not. You would have delivered me right into the female’s arms.” He sipped his whiskey. “And, perhaps, stayed to watch?”
She hated him then. Hated him every bit as much as she loved him. “Go to Hell, Artur.”
He laughed. “Sorry, love. Our kind doesn’t even rate that privilege.”
He had a mocking answer for everything. When had the cynical light in his eyes turned permanent? She wanted to wipe it out. She wanted to hurt him as he hurt her every damn time they were together.
“Gareth wants to perform his death-seeking as soon as possible,” she said.
The set of Artur’s features didn’t change, apart from a slight hardening around the eyes. “What method is he contemplating?” For all the emotion he betrayed, he might have been asking Gareth’s dinner order.
“Blade.”
“Good.” He nodded once. “A courageous choice.”
Cybele’s own choice had been poison. “I still can’t believe you put him up to this.”
“He wants it. And the clan needs every adept it can muster.”
“And you need to punish me.”
The ugly expression was back in his eyes. He put aside his glass. With angry steps, he crossed to her chair and stood looking down at her. “Believe me, Cybele,” he said, “if I wanted to punish you, I wouldn’t use Gareth to do it.”
His gaze raked her body so lewdly that she felt stripped of her clothes. She fought the urge to cover herself—or fling herself at his feet. Eyes raised to his stare, she let her anger and her contempt show.
“Just how would you do it?” she taunted.
His jaw tensed. “You’ve sworn fealty, Cybele, like all the others. You owe me your obedience.”
Her lips curved into what she suspected was a ghastly smile. “And submission, Artur? Willing submission? Do I owe that, too?”
He reacted not at all to her dripping sarcasm, nor to her insolent smirk. Only to her words. He leaned over her, his right hand supporting his weight on the arm of the chair. It took conscious effort for her to not shrink back into the cushions. His left index finger touched the base of her throat. Slowly, he drew a line down, down, between her breasts and over her belly. He stopped a scant inch short of the throbbing pulse between her legs.
“You do owe me submission, Cybele. Willing or otherwise. I am your lord. Your master. For now, I allow you the illusion of freedom, but not forever. One day, I promise you, I will issue the command. And you will not refuse.”
The words were meant to shock, and they did. But try as she might, Cybele could not deny the truth behind those words. She was Artur’s. She always had been.
His finger hovered over her sex. Even through a thick layer of denim, his touch burned. Raw need, like boiling honey, poured through every cell in her body. Her nipples constricted and tingled, her belly spasmed. Moisture wet her thighs.
Primitive animal arousal. And yet, so much more. She was acutely aware of Artur’s life essence. All that she was yearned in response.
She wanted desperately to grind her hips against his hand. To beg him to issue that command now. How he’d laugh at that!
Somehow, she found the strength to remain silent. But in her mind, she begged. Kiss me. Oh, please, Artur, kiss me. Forget Cade. Forget the choices I made when I found him.
He didn’t. Didn’t touch his lips to hers, didn’t plunge his tongue into the welcoming depths of her mouth. H
is eyes grew cold. His hand withdrew; he stepped away. And she knew she’d lost him again. He’d withdrawn to a place as distant and unreachable as Heaven or Hell.
He flashed a nasty grin. “That should hold you, love. Until I want more.”
A flush crept from her chest to her neck and face. The bastard. She hated him. For what he wouldn’t give her, and for how the loss of what he’d once given so freely drove her to places she didn’t want to go. Never before had she experienced the urge to wound. If only she could force a spark of heat into his icy black irises.
“I look forward to it.” Her voice, at least, remained calm. “But tell me this, Artur. When I anchor Gareth, do you intend to watch?”
His expression chilled even more. “No.”
“I don’t believe you,” she pushed. “I think you will. I think you won’t be able to stay away. At the very least, you’ll be outside the door, listening. Imagining every act, every touch, every wave of pain and pleasure . . .” She laughed. “It would feel like you and me. Together again. Except this time, with roles reversed.”
Artur didn’t move. He didn’t reply. His eyes were a void. The sight chilled Cybele to the bone. It was like catching a glimpse of Oblivion.
He turned and left the room without a word. Cybele wondered what the hell she was doing.
Civilization was ugly. And dirty, too, Luc thought as his boots kicked up a cloud of dust, staining the legs of his jeans. He made his way across the unpaved parking lot toward a tired building, passing a couple rusty pickups and a Ford sedan on the way. The single window by the entrance cast tired fluorescence into the night. Above it, an illuminated sign stuttered. CROS _ROADS D _NER, it read.
The interior was cleaner, at least, though a scent of grease hung in the air. The dull linoleum floor showed no dirt past the mat at the entrance. A television mounted from the ceiling droned a late-night talk show. His gaze swept the room: two men—one old, one young—on stools at the counter. A pair of middle-aged women sitting in a booth near the entrance. Sisters, probably, from the looks of them. A lone waitress wiping down a table near the kitchen. All four heads swiveled in his direction. One of the men grunted a greeting, then returned to his meal.
Luc folded his large frame into a corner booth near the cigarette machine, back to the wall, aware of an acute discomfort. It had been three months since he’d entered any man-made structure. His instincts screamed for him to get out of the place. The sky belonged above his head, not stained yellow ceiling tiles.
He ignored the urge to flee and picked up the menu to study his choices. His stomach rebelled. In three weeks, he had eaten only what he’d foraged in the wild, and he knew he had to reintroduce civilized food carefully.
The waitress appeared by his table, order pad in hand. She was short and plump, pushing forty, he thought, her frizzy blonde hair laced with gray. But the lines of fatigue around her blue eyes smoothed and her gaze kindled with interest as she examined him.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” she said. “Looking for a job at the mill?” Her tone approached hopeful.
“No,” Luc said. “Just passing through.”
“Figures.” A sigh escaped her. “Well, hon, what’ll you have?”
“Eggs,” he said, putting aside the menu. “Over easy. Toast. And coffee. Black.”
“Sausage?” He considered his queasy stomach and declined.
The volume on the TV kicked up a notch as the talk show yielded to commercials. Reflexively, Luc glanced over. A blindingly handsome priest had appeared on the screen. “Demon Annihilators Mutual Network is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the eradication of demonkind. I’m Reverend Jonas Walker . . .”
Blast it all to Oblivion! Luc gritted his teeth as DAMN’s public service announcement played out.
“Nephilim!” one of the sisters in the booth exclaimed with a shudder. “Just imagine. I’ve heard the cities are crawling with them. Thank the Lord we’re safe here in the country.”
“Don’t go thinking we’re clear of them out here,” the young man commented from the counter. “I heard talk some of them Nephilim creatures holed up on a ranch south of Seeley Lake.”
“No!” The second sister’s eyes went round. “You don’t say.”
“Bah.” The old man at the end of the counter, his face whiskered and weathered, gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Nephilim. Hellfiends. What a load of bull. Just another excuse for criminals to get off. ‘The Devil made me do it.’ Ain’t I heard that one before. Only liberals and gossiping fools believe that crap. So what if folks are keeping to themselves out on their own land? No crime in that.”
The younger man protested. “Bud Harkin’s land is up that way. He says he’s had seven calves gone missing in the last six months. And he found a sheep carcass without a head.”
“Wolves,” the old man countered. “Damn vermin are everywhere now. Ain’t no Nephilim. Ain’t no hellfiends. Tell me, has anyone here seen a demon?”
“But . . . how would we know if we had?” one of the sisters protested. “According to Father Walker, Nephilim look like regular folks. And hellfiends . . . they work their evil through humans. By influence and possession. A person might do any nasty thing if a hellfiend’s got control of him.”
The waitress snorted. “If that’s the case, then I reckon I’ve seen a few demons in my day.”
The old man grinned. “Aw, them were just men, Annie, darlin’. Doin’ what men always do.”
Annie turned to Luc and winked. “What about you, hon? You believe in demons?”
“Not at all,” Luc lied.
Cade cursed his lack of experience, cursed his lack of subtlety, cursed his lack of control. For good measure, he directed an extra-foul curse at the great Artur Camulus, because if anyone deserved to be cursed, Artur did. The next few days were going to be a nightmare.
Cade had lived through one crisis. His own. He wasn’t sure he had the stomach to anchor someone else’s. Especially not Maddie’s. Blast it all to Oblivion. He liked her. More than liked her. She was a haunting combination of fragility and determination. He wanted more than anything to erase the ordeal to come. She didn’t deserve what was going to happen to her. It was going to be shit, doing what had to be done. But it was for her own good, he reminded himself. For her survival. And for his clan’s. He vowed that once it was over, once she was his slave, he’d treat her well. Protect her from Artur. If he could.
Outside, the desert sped past. They were on a proper road now, unpaved but relatively free of ruts. He switched on the jeep’s headlights. He didn’t need light to see in the dark, but if they passed another car, it would seem suspicious to have them off. And Maddie seemed to sleep more calmly with the headlights on. Her death grip on the safety strap had eased.
Ideally, he’d have gained her trust before her first wave hit. Trust would have made things easier. He hadn’t trusted Cybele when she’d found him—far from it—and his transition had been all the harder. If Maddie trusted him now, she’d submit to his will without question. As it was, he feared she was going to fight him every step of the way.
At least their wild interlude in the sand had allowed him to strengthen the tenuous mental mastery he’d introduced with his kiss the night before. She didn’t trust him, but it didn’t matter. Her body, bent on survival, didn’t care about trust. She wanted him. Badly. Soon she’d be begging for it, and he wouldn’t hesitate. He had no more choice in the matter than she did.
The enormity of his responsibility—to Maddie, to the clan, to the memory of the small person who had been, too briefly, his son—weighed like a boulder strung around his neck. What if he lost her, too? He didn’t want to think about that. But it could very well happen, no matter how hard he tried to stop it.
She didn’t believe his talk of Watchers and Nephilim. Well, he would have to overcome that resistance. Fast. He had to offer her something solid to hold on to before insanity became her only refuge from the truth.
“You think I’m Nephilim? Yeah, right. I’m beginning to think you’re one of those idiot DAMNers after all.”
“If I were, I’d have killed you on sight. No, Maddie, I’m just the opposite. I’m Nephilim. Like you.”
“The Nephilim are a myth.” She spoke slowly and enunciated clearly, as if presenting the truth to a half-wit. “Angels never walked on earth. Never mated with human women. Never produced half-human, half-angel hybrid creatures. The whole idea is preposterous.”
“It’s not. You and I are the proof. We’re the descendants of the few Nephilim who escaped the archangels’ vengeance. Our forefathers fled to every corner of the earth. My own ancestor was Samyaza’s eldest son.”
“Samyaza, who, according to The Book of Enoch, was the original leader of the Watchers?”
“That’s right.” Cade glanced in his rearview mirror. A glow hovered on the eastern horizon. “But eventually the Watcher Azazel displaced him. After the curse, Samyaza’s Nephilim son fled to northern Europe, where he taught his father’s stolen heavenly magic to his descendents. They became the Druid priests of the Celts.”
“So now you’re a Druid, too?” Maddie laughed. “You can’t expect me to swallow that. Especially since you’ve left off the white robes.”
He shrugged. “Believe what you want. You’ll learn the truth soon enough. Your crisis will leave no room for doubt.”
“You keep talking about a crisis,” she snapped. “If you think that’s going to scare me, forget it. I’ve got terminal brain cancer, remember? All the fear’s been leached out of me.”
A car approached, motoring in the opposite direction. Cade stepped on the gas and flew past it. “You’re wrong about that. Believe me, Maddie, there’s going to be plenty of room for fear when you confront your demon nature.”
Time passed before she spoke again.
“You know, not that I’m even close to believing you, but that’s one thing I don’t understand about the Watcher legend. The Nephilim were the children of angels, yet Jonas Walker and his DAMNers call them demons. Archdemons, even. Why?”