by Deanna Chase
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. 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.” Lincoln 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.
Simple question, with such a complicated answer.
Yatam, father of all demons.
Metaraon, the Voice of God.
Adam, the first
man.
Isaac, my father.
James Faulkner, my betrayer.
Lincoln didn’t know about the past that Elise was always trying to escape, and she wasn’t about to tell him. It had nothing to do with shame. She had told McIntyre and Anthony much of the truth, and admitted the rest to Leticia—the kinds of things that a woman could only tell another woman.
No, Elise didn’t trust Lincoln. With her wounds? Yes. But with her past…no. He was responsible for that email with her picture. He had an entire town keeping an eye on her. She didn’t trust that he didn’t have other secrets, too.
“Nothing made me. I was born for sin and damned from the beginning,” she said, pressing her hips to his. He was already aroused, rigid between them.
“I have faith, Miss Kavanagh,” he said. “I believe anyone can be saved. God loves us all.”
“Elise,” she corrected, yet again. “And I used to have faith, too.”
“I’ve still got enough for the both of us.”
He really seemed to think that she could be saved, but that was because he didn’t know what Elise had done. He didn’t know that there was no salvation for anyone, anywhere—not a Godslayer, and not a crooked deputy from small-town Pennsylvania.
Elise wrapped a finger in the chain that held his crucifix.
“Then save me,” she said, pushing Lincoln back, forcing him to sit on the desk.
She stepped close, thighs on either side of his, fitting their bodies together. He was shorter than James, more muscular. He smelled of aftershave and cherry pie. Elise slanted her mouth against his, one hand on his cross and one at the back of his head, and she tasted the mortality on his tongue.
Elise clung to her corporeal form as she explored his mouth. Her every instinct wanted to pour inside of him, possessing Lincoln from the inside out. She settled for grinding her hips against his. They were separated only by two thin layers of clothing, but she made sure that he felt it.
His breaths came choppy and hot on her neck. Aroused, afraid—it was all the same. He was right to fear her.
Elise’s fingers slipped down his abs, finding their way into the waistband of his sweats. And when she circled her bare fingers around him, his gasp was delicious. Caught somewhere between pain and rapture.
Lincoln’s hand cupped the back of her neck. His thumb brushed the bites.
There was the pain. It made her skin prickle with gooseflesh.
Elise groaned.
He pulled his hands away.
“Do it again, harder,” she whispered into his mouth, stroking him slowly, up and down, enjoying the tension in his body.
But he pulled back to stare at her with heavy-lidded eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Do it,” Elise insisted, grabbing his wrist, pressing his hand to her throat.
But Lincoln only trailed his fingers down her ribs, pulled her tighter against him, pressed his manhood between her legs.
“Not like that,” he said. “I don’t hurt women.”
Frustration rose in her, heady as the arousal. “It’s not that kind of pain.”
“No,” Lincoln said, and he was tugging on her underwear, pushing it down her legs, baring her to the warm Pennsylvania air.
Elise shoved him onto the desk, flattening him beside the ancient computer monitor. She flowed up his body. Flipped her hair so that it hung over her shoulders, a veil of darkness separating them from the world.
“Do you want me to bleed you?” Elise asked, digging a fingernail into his jugular.
Lincoln looked shocked. And then a muscle in his cheek twitched, because her hips were moving again, and she was removing his ability to respond with the friction between their bodies. His hands tightened on her hips, not hard enough to bruise.
He opened his mouth to respond, but the words never came out.
The office window shattered.
Elise was off of Lincoln in a flash, all the way across the room, in the shadows of the corner. Broken glass dotted the carpet. She lifted her fists, prepared to face an attack.
But nothing jumped through the broken window. The early morning air was silent, inside and out, and Elise and Lincoln were still alone.
The deputy pushed himself to a seated position. He was panting hard, still coming down off of the arousal. “What just happened?” he asked, trying to stand. His knees buckled under him.
Elise stepped up to the window. Hints of paler blue clung to the trees—the first hints of dawn. The stars and full moon were still brilliantly bright. If there was someone outside in the trees, they were beyond her vision.
“I think we’re okay,” Elise said, turning back to Lincoln.
He stooped to pick through the glass. “What’s this?”
Lincoln held a heavy gold band in one hand. It was a ring. To mundane eyes, it would have looked like plain men’s jewelry. To Elise, it sparked with magic.
She looked down at her right hand. There was a matching band on her middle finger, a little slenderer, but carved with the same delicate lines.
Her heart began to pound.
Elise looked out the window again, searching for a familiar face—the face of a man she had told to leave her alone, never speak to her again. The man who had tattooed her back, stolen her heart, and scarred her soul permanently with his lies.
But James Faulkner wasn’t there.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“What the fucking fuck is James doing in Pennsylvania?”
“Hell if I know,” Elise said. She had Lincoln’s cell phone pressed between her ear and shoulder as she went through the racks at a downtown Northgate consignment shop. She hated shopping. Her mood was foul and definitely not improving.
“You’ve got to come home,” Anthony said. “Right now.”
“I haven’t figured out these murders yet.”
“You can’t tell me you still think this is a cut-and-dried rogue werewolf problem. There’s a whole werewolf pack, James is hanging around… Shit’s going down, Elise. This is bad.”
She pulled a pair of pants off the rack and held them in front of her body. It was hard to tell how they would fit when she was wearing a pair of Lincoln’s tightly-belted jeans. “I know it’s bad. I’m not stupid.”
“When it comes to James? Yeah, you kind of are.”
A headache throbbed in her left temple. “Don’t forget, I’m always one sunset and a thought away from bitch-slapping you in Vegas.”
“At least you’d be out of Northgate.”
Elise rolled her eyes. “James apparently wants me to know that he’s here. That’s it.”
“Bull-fucking-shit.”
He was right, of course. It was no coincidence that James and a pack of werewolves were in the same place as seven murders and one missing girl named Lucinde Ramirez. Elise didn’t believe in coincidences anyway.
She chewed on the inside of her mouth, gazing out the storefront to the statue of Bain Marshall in the square. The weather was overcast, but she’d still had to borrow another one of Lincoln’s sweaters to get into the shop. After her run-in with Rylie and Nashriel, Elise was feeling more sensitive to the light than ever.
Her skin wasn’t the only thing feeling sensitive. James’s ring hung from a chain around her neck, heavy as cement shoes dragging her to the bottom of a stormy black ocean. Elise’s heart was raw.
Had James been watching? Did he know?
Elise shook off that thought. It didn’t matter if he knew what she’d been about to do to Lincoln. It wasn’t any of his goddamn business.
Yet when she spoke again, her voice came out strangely soft. “Why would he do that?”
Anthony scoffed. “Throw the ring through Deputy Marshall’s window? Sounds like a threat.”
A threat…or an invitation.
The demon that had killed Lucinde Ramirez had also killed James. His death had been traumatic for Elise in more ways than one; he was ritualistically bound to her as aspis. Just like “kopis” was the Greek word for sword, “aspis�
� meant shield. The bonding meant that James could protect Elise from magical onslaught. It also meant that one of them dying would drive the survivor insane. Even if Elise hadn’t been in love with him, she would have been desperate to save his life.
In order to bring him back from the dead, Elise had evoked the demon’s necromantic powers and dragged James’s soul back to the world of the living. Elise had breathed life back into him. Their lives and souls had been irrevocably entwined during that ritual, far beyond the already-rigid ties of kopis and aspis.
She could see through his eyes, think his thoughts, share his memories. And it went both ways.
James had made the rings to shut down the psychic bond. It only took one of them wearing a ring to block each other’s thoughts. At the time, Elise had assumed he made them as a favor to her. Later, she learned that it was because he feared Elise finding the truth within his thoughts: that he had agreed to surrender Elise to her oldest and greatest enemy.
Now, James suddenly wasn’t wearing his ring. If Elise took hers off, too, the psychic bond would instantly be restored.
For the first time in three years, Elise could see him.
She had already decided she wasn’t going to take her ring off.
“I’m not asking you why James threw the ring through the window. I already know why he did that,” Elise said. Because that asshole can’t let me live my life without him.
“Then what?” Anthony asked.
“Don’t you get it? Lucinde Ramirez. James is the only one who could have known that name. He must have filed a fake report. He deliberately lured me here. And he did it using the most painful goddamn name he could have ever picked. Like he’s taunting me for my failure.”
Anthony was quiet on the other end of the line, mulling the same puzzle that Elise was.
What was in Northgate that James would want Elise to find?
“It’s gotta be bad,” Anthony said.
She massaged her temples. The sunlight was worsening her headache, even through a thick layer of clouds. “I agree.”
“I can’t talk you into coming back, can I?” Anthony asked. He didn’t bother waiting for an answer before plowing on. “I’m going to have McIntyre book a flight for me. I want to have your back on this.”