by Anna Windsor
He had to admit, though, if he ended up with the girl actually in the girly room with him, that wouldn’t be so bad. It would be good. Better than good. He was sure of that.
Duncan …
The thought nudged into his brain.
Duncan’s home.…
John got out of the girly bed in one huge hurry then. Christ! Where was his head? He probably didn’t have much time. He put his jeans on too fast, hopping into the legs, almost fell over, got his act together, and pulled his shirt over his head.
The door banged open, and two people walked into the bedroom at a pretty good clip. One was Bela, wearing a pair of brown slacks and a cream-colored shirt that highlighted her dark, exotic good looks and her very worried expression.
As for the other—
“Duncan,” John said as he finished pulling down his shirt, grateful in spite of the circumstances to see his one and only lifelong friend healthy and presumably happy with his beautiful new wife at his side.
Duncan Sharp looked much as John remembered from their younger days—big but a little scrawny, close-cut brown hair, and spooky blue eyes. He had on his usual, jeans and an army-green T-shirt, so typical and familiar that John couldn’t help smiling.
Duncan wasn’t smiling.
He stopped next to the dark-haired beauty he’d married, staring at John, no doubt trying to take in the whole Strada-body thing. He must have been warned or he’d already be shooting. As it was, John glanced at Duncan’s shirt and then his ankles, checking for holster bulges as he carefully came around the bed to say hello to his friend.
Duncan didn’t wait for any greetings. He strode toward John with a fierce tension John recognized from their service days—but not in time to duck the punch Duncan threw.
Duncan’s knuckles connected with John’s jaw hard enough to stagger him and make him see a burst of blinking white stars. His ass thumped into the bathroom door, and he used the wood paneling and doorknob to hold himself upright. A few knickknacks toppled off a dresser, clattering as they bounced against the drawers and floor.
Bela didn’t try to get in the way, and Camille didn’t scream and come running down the hall from the lab to break up the fight. John sort of liked that. Camille knew what was probably happening, and she was more than capable of interfering if she decided to, but she knew some things had to work themselves out.
John rubbed his jaw reflexively, wondering if any teeth were loose. Okay, okay, he sort of wished Camille would scream and coming running down the hall, but that was sexist macho asshole thinking, and a pathetic, weak-minded excuse to get to put his arms around her again.
Don’t be a dick, John.
“You piece of shit,” Duncan snarled, advancing as John skirted the bed, keeping the frilly sheets between them. “I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead and I thought it was my fault.”
John pointed a finger in Duncan’s face. “It wasn’t like I could jog up and say howdy. You would have shot me—and watch your mouth in front of the lady.”
“Screw you. Bela and her quad know how to swear better than both of us.” Duncan really wanted to throw a few more right hooks, John could tell, but he kept moving around the bed, jumping across it to the other side so Duncan couldn’t reach him easily. He really didn’t want to have to hit back. “You could have called. You could have dropped me a note.”
“Ah, honey, it’s so sweet you missed me.” John blew a kiss at Duncan and thought he heard Bela snicker.
Duncan tried to scramble over the bed after him, but Bela grabbed him by the belt loops and hauled him back to the floor on the opposite side from John.
“All right, boys,” she said. “No more breaking shit in Camille’s bedroom. If you really need to slug it out, we’ll go to the alley behind the house.”
Duncan was still glaring across the bed at John, but Bela’s touch obviously stilled the beast inside him, literally and figuratively. A patch of golden-orange fur with black stripes had rippled up on Duncan’s face and neck, but as he stood next to his wife, the fur gradually receded. John winced, but otherwise kept his reaction to himself.
I should have done better protecting him. I shouldn’t have let the Rakshasa get to him.
He thought about Camille, about possibly failing her like that, and it choked him up. What the hell was happening to him? It wasn’t enough he’d turned part demon and started sleeping on frilly sheets—now he was getting misty because his best friend wanted to punch his teeth down his throat?
All because of a woman. Not just a woman. A Sibyl, though John was beginning to think she was a witch, too. Whatever kind of man he had been when he wore his first body, that man truly was dead—but the change had nothing to do with taking over a demon’s skin. John knew it had everything to do with his soul touching Camille’s, with meeting her again and speaking to her. He just couldn’t be that cold, distant nothing-but-a-soldier thing anymore, not with her in the same house. Not knowing she was even on the same planet.
So what was he now?
Who the hell knew? He sure didn’t.
I’m hers. I hope to God she’ll decide she’s mine after we both figure out who I am.
“I’m sorry,” he told Duncan around the big irritating, embarrassing lump in his throat. “About the demons attacking you. About sucking you into all this last year.”
Duncan’s expression hardened again. “What about for leaving me in the desert before that? Just walking away after that temple disaster without so much as a ‘Kiss my ass, buddy’?”
“What happened in the Valley of the Gods was classified. I couldn’t say anything.” John held Duncan’s angry gaze, then felt himself relenting, holding up both hands in surrender. The room around them smelled like lilies and women and here and now and today, not then. No need to keep then so alive. “Yeah, yeah. I could have called. I could have dropped you a note to let you know everything was okay. I was wrong not to do that.”
Duncan’s mouth twitched at one corner. Not a smile, but not another windup for a tell-off, either. “Better.”
John’s gaze shifted to Bela and he lowered his hands. “I’m glad you’re in his life. He deserves somebody like you.”
Bela acknowledged this with a nod.
“And back when I was in Duncan’s head, I never—you know.” John coughed to give himself a second to pick the next words. “Got any cheap thrills, or anything.”
Bela flushed, but she laughed.
“No,” Duncan said, red highlights hitting both cheeks as he spoke. “No way. Just because you make nice with my wife doesn’t mean we’re finished with this.”
John raised his hands again, palms out. “Whatever you say.”
“Don’t do that.” Duncan jammed his fingers through his hair and looked twice as pissed.
John had to work not to grin, but he pulled it off by counting the pictures on Camille’s walls. “Do what?”
“That whole whatever-you-say crap.” Duncan’s frown was severe, but more normal now. Irritated instead of furious. “You always won fights like that when we were growing up.”
John shrugged. “Maybe I just didn’t want to fight with you. Maybe I don’t want to fight with you now.”
Now Duncan’s frown got a little more serious, and sad, too. “This is past fistfights in the fields, John.” He looked away. “This isn’t some little-kid bullshit.”
The sadness showing on Duncan’s face crept over to John, but really, he already felt it. The time for teasing and yelling and blustering was over, finished. “I know.”
Duncan took a few seconds to compose himself, and he glanced at Bela more than once while he pulled his thoughts together. At last, when he was ready, he faced John straight on again, and his voice was steady and quiet when he spoke. “If you run out on me again, no matter what the reason, we’re done.”
John felt each word like a different kind of punch in the jaw. The kind that got his attention, made a permanent impression. He and Duncan had swapped a lot of licks and insults, but neit
her one had ever threatened the other with the end of their friendship.
Which meant this was no threat.
What was that old gospel song they’d been swapping back and forth when he was in Duncan’s head?
Can’t hide, sinner …
Yeah, that was it.
And John knew it was true.
“Got it,” he said, because he did understand, and after everything he had put Duncan through, there wasn’t really anything else he could say.
The two of them stayed quiet for a minute or so, and John felt all the anger seep out of Camille’s bedroom. The space went back to its soothing tones and silky bedsheets, its neatly arranged art and furniture. Definitely nothing John or Duncan would ever put together, much less choose as the stage to play out what might prove to be the most important—and final—act of their friendship.
Bela seemed to judge it safe to give them a moment or two, because she picked up the stuff that had fallen off the dressers, put it back in place, and stepped out of the bedroom. John noticed she didn’t go upstairs, though. Staying close, just in case. Poor woman was obviously used to refereeing.
“Why are you here?” Duncan asked as soon as Bela closed the door behind her. “I mean, right here, in this brownstone, right now.”
John’s response came reflexively. “I’m here to kill Rakshasa.”
“And?”
John let out a breath.
Duncan was still his best friend. No matter how much time passed, no matter how much distance grew, nothing would ever change that. If he couldn’t tell this man the truth, then there was no hope for him.
“A year ago, I would have said that was it. That I’m here to eradicate demons.” John touched his temple. “Including the one in my brain, when he’s the only one left.”
Duncan worked that out faster than John would have liked, judging by the frown and wary expression. “And now?”
“Now—” John glanced at the door, imagining the hall, the door to the lab, and Camille hard at work over whatever was in that room. “Now I’ve got other things on my mind.”
Duncan glanced around the bedroom as if he might just now be taking in the details, the nuances that had changed since Camille claimed and renovated the room. She was everywhere down here, like a tangible presence drifting through the air between them. More than anything, Duncan seemed to be processing John’s willingness to stay in the brownstone, in the bedroom, when community living really wasn’t his style. Duncan might also be remembering John’s time as a ghost in his head, when John thought Camille was a special kind of hot.
“Why are you here, John?” Duncan asked again, this time more slowly, staring at John with the spooky blue eyes John had known since he first remembered anything about life.
“I think I came here to marry Camille.” He couldn’t quite believe he’d said that, but he didn’t back away from it. “I don’t know what else to say. She feels like my future. She feels like … everything. If she decides she likes me. And if I don’t turn out to be a psychotic killer demon. And if none of you have to behead me.”
There. That was it. Pretty much in a package, tied up with a bow. If it wasn’t enough for Duncan, John didn’t know what else he could offer.
“Okay.” Duncan rubbed his hand across his short brown hair again, not too fast or hard this time. More like the habit John remembered.
“Just okay?” John gave Duncan a sideways look, because he knew there had to be more.
“I have faith in Camille.” Duncan’s grin came on slow and sly, not open or relaxed yet, but John would take whatever he could get. “She’ll kick your balls up through your ribs if that’s what you need.”
“Great. Thanks.” John refused to let his hand twitch over his groin. He had no doubt that if a Sibyl planted her foot in his nuts, he’d know he’d been kicked.
“You, ah, need some sparring rounds to get in shape?” Duncan’s grin was starting to spread across his face.
John shook his head. “Not today, thanks. Some Bengals are helping me out. I’m due there in a little bit.”
Duncan didn’t react to this, and John knew he wouldn’t, and that he’d keep his mouth shut about it since Duncan had gotten some help from the Bengals himself in the early days after his transition to half demon. “When you’re done with them, come by the townhouse on the Upper East Side, and go a round or two with me and my new friends. Creed, Nick, and Jake—the Lowell brothers—they’re demons, too, and they can teach you a lot about self-control if you’re willing to learn.”
John matched Duncan’s grin, feeling more relief as time went by without broken furniture and cracked jaws. “I could probably pick up some tips from you, too.”
It was Duncan’s turn to shrug. “We’ll see.”
After Duncan left, John got ready to head out to his training session with the Bengals and to pick up some clean clothes from his place. He collected Dio’s demon packet, glanced at a few pages, then folded it and tucked it under his arm for later review. Just before he left the room, he took some things out of his pockets, like his zillion-year-old dirty rabbit’s foot, his lucky quarter, and his mother’s battered engagement ring—the few treasures he’d gotten Duncan to rescue from his personal effects before they buried his old body and what little he had on him when the Rakshasa cut him to pieces last year.
For good measure, he pulled off his watch, and he put it all on the nightstand, right where Camille would see the stuff if she checked inside the bedroom after he left.
“Here you go, beautiful,” he said out loud, his voice calmer than he thought it would be. “So you’ll know I’m not running away. Have to come back for this stuff, don’t I? Among a lot of other things.”
( 16 )
Camille tugged at the string of her sweatshirt hood as she tried to get comfortable on her end of the big leather sofa, and she wished she had a pillow to hold. Everybody else had pillows, one from each of the three leather chairs her quad was sitting in, positioned around the communications platform. That was fitting, since this felt kind of like an inquisition—and the swirling, smoking, dark projective mirrors on the walls weren’t doing anything to lighten the mood.
“Are you in love with him?”
It was Andy who asked the question, but Camille could tell they all wanted to know. Her quad had given her exactly twenty-four hours before they invaded the lab and made Camille come upstairs. Duncan had split for OCU headquarters, and Bela had politely asked Ona to remain behind in the lab. Ona had said she wouldn’t come “until it was her turn,” whatever that meant. John was still off on whatever errands he was running, but Camille had seen what he left behind on the bedside table. An unwritten message.
Okay, you win. I’m not running—for now.
It took some effort, but Camille finally settled herself down enough to start talking—and to lead off with the most truthful answer she could give. “I have no idea if I’m in love with John—and don’t tell me I do know, or I’ll have to hit somebody. I’ve really only known him for a day or so.”
Bela’s intake and exhale were the only sounds that followed, and Camille felt unnaturally aware of the mix of light perfumes blending with the tang of air and water and earth energy. Everything seemed to be swirling together, inside her head and outside, too.
“All of that stuff about love or not love can be confusing at first,” Bela said, a little too slowly and very gently, obviously drawing on her own experience of falling in love with her husband under weird, pressured circumstances. She rubbed the right knee of her faded work jeans, and Camille wondered if Bela even knew she was doing that. Her football jersey, just as worn as the jeans, was already frayed along the bottom hem, where Bela picked at it when she was nervous.
Andy never seemed to get nervous. She gave her opinion in a completely not-gentle rush. “Confusing, my ass. It’s fucked up, that’s what it is. Every time I’ve ever fallen in love, it’s been nothing but a nightmare, and this—this thing you’ve got going with demon-man,
I think it’s dangerous, Camille.”
She didn’t say too dangerous, which Camille took as a positive sign even though she knew that was desperate. She was also glad nobody was asking her how long she’d been thinking about him, or how many times she’d had contact with him, because those answers could get her in some serious trouble with her quad.
“I’m okay with it.” Dio was sitting sideways in her leather chair with both legs over the arm closest to Camille, and she bounced her white tennis shoe and slightly mud-stained jeans cuff with each word. “With him, I mean—unless he hurts you. Then I’ll help behead him and we’ll all feel better.” She hesitated, then added, “And just so you all know, when John first showed up, he tried to get me to make the same deal Duncan did—that whole if-I-start-to-hurt-her-you-kill-me thing. And I’m not doing it.”
“What are you, the group executioner?” Bela shook her head at Dio. “Why does everybody ask you to kill them?”
“Because she’s the meanest bitch in the house,” Andy suggested.
Dio hit Andy with her pillow, rumpling the black NYPD sweatshirt Andy always wore with her jeans.
“No?” Andy’s smile would have been contagious if Camille hadn’t been feeling so nervous about all of this. “Okay, then. We’ll settle for this: Dio has a murderous nature that shows through now and again.” Then, before Dio could hit her again or come up with some smartass remark, Andy went back at Camille. “I’m not okay with John. Not yet. I don’t know if I’m speaking from new Sibyl instincts or good old-fashioned cop instincts, but you better be listening. There’s something under the surface with that man. Something dark.”
“Um, yeah.” Dio snickered. “A not-quite-killed Rakshasa demon. Is that dark enough to suit everybody? And since when did you go all old-maid careful on us, Andy?”
Andy wasn’t having any of that crap, and this time she shook her finger at Dio when she talked. “Don’t judge this guy by Duncan or the Lowell brothers or any other part-human demons we know. John Cole is something new and we need to treat him that way.” She glanced at her own pointing finger, frowned seemingly at herself, and bounced her hand on her pillow because she pulled it down so fast. “You people should have seen what the Sibyls who used to live here put my ex-partner Creed through before they accepted him as okay.”