by Marie Hall
“Why do humans insist on buying this charm? Money, protection, luck. Okay, those I can understand. But love? Don’t they know that’s not how love works? You can’t force it on someone.” She tried, but couldn’t keep the hurt from creeping into her voice.
Tamryn eyed her. Aware, Eve was sure, of her inner torment. For the moment however, her sister didn’t pursue the matter and shrugged her slim shoulders instead. “Why do you care? I’m always upfront about this particular charm. If they insist on buying it anyway, it’s their business.”
“Besides,” Tamryn yanked on the dangling leather chain in Eve’s hand, “we both know humans come to San Fran because this is horror central. Weres, Vamps, and Witches, living out in the open. You know better than anyone, it’s us on display and not our wares. So no, I don’t feel bad at all taking their money. Tit for tat far as I’m concerned.”
“Touché.” Eve snapped her fingers with a grin.
She then turned her attention back to the table, hoping the message was clear. Go away. Leave her alone. But her sister didn’t walk off. Her palms grew increasingly sweat slicked, knowing her sister was still behind her. Boring holes into her back. She closed her eyes. Please don’t do this, Tamryn.
“So...”
She groaned and turned, knowing no amount of ignoring her would get her to leave.
Tamryn trailed her finger along the spine of a Grimoire. “You coming tonight, or what? It’s time we reinstate our weekly get together, don’t you think? Drinks, chips, and gossip. Fun huh?” Tamryn wiggled her brows, using a different tactic to entice Eve. Thing was, she wasn’t ready to go back to the life she’d lived before Michael’s death.
“No.” She set her mouth in a thin line.
“Eve. C’mon.”
“No. Okay.” She pushed away from the workbench, scattering several charms in the process. “Why do you keep doing this to me?”
Tamryn huffed. “Because you’ve become a shell of your former self. Do you honestly believe for one minute that Michael would have wanted this?” She lifted a brow and laid a hand on her hip, her stance defiant.
“That is not fair!” Eve jumped up, glaring daggers at her sister. “You wouldn’t understand. You wouldn’t even know what I’m going through,” she said, her voice breaking.
Tamryn’s violet eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “No, of course I wouldn’t. It’s not like I didn’t lose a brother-in-law. It’s not like I didn’t go through the pain of Mom’s death. Of course I wouldn’t understand, Eve.”
Eve winced and glanced away.
Tamryn blew out a heavy breath. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that...”
She shook her head, holding out a restraining hand as the truth of the words sunk deep into her heart. Her sister was right. Fact was, she knew she was being ridiculous, and it was hard to admit this--especially to herself--but what hurt most was the guilt. Guilt for surviving when Michael hadn’t. Guilt for actually wanting to go out and have fun again.
Tamryn had never had anything but the best of intentions for her. Mentally, Eve knew hanging onto the past brought a lack of resolution. She’d loved Michael, and she had to believe that somewhere up there he knew and would understand that eventually she’d have to move on. Still, it was hard to think about making a fresh start.
Just the idea of starting over, of having to reenter the hit and miss world of dating made her heart stutter. Women her age were usually nice and settled, with two point two kids, the white picket fence, and all that jazz. Here she was thirty, and contemplating a life of spinsterhood, not because she was too old, but because she was in a comfort zone she feared changing. Deep down she knew Michael would have been furious with her for mourning him so long. But that was love, and she’d loved him hard.
She blew out a deep breath. He shouldn’t have died so young, and that was the irony of the situation. Michael had seemed like the man of steel. So strong, virile, and full of life. To have seen his life snuffed out by such a senseless act--the thought still made her twitch with anger.
But she couldn’t keep doing this. It had to stop sooner or later, she admitted to herself with reluctance.
With a sad smile she turned toward her sister and gave a weak nod. “You’re right. I’ve been selfish, you and Cel were there for me when everyone else left.”
She pulled Tamryn into a quick hug. “I don’t want to go to the club tonight, but I’ll do it for you. Deal?”
Tamryn grinned and ran a hand through her unruly red curls. “Good. For a second there I thought I was gonna have to get all kung fu on your booty.”
They laughed.
***
Later that night Eve studied her wardrobe dispassionately. She hadn’t returned to the X after Michael’s death.
Breath, Eve. She closed her eyes for a split-second. You will do this. You have to. She repeated the mantra over and over.
Not only would she do this, but she’d go all out. All or nothing. She stripped off her clothes, showered, and then returned to her closet.
She grabbed a black chiffon skirt, one that hung snug at her hips and gently flared around her knees. She nibbled on her lip studying her tops, finally deciding on a black and red off the shoulder corset. Grabbing the first pair of red stilettos she found she sat down on the edge of her bed and slipped them on.
Done, she studied her reflection in the mirror.
Her skin glowed from the scalding water and hard scrubbing she’d just subjected herself to. The deep gold of her eyes shimmered in the light. She hung her head.
“Breath. Just breath,” she mumbled.
She growled, decided she’d done about all the primping she was willing to do and headed out the door to grab Tamryn and Celeste.
Stupid. Stupid. So freaking stupid.
***
Cian heard the shuffling of feet and high-pitched voices of females before he saw her. His dark witch. He’d followed her home from the shop contemplating what to do, how to approach her, and then suddenly here she was. As if she’d stepped from his thoughts into reality. His gut churned with anxiety.
To her it would seem as if two years had passed, but for him to see her hale and whole after the horror of seeing her body twisted and broken, took his breath. The glimpse of her through the shop window did not compare to this moment.
He was transfixed. She radiated an alluring mixture of power and sensuality. He sensed in her a great sadness and touched his heart, feeling a sudden burning ache to hold her. Comfort her. He clenched his jaw, knowing what he felt was the effects of her magick flaring to life inside him.
She and her sisters walked down the sidewalk. The blonde and redhead wore smiles. His witch did not.
Her misery scorched him like a fiery brand. Rammed through his skull. Cian remembered the sparkle in her golden eyes first time he’d laid eyes on her.
She shouldn’t feel this way. All my fault.
He followed at a discreet distance. Silent as a thought. The sisters moved with purpose, threading a winding path through alleyways, around condemned buildings, and stinking dumpsters. The path was a familiar one to him.
He watched as different sets of eyes studied the women. The furtive glances and faint odor of male lust riding the winds told him of their intent.
But the women weren’t weak and the men knew it. They crackled with power, like a burst of electricity from a live wire. Their ramrod shoulders and straight backs gave off a clear message: Screw with me at your own peril.
One by one the sets of eyes left off, scouting easier prey.
Cian’s lips quirked.
The ladies stopped at the entrance of the club and knocked.
A peephole slid open and a large brown eye peered out.
“Password,” the gruff voice asked.
“Asylum.”
The large, wrought iron door opened on silent hinges. Pale wisps of blue smoke escaped the club to curl around their ankles, creating an illusion of ethereal beings floating slowly inside.
A t
ingle ran like quicksilver down his spine. And he knew without turning that another reaper was around. The hunt was on. It was small comfort to know that while the sisters were inside the X, no harm could come to them.
But how am I supposed to keep them safe the rest of the time? Especially when The Morrigan is determined to have her?
After a few seconds passed, he knocked on the door, spoke the password and continued his pursuit. The pulsating rhythms of Danzig vibrated through his body. The loud music keyed him up. Pumped him full of adrenaline. Made him want.
Quickly he followed their scent up the stairwell, only slowing down when they were a few feet ahead. He stared at her backside. At the gentle sway of her hips and the wealth of black hair trailing down her back.
Want what you can never have.
He clenched his hands into fists, climbing step after stone step.
Cian had expected the sisters to return to the coven floor--where all practicing witches, wizards, and warlocks who preferred to keep to themselves, partied. Instead they headed for the fourth floor door. The mixed flock.
On this level only, the pack, clan, and coven put aside their differences and prejudice’s to party together.
Many centuries past the fae would have been included as part of the revelry. Now, no fae were allowed save the reapers. Death was an essential part of life and it could happen anywhere, at any time. Supernatural laws and rules did not apply to the reapers.
“Ah! My favorite sisters three.”
The sisters turned at the sound of the melodious voice.
Cian glanced at the source.
“Lise,” his witch cried and rushed into the proprietor’s frail embrace.
Madam Lise’s snow-white eyes roamed the witch’s face with unerring accuracy. She laid a liver spotted hand against her heart. “Such sadness.”
Cian shifted. Electric currents of Lise’s power pulsed through him. The woman was immortality personified. In her voice he heard not just words, but an ancient knowledge of the beginning and the end.
The mystery that was Lise teased his mind. She was more than the Gods and Goddesses. She was time, origin, everything. Somehow he knew when this world passed away and he was nothing, not even a memory, Lise would remain. She was the chosen one.
It was a cold shiver down the spine type of thought.
He was suddenly yanked from his reflections when he saw a white glow spread from between Lise’s fingers. Like a spiraling helix, they shot through his witch’s flesh. She radiated from the inside out. A dark-haired priestess caught within a silky, ivory web.
The ground trembled. Glass bottles behind the bar shook and rattled, not from music that had gone suddenly quiet, but from the living force springing from Lise’s hand.
He expected to see stunned looks upon the faces of those dancing. But there were no looks of shock. No one had even stopped dancing. He knew then that the music hadn’t stopped. So much as Lise, himself, and the three sisters, seemed to be within some capsule of time completely separate from the outside world.
Now aware of it, he felt the cocoon’s embrace. It was warm, inviting, meant for privacy more than anything. It rippled like the soft lapping of a stream against a bank.
His witch grunted. An obsidian winding curl of smoke escaped her parted lips. Then as if someone had cut an invisible string holding her up, she slumped to the ground.
He ran forward. Not thinking about what he meant to do--the need to comfort overruling his desire for stealth. All he wanted was to touch her. Hold her and keep her safe.
The emotion was alarming and stopped him cold in his tracks. He backed up, into the safety of shadow. Who would find comfort from death?
The sisters helped his witch up. Her golden eyes were wide with shock.
Lise gripped her shoulder. “I’ve tasted your fears, it is time to let go. Live and love again, my dear witch, he would want it that way.” She turned her unnatural gaze to Cian.
He took a sharp breath and heard the old woman’s voice in his head. Well met, Death. Be ye welcome here.
Cian gave a solemn nod. Chosen.
“Come sisters three,” Lise spread her arm wide, “I’ve saved you the best seat in the house.”
With those words, the music returned, along with the sharp smells of bodies pressed close, and alcohol tainted breaths. The scents were suddenly overpowering and cloying, seeming to stick to the roof of his mouth and he grimaced at the stench.
The women sat down in a corner booth next to the dance floor. All three heads joined together to form an odd circle of gold, black, and red. No doubt they were talking of the incident and what it had meant.
There was nothing to do now but wait. So Cian walked over to the bar and sat. He dropped his stealth, nothing more than essence he’d draped himself in. He wouldn’t call it exactly going invisible, but unless someone looked in just the right spot they wouldn’t see him.
“What’ll you have?” The bartender was cleaning a glass with a dishrag, staring at him and waiting patiently for his answer.
“Fire water,” he said without thinking.
The bartender nodded, poured him a tumbler full of the green stuff and slammed it down on the grainy wood. He hadn’t actually expected the mortal realm to serve drinks created in the lands of magick.
His lips quirked as he brought the tumbler to his lips and took a sip. Just as he remembered it. Smokey, with a bitter hint of overripe cherries. It smoldered going down, making him feel like the flesh was being stripped off his throat.
“Reaper.”
The rumbling voice that always made him think of a volcano ready to explode, could belong to none other than Bezel, demon of the lower night abyss.
He turned and stared into glowing lavender eyes. “Bezel,” he frowned, “what are you doing in mortal realm?”
The blond, trucker cap wearing demon raised a brow. A lascivious smirk crossed his face as he hooked his thumb over his shoulder to the retreating figure of a man. “Been bound.”
Cian stared at the pale, freckle-faced sorcerer cutting a path through bodies toward the bathroom.
“Someone finally learn your true name, Demon?” Cian cocked his head. “Took me three centuries to learn it. Not the easiest name to find.”
Bezel shrugged. “That over-inflated bag of dog waste thinks he does. But he don’t and he won’t.” A deep Kentucky twang twisted the demon’s words.
He grinned. “You plan on telling him anytime soon? Or are you going to let him discover that the way your last sorcerers have?”
The demon raised a brow, a smug look on his face. “What do you think? Pass up a chance for a little bloody sport later, no way. You know the drill, Cian. I lull them into a false sense of security. Them bam!” he slammed his fist down on the bar, “when they need me most I turn on them instead. Ha...” Bezel shook his head, “nothing better, ‘cept for maybe gator huntin’ on the Bayou. Now that’s fun right there.”
“Gator hunting?” Cian chuckled, when the demon set his mind to a character, person, place, or thing he played the role better than an Oscar nominee. “Playing the good ol’ boy this time, I see?”
Bezel took a swig off the Corona bottle in his hand and burped. “Yeah. Been pretty fun. But I’m ‘bout through with this one. He’s getting boring, thinks a little too highly of himself. Bastard. Thinking that maybe I’ll twist his head clean off, or maybe fillet him down both sides.” He nodded, a pleased expression on his face. “What do you think?”
Cian shook his head, an I-don’t-wanna-go-there look on his face. “Little too gruesome for me, demon. How about I just take care of the mess afterwards?”
Bezel gave a toothy grin.
Cian took another sip of the fire water, his gaze searching out his witch. She was still sitting in the booth, watching as her sisters gyrated on the dance floor.
It was as if time suspended. The thrum of music faded to an insignificant noise in the background. His only focus was on the dark witch--watching as she sucked her bo
ttom lip between her teeth and played with the silver bangles on her wrist.
He was aware of several men staring in her direction with something other than just mere curiosity. There was hunger, raw and wild, glittering in their eyes. Hers was an exotic beauty rarely seen. He seethed with jealousy, wanting to break several necks for even daring to let their gaze linger for too long. He chugged the last of the fiery brew down and scrubbed a tired hand down his face.
Bezel snapped his fingers, breaking Cian from his trance. The demon looked from Cian to his witch and back again. His lips curled into a slow smile.
“The death of a man is a woman.” His lavender eyes glowed like amethyst flames in the darkness.
Cian nodded and turned around, facing the bar once again. She was a topic he wasn’t willing to discuss, especially not with the demon. “So,” he said, switching subjects, “any of your sorcerers ever allowed to see your true form? I can’t imagine that anyone would bind you if they did.”
“Bastard,” Bezel snorted, a smirk curling his lips. “But no,” he swallowed the last dregs in his bottle, “don’t want any of them ever learning too much about me. Knowledge is power, and I ain’t in a sharin’ mood.” He shrugged. “Simpler to just become what they want. Makes it easier to control them later on.”
Cian’s brows drew together. “Then why disguise yourself as a corn fed country boy?”
Bezel gave him a deadpan stare.
Then it clicked. “Ah. Of course.” He chuckled.
That moment to the next was a blur as rough hands yanked on Cian’s shoulder, twisting him around. Fangs dripping with saliva and the rage twisted face of a Were, greeted him. “We don’t tolerate Fae’s around these parts.”
Cian shouldered the hand off. “You have two seconds to get out of my face.”
The Were growled, drawing attention from the group surrounding the bar. “Or what?” His spit landed on the side of Cian’s face. Brown eyes turned black with the beginnings of going feral.