Crave fa-2

by J. R. Ward

  Isaac appeared in front of him, standing tall and strong, his sweatshirt open to show a bulletproof vest.

  When he was certain he was seeing correctly, Matthias started to laugh . . . and the pain in his left side abruptly eased.

  “Son of a . . .” He didn’t get out the bitch as a round of coughing shook him up.

  After it had passed, he could feel blood leaking out of his mouth and down his cheek as his heart started to bang around in his rib cage like an animal thrashing in a cage.

  As Isaac got down on his haunches, Matthias thought about that tattoo on the man’s back. Grim Reaper, indeed. He wondered if the soldier would go and get another notch tattooed on the bottom.

  How much you want to bet it would be the final one, too?

  Isaac shook his head and whispered, “I have to let you die. You know that, right.”

  Matthias nodded. “Thank . . . you . . .”

  He lifted his frozen hand and, a moment later, felt it encased in something warm and solid. Isaac’s.

  So weird how things worked out. Back in that desert, Jim had set out to save him, but here and now, in this kitchen, Isaac was giving him what he’d wanted all along.

  Before Matthias closed his eyes for the last time, he looked over at Alistair Childe. His daughter had freed him and he was embracing her, holding her safe, his head down next to hers. As if the man felt the stare that was upon him, he glanced up.

  The relief in his face was epic, like he knew Matthias was dying and never coming back—and that even though that wouldn’t resurrect the son he had lost, it would protect his and his daughter’s future for evermore.

  Matthias nodded at the guy and then shut his lids in preparation for the great nothingness that was coming. God, he was hungry for it. His life hadn’t been a gift to himself or the world, and he was looking forward to not existing.

  As he waited out the stretch of neither here nor there, when he wasn’t really alive, but not quite dead, he thought of Alistair the night his son had died.

  “. . . Dan . . . ny . . . boy . . . my Danny boy . . .”

  Matthias frowned and then realized he hadn’t just thought the words, but spoken them aloud.

  They were the same ones he’d said right before he’d put his foot on that bomb trigger.

  At that moment, white light came upon him, a product of the numbness . . . or maybe it had walked through the sensation as if the feeling was a door. Upon its arrival, a great, peaceful calm overtook his mind, body, and soul sure as if he had been wiped clean of all the sins he’d imagined or wrought during his time on Earth.

  The illumination was so much more than anything his eyes were doing. It was all he saw, all he knew, all he was.

  Heaven did actually exist.

  And oh, the lovely nothingness . . . ah, the blissful—

  In the corners of his nonvision, a gray fog boiled up, at first appearing as nothing distinct, but then expanding and darkening to a blackness that started to eat at the light.

  Matthias fought against the invasion, his instincts telling him that this was not what he wanted—but it wasn’t a battle he would win.

  The fog became tar, coating him and claiming him, pulling him downward into a spiral that tightened, tightened . . . tightened . . . until he was flushed out into a sea of others.

  As he writhed against the choking, cloaking tide, he bumped into flailing bodies.

  Trapped in an oily black infinity, he screamed . . . along with the rest of them.

  But no one came. No one cared. Nothing happened.

  His eternity had finally claimed him and it was never going to let him go.

  CHAPTER 50

  “He’s dead.”

  As Isaac spoke the words, he rose to his feet and took a deep breath. Across the way, Grier and her father were wrapped tightly around each and he gave himself a moment to appreciate the sight of them alive, and well, and together.

  Thank you, God, he thought—in spite of the fact that he wasn’t a religious man.

  Thank you, Almighty God.

  “Stay here,” he told them before going around and shutting and locking the back door.

  It took him ten minutes to search and secure the whole house and the final thing he did was go to the front door and double-check that the dead bolts were properly engaged—

  Isaac frowned and looked through a window onto the lawn. There was a small dog out there . . . standing on stocky legs, with his head cocked as he stared in at Isaac. Cute little thing . . . could use a haircut, but that happened to the best of men and boys and terriers.

  Isaac cracked the door and called out, “You live here?”

  While that head tilted to the other side, Isaac searched the front yard and prayed that at any minute Jim Heron would step out of the trees.

  Nothing but the dog, however.

  “You want to come in?” he said to the animal.

  The thing seemed to smile as if it appreciated the kind invitation. But then it turned and trotted off, a slight limp listing him to the right.

  Between one blink and the next the thing disappeared.

  Theme song of the fucking night, Isaac thought as he shut the door again.

  As soon as he walked into the kitchen, Grier broke away from her father and came running at him, hitting his body hard, her arms wrapping around him with vital strength. And with a sigh of gratitude, he held her against him, tucking her head into his chest, feeling her heart beat against his.

  “I love you,” she said against the bullet proof vest. “I’m sorry. I love you.”

  Shit, so he’d heard her right when he’d been on the floor.

  “I love you, too.” Shifting her face up, he kissed her. “Even though I don’t deserve you.”

  “Shut up.”

  Now she was the one kissing him and he was more than willing to let her—but not for long. All too soon, he was breaking off the contact.

  “Listen, I want you and your father to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”

  He glanced at the clock. Nine fifty-nine. “Go back to town—somewhere public. One of your private clubs or something. I want you both to be seen tonight, together. Tell people you had dinner or saw a movie. A father-daughter thing.”

  As her eyes shot to Matthias’s body, her father said, “I can help.”

  “We can help,” Grier amended.

  Isaac stepped back and shook his head. “I’ll take care of the bodies. Better that neither of you know where they end up. I’ll deal with this—but you have to go now.”

  The Childes looked like they were in the mood for arguing, but he was having none of that. “Think about it. It’s all over. Matthias is dead. So is his second in command. With them gone, XOps will return to what it should be—and be run by the right people. You’re out.” He nodded at Childe, “I’m out. The slate is wiped clean—provided you let me handle it from here. Let’s do this the right way—one last time.”

  Her father cursed—which was something the man no doubt didn’t do very often. And then he said, “He’s right. Let me go change.”

  As her father disappeared, Grier looked at Isaac, her arms slowly crossing around herself, her eyes growing grave. “Is this good-bye for you and me? Tonight? Here and now?”

  Isaac went to her and captured her face in his hands, feeling all too vividly the reality he couldn’t escape and she wasn’t going to be able to live with.

  With a pain in his chest that had nothing to do with the bullet, he said one, devastating word: “Yes.”

  As she sagged, her eyes closing tight, he had to speak the truth: “It’s better that way. I’m not your kind of man—even if I don’t have to worry about XOps anymore, I’m not what you need.”

  Her lids flipped open and she glared at him. “How old am I?” she demanded. “Come on, how old. Say it.”

  “Ah . . . thirty-two.”

  “And you know what that means, legally? I can drink, I can smoke, I can vote, I can serve in the army, and
I can make my own damn decisions. So how about you let me choose what’s good for me—and what isn’t.”

  Right. It was so not the time to get turned on. And he really didn’t think she’d thought through all the implications of being with a man who had his background.

  He stepped back. “Go with your father. Let me clean up here and back in town.”

  Her eyes held his. “Don’t break my heart, Isaac Rothe. Don’t you dare break my heart when you know perfectly well you don’t have to.”

  With that, she kissed him and strode out of the kitchen . . . and as he watched her go, he felt pulled between two outcomes: one where he stayed with her and tried to make it work, the other where he left her to stitch up her life and move along.

  Overhead, he heard her and her father walk around as they got themselves ready to go out and pretend like they hadn’t seen two men get killed in their homes and weren’t praying that a soldier who they shouldn’t have ever met disappeared the bodies.

  Christ, and he even considered being in her life?

  Isaac was alone no more than twenty minutes later, the two of them making a hurried departure for the city in Childe’s Mercedes.

  Before they left, Isaac shook her father’s hand, but didn’t offer even his palm to Grier—because he didn’t trust himself not to kiss her one last time: Looking at her in her black dress, with her hair put together and her makeup on, she was as he had first met her, a beautiful, well-educated woman of privilege with the smartest eyes he’d ever had the privilege of staring into.

  “Be safe,” he said to her hoarsely. “I’ll call you to let you both know when it’s okay to come back here.”

  No tears, no protest on her end. She just nodded once, turned on her heel, and went to her father’s car.

  As the pair left, he walked to the front door and tracked the sedan’s taillights.

  He had to wipe his eyes. Twice.

  And upon the disappearance of those glowing red beacons, he felt as if he had been left behind. But that was such bullshit, wasn’t it. You couldn’t be left, if you were the one doing the departure.

  Right?

  Needing some kind of contact, some sort of hope, he looked around at the treeline on the far side of the rolling lawn again. No sign of Jim or his boys . . . or that dog.

  And yet he could have sworn he was being watched. “Jim? You out there, Jim?”

  No one replied. Nobody came out of the foliage.

  “Jim?”

  As he went back inside, he had the strangest feeling he was never going to see Heron again. Which was odd, because Jim had been so fired up to be a savior.

  Then again Matthias’s body was stiffening on the kitchen floor, which meant Isaac was safe now—so that man’s purpose had been served, hadn’t it.

  Although . . . just to be sure, he was keeping the bulletproof vest on until dawn.

  No reason to take being alive for granted.

  CHAPTER 51

  “Jim? You out there, Jim?”

  As Isaac’s eyes searched the trees, Jim stood no more than three feet away from the guy and he wished he could hug the motherfucker. God . . . when those two gunshots had gone off and he’d watched through the kitchen windows as both Matthias and Rothe went down, years had been shaved off his eternal life.

  But Isaac had been okay. He’d saved himself with some very clear, defensive thinking. Just as he’d been trained to do.

  “Jim?”

  And now, as he stared at his fellow soldier, pure, unadulterated elation flooded him. He’d won. Again.

  Fuck you, Devina, he thought. Fuck you.

  Isaac was alive and so were Grier and her father. And in spite of getting the soul wrong in the beginning, things had worked out properly—although Nigel’s punishment thing had turned out to be a nonissue, hadn’t it.

  Jim looked over his shoulder at Adrian and Eddie and was surprised to find that they weren’t all smiles.

  “What’s wrong—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. A mad swirling rush rose from his feet, twirling around him, rising up to claim his legs and hips and chest. He tried to fight it, but couldn’t run from—

  His molecules scrambled and scattered until he was a swarm of himself that moved out of the dimensions of time and space, traveling to some unknown destination.

  When he coalesced, he knew just where he was . . . and the sight of Devina’s worktable made his gut sour.

  He had not won. Had he.

  “No, you did not,” she said from behind him.

  Turning on his heel, he looked at her as she came in through the archway. She was in her brunette form, all lovely and lush and fake as a Barbie version of herself.

  She smiled, her red lips curling off her beautiful white teeth. “Matthias shot Isaac with the intent to kill him. Whether or not there was a death is not the measure. There was mens rea—a guilty mind.”

  Above her head, a black flag hung from the black wall, the first trophey for her.

  “You lost, Jim.” That smile got even wider as she lifted her arms and indicated her great, viscous prison that rose high above them both. “He’s here now, mine forever.”

  Jim’s hands curled into fists. “You cheated.”

  “Did I.”

  “You pretended to be me, didn’t you. That must have been how Matthias got into the farmhouse. You either made him look like me or you appeared as me.”

  Her smug satisfaction was all the confirmation he needed.

  “Now, now, Jim—I never cheat. So I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Devina strolled over to him, approaching him in a sensuous glide. “Say, would you care to stay awhile? I’ve got some ideas for how we could spend the time.”

  When she was right in front of him, her red-tipped nails drifted up his chest and she leaned in. “I love being with you, Jim.”

  With a hard clap, he captured her wrist and squeezed hard enough to break it. “You must be a glutton for punishment. In case you don’t remember, I shattered you last trip through the park.”

  The bitch had the nerve to pout. “You’re hurting me.”

  He didn’t believe that for a second. “And you’ll say or do anything.”

  Now she smiled again. “Too right, Jim, my love. Too right.”

  He dropped his hold as if she burned him, his stomach clenching up as he recognized the light in her eyes.

  “That’s right, Jim,” she murmured. “I have feelings for you. And that scares you, doesn’t it. Afraid you’ll reciprocate?”

  “Not. At. All.”

  “Ah, well, we’ll have to work on that.”

  Before he could stop her, she rose up and captured his mouth, kissing him quick and then biting his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

  She stepped back fast, as if she knew she was pushing it. “Bye for now, Jim. But we’ll be seeing each other soon. I promise.”

  With disgust, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spat on her floor. And he was about to cut her down, when he frowned, thinking of what Nigel had said on the lawn.

  Know that you shall go farther in this game if you use your head rather than your anger.

  Now Jim was the one smiling—albeit grimly. There were worse things than having your enemy fall in love with you: As strong as she was, as unpredictable and dangerous as her powers were, that look in her eyes right now, that burning, out-of-control look, was a weapon.

  Beating back his own emotions, he found himself reaching down and jacking his cock with his palm.

  Devina’s reaction was instantaneous and electric. Her hot stare flashed to his hips, her mouth parting like she couldn’t catch enough air, her breasts rising over the bodice of her dress.

  “You want this?” he asked gruffly.

  Like a puppet, she nodded.

  “Not good enough,” he told her, hating her, hating himself. “Say it, bitch. Say it.”

  In a hoarse, hungry voice, she breathed, “I crave you. . . .”

 
Jim released the hold on himself, feeling filthy inside and out. But war was ugly, wasn’t it, even if you were on the good, moral side.

  Means to an end, he thought. His body and her need were means to an end, and he would use them if he had to.

  “Good,” he growled. “That’s good.”

  With that, he willed his body to rise up from the floor, this time the twisting energy summoned up by him and no one else.

  As he levitated higher and higher, Devina reached for him, her face contouring into a kind of painful desire that juiced him up.

  And then he wasn’t looking at her anymore; he was scanning the walls of her dungeon, searching for the girl he hated leaving behind yet again . . . as well as the boss he had tried to save and failed.

  He would be back for the former. But the latter . . . he feared that Matthias had been laid to rest for an eternity, his never-ending suffering having been well-earned.

  Jim mourned the loss of the man, however.

  He’d wanted to redeem the guy.

  Jim came back to consciousness on Captain Alistair Childe’s lawn. And as he thought back to his first assignment, it seemed he excelled at coming and going on grass.

  Adrian and Eddie were on either side of him, the two angels grave and serious.

  “We lost,” Jim said. As if they didn’t already know.

  Adrian put his hand out, and when Jim reached up, the guy helped pull him to his feet. “We lost,” Jim muttered again.

  Looking over his shoulder, he thought briefly about going into the farmhouse and helping Isaac take care of Matthias’s remains, but he decided to stay put. The soldier was going to have a hard enough time making sense of all the things that couldn’t be explained—more contact with Jim was just going to give him another thing to get fucked in the head about.

  “Caldwell,” Jim said to his boys. “We’re going back to Caldwell.”

  “Fair enough,” Eddie murmured, like he wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

  And Jim wasn’t going to worry who was next in the game. As he’d learned with this particular assignment, the souls were going to find him. So he might as well follow what the center of his chest was telling him: namely that it was about time for the Barten family to have their daughter’s body to bury properly.