Kindling the Darkness

by Jane Kindred

“Well, thank God I’ve never been accused of being normal.”

  Before Lucy could respond, the little bell on the door handle jingled. He’d forgotten to lock up.

  Kelly peered around the door and smiled tentatively at them. “I left my purse. I’ll just run in back and get it.”

  “No problem. I was just about to close up.” Oliver discreetly wiped the dust off the seat of his pants while Kelly dashed into the back. Good thing she hadn’t shown up a few minutes earlier. That would have been awkward.

  She returned with the purse strapped over her shoulder. “You guys looked busy when I came by, so I went to Rags & Riches for a little bit. Have a good night.”

  Oliver groaned as she closed the door behind her. At least they hadn’t been naked wrestling. As much as he’d have preferred that, to be honest.

  Lucy was still staring at him warily, as if she expected him to throw her out. Oliver walked to the door and locked it and pulled the shades.

  Lucy’s eyes were suspicious as he walked back toward her. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure we aren’t interrupted. I thought I might give you a little piece of my soul.”

  Chapter 15

  Lucy didn’t stop him as he stepped in for the kiss. Dammit. He was right. She’d been picking a fight like some stupid, awkward adolescent. She did like him, and she wasn’t at all accustomed to the feeling. For that matter, she couldn’t remember ever having sex with the same man twice. Sex was for releasing tension, getting an itch scratched, and that was it.

  She melted into Oliver as he slid his arms around her, ignoring the part of her brain that was reciting a litany of why giving in to her attraction for Oliver was dangerous, could compromise her integrity in doing her job, why she didn’t deserve to be desired because she was bitchy and cold and picked childish fights. And had infernal blood—but not, as her dream-id hell beast had pointed out, enough infernal blood to be worthy of hell’s throne.

  She told her brain to suck it and indulged in the taste and texture of Oliver’s mouth and the feel of his skin as she slipped her arms over his shoulders and curled her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck.

  His hands had moved from caressing her to studiously, methodically undoing the buttons on her shirt, which he tugged from her waistband to get to the last of them. She shivered as he reached the bottom button and laid open the shirt, his hands inside the shirttails lightly stroking her sides.

  To Lucy’s disappointment, Oliver paused and released her mouth. “What are these?” His thumbs brushed over the healing marks of Rhea’s artwork peeking out over the top of her waistband.

  “Oh.” Lucy hadn’t expected anyone to see them. “Inkless tattoos.” She sucked in her breath as Oliver unzipped the pants for a better view. “They were...ceremonial. They’re not permanent.”

  “They’re beautiful.” He dropped to his haunches and kissed the top of one hip bone, letting his mouth linger and intensifying the shiver still rippling through her.

  “My sister-in-law’s sister...”

  Oliver paused and looked up. “What?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  He returned his attention to the tattoos, kissing his way down from them to the band of her underwear. His mouth hovered over the fabric, damp heat from his breath drawing damp heat from between her thighs, and she gasped as he closed his mouth over the crotch of the panties, pressing his tongue between the cleft and against her clit.

  Lucy closed her eyes, falling under his spell again, ready to throw caution to the wind, ready to break all her rules. Her irritating, rational brain was like a trapped animal rattling its cage in futility. Don’t do it. (Shut up.) You can’t trust him. (Who cares?) You’re pathetic. She continued to ignore the voice as Oliver slipped her underwear down. You’re on your period. Her higher brain seized on that one.

  Eyes snapping open, she took a stumbling step backward.

  Oliver was on his knees, looking puzzled. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m on my period.”

  He blinked up at her with a sly smile. “I’m not seeing the part where that’s a problem.” Lucy’s eyes widened, and Oliver laughed. “Honestly. I don’t mind.”

  But she was already pulling things up and zipping things and putting herself back into place, feeling awkward. “I do.”

  Oliver straightened. “Okay. No worries.” He watched her button her shirt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “You didn’t upset me.”

  “You seem upset.”

  “I am not upset!” Lucy sighed and combed her fingers through the swoop of hair in front of her eyes. “Sorry. I am upset. I’m upset with myself.”

  Oliver studied her quizzically, as if she were a new species he’d encountered unexpectedly in the wild. “What for? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “For wanting you.” The words came out too loud and harshly, as if it were a condemnation of him instead of herself, and Lucy was horrified to feel tears burning behind her eyes. Worse, she could tell from his expression that he could see it. She turned away from him, blinking rapidly, and grabbed her coat from the counter.

  When she turned back, he had his hands in his pockets, watching her with a frown. “I don’t really understand what’s going on here.”

  “Nothing’s going on. I just made a mistake.”

  “By wanting me.”

  She shoved back her bangs in frustration. “No—it’s not about you. It’s about me. I have responsibilities—to Smok International, to your council. To the people of this town and this state.”

  “To yourself?”

  She ignored that. “It’s partly my fault that this hell beast is even in our dimension. It’s here because a necromancer held the gates open to absorb hell’s energy and prevent my brother from descending until the necromancer had gotten as much power as he wanted. And that necromancer used a shade—an unanchored spirit of the recent dead—to control me and lure Lucien into his trap. So for those few minutes before the necromancer was defeated, the gates swung both ways. And I’ve been tracking down every demon that escaped ever since. This is one of the last, and it’s the worst. And while I’m indulging my sexual urges, someone else could be dying.”

  Oliver looked down at his feet, his forehead creased in thought. “I see. So I’m distracting you.” He nodded thoughtfully and glanced up again. “Though I have to say that, from my end, at least, it’s a little more than just sexual urges.”

  For some reason, the idea that it was more than sex made her cheeks warm with embarrassment in a way that sex itself did not.

  “I think about you all the time. Half the time, it’s because I’m furious with you.” His mouth curved in a slight smile. “But you’ve gotten under my skin, Lucy Smok. And that doesn’t happen to me very often. And if I’ve gotten under yours, even half that much, maybe you owe it to yourself to examine why you think you don’t deserve that.” He held up his hand before she could refute the statement. “Because that’s what I see all over your face. That you think desire—whether it’s for sexual pleasure or even just companionship—is selfish. And I wish I could confront whoever taught you that and give them a damn piece of my mind.”

  Lucy was speechless. She pulled on her jacket slowly, trying to formulate a response, any response.

  “So that’s it? You’re leaving again?”

  “I have a hell beast to kill. But I will. Examine it.”

  “It?”

  “Why I don’t deserve to desire or be desired.”

  Oliver frowned. “No...why you think you don’t deserve to.”

  “Same thing.”

  His head shook definitively. “Nope. Not even close.” He stepped in toward her once more before she could move past him, a question in his eyes as he brought his hand to the side of her neck and stroked his thumb along her jaw.
“Am I wrong in thinking you feel what I feel? Just tell me if I am, and I’ll keep my distance. I don’t want to be that guy. Tell me you want me to back off, and I will. No hard feelings. I’ll respect your boundaries.”

  Lucy closed her eyes for a moment, his scent and his touch making her heart beat faster and her breath quicken, everything inside her crying out for him—except for that holdout, that one corner of her brain saying she was stupid to let go and fall. She could regain her professional footing here, put up her wall. Feel safe. Feel nothing.

  “You’re not,” she said.

  His expression was puzzled when she opened her eyes. “I’m not?”

  “That guy. And you’re not wrong.”

  With both hands framing her face, he lowered his head and brought his lips to hers, and she was ready to lose herself in him, to tumble into the unknown territory of trust and emotional surrender and unfettered desire. But the kiss was brief and tender, almost chaste. No, definitely not chaste, but it was different from the frantic, overwhelming kisses they’d shared. It was a promise that there was more to come. He would be there. There was no rush.

  But now he was all business, moving aside to let her pass. She’d almost forgotten she was leaving. She buttoned her coat, trying to adjust her internal compass as he walked her to the door.

  “Have you considered my suggestion about teaming up?” he asked as they reached the front. “This thing has eluded capture twice—”

  “Three times.”

  “Three?”

  “It attacked me the morning I met you, right after I left Jerome. I stopped for gas in Clarkdale, and it was waiting for me.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “I wasn’t working for you then.”

  “You’re not working for me now. You’re working for the council. And I think the cat’s pretty much out of the bag that my experience makes me at least tactically qualified to help hunt.”

  She turned back at the door and studied him. Was it experience or current job skills?

  He seemed amused by the way she was sizing him up. “I am the one who recommended Smok Consulting to the council after all.”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow. “I thought you voted against it.”

  “I did. But since they were determined to bring in an outsider, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t Darkrock.” Maybe he was just trying to convince her that he wasn’t on active duty, but he sounded sincere.

  She tried to hide her surprise. “Do you promise to let me take the lead?”

  Oliver smiled. “In every possible way. So, do you have a plan for where to hunt tonight?”

  “Going back to the mine shaft.”

  “You think it’s sticking close to it? Hiding out in there during the day?”

  “I don’t think it hides at all. I think it takes advantage of its human form to blend in. And I think it wants to fight with me, so it doesn’t really matter where I go, it’s going to be there.”

  “Then why the mine?”

  “Because I can back it into a corner if I play my cards right.”

  * * *

  She brought the crossbow again, despite Lucien’s assertion that an arrow would be no more effective than a bullet. The creature had shown that it felt pain, so if nothing else, she could make it suffer, and hopefully slow it down long enough for Oliver to get off some shots of his own. He brought the tranquilizer gun loaded with darts containing a dose of ketamine designed for big game like ogres and trolls. And they took Oliver’s truck just in case they needed to haul away a carcass—or an unconscious beast.

  Lucy tried to ignore the little voice in her head that still didn’t quite trust Oliver as they drove to the site. She was being ridiculous. No one could have two such distinctly different personalities. Still, on the remote chance that he really was the hell beast—or working with Darkrock—she held back a few details of her plan.

  She left the sight off the crossbow this time in favor of thermal-imaging goggles—and Oliver, oddly enough for someone who was no longer a Darkrock operative, had a pair of his own. Her plan was to hit the beast from a distance with a single arrow followed by a barrage of rounds from her Nighthawk Browning to incapacitate it. She might get lucky this time, and it might go down. But if it didn’t, Oliver would be standing guard at the entrance to the mine with the trank gun.

  Oliver argued with her, wanting to head into the shaft with her, but Lucy “pulled rank” on him, reminding him that the council had hired her because of her expertise. She knew what she was doing. It would have been even better, of course, if she were half as confident as she sounded.

  She chose the same entrance as before, going in as far as the tracks they’d left the last time—scuffed by their fight but still distinguishable. The cart rail tracks turned off here toward another section, while the path to the right was less defined. Lucy scanned the ground, her crossbow at the ready. There were tracks here, all right. Two sets. One large...and one small. The hellhound was here, and the beast was following it.

  She paused and lowered the crossbow as she looked deeper into the tunnel. If she hit the hellhound, the Soul Reaper would shatter its corporeal form. The process was agonizing, but she’d hardened herself to it, knowing she was doing a necessary job. And the creatures she sent back to hell were fine, of course, once their matter reconstituted in their own plane. A little temporary agony was the price they paid for taking advantage of the breach to enter a realm they didn’t belong in.

  It was still her job to return the hellhound to where it was supposed to be. But she wasn’t sure she could take aim at a juvenile wolf, much less a boy. She also wasn’t sure she ought to. Goddammit. Oliver’s sensitivity crap was rubbing off on her. And who knew how much harm his treating the hellhound like a human boy had done it? She’d checked out the storage unit after he left this afternoon. He’d brought the boy comic books and a little handheld video game system. He’d shown him caring and affection. How was a creature bred in hell for the purpose of hunting lost souls supposed to process that kind of information?

  A piece of gravel bounced on the path behind her as though a boot had kicked it, and Lucy whirled, ready to let an arrow fly, only to see Oliver making his way down the tunnel.

  “Jesus, Oliver. I could have killed you. I told you to wait at the entrance.”

  “I got to thinking that it would make more sense to hit the thing with the tranquilizer first. Isn’t slowing it down the whole point?”

  “Keeping it from escaping again is the whole point.”

  “But if we hit it with a trank dart, it won’t be escaping.”

  “And if we don’t hit it with anything and it gets past us, we’ve left a killer on the loose. Again. This damn thing has been toying with me. I can’t afford to let it outsmart me anymore.”

  “If it comes at either one of us, we have each other’s backs. Don’t worry. We’ve got this. It’s not going anywhere.”

  It felt like he was deliberately sabotaging her. Which would make sense only if he was working with Darkrock to take it in alive—or he was the hell beast. Lucy studied him through the night-vision goggles. She’d noticed a fading scar on his left shoulder earlier that her conscious mind had eagerly ignored. She’d hit the beast in its left shoulder the other night. But he didn’t feel like a hell beast.

  “Lucy.” Oliver nodded toward the path ahead of them. Something was moving in the dark.

  Lucy trained her crossbow on a flash of bright fur and a hulking shape, but Oliver knocked her arm aside with a shout as she fired, sending her arrow wide and high as her target headed deeper into the tunnel.

  “Dammit, Oliver!”

  “You were going to hit Colt.”

  “The hell I was. I had the beast in my sights, and you ruined the shot.”

  “It wasn’t the wolf. It was the kid.”

  “Oliver, I know what I saw.�
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  “I’m telling you, Colt was there.”

  “We can argue about what you think you saw later. We’re losing it.” Lucy took off in the direction the thing had gone. She spotted it around a corner and got off a shot this time. It hit the beast’s flank but didn’t go deep, and the creature shook it off and kept running.

  “You hit him.” Oliver grabbed her by the arm and spun her about. “You could have killed him!”

  “I hit the damn hell beast!”

  Oliver’s face was a mask of fury. “You’re so damn sure that everything not fully human is evil that you’re telling yourself stories about what you’re hunting. At least have the decency to admit that you don’t care what you hit.”

  Oliver was out of his mind. It was four times the size of the little wolf that had run from them this morning. She knew the beast when she saw it.

  She shook him off. “Stay out of my way. If you mess with my shot one more time, I can’t guarantee you won’t take the next one.”

  “Now you’re threatening me?”

  “I’m telling you to stay the hell out of my way.” At the end of the tunnel, the creature had turned to face them. Lucy raised her crossbow, and Oliver lifted the dart gun, but he was aiming it at her. “Jesus Christ, Oliver. Are you fucking crazy? Put that thing down or use it on the wolf!”

  “I’m not going to stand here and watch you kill him.”

  “It’s not a him, it’s a thing.”

  “It’s Colt. He’s a goddamn kid.”

  “It is not Colt.”

  They’d lost their advantage by bickering, and it was coming for them, fast. Lucy tossed the crossbow aside and drew her gun, but Oliver had moved in front of her.

  “Get the hell out of my way, or I’ll shoot it right through you,” she warned. But he’d cost her the shot, and the hell beast leaped on him, knocking him against the side wall of the shaft before turning to face Lucy with a grinning snarl. Lucy shot it. Twice. Three times. The bullets didn’t faze it. It knocked the gun from her hand before she could shoot again, and Lucy felt the infernal blood surge in her veins as it struck her. The goggles were knocked off as they rolled in combat, the wolf snapping at her limbs and Lucy whipping it aside with a long-taloned wing.