by Alison Paige
She shook her head. Akram was a demon. He consumed human souls to survive. He was heartless, self-centered and unfeeling. None of their time together mattered to him. They’d made love moments ago and he was already moving on, choosing another to take her place before their time had even ended.
Morrigan’s chest pinched with every heartbeat, made it hard to breathe. Whatever the past fifty years truly meant for her, it clearly wasn’t the same for the demon. She couldn’t let the same thing happen to Sophia. She couldn’t allow her little niece to make the same heart-wrenching mistakes she had.
“I won’t let you do this, Akram,” she said, rounding the bed and heading to the double French doors that led out onto the balcony. She flung the doors open.
“Where are you going, Raven?”
“To put my niece, and everyone else I care about, out of your reach.” She willed her body to change, holding the image of her Raven form in her mind as she took three long strides and leaped over the thick wood railing.
Pain rolled through her like a giant hand squeezing toothpaste from the tube. She was the tube and her Raven form was the toothpaste. Her breath caught in her throat, choked back the scream that always threatened when she shifted. Bones snapped, reshaped, organs shrinking, the pores of her skin sprouting feathers.
The ground fell away and the night air rushed around her body, ruffling her wings, lifting her up, up.
“I have your soul, Morrigan. It is mine until the last host is delivered,” Akram called after her. She looked down and saw him step out onto the balcony, watching her escape. “Do not make me take you that way, Morrigan. I will devour you. I will.”
You already consumed me—body, heart and soul. She flapped her wings and kept going.
“What’re you doing here, demon?” Nickolas stepped from a dark alcove to block Akram’s way down the hall.
“Where’s Morrigan?” He truly did not have time or patience to deal with petty jealousy.
“Morrigan? Far away from you, I hope. Serves you right,” he said, his top lip curling in a sneer. “Can’t keep a woman who was never meant to be yours in the first place. Morrigan belongs with us. She’s mine.”
Anger bolted up Akram’s spine like hot lava, turning his vision red. Never in all his years had he bothered with such useless sentiments, but lately they seemed to hit him in waves. “Morrigan was mine for fifty years, in every sense of the word. We were together longer than most mortal couples, each of us utterly responsible for and dependent on the other’s survival. And yes, soon her duty to me will be at an end. She will leave me to return to her family…to you. So do not bother me with your indignation. I assure you, I will suffer justly in the end.”
Nickolas snorted. “Says you.”
Akram glanced at the dark alcove Nickolas had been hiding in. The ice machine clunked, a fresh shower of cubes rained down into the open bin. Akram shifted his notice to the bucket resting on Nickolas’s hip under his arm.
Morrigan didn’t know he’d put up her family in a local hotel. Perhaps she was still searching the beach for their tents. He still had time, but not much. Morrigan had a quick mind, and a bird had an instinct to help it find its flock.
He had no doubt Morrigan was good for her word. If he wanted to live a moment longer than his host, he needed to make sure his future would play out the way he planned. If things didn’t work as he hoped, that single moment would be an eternity too long. “Fetch me the girl, Sophia. Tell her parents it is time.”
“What? Why? Morrigan is still your huntress. She told me so. You can’t take Sophia, too,” Nickolas said.
“I can do what I damn well like, Raven. Now do as I say and bring me the girl.” Muscles tightened, his heart ratcheting up a beat, pressure quickly building, so he could scarcely breathe. Akram clenched his jaw, fisting his hands, trying hard to keep the swell of emotions in check.
“Wrong answer, demon. You’re days of ruling us and stealing our women are over. It ends here, now, tonight.” Nickolas dropped the ice bucket, reaching behind his back at the same time. His stance widened, lowered, a knife flashed in his grip. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
“Clearly.”
The young upstart lunged at him, swiping the blade past Akram’s chest, almost nicking the side of his neck as he turned. “You mean to kill me, Raven?”
“Yeah,” Nickolas said and lunged again, slicing the air near Akram’s side. Metal met cloth and flesh, pain seared through his veins, screamed in his head. Akram ignored it.
“You fool. I am spirit. Incorporeal. This body is not my own,” Akram said. “You can’t kill me. Nothing can.”
“We’ll see about that.” Again Nickolas jabbed the blade at Akram, the two of them dancing in circles in the narrow hotel hallway.
Akram jumped back, missing the blade but slamming his back hard against the wall. The air gushed out of his lungs. He recovered just in time to dart sideways, dodging yet another attack.
With each miss Nickolas grew more crazed, more determined, his face red, veins bulging on his neck and forehead. Muscles tensed along his arms, his legs trembling with his anger. This was the man Morrigan would leave him for? This was the man who would have her, love her, be loved by her, until the end of her days? It wasn’t fair.
It’s not bloody fair.
A sudden swing of his arm and Nickolas’s knife slit Akram’s chest. Akram glanced down at the damage, the line of dark red blood already staining through his torn shirt. Pain roared through his body. It meant nothing. How had the dim-witted Raven done it? Akram was faster than a flash of light, swifter than the wind. How?
He looked up into Nickolas’s face in time to see the blade slicing toward his throat. Time slowed. Akram blinked. He knew. This was what he wanted. How it had to be. And then the knife slit through his flesh, spilling a rush of blood, hot and wet down his chest.
Nickolas wasn’t done. He’d turned giddy with his success, ramming his knife with manic glee up beneath the protective ledge of his sternum. The knife pierced Akram’s heart and Nickolas twisted the blade, slicing muscle, severing his artery. Like the intruder he was inside his body, Akram watched it happen.
Akram’s spirit could restore youth and vitality, could heal deformities and set back the damage of cancer and other terminal illnesses. But the body, no matter what, needed its blood. For that there was no substitute. This body was now beyond his repair.
For a moment, eons of survival instinct swirled to the surface and demanded he let go of the ruined body. His gaze riveted on Nickolas, seeing only the healthy soul and the body he needed. He could take him, possess him, with no effort at all.
Akram swallowed back the thought. Morrigan would never forgive him. She cared for this man, for her family. They were dear to her and she was dear to him. He wouldn’t take any as a host. Not even to save himself. Akram held on, hunkered down, refusing to be turned from his path.
He’d lied. He, Akram, could die…if he chose. All he had to do was let the death of the host take him, too.
The hall grew darker and Akram felt his body slide down the wall until he crumpled on the floor. Nickolas stood over him, his arm bloodied to the elbow, the knife fisted in his hand. Akram closed his eyes.
“Nickolas,” a girl’s voice said. “What’ve you done?”
And then the world went silent.
CHAPTER FIVE
“He can’t take her,” Morrigan said. “I’m still his huntress.” Her gaze moved from face to face around the hotel room. From her sister and her husband at the table, clinging to each other, cheeks blotchy, tearstained, to Nickolas, slouched on the edge of the bed.
He shrugged. “Maybe he’s freed your soul and you just don’t know it.”
“Don’t be stupid, Nickolas. You think I wouldn’t feel if my soul had returned?”
He shook his head, his gaze on the carpet. “Didn’t say it returned. Said he might’ve freed it. If you want him to have it, then it’s his whether he holds on to it or not.”
Nickolas looked away, rubbing his hand over his forearm, nervous.
“Nick, you said you saw him take her,” she said. “Did he say anything? Did he look…I don’t know, distressed?”
The look in Akram’s golden eyes standing on that balcony as she flew away into the night flashed through her mind. Anger, panic, pain, he was desperate to stop her. Or was he just desperate? Had he taken Sophia so when he consumed Morrigan’s soul he wouldn’t be without a huntress? It’d be typical behavior for a Leshii demon. But was Akram a typical Leshii?
Morrigan’s gut went cold, a heavy block of ice weighing in the pit of her stomach. She watched Nickolas’s face, hoping he’d tell her there was another reason. Hoping he’d say Akram had done something, said something that would explain.
Nickolas shook his head. “No. He just said it was time.”
The words echoed through her mind. The same words Akram had used fifty-one years earlier. He meant to take Sophia as his huntress, just as he’d done her. Just as he’d done to the Raven before her and the Raven before her and on and on into the dark, distant past.
Bastard. How had she let herself fall for such a self-centered fiend? Was this all her fault? Had she given Akram more credit than he deserved, hoped he was more than she knew he was? He’d never pretended to be anything more than a soul-eating demon. He’d never done a single thing that didn’t serve him in some way—even the pleasure of sex was a two-way street. Had her lonely heart twisted his actions, given him emotions, sentimental motives where there’d been only self-preservation?
She had to stop him. She couldn’t allow her confused heart to cloud her judgment any longer. No matter what he’d do to her, to her soul, she couldn’t let the demon wreak havoc on another young girl’s life, on her heart.
Nickolas was right. Their flock’s service to this demon had to end and Morrigan knew exactly how to do it. Her gaze flicked to her sister. “I know where he’s taken Sophia. I’ll get her back, but then you have take her and the rest of the flock out of here. Get as far away as you can and don’t let anyone know where you’re going.”
Her sister stood, still holding her husband’s hands, her face tight with pain and worry. “What about you? Your duty is nearly finished.”
Morrigan owed him one last soul, one last host. He already had her soul hostage. She’d force him to take her body, as well. Once inside her she’d end them both before he had a chance to escape.
Morrigan turned and headed for the door. “Don’t wait for me. I won’t be going with you. I won’t be going anywhere.”
“Where is she, demon?”
Akram didn’t turn around at the sound of Morrigan’s voice. He couldn’t. He hadn’t the energy left to him.
Worry eased from his shoulders like an icy chill chased away by a warm bath. He thought he’d overplayed his hand, allowed too much of the host’s lifeblood to escape the body. He thought he wouldn’t last to see her one last time.
Akram sank a little deeper into the high-backed Victorian armchair. He faced the balcony, purposely hiding a clear view of himself from the door where Morrigan stood.
“Morrigan, you’re here. Thank goodness.” Sophia rushed from the bathroom, where she’d gone for the third time to wet a washcloth or bring a dry one. She, silly bird, had been frantic to save Akram.
“Sophia. I want you to leave—now,” Morrigan said.
Sophia knelt in front of Akram, gingerly removing the soaked cloth from his neck and replacing it with the dry one she’d brought. Morrigan stepped around beside her and for the first time saw the state into which Akram had allowed himself to slip.
“What the hell?”
Sophia shook her head, her brows tight. “I know. It’s bad. The bleeding’s almost stopped, but he won’t leave the host for the new one I brought him.”
She tipped her chin to the young boy, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, who sat at the small table, stupefied by her magic Raven arrow.
Morrigan followed her gesture and seemed only then to have noticed the boy. “He’s a child,” she said. “And what are you doing bringing him hosts?”
Sophia shrugged, dabbing the gash on Akram’s neck. “I figured if I’m going to be his new huntress, it’d be cool if we were closer in age.”
“He’s more than one thousand years old,” Morrigan said.
Sophia glanced over her shoulder at her, glaring. “I know. But you weren’t here and as you can see, he needs a new host.”
Morrigan sighed, crossing her arms under her chest and shifting her weight to one hip. “Go home, Sophia.”
“What? No.” The young Raven slouched back from him, twisting to see her aunt behind her. “He wants me here.”
“Sophia, if you’re really supposed to be the next huntress, trust me, you want to take time to say your goodbyes,” Morrigan said. “Now, go. Go!”
Sophia startled at her raised tone, but didn’t budge.
Akram mustered his last bit of strength to nudge her with his knee. “Leave, you daft little bird. You were only bait. You’ve lured my huntress back to me. You’re service is complete. Now go back to your flock.”
“Bait? That sucks,” Sophia said, her teenage voice full of whine and sarcasm. She threw the bloodied washcloth at his feet in disgust. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll be back in a little while, anyway. He needs a host and as soon as you snag him one, you’ll be done. Then it’s my turn to live like a queen, never wanting for anything.”
Morrigan closed her eyes, shook her head. “Except everything you gave up to get it. Just get out of here, Sophia.”
The young Raven got to her feet and headed for the open balcony. She began shifting with each stride, and by the time she leaped from the railing she was fully in bird form.
“What the hell are you doing?” Morrigan asked him the moment her niece was out of earshot.
“I’m dying,” he said, though his voice was raw, almost too soft to hear.
“Right.”
He glanced at the boy. “Send him away.”
Morrigan crossed the small distance. She snapped her fingers inches from the boy’s nose, then lightly slapped his cheeks until he came to his senses. “Get out.”
Eyes wide and still a little foggy, the young man didn’t ask questions. He ran for the door, slamming it closed behind him.
Morrigan came back to stand in front of Akram. “I’ve got your next host. My last body and soul to bring you.”
“Where?”
“Here.” She drew her knife from its sheath on her thigh. “Me. You can take this body. You’ve already got my soul. Eat it. Do what you will to my body.”
What was she playing at? “Tempting thought, having your body to do with as I like. But you’ll die in the end,” he said.
“Yeah. I know. C’mon, you haven’t got much time left in that host. Let it go. Take me.”
“But, Morrigan, if I possess your body, won’t you kill us both with that knife?” he said, his inhale wrenching a hacking cough from his tightening lungs.
Morrigan blinked, surprise flashing through her dark eyes before she reeled it in. She stiffened, confidence returning with her steely determination. “Doesn’t matter. You don’t really have a choice, do you? I’m not finding you another host. It’s me or nothing.”
“Let me guess,” he said, ignoring the searing burn each breath brought to his throat. “Instead of wasting your last fight trying to cast me out like most souls do, you plan to hold on and pull me with you into death?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe I just want to end my life. Maybe being your food is my way of making up for all the lives I helped you take the same way. Or maybe I’d rather be demon food than be alone in the world surrounded by famil
y and friends who’ll never understand me.” She glanced away, her dark eyes glistening wet. She looked in his eyes again and pointed at her chest. “You’ll have come in here and find out.”
The smile that bloomed across his lips was born of pride and an utter lack of strength or will to suppress it. “You are a clever bird. Loving you was inevitable,” he said, ripping another painful round of coughs from his throat.
“What? What’re you saying?”
“There’s no need to sacrifice yourself,” Akram said. “I’m leaving with this host. I forgive your last debt to me. You’re free.” The back of his neck tingled like a million tiny pins, heated white hot, prickling over his skin. Her soul left him in a blaze and for the first time there was no cooling breeze of a new soul taking its place.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Search your heart, Morrigan. You’ll find your soul is yours again. It’s done,” he said.
“What about Sophia?” A tear shimmered down her pale cheek. Her chin quivered.
“As I said, she was merely a means to see you one last time. I have no desire for another huntress. I want only you. And you…are lost to me. I cannot bind you again. A Raven serves but once.”
“But you don’t have to die,” she said. “You can hunt your own hosts.”
“I am a Leshii demon. I function without emotion. You’ve ruined me, Raven Morrigan. You’ve made me love,” he said, his smile warming his chest even as his lungs struggled to breathe. “Thank you.”
“Why are you doing this? What do you get from dying?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why?”
“To survive is not the same as living. To live I must take a huntress and that would cause us both pain. I don’t wish to cause you any more pain, Morrigan.”
“A selfless act?” she asked.
He laughed and the pain it sent roaring through his chest, burning into his lungs and tearing at his flesh, nearly ended him. He gasped for breath, swallowed hard.