Embrace the Night

by Crystal Jordan

  Under other circumstances, he might have been able to convince himself it was just her body, just the chemistry they generated between the sheets, but the stolen moments they snatched for sex were buried under the time they spent just being together. He liked watching her tease Alex into laughing, liked flopping down in front of a television in whatever random hotel they happened to be in to watch some cheesy program, only to spend most of the time cracking up because not one of them could keep their sarcastic comments to themselves.

  They were in danger; they were on the run.... At this point, they could all be wanted fugitives, and he wouldn’t know. Nothing about it should have been comfortable. He was ready to fall over from exhaustion and strain, but he couldn’t think of anywhere in the world he’d rather be than right here, or any other people he’d rather be with.

  “This pizza is going to be cold before we eat it if you two don’t get a move on.” He shook his head to clear his wayward thoughts, and jumped when Ophelia dug her claws into his leg. He detached her from his flesh with a grunt, and petted her until she sighed and purred.

  “Coming!” Chloe called, and the way her voice echoed told him he was right and she was spreading her things out in the bathroom. His lips tugged in a reluctant grin.

  Alex dragged in from his room, propping himself against the counter across from Merek. Cocking his head, he listened for something Merek couldn’t hear. His eyes squinted into an almost-smile. “We could just eat without her.”

  At that second, Chloe appeared in her doorway. “Thanks a lot, brat.”

  Alex just snorted a little laugh, grabbed the stack of paper plates from the pizza place, and divvied them up. Ophelia gave an imperious mew, and Alex obediently went to retrieve a can of food from Chloe’s suitcase. No doubt about it, the cat had them well trained.

  A giggle drew Merek’s attention to Chloe, who was shaking her head at her familiar. Her gaze met his, and they both grinned, then chuckled, then laughed until they were holding their sides. Alex came back, popped the top off the can, and set it in front of the cat. “What’d I miss?”

  Chloe waved a hand helplessly in the air, and Merek had to grab it to keep her upright. “N-Nothing. It’s not even really that funny.”

  A fresh spate of laughter rolled out of him, and he grabbed a napkin to wipe his eyes. “No, it’s just tension relief, and the fact that the cat has us at her beck and call.”

  The strangest look entered Alex’s eyes as his gaze went from the familiar, back to the bedroom door, and then down to stare at his hand as if it belonged to someone else. “Man, if the pack could see me now, a wolf playing fetch for a cat.”

  And that just set them all off again.

  “Oh, gods.” Chloe leaned weakly against Merek’s side, and he let himself enjoy the feel of her. “Okay, really. We need to eat and get some sleep. We are way too giddy.”

  “Even cold pizza and lukewarm lettuce sounds good to me right now.” Alex flipped open the first of four cardboard boxes, and handed Chloe the plastic container with the salad she’d insisted they get.

  She forked a portion of greens onto everyone’s plate while the wolf served up gooey slices of combination pizza. Merek’s stomach rumbled like he hadn’t eaten in a month, but this was the first meal they’d had without tension humming through their muscles in days. They didn’t even bother sitting at the table, they just fell on their food like ravenous animals, and not even Chloe bothered to try to spark up a conversation.

  When they’d cleaned their plates, and both Merek and Alex had gone back for thirds, the kid sighed with deep satisfaction.

  “Exactly,” Merek said.

  Chloe snorted and heaved herself away from his side. “All right, let’s tidy up and hit the sack.”

  Any other day, that would have been the most exciting thing she could say to him, but the exhaustion weighed down on his very bones now that his hunger had been satiated. Pushing to his feet, he grabbed the empty pizza and salad containers, while Chloe stuck the leftover slices in the fridge and Alex gathered the dirty plates and Ophelia’s empty can of cat food. Then he went rummaging through the cabinets with Chloe to try to find a garbage bag. The apartment was furnished, but besides that, supplies were limited.

  A deep sigh echoed from the cabinet Chloe had her head in. “Looks like cold pizza for breakfast, and then we need a grocery store.”

  Alex hummed an agreement. “Yeah, less fast food would be nice for a while. I’m getting sick of it.”

  Eyebrows arching, Merek blinked at the wolf for a moment. “That’s got to be the first time in history a teenage boy has said that. You’re a mutant, kid.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Alex actually grinned at him.

  Ignoring them both, Chloe continued rifling through the contents of the kitchen until she found what she was looking for. “Thank the gods there’s coffee here. Instant coffee, so it’ll taste like tar mixed with drain cleaner, but it’ll be caffeinated, so I don’t care.”

  “What a trooper.” Alex gave her a one-armed hug, and she ruffled his hair, making Merek smile. Nice kid. He hoped the boy grew up to be a better man than his father. Narrowing his eyes, he focused on Alex. And saw nothing. He bit back a curse, his muscles going rigid. It wasn’t the static-fuzzed picture he usually saw when he looked at the wolf, but a huge blankness.

  What the hell did that mean?

  Only that the kid would be important to him. He sighed. The kid was already important to him. So was Chloe.

  As always, frustration clawed at him that his gift denied him the ability to protect those who mattered the most to him. The future was his to shape and command unless it really counted. Powerful and powerless at the same time. He fucking hated it. It was his job, his duty, to protect people using every weapon at his disposal. Bitterly ironic that what usually made him so valuable in just these situations was completely beyond his recall or control. He shoved a hand through his hair and turned away, moving to double-check the doors and windows as well as his magical shields.

  Plastic rustled while Alex and Chloe stuffed the garbage in a bag, and then there was a long pause during which he could sense Alex speaking telepathically to Chloe. Then his voice filled Merek’s mind. I’m headed for bed. Need anything before I go?

  “No, thanks. Sleep well.”

  A chuckle rippled through his thoughts. No worries on that one.

  Merek glanced back at Chloe, seeing only the woman and nothing of her future or past. He didn’t even have to try to harness his abilities with her. His muscles wound tighter as he faced her. “You should go, too.”

  “Not just yet.” She leaned back against the counter, folded her arms, and met his eyes with her sharp hazel ones. “Why do you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Every now and then you stare at me, tense up, and get this awful look in your eyes.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Are you seeing something bad in my future? If so, I’d like to know. I can take it.”

  “No. I still can’t see your future.” His hands flexed at his sides. “I just realized I can’t see Alex’s either.”

  She nodded, but her gaze didn’t waver. “Could you ever?”

  “Yeah, although . . . it was fuzzy. Like a television screen on the blink. Sometimes the picture was clear; sometimes there was nothing but static.” He forked his fingers through his hair, hating the truth. There was a lot of shit he could handle, but this was one thing he’d never be able to accept. “It’s like that with my partner Selina, too, but not with Alex anymore.”

  “So now you can’t see him either.” She shifted, settling more comfortably against the countertop.

  “No,” he growled. “Not at all. It’s just blank.”

  “Why?” He could almost see the scientist’s wheels spinning, running experimental scenarios in her head. The woman had to test everything. Him, his control, herself, her abilities, the world around her. “You’re this amazing clairvoyant, even Luca sounded in awe of your skills, so why are some people blank and some no
t? What makes your sight go on the fritz like that?”

  “It’s complicated.” He swallowed and let his chin drop to his chest. “The last person I couldn’t see anything with was my wife. Before her, my best friend growing up. Before him, my parents.”

  “So, people who are important to you in some way.” Her eyes narrowed, her head tilting as she considered. “Or people who become important.”

  “Yeah. The one and only vision I ever had of my wife was the first time I touched her. I shook her hand to introduce myself and got this flash of our wedding, where it would be, how she would look, how I would feel. Just this one single moment that burned into my brain.” One he’d done everything in his power to make come true. Good thing she’d been a scattered artist with no desire to ever plan anything, because most women he’d ever heard of would have balked at his controlling every aspect of their wedding. He’d just known he had to have that moment, that vision, that feeling.

  Now, it felt like a different person had been married to her, loved her. He wasn’t that man anymore, young and with just enough cocky idealism left to think he could save the world. He suppressed a snort. He didn’t even want to be that man anymore. Turning away from Chloe, he stared blindly at an ugly watercolor print hanging on the wall.

  “Something bad happened to her, didn’t it?” Her voice was soft, undemanding. He didn’t have to answer her if he didn’t want to. He sensed she wouldn’t press the issue. So, why would he tell her anything? He hadn’t spoken to anyone about this since . . . ever. Maybe it was the exhaustion that made him answer, maybe it was some heretofore unrevealed need to connect, maybe it was just Chloe and what she did to him.

  “Yeah. Something bad.” Him. He had happened to his wife. If he’d walked away that first day, if he’d never shaken her hand, she might be alive and well today. The thought was a punch to the stomach, even to this day. “It’s worse than that.”

  “Worse than something bad happening?”

  “I can’t—I can’t even remember her face anymore.” Guilt dragged vicious claws down his flesh. She’d died because she was his wife, and a decade later he couldn’t even recall what she had looked like. Ten years was nothing in a Magickal’s five centuries-long life. If they survived to a natural death. His wife hadn’t gotten that chance.

  “What?” Chloe’s arms looped around his waist, and her body warmed his back as she rested her cheek between his shoulder blades.

  He swallowed. “My wife. I can’t remember her face. If I focus on most people, I can see every detail of their lives, from the day they were born to the day they’ll die. All the possibilities. I can see them as clearly as if I were standing there with them.” He closed his eyes. “It’s not like that with the people who’ll have the biggest impact on my life. And her face has faded from my mind until I have to concentrate to remember it. Even then, it’s blurry, like one of those grainy old photographs.”

  Her lips brushed over his back. “I’m sorry.”

  Just that. He could feel her sympathy radiating from her, seeping into his skin, but she didn’t coddle or fuss, didn’t demand to know more, didn’t ask questions. She just held him the way he’d never let anyone hold him since his family died. Not for comfort or solace or need. He kept the world at arm’s length, and he liked it that way.

  He’d had sex since his wife’s death; he’d even had a relationship or two, but he’d always ended things before it got too deep. He’d always been able to foresee that it wouldn’t go too deep. A humorless smile curved his lips that the one woman who appealed to him most was the only one who tried to run when things got intense. Not that she could push him away even if she wanted to in their current situation, but she didn’t demand more than he was willing to give.

  The problem was she didn’t have to demand it, did she? He’d already given up his entire life for her, given everything for her. Cold clutched at his belly, twisting inside him, but he couldn’t deny the thought. He was always honest with himself about who he was and what he wanted. He made no excuses to himself or anyone else about what he was. Most of the time, he was a cynical bastard, the product of his life and circumstances. But with Chloe, he dared to hope . . . for far too many things, most of which he didn’t even want to acknowledge.

  “What was her name?” Chloe linked her fingers together on his chest, dragging his attention back to a story he didn’t want to tell.

  “Laura.” He sighed. Everything tangled up inside him. The past, the present, the future. Things that he saw so clearly for other people, but not with himself.

  Her fingers moved in reassuring circles on his chest. “That’s a nice name.”

  “She was a nice girl.” True, and not even close to the whole picture of who she’d been.

  “Can you tell me what happened to her?”

  He didn’t want to. Gods, but he didn’t. Not when the ugliness of it was etched into his mind, the memories that he couldn’t forget. But since Chloe had had the guts to tell him her worst nightmare, he couldn’t deny her the same. “She died.”

  Chloe just waited, her arms secure around his waist. It was easier not looking her in the eyes, not having to see the expression on her face when he told her the truth. “We lived in Chicago—I grew up there. I was a new detective assigned to their MTF Violent Crimes Unit. It was one of my first cases.” One he hadn’t had the experience to handle, though he hadn’t realized it at the time. He cleared his throat, pushed out the words that would revolt the average person. “A real bitch, too. A serial killer was targeting Magickal women, sexually assaulting them with wands, and then stabbing them to death with knives from their own kitchens.”

  “Wands?” She stirred against his back, her arms tightening.

  He could hear the surprise in her voice. Only little kids first learning magic used wands as a focusing tool. An adult Magickal would never need one, and wouldn’t want to be that indiscreet anyway. “Yeah. Wands.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Yeah.” But he’d seen worse since then, much worse. At the time, it had horrified him, added another callus to his already scarred soul. “We arrested a guy who met the profile, had no alibis, and knew way too much about the crime scenes to be uninvolved.”

  “And the wands?” Her fingers balled in his T-shirt, but she didn’t recoil. He had a feeling the stubborn witch was going to stand there for as long as he wanted to keep talking, no matter how bad it got.

  A brief smile touched his lips, and he covered her small, warm hands with his. “He was on a kind of antidepressant that caused impotence. All the pieces fit. We thought we had our guy.”

  “You didn’t.” The words came out a whisper, and a tiny shiver went through her.

  “No.” He snorted. In retrospect, he should have seen it, should have understood the case would get personal when he couldn’t get a clear precog read on anything. “Instead, we just pissed the real killer off by giving credit to someone else.”

  She didn’t ask how this related to his wife, but he could feel her going rigid behind him, knew she’d already guessed what had happened to Laura. Bile burned the back of his throat, threatening to choke him. Cold spread through him, freezing around his heart. Gods, he didn’t know if he could say it. Didn’t know if he could force out the words he’d never said to anyone. So he told her about his wife, instead of what had ended her life. That much, at least, he could manage.

  “Laura, she was a Fae artist, you know? She had that stereotypical flakiness. Hell, she owned it, played it up. Frustrated the hell out of me, sometimes, but that was just her.” A sigh eased out of him. They’d been so young, so damn sure of themselves. “She forgot to set the warding spells on the house. Wasn’t the first time.” And he’d given her hell about it every time, but Laura was Laura was Laura. She’d apologized, promised to remember, and then a week or two would go by and he’d come home to an unprotected house.

  He was silent so long, lost in his own thoughts, that he jerked when Chloe spoke. “Who did it if it
wasn’t the guy you arrested?”

  “His twin sister. That was how he’d known about the crime scenes. She told him.”

  “A woman did that? To other women?” Her palms flattened against his stomach, and he could feel the deep breath she dragged into her lungs. He heard the trained medical professional in her voice next. “That’s a fairly rare psychopathic trait to find in women.”

  He nodded even though he doubted she could see it. “They were both abused as kids by their father. Seriously abused. Sexually. With wands, among other things.”

  “Oh, gods.” Horrified woman washed the doctor away, and she wedged herself even closer to his back.

  “I came home and . . . found Laura like that.” His belly heaved as the memories he’d have given anything to burn from his mind assaulted him in vivid, gruesome succession. The wand had still been inside her, a knife from a set her parents had given them for a wedding present protruding from her chest, her eyes blank, and her face waxen. He’d slipped in the ocean of blood around her, fallen in it before he’d reached her side. His mind had known she was gone, but he’d still radioed for an ambulance, praying someone could undo what had been done, that somehow the awful metallic stench of blood would be gone and she’d be there, smiling at him and telling him she’d burned dinner so it was Chinese takeout again. “We’d only been married five months, and it was over. I lost her.”

  “And you blamed yourself.” The soft sob was almost his undoing, and he jerked away, every muscle in his body shaking. She came around him anyway, took his face in her hands. Like him, she wouldn’t let him run away. She blinked back tears and searched his face. “You still do. Blame yourself. Your clairvoyance. For not seeing what was coming, for not saving her.”