I really hadn’t changed at all.
Chapter 12
I came around slowly, aware of a curious weight settled across my chest. For a few blissful moments, all I knew was the sweet, wild scent of meadows and an exotic musk—Bast’s scent. She smelled like far-off places, like forgotten memories, and my steady heartbeat quickened with keen and foolish hope. I could pretend, just for a few moments, that I deserved to be content. Then the sounds of New York filtered into my apartment and reality chased away my hiding place, reminding me I was the monster in this dream and that I didn’t belong.
Bast ran a fingernail around my nipple and then sent those sharp nails lower. A scatter of delicious shivers stirred me fully awake. She hooked one leg possessively around mine and pulled herself over me. Her body was fluid in motion, muscles lean but firm—coiled strength—and her golden skin gleamed with the same luster as her alter ego’s black coat. She prowled lower, trapping my thighs between hers. Where her warm skin brushed mine, shivers sparked. I’d lost myself in her smooth skin and maddening curves last night and wanted to again.
I reached for her face, hoping to draw her up into a kiss, but she batted my hand away and growled low in her throat. She tilted her head up, mischief glowing in her green cat eyes. She grinned, displaying sharp, pointed canines, and ran the tip of her tongue over her lip.
Last night was a blur. What had started as a questioning kiss had turned into ferocious need. The many scratches and bites throbbing on my shoulders and other parts were evidence of Bast’s enthusiasm. We’d each taken what we needed from the other and hadn’t been gentle about it. But now, with the look in her eyes and the feel of her tongue in its slow, deliberate exploration—there was more to this than quenching desires.
She pulled up, planted her hands on either side of my head, and locked her gaze inches from mine, pinning me beneath her. If I touched her, she’d slap my hand away again. That gaze was an order.
Prey, it said. Don’t move. You’re mine.
My quick breaths betrayed my building anticipation. In five hundred years, no woman had trapped me quite like she did. I loved that about her, loved how fearless and dominant she was, but her dominance wasn’t stolen by force. She had earned her alpha status.
I spread my hand against her hip, needing to touch her. Her responding growl reverberated low and deadly, thrumming through me and sweetening my desire, while also pooling heat way down below. I could have ignored the warning, ridden my hands up her back, pulled her down, and taken her, but that wasn’t the game she wanted to play.
Leaning into my shoulder, she braced herself on an elbow and shifted her free hand lower, swirling her fingers across my bare skin.
My thoughts had funneled down to one thing.
Lower, I silently begged and may even have said it out loud. Lower her hand went, gliding, swirling.
“Look at me,” she purred.
I turned my head and locked gazes with her. Her green eyes shone, and inside, her brilliance stirred.
I blinked and tried to turn my face away, breaking contact, but her hand caught my jaw and pulled me back.
“Look at me,” she said again, this time teasing a thread of compulsion through the words.
I felt the push and opened my mouth to warn her, but she planted a finger on my lips, sealing away the protest.
She was playing a dangerous game, one I couldn’t resist. I flicked my eyes up and her glare captured mine while her hand closed around my cock. I arched into her grip. I’d never been very good at self-control. She laughed, a deep, salacious chuckle, and collecting the wetness, she moved her hand in a way that made me forget all the warnings I needed to tell her.
Our gazes entwined, my soul tugging at hers, sinking threads of darkness into her light. Her soul embraced it, welcoming me—the innocent always did—but no soul could withstand mine. As I sank into her, and her hand worked its rhythm, and the pleasure beat at my barriers, chilling stabs of fear plunged in. I wanted to go deeper and wallow in her brilliance, like maybe I could cleanse myself of the darkness if I drowned myself in her light. It felt like coming home, like I would always be safe, always be welcome, until the darkness in me rose up like a storm on the horizon. Pleasure wrenched the shreds of resistance away. Her eyes drew me in and led me on, and I stalked her soul. I could take her, make her mine, and swallow her down. Heated need beat in time with her hand, and the darkness surged, hungry and all-consuming.
With a cry, I tore my gaze away and squeezed my eyes closed, maybe I’d even told her to stop, but her lips were on mine, her tongue pushing in. Her hands were suddenly on my face, and she lowered herself onto me, capturing all of me.
“It’s okay,” she whispered against my mouth, hips rocking, her body driving me toward the edge. “It was always okay.”
I still had hold of her light and pulled it tighter, higher, harder. Snapping my eyes open, I pulled her down, twisted, flipping her onto her back, and thrust deep. Her nails dug into my shoulders, and for a few blinding moments, I froze. She arched, her lips parted, breaths coming fast and ragged, and I was sure I’d never seen any woman more beautiful than her. Body and soul, I could have both. A cruel, dark voice urged me to drink her down while she writhed and screamed her pleasure. I could devour her soul and fuck her until there was nothing left to take.
Horror thrust brittle ice through my veins. I whipped my head to the side, shattering the deep hold I had on her. Her soul slipped out of my reach like cool sand through my fingers.
“Bast, by Sekhmet, I can’t…”
She quivered beneath me, sank her claws into my shoulders, and then raked them down my back. Pain chased away the fear, and when she growled my name, I lost myself in her until she came with a shattering cry.
A wide, gratified smile tugged at her lips. She pulled me down, darted her tongue into my mouth, and nipped my lip. I responded, but the kiss was hollow.
“You can’t,” I whispered, words failing. “We can’t…”
I pushed out of her arms and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, showing her my back. She had no idea how close I’d come to yanking all of the brilliance out of her.
“You can’t tempt me like that.” Tremors rolled through me and my heart pounded, heavy and loud. Magic buzzed beneath my skin. It had been close—too close. Hunger plucked at the threads of pleasure, wanting more. Even now I wanted to turn and feed.
“You’re stronger than you think.”
“You don’t know me.” She thought she did. That was the problem.
Her hand ran up my back and over my shoulder. “I know you well enough. You’d never hurt me.”
She was wrong—so wrong. If she could see what I saw and knew the kind of darkness I was made of, she wouldn’t be here. She certainly wouldn’t have let me touch her. If she knew how close she’d come to being mine…
“You liked it,” she purred, close to my ear. Her hair tickled my shoulder and my neck, and her soft lips followed.
Oh, I liked it. I liked it a lot. I liked the feel of all that goodness, all that light, and how I could crush it and devour it until there was nothing left. The fact she’d held my gaze, challenged me, and ridden my pleasure at the same time, I had no idea how I’d resisted, and that terrified me.
“You need to leave.”
She pulled back and a cool draft trickled down my back in her absence. The bed rocked, and I listened to her snatch up her clothes.
A slither of sunlight had pierced the gloom. My gaze strayed to the dust motes drifting through the daylight’s glare, and then my thoughts fell to the spirits of the underworld, my home, and the death I’d found there. The sunlight fizzled away, my imagination turning the dust to ash.
When I twisted to look at Bast, she was tugging on her waistcoat. She kept her eyes down and focused on the buckles. Her fingers trembled. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, that I hadn’t meant for things to get so out of control, that she should never have come to me for help, and that this was a mistake—again
.
Instead, I asked, “Why did you decide to have the child?”
Her head jerked up. “Because”—she flipped her short hair out of her eyes—“I wanted to show you that you’re capable of more than darkness.”
Her words struck me like a punch to the gut. I slumped forward and shuddered. She didn’t know how bad it had gotten in the underworld. She didn’t know the hundreds of innocents I’d devoured. She didn’t know the high I craved when every soul went down.
And the girl, our daughter—the girl with no home and no hope. I prayed to whatever god would listen to me that she wasn’t like me.
Capable of more than darkness. Emotion, sweeping and heady, caught a hold of me and I was glad Bast couldn’t see my face. Why did her words hurt like this, like someone had punched into my chest and torn out my heart?
More than darkness. I wished it were true, and that was where the ache came from. I wanted her—the woman with the soul filled with hope and light—to be right, but she was so very wrong.
“You should look to Osiris for answers,” Bast was saying.
I dragged my hand down my face and blinked my sight back into focus, back into the room and my life. When I turned again, my smile was back, plastered on my face like a mask.
“If I look to that bastard for anything, it’ll be for a place to stab Alysdair in deep.” I heard my voice going through the motions and saying the same things, but the hurt her words had caused rippled on.
Bast collected her coat and shrugged it over her shoulders. “Besides him and Anubis, there’s nobody left who can control the jackals. Anubis hasn’t been interested in any of us for as long as I can remember. But Osiris? There’s something about him… Like he’s buying time.”
Osiris’s words came back to me—how he’d been planning for millennia and how time was something a god had a surplus of. Yes, it would be better to focus on Osiris and the murders and not on the fact that I’d almost killed a good woman because it felt good to fuck and devour at the same time. If she knew the truth, she’d know I wasn’t fit to be a father, and she wouldn’t hold out the foolish hope that I could change.
I fell back on the bed and propped my head up on my hand. “This—you and me—can’t happen again.”
Her lips turned down. She managed to mask the pain in her eyes, but only after I’d seen the glimmer. “Don’t worry. There’s no chance of that.”
Apologies were back on my lips, but I swallowed it. This was for her own good, and telling her sorry would have been for mine.
“I need to go,” she said but didn’t move. Her gaze glided over me. All the desire was gone, and regret hooded her eyes. “You could stop feeling sorry for yourself and help me.”
“Why would Osiris attack your blessed?” I asked, turning the topic away from me while neglecting to mention I’d made a deal to kill a god so I could return to the home I’d been cast out of for her blessed.
She sighed. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to Osiris in decades.”
Interlocking my hands behind my head, I stared at the protection spellwork coating my ceiling, and traced the swirling lines and intricate hieroglyphs. The pattern helped clear my head and focus.
Bast noticed where my gaze was pinned. “Protection spells? You’re paranoid.”
“Ever have someone try to slit your throat in your sleep?”
Her brow shot up. “No.”
Of course she wouldn’t have. Everyone loved her. Which begged the question: Who would target her blessed women?
“There’s a connection between the women,” she said. “Something we’re not seeing. I’ll go over their activity for the last few months and see if I can find anywhere they converged.”
A pounding on the door rattled my windows.
“Ace!” Shu barked from the landing.
Bast’s lips twitched. She flicked her hair out of her collar and strode toward the door.
“Don’t open—”
Shu entered my apartment like a whirlwind in a fur coat. She barely spared Bast a glance and didn’t blink at me sprawled naked on the bed. “You have no idea the shit I’ve had to deal with in the last twenty-four hours, and here you are, fucking your ex?”
I didn’t move. She wasn’t pissed off that I was screwing Bast. She hadn’t known whether I was back from the underworld or if I’d ever come back. Her anger buried what I knew had been real, heartfelt fear. Had I not come back, she would have had no choice but to return to the underworld, and the souls wouldn’t be as welcoming to her as they had been with me.
“Bye, Ace.” Bast sauntered out the door without a backward glance, leaving me to face Shu.
Five and a half feet of fierce ex-demon was fuming at the foot of my bed. “You turned off your cell.”
I padded naked to the shower. My bare ass wouldn’t deter her—very little did. Sure enough, she followed. I shut the shower door closed on her glower. “The kid?”
“Yes, the kid. He’s not a kid anymore. If you had your cell on you’d know Cujo has a lead. You need to get down there and deal with it. He’s been fielding reports to keep the cops from getting killed.”
I’d never tell her, but she was exactly what I’d needed: a reason to throw on my coat, pick up Alysdair, and go to work—a distraction. She kept my dark thoughts at bay. Ironic, considering who—what she was.
“Okay.” I switched on the water and buried my face in the hot jets. Thoroughly soaked, I asked, “Shu, do you know any illusion spells?”
“What for?” she snapped loud enough for me to hear over the hissing water.
“Insurance.”
A guttural sound filled the bathroom, the growl sounding more demon than human. “You need a lot of power to pull off one of those.”
I could just make out her outline, rigid and stubborn, through the fogged glass. I waited, knowing she couldn’t resist the promise of a challenging spell.
“I can craft one, but I can’t activate it,” she said. “Not in this useless body. But you could, in your current state.”
“That’s what I thought.” I ran my hands through my hair, washing off the smells of sex, ash, and the underworld.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
That the darkness in my soul will never wash off, I thought.
Trinity Church, on Broadway, had once been the focal point for the Lower Manhattan community and a beacon of hope for arriving ships. I remembered its destruction—twice. First by fire and then after a devastating snowstorm had weakened its walls beyond repair. New York’s high-rises had sprouted around its third incarnation, reducing the impressive church, with its piercing spire and gothic embellishments, to a toy among monoliths erected in honor of the modern world. Like the old gods, the church stood proud and defiant, but lost in the shadows of the new world.
By the time I bumped the Ducati onto the curb, the weak winter sun was setting, but clung on to neighboring Wall Street and pseudo-darkness had descended on the church grounds. I left the bike on the sidewalk, risking a ticket. It was a whole lot easier chasing down a demon using 205-horsepower than by foot.
Alysdair was snug against my spine. The coat hid her profile, but not the handle and hilt. I usually confined the sword to nighttime use, but after the events of the last few days, having Alysdair within reach gave me options I sorely needed.
Collar up, I ducked through the high construction fencing and out of sight of passersby.
The church was in the throes of a substantial renovation project. The demon had likely sensed something of the old powers in the church grounds. Construction workers had reported strange noises and a sighting of what they’d described as a rabid homeless man to the cops. Cujo had fielded the reports and passed them on to me.
I’d been inside a handful of times in the past, most recently during 9/11. The inside of the church was a resplendent sight when properly illuminated. But today, with the aid of a few work lights, all that loomed out of the gloom were rows of sheet-covered pews.
I
hesitated at the main aisle, motionless, and listening. New York buzzed and snarled outside. I listened deeper, to the quiet inside the church and how it soaked up the noise. And there, at the back of the church in the darkest part, deep breathing rumbled.
“Remember me?” I asked, not needing to raise my voice for the quiet to carry it. “You’re a long way from home.”
“So…are…you.”
From the grainy growls behind those words, I was betting there wasn’t anything left of Jason Montgomery.
Alysdair whispered free of her sheath. Her weight and balance felt good and right in my hands. No more consuming souls. This demon was going out by Alysdair’s grace, not mine.
“There’s only one way this goes down.”
“Soul Eater. Liar…thief.” Its hisses sailed down the aisle and sounded exactly like the whispers back home.
“I’m all those things,” I replied with a knowing smirk. “And more.”
And you should be afraid.
Alysdair’s pale green glow washed over the pews a few steps ahead, lighting the way.
A large shape shifted in the darkness behind the altar. Roughly the size of a man, it could have been mistaken for someone hiding under blankets, but those leathery sheets weren’t blankets.
A quick spot check for exits confirmed the only way out was behind me. When it sprang, and it would, I’d be faster. Gripping Alysdair in my right hand, I raised the sword in a reverse grip, and fixed the mound in my sights. A few more steps and I could skewer it to the wall, ending this before it began.
Then the words started. Spellwords, from a demon? Ballsy.
“Oh no you don’t.” I lunged.
The demon flung its massive bat-like wings open, knocking Alysdair clean out of my hands, and punched me in the chest. I flew back, slammed into a pew, and fell forward. Damn, those wings had reach. With an ear-splitting screech and a blast of air, the demon beat its wings and rose above the altar in ungainly, inexperienced jerks. Its twisted gargoyle face rippled with rage. Hollow eye sockets glowed red. Jason Montgomery was long gone.
Hidden Blade (The Soul Eater Book 1) Page 8