Possession fa-5

by J. R. Ward

  The knife was about six inches long, and had a blade that was cared for so well, it gleamed white in the distant light of her office.

  “No more of that yelling. Don’t want to wake the neighbors.”

  “You’re not going …” She couldn’t breathe.

  “To get away with this? Of course I am. You’d be surprised what I’ve gotten away with in the past.”

  “You’re…”

  “Just stop, I know what I’m doing, okay?” At that, one hand locked on the back of her neck to keep her in place, and the other started working on her clothes.

  Tears speared into her eyes, terror making her tremble all over. Not like this, oh, dear God … but she couldn’t move, and wasn’t going to try screaming again in fear of—

  A thunderous noise broke through the pounding horror in her blood, and she wasn’t the only one who heard it; she could feel G.B. freeze above her. A moment later, it was repeated … and a third time, and a—

  The explosion that came next was something she knew, if she lived through this, that she would never, ever forget. It was unholy, a roar that was loud and deadly as a wild animal’s attack call.

  An instant later, the weight on top of her was gone, and even as close to fainting as she was, she took advantage of it, wrenching herself up and shoving herself backward.

  “Duke!” she screamed.

  Duke’s much larger body had taken G.B. down, the pair of them rolling around.

  “He has a knife!” she yelled.

  Like either one of them was listening? Scrambling to her feet, she wanted to help, needed to—

  Fuck the phone and 911. What she required was upstairs, in her bedroom.

  As the pair of them struggled for control of the weapon, she ran for the staircase, skidding in her now-bloody socks, ricocheting off the walls, scampering to the second floor. And even though it was totally dark up there, she found her bedside table in a second.

  Her handgun was one she was licensed to carry and had been trained to use. But all of that had been on a hypothetical. It had never occurred to her that she might have to use the nine-millimeter autoloader.

  She all but fell down the stairs.

  Pulling herself around the base of the balustrade, she entered her living room with the weapon up at shoulder height and the safety off.

  All hell had broken loose, her furniture busted up, more pictures down from the walls, the lamp knocked over.

  They were up on their feet again, a hideous waltz happening as they circled around and around. Duke had control of G.B.’s arm, his superior strength on the verge of winning out, but he’d been stabbed, blood dripping off his elbow and from a wound in his side.

  For a split second, she thought … yes, they truly did look like brothers. Nearly twins, as a matter of fact.

  Then she leveled the gun at the two of them. “Drop the knife,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.

  Both of the brothers looked toward her, identical pairs of blue eyes locking on the barrel of her gun.

  Later, she would realize that Duke really did love her. Because for a split second, his concern for her distracted him and his focus was lost … and that was all it took.

  G.B. pulled a second knife out from God only knew where and plunged it right into his gut.

  “No!” she screamed.

  Everything went into slow motion at that point. Duke dropped to his knees, clutching his abdomen, curling over. Above him, G.B. threw the knife up over his head, his eyes rapt, his body strung in an arc—

  Pop! Pop! POPPOPPOPPOPPOP!

  Cait started knocking off rounds, the bullets firing cleanly out of her well-oiled gun, one after another after another … driving G.B. back, the impacts jerking him like a puppet. And as he went, so she followed, discharging the entire clip as she walked with him.

  Just as she had done in that dream she’d had early in the morning.

  When she was finally finished, he was falling backward, his feet tripping over themselves, his expression one of utter and complete shock, as if this was not at all what he’d had in mind.

  He hit one of the glass windows of her office in the center of its large pane, and his weight and trajectory were too much for the fragile barrier to hold: he broke it as he finally fell back completely, his limp body shattering the expanse in a spectacular display of light and sound.

  But she didn’t give a shit about him.

  Whirling around, she all but fell on Duke. “Oh, God, please don’t die, please don’t…”

  With a groan, he pitched to the side, and she could tell he was struggling to focus. “Duke, I’m going to call nine-one-one, just hold on.”

  As she went for the phone on her desk, he captured her arm with a burst of strength that didn’t last. “Cait …? Are you there?”

  Oh, shit. “Yes, I’m right here.”

  “I’m not going to live through this, Cait.”

  “No, you are! You’re going to—”

  “I love you,” he said as he started cough. When blood appeared on his lips, she nearly screamed again. “I want you to—”

  “I love you, too!” Oh, God, she meant that. With all her heart and her soul, even though she barely knew him, and even though—

  “Just be with me as I go, okay? Just … stay with me…”

  “No! You fight it! Goddamn it, you fight and stick around until the—”

  Fast, everything was going so fast now, as if time felt it needed to catch up from the slowdown that had just occurred. She needed to stop this—oh, God, how did this happen—how did—

  As her mind threatened to hamster itself into immobility, Duke’s voice reached her through the delirium.

  “Cait, are you still there?” His eyes were moving around, but they were unfocused—and there was more blood, everywhere. “Cait?”

  Pull it together. She was going to pull it together. Right. Fucking. Now.

  As her brain came back on, there was only one thing she wanted more than to give him his dying wish. And that was to save his life. Which was not going to happen if she stood by and let him continue to hemorrhage on her living room floor.

  For the second time, she tried to break away from him … and this time, he couldn’t hold on to her.

  Chapter

  Fifty-seven

  “More coffee?”

  When Adrian didn’t answer, Sissy got up from the kitchen table and took his mug with her. As she poured out what was left in the pot, steam rose up and tickled her nose. Funny, the old pot seemed to be getting the stuff hotter by the hour, instead of the other way around.

  “It’s so late,” she said, looking at the clock for the thousandth time.

  She’d tried reading more of that book he’d given her. Had flipped through the magazines in that Target bag. Had even resorted to reading the newspaper, something she’d always assumed only parents did.

  “How much longer can this go on …?” she wondered out loud.

  She couldn’t believe she was still asking that as dawn closed in—and there still had been no word from Jim. No sign of him. No anything at all.

  For a while, she’d assumed Adrian was just better at this waiting thing than she was. But then she’d realized he’d fallen asleep sitting up, his battered body somehow knowing enough to keep him propped upright at the kitchen table.

  “I’m just going to go to the bathroom,” she said to him in his repose. “I’ll be right back.”

  After all, that coffee she’d been drinking all night had to go someplace.

  As she headed out, her companion didn’t show any reaction to her excusing herself, and that was okay. If she couldn’t get any rest, he might as well have the benefit of it. And at least someone in the household would be perky enough to deal with whatever might come home.

  Striding down the hall, and into the parlor, she shut herself in the formal guest bath. There were another nine or so to choose from, but she didn’t want to go upstairs, and the other two on this level we
ren’t as pretty.

  She liked the flowered silk wallpaper, so sue her.

  After taking care of business, she went to the sink and cranked on the gold handle. So strange. Every time she came in here, the fixtures seemed to get shinier, the mirror losing even more of the black pits that had marred its wavy surface, the crystal sconces coming back to life.

  It was almost as if the house were de-aging.

  But of course, that wasn’t possible.

  After drying her hands on a towel that was softer than it had been when she’d used it at midnight, some six hours before, she walked out toward the—

  A flash of reflected light appeared across the marble floor for a moment … before disappearing as if it had never been.

  Frowning, she changed directions and walked to the front part of the house. The door was closed, as it should be—so it couldn’t have been from someone—like, oh, say, Jim—coming home. Besides, he walked through those kinds of things normally, didn’t he.

  Just as she was about to go back toward the kitchen, she heard the subtlest creaking above her head.

  Someone was going up the stairs.

  Rushing around in her stocking feet, she was about to bound up two at a time, but instead she stopped. Collected herself. Proceeded in a silent way.

  As she passed the grandfather clock, it began to chime, its incessant droning pissing her off—as if the thing were making the noise in hopes of giving her away.

  When she got to the top, she was just in time to see the hall bathroom door shut and hear the shower come on.

  So it was him.

  Fine. She would wait out here.

  The second-story sitting area had an arrangement similar to the one in the parlor, sofas and love seats placed with care around an Oriental rug, little side tables supporting lamps and small objects made of stone as well as coasters for drinks consumed long, long ago.

  Funny, her grandmother had had a collection of those carved rocks, too. Sissy had particularly liked the ones that were cut and polished to be fruit—green grapes made of jade, purple ones made of amethyst, apples and pears from various shades of quartz.

  As the shower droned on, the grandfather clock eventually got over itself and fell silent, and she got bored with pacing around, so she sat down in the far corner.

  Not long thereafter, the water cut off.

  And Jim came out into the light with nothing but a towel on.

  Surging to her feet, she went to say his name—

  Something stopped her. Well, actually, it was him: He looked absolutely hollowed out, a shell of the man she knew, and yet that wasn’t it. No … there was something else—

  His mouth was swollen, but not like he’d gotten punched. Just red and puffy. And there were scratches on his bare chest and his arms.

  Made by fingernails.

  And he wasn’t just exhausted; he was spent.

  Sissy didn’t know a lot about sex—well, the mechanics, sure, but it wasn’t like she’d personally gone much past second base or anything. And it hadn’t been because she was a prude. She’d just never found a boy who seemed worth the risks of pregnancy—had never been so flipping turned on that she’d let booze or romantic delusions go to her head.

  She knew enough, though, to be one hundred percent sure that that man had spent most of the night having had it.

  And the confirmation? Not that she needed it?

  As he walked on to his room, he flashed his back: Which was covered in a shockly huge black-and-white tattoo of the Grim Reaper. And there were scratches on both the ink and the flesh, as if someone had been hanging on to him as he—

  “Are you kidding me,” she demanded.

  He stopped dead in his tracks. But instead of turning around, he just dropped his head, as if he were too tired to hold it up anymore.

  “I thought you were supposed to be fighting the war.” She went over to him, getting right in front of his well-used body. “But that’s not what you did all night, was it.”

  “Sissy … you don’t understand.”

  “Oh, please, like you’re going to hit me with another ‘Stay out of it, this is all toooooo complicated for you, little girl’? Do you honestly think I don’t know what the walk of shame looks like? Christ, I saw it all the time in my dorm. I just never thought I’d associate it with you.”

  He pushed a hand through his wet hair and finally met her in the eye. “I’m going to bed now.”

  “Okay, great. So I guess Adrian and I’ll just go find the soul—”

  “We lost the round, okay? We lost.”

  Sissy stopped breathing for a moment. Then that anger deep inside of her flared. “Because you were fucking around with some woman, right?”

  “As a matter of fact … that’s exactly the case.”

  “Some savior you are. God, you’re pathetic, you know that.”

  As Sissy pivoted on her heel, Jim watched her walk off. It was probably for the best. No, definitely for the best.

  She was right; he had spent the night fucking. And when the round concluded itself? He’d been with Devina when she’d gotten the signal. Naturally, she’d insisted he come down to Hell with her to get her flag, and he’d gone because, once again, the only virtue she had was that she couldn’t be in two places at once.

  As long as she was with him? She wasn’t with Sissy and Adrian and Eddie.

  And with the way things were right now, that was the best he could hope for … the only thing he could expect to go his way.

  So he’d sat down there and witnessed the soul arrive, a black shadow streaming the length of the well, entering the viscous wall, a fresh scream pealing out as the damned realized that death had not freed him at all.

  In fact, he was trapped forever. Tortured forever. Not life everlasting … more like life never-ending.

  And then he’d watched as Devina had taken a guitar string, a gold earring shaped like a shell, and an old Rolex watch out of her pocket.

  “Just more to add to my collection,” she’d said with a self-satisfied smile.

  After that? No more reason to stay. And even the demon had been yawning like she’d needed some rest…

  The slam of Sissy’s door went through Jim like a bolt of lightning, his legs nearly going out from under him. The weakness wasn’t simply because he was physically exhausted. Spiritually, he was coming to realize, he was dying inside.

  If Devina was a parasite, as Eddie had said, and she entered through a wound in the soul … he knew he was making the infection in him worse every time he saw her, anytime he was with her. But even knowing that, he would have done no differently tonight.

  Sacrifices were to be made. Had to be.

  For some reason, he thought of the night he had spent sitting outside of Sissy’s room like a dog.

  That was the closest he was ever going to be to her.

  And that hurt more than anything else.

  Shutting himself in his room, he went over and got in his bed. The lights were off, and even though the daylight was coming soon, the room was dark because of the velvet drapes that were thick enough to keep a vampire safe from even July sunlight.

  Within hours the cycle of the war would start again, another soul ready to be conquered or lost. And assuming the Maker didn’t come and recruit him into Nigel’s vacated seat at the tea table, Jim was now down one, the momentum of the war having shifted dramatically in the opposite direction.

  Somehow, by some miracle, he needed to find the strength to fight again, at least until he learned whether Devina had spoken the truth … or had lied as usual.

  He had no idea where the focus and drive were going to come from.

  His tank was truly empty.

  So maybe Devina was, for once, right. For the first time in his life, he saw the value of quitting. He sure as shit wasn’t doing anyone any good with the way things stood now.

  Closing his eyes, he let his body take over, the need for sleep canceling everything out, erasing even the fact that Siss
y was pissed off down the hall, and Adrian was somewhere in the house no doubt aching from the sacrifices he himself had made, and Eddie was still lying in state, smelling as beautiful as a spring meadow.

  He was a blank slate as he was claimed by a black void, his last conscious thought that he knew why Nigel had done what he had.

  And he didn’t blame the archangel one bit.

  Chapter

  Fifty-eight

  “Okay, I think that’s all I need.”

  As Detective de la Cruz, the one Cait had met outside the Palace Theatre, closed his little booklet, Cait winced and went to rub her eyes.

  “Ow.” Yeah, not touching much of her puss would be a good idea. If she remembered correctly, she had a dozen stitches in it.

  “Can I get the nurse for you?” the man asked, concern on his tired face.

  “No, I’m fine.” She pulled the white hospital sheets up higher on herself. “Just have to remember not to…”

  Make any contact with anything on her body, whatsoever.

  He gently touched her shoulder, being careful not to get in the way of her IV. “I’m going to put in my report that it was justifiable homicide, Ms. Douglass. I don’t think this incident is going to go to a grand jury, I really don’t. The D.A. and I have worked together for a long time and there’s a lot of trust between us. If you hadn’t killed him, he’d have finished the attack on you. Guaranteed.”

  “Thank you, Detective. I’ve never … I never thought something like this would happen to me.”

  “You survived. And you’re going to get through this. It’s going to take time, but … you’ll come out of it.”

  She could feel tears coming again, but God, she’d cried enough for ten years. “Thanks.”

  “Call me if there’s anything I can do for you, okay? And I’ll e-mail you a list of counselors that have experience with this stuff. They can really help on the flipside. Trust me.”

  He smiled at her, and then walked out, shutting the door quietly behind himself. Turning her head to the window across her private room, she stared at the gathering sun, and listened to the beeping behind her, and the hushed voices at the nursing station outside, and the bustle in the hall of people coming and going.