My Soul to Keep

by Sharie Kohler

  The lycan lifted a dark eyebrow in mild surprise and flicked a glance toward the door. “Out there?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got a ride.”

  “Sorcha.” Jonah grabbed her wrist. Each of his fingers left an invisible mark on her. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going. I don’t have any reason to stay here. Not now.” She paused, the words oddly thick in her throat at the thought of leaving Jonah. Never seeing him again. Stupid.

  She shook her head, reminding herself that this was never about him. This was for Gervaise. For her own sense of peace. She’d have to start over again. Figure out a way to track down Tresa, to finish her off—and her demon. Then it would truly be over. Gervaise would be avenged.

  And that wasn’t going to happen with Jonah around.

  “We’re not finished,” he growled, his gaze feverishly bright.

  Why should Jonah care whether she stayed or left? He had a purpose. A calling. It had fallen into his lap without his even asking. Whether he wanted it or not, he was a slayer. “Good-bye, Jonah.”

  He surged in a step toward her, indifferent to their observers. “Sorcha, wait.”

  She hovered on the threshold of the broken door, a dozen plus eyes trained on her. Cold air stirred behind her like the burn of swirling steam. “What for?” She smiled, felt the cruel turn of her lips.

  “Yes, don’t rush off,” the lycan said in his gravelly voice, a faint accent underlying his words. His pewter eyes mesmerized, their pull undeniable, and she wondered how many he had lured to their deaths with those eyes, that voice … He walked toward her, each step a measured thud that resonated through her. “I’m enjoying you far too much. I’m disappointed to have missed Tresa, but I must say that I’m not sorry to have found you here.”

  Sorcha laughed hoarsely. “You think I give a shit?”

  He smiled then, a seductive pull of his lips. He was much too handsome, she noted dispassionately, but it didn’t touch her, didn’t affect her. His beauty was a deceptive poison. A lycan could never be trusted, never be saved.

  “Sorcha,” he murmured with an approving nod. “I’m not nearly done with you yet.”

  You’re done, she could only think, not liking the gleam in his eyes, and cringing altogether as he lifted his hand to brush her bangs from her forehead. The cold at her back surrounded her, and she shivered uncontrollably. At least she told herself it was only the cold.

  He frowned and took her arm. “Come, let’s get you warm by the fire. You can tell me more about Tresa … and yourself.” This last he said with dark satisfaction. As if it were already decided, as if they were enmeshed with or without her consent.

  She dug in her heels, resisting, but it did little good. Her shoes were simply dragged along the wood floor. “No—”

  He slipped a hard arm around her waist, practically lifting her off her feet. She brought a fist down on his rock-solid shoulder. He didn’t care. Didn’t even flinch. He was steel. Ruthless stone.

  An animal growl rumbled on the air and she knew without looking that it was Jonah. He charged, burst forth in a flash, shifting in an instant, his human skin rippling and stretching into his beast.

  The lycan released her to meet him, shouting at his men as they lifted their guns to Jonah. “He’s mine!”

  Sorcha stumbled back, staring wild-eyed, transfixed, horrified.

  “Sorcha, run. Run!” Jonah roared in a thick, garbled voice moments before his body made contact with the lycan.

  She hesitated, unsure, unwilling to abandon Jonah. Then her gaze collided with his face. He glared at her over the lycan’s back, his eyes twisting flames of ice. “Don’t stand there! Go! Go!” he snarled.

  Turning, she fled, the sound of smacking fists and crunching bones sharp behind her. She dove out the door into the hard bite of the tundra, telling herself that Jonah would be fine. He could handle himself. He always had. Without the full moon, the lycan was no contest for him. And she needed to get away. Not just from the lycan with his hungering gaze, but from him—Jonah. In many ways, he was more dangerous to her than the lycan.

  Heedless of the cold, she raced into the blistering freeze. She hardly felt it. Glancing over her shoulder, she was half afraid the lycan or his crew followed her, and half afraid that she would see Jonah, pursuing her. Mingling with that fear was the deep worry that Jonah would not be there, right behind her, that he would not follow and find her. Again.

  The glance over her shoulder revealed only the lodge, shrinking in size amid the barren snow-swept landscape. No Jonah. She paused for a moment, ready to turn back around. Then she heard his voice in her head shouting for her to continue on.

  Facing forward, she forced her legs to keep up their swift pace, working them hard until the tears froze to ice on her cheeks. As she pushed through the swirling arctic gust, she told herself it was the cold that made her eyes tear, and not leaving Jonah behind.

  ELEVEN

  A gunshot exploded on the air, lifting Jonah off his feet. The impact dropped him to the floor twenty feet from the lycan he fought.

  “I told you not to fire,” the lycan snapped, clambering to his feet with a grunt.

  “Looked like you needed some help,” one of the mercenaries replied, stepping forward to deliver a swift kick to Jonah’s ribs.

  Jonah hardly felt it, huddled into a ball, hissing against the fiery pain in his shoulder. His burning muscles worked, squeezing and contracting around the bullet, his body rejecting the small chunk of lead, pushing it out of him, but with no amount of ease.

  “Look at that,” the mercenary said with a whistle as the blood-soaked bullet clattered to the floor. As if Jonah were some sort of circus freak.

  “She’s gone,” one of the mercenaries panted from the doorway. “Damn, she’s fast. Can’t even see her anymore.”

  Relief swept through him. At least Sorcha got away and wasn’t stuck here to be some lycan’s plaything.

  “Of course,” the mercenary nearest Jonah replied. “She’s a freak like this one.”

  Jonah felt the air shift as the bastard pulled back his leg to deliver another kick. He lurched up and met the swinging leg, catching the booted foot in both hands and with a snap twisting it viciously. The mercenary landed hard on his back with a shrill shriek.

  Another bullet struck Jonah in the chest. He groaned, staggering back from the force.

  “Enough!” the lycan bellowed. “The next man to fire his weapon will be left here to freeze to death.” He snapped his fingers at the fallen mercenary. “Move him somewhere else. His screams are most distracting and I wish to question our friend here.”

  Friend. Jonah snorted.

  “Rise. I have much to ask.” The lycan spoke with the formality of an age lived and lost, and Jonah wondered precisely how old he was.

  Gasping against the pain of his bullet wounds, he struggled to his feet, watching the lycan stroll into the living room. He stood before the fire, hands stretched out to soak up its warmth. After a few moments, he glanced back over his shoulder. “Better yet?”

  Grunting, Jonah dropped down on a chair, snapping, “What are you doing here?”

  “Hunting the witch.”

  Jonah sighed, wondering how many were on the trail of Tresa. “You can’t kill her.”

  “That’s to be decided. I’ve been looking for her for some time now.” The lycan strolled around the living room, picking up the odd knickknack and examining it as if it interested him … a link to the witch who had lived here. Whom he hunted.

  With a sigh, Jonah began to explain. “You don’t understand—”

  “Oh, but I do. I know all there is to know. Kill a witch, release her demon.” He nodded as though bored. “I know. And then some.” He squared off before Jonah’s chair. “Probably even more than you.”

  Jonah stared up at him, one hand pressed to the sucking wound in his chest. “You know how all this works, and you’re still prepared to risk it? To free her demon?”

  “She’s
not just any demon witch, is she? I’ve been around a long time … I’m willing to risk just about anything to get my hands on the witch who started it all.”

  Jonah shook his head, muttering beneath his breath, “You sound just like Sorcha.”

  “Maybe you’re in the minority for a reason, then.”

  “I don’t want to free some demon so that the son of a bitch can enslave me and—”

  “Aren’t you a slave already? To the curse? Perhaps not as I am. Moonrise doesn’t own you in the way it owns me.” He shrugged a broad, muscled shoulder. “As far as I’m concerned, Tresa is worth capturing. There has to be a way to end this. Through her. I believe that.”

  Jonah stared hard at this lycan, speechless, able to forget Sorcha for the moment. He had never before met a lycan who regretted his existence, who wanted to be anything other than the voracious beast he was. He shook his head slowly, marveling. “Who are you?”

  “The name is Darius.”

  “How long have you been around?” he asked because he sensed a timelessness to this lycan.

  A shutter fell over his pewter eyes. “Too long. Now.” His tone turned brisk, businesslike. “Will you tell me what you can of this Tresa?”

  “So I can help you find her? No. I won’t risk you unleashing her demon. I can’t do that.”

  Darius sank down onto the sofa across from him, throwing one arm along the back. As if they were having a friendly visit. As if armed men did not surround them, their weapons trained on Jonah. As if bullet holes did not riddle Jonah’s body.

  Darius motioned to one of the men. “Fix the door, will you? Find a tarp at least. I’m starting to get cold.” Two mercenaries moved at the command. Another dark-clad soldier stoked the fire. Darius leveled his chilly gaze back on Jonah. “I will find her anyway, you know. I’ve made it my business to learn all I can about her. She can’t evade me forever.”

  Jonah nodded tightly. Inside his head, he heard Darby whispering at him to kill this lycan, destroy him. To put an end to the threat against Tresa. Funny how he hadn’t heard that whisper around Sorcha. Or he’d chosen deliberately to ignore it.

  Incredible as it seemed, something in this Darius reminded him of Sorcha. His hard-carved face echoed the desperation he read in Sorcha’s face … the cold determination in her eyes to end the curse was the same. He couldn’t kill this lycan for that same reason. For simply wanting his humanity back. However misguidedly he went about it.

  Flexing his fingers over one gurgling-wet bullet hole, he muttered, “I can only hope you’ll come to your senses before you do damage to us all.”

  Darius smiled, motioning to the door. “I guess you’ll want to be moving on. Before she gets too far. Good luck to you and your … female.”

  “She’s not mine,” Jonah gritted out.

  “No? Could have fooled me. Perhaps I should go after her myself, then. She was certainly easy on the eye. And she can hold up better than mortal women. That’s the misfortune in dealing with human females, isn’t it? They’re so fragile. And lycan females are always too blood-hungry for my taste. Now that female, Sorcha was her name?” He tapped his chin. “She might be just the thing to warm me on a cold night like this—”

  Jonah lurched up from his chair and lunged forward in one angry step. A mercenary lifted his weapon, but caught himself, pulling back. Jonah did not relish another bullet. Clenching his teeth, he ground out, “Put her out of your head.”

  Darius laughed, low and dark. “I’ll leave her to you, I’m not one to squabble over a female. I’ve learned to live without. Some of us are destined to be alone.”

  Jonah opened his mouth to dispute Sorcha’s being anything to him, but he’d already shown that she was. Why deny it? The lycan wouldn’t believe him. Hell, he didn’t even believe himself.

  He glanced at the broken door. In one blow, he’d found and lost Sorcha. But then, she had never really belonged to him. She could hardly have known what she wanted when she offered herself to him at the age of fifteen. And now she looked at him with such scorn and aversion that he wondered if the Sorcha he knew was in there at all.

  Perhaps she had died in that explosion after all. Lost to him forever. All that remained was her shell.

  Whatever the case, he wouldn’t go after her. He would trust that Tresa was wise enough not to get caught up in Sorcha’s path again. She hadn’t survived this long being easy prey.

  He would return home and do his best to forget that he’d ever seen Sorcha again. Just as he shoved everything else—anyone else—from his life, he would shove her out as well. Darius was right. Some people were meant for solitude.

  TWELVE

  So Tresa is safe, right?” Darby demanded the moment he entered his condo.

  Lounging on his couch in a pair of pajama bottoms and a tank top, she looked up at him. She tossed aside a magazine, sat up and stared at him with expectation bright in her hazel eyes.

  Dropping his bags near the door, he glanced at the boxes of Chinese food littering his coffee table. “Save anything for me?”

  “She’s alive, right? Tell me she’s alive. If not, I can’t even return home. My aunts will go ballistic …”

  He shrugged as he picked up a carton of sesame chicken. “Last time I saw her, she was alive and well.”

  Darby stabbed her chopsticks back into a carton of lo mein. “That doesn’t sound very heartening. You were supposed to make sure she lived.”

  “I did my part. I made certain the female you sent me to stop didn’t actually kill Tresa.”

  Darby frowned. “Female?”

  “It just would have helped if you had given me a bit more information about her.”

  Darby wrinkled her brow. “Why do you call her a female? And what did you need to know about her other than that you needed to stop her?”

  “I call her a female because she’s not human. She’s a dovenatu. Like me. That would have been good to know.”

  “No way!” Darby shook her head. A small smile played about her lips as she resumed working her chopsticks in the noodles. “That must have been a fun surprise.” Her smile slipped and she looked up again with a sobering expression. “Wait, now my vision makes a bit more sense … seeing her kill you. Well, it wouldn’t be such a challenge for her, right? I mean, if she’s like you.” Darby motioned at him up and down with her chopsticks. “Same abilities, strengths and all that.”

  “No worry. I’m alive, and I don’t think she’ll kill me—or try to. Turns out we’ve got history.”

  Darby shook her head, clearly uncertain. “My visions are never wrong … I saw her pull a sword from your back.”

  “A sword wouldn’t kill me.”

  “Well, maybe it wasn’t a typical sword. Maybe it’s dipped in silver nitrate … or enchanted or something.” She shook her head, her expression helpless. “You looked dead to me.”

  “Look, she was kind of a sister to me. I don’t see that happening.”

  Did he actually just say that? Equate Sorcha to a sister? Maybe once. Long ago. Only the woman he’d kissed and touched and held in his arms in that cabin was in no way a sister to him.

  “So she understood everything when you explained that she couldn’t kill Tresa?”

  “Let’s just say she accepted it.” His lips pressed in a hard line as he thought of her escape into the tundra.

  “Hmm.” Darby plucked a shrimp from her carton and chewed thoughtfully. “That’s a weight off my mind. I couldn’t return home and tell the coven that—”

  “Now, I can’t promise the witch won’t be killed,” he said, thinking of the lycan Darius.

  “What?” Darby lurched up on the couch.

  “It appears Tresa has more than one enemy in the field.”

  “Who?”

  “Some lycan is hunting her.”

  “A lycan?” Her face reddened. “What is it with you dovenatus and lycans wanting her dead?”

  “Tresa is the origin of the curse. She’s the key.” Even he could see there
was sense in that—that maybe there was some way to break the curse that the covens didn’t know about.

  Darby flung both hands up in the air. “Great. I can’t go back and tell them she’s alive for now, but who knows about tomorrow.”

  “Whoever knows about tomorrow, Darby?” He dropped down on the chair across from her. “There are no guarantees. Why don’t you head back and take care of your aunts the best you can? What will be, will be.”

  “Spare me the fatalistic bullshit.” She leaned forward on the couch, resting her arms on her knees. “You’re supposed to be our slayer. It’s your job to help determine what will be. Why do you think you found me that day? It was destiny—”

  “Do I have to hear this again?” He groaned.

  “Yes—”

  A brisk knock on the door silenced her before she could say anything more. He glanced at the table littered with takeout. “Did you order more food?”

  “No.”

  He moved toward the door, his steps cautious, his skin snapping into hyperalert. He never had visitors. One would need friends for that.

  Before he could look through the peephole, a familiar voice called out, “Jonah, it’s me. Open the door.”

  Sorcha. Here? His heart hammered furiously in his chest.

  “Who’s that?” Darby hissed.

  Without answering, he pulled the door open, schooling his face into impassivity. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you, too.” Her dark hair gleamed with healthy shine, falling sleekly past her shoulders. She looked so good his mouth watered.

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “It wasn’t that hard. You mentioned Seattle and it seems you leave an impression everywhere you go.” Had he mentioned where he lived? He couldn’t seem to recall much of their conversations—much of anything but her. “The female staff at the airport definitely remembered you. Once I was close enough, I just followed my nose.” Tapping a finger to her nose, she strode past him, into his condo. She pulled up at the sight of Darby on the couch.