“So, what, you’re an assassin?”
He didn’t answer.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew what his silence meant. The human ground her back teeth so hard he could see her jaw muscles contracting. “There wasn’t any talisman. And I wasn’t the one performing a ritual. It was Christophe.”
She looked around the rotunda again, trying, he supposed, to penetrate the darkness beyond the perimeter he’d established around them. Her magic flared up—the magic she’d killed for, not the magic she’d been born with—but it was unfocused, as if she could pull, but didn’t know what to do next. She’d murdered for that magic but couldn’t use it.
Durian smiled. There was justice in the world because sooner or later that stolen magic was going to kill her. He let his mind connect with hers until he felt the chaos of her mostly human reactions. Getting past her psychic block wasn’t easy.
“Stop,” she said.
Sensations came at him too fast to examine in the careful manner he preferred with a potential sanction. She felt human. She felt magekind. Most of all, she felt like one of the kin. What he didn’t get from her was evidence that she was a liar. Yet she must be.
She clapped her hands to the sides of her head. “I said, stop it.”
Something wasn’t right, and he disliked not knowing what. He didn’t pull out of her mind, but he stopped looking around. The intensity of her panic unnerved him. “Start talking.”
Her hands fisted at her sides. Her breathing was shallow, her heartbeat a rapid thub-dub in the back of his head. She was seconds from some sort of psychic meltdown.
He took a step closer. She smelled like someone in need of a bath. “Go on.”
She raised her eyes to his, so full of anger and resentment that was not directed at him, that he cocked his head, far more interested in her now than he had been moments before. “Christophe killed one of his magehelds.”
“And Christophe dit Menart”—he gave the name a subtle emphasis—“did not complete the ritual? Forgive me, but that is difficult to believe.”
Her physical state stabilized, and, with that, her panic receded. She shrugged, her bravado back in place. “He didn’t.”
“You,” he said, “have the dead fiend’s magic, and that makes it next to impossible you didn’t do the deed yourself.”
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her eyes got big and a bit too focused. “I didn’t kill Tigran.”
Christ. Her vocalization of the fiend’s name came with a whole host of conflicting emotions. He didn’t say anything for half a breath. Outside the barrier he’d erected around them the chill night air penetrated like the memory of cold. Cold but not cold. The fog was coming in.
She wasn’t lying. Impossible as that was, Durian was sure of it. He was less interested in her denial than the way her voice sounded thick with emotion, how her mouth thinned with, if her body language was to be believed, her effort to keep back tears. You’d think she’d been the victim herself.
“If not you, then who?”
“Christophe,” she said in a choked voice. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides, and her eyes stared blankly forward. At nothing. Her shoulders slumped. “I saw it happen.”
“The ritual in question isn’t a trivial piece of magic.” Even the late, great and unlamented mage Álvaro Magellan had been known to have help on hand for that sort of thing, and Magellan had been considered by most to be the most powerful mage ever to have lived.
“No kidding.” She ran a fingertip along her right eyebrow and then rubbed the whorl near her temple. Her hand trembled. Curious. Very curious. She was the color of chalk and that made the traceries stand out even more.
“Presumably, you were assisting dit Menart.”
“Me?” Her gaze snapped to him and it was laser sharp. Whatever emotional low she’d hit earlier was over. Her expression hardened to ice. “I want to kill Christophe. So, no, I wasn’t helping. I didn’t want to be there.”
“Then why were you?”
“Christophe had a point to prove.”
“Which would be?”
She shivered again, but it didn’t last long. She had a hold of herself now. “Don’t disobey. Ever.”
“And why would he need to prove that to one of his own kind?”
“His own kind. Is that what I am?” She walked to him and didn’t stop until mere inches separated them. “I don’t know what the hell I am anymore.” Her eyes were an uncanny blue. “Have another look. I’ll let you just this once.” One corner of her mouth quirked like she thought she was amusing. “If you find out what I am you let me know.”
Durian gazed into her eyes. Her lashes were long and black as sin. He wondered if she was insane.
“Go ahead,” she whispered. “You have my permission.”
He touched the bottom curve of her eye sockets, pressing that tender skin to feel the shape of the bone itself. First the left, then the right. Humans were fixed to just one form. She had nothing but this so easily damaged, corporeal existence.
He stroked his fingers along the lower rim of her eye. “Gray,” he said, and he heard in his voice the soft silk of a lover. “You understand, don’t you, that if I find you’ve lied, that if you did kill Tigran, things will not go well for you?”
She held his gaze.
“Do you have a different story to tell me?”
“Nope.” Her eyes, a lighter blue than the sky, met his without fear. This was not insolence from her. She’d made peace with death some time ago. Most of his sanctions never saw him coming, but this woman, she looked into the abyss of what he was with full awareness of the consequences. She was either stupid, insane, or telling him the truth. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.
She stopped shielding herself at all. Not even the minimal protection the kin used as a matter of course. He eased into her head and found anguish. Such overwhelming anguish it was at first impossible to get anything from her but that. She swallowed, blinked twice and managed to pull herself together. Given the state of her emotions, he was impressed she could. Then more impressed when she focused on the events he wanted to know about.
The terror she’d felt that night flowed back to him. Sharp as a knife. Defiance, too. Hopelessness. An image came at him. Christophe standing over a body that was familiar to her. Tigran. The mage’s arms were bare, and her memories were detailed enough for him to see the words tattooed on Christophe’s skin.
Intimate. A lover. But not Christophe’s.
Tigran.
The words the mage had said that night carried power that resonated in her still. She’d known what was happening. She’d known Tigran would die and that she could do nothing to stop it. Other images cut in, but they weren’t from the night Tigran died. Her alone with Tigran. Touching. Bodies sliding together. A terrible, keening grief. She’d cut herself off from her emotions and lived when others hadn’t. A room. Bodies entwined. Horror and a cold, deep rage. Christophe’s knife descending. Such pain and anger. Everything mixed up, out of order.
She was breaking down before his eyes. She gripped his wrists as he withdrew from his link to her.
“Gray.” She wasn’t lying about what Christophe had done or about her lack of participation. She had been as much a prisoner as Tigran. Durian didn’t force their mental connection any deeper. Her mind might completely shut down if he did, leaving her no way back to sanity.
CHAPTER 2
Gray’s legs were wobbly, and she was feeling lightheaded with the aftereffects of the fiend’s tromp through her head. As a consequence, she held onto the demon’s upper arms so she wouldn’t fall over. She was aware, too, that her stomach was sore where his arm had been clenched around her right after she’d shot at, and missed, Christophe. Her head was sore, too, but that was from having the guy look around the way he had.
She focused on the demon because it helped pull her away from the memories he’d been after. A more satanically lovely man she’d never seen, if you liked a
face that was all angles and no charity. Definitely smoking hot. Not that she wanted to sleep with him or anything. Hell no. She just couldn’t help noticing his looks. He oozed charisma without even trying.
The fiend cocked his head and lifted one eyebrow. Even his expression of irritated curiosity was lovely. Not in a pretty boy way, either. She liked that in a man. Or whatever. As she recovered from their psychic link, her brain started to process more than the demon across from her. Like where she was, as in not with Christophe. Not under Christophe’s control. Not a prisoner anymore.
“You tried to kill Christophe because he murdered Tigran.” He sounded like he was having trouble believing it.
“That’s one of the reasons, yes.” Her back was about four feet from one of the rotunda columns to the water side of one of the most photographed landmarks in the City, short of the Golden Gate Bridge and the painted Victorians. Splashes from the fountain in the middle of the pond landed on the water with musical tones. Under different circumstances the sound might have been soothing, except that she could only hear the fountain, not see it. She couldn’t penetrate the veil of shadow he’d drawn around them.
“The other reasons? If you don’t mind sharing.”
She had to block herself off so she could speak without breaking down. This wasn’t someone who was going to take pity on the human woman. “Tigran. Like I said.” She was still a bit shaky, but it occurred to her that she might be safer not holding on to him. His arms were hard with muscle. He could break her in half if he wanted to. “And the fact that Christophe kidnapped me.”
“Revenge, then.” He nodded, like that made perfect sense. It did in her world. If it made sense in his, they had something in common.
“Partly. Maybe mostly. One of the benefits to killing him was supposed to be getting his magehelds off my back. They’ve been looking for me. But that wasn’t Tigran’s idea. To kill Christophe.” She shrugged. “I thought of that on my own.” Her throat got thick again. “After.” She swallowed hard and gestured with one hand. “You know.”
“What were you supposed to be doing instead?”
She studied him without caring that it was rude. Her heart beat faster as she considered the risks of telling him. His hair wasn’t black the way she’d thought at first. It was dark, dark brown and barely skimmed his shoulders. His clothes were straight out of GQ: expensive black trousers, expensive black pullover sweater, and expensive shiny black shoes. “According to Tigran,” she said, “there are free fiends in the city.” By which she meant demons who weren’t enslaved by a mage the way Tigran had been.
“Really?” he said.
She absolutely could not read his expression. “Supposedly, they’re headed by a warlord calling himself Nikodemus. I was supposed to try to find him. Or someone who knows where I can find him.”
“For what purpose?”
“To ask for refuge. And for help with what I am now. Because, you know, I’m not what I used to be. And Tigran… um… Right. He isn’t around to help me.” A bus rumbled along one of the surrounding streets. Even at this hour, the city was alive with noise. She doubted anyone could see them. In an arc that extended maybe six feet past the man’s shoulder, the rotunda lighting was out, smothered by the same kind of magic that was giving her chills. The way these things worked, anyone looking in would see and hear nothing of whatever went on inside. “Do you know where I can find Nikodemus?”
The demon didn’t answer, and she got the sinking feeling that she’d just done something more dangerous than failing to kill Christophe. His dark eyes flickered as if there were something moving behind them; a whole other world, maybe. Tigran’s eyes used to do that, too. “Perhaps,” he said, “you ought to come with me.”
She wasn’t necessarily opposed to that. But she wasn’t an idiot, either. “Where?”
His scowl deepened. “Wherever I tell you to go.”
A thought occurred to her. “Are you Nikodemus?”
He laughed. “Hardly.”
“I guess that would have been too much of a coincidence.”
“Not too much more,” he said, with that lovely wry expression of his.
“Do you know him?”
All he did was lift his eyebrows.
“Have you met him?” Still no answer. “Do you know of him?” More silence. “You heard the name once? Someone told you about him? Jesus, what is your problem?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“You aren’t very good at answering them.”
“No. I’m not.” He took a step back with the result that her hands slid off his arms. “Shall we go?”
Her hands felt cold now that she wasn’t touching him. “The last thing you’re supposed to do is go anywhere with someone you think might be a killer.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
This time, she was the one who laughed.
The demon gave her a sideways look, part irritated, part amused. “I’ll take you someplace where you can bathe before we discuss your situation and what might be done about it.”
“That’s not very specific.”
“I’m sure you understand the need for discretion.”
“A shower would be really nice.”
He gave her what was almost a bow, like he thought it was a hundred years ago when women were pampered. Unless they were poor, of course. Then they worked like horses and no one bowed or opened doors for them. “Come along, then.”
“Well.” She shoved her hands in her back pockets. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. I don’t even know who you are. Or who you know. If you know anybody.”
“You know what I am. I should think that is sufficient.”
She tapped her sneakered foot on the ground. “You stopped me from killing Christophe.”
“I am bound, at present, to see that no harm comes to any of the magekind currently in this territory.” His fathomless gaze gave her chills. “That means, much to my regret, Christophe. And you, Gray,” he said softly. “Since you are also magekind.”
She snorted. “Magekind? Me? Not hardly.”
“Enough that it matters.” He picked a speck of something off the sleeve of his sweater. She wondered if he was doing that to hide the flickering change of his eyes. “This is not the place for us to discuss your future. Or who I might or might not know.”
Her stomach roiled as she had another thought. “Are you mageheld?”
His gaze shot up to meet hers.
“At least answer that question.”
He smiled, and it was a killer of a smile. He touched the center of his chest and for a second there she was convinced he was in pain. His mouth quirked. “What if I’ve been instructed to lie if asked that question?”
“Exactly.”
“I am bound—” His voice just missed being a growl.
Gray’s heart kicked up.
“—by my free choice.”
“Free choice? Bullshit.” She stared at him, a chill crawling down her spine. “Magehelds are slaves, pure and simple.”
Tigran had told her that once she had his magic, she wouldn’t be able to feel a mageheld, only the free kin. Except there’d been a hiccup with that. Her best guess was that she’d ended up with a little of Christophe’s magic because a lot of things weren’t working the way Tigran had said they would. Was she sensing what this demon was because he was free—which he’d just said he wasn’t—or because of the magic she’d accidentally stolen from Christophe?
“Bound, yes,” the demon said. “But not bound to a mage, human. To a warlord.” He continued without letting her object. His eyes weren’t brown anymore. They were purple. “I am no one’s slave.” He wouldn’t look away, and she wasn’t going to be the one who blinked even though he scared the hell out of her. “I am one of the free kin.”
“I’m not anyone’s slave either,” she said. “Not anymore. Not ever again.”
The demon went completely still. If he was breathing, she sure couldn’t tell. Then he nodde
d, touching his fingertips to his sternum again and then to his forehead. She had the weird idea that he made the second motion out of respect. He said, “Shall we go, Gray?”
She nodded, and the blackness around them slowly faded. City noises got louder. The smell of exhaust turned the air acrid. A foggy mist curled off the water behind the Rotunda. She heard, saw, and felt the rumble of traffic on the street.
They walked in complete silence the couple of blocks to Baker Street. They were near Bay Street when he pulled out a key fob and pushed the button. A few feet away, a pair of headlights flickered on. She looked over at him. “A Volvo?”
“As you can see.”
“Not what I expected someone like you would drive.”
“Is that so?”
“A Porsche seems more your style. Or…” Her knowledge of high-performance cars started and stopped with Porsche, so she just waved her hand as if she knew more but couldn’t be bothered with an extensive list. “Something less soccer-momish than that thing.”
“You’ll have to bear up under the disappointment.” He smiled, and boy, the things that did for his face.
As he opened the passenger door for her, Gray had a weird displaced flash that he was her date and making major points for gallantry. He was all dressed up, for one thing. Like he wanted to look good and make an impression. And he’d opened the door for her.
While she stepped around him to get in, he said, “What now?” under his breath.
A burst of heat zinged through her chest and set off a rush of adrenaline. She would have run as fast as her weightless body would take her except he put a hand on the back of her neck and murmured, “Stay calm.”
So she stood there like a complete dunce while Christophe dit Menart came around the nearest corner and walked toward them, his seven mageheld bodyguards in tow.
CHAPTER 3
Shit,” Gray whispered.
Christophe and his bodyguards sauntered toward the car like Christophe was king and everyone was supposed to be on their knees before him. The mage was working his magic for maximum effect, so she wasn’t surprised that her pulse raced until she could hardly breathe.
My Immortal Assassin Page 2