“Understood.”
“It’s like this. Christophe had my sister killed and me brought back to his house. I thought Tigran was some psycho killer at first. But he sat me down and he explained what he was and what he had been ordered to do and what that meant for us both.” She shook her head. “That very first day he told me he was willing to die.” She had to wait a bit before she could continue. God, all that just seemed unreal now. “It took a while before I believed him and then we needed time to… get things to a point where there was a chance it would work.”
“Where what would work?”
She couldn’t answer right away. “Right.” She stared at a spot on the floor and gathered herself. “Tigran was supposed to reproduce with me.” She could feel her cheeks burning hot. She did her best to separate herself from her emotions. “Christophe wanted children he could take mageheld from pretty much the start. So he wouldn’t have to go out and find free kin.”
Durian drew in a long breath and let it out just as slowly.
“The wiggle room was in me staying pregnant. My idea, actually.” Gray stared out the window even though there wasn’t anything to see. “If I ever have kids,” she said, “if I still can, they won’t be born for any reason but me wanting them or knowingly taking the risk of having one. I’m not a fucking baby factory for Christophe or anyone else.” She glanced away from the window. He was watching her too carefully, she thought. She held his gaze. “I don’t care what you think about that.”
She rocked forward, realized she was giving away her turmoil, and stopped. She got up and went to the window, talking to the darkness. She could see his reflection in the window. “We knew he’d figure it out eventually, since, obviously, there would never be any children, and that Tigran would probably pay with his life. But what that bought us was time for him to make sure I could take his magic when the time came.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Because that way, you see, Tigran wouldn’t die for nothing. It was awful.” She turned around. “It worked. Just the way he said it would.”
On the surface, Durian didn’t react to anything she’d said. He stayed exactly where he was with exactly the same unreadable expression on his face. Except something did change. Her sense of him opened up. She dropped into his head, and there was a world there so foreign, so breathtakingly dark she went stock still.
He had killed. Many, many times. Swiftly. Without mercy. Without emotion. And he would do so again when it was required of him. Isolation. Anticipation of the hunt for his next target. Rage. Control so complete she might never find what lay beneath the surface he allowed her to see. She tried.
He blocked her. Her awareness of him went nova, and it freaking hurt. The markings on her arm and temple turned to fire underneath her skin. She didn’t know he’d gotten up or that she was going to fall on her ass until his arm shot out and stabilized her. He let her go when she was sitting on the couch again. She blinked a few times while her stomach threatened to turn inside out.
“None of the kin would fault you for surviving.”
She blinked at him, half expecting him to change forms. She fought her panic. Durian stayed human. Thank God. He leaned toward her, his eyes swirling with purple. He continued in the same smooth tones as before. “I am, at this moment, open to you. As you are to me. And that, Gray, is not something I often permit.”
“Are you going to help me?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
He extended one arm along the top of the couch. His eyes were brown again, that dark, dark brown that was almost black. “There are things you must understand before we proceed.”
“Such as?”
“Though I have a number of responsibilities to Nikodemus, there are two that need concern you now. The first is his safety. The second is my work as his assassin.” His upper back relaxed against the couch. “If you imagine those two things are closely related, you would be correct.”
“Makes sense.”
He flicked something off his trousers. His habit of lapsing into impenetrable silence was starting to irritate her. His irises had flecks of purple in them again. He was pulling, she realized, bringing his magic up from its source to a place where he could use it. Her skin prickled.
“Nikodemus is a warlord. As you know.” He considered her. “This means he leads by dint of power, which he gains through the bonds he forms with others of the kin. Kin swear fealty to him in return for his protection and leadership.” He spoke calmly, in deliberate tones. “Other warlords have sworn fealty to Nikodemus, and that is not a circumstance to be dismissed lightly.”
Her sense of Durian deepened. She felt as if she knew him better than she did, and that was a dangerous thing to let happen. He definitely wasn’t tame. “You don’t like him, do you?”
His eyebrows lifted. “It is not necessary that I like him. It is only necessary that I keep my oaths to him unless or until he gives me cause to break them.” He hesitated, and her skin went goose pimply from head to toe. “The same is true for any of the kin who swears fealty to another.”
Durian pressed his hands together, almost as if he was praying. He stared at her from over the tops of his fingers. “If you wish to remain safe, you should ally yourself with someone, Gray. A fiend who does not forge such a relationship is likely to soon find himself mageheld or dead.”
She was going to give herself a headache trying to figure out where he was going with all this. “So, I should align myself with Nikodemus.”
The edge of Durian’s mouth quirked. “Not necessarily. Not directly, at any rate.”
She licked her bottom lip. He waited in that annoying way of his. Her stomach got queasy. But there was exhilaration, too.
“There are decisions to be made, Gray. What is yours?”
“You want me to swear fealty to Nikodemus?”
“No.” His smile made her feel like she’d walked straight into a trap. In a way, she guessed she had. “Not Nikodemus.”
She took a breath. “Make it crystal clear, if you don’t mind.”
“If I’m to help you, I want you to swear fealty to me.”
CHAPTER 6
Jackson Street, San Francisco
Three blocks from the condo that was his destination, Christophe dit Menart got out of the back seat of his parked car. In Paris he never drove except on those infrequent occasions when he left the city. In Paris, people came to see him, not the other way around. Here, he was not feared or esteemed to the degree he had been in Europe. Naturally, that would change. When he had been here long enough to make himself known.
In the New World doing without a car for even the meanest tasks proved nearly impossible. This was something few Europeans understood until they’d been here. One could sit in a café in sight of the Eiffel Tower, smoking a Gauloise, the bitter perfection of an espresso at one’s hand, the scent of a freshly baked croissant inhaled with every breath—a croissant of the sort almost impossible to find in this country—and say, Those Americans, driving everywhere in their SUVs. Feh.
Only when a man had traveled thousands of miles to alight in this most Parisian of American cities, only when he had done this and learned he could drive eight hours and find himself still in California—only then could a man begin to understand the American mind. The sheer size of this country oppressed.
And so. One required a car. Though he owned the condo to which he was headed just now, he refused to park in the communal garage. The underground lot was too confined. He preferred to park far enough away, on a different block each time, that during the walk to his destination, he had time to assess possible threats. From humans. From the magekind. From any of the demonkind who lived here with such offensive impunity.
Californie. The new frontier.
San Francisco was rotten with demonkind. Centuries of vigilance in Europe, Russia, and lands in between had reduced their numbers to the point where they rarely caused serious trouble. They’d been killed, controlled, or simply
driven out.
The demonkind had fled here like the disease-carrying rats they were and had integrated themselves into society. They passed for human with frightening accuracy. Nikodemus was the worst of them. The most dangerous. The fiend had so often said he and his kind were no danger to anyone that Christophe now thought the demon warlord might actually believe it. As if Nikodemus or any other fiend could resist his nature forever.
If Nikodemus were right, how then did Álvaro Magellan die at the hands of a fiend? It was only a matter of time before one of them snapped, perhaps Nikodemus himself, and innocent lives would be lost.
He intended to one day have the warlord under his control and Magellan’s former dominion acknowledged as his. To have such a one as Nikodemus free among humans; that was a danger none of the magekind could afford to ignore. When the warlord fell to him, as inevitably he would, his minions would fall, too. Humans would find the world a vastly safer place.
He paid no attention to his magehelds as he walked to the condo. They kept up because they had to, because it was no challenge for them to do so. Even if he were to run, they would stay with him. He possessed not even a quarter of their physical strength or stamina. The least of his magehelds could crush him with a single blow. If they weren’t under his control, they could take over his mind. Ruin his life. Three hundred years ago, one of them had tried just that. Sheth, a monster who would never harm another human again. The demon now paid for his sins in service to Christophe.
Six paces from the entrance to the condo, one of his magehelds hurried forward to open the door. He swept through. The same thing happened when they reached the door to his destination. This was a dance by now. A familiar one, well choreographed.
Erin knew he was coming before he arrived. Naturally. Being what she was. A self-trained witch who had not lost her powers despite her lack of a mentor. She had no idea the rarity she was.
She stood in the middle of the living room, wearing an ankle-length silk robe. Her hair was loose, a river of black down past her shoulders. She ravished him with her smile. “Christophe.”
Her beauty took his breath as it did the first time he saw her and every time since. He unzipped his jacket, shrugged it off and dropped it on a chair. The runes and Latin wards inked onto his skin flashed in his peripheral vision. He had only to see her, and he wanted to touch her. Caress her. Hear her moan as he sunk into her welcoming body.
He signaled to his magehelds. All but one of them left the room. The one remaining, his companion of the last three hundred years, retreated to a shadowed corner. Christophe walked to Erin and put his hands on her shoulders. He breathed in and checked that his spells were in place. She was still his. He lived in a state of almost constant fear that he would one day find she was no longer his.
“My love.” Even now, with the evidence of her adoration of him, his heart pinched with the fear that one day he would find a crack that could not be repaired. He put his hands on the knot that fastened her sash and leaned in to kiss her. Softly. Gently. As if he would die if he could never kiss her again. He drew back. “How are you tonight?”
“Good,” she said, keeping her voice low. Her eyes darted sideways, in the direction of his remaining mageheld. “You?”
He kissed her again, fingers loosening the silken knot of her sash, which, at last, parted. Either she understood the futility of her discomfort or she gave into their mutual desire, because she did desire him. For which he almost daily gave thanks. She leaned into his embrace. Her mouth was soft under his. It was miraculous to him that after so many years of living he could feel any degree of lust without a magical enhancement of his senses or experience. He kept his hands around her rib cage, where they’d wandered while he kissed her. The knowledge that he loved this woman frightened him because all of it was built on a lie.
“What did you do today?” he asked. One hand wandered to the curve of her belly. Three more months. So short a time and yet an eternity, too, before the child was born.
“I picked out colors for the baby’s room today.” She leaned against him, catching his fingers in hers for a moment. Such a sweet gesture. “Will you come see?”
He cradled her face between his hands. “In a moment.” He kissed her forehead and pushed her robe off her shoulders. The material fell down to catch in the crooks of her elbows. “Do you remember how we met?”
“On holiday. In Paris,” she said automatically. She had, of course, never been to Paris, but the memories were there and Christophe liked to make sure they stayed vivid. Her arms slid around his waist, too. He feasted on the sight of her naked breasts. “I wanted chicken for lunch, but the waiter refused to understand me.” She laughed at her memory. “You rescued me.”
“Yes. I rescued you.” He glanced over her shoulder and saw the bottle of wine and glasses on the table by the couch. For her, only water. He moved them to the couch, and she curled up next to him, leaning against his side. His mageheld was a bright presence in the corner of his mind, enhancing the desire he felt on his own. Christophe draped an arm around her shoulder. “I almost didn’t go to that café. Imagine, my love, if I had not.”
A fiend felt lust with such a visceral intensity that Christophe wondered how they ever restrained themselves. His mageheld’s lust for Erin burned in him to the point where he considered making love to her right now. Before she was ready.
“But you did, Christophe. And you showed me Paris.” Erin was tall and as slender as could be thought healthy for a woman expecting a baby. She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I would have stayed there for you. You know that, darling.”
“I know,” he said. He touched her pointed chin. She was beautiful and so far pregnancy agreed very much with her looks. “But I was happy to move here.”
She smiled and Christophe’s heart lurched. What would become of him if Erin stopped loving him?
“I’m glad you came after me.” She reached for the wine to pour him a glass. While she did that, Christophe looked at his mageheld. Sheth’s attention was fixed on Erin’s nearly naked body. Christophe reached to cup her breast. “You’re much later than I thought you’d be tonight. Is everything all right?” As she poured, she looked at him from under her lashes. “Or don’t you want to talk about it?”
“Another time, perhaps.” He took his wine from her, drank much too fast, until the glass was empty. If she’d served him swill, he’d never know. “I have a favor to ask of you.”
Her eyebrows arched.
“A very large favor, I’m afraid.”
“Go on.”
“A friend of mine is dying. Someone I have known for a very long time.”
She rested a hand on his arm. “Oh, Christophe. I’m so sorry.”
“He is the only remaining parent for his son.” He turned his wine glass in a slow circle. She knew about his magic, but not the extent of his power. He dabbled, he told her, but his money came from an Internet application he’d created and then sold to a much larger company. “The boy, he has no other family, I’m afraid, and my friend has asked me if I would raise his boy should the worst happen.”
She sat up straight, rearranging her robe more modestly. “You told him yes, I hope?”
Christophe smiled. He didn’t even have to use his magic to achieve the desired result. “I told him I must speak to you first.”
“Tell him yes. Yes of course!” Her eyes glittered with tears. “Is he very young, the boy?” Christophe nodded. “Oh. How tragic for them both. Does he know his father is ill?”
“Three years old.” He caressed the top of her shoulder, baring her skin once again. “I can’t say when he’ll come to live with us. My friend might survive after all. If not—” He grimaced. “There are always legal formalities.”
“He can use the room across from the baby’s, don’t you think? I’ll have it painted. New curtains. We’ll want to bring as much of his own things with him as we can.”
“Find a bed and a dresser at least. When the time comes—” He
crossed himself. A habit for him. Christophe had been alive too long not to understand the power of habit and ritual. “—I’ll bring what I can.”
“That poor, poor child. To lose his family like that. Is there really no other family?”
“No one. Your heart is so tender.” He brought Erin in close and kissed her and he hardly needed Sheth’s intervention to feel a sexual reaction. He would have a son from Erin. A miracle, the child was. She hadn’t gotten pregnant right away, but that had only given them time alone. Time for him to fortify the memories he’d given her and bury the others. Time for him to become more than a little fond of her.
Her sentimentality ought to annoy him, but it didn’t. He was touched by her concern for the soon-to-be-orphaned boy. Christophe was confident his own son would be magekind. With two parents of power, how could the child not be? Nor would he mind more children. Erin answered a part of his soul that had been deaf and blind for too long. He pulled away from her and poured himself a second glass of wine.
“Your day was bad, wasn’t it?”
Christophe sighed. “Worse than you can imagine.”
“Your friend?”
He let her think that was it. What choice did he have? He could hardly tell Erin the truth, which was that he needed a young witch or mage whose magic he could siphon off to augment his own. The great Magellan himself was rumored to have done so himself, and on more than one occasion. Though most frowned on the practice, Christophe could feel the hole left behind by Anna’s theft.
Anna, or Gray as she seemed to be calling herself now, and that damned fiend of Nikodemus’s, that’s what had him in such a vile mood. She was to have conceived by Tigran, producing demonborn offspring whose power, Christophe was certain, could be taken before they were ever a threat to humans. If Magellan could take power from young magekind, then surely, one could do the same with young demonkind.
All those weeks and weeks Tigran had been dutifully fucking Gray. God knows how many times his mageheld must have impregnated her before Christophe found out what was really happening. Though it was impossible to fathom how a mageheld could have defied him like that, Tigran had somehow learned how to end each and every one of her conceptions. The fiend had deserved to die for his defiance. Cutting out his heart was too kind a death for such a betrayal.
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