Red Rain: Book 4, Night Series

by RS Black

  I was still salty about the brain chip. And I doubted I’d ever get over it. It didn’t matter that in this hellhole he was the only one I could semi-stand to talk to, I still hated him. In layman’s terms, Dean was the equivalent of a schoolyard bully with a split personality disorder.

  Giving me a bored shrug, he nodded. “You don’t have to. I’m not the only puppetmaster in the ring here. Moves and countermoves. It’s the game I play. The game you and yours have unwittingly found yourselves at the very center of. As to Dick, he’s my bitch, not the other way around.”

  “Ah, yes.” The smile I had this time was actually real.

  Much as I hated the bugger, his candor was refreshing—even when he was admitting to being a giant douche.

  “So you’re declaring that when you dimed me out to Dick, it was actually for you?”

  “Well”—he squinted his eyes and nose and squeezed his fingers together—“it’s actually a chip. But you know, tomayto tomahto, I get it. Not that big a difference to you.”

  I lifted a brow. “Not really. So you gonna tell me why you did it? Cause clearly, it had nothing to do with Ash, since you’ve thrown him in my path every step of the way.”

  “Of course it was for me. I want you to have your freedom to do whatever the hell it is you do, but I can’t not know.”

  “Never not have a plan,” I quoted back at him.

  “Precisely.” His smile was proud.

  “Why does it matter to you what I’m doing?”

  That was the hiccup in this entire thing I couldn’t fathom. Why the hell did he care if I had a plan or not? Even with a plan I still had less than a one percent chance of it actually working. Dean knew all paths. He’d told Asher so once before. Knew every way this thing could play out. Surely he knew what it would take for me to succeed.

  He thrust out his jaw and I knew he’d never tell me. Because that’s what Dean did; he spoke nonsense. Riddles that were so incredibly difficult to decipher you might as well not even bother.

  “Because maybe you matter to me, Pandora.”

  I blinked.

  My brain was having a difficult time processing what it was I was hearing. It wasn’t a declaration of love or fealty. But it was definitely something momentous.

  “Are you saying you like me, Death?” My lips twitched.

  He held up a finger. “One question, Dorrie. That’s all you asked for. And I’ve already given you more than that. Now you answer mine. What were you doing at Diabolique?”

  Taking a deep breath, because I still felt stupid jittery, I gave him the short and simple version. “I killed Cash. Freaked out Keltse’s demon. And had sex with Asher. And umm”—I pretended to think on it—“nope, yeah, that about covers it.”

  His eyes thinned and the red of his eyes blazed. He didn’t believe me. I grinned.

  “What?” I asked innocently.

  “That’s not all you did. Why were you in Luc’s room?”

  “Well, Dean”—I patted his hand—“I’m pretty sure I answered your one question.”

  “Pandora.” His deep voice growled.

  He definitely didn’t want to let me off that easy, but after all the hell he’d put me through lately, I figured turnaround was fair play

  I would let him try to mull it over on his own why I was with really with Luc.

  But I knew he wouldn’t figure it out.

  My hatred of Luc was well known before all this shit had gone down. No one, not even Asher, probably suspected the complete one eighty I’d gone through since. Luc was my little secret and I’d kill anyone who ever figured out why.

  A soldier with a dark head of hair and amazing blue eyes that looked like the sky after a good spring rain popped into the room. He took one look at Dean and me, cleared his throat, and awkwardly averted his eyes as he said, “You two are needed in the doctor’s office.”

  The kid was crazy young. He looked to be seventeen, possibly eighteen, but I doubted it. He was fresh-faced and looked so damn innocent that every time I saw him I couldn’t help but wonder what in the hell he was doing here. Orion, as I’d learned his name was, was an unturned shifter. Still so human in so many ways.

  I tried not to care about the people who worked here. Tried not to wonder about their stories, but sometimes—like now, like when I saw someone inside of this hellhole who didn’t belong—I couldn’t help but feel a niggle of compassion.

  It was an emotion I had to shove into a dank, dark corner of my soul. I wasn’t trying to make friends here or trade sob stories. Whatever Orion was, and whoever had beef on him, I didn’t care. He’d go down in a bed of flames just like the rest of them. Innocent eyes or no, he knew the shit that went down here, which made him just as culpable as the rest of them.

  Getting up off the bed, I walked over to my closet and grabbed a pair of skintight jeans. They were tattered at the knees and ankles, but they made my ass look fantastic.

  I didn’t know who I’d be facing tonight, but one must always go to one’s potential death looking one’s best, I always say.

  Yanking my shirt over my head, I tossed it behind me, exposing my bare back to Dean. I felt him looking.

  Asher had told me once that the scars lining every inch of my body added character, had formed and shaped me into the monster he loved. But that body belonged to him alone. In here I cloaked myself in illusion. In here no one saw the cracks or the scars or the wounds that went soul deep. In here I was perfection personified and a lethal killing machine. I was a legend.

  Dean might not have many emotions, but he was definitely curious. I doubted he’d blinked once. However, I was done pretending I cared.

  “You gonna sit there and get your rocks off or go get dressed so we can find out just how I might die tonight?”

  I grabbed for the first shirt I saw and my fingers slipped off the hanger when I realized it was a Dia de los Muertos skull print. Asher’s ghost was too freaking close to the surface right now.

  If I was going to survive tonight, I needed to shut it out. Shut him, my family, and anything else that mattered to me out.

  Swallowing the painful memories, I reached for a plain red silk shirt instead. By the time I turned around, Dean was nothing but a memory.

  I’d never even heard him leave.

  ~*~

  I stared at Dick for a long, tense five minutes. Neither Dean nor he spoke. Just looked at me with the type of intense scrutiny that made me wonder whether I had a piece of spinach stuck between my front teeth and they were just too embarrassed to tell me so.

  Finally though, it was Dean who stepped up, and the way he looked at me, with eyes full of remorse—a look he’d never once, since the moment I’d known him, given me—it made a cold chill zing down my spine.

  I stood up straight.

  “Pandora, tonight you’ll be facing all your worst fears.”

  I scoffed. “Can’t be that bad, right? I mean, I’ve got nothing else to lose.”

  I tried to make a joke out of it, but he didn’t join in. That told me this was bad. Really bad. “What, Dean, what?” I snapped. “Just tell me already because you’re freaking me out.”

  “It’s not what you have to lose, Dorrie, it’s what you’ve already lost.” Dean said it slowly. “Tonight, you face Daniella.”

  It was like getting smacked hard in the face with a bucket of ice water. My skin pebbled up and my stomach immediately soured. “Daniella’s a keeper?” I knew who Daniella was. Everyone in the lore knew who Daniella was.

  Reaching over to the closed folder on Dick’s desk, I flipped it open with fingers that couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Staring back at me were the woebegone eyes of a heartbreakingly lovely creature. Small and thin, she almost resembled a child, except for the ancientness in her eyes. Among monster society she was both feared and respected, and though she’d shunned civilization years ago, her legend lived on.

  Shaking my head, I slammed the folder closed. “No. Hell no. I’m not going there. I can’t do it.” />
  Dick’s lips twitched as if to say “Oh, you’re going.”

  “No.” I shook my head harder. I wanted no part of her. Not because I feared her power, though you weren’t sane if you didn’t fear her power. But because she was not evil.

  I’d reconciled every bit of the killing I’d done in the past three months with the simple fact that they’d all needed to die.

  I didn’t know how Daniella had been conned into becoming a keeper, but I couldn’t do it.

  Dean gripped my shoulder. “You don’t have a choice in the matter, demon girl.”

  He said my name with acid in it. Daniella wasn’t a demon. She wasn’t human. But she wasn’t a villain. Her powers were frightening and could turn a victim mad in mere seconds, but she’d only ever used her powers for defense.

  “She lives in a freakin’ Buddhist temple, Dean. I just can’t. I can’t do this to her. I can’t.”

  Standing in front of me, so that his face was all I saw, he squared his jaw and shook me violently. “You don’t have a choice, you hear me? This is war, Pandora. War. She knew that when she took the key. She knew what this would mean for her someday. She’s accepted her fate. You need to also.”

  Feeling like I was going to vomit, I covered my mouth with the back of my hand. If I killed her, I would lose my humanity. I would lose me.

  I mean, as it was, she was the third keeper, so in all likelihood I’d lose my grip on this body. But there was still a slim chance. I knew what it was to be possessed and overtaken. I knew how to fight it. It would be hard, but I’d managed to come up out of the darkness before. But it was because of my shred of humanity that I could. If I killed her, that act would kill off everything I’d worked so hard to achieve. I would lose me completely.

  “You’re asking me to kill light, Dean. I took a vow.”

  “Which means nothing now. Your transformation is not complete and you can’t—” He clenched his jaw and it was crazy, totally crazy, but I suffered the strangest urge to hug him.

  Not just because I needed his strength in this, but because I think he might have needed mine too.

  “This war can’t end, demon, until you do your job.” His voice was thick and gruff and then he pushed me back so hard that I stumbled across the carpeted floor, nearly landing on my ass.

  He was out the door without a backward glance. No doubt running off to alert Asher to my fate.

  I closed my eyes. Why he continued to believe that Asher would care was beyond me. This would be the final straw for Ash if he hadn’t already reached it. Killing Daniella, he’d never allow it. If Asher knew where I was going, he’d come. Not for me, but to take me out.

  Even the worst of monsters would never be okay with this killing. Daniella was protected by us all. Long before I’d been conceived Daniella had taken a vow to do harm to none.

  She was so powerful, and deadly. With her own two hands she could bring down the world, but she’d been an anomaly, just like myself. Daniella had been born with a conscience. But unlike me, she never sinned. Never did wrong.

  For the sake of humanity she’d sequestered herself away high in the Himalayan Mountains and never left. She lived out her life surrounded by Tibetan monks. Never speaking. Never falling in love. Never doing anything other than controlling the curse she’d been dealt.

  My hands shook as the enormity of this task sank through my brain. My eyes burned as I looked at Dick.

  “Why did you guys do this to her?”

  He never answered, just sat in his chair, fingering my mark and laughing softly beneath his breath.

  Chapter 21

  Dean

  “Daniella.” Asher sat on his trailer’s stoop, hanging his head and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  His shoulders were slumped, and for all intents and purposes he was a man broken by the world around him.

  I would never admit this out loud, especially not where Lilith might be able to hear me, but I was beginning to have my doubts that Pandora would walk away from this. Even if she did have a plan, the wind had ears.

  I was coming to doubt she had any plans at all. I’d inserted a chip into her head, sure in the knowledge that I would learn it, but I’d been surprised to learn there was nothing. Grace had given me cause to hope, but the old bat might have simply played me for a fool. I wanted to believe that somehow, someway, a last-minute Hail Mary might still be possible.

  But looking at Asher, at this warrior who’d taken down countless creatures through the years with cold, ruthless efficiency, I wasn’t really feeling the hope anymore.

  Sighing, the Priest looked back at me. “The final Keeper is going to release Sin, right? She would have lost herself anyway.” He twisted his lips.

  I really wasn’t good at being a counselor to the bugs that lived and breathed around me, but in the past few months I’d been growing better at it. Leaning against the picnic table on the lawn in front of his trailer home, I crossed my ankles.

  The sky was a deep gray. Dark clouds obliterated any sun. It was like the beginnings of birth pains. The world knew what was coming. I clenched my jaw.

  “Yes. Sin is going to take over. But Pandora is nothing if not resilient.”

  Asher scoffed. “Look what you guys have done to her. I’m not a fool. A person can only take so much before they break. You make her kill Daniella and that’s exactly what will happen to her. There isn’t a shred of darkness in that woman.” He shook his head, staring up at the groaning trees.

  It was a swerve I hadn’t seen coming myself. Of all the guardians the Four could have chosen for the map, choosing a creature so far removed from society and the world at large had never occurred to me.

  “Daniella knew what she was doing—”

  Asher snarled. “Cut the crap, Death. Okay. Yes, Daniella’s a big girl, and yes, she chose this fate.” Shooting to his feet, he paced in front of me. “But fuck.”

  I let him mumble incoherently to himself for a minute, before saying, “So you’ve given up on her, then?”

  “No.” His answer was a quick burst. “Of course not.” Forking fingers through his hair, he finally sat back down on the spot he’d vacated just a minute ago. “But I’m not an idiot. Whatever paths you saw for us, Dean, I’m pretty sure this is the one where everything goes to shit.”

  I chuckled.

  “Glad you can find the humor in all this.” He licked his front teeth and glared at a pebble by his foot as if the sight of it offended him.

  “Not really humor, no, but the irony of it all, yes. Lilith’s going to take great pride in crowing her victory over me.”

  Rolling his eyes, Asher snapped, “That’s all this is to you. A game. You’ve always said that, but now I really see that it’s true. For you this is just a game. But for Pandora, for me”—he tapped his chest hard—“it’s real. It’s our lives. The fate of the world. And it’s nothing but a game in the hands of a bunch of decrepit immortals so out of touch with the world that all they can do is laugh about it all going down in flames. Well, I’m not laughing, Death.”

  Getting back up, he moved in the direction of Vyxen’s trailer three rows down.

  “Where are you going?” I lifted a brow.

  “War’s coming, Dean. I’ve got an army to gather, and a demon to see.”

  As I watched him go, I sensed Lilith’s presence behind me.

  “He is right, you know.” She said it softly.

  “And that is?” I asked without turning around.

  “I am going to laugh as it burns.” There was a glittery lilt to her words. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for my day in the sun, Dean.”

  I gripped the edge of the bench tightly. “Don’t start celebrating just yet, War. There are still cards in play.”

  Her hands slid up the base of my spine as she leaned over my shoulder so that her mouth rested close to my ear. “I’ve had my lackeys on her for months, Death. Your girl has no game in play. She’s got no plans. Believe me, if she did, I’d know. I’d ha
ve heard by now.”

  The moment she said it I knew.

  I knew Pandora well enough to know she wouldn’t not have a plan. I’d taken her youth for granted. Expecting her not to understand the machinations and scheming of the true immortals. But she had known. For all her youth, she’d shown herself to be a master strategist.

  Pandora had kept her plans silent for one reason—because she couldn’t afford to trust anyone. Not even me.

  And she’d been right.

  My lips twitched with the knowledge that there might still be my Hail Mary after all.

  “Do you know something I don’t?” Her nail poked hard against the throbbing vein in my neck.

  My smile grew wide as I said, “Nope. I know nothing, Lilith. Absolutely nothing.”

  ~*~

  Pandora

  The Buddhist temple was as still and lovely as they all tended to be. The sky was a dusky shade of lavender, hinting at the darkness to come. The setting sun was just a smear of orange on the horizon.

  Ancient-looking trees surrounded me.

  The temple was a thing of polished beauty. The roof was made of baked red clay tiles, the walls of rich wood. The heavy doors guarding its entrance gleamed with traces of gold trimming.

  I’d visited Daniella once, over a century ago.

  The day I’d come to her, I’d been seeking guidance. Not so much spiritual, more emotional.

  I’d been angry with Luc, on the verge of leaving Diabolique again. I’d also been losing faith in my fight for humanity. I’d seen so much human-on-human violence. Children being murdered. Husbands beating wives. Women fighting women.

  It’d sickened me, made me question my reasons. My belief system was rocky and in danger of crumbling.

  I’d come through the temple gates and it’d been bustling with life then. With dark-skinned monks dressed in their classic orange garb, some chanting prayers, others in fight formation.

  I’d felt so at peace the moment I’d stepped through.

  Daniella had found me immediately. She’d never once spoken to me; words had never been necessary for her. She was an empath. A being who could feel and understand the emotions of others with one simple touch.