"And I just have the kind of luck to get involved just as it's been found again after how many years?”
"A few thousand.”
A sort of sick comprehension dawned in her expression, and she braced her elbows on her legs, burying her face in her hands. "This can't be happening.”
He caught the mumble and wished for a way to reassure her. Hell, he wished for a way to reassure himself. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid that it is. It's happening right now. And the only way I know to keep the situation from getting even worse is to keep Louamides safely out of Uzkiel's sight until the rest of the Watch can locate him and bring him under control.”
Rule braced himself for more screaming, but it didn't materialize. Instead, Abby turned her brown and blue eyes on him and studied him in silence for several minutes.
Her expressions might be easy to read, but her eyes were fathomless. He could see the doubt, the fear, the frustration, even the anger on her face, but in her eyes all he saw was a warm, deep calmness that made him want to crawl inside her. It was a separate instinct from the one that wanted to get inside her through an entirely different route. That one he understood, not so much its cause but at least its intent. This one confused him. This wasn't lust but something…sweeter.
It made his scowl deepen.
Abby sighed. "Look, I'm trying—I'm really trying—to see your point. I promise. But maybe if you tried looking at this from my perspective instead of just trying to intimidate me into cooperating—”
"I am not trying to intimidate you." Forcing the tension from his expression, Rule leaned back to try to give her as much space as possible while still staying close enough to grab her if she tried to bolt. "I'm just trying to explain to you why I can't let you wander around the city alone. Not while Louamides is still with you.”
She laughed, but he heard no amusement in the sound. "So, what? I'm supposed to just nod and smile and take up knitting until you solve a problem you've clearly been fighting for a lot longer than I've been caught up in it?" She shook her head. "I don't know what world you come from, but I'm from this one, and around here we have to do things like pay rent. And buy groceries. That requires that I 'wander around the city,' as you like to put it.”
He leaped on the opportunity to reassure her. The fact that she was throwing this kind of obstacle in his way meant that she was weakening. Whether she'd begun to see reason or she'd just gone cross-eyed from exhaustion, Rule didn't care. It was the outcome that mattered.
"We all realize that this is inconvenient for you. We would never put your livelihood in jeopardy," he reassured her. "The Council will be more than happy to pay your rent and see to any other bills for as long as you are required to stay in hiding.”
She cast him a sour look. "Unless 'the Council' plans to keep paying my bills for the rest of my life, I have to go to work. If I don't show up tomorrow, I'll lose my job.”
"You cannot tell them you are ill? Do you not have vacation time?”
"Vacation is what you call a week spent lounging on the beach, or touring Napa Valley. Being locked in a nightclub with a bunch of inhuman strangers is not a vacation. Besides, if I want to take a vacation, I have to request the time in advance. I can't just stop showing up and call it a vacation.”
"Who do you work for? I will speak to her.”
"It's a he, and trust me, that scowl will work even less on him than it does on me.”
Rule cursed and rose, shoving a hand through his hair and prowling toward the fireplace on the other side of the room. "I am trying to make this easy on you, but there is only so much I can do. I cannot let Uzkiel find you, and I cannot protect you if you are not kept somewhere safe.”
He knew while his mouth was moving that he was asking for trouble. He glanced back at the sofa and saw Abby's eyes narrow and knew she was about to give it to him.
"Well, forgive me for making your life difficult," she said, pushing to her feet. "Here I am with my entire life turned upside down, my body invaded by something I didn't believe in two months ago, and my freedom snatched away from me by a walking mountain with an attitude problem. What do I think gives me the right to get upset about any of it? I'm just behaving like an absolute crybaby!”
He opened his mouth, but nothing got the chance to emerge.
"Let me repeat my suggestion that if I'm such a pain for you to have to deal with, I'd be more than happy to get out of your life just as soon as you let me go!”
She stalked toward him with each step, her eyes blazing and the fear in her expression transmuted clearly into rage. She poked a finger at him in time with the cadence of her speech until she issued her last command with the tip digging into his chest and her gaze spitting fire at him.
Rule broke.
He couldn't help it. He'd been fine while he sat next to her; he'd even been in control while he'd been touching her, trying to keep her from hurting someone, herself included. But the minute she touched him, the minute her fingertip came to rest on his chest and the warm, sweet scent of her breath rushed over his skin, the grip he had on his control shattered like cheap glass.
As he muttered a prayer and a curse in the same breath, his hands came up to sweep her arms away and drag her hard against him. He saw the look of shock and the quick shiver of fear before his last rein broke and his mouth slammed down over hers like an invading army.
And he knew his troops had hers hopelessly outnumbered.
* * *
Abby knew she'd just taken a flying leap off the Cliffs of Insanity, but by the time she realized, it was too late to do anything except spread her arms and yell, "Banzai!”
One minute she'd been trying to have a reasonable conversation about the least reasonable thing that had ever happened to her, and the next thing she knew, the world stopped.
Or maybe that was just her heart.
Rule was exploring her lips as if they contained the key to the gates of heaven. Abby was pretty sure they didn't, but Rule seemed determined to find out for himself.
But she would be willing to swear on her grandmother's silver rosary that she would never in a million lifetimes forget the feel or the taste or the heat of the demon's mouth on hers. It had etched itself permanently not just on her memory but on her soul as well.
That's when Abby remembered just who she was kissing.
Stiffening, she flattened her palms against Rule's chest and pressed. He made a low, rumbling sound in his throat and tightened his grip on her arms. She felt the way his muscles tensed, but his mouth unexpectedly softened.
Ooooh, he was devious. Or was that delicious?
An attack she would have fought against. It would have made her mad and cold and perfectly willing to put a knee to a place she assumed was as sensitive on demons as it was on mortal men. But Rule knew his stuff. The minute she got her back up, he regrouped and switched to stealth tactics.
His grip remained firm, but Abby could feel his thumbs rubbing small circles on her upper arms as he held her in place. The rigidly contained sensation raised gooseflesh on more than her arms and had her leaning closer to him instead of pulling away.
A tremor ripped through her, like the aftershock of an earthquake, which was no wonder, since she could swear the earth was moving. She had to struggle to suppress a whimper when he dragged his mouth with drugging slowness over hers. He tasted like heat and pleasure and gingersnaps, crisp and spicy and just barely sweet. She swore to herself that she would not kiss him back, even as her lips parted and he slid inside like a cat burglar, quiet and subtle and devastating.
That time the moan slipped out. She couldn't help it. Her knees collapsed and his arms slid around her to catch her to him. The red haze of rage dissolved in the bright light of lust just as the door to the library swung open behind them.
The voice she heard next belonged to Tess, not God, but that didn't change the fact that Abby swore she heard the angels singing.
"Well," the woman said, laughter rich and bubbling in her voice. "I suppose
this pretty much counts as a meeting of…er…minds."
CHAPTER TEN
"I brought you some towels." Samantha set a stack of fluffy linens on the end of the bed and offered her a tentative smile.
Abby turned away from the window overlooking the street four floors below and reminded herself not to take her frustration out on the Lupine. Of the Others Abby had met today, Samantha had been the most sympathetic, even if she hadn't managed to talk Rule and Rafael into letting Abby go home. Frankly, Abby didn't think that much talking was possible.
I warned you to knee him in the balls while you had the chance.
Abby groaned as the voice that had gone blessedly silent after her bout of unconsciousness reared its ugly tongue. At this point, slamming her head into a brick wall sounded almost fun, if it would get rid of the thing permanently.
Hey, that ain't nice. You keep thinking things like that and you'll hurt my feelings.
"Would you shut up!" Abby yelled, throwing her hands up and glaring at…nothing. Unfortunately, Samantha seemed to think it had been aimed at her. She paled and looked like a puppy who'd just been kicked.
Forcing herself to at least a semblance of calm, Abby sighed and offered the Lupine a weak smile. "Sorry, I didn't mean you," she explained. "But the voice inside my head is driving me crazy. If hearing a voice inside my head doesn't count as evidence that I'm already crazy.”
Samantha murmured something sympathetic, which just served to make Abby feel like a heel as well as a prisoner. No matter how often one of the Others told her they understood how she felt or that they didn't like the current situation any more than she did, their sympathy didn't extend toward straying from their decided course of action.
They'd vetoed letting her go home alone, letting her go home to her brother, letting her go upstate to her parents, letting her go anyplace with a bodyguard, and even letting her go to the police. Not that she'd held out much hope about the last one, but she'd have settled for the FBI or even the bloody KGB if it got her out of the nightmare she'd landed in. She felt so out of control at the moment that making any decision for herself, even a stupid one, had become her only goal. Make that obsession.
Nothing had made the others so much as blink. Rafael had pulled rank as head of the Council of Others—which still didn't mean much to Abby but seemed to settle the matter for everyone else—and decreed that Abby would remain in protective custody until Uzkiel was captured. The custody turned out to be so protective that she wasn't even allowed to leave the building. The night manager of Vircolac had set up a room for her on the private top floor of the club, and she'd been hustled up here unceremoniously by an annoyingly amused Tess and an at least guilty-looking Samantha.
The only concession Abby had been able to wring from her jailers had been the agreement that they would at least look for a way to get her body back under her sole ownership by moving Lou into some other kind of non-human, volunteer host. They could exorcise it into a Tibetan meditation bowl, for all she cared, but she wanted to be the only voice talking inside her head again.
"I know I hate getting into a nice clean bed when I'm feeling all grubby. I thought you might want to take a shower.”
At least Samantha's voice had the courtesy to be coming from someone else's body.
Abby gestured at her grubby jeans and even grubbier sweatshirt. "Thanks, but I don't have anything to change into.”
"Oh, Missy sent over some sweats from next door. She always keeps spares around. They're under the towels.”
Abby looked down and saw a corner of navy cotton peeking out from beneath the oatmeal-colored towels. "Who's Missy? And why does she keep extra sweats around? You guys do the kidnapping thing often?”
Samantha ignored the kidnapping comment. "Missy Winters. Luna of the Silverback Clan.”
Samantha tugged down the sheets of the bed she'd helped make up a few minutes ago. "She and the Alpha live next door. He owns Vircolac.”
The research Abby had done on one of the station's werewolf stories flashed into her head along with a mental picture of one of the Other faces that had been most prominent in the news over the last few weeks. Graham Winters was another one of those Others like Rafael De Santos—too sexy to possibly be human. Honestly, it could give a girl a whole new perspective on her dream man.
"Missy always keeps extra changes of clothes around, because there always seems to be someone showing up around here without them." Samantha folded the duvet neatly down toward the end of the bed. "You might have noticed earlier that when we shift, our clothes don't make the change with us.”
Abby sighed. "I had a few other things on my mind at the time, but yeah. I remember thinking I usually know a person for longer than fifteen minutes before I see them completely naked.”
That may be one of your big problems, sweet cheeks. You’re a prude. You need to relax. Let your hair down. Let your pants down....
She really wanted to punch the dirty-minded little fiend right in its nasty little mouth. Since that wasn't possible, she settled for ignoring it.
The werewolf grinned at her and fluffed a big down pillow. "You did blush a little, but I thought it was cute. When you grow up in the pack, it's easy to forget that humans don't have the same perspective on things like nudity and sex that the Others do.”
"There's an official Others' perspective on sex? Was it part of the media kit?”
Samantha laughed. "No, but we do tend to be more relaxed about physical stuff than you guys are. Lupines especially. Maybe it's our 'animal instincts,' but the pack looks at skin and sex as natural. There's no reason to hide either of them.”
Which reminded Abby ...
"Listen here, you little creep," she said to Louamides, "I am not going to have an audience while I get out of these clothes and take a shower.”
A gusty sigh echoed inside her head.
"I mean that, too," she said firmly. "I swear by everything holy, if you think you're gonna get an eyeful, you disgusting little fiend, you've got another think coming. I don't care if I have to shower with my eyes closed in the pitch dark.”
Ignoring Samantha's very wary expression, Abby grabbed the towels off the end of the bed and was about to turn toward the connecting bathroom Samantha had pointed out earlier, when she noticed that the werewolf wasn't leaving. Her hands lingered on the third pillow, the same one she'd been fluffing for the last ten minutes.
"Is something wrong?" Abby sighed. "Surely no one thinks you need to watch me while I sleep so I don't try to climb out the window? I'm the human one, remember? I don't do stunts.”
Samantha shook her head. "No, of course not. It's just—" She broke off and her expression turned even guiltier. If that were possible. "I brought you something else.”
Abby watched while the other woman reached into the pocket of her own borrowed sweatshirt and pulled out something small and silver and shiny.
She looked over her shoulder, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely more than a whisper. "I can't leave the phone with you, but I can't stop thinking about how worried my family would be if I disappeared and they didn't hear from me. The Felix said you shouldn't be allowed to make any calls, but I thought... you know. If you sent just one text message…at least you could let someone know you're safe.”
Abby stared at Samantha and fought the urge to grab her by the cheeks and kiss her smack on the mouth—
Aw, yeah, baby! Now that's what I'm talking about!
—Abby contented herself with a squeal and a big hug and grabbing the proffered phone like a lifeline. This was exactly what she needed, and she didn't even need to think about whom to text or what to say.
She typed in the phone number she knew by heart and used a trembling thumb to pick out the one-word code she and her brother, Noah, had developed when they were kids.
"Thanksgiving."
Vircolac didn't stock enough brandy for Rule to get as drunk as he wanted to. Hell, he doubted even faerie wine would have offered him the oblivion he l
onged for tonight, but he was damned sure going to do his best to find some kind of substitute, even if it killed him.
At the moment, an untimely demise had a lot to recommend it.
What in the sun's name had he been thinking? He would have been better off sticking his tongue in an electrical socket than in the mouth of Abby Baker. Not only was she human and apparently just pious enough to have bought into all the bad publicity her religious leaders had spent centuries concocting about his people, but she was also the key to defeating or being defeated by the most dangerous fiend it had ever been Rule's misfortune to encounter. And to top it all off with a nice, shiny ribbon, she now resided quite securely under his protection.
Rule slouched in his chair and brooded, a large glass of brandy in one hand and his gaze trained on the flickering flames in the hearth. After Rafe and Tess and the others had left, Rule had remained at Vircolac and settled here in an upstairs sitting room he'd been told was often used for private meetings and gambling. He'd denied any interest in retiring to the bedroom he used while he stayed in the Above—or any room with a bed just then—and the night manager had offered Rule the library. The last thing he needed was to stare at the site of his own folly for a few hours, so instead he'd come up here to sulk in peace.
Too bad his mind wouldn't let him rest. It kept reliving the feel of Abby's lips beneath his, the warm, sweet taste of her, her subtle feminine scent filling his nostrils. If he had wanted to devise a particularly insidious form of torture to inflict on himself, he could not have chosen better.
The Watch had become far more than his job over the centuries he had spent serving in it. Perhaps part of that came from the fact that his father had served before him and his father's father before him, back to the dawn of the order. Maybe it had truly come to be in the blood of Rule's family. He knew for certain that somehow it had fused with his identity. He had become a Watchman in truth as well as in name. Protecting people from the evil of the fiends was his mission, the reason he continued to draw breath after so many long centuries of existence. Taking advantage of someone under his care, setting his own desires above the need to guard and defend, counted as the greatest heresy he could name. It went against everything he believed and everything he stood for.
The Others 03: The Demon You Know Page 8