“When do you have to return to work?” Andras asked after a while, glancing at his phone.
“I, um, I don’t think I’ll be going back to work today.” I took my own phone out of my purse, with the intention of calling Harry. My mind was too scattered by everything I’d heard right now to have any hope of a productive afternoon at the office.
“Would you like to meet Natasha? I’ll have to pick her up from the hospital in twenty minutes or so.”
Natasha. The woman who managed to have a relationship with a demon, to become his girlfriend—his Mistress as he called her.
“I’d like that.”
“HI, zaichik.” A tall, young woman with a strawberry-blonde ponytail hopped into the backseat of our car shortly after we pulled over at the hospital. With a quick kiss on Andras’s cheek, she settled next to him.
Zaichik—a bunny-rabbit in Russian. There was nothing cute and cuddly that I could see in the tall, imposing Andras, but Natasha’s view of her demon clearly differed from mine.
“Jade, meet Natasha. Natasha, this is Jade, Vadim’s woman,” Andras introduced us matter-of-factly.
“No. Not his, not at all,” I protested.
The idea of being someone’s woman rubbed me the wrong way the very first time Andras referred to Natasha like that. When applied to me it sounded even worse, as if he were talking about me as Vadim’s property, like his wallet or a pair of pants.
Besides, at this point, technically, we really were nothing to each other, nothing at all.
“A ‘casual acquaintance’ would be a much more accurate term,” I corrected him. “We hardly know each other.”
“He told me you had a date.”
“Dinner,” I corrected. “We had dinner. Once. As casual acquaintances.”
Seemingly unconcerned about the importance of definitions, Natasha cheerfully offered me her hand. “Nice to meet you, Jade. Are you American? Your Russian is amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever met a foreigner with a better command of the language.”
“Thank you. I’m Australian, actually.”
“Really?” Her light-grey eyes grew wider. “This is like on the opposite end of the Earth! It must be hard to be this far away from home.”
“Well.” I paused, side-tracked by her questions. Here was a woman, who apparently was dating a demon, yet thought my being born on a different continent was something extraordinary. “I’m used to it now.”
“I’ve never been to Australia. With all the unique animals over there, it really seems like an alien planet to me.”
“I’ll take you there, whenever you want.” Andras wrapped his arm around Natasha’s shoulders, drawing her for a kiss to her temple.
“Look at you.” She smiled at him, playfully. “My wish is your command—my own personal genie.”
Watching them getting all warm and cozy with each other, I was beginning to feel like I had landed in some alternative reality where it was perfectly normal to have a demon for a boyfriend.
“How long have you been together?”
“Well, we’ve known each other for close to two years now,” Natasha replied. “We were neighbours at first.”
“Natasha helped me one night, on her way from work,” Andras chimed in. “That was how we first met. Then I moved into her building because I realised I needed to be where she was.”
Natasha took his hand, a warm expression on her face.
The driver, a man in the uniform grey hoodie, turned around to ask for the destination address over his shoulder.
No, not a man. A demon.
“Would you like to come over, Jade?” Natasha offered. “We can have some tea at my place.”
“Thank you. But maybe some other time? I think I’d like to go home now.” I truly felt dazed and confused at the moment. All the information from Andras, coupled with the visual of their obviously deep and happy connection with each other, created a buzzing unrest in my head that needed some time to settle down.
“I’ll give you my phone number.” Natasha reached into her purse. “All of this can be rather overwhelming at the beginning. Please, call me any time you feel like talking to, you know, a human female.” She smiled as she wrote her number on a piece of paper.
“Alyssa and Sytrius, her partner, are coming to Germany for Christmas if you’d like to meet them,” Andras added casually, as if I had already become a part of this peculiar group comprised of demons and humans—close enough with them all to celebrate Christmas together.
“Thanks,” I mumbled as the car pulled over at my apartment building. “I’ll think about it.” Before opening the door, I turned to Natasha, unable to stop myself from asking. “What is it like, to date a demon?”
Her expression grew serious.
“It’s a big responsibility, first and foremost.” Her reply was unexpected.
“In what way?”
“When an Incubus loves, he gives you his heart and his soul. You have to be careful not to damage the gift. For it would ruin him forever.”
Chapter 19
NATASHA’S WORDS STILL rang in my head as I walked to the entrance of my stairwell.
“Jade.” A tall figure moved my way from the wall by the door, a white plastic bag in his hand, with something hard and cylindrical weighing it down.
“Vadim?” I took a step back. Despite the shock of surprise, a wave of familiar tingles ran over me at the sound of his deep voice. “What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
My heart raced as warm effervescence spread through me—the pleasure at seeing him again.
God, I really had missed him.
“Do we?” I couldn’t muster enough determination to send him on his way.
“Yes. Can I come inside?”
Except for a different style of leather jacket, his clothes were nearly identical to those worn by Andras. His hood was also drawn low over his head, leaving only that tantalizing bottom lip on display.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I protested, although it didn’t come out very convincingly.
Talking to Andras and seeing him with Natasha had put my mind at rest a little. I no longer feared for my life when being one on one with Vadim. However, judging by the way my emotions swirled in a twister at the mere sight of him, being one on one with him still held another kind of danger for me.
“I’m not sure I want to talk.”
“You called Andras.” There was a clear note of reproach in his quick reply. “Why would you talk to him, but not to me?”
Dammit.
I hadn’t asked Andras to keep our meeting a secret, but I certainly didn’t expect him to spill the beans this quickly. Apparently, demons chatted like schoolgirls behind people’s backs.
“Here.” He stepped forward, taking something out of his pocket.
“What is this?” I leaned back but stood my ground as he held out what looked like a polished disk on a string.
“An amulet. It will force me to keep my distance. Put it on.”
“How does it work?” I asked cautiously, but took the pendant from him.
He gestured at the entrance door. “Come, I’ll show you.”
“I—” Holding the string in my hand, I took a closer look at the pendant. Even in the daylight, I could see bright swirls of orange and yellow light moving inside. It was both eerie and pretty at the same time. “What is it made from?”
“I’ll tell you inside.” Obviously short on patience, he grabbed the pendant out of my hand and slid it over my head. “Come,” he said, as if I had already agreed to have a conversation with him.
Something inside me protested at the tone of command in his voice, yet the plea in his eyes prompted me to unlock the door after all.
Vadim held it open for me, letting me enter before him.
“Listen.” I turned around as soon as I was inside. “Let’s go talk elsewhere. I know a bar that would be open already. There aren’t that many people there at this hour. Quiet enough to hav
e a talk, whatever it is you want to tell me—”
It was a weak attempt on my part to avoid being one on one with him, but not one out of fear. I simply didn’t trust myself to make sound decisions around him.
Vadim dismissed my suggestion, as if he hadn’t even heard it. “Invite me in, please,” he said grimly, firm concentration on his face.
“What?”
With force, he punched the space in front of his face, his fist bouncing off something that appeared to separate us. Carefully, I swept the air around his fist with my hand, encountering no barrier whatsoever.
“What is happening?”
“I guess Andras didn’t get this far in his little talk.” The bitter note was still there in his tone. Vadim really seemed offended by my choosing Andras over him for that conversation. “The amulet.” He gestured at the disk around my neck. “It’s made from soros stone which came from our world. It recognizes us.”
One hand on the disk at my chest, I was still touching the space all around his fist with the other, in search of the undetectable-to-me barrier.
“You brought a necklace with you?”
My sarcasm bounced off him.
“Those were our urns,” he replied gravely. “Coffin-like enclosures for our physical bodies made from soros stone, to give us some protection for the journey between the dimensions. The urns disintegrated on impact with this world. The pieces can still be found all over. Some have been carved into pendants by humans who used them to detect us among them. I’ve had this one since first coming to this area in the fourteenth century.”
“Do you remember things that happened that far back?”
“Much further than that.”
“How about the day you came into this world? Do you remember that, too?” I had a hard time comprehending the expanse of time stretching over a millennium. The idea of someone walking the Earth for that long boggled my mind.
“Vaguely, but I wish I didn’t.”
“A millennium ago?” I had just a general knowledge of what the world was like back then—simply what I’d learned from history lessons in school and some books I’d read.
Vadim was someone, who’d actually lived through it all.
“We survived the journey,” he continued. “Barely. With the soros stone urns smashed to pieces, our physical bodies, just as fragile as those of humans, ended up being broken and injured too.” He paused, his forehead wrinkled, with a deep crease forming between his thick eyebrows. “Those were our first days on earth. Scattered all over the world, immobile and in pain, waiting for the broken bones to heal.”
“For how long? How fast do you heal?”
“Not faster than you, but unfailingly and completely. Eventually, we all healed, found each other, and have been plaguing the earth ever since.”
“Plaguing?”
“Isn’t that how you would view our presence in your world? A swarm of parasites who are always taking, corrupting the minds and bodies of innocents with sin, giving nothing but death in return? At least that seemed to be the opinion of people who learned about our existence over the centuries.”
“No wonder you’re striving to keep your being here a secret.” I exhaled a sigh, taking a step towards the lift. “Come in, Vadim,” I invited, thinking at the very least I could listen to whatever else he had to say. I had no reason to doubt he would respect my wishes if I asked him to leave anytime later again.
Vadim slipped through the invisible barrier and entered the building.
“Come.” Taking my hand, he urged me into the lift with him.
With the same resolve, he headed to my apartment door, tugging me behind. As soon as I unlocked the door, he entered first—so the amulet around my neck wouldn’t stop him, I guessed.
He let go of my hand only in the hallway, marching to my kitchen in long determined strides. There he produced a bottle of red wine from the plastic bag he’d brought with him, setting it on the table.
Confidently, as if he lived here, he got a wine glass from the cabinet and a bottle opener from the kitchen drawer then poured some wine into the glass.
“Here.” He handed it to me. “I want you to be able to listen to me, calmly. Wine seems to relax you somewhat.”
He took me by my shoulders and spun me around to face my bedroom, giving me a gentle shove towards it. “Now go inside that room, please. Don’t let me in until I’m finished.”
“Are you saying I’m in danger from you, Vadim?” I stared at him over my shoulder, searching for his eyes in the shadows of his hood.
“Jade.” His voice softened. “Please. For my peace of mind, stay in the room.”
Holding the glass of wine in one hand and clutching the pendant in the other, I stepped into the bedroom. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Hands fisted over his head, he leaned with his arms against the barrier created by the amulet. His stern concentration wavered with something raw and fragile in his eyes.
“You’re safe here, Jade. Just let me say to you what I came here to say, please. Ask me anything you want. If after all that you still want me to leave, I won’t bother you again.”
I took a step back and plopped on the bed.
“Tell me about the woman you killed. When did it happen?” Releasing a breath, I took a huge swig from my wine glass, hoping it’d calm me, just like he said.
“Sixteen seventy-three,” he replied without hesitation. “April. I was away from the Base on Council business. One of the very few times I’ve ever left the place. This also happened to be my only time among humans on my own. Usually, we go everywhere in pairs to keep an eye on each other, but my partner had been hurt and stayed behind, waiting to heal enough before making the journey back. I had to return to the Base on my own to deliver the information we had collected for the Grand Master at the time. I stopped at a guesthouse to water my horse.”
He paused for a moment, his gaze glossing over as if he no longer looked at me but into his past.
“She worked in the kitchen. I didn’t even go inside, just found a stable-hand to get feed and water for my horse, but she came out with some errand and spotted me. We chatted. Well, she was the one talking. I was just watching her, marvelling at the happy colours of her emotions swirling around us. She said she made money on the side by providing sexual favours to travellers but that she liked me enough to do it for free.”
“I can’t believe that wouldn’t happen more often,” I muttered. “As far as all of you are concerned.”
“Any direct contact with humans was strictly forbidden. I knew I was breaking the rules even by listening to her saying things like that to me.”
“Is that why you cover your faces?” I found odd their apparent need to stay in the shadows. Even during our walk, I noted the way Andras tended to keep to the buildings along the sidewalk, as if hiding from the attention his athletic figure commanded from passers-by.
“Yes, when we’re in public.” Vadim shoved his hood back now. His short, tousled hair made my fingers itch with the urge to smooth it out. “Sexual energy is hard for us to stay away from. It is nearly impossible to resist when offered freely.”
“She took me to her small room at the back. Undressed me.” He rubbed his neck, leaning with his shoulder against the invisible wall separating us. “She did things to my body that no one had ever done before or after that night. Her energy was sweet, light, and simple. She giggled . . . Happy.”
He slid down the barrier to sit on the floor, getting lost in his memories.
The images created by his words in my mind tugged at my heart with a new emotion, and it took me a moment to recognize it for what it was.
Jealousy.
It wasn’t easy to hear about him being with another woman, even if it happened hundreds of years ago, before any of my known ancestors ever walked the earth. Yet I understood his need to tell this to me. It was his past, and he wanted to tell me all, so I could get to know him, completely.
“I had never touched a woman before. Th
e whole experience was indescribable. I lost myself in her energy, which was all mine to take. I lost my head, and I took it all. Once I was inside her, I couldn’t stop, greedily taking it all as it came off her, wave after delicious wave—lust, attraction, passion. I never noticed when I dipped into her life force, and stopped only when she slumped in my arms, but by then it was already too late. She was dead, a smile of utter bliss frozen on her face.”
Sitting on the floor, with his back to me, forearms on his raised knees, he wouldn’t face me, choosing to talk into the darkness of the hallway instead.
“A kitchen hand found me at her dead body and raised the alarm. Their justice was quick They swarmed me, using anything they could get their hands on for a weapon, and I didn’t fight them. I needed the punishment—I wished they could kill me then and there. But you see, my sweet, innocent Jade, this is part of our existence—we cannot die, no matter how much we may want to. There never was a choice for me but to keep going. Beaten and broken inside and out, I had to go on.”
“How did you? Go on, I mean.”
“What I had done could not be reversed—there could never be atonement for me. All I could do was to make sure it didn’t happen again. Yet it was continuing to happen. Women were killed every year routinely, right there at the Incubi Base.”
“They were?” My hand cramped from the firm hold I had on the wine glass, yet I barely noticed it.
“Before you, we had to kidnap women to feed.”
“You did what?”
He continued, without any indication he heard me, “I’ve served on the Incubi Council for centuries and knew how it was done. We would get an approved list of names and addresses from The Priory of Grimien—the human organization that has been governing our existence in this world for the past six hundred years. Then the retrieval teams would kidnap the Sources and deliver them to the Base. Every night, the Sources would then feed the Council members.”
“The same way the demons fed off my fantasies?”
“Yes.”
“No one kidnapped me, though. I came on my own.”
Grand Master (Demons, #3) Page 9