Burning Midnight

by Rose Wulf

  Scrunching her lips as she thought over his response, Gwen asked, “Who? Why?”

  “From what I can gather,” Knox replied, “chances are it’s the demon who expected to have inherited your soul by now. Demons are egotistical, angry, vain creatures. Not receiving his prize was bad enough, but to have the curse healed away by a Nephilim, and thereby the intended soul purified, would be too big an insult to ignore. If he—or she—simply let it go, their reputation would crumble. Probably in their opinion, you already belong to them.”

  “I don’t belong to anybody,” Gwen declared, crossing her arms stubbornly. The curse had been bad enough. A situation she’d never had the chance to control in the first place. But now this? Being targeted over a bruised ego? That was just ridiculous.

  Knox held up a hand as if to ward her off. “I’m not saying otherwise,” he assured her. “I’m giving you my best attempt at insight into the enemy’s reasons.”

  Sighing, Gwen dropped her arms again. “Fine. But who is this ‘enemy’?” Knox had very specifically not told her that detail. And in her opinion, it was a largely important one.

  Huffing out his own breath of irritation, Knox said, “Hell if I know. I haven’t been able to get a name, or even a narrowed down list.” He refocused his stare on hers, somehow holding her gaze to his without a touch. “But whoever it is, Gwen, they’re bad news. They’ve got reach. We don’t want to wait for their final play.”

  Gwen’s stomach lurched at the intensity of his warning. She definitely didn’t want someone like that in her business. Really ever. With a heavy swallow, she asked, “What am I supposed to do, then? Move to Mars?”

  The corners of his lips twitched with amusement and he shook his head. “I’d actually recommend Saturn, but let’s save that for Plan B.” But she could see on his face that the real answer wasn’t nearly so simple.

  “So I’m running again,” Gwen muttered, not so much as a question but as a statement of defeat. It was the last thing she wanted to do. Well, of the things she was willing to do. “Goodbye new apartment. Farewell, new job. Sayonara stability.”

  “Never pegged you for a drama queen.”

  Gwen blinked, realizing she’d been blankly staring off into the distance, and narrowed her eyes up at Knox. She opened her mouth to tell him off but caught herself. Yeah, sure, it sucked. A lot. And she was sure that before everything was settled—and assuming she survived—she’d have to start all over again. Sort of. She also had friends, and Ben, and she’d pulled her shit together before, so surely she could do it again when the time came. And who knows, maybe this won’t completely destroy my new attempt at a responsible adult life. So instead of telling off the annoyingly perceptive demon, she sighed. “Next time I do that, just shake me or something.”

  A flash of a grin lit his eyes before he caught her jaw beneath two curled fingers and captured her mouth with his. He nibbled on her lips, slipped his tongue inside, and sucked on hers long and slow. Her knees nearly gave out as she reflexively caught herself by grabbing hold of the sides of his shirt.

  He released her lips before she could gather herself enough to reciprocate and, lips teasing the underside of her jaw on the way to her ear, whispered, “Kissing you is so much more fun.”

  Flustered and embarrassed by her own desires, Gwen stepped back with an exaggerated scoff of irritation. All the while doing her best to tamp down the raging lust in her blood. “I seriously don’t know what to do with you. Are you actually here just to seduce me?”

  A wicked grin curled his lips and Gwen immediately regretting posing that question. “If I were, I’d already be winning.”

  Refusing to let him intimidate her, Gwen dipped a hand into her pocket and extracted her phone. “Just remember I have Belle on speed dial. And an angry wife is way more effective than a single prayer.” She didn’t actually think Knox was a threat to her, for some inexplicable reason, but she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to throw at least one taunt back at him.

  It only partially worked. Knox laughed, his shoulders visibly shaking, and held up his hands in mock surrender. “Duly noted. I’ll be more subtle.”

  Gwen sighed and tucked her phone away, belatedly surprised it hadn’t been lost or destroyed in their scuffle with that demoness. When she’d been trapped in the demon’s grip, she’d honestly, for a moment, thought she was done for. She hadn’t even been able to breathe freely with that demonic blade at her throat. Talking had hurt like hell.

  She didn’t realize she’d lifted her fingers to her throat, just shy of the sore slit that remained, until Knox curved his hand around hers. “Does it still hurt?”

  Her gaze refocused and she paused. Her neck did sting, as a matter of fact. She’d just been ignoring it up to this point. Or perhaps the adrenaline had overridden the pain for a while. “A bit,” she admitted. She gave his hand a squeeze, not quite up to the shrug that should have accompanied the gesture, and added, “It’s not too bad, though. I don’t have blood running down my throat, do I?”

  “No,” he said, letting go of her hand and dropping his arm to his side. “But it’s front enough, people will notice.”

  “And I’m betting demons can’t heal people, right?” Seemed logical to her, anyway.

  Knox shook his head.

  “Then, oh well,” Gwen declared. This time she did shrug, because if there was nothing she could do about it, then there was no sense pouting about it. She’d never been one to care about getting odd looks from strangers. She’d realized something else a moment ago, too. Something more important—probably—than a little scratch. “Tell me something. Can demons go into people’s dreams?”

  This seemed to pique his interest because Knox’s mild frown turned into an expression of curiosity, complete with an arched brow. “Some demons probably can,” he said. His response came slow enough that she suspected he was searching for the answer. “Not all.”

  “What’s the distinction?” she pushed. “Is it a demon class level thing, or a power thing, or a specialized training thing? Something else?”

  Knox tucked his hands into his pockets and tilted his head up to the semi-obscured blue sky. “All of the above,” he said after a beat. “The purer a demon’s bloodline, the stronger they’ll be. The stronger a demon is, the more they can do. The more they want to do, the harder they’ll train.” He paused, straightened his gaze again, and added, “But a low-level demon could never do something as complicated as influence dreams. They just don’t have the juice. There are still limits.”

  Gwen couldn’t say the answer surprised her, at least not the general answer, but it wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. With the adrenaline wearing off and the initial shock past, she’d come to realize, though, that she’d encountered that demoness before. In her nightmare. Hers was the voice that had left her with an ominous warning echoing in her head.

  “He’s coming for you, Gwendolyn Manning.”

  “Why are you asking that, anyway?” Knox’s question kept Gwen from falling into the abyss of obsession, for which Gwen was grateful. Although, for some reason, she felt weird explaining herself.

  “I think … no, I know,” Gwen began awkwardly, “whoever she is, that demon came to me once before. In a nightmare. She never showed her face, but I remember her voice.”

  Knox studied her for several seconds. As if he were actually thinking, as opposed to simply trying to make her uncomfortable. “You’re sure?”

  Gwen nodded.

  “Two nights ago?”

  She nodded again, but this time abruptly cut the motion short. “How did you know that?” She hadn’t mentioned her nightmares to him. “Were you spying on me?” The last was added with a twinge of incredulity, as she suspected spying on her wouldn’t have been his first choice of task.

  Knox held up one hand and shook his head. “I wasn’t even north of Sacramento,” he assured her. “But there was a particular surge of dark energy from below the other night. Kai asked me to look into it, and that trail
eventually led me to you.”

  A lump formed in Gwen’s throat. Surge of energy? Somehow, that visual, coupled with Knox’s earlier words about the danger their potential enemy posed, really resonated in her. “How big is a ‘surge’?” Gwen heard herself ask quietly.

  “Big enough to distract Kai from his Archangel hunt,” Knox replied.

  That’s what I was afraid of. Instead of dwelling on the implications of that, however, Gwen took a breath and said, “He. The demon who’s after me, the one who thinks he owns me. It’s a he.” He’s a he?

  Knox dropped a hand to her shoulder, locking her focus with his serious gaze. “Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “It’s what that bitch said in my nightmare,” Gwen replied. “That she was just a messenger. ‘He’s coming for you, Gwendolyn Manning,’ she said. So the demon’s a he.” She swallowed the tickle of nerves this conversation had lifted to her chest. “Does that mean anything?”

  She watched the hesitation in his eyes, torn as to whether or not she appreciated that he held her gaze.

  “Nothing good,” he finally said. “But also nothing concrete.”

  “So you’re saying we narrowed it down to definitely bad and possibly worse?” Did she really want an answer to that?

  “More or less,” Knox confirmed. His grip of her shoulder shifted and he said, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  Somehow, his apology threw her off. Gwen gave him a curious look, suspecting she knew what he was trying to say but entirely not understanding why. “I don’t think Kai will kill you for bearing bad news. I mean, he spent months stuck in close quarters with me. He probably wanted to kill me himself a few dozen times.”

  This time, Knox grinned. “That was probably more because you were playing the third wheel that never went away. And maybe a little because he’s got a permanent stick up his ass.”

  Gwen rolled her eyes. “The first part, probably.” Why hadn’t his hand left her shoulder yet? Better question, what the hell’s the matter with me that I’m letting him touch me like this at all? Uncomfortable with the answers behind those questions, Gwen cleared her throat and too-deliberately declared, “So, uh, which way is home from here?”

  ****

  Knox fought the cringe at her question. He didn’t need a whole lot of insight to guess at how well she’d like the smarter answer. Deliberately sliding the hand on her shoulder down her arm, he wrapped his hand around hers and made a point of looking to the trees around them. “Well, that’ll be a bit of a walk,” he said after a beat. “Might as well enjoy the view while we’re out.” He wondered, briefly, if she would quietly assume he was still feeling drained and not up for teleporting them. But even in the short amount of time he’d known her, ‘quietly’ wasn’t a fitting adjective.

  They made it all of two feet—or he made it two feet, at least—before Gwen jerked her hand free and snapped, “What kind of answer is that? You can teleport, and I know I don’t need to remind you of that.”

  Swallowing the sigh of resignation, Knox turned to face her, unsurprised to find her with her hands on her hips and an eyebrow raised for effect. Really, it was the perfect expression for the tone. “True,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed slowly as she obviously recognized his lack of intent to add more.

  He tucked his hands into his pockets to keep them in place. The rapidly building look of frustration on her face was absolutely adorable.

  “For the love of—” He gave her a sharp look and she cut herself off for a second. “Pete,” she finally amended, earning a twitch of his lips. “You know what I’m getting at, Knox. You might know where or how far away we are, but I don’t, and I don’t particularly feel like wandering through the forest in my bare feet.”

  On reflex, Knox dropped his gaze to her aforementioned feet which were, of course, shoeless. It took all of his self-control not to actually smack his own forehead. Idiot. This hadn’t exactly been a planned outing. Of course, she was without shoes. He’d known she wasn’t wearing shoes when they’d been eating pizza on her airbed, and as odd as it was, that really hadn’t been more than an hour earlier. If that.

  Returning his focus to her impatient expression, he couldn’t help but grin. “Would you like me to carry you?”

  She pursed her lips and he swallowed. “I want you to take me home, Knox.”

  In other circumstances, he decided, he really wouldn’t mind hearing those words. Hell, if ‘home’ were just safer… It was an effort not to physically shake his head. He was in for an uncomfortable ride if his desires were already taking the reins. Some days, I hate my job. Stolen kisses, after all, were a long way away from an open invitation to indulgence and he knew it.

  “Has it occurred to you that ‘home’ isn’t safe right now?” Knox said instead, choosing to cut to the real issue. Despite how much he enjoyed teasing her.

  The light in her hazel eyes shifted as his point registered, and he waited. Knowing Gwen, it wouldn’t take her long to recover and find her voice again.

  “No,” she finally said, a surprising amount of the fight gone from her tone. “It actually hadn’t.” She sighed and her shoulders slumped, not in complete defeat but more in resignation. “I guess that was dumb.”

  Something odd flickered in his stomach. It felt vaguely like sympathy. Not an emotion he generally experienced, especially regarding any individual human. Then again, this one’s proving to be full of surprises.

  Releasing an exasperated, verging on dramatic, sigh, Gwen threw her hands into the air and turned as she spoke. As if asking her question to the entire world. “Well, what am I supposed to do, then? This is ridiculous! I can’t afford to go move into a hotel for the foreseeable future!” She took a breath, her arms at her sides by now, and turned back to face him. A new light of determination shone in her eyes so Knox didn’t bother trying to speak. “No, you know what? I’m not letting that demon bitch kick me out of my apartment. I’m tired of living on the run, dodging demon attacks, and sleeping with all the lights on. This is my life now and that’s my home and she can just get the hell out!”

  Well, fuck.

  He was officially on-board. Probably for a lot of the wrong reasons, but on-board all the same. Gwen was a damned spitfire when she wanted to be and it appealed to him more than he was comfortable admitting. Still, he couldn’t just come out and pledge his loyalty. “You sure you’re up for that?”

  Gwen stepped right back into his personal space without hesitation. “All I need from you is a ride home. I’ll deal with my problems on my own.”

  “That’s a great ideal,” he said. “But at the end of the day, you’re at a huge disadvantage if you go it alone.” A suicidal one, actually.

  “That’s basically been the song of my life,” Gwen replied. “I’ve learned a few protection spells since everything that happened before. And she’s not half as determined.”

  This keeps getting more interesting. Knox grinned and took half a step forward, turning their close proximity into an intimate one. “That I believe,” he said honestly, lifting his arms and snaking them around her waist. “But let’s save testing your protection spells for another day.”

  Confusion sparked in her eyes and she opened her mouth, his name partially formed in a curious tone, but he’d already opened the portal to take them back to her apartment. There was no sense in putting it off, after all. It was time to find out whether or not their unnamed demoness was waiting for Gwen’s inevitable return.

  Chapter Five

  “Seriously?” Gwen exclaimed as she and Knox stood just inside her entryway, surveying her seemingly enemy-demon-free apartment. The demoness may have left, but she’d left one hell of a mess in her wake. Gwen’s boxes looked as if they’d been blown out in all directions from the center of the room. A veritable explosion of semi-unpacked moving boxes, her personal belongings scattered—many broken—across the floor. Her airbed was on its side, up against the far wall, the bedding she’d had spread out all bundled
and tossed aside. “What, did she have a temper tantrum?”

  Knox whistled low, though the sound somehow felt sarcastic. “Kinda looks that way.”

  Swallowing her outcry of frustration—not like it would help anything—Gwen clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides deliberately. “That bitch.” God, this is going to take forever to clean up. Demons probably didn’t have the same sort of property-restoration abilities that angels did, given the difference in their natures. Meaning she was stuck doing it all by hand.

  Knox planted his hands on his hips and Gwen glanced over in time to see his head swiveling around the room. She could practically see the gears turning and she wondered how much longer it’d be before he’d bail. A matter of minutes? Another battle? What was he actually sticking around for, even? He’d said something about not depending on her admittedly questionable protection spell skills, but that didn’t really mean much.

  She opened her mouth to ask about his intentions at this point, but he beat her to it.

  “If you don’t get mad about it,” he said, “I think I can save us a couple hours’ manual labor.”

  Well, that was a curious statement. Eyebrows lifting high on her forehead, Gwen turned bodily toward him and asked, “Meaning?”

  Knox glanced at her and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder to the far side. “You’ve got neighbors.”

  “Meaning?” Of course, she had neighbors. It was an apartment. What was his point?

  Knox sighed, dropped his arms to his sides, and looked her square in the eyes. “I’m a demon, remember? I have a certain … skill set. Generally considered to be unpleasant, sure, but it doesn’t have to actually cause injury.”

  Gwen slowly shook her head, trying to figure out what kind of ‘skill set’ Knox could possibly be referring to. One that involved her poor, uninvolved neighbors. What on Earth could he even think would motivate— Oh. Oh, no. No way in hell. “Absolutely not. No way are you possessing my neighbors!”