She hesitated, her bottom lip between her teeth as she watched me. “Okay, take me home. I’ll give you the address.”
I shut the door on her and climbed into the front, starting the car. Without speaking, I tapped the screen in the middle of the dashboard, and under the navigation system, tapped the ‘home’ icon and pulled out of the parking spot I’d backed into.
“Right. Okay, I get it. If you wanted to take advantage, you would’ve already.” She groaned again and collapsed sideways across the back seat. “But in my defense, I got clocked really good, and I’m not thinking straight.”
The streetlights, few and far between, blipped over us as I followed the little red arrow on the screen down the streets, left, forward, left again, right. We passed back through the part of town where the road was pocked with tar-patched cracks and potholes that appeared out of the darkness almost too late to miss them.
We headed up into the hills, and soon the roads, the lights, and the surroundings improved, potholes giving way to smooth asphalt, warehouses and factories to new developments and condominiums that looked down over the city below.
Her complex was quiet, not gated like some we’d passed, modest and older than some of the luxury properties around it. A cursory glance at the cars in the well-lit parking lot didn’t show the Marshall’s Jeep. I backed into the spot she pointed to and surveyed the lot and the walkways from the shadow of the carport, giving my night vision a chance to adjust.
“No sign of your ex. Can I help you upstairs?” I turned to look at her and jumped at the closeness of her face.
“You really just scanned the whole parking lot looking for him, didn’t you? I wondered why you were sitting so still.”
I handed her the keys and her purse off the passenger seat. “I didn’t bring you home just to have you be attacked again. I certainly don’t want to find out I blew off my appointment for nothing.”
“Your appointment…you mean the soul you were going to steal?” She seemed more curious than judgmental, but her question rankled.
“I don’t steal. I collect. Anyone who gives me their soul does so of their own free will. They think it’s worth it, for whatever reason, so who are you to judge me?”
She flinched and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “You’re right. I guess I’ll have to relearn a lot of things, now that I know Shawn wasn’t exactly the way he portrayed himself, maybe nothing’s the way he explained it.”
“I’m not saying I’m a good guy, or anything. But I don’t attack people, and I don’t have to steal souls.” I got out of the car and opened the back door for her. “If people weren’t so eager to hand them over for power, or money, or sex, I would steal them. I just don’t have to.”
She managed a small laugh. “Glad we’ve got that cleared up. I don’t want to give you my soul.”
“I know. You don’t have that greedy desperation about you. I wasn’t going to try.” In fact, the only weakness I could see in her at all, was her growing fear of Shawn. I could’ve played on it, used it against her, but I’d seen his obsession with her. I could have her soul in a matter of days, and I wouldn’t have to do a thing. The Marshall would drive her right into my arms, and my quota would be filled.
With a heavy sigh, she locked the doors and reached out for me. “Can you walk me up? I don’t feel so good about taking stairs right now.” She placed one elegant, long-fingered hand in the crook of my elbow, and something in me stirred that hadn’t in a long time.
Darcy didn’t seem to notice the electrical thrill, or my surprised reaction. She gripped me tighter, taking a few wobbly steps, but her legs quivered and buckled under her. “Shit, sorry.”
I hefted her into my arms, and she clasped her hands behind my neck. “Don’t think you can take advantage of me, just because I’m carrying you upstairs.”
“I could crawl up, but this is faster.” She gave me a long look. “Can I take advantage of a…what kind of demon are you? I think you’re the first demon I’ve ever met.”
Her head sagged against my shoulder as I sighed and started up the stairs. “I’m probably not the first, but if you’ve always been this secure in yourself, there’s not much attraction to any kind of demon.”
She stiffened and glanced at me. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“Can’t do that, either. I don’t feel much. Most of our emotions have simply faded over time. Only the young worry about what any human thinks.”
She tapped me on the shoulder and pointed down. “I can walk. Thank you for handling the stairs. I’ll go back to pathetic clinging but walking on my own two feet.”
“You need to see a doctor.”
“I heal fast. I’m fine.”
Frustrated, I grabbed her arms and forced her to look at me. “Why are you avoiding treatment?”
“Because my ex is a cop, his friends are cops, and I already know that if I go in, they’ll call the cops. I won’t put myself through the humiliation of having the police call me hysterical or a liar, or worse, flat out accuse me of trying to ruin Shaw’s career.”
She pressed her hand to her head and reached into her purse, digging out the keys and handing them to me. “Since I’m not a temptation for you, would you come inside and just look around for me before you leave?”
Her resignation to the fact that her ex might have hurt her and could be inside her home at that very moment, lying in wait, sparked a cold rage in me I didn’t think I had the capacity to feel. Silently, I took the offered key and unlocked the deadbolt while she pressed her back to the wall, watching the stairwell.
I felt around for a light switch and when I found it, flooded the open living area and kitchen with warmth and light. She slipped inside and leaned against the closed door as I checked the rest of the apartment, taking note of a broken window lock in the bedroom as I scanned the cars below.
“It’s all clear,” I announced as I stuck my head behind the shower curtain. I rejoined her in the living room, where she collapsed on the couch and curled up in the fetal position. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“No, thank you. You’ve already earned yourself a lifetime of free food from O’Shay’s.” She sat up and hugged herself. “I really do think I’m fine as far as my head, I hardly feel the cut and I’m not woozy anymore.” She dug through her purse and pulled out a perfume bottle. “Oh my God, I forgot this was in here. Glad it didn’t break.” She set it on the table beside her. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
I lifted her feet and placed them back on the couch. “No. I’ll walk you to bed, after I go online and find out what to look for in a concussion.”
She laid back and closed her eyes, obviously still hurting too much to argue. Something stirred again in me, not so much an emotion as the memory of something I had felt in a different life, as a different being. It bothered me the way forgotten memories do, itching at the base of my brain like the buzzing of an insect in a quiet room.
Chapter 5
Darcy
Watching him putter around behind the counter of my kitchen, it was hard to imagine him stealing souls and disappearing into the night. I’d been warned about his kind for as long as I’d known Shawn. Before him, I’d have laughed if someone told me demons and night creatures existed.
Ranger wasn’t anything like the image in my head. For a being with no emotions and no soul, he’d been more compassionate and caring than most humans I knew.
“If I’m not attractive to you, and you aren’t capable of empathy, why are you going out of your way to help me?”
He paused over the sink, my electric tea kettle in one hand, a thoughtful look on his face. “You are attractive, Darcy. Not that your body is why I’m here. I mean…” he cleared his throat and filled the kettle before continuing. “Your soul has no taint. It’s harder to take a clean soul, so why bother when so many are offered freely every day?”
“I’m no saint.”
He chuckled as he set the kettle back on its base to boi
l and sat on the chair opposite me. “I’m not surprised to hear such a Christian point of view but let me assure you. It’s not premarital sex, or the occasional drink, or running a red light that taints the soul.”
“But if I was ashamed of having sex, would that make me more attractive to a demon?” I was beginning to understand. Shawn had always hunted around drug houses, in the allies the prostitutes worked, and even around churches. I wanted to share that with DeVries, but couldn’t understand what purpose it would serve, so I shut my mouth with a snap and waited for him to answer.
“Some demons are drawn to feelings of shame, the disconnect you feel at those times is a very real physical detachment, a wound between the soul and body.”
The kettle beeped that it was ready, and he jumped up before I could even stir in that direction. “So…if someone knew to look for specific humans as potential…targets, could they help them?”
The pause was palpable. He knew I was asking more than I was saying, and he took time before responding. “There is always a way to help a psychic wound. Not my job, not my problem, but…”
“But the people giving men like Shawn badges know they could help people?”
“The government is aware of the nature of psychic wounds. It’s been whispered among my kind that your people have their own reasons for letting us move among you.”
My head throbbed as I considered the layers of deceit that Shawn had enjoyed plying me with for two years. “The Marshall’s know they could be protecting people, and instead, they hunt demons, because they get something from them. I feel dirty right now.”
He handed me a cup of tea, his callused fingers lingering to tuck back a stray lock of hair. “Don’t. feeling guilt for the choices of others will create exactly the kind of psychic tear you can’t afford. Not as the former girlfriend of a demon-hunter. That would put a target on your back.”
“Thank you, for…I don’t know, for taking a short cut past my bar and stopping when you didn’t need to.”
He handed me his phone, the web page open to a site about concussions. “I’ll get out of your hair if you can honestly tell me you don’t have any of these symptoms.”
I read the list, glancing up at him after a few of them. “I am a little woozy, but I feel like that was more shock than my head. This tea’s helping that a lot.”
“Well, you might want to avoid telling your doctor that when you see them tomorrow,” he smirked as I sniffed the tea. “Don’t worry, it isn’t drugs. Not exactly, anyway. You won’t get high, and if it’s already working, you should be mostly healed by tomorrow.”
Well, shit. “Thank you again, I think. You’re sure this is safe?”
“I didn’t put anything in the tea, Ms. O’Shay. I simply…blessed it.” His sexy smirk turned into a full-fledged grin at my consternation. “The churches of the middle ages have done you a great disservice in your understanding of the alternate planes. I promise. Nothing I’ve done tonight was in an effort to compromise you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “How’s that for another first? I meet a man who isn’t trying to, uh, compromise me, and he’s the actual, real-as-life demon.” I stood with my empty tea cup in hand, testing my legs before I tried to walk. “If you are an example of a normal demon, it makes me wonder about angels.”
He glanced at the floor, the smile slipping off his face. “I couldn’t tell you. I’ve never met one. I’ve been told they’re vicious and merciless, but isn’t that always how the enemy looks when they’re winning?”
“Are they?” I had a hard time envisioning the angels victorious when I saw regulars nursing beers their friends bought because they’d just been laid off, or others stop coming in because they’d got the bad news that their job, or their smoking, or their habits had cost them their golden years.
“I don’t know. Like I said, they haven’t been around in millennia. Longer than I’ve been without feelings, even.” He took the teacup from me, motioning for me to stay put. “I think you’re safe to sleep, Ms. O’Shay. I’ll help you to bed and lock up.”
“Shouldn’t I let you out and lock up behind you?” I smiled, the flutter in my stomach belying the hope he was looking for a reason to stay.
Instead, he chuckled and took my arm. “Demon, Sweetheart, remember?” I shuddered, not at the reference, but the electrical thrill at his rough hands on my skin, but he felt it and let go like I’d burnt him. “Don’t worry, pretty girl. I’ll let myself out, I won’t let myself in again.”
I couldn’t think of an apology that wouldn’t make me look like an even bigger idiot, so I let him take off my shoes and tuck me into bed without a word, until he pushed my hair back from my forehead and let one finger slide down my jaw.
“You can stay, if you want to.”
He smiled, gently, not like the smirk that seemed permanently fixed to his lips. “I appreciate that, but you’re going to be asleep in a moment, and I don’t want to disturb your healing.” That one warm fingertip slid down my throat to my collarbone and back up to my chin. “I’ll see you soon, Pretty girl.”
I didn’t hear anything after that, just the felt the warm edges of sleep dull my mind as I drifted off in my soft bed, already certain my dreams would be filled with soft brown eyes and the rasping touch of fingers that had known hard work somewhere in time.
Chapter 6
Ranger
She was asleep before I left the room, her body curled in on itself, softly snoring as I shut the door behind me. The first stirrings of emotion she’d caused, or at least witnessed, were fading as fast as they’d risen. I turned out the lights and moved the electric kettle to a ceramic tile to cool, sweeping the fine white powder from the granite to the floor.
“If Hel wasn’t home, you’d be headed there for lying,” I muttered to the reflection in the black glass of the microwave. It wasn’t a blessing, but it wasn’t a narcotic either. I didn’t know what was in the powder, except that it healed wounds and aided slumber, and I was grateful to the witch who’d given it to me in payment a few days earlier.
With the apartment in order, I let myself out and flicked the deadbolt and the chain to the locked position with a wave of my hand. In the morning, I knew it might be frightening to her to know I had indeed gotten out of her locked apartment, so I undid the chain. The human mind is adaptable, to a degree, which is why it is so susceptible to suggestion.
The deadbolt alone wouldn’t bother her, and when I knew she was gone, I’d return to get a better look at the bottle she’d been so pleased had escaped damage during her attack. It both called to and repelled me, the smoke inside the bottle undulating in unaccompanied dance. I wouldn’t risk taking it until I knew more about it.
I shrugged off the sensation of being watched as I passed under the parking lot lights and into the shadows where I’d parked Darcy’s car. It was empty, and once I’d locked it, I waited for my stalker to approach.
“You owed me a hundred souls, DeVries, not ninety-nine.” Boras emerged from the shadows, his eyes glowing red in the dark. I hunched into my jacket, pushing my hands into my pockets so he wouldn’t see my fists. “You try to short me, I’ll send you straight to retraining.”
All my breath escaped me in a long sigh, and my hands relaxed. Retraining, torture to remind us of our place in the hierarchy, was the least of my worries as we stood far too close to Darcy’s bedroom.
“Do what you have to do, Boras. But If I go to retraining for a year, or a hundred years, that a hundred years of souls I’m not gathering for you. Or you could cut me some slack and listen to what I found today, before you make a mistake that will cost you.”
“Cost me what?” His greed was, as always, encompassing. I could taste it, as heady as any human vice. Of course, demons are nothing but their psychic wounds, their souls torn from them leaving wounds that fester and rot until we are shaped into our worst selves.
“I found a Marshall, and he’s already halfway gone. I can take his soul or kill him, whichever
you prefer.”
He sniffed and leaned in, curiosity piqued, just as I’d known it would be. “He hasn’t seen you?”
“I kicked his ass in a bar tonight, but no, he didn’t ID me.”
Boras laughed aloud, a harsh, grating sound that made my stomach recoil. I pasted a smirk onto my face, as close to a neutral expression as I could get without him suspecting my thoughts. It’s not easy hiding your feelings from an archbishop of the dark church. They prey on demons and humans alike. Keeping my boss high on souls was the only thing that kept me alive most days.
“He’s weak?”
“He’s addicted to something, and he’s out of it, whatever it is. He’s stalking his ex-girlfriend and risked an assault charge in front of fifty witnesses. I could have killed him tonight, but…”
“But you walked away from my last soul to get laid.”
I snickered and arched an eyebrow at him. “She’s the Marshall’s girl, Boras. You know I always have a plan. When have I let you down?”
He licked his lips and curled them back to reveal his yellow, needle-looking teeth. “Bring me both their souls, or her soul and his head, and I’ll recommend you for a promotion.”
“Her soul is strong, Boras. Taking it would mean days of work.” I cursed inwardly at my stupidity. Some archbishops of the Dark Church were content with whatever
“I’ll wait. A healthy soul is a rare treat. Worth your best effort and my appetite.” His grin widened and his tongue slipped out over his lips again, the all-too-human pink muscle making the rest of his inhuman face more grotesque. “I’ll be watching you.”
I waited until he was gone to run, and I didn’t stop until I hit the Pacific Ocean and my shoes were soaked by the incoming tide. My insides were liquid, fear gurgling out my mouth in mad laughter between hiccups and panting breath.
Ten thousand souls you’ve reaped for him. Not one made you feel this afraid. Boras was a terrifying specimen of Hel, to be sure, but he’d been my boss for a hundred years. I knew he skimmed a few souls from the Archpriests, and I didn’t care as long as he left me alone to do my part. But for moments at a time, Darcy had made me feel human again, made me feel like my own soul had returned to my body.
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