Stone Goddess (Isabella Hush Series Book 3)

by Thea Atkinson

  He gave me a long look before turning back to the thug and splaying his fingers over the that weasley face.

  The intruder yelped and spasmed as though he was being throttled from within.

  I didn't feel the least bit of pity.

  I knew what Maddox was doing to him. I'd seen it before when he'd turned all the pain Alvin had inflicted on me back into his own body. It had killed Alvin, and while I'd been terrified of Maddox afterward, I'd since suspected that Alvin suffered more than just the results of the beating he'd given me.

  He might in actuality have taken back all of the pain he'd inflicted on others.

  I hoped this bastard had just as long a history of hurting people.

  Despite the obvious pain the man was in, he did his best to roll over and scrabble to his knees. He somehow found a runner's lunge and squirreled out of Maddox's grip. His chest heaved as he faced Maddox, all muscles on the ready to bolt for the door.

  Maddox stood and stared him down, projecting a furious enough sense of command with his mere posture that the man stilled at his feet.

  "Touch her again—harm anyone—and you'll die."

  I swung my gaze to the intruder. He clutched his head between both hands, squeezing as though he was still in pain. His eyes bulged as they took in Maddox's face, and I had no doubt the man believed every single word Maddox said.

  But it wasn't enough.

  The stunner was abandoned to the carpet and I reached for it, some part of me enraged and hurt and wanting to relieve my own misery at the expense of someone else's pain.

  Maddox kicked it out of my reach toward the intruder.

  "Go on," he said. "Pick it up."

  The man gained his feet but turned from the stunner. He shook his head then peered at me with a vacant expression.

  He weaved on his feet and stared down at the stunner then back to me again. He seemed to be working out what the connection was. Maddox toed the stunner back toward him, where it lodged against the man's sneaker.

  "I told you to pick it up," Maddox said.

  His voice reminded me of a cold pool of water at the end of a churning waterfall. The depths of the fury were unplumbed and unknown and I wouldn't have dipped my toe in if it meant my very soul.

  The man's eyes locked on Maddox as he stooped and reached for the weapon. He got no more than one inch from it before he flinched as though someone had stabbed him.

  He staggered on his feet. He grabbed his head again.

  "What the fuck?" he said and hunched over into a standing fetal position.

  "That's your intent," Maddox said. "Nasty bit of stuff, isn't it?"

  He closed the short distance between himself and the thug and laid his hand on a quivering shoulder.

  "You'll find for some reason that whatever you do to others from here on out will return to you two fold," he said. "If you're a cunning sort, you'll use that intent to improve your orgasms, but I doubt you're that smart."

  He hunkered down to peer up into the thug's face as though he wanted to comfort him, and yet the words, the tone, even the look on his face was far from it. In fact, I felt the dead weight of it all press down on my shoulders like an oppressive heat.

  "Get out," he said.

  The man didn't wait one more second. He fell back on his heels in his haste to about face and when he fled to the door, he fumbled with the doorknob for several seconds before remembering that it should turn right.

  He was gone without closing the door. I heard his footsteps pounding down the steps and disappear down the sidewalk.

  Maddox plucked the stunner from the floor and that was the moment my cat chose to shoot out from beneath the sofa and deliver a series of rapid swipes to his wrist before tearing off toward my bedroom in a yowling streak of fur.

  "Now you decide to protect me, you foolish thing," I said.

  I immediately grappled for Maddox's hand, smearing a drop of blood across his wrist. His pulse thrummed against the pad of my thumb in an even rhythm, skipped a beat, and then sped up. I cradled his injured wrist in my hand and ran my finger over three long scratches, assessing how deep they might be.

  "Superficial," I said against a tightness in my throat.

  "She has impeccable timing if not ridiculous standards," he said.

  I thought he was going to pull away from me because the tension in his entire body was electric enough to power a potato to light, but instead, he placed his other hand on top and his thumb ran absently along the lines of my wrist.

  If this was a human man and the circumstances were normal, I might consider that touch an intimate act, one that preluded a kiss. I even lifted my chin out of reflex and a compulsion that my skin and tissues remembered from years of conditioning.

  I felt my face flush with heat. I had to admit I liked his hands on me. There were calluses at the base of his fingers, rough ones that nibbled at my skin in a delicious way. I felt caught in that moment, like a hare in a trap. I could barely breathe for the sudden lust that prickled down my spine.

  I'd always chased the wrong sort of man: dangerous types of men.

  He'd just shown me again how dangerous he was. Far more dangerous than Scottie.

  I hated that my body responded to him the way water runs into a gunnel. Because I wasn't that woman anymore.

  I would put it down to weariness. Falling into bad habits. I was aching and sore and weak and my response to the adrenaline of being hurt was just a confusing muddle of past conditioning and the fragrance of him.

  His gaze landed on the column of my throat and I fancied he watched my pulse tattoo an imprint from the inside. It sped up as his glance lingered there, seeming to savor the motion the way a thirsty man takes in a condensed glass of water.

  So he felt it too, no doubt. That fight or flight adrenaline channeled into the drive to find satiation in something just as primal.

  I swallowed down hard, knowing it all for what it was.

  Instinct and years of bad choices. And I'd stop all that right now.

  "You didn't have to do that," I said.

  "What?" he said. "Let you roll around on the floor while some thug Tasers you? Not my style."

  His voice sounded thick and throaty despite the sass of the words. He cleared his throat and pulled his hand from mine, then raked his fingers through his hair. A wisp clung to his lashes and he scraped it back behind his ear.

  I thought I felt my fingers twitch, imagining myself doing it for him and I cupped my elbows in my hands to disguise how badly I fought the reflexive desire to run my own fingers up into that mass of thickness and grip it at the roots.

  The whole affair must have unnerved him the way it did me because he put several paces between the two of us. He halted at the doorframe that bordered the foyer and living space, leaning against the jamb with one foot crossed over the other at the ankle with a casualness that his tense shoulders warred with. He crossed his arms but I noted that both hands were fists against his biceps.

  "What the hell was that?" I said. "That business of doing unto others? Who the hell are you?"

  "Batman," he said, swinging his gaze to mine.

  "Very funny," I said, but the humor did at at least release the coiled tension in my stomach.

  I realized then, just how sore I was. I sagged on my feet. My muscles felt like liquid fire everywhere the electricity had sizzled down my skin.

  I rubbed my triceps, trying to smooth out the ache in the muscles.

  "You didn't answer my question," I said.

  "Maybe there's no good answer you'll want to hear," he said.

  "I've heard plenty of awful things over the last few weeks."

  I didn't say I'd asked the question but was terrified of hearing he might just be one of those awful things.

  I gave up trying to smooth out the wrinkles in my muscles and collapsed backward onto the couch, my legs splayed out in front of me with my heels propped against the carpet.

  I leaned backward, soaking in how good it felt to be on a
soft cushion. I refused to look at the mess of dirt the bastard had left me to clean up.

  Maddox eyed me silently for a long moment before he approached me. He stopped short at the armchair and his knees popped when he sunk into it. Dust motes climbed to the ceiling in the lamplight. I watched them swirl between us for a moment, afraid to speak.

  "Good thing we had our deal," he said. "Or else I might not have come by in time."

  I looked up at him. "Deal?"

  He tapped his finger against his temple. "Remember the one we made yesterday? You get me the Lilith stone, and I pay you for your trouble?"

  Yesterday. So I'd been in Errol's shop much longer than I'd thought. A full day had passed and now Maddox made no mention of what he'd just done to Scottie's thug. No mention of the way he had to have seen my pulse speed up at his touch. Just back to that deal. One I didn't want to talk about at the moment. Things were complicated enough as it was.

  I imagined Fayed waiting for me for nothing.

  I chewed on my bottom lip, letting my eyelids close because it felt so good to pretend the best thing for me was sleep.

  "Isabella?" he said. "You do have the stone?"

  I said nothing.

  "That's obviously why your friendly gentleman was here, am I right?"

  I peeked from beneath shuttered lashes to see him wave at the dust in the air with a grimace of displeasure. When his gaze landed on me again, it was so intense that it dragged my eyelids up the rest of the way.

  "You stole the stone like we agreed," he prompted. "And he decided to retrieve it from you? Where is it? In your bedroom?"

  He cast a wary look toward the bedroom door and I wasn't sure if it was fear of the cat or fear of how dirty he thought it might be in there.

  I shook my head and stared down at my feet. I hadn't bothered to take off my sneakers and I'd walked in a few puddles on my way home. I'd blamed my intruder for muddy marks on my sofa and here I'd rubbed in a good deal of brackish water to get it all good and grimy. There were smudges all over the carpet leading back to the door.

  "Isabella?"

  I stared him down with a direct look finally. There was no point in being coy. I knew I wasn't going to give him the stone even if I did manage to break into Scottie's hotel room. Somewhere between clamping down on my tongue and nearly wetting myself, I'd decided to let Scottie have the damn thing.

  Eventually, he would open the pouch and handle the stone. Problem over.

  The money was no longer a motivator. I could earn cash a dozen ways. I had one chance to get rid of Scottie for real. The fury was already building behind my heart, seizing it in a bitter grasp and squeezing slowly enough that I felt my shoulders drawing together. How could he do that to me? How could he send Alvin to hurt me and then that weaselly thug?

  He deserved to go to hell.

  Literally.

  "There's been a hiccup," I said.

  His brow furrowed and the steely eyes shuttered down.

  "I don't like the sound of hiccup."

  I shrugged. "Would you prefer a horn blast in your ear? Maybe the sound of a train rushing by? I have some dishes I could throw against the wall."

  "You made a bargain," he said and got up to loom over me, his arms crossed again. This time his fists were pumping open and closed. I watched them for some time before he spoke.

  "You have to honor your end," he said.

  He didn't mention the things he'd done to that intruder. He wouldn't. And I wouldn't either. I refused to add it to the equation because it might mean I'd rethink my decision.

  And I didn't plan to.

  He must have read the resistance in my eyes because he pushed off from the door jamb in one motion and splayed his feet, shooting me a suspicious look.

  "You said if you couldn't deliver, that you would tell me where it was and I'd get it myself."

  I laughed out loud. "Good luck trying to get anything out of Scottie."

  He made a sound low in his throat that indicated he didn't think he'd have too much trouble.

  I swung my gaze to his.

  "You might be big and immortal, or whatever the hell you are, but there's no way you can get past Scottie and all his security and then break into the safe that he undoubtedly has that damned stone stored in."

  He rocked back on his heels then strode toward me, crouching beside the sofa with his arms propped on his knees. He really was a big man; even squatted down, he loomed over me. I clutched the edge of the sofa, a reflex borne of a decade of uncertainty. I'd lost count of the times Scottie had harmed someone who insulted or threatened me.

  But it was never about me. It was about someone insulting his possession. And at the end of the day, he treated that possession any old way he wanted. He alone had the power, the right, to hurt me.

  Maddox's gaze dragged down to my fingers and a strange mix of emotions melded into his jawline. He swallowed and trailed my tight muscles all the way back to my shoulder.

  "I'm not going to hurt you," he said.

  I thought he would reach out for me. I flinched.

  He went so still I couldn't see his chest expand as he breathed.

  He wouldn't hurt me. I had to tell myself that twice before I believed it.

  I released my breath through my nose, made an effort to let my fingers release the claw-like grip on the cushions. Only when I laid them flat on my stomach did he speak again.

  "I gave you your chance," he said before climbing back to his feet. He stood over me with his arms crossed as he rocked back on his heels. "Don't underestimate me. I can and will do whatever it takes to retrieve the stone from your lover."

  He said lover the way someone would say the word excrement.

  "He's not my lover," I said, and he sighed with impatience.

  Gone was the compassionate expression and tolerant attitude. I thought the speedy shift was just a bit too quick and it sparked something within that felt akin to hurt.

  "You think you can lay your hands on a dozen men at once like you did to that thug?" I shook my head. "Dream on. I'm not sure how susceptible you are to automatic weapons, or even short range pistols."

  "You'd be surprised," he mumbled.

  "What are you?" I said but it was a moot point by then. I wasn't budging.

  "It's not yours to decide, Isabella. I'll retrieve it with or without you."

  "You're assuming it's still on this plane or in this world or whatever the hell you non human things call us."

  He pressed his lips together.

  "We non human things call you ninth-worlders. Some of us call you food. Some of us call you drink. And some of us call you damned stupid."

  At that he pulled his dress shirt up on the side to reveal an angry looking symbol emblazoned on his skin. It looked like a red worm trying to burrow itself into his body and stretched for three inches downward before veering upward again at an angle as it tried to corner three dots. He might have been branded except the mark was raised and not seared in.

  I shuddered at how angry looking it was, how obviously painful.

  "See this?" he said. "This tells me it's here in this world. I smell it in your apartment, on your skin. This tells me it's been activated and recently."

  "So big deal. You knew that already. It's how Colin sent me to Hell."

  I sat up, dangling my feet over the sofa and planting my hands on my knees. What was the worst that could happen? Scottie got out of my hair?

  I shoved aside the painful recollections of the things Lucifer had done to me in his lair, of the things he'd done to others. They skittered over my memory like cockroaches and if I thought too long on them, they built nests in my psyche. I pushed side the annoying thought that no one deserved that kind of pain. Not even Scottie.

  I flipped it over like mirror because I just didn't want to think that far. I just wanted Scottie gone.

  "Isabella, it's important that we retrieve it, and not just because my client paid me to. Because you don't know what it can do."

 
"The hell I don't." I slid from the sofa and weaved my way to the refrigerator, planning on a nice pull of sour milk to get him out of my hair.

  He snagged my elbow as I passed him. "No," he said. "You really don't."

  The look on his face scared me. Not because I was afraid he'd hurt me, but because he looked afraid.

  "That stone has been missing for centuries," he said. "Once it hit the ninth world again, this tracking rune transformed. It used to be a quaint black tattoo."

  I looked it over, trying to ignore the heart-achingly sinewy look to the abs he exposed because the scar was disconcerting to see standing like an angry red weal on his skin.

  "I was charged with finding it," he said. "This mark is the contract."

  "Who charged you," I demanded. It sounded so mysterious, not just a deal struck for a few bucks. "You never told me that. I would think that detail would be important to a partner."

  "Don't you trust me?"

  "I don't trust anyone anymore," I said. "Too risky. You want my help, at least tell me why I should just let you traipse over to where it might be and let me lose out on thousands of dollars and put my head in a noose at the same time."

  He sighed. "Because the stone isn't just called the Lilith Stone for nothing. It's called the Lilith Stone because she is trapped inside it."

  CHAPTER 10

  "You've got to be kidding." I yanked at his shirt when he didn't let it drop and gave him a shove.

  He sighed. "I'm giving you that detail now," he said. "An eon ago, a caste of monks forged the stone from Lilith's own blood and infused it with magic – and cursed her in the process. Her essence is trapped inside."

  I remembered the ethereals in Lucifer's boudoir and in what he'd called his menagerie. He'd been able to release them at will to entertain him. What he called entertainment was nothing but horrific suffering.

  I brought an image of the stone to mind, recalled its red globule like an insect trapped in amber. I'd thought it was blood. But what if it was the essence of a demon?