The Devil You Know

  Apparently, Adam agreed.

  “Dougal’s been attempting to create a better host.”

  “Create?” I asked in astonishment.

  Adam nodded. “We’ve understood about genes and heredity ever since the first demons walked the Mortal Plain. It’s always been against our laws to muck with it, but apparently Dougal doesn’t give a crap. He started centuries ago, abducting pregnant women and having demons possess their unborn children. They used the same skills we generally use to help us heal to manipulate the fetuses’ genes.”

  Pain stabbed through my head, and I realized it was Lugh letting me know what he thought of Dougal’s pet project. I don’t think he did it intentionally, and he let up almost immediately.

  “What, exactly, was he hoping to accomplish? And where does Raphael fit in?”

  “Dougal hasn’t set foot in the Mortal Plain since his project began. He’s been running it through Raphael. As for what they’ve been trying to accomplish…They were trying to create a more powerful host. Stronger, faster, harder to hurt, longer lived—and easier to control.”

  “Easier!” I cried. “You guys have total control of our bodies when you possess us! What could possibly be easier?”

  Even in the intermittent flashes of light from the streetlamps, I could see the grimness of Adam’s expression. “It would be easier if the host didn’t have the intelligence to object.”

  I think I might have turned green.

  “To demons like Raphael,” Adam continued, “having a native personality in his host is something of an inconvenience. To demons like me, part of the appeal of walking the Mortal Plain is the interaction with our hosts. If Adam were merely an empty vessel for me to fill, I’m not sure I would have chosen to return to the Mortal Plain after my first stint. I enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, to be sure. But it wouldn’t be the same without Adam.”

  “So let me get this straight. Dougal and Raphael are hoping to create a race of superhuman vegetables?”

  “That’s it in a nutshell.”

  “And my father was one of their experimental rats?”

  Adam nodded. “Apparently, there’s much more to The Healing Circle than we know. Underneath the hospital, they have extensive labs—and holding cells. They bred various…strains, trying to isolate the traits they found most desirable. Your father’s strain was bred specifically for increased healing capacity, and, they hoped, longer life span.

  “When that ‘batch’—and I’m using Cooper’s word—reached maturity, it was time to summon demons for them. Can you guess what happened?”

  I thought about it a moment, then nodded. “They found this batch were resistant to demonic possession.”

  “Not just resistant—impervious. Raphael himself tried to take one, just to see if it could be done. They still felt the batch was a step in the right direction, and if they could breed them with other strains, they could take another step closer to their ideal. Then they discovered that the batch was extremely hard to breed. They tried them with various other strains, and even with normal human beings, and weren’t able to get any viable offspring. So Raphael decided they’d hit a dead end with that strain, and ordered them all destroyed.”

  Pain stabbed through my head so hard I gasped. It didn’t let up as fast as it had last time, either.

  “You all right?” Adam asked.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, though that didn’t bring me any relief. “Calm down, Lugh!” I said. “Please!” The pain subsided, and I blew out a breath of relief. “Go on,” I said to Adam.

  “You pretty much know the rest. Your father escaped the purge. When Raphael found out your mother was pregnant, he thought to take advantage of what he considered a lucky break. Obviously, things didn’t exactly pan out like he wanted.”

  I was doing my best to absorb everything Adam had told me, but it wasn’t what you’d call easy. I mean, holy crap! I could chew on that for a week and not have it fully digested.

  “And the Spirit Society is in on all this,” I said, because there was no other way Cooper could have known so much.

  “Hard to believe, huh?”

  I leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. “Not really. They’re fanatics. If their damned ‘Higher Powers’ want their help creating superhuman vegetables, they’ll do it. Do you know what happened to my biological father?”

  Adam shook his head. “Cooper had no idea. He was never found. And the reason Cooper was so terrified of Raphael is he saw what Raphael did to the director of the lab after your father escaped. Let’s just say he made me look like a soft touch.”

  “Spare me the details,” I said, and was glad Adam listened to me for once.

  The rest of the car ride passed in silence. I’d like to say I was thinking deep thoughts about the nature of fanaticism and the sanctity of human life, but really I was just brooding—having one of those “why me” moments. I figured I was entitled. Of course, if I wasn’t careful, the “why me” moment would turn into a “why me” week and then a “why me” month.

  When he pulled up in front of my apartment building, Adam turned to me awkwardly. “Er, would you like me to come up? Do you need someone to talk to?”

  The last thing I’d expected was a nice gesture from Adam. Strangely, his unaccustomed niceness brought a lump to my throat. I forced a smile, when usually I would have offered a snarky comment instead. “Thanks, but I think I need some time to myself just now.”

  He nodded his understanding, and I got out of the car. I had to fight the urge to watch longingly as he pulled away.

  I thought I’d had my share of strife and trauma for the day. I should have known better.

  I’d been so distracted by the idea of questioning Cooper—and about how that questioning would go down—that I’d somehow miraculously managed to forget about Brian. While I was riding the elevator up to my apartment, I remembered I was supposed to have a conversation with him. Internally, I groaned. He was going to be pissed at me for waiting this long to call him. Not that he wasn’t pissed enough already, what with me having made him an accessory to murder and all. If there were a chance in hell I could have avoided our little chat, you can bet I would have. As it was, I spent the entire elevator ride chewing my lip, trying to anticipate what questions he was going to ask me. How would I answer them all? Did I dare give him complete honesty? Impossible to say, especially when I couldn’t seem to figure out what I wanted from him just now.

  Lost in thought, I opened the door to my apartment and stepped in. I tossed my keys on a side table and turned toward the coat closet to stash the Taser I’d been carrying in my purse all day.

  That’s when I noticed that the lights were on. I knew for a fact that I’d turned them off before I’d left. I reached for my Taser with a very different purpose, turning to face the living room.

  It says something about how distracted I’d been that I hadn’t noticed Brian sitting there on my living room sofa as soon as I’d walked in the door. A little yelp escaped me when I saw him, and I put my hand to my chest to feel the frantic hammering of my heart.

  “Jesus, you scared me,” I said, taking a deep breath to try to calm myself. And belatedly letting go of the Taser.

  Brian leaned back into the cushions of the sofa and regarded me with an inscrutable lawyer look.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked, still flustered beyond belief.

  He shook his head at me, his usually warm eyes cold. “I kept waiting for you to call, and you didn’t. I got tired of waiting, so I came over. Andrew was here moving his stuff out, and he kindly let me in to wait for you.”

  I would owe Andy a good kick in the ass for that. But thinking about giving my big brother hell wasn’t my top priority at the moment. Letting out a silent—I hoped—sigh, I dropped my purse on the dining room table and sat on the other end of the sofa from Brian.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, and I meant it. “My life is complete and utter chaos these days, and I can only ha
ndle one or two problems at a time. I was planning to call you as soon as I got home.”

  “Uh-huh.” His voice dripped with skepticism.

  “I was!” I insisted. No need to mention that I hadn’t come up with that plan until the elevator ride up. He didn’t look any less skeptical, and I guess I didn’t blame him. I scrubbed a hand through my hair and wished with all my heart that Raphael had chosen some other human/superhost hybrid to host his brother the king. My life hadn’t exactly been sugar and spice and everything nice beforehand, but I would happily trade the problems I had now for the ones I’d had then.

  “What do you want from me?” I said, and I was almost whispering. “I’m possessed by the king of the demons, and there are all kinds of people out there who want to kill me. My love life can’t be my first priority.”

  He snorted. “Like it ever was,” he muttered. “But this isn’t about your love life. This is about you owing me a lot of answers.”

  Brian was far too self-aware to be fooling himself that much, but if he wanted to focus on something other than our mixed-up relationship, that was okay with me.

  “Fine,” I said. “Ask me your questions.”

  So he did. And I answered him, as honestly as I dared.

  The cross-examination went on for about half an hour, and Brian was in full lawyer mode, meaning he revealed as little as possible about what he was feeling. As for myself, I was too worn out to feel much of anything.

  When he ran out of questions, we both fell silent, lost in our own thoughts. I felt the rift that had opened between us like a physical pain, and I realized with a shock that my reasons for pushing him away might not have been as selfless as I’d told myself. Had I pushed him away for his own good? Or had it been because it was easier on me to push him away on my own terms than to have him leave me? As I watched him mull over everything I’d said, I couldn’t be sure, and something ached deep inside me.

  “Do you still love me?” he asked out of the blue, and I almost jumped because he’d been silent so long.

  The ache rose from my core and lodged in my throat. I clasped my hands in my lap and stared at them, because I couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. If I wanted to keep protecting him—and protecting my own heart—I should tell him no. He probably wouldn’t believe me—after all, he hadn’t believed me up until now, and I saw no reason why anything I’d said would change that. But the words might shore up the fortress I’d built around my heart.

  I tried to force myself to deny him. But I couldn’t.

  “I never stopped loving you,” I said softly, still staring at my clasped hands. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t.” My eyes burned as though I were on the verge of tears, but I blinked rapidly until the burn faded. “Love doesn’t conquer all. There are just too many obstacles.” He started to object, but I held up my hand for silence. “I’ve had some truly miserable moments in my life,” I said, “but there’s nothing that compares to what I felt when Raphael kidnapped you.” I forced myself to look at him, making no attempt to hide my anguish. “Don’t you understand that it’s impossible for me to consider facing something like that again?”

  To my dismay, he moved closer to me. If I could have moved away without falling over the arm of the couch, I would have done so. When I tried to turn my head to avoid his gaze, he put his hand on my face to hold me still. My whole body jolted in shock at the pleasure of that simple touch.

  “Stop lying to yourself, Morgan,” he chided gently. “I know that was awful for you—it wasn’t exactly a bowl of cherries for me, either—but you were pushing me away long before that. I’ve managed to keep loving you anyway, even when you’re being a horse’s ass. What are you so afraid of?”

  The easy answer, the answer I’d been giving myself ever since I realized my heart was in danger, was that I was a corrupting influence on him, that being with me was souring and changing him, destroying the man I once loved. But I knew now that wasn’t the truth. The truth was I was afraid that one day he’d wise up and realize what a pathetic specimen of humanity I was. My self-esteem wasn’t so hot to begin with. If I openly gave my heart to Brian, and he shoved it back in my face, I didn’t think I could bear it.

  There was no way in hell I was telling him that, though. So instead, in my typical emotional cowardice, I changed the subject. “Are you going to call the cops on us?”

  He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “I must be insane to keep banging my head against this wall,” he muttered, and I winced. “You are far more trouble than you’re worth.”

  I was still reeling from the pain of those words when he grabbed me, hauled me up against his body, and kissed me. My resistance to that kiss lasted perhaps a total of ten seconds. When I gave in to it, I gave in with all my heart, wrapping my arms around his neck and clinging for all I was worth.

  In the weeks I’d been without his kiss, I’d almost forgotten how good he tasted. Now I was forcefully reminded, and my senses reeled. When his tongue dipped into my mouth, I let out an uninhibited moan of pleasure. His hand cupped the side of my face, and the warmth of that touch melted some of the ice that had formed around my heart.

  I never wanted him to stop. While his lips were on mine, my mind went on vacation. Instead of thinking all the time, I merely felt.

  Unfortunately, Brian still had more to say to me, so he broke the kiss long before I was ready. I made an incoherent sound of protest and tried to capture his lips again, but he put his hands on my shoulders to hold me off. He was breathing hard, and his eyes were dark with desire, but somehow he found the willpower to stop.

  “I love you, Morgan,” he said as he stared intently into my eyes. “I think you’re worth fighting for. But eventually, you’ll have to start trying, too. I can’t keep this up forever.”

  My heart constricted, but I knew he was right. I reached out and brushed the back of my hand over his cheek. “Believe it or not, I am trying. But we both know how screwed up I am. I was a mess even before I found myself a key player in a demon civil war. I don’t know if I’m capable of having anything resembling a normal relationship.”

  He shook his head. “That’s a cop-out. Lots of people have fucked-up family lives and still manage to have solid relationships.”

  I wasn’t so sure I agreed with that. It seemed to me that those so-called solid relationships were probably illusions. But I didn’t think I’d get Brian to agree with me, so I kept that opinion to myself.

  “All I can do is my best,” I said, “I know it’s inadequate on a lot of levels, but—”

  Once again, he interrupted me with a kiss. If he had to interrupt me, this was definitely my preferred method. It didn’t solve any of the issues between us, but it felt so damn good! Knowing I was probably making my life even more complicated, I nonetheless abandoned myself to his kiss, to the taste and smell and feel of him. Fire burned through my veins, and my heart hammered in my chest as I straddled him on the couch. With a moan, he shifted so I could feel his erection pressing firmly between my legs.

  My hands moved with a will of their own, plucking open the buttons on his shirt. The tape on my fingers made me clumsy, and I lost patience with it. Still kissing him as if my life depended on it, I scraped at the tape with my fingernails until I found the edge, then ripped it off and tossed it aside.

  My fingers now free, I hurried to open the last few buttons on Brian’s shirt, then smoothed my hands over the skin of his chest. He had very little hair on his chest, and what there was felt smooth and silky under my caress. When I found his nipples and tweaked them, he moaned and jerked beneath me. He pushed my shirt and bra up until my breasts were bared, not bothering to unbutton or unclasp anything. I pinched his nipples again, and he surged forward, seizing one of my nipples between his clever lips.

  It was my turn to moan, and my back arched without my conscious volition. His tongue rasped over the hardened bud, and he sucked just hard enough to be almost painful. Then he fastened his hands under my butt, pressing me against hi
m as he rose to his feet. I wrapped my legs around him, clinging to his neck as he carried me to the bedroom.

  He set me on my feet by the bed, then attacked my button-fly jeans. I took advantage of his moment of distraction to pull the shirt off over my head and lose the bra. I pushed his hands away before he’d finished with the buttons, but his cry of protest died when I slid his shirt off his shoulders. I reached for his belt as he tackled the remaining buttons on my jeans.

  The fragment of my mind that still held a hint of intelligence noticed that Brian’s belt held both a cell phone and another cell-phone-sized accessory. One that I’d have to ask him about—since I recognized it as a mini stun gun—but not until later. We had better things to do with our mouths right now than talk.

  Brian toed off his shoes as I shoved his pants and briefs down his legs. I meant to go down on my knees and take him in my mouth, but apparently Brian was impatient to get to the main event. He pushed me onto the bed, dragging my jeans and panties down, then cursing when everything got tangled around my sneakers. He cursed some more as he pried the sneakers off and successfully freed my legs from the bundle of clothing.

  Brian was usually a slow and gentle lover, loving the foreplay and the buildup as much or even more than the climax itself. Tonight, he was too desperate, too needy. But then, so was I. He fell on top of me, using his knee to shove my legs apart. We hadn’t even managed to get all the way onto the bed, my legs dangling over the edge as he thrust home in one powerful, almost angry stroke. I wrapped my legs around him and tried to pull his head down for a kiss, but he pinned my wrists to the bed beside my head.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to protest this sudden show of dominance. I wanted to touch him, wanted to feel the quivering of his muscles and the frantic beat of his pulse as he took me. And yet, once he started to move, the protest turned into a protracted groan of pleasure.