Stained

  “His name is Samyaza. He’s… You would call him a half-demon.”

  Chapter Three

  Julia shouldn’t have been shocked. Samy-whatever did, after all, have wings. But hearing it aloud made it real. A demon—half-demon, whatever difference that made—had killed Suzanne and Harry. Had thought he’d killed her, too.

  So it was her fault.

  Well, of course it was. She was a freak, wasn’t she? And didn’t freaks attract freakishness? She’d heard it in her first foster home, had known it all her life.

  “Why did he do it,” the guy asked.

  “What?”

  “Kill your family?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Do you think it had anything to do with you?” His voice was skeptical, and Julia threw her hands up. “Didn’t you hear what he just said? ‘You’re supposed to be dead.’”

  “He’s thorough,” the guy said sharply. “Why aren’t you?”

  It took her a minute to work the words out of her throat, and when she did, they wobbled. “He burned my house down…but I wasn’t inside.”

  Seconds passed, seconds in which the two of them were so still she could see dust floating in the air around them. Seconds where she looked at his face and felt her stomach clenching in that weird way again.

  “Did you have any siblings?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Both parents passed?”

  She nodded.

  “Could they do what you can do?”

  Julia shook her head. “If they could…I didn’t know.” She swallowed a sob, then gritted her teeth. She would not cry in front of this guy.

  He regarded her for a long moment, then turned and started walking away, footsteps echoing in the empty warehouse. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Yes you do! You’ve gotta tell me something,” she yelled at his broad back. “Who are you?”

  The word echoed back at her as he pushed through the warehouse door: “Cayne.”

  She dashed after him. “All right. Cayne.”

  His long legs made uncomfortably big strides over the cracked pavement, but Julia edged ahead, noticing, in the dim moonlight, a deep cut over his eye. Without thought she reached for his face. It would only take her fingertips brushing his jaw—

  Her hand grasped air, and then her wrist was breaking. Julia yelped as Cayne twisted her arm. As fast as he caught it, he dropped it. She stumbled back, stunned.

  “Ow.” Her eyes stung. “You prick! I was trying to—” She pointed to his face. “You have a cut.” Oh, great. She was crying now.

  He frowned, and her anger piqued. “There.” She pointed at the spot again, and his finger trailed the ruddy outline around it.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” She sniffed. “Way to overreact.”

  Cayne frowned. “You should be careful when you’re grabbing at someone’s face.”

  “You should apologize,” she said thickly.

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned away, walking in long, forceful bursts through the damp dirt.

  Julia stuck on him. “I’m feeling generous,” she tried. “I’ll still fix your cut…and all the other stuff I didn’t get—if you’ll just talk to me. A little.”

  But he wouldn’t talk to her. He wouldn’t even look at her. He stepped fluidly over a broken bottle, moving on the balls of his feet like a big scary cat.

  “Hel-lo, Cayne. Stonewalling is not polite. And it isn’t going to make me go away.” She raised her voice, projecting it over the dim roar of traffic a few blocks over. “Why were you fighting with Samy-whatever on my roof? How did you even get up there?”

  This time he looked down to glare.

  “Aaah, he’s not catatonic!” She clapped. “Let me guess— dang, you walk fast. I’m not going to bite you.” He was walking so quickly she had to jog to keep up. She followed him through an abandoned stockyard, hopping over coils of wire. “Let’s start with something easy. How about age? I’m going to go with something like eighteen.”

  “Sure. Now leave me alone.”

  “I can’t. Someone is trying to kill me.”

  Cayne stopped walking, fixed those brilliant eyes on her. “GO. AWAY.”

  The command in his voice was almost overpowering, but Julia wasn’t in an obedient mood. “No.”

  His jade eyes narrowed. “Leave.”

  She shook her head.

  He seemed surprised, then frustrated. He spun, and Julia scampered behind him, silently cursing him and her life. “Sorry. Okay. No more questions about you. I just have to know what—”

  “Stop.” It was almost a plea, and for a moment she did stop. Cayne turned, exhaustion plain on his face.

  “Why were you fighting that thing?” she asked softly. “The half-demon.”

  Those beautiful, hard-as-stone eyes looked blue under the moon. “He has something I need.”

  Julia took the tiniest step closer and noticed they were in the tall grass now, near the river. She had been chasing him for nearly a mile.

  “Okay, so—”

  His hand jerked up, and her mouth snapped shut. She followed him on putty legs to the shore, where he bent to unlace his big, black Vans.

  “You really don’t know why he’s trying to kill you? What’s…going on?” He asked over his shoulder as his fingers worked the laces. Julia shook her head. His eyes narrowed, like he thought she was lying. “You never told me what you are.”

  The interest in his eyes made her shy, even though that was stupid. She folded her arms over her chest and tried to look unaffected. Like she didn’t think he was hot. Like she didn’t have a thing for shaggy hair and tight-ish t-shirts and good sneakers. “As you can plainly see, I’m a girl.”

  His gaze rolled over her, making her warmer. “You are?”

  “Yes.”

  “A girl that heals people.”

  “Um-hmmm.”

  “And lives in an old warehouse?”

  “Like I told you, my house—” She cut herself off, cringing at the thought of saying it again. “I needed somewhere to stay for a little while.”

  Cayne looked almost uncomfortable as he crossed his arms. “You’re sure they didn’t have special…abilities? Even if they were different from yours?”

  “No. But they weren’t my biological parents. Those died when I was little.” Julia had wondered in a Take Me to Hogwarts kind of way if her birth parents had been like her. Cayne seemed to think so, which for some reason made her feel even more alone.

  He pulled off his right shoe and both his ankle-length white socks and tossed them in the grass beside the left shoe. “I’m, uh…going to clean up.” He nodded at the river, and Julia turned up her nose.

  “You’re joking, right? That’s gotta be like the dirtiest water you could ask for.”

  “I’ve see worse,” he said over his shoulder. He rolled up his jeans legs, revealing muscled calves, waded in ankle-deep, and crouched to duck his head into the water. Julia sat in the damp grass, crossed her legs, and, when she was sure he intended to take his time, let her tears flow.

  She sobbed for at least ten minutes—during which time Cayne, having noticed her tear fest, decided to strip down to his boxers and take a swim. She knew she was in a bad place when her eyes stopped leaking and her gaze swept his hard, ripped back. He swam gracefully. More gracefully than she’d expected.

  And tears filled her eyes again, because she’d cut her own hair and it probably looked horrible.

  He got out when she’d been tear-free for a few minutes and approached warily. “Feeling better?” he asked, in a low voice that carried a hint of some distant, not-Southern accent.

  She nodded quickly, blinking away more tears.

  “Good.” Cayne nodded down at her, water rolling down his gorgeous chest. “’Cause I was thinking…”

  “Hurt yourself?”

  He raised his brows, and Julia smiled a little.
/>
  “Okay. Thinking what?”

  “You want answers. I want another shot at getting mine. And then I want him dead.”

  “Yeah. I mean, I also, ah…would like him to die.”

  Cayne nodded. “I have a plan.” He looked her over, head to toe, in a way that made her aware of her general grubbiness. His eyes gleamed; that handsome mouth curved like he’d just thought of something clever. “We use you as bait.”

  Chapter Four

  “Excuse me?”

  “We—”

  Julia held up her hand. “I got what you said. It’s just that…why do I have to be the bait?”

  Cayne grunted as he tugged his shirt over his wet head. “I thought you wanted to—”

  “I do,” she said, standing and wiping the butt of her jeans. “But I’m not going to be the cheese in your mousetrap.”

  “It’s a solid plan, really.” He smiled roguishly, handsome features exaggerated by his slick hair.

  The problem, Julia realized as she studied his smug grin, was that Cayne knew what was going on and she didn’t. He didn’t need her, but she needed him. Unless, of course, she wanted to continue living in an abandoned pecan factory, hiding under her tarp, terrified that Death—er, Samy-whatever—would return to do her in.

  She took a deep breath, then asked the question that weighed most on her mind. “Why is he after me, anyway?”

  One look from him, and she knew he wasn’t going to tell her. At least not right then.

  She gritted her teeth. “So what’s your plan?”

  His dark brows wiggled. “I’ll follow you through the city and you try to draw him to us.”

  “That’s it?”

  Cayne nodded.

  “That doesn’t seem very safe, for me.”

  “I’ll protect you,” he said.

  “Riiiight.” Julia eyed the blood stain on the collar of his shirt. “The guy who just got creamed is going to protect me.”

  Even in the pre-dawn dark, she saw his nostrils flare. “Only because he caught me off guard. I followed him to Memphis, and I was going to approach him when he doubled back on me. When I’m not caught off-guard, I can take him. Why do you think he ran away? Why do you think you’re alive?”

  “Whatever. I have yet to see what’s so great about this plan.”

  Cayne rubbed his eye; the cut beside it still oozed blood. “It’s true I’ve got shit with him, but he traveled here for you. And if he came himself, he really wants you dead.” Julia’s throat tightened as Cayne shifted his weight and crossed those rugged arms—the consummate expert on all things Death. “He’ll come back for you—again and again and again. You need me.”

  Julia felt unsteady, so she crouched down on a nearby tree root. “You would have died if I wasn’t there.”

  One dark brow arched. “Same to you.”

  She drew her knees to her chest. “What can’t you answer any of my questions?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “That’s not an answer.” She dropped her head into her palm. When, after a few seconds, he looked down the street—like maybe he was about to walk away—she looked back up at him. “Julia,” she said grimly, with a little wave. “I’m Julia.”

  “Julia, do you have a st— a birthmark?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  He shrugged, shrewd. “Just curious.”

  On its own, Julia’s hand slid to the back of her neck. She caught herself mid-motion, but Cayne walked behind her and lifted her hair. His fingers skated gently over her skin, igniting a wave of prickly heat that moved from her shoulders to her toes.

  “I thought so,” he murmured.

  She jerked away. He stepped back in front of her, and she pressed down on the hair that usually hid the freaky, ruddy starburst. “You thought what?” Her heart was pounding.

  Cayne’s mouth pinched, like he was trying to decide if he should tell.

  “Get on with it! How did you know I had a birthmark?”

  He shook his head. “Consider yourself the down payment on your answers. After we kill him, I’ll tell you what I know. You can even choose not to hear the reasons. They won’t matter anymore. Your problem will be gone.”

  Julia’s jaw dropped. “You think I’m going to use my life as a down payment because…why again?”

  His eyes hardened. “Because without me, you won’t last another week.”

  “And what if I don’t trust you?”

  “You can go back to your warehouse alone.”

  His tone was cold—and almost cruel, but it was what she needed. She was living in a warehouse because she’d lost Suzanne and Harry. She had lost her family because of the winged thing. The half-demon. She—the secret freak, the cast-off girl—was all alone again, twice orphaned, and it was all that black-winged motherlover’s fault.

  His eyes on hers, Cayne stuck out his hand, and after a second, Julia took it.

  Chapter Five

  “So you’re really not going to tell me what my birthmark means?” Julia looked out over the rim of her orange soda can, giving Mr. Mystery her best glare.

  He shook his head, and Julia went to her Zen place, created an hour earlier when Cayne had left at the pecan warehouse, saying he’d be right back.

  For a while she’d been pretty sure he’d gone for good, so she created this whole plan to hide out in the Peabody Hotel; if Samyaza wanted to come after her, he’d have to get through a downtown Memphis landmark first.

  But Cayne did come back, with a plastic grocery bag of five dripping sodas, six bags of Doritos, one bag of peanut M&Ms, and two jumbo cinnamon rolls.

  “Well, at least I know it means something.”

  Even stuffing his face full of cinnamon roll, Cayne managed to look shrewd. His dark eyebrows were expressive in a way that might have been charming if it wasn’t so infuriating. As he’d done a few times now, he communicated using only his face, scrunching his brows and pulling his lips into a pinch that said: No way am I telling you shit. Then he took another bite out of his roll.

  Julia opened her mouth to say she’d still help him even if he told her what he knew. She shut it when she realized that wasn’t true.

  “I’ll help you for one day,” she told him. “Max.”

  He gave her that look again—the one that said No way—and she stuck her tongue out. She tore open her bag of M&Ms, separating them in her palm by color. When he still didn’t say anything, she slid a glance his way. He was sitting in a corner, on a plastic chair with rusted legs, looking like a model for Runaway Teen Weekly.

  Well, just because he was hot as Hades didn’t mean he’d win their little war of wills.

  “So… You asked if my parents could do weird stuff. And you knew about the birthmark. Which makes me think obviously it’s connected to what I can do. But that seems silly. I have a birthmark and I can heal people. No relation, right?”

  He licked the icing remnants from his lips and gave her a truly infuriating poker face.

  “Why don’t you tell me what Sam has of yours? I can help you try to get it when we fight him.”

  His mouth quirked. “We?”

  “Yes, we.”

  Cayne stared into her eyes. After a second, he simply shook his head.

  Julia sighed. “Can you tell me where’re you from?” she pressed.

  This time, he simply blinked at her.

  “Okaaay.” She threw all her sarcasm into it, but she could feel her cheeks burning.

  She finished off her M&Ms and came to the conclusion that if they were in school, Cayne would be the kind of guy that sat at the punk degenerates’ table (she could see him with a pierced eyebrow) or maybe even the athletes’ table (a wrestler?).

  She stood up and brushed off her dirty jeans. “Are you going to tell me anything about yourself? Or am I to narrate your life for you?”

  Cayne grabbed a paint can filled with old cigarette butts and tossed his trash inside. He straightened his sho
ulders, and again, she thought how tall he was. How handsome.

  “You don’t have to do anything but walk around,” he told her flatly.

  *

  Walking with Cayne was like walking with a stalker. Julia had never had one, but she had to assume. He stayed behind her, always ten or fifteen feet. He could blend into a crowd like nobody’s business, so she rarely saw him but she could always sense his presence.

  She led him all around town, past the Orpheum Theater, down Beale Street. Past the Peabody Hotel, famous for its parade of ducks. She managed to keep her mood distant and frosty until early afternoon, when her bravado bled out and her feet started to throb just as she walked past the Bean Bag, a café Suzanne had loved. Cayne’s nearness kept her from sinking into despair, and it was only later that night that Julia thought that maybe she should be thankful he was around. Maybe.

  The next day was much the same. Cayne followed her across the bridge into West Memphis, always lurking in the corner of her eye. She entertained herself, and kept her mind off more pressing issues, filling in Cayne’s story the best she could.

  He seemed confident he could kill a half-demon—and he’d hurt its wing back in the warehouse—so he must have some kind of supernatural ability. Then again, she’d had to resuscitate him, so maybe he was just crazy.

  Or, she realized, he could be someone like her. It made sense. She could heal people and she had an ugly birthmark, but she wasn’t anything special otherwise. She was, as she had told him, just a girl.

  She wished she could remember his aura. She remembered its brightness, but mostly she remembered all the wounds…and memories. She considered taking another peak, then decided it was too risky. She didn’t want to make him mad, not until he spilled some information.

  Finally, at the end of their second day of Samyaza stake-out, Cayne was “kind” enough to explain that he had followed the half-demon to Memphis from Charlotte, North Carolina. And that was it.

  “Because he has something you want,” Julia tried. “Are we talking like a magical stone, or like, your girlfriend?”

  He shook his head.

  “So you plan to get whatever he has that you need, and kill him? How? Are you some kind of professional demon slayer?”

  He smirked, then lifted one eyebrow, and that was the end of it. Obviously he got off on being oh-so-mysterious. Sometimes she wanted to slap him. Most of the time she just kept to herself. Prim. Angry. Extremely put out.