He wanted me, he wanted my soul in a way that made me tremble, that made me want to turn and scream and run. Or made me want to step into him, into that fire to know what it would taste like on my tongue.
As if.
I wanted my gun, a rocket launcher, a bomb. Anything that would kill him, stop him, make him, and the nightmare promise of his smile, go away.
“Breathe.”
I breathed.
“You’ll want to hold very still now.” His hand extended, fire swaying at the tip of the three fingers he extended. It was warm, that fire.
A fire that did not burn.
“Why?” I shivered, suddenly too cold.
Three fingers stroked down, slashing from my left shoulder to my sternum. There was pain–out there at a distance. A scream.
And then the world exploded.
Chapter 8
Someone was squishing me. I blinked and moved my tongue around in my mouth. It tasted weirdly of burned herbs and cinnamon. Sounds filtered into my awareness. Sights. Sensation.
My back was pressed against a wall, cold, and something dug in the back of my hip a little painfully, not that it seemed to matter much.
My front was covered by the back of a muscular, very pissed off werewolf. Jame.
He was still kicking off a fever, but from the tension in him, I knew he was in full protective mode. There was a threat.
Well, that was probably something I should deal with. I was the chief of police, after all.
“Hey, Jame? You wanna give me a little breathing room, buddy? Let me in on the situation?”
He growled.
Okay, not really helpful. I twisted a little so I could look past his shoulder.
A man stood there in front of Jame’s fireplace, dressed in a leather jacket, t-shirt and jeans. No, not a man. The demon, Bathin.
“Tell your friend I am not a threat to you, Delaney.” His voice was just how I remembered it. Low, whiskey smoke, heat and amusement.
“Nah, I don’t lie to my friends.” I patted Jame’s arm. “This is Bathin. He’s a demon. He had Dad’s soul trapped in that stone on your mantle. He and I made a deal, and now he has my soul. So I think he’s going to be sticking around for awhile. Do you have any coffee? I could really use a cup.”
Jame twitched in that way only werewolves who were paying complete attention to every living thing around them could.
“He’s a demon.”
“Right. How about you sit down, have a chat, and I’ll get the coffee.”
Jame moved to the side so he could glance at me over his shoulder. “He took your soul?”
I nodded. It was weird that it didn’t bother me, wasn’t it? Or was it? Was that weird?
“It’s a long story, but there’s some really good news.” I wriggled enough, he finally got the message and leaned away so I could move off of the wall.
“News?” Jame pulled his cell out of his pocket and hit dial without even looking at it. I wondered who he had on speed dial.
“Yes. Let me just get coffee and we can talk about it. Coffee?” I asked Bathin as I started toward the kitchen.
He was leaning one elbow on the mantle watching me with a tolerant curiosity. “Yes. Two sugars.”
“Got it. And do you want—” My words were cut off, because Jame was suddenly, silently right behind me, still putting his body between me and Bathin, but also talking on his phone.
“She’s right here, conscious, but acting strange. She sold her soul to a demon.” Pause. “Yes.” He glanced at Bathin. “It’s here.” Another pause.
I stage-whispered, “Do you want coffee too? Or maybe tea? I’m not sure what you’ve got in the kitchen.” I marched in to investigate, my were-shadow following on my heels. “And the cupboards say…coffee! Powdered lemonade.”
“Strange-strange, not shock strange,” he said.
“Refrigerator has… no surprise: beer and tomato juice. So?” I waved my hands at the fridge then cupboard.
He leveled a very serious gaze at me. “I will. Yes.” Then he pocketed his phone, closed the refrigerator even though my hand was still on the handle, and physically guided me over to the coffee-making area.
“Make the coffee.” He had his back to me again, close enough I had to brush against his shirt as I reached for filters and grounds.
He was in full protection mode, which I knew I should either consider sweet of him, or terrifying since I’d never, not once, been in the kind of danger that any werewolf had treated me like a part of their pack.
I paused, my finger over the coffee machine GO button and wondered at that for a second. I seemed awfully calm about selling my soul. Was that like me? Was I always so calm when crazy stuff happened?
Maybe?
But at the back of my mind, doubt niggled. I had sold my soul. I had just spoken to my dead father. Shouldn’t I feel more…more?
Huh.
I pushed the button. “Okay, Big Bad, you can walk me out to the living room so we can all sit down and wait for whoever you called to get here.” I pushed at his back gently so as not to disturb his injuries.
Man was made of brick wall. He didn’t even budge.
“We’ll wait here.”
I rolled my eyes. “C’mon, Jame.” I took his hand and led him into the living room. “We can sit down and wait. Coffee’s going to take a couple minutes to brew.”
He pulled his hand out of mine and draped his arm instead around my shoulders. Instinct just wasn’t going to let him do anything else.
“Maybe the couch?” I suggested.
I was herded to the couch and sat. I pulled him down toward me, but he didn’t shift from his standing sentry position.
“Introductions, perhaps?” Bathin said.
“Jame Wolfe, this is Bathin, the demon who possessed my father’s soul in trade to keep demons out of Ordinary, which he was only relatively successful at doing.”
Bathin’s mouth quirked. “So much attitude.”
“Just telling the truth.”
“Hush,” Jame said. “Don’t speak. Either of you. We wait.”
Bathin’s eyebrows lifted, but he remained silent, leaning on the mantle as if he had all the time in the world to waste here in Jame’s living room.
“We might want—”
“No.”
Okay, then. Jame wasn’t having any of it. Fine. I was tired, but also weirdly full of energy, like that second wind you get in the middle of pulling an all-nighter. I tapped my fingers on my thighs, and then decided a few calming breaths would be good.
So I breathed calmly, thought calm thoughts, and rolled the kinks out of my shoulders and neck.
Jame was a solid wall of not-having-it, and Bathin seemed smug and satisfied and content to watch the two of us like some weird uncle at the dinner table who’d just been introduced to relations he’d never met before.
The knock on the door was followed by the door opening. It was fully dark out, which meant I might have lost some time, but it wasn’t dawn yet.
That was good. That was positive. I hadn’t lost too much time dealing with the demon.
“Hey, Myra.” I should have guessed that’s who he’d call. “And Rossi. Come on in. We have coffee.”
Myra entered the room, her gun in her hands currently pointed at the demon by the fireplace. “Give her back her soul. Now.”
“Mymy,” I said. “There’s more to it. You need to listen.”
“Now.” One clipped word.
I glanced over at Bathin and was surprised at what I saw. He was still a thousand gigawatts of gorgeous, but his lips had parted slightly, his eyes softened, but also sort of intense.
He looked like someone had just stopped his world and sent it spinning too fast and upside down. Totally gobsmacked.
I glanced back at what he was looking at. The furiously dark and sleek vampire?
Nope.
Just my sister, her pale skin showing off a few of her seasonal freckles now that we’d actually gotten some
sun, her dark hair a thick wedge of black over her startlingly light blue eyes, her lips which I knew were fuller than mine and looked good in pale lipsticks, pressed in a unforgiving line as she faced down what she thought was a threat to someone she loved.
A threat to me.
“No, Myra don’t. Don’t shoot him, don’t make any deals with him.”
“You be quiet, Delaney,” she said with more anger than I’d expect from her. “You don’t get a say in how this goes down now. Not anymore.”
Rossi hadn’t moved yet, but I knew him. I knew how fast a fanger could close the distance between him and the demon.
This was about to become a bloodbath.
“He can find Ben!” I blurted. “He’s going to get Ben. He’s going to bring him back before midnight, right to you, Jame. Whole and alive and sane and with no other bindings on him. He promised. That’s what I did. That’s what I sold….” I swallowed, couldn’t say it as shame filled me so hard and fast I lost my breath for a second before that shame was washed away on a numbing, cool breeze.
“That’s what I made the deal for.” I looked at Myra wondering if she understood. Wondering if the words that came out of my mouth made sense or if she was looking at me like that because I was suddenly talking in some language she’d never heard before.
“Dad was there,” I said, softer, not because I felt…well, anything. But because I wasn’t convinced my words were reaching her.
I saw how those words impacted Myra. Saw the flicker of surprise, then fear, then anger. All of which she covered up as she lowered her gun. Though she did not, I noted, put it away.
“Go through it again. All of it.”
I nodded. “I will. There’s coffee. Let me pour some.” I stood and walked out of the room. It occurred to me that every gaze in that room was on me, and then it also occurred to me that I was leaving a ticking time bomb behind me.
“Don’t kill anyone. Any of you. We are going to work together on this, understand?”
I could see a slice of the living room through the wide doorway to the kitchen. That angle revealed only Jame’s back—he still hadn’t moved—and Bathin over by the fireplace.
He must have known I was looking at him. He tipped his face my way and winked.
Whatever.
I pulled out enough mugs for everyone, including one for Rossi, and filled them all with coffee, except for Rossi’s which I filled with the instant-hot water at the tap and a bag of breakfast tea.
I fixed them the way I knew everyone liked, then carried the whole parade back into the room.
“Two sugars,” I handed Bathin his cup.
“Jame, Myra.” They took their cups with matching scowls. Huh. Maybe they’d settled down after a little caffeine.
“Rossi, breakfast tea?”
He stood very still and unbreathing as only a vampire could, his eyes laser-tight on Bathin’s every move.
“Tea?” I waved it in front of his face to break the stare-a-thon and he flicked his gaze to me.
“No, Delaney.” His voice was soft and carried a kindness that I hadn’t heard much of out of him. Like he was talking to a child. Wait. Was he treating me like a child?
Irritation pushed at the back of my mind and then just sort of fizzled out. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t a child, but it was too much trouble to get worked up over that.
That was normal, right? That was the adult response? Let it all roll off my back, no problem, no worry.
Rossi lifted his hand toward my face, his eyes still on me, peering into my own. It should be uncomfortable to be stared at like that. I found I didn’t care.
“Careful, old one.” Bathin’s tone was even, carrying the roll of authority. “What’s mine is mine.”
Rossi ignored him and placed his fingers, gently at my chin so he could tip my face to better stare at me.
“Can you wrap it up?” I asked. “We need to all get on the same page here so Bathin can find Ben.”
“Ah, child. If only your father knew.”
“He does. He was there. His soul, his…spirit. He knows.”
“Where?” Myra demanded. “Where were you? You just left the hospital an hour ago. How did you find Dad, get tangled up with a demon, and lose your soul in an hour?”
She made it sound like I’d lost my lunch money between putting it in my pocket and walking out the door.
“Talent?”
Oh, that was not the right thing to say. I didn’t know why she was so riled up. Everything was fine. This was fine.
Plus, we were going to save Ben. That was more than fine, it was great. Maybe I should be a little more excited or anxious about that, but even though I wasn’t jumping up and down with joy, I knew saving Ben was a happy thing, a good thing, and was going to be a huge relief.
Because then we could kill Lavius, no book of magic involved.
“Where,” Myra said in a flat tone. “Were you?”
“Here. I drove Jame home for a shower and change of clothes. While he was doing that, I felt Dad’s ghost.”
“Here?”
“Weird, right? Yes. Then a rock fell off the mantle and I picked it up.”
“What rock?”
I looked at the mantle, didn’t see it.
Bathin held up his hand, the rock between his fingers. Instead of green with cracks of black and red, the stone was now this beautiful tone of clear blue with fractures of pale pink sparkles and a shatter of pure, solid silver shot through it like a forked lighting frozen in time.
It didn’t look the same, and the reason for that flooded my mind. The stone had held Dad’s soul. This one held mine.
I shivered and rubbed at my arm absently. “That’s the one,” I said. “Hey, you sent it to Dad on the day he died, didn’t you?”
“I did not,” Bathin said.
“Huh. I had just assumed you were behind that. Anyway, that doesn’t matter right now. Here’s what matters: Dad traded his soul to Bathin, who is a demon, in exchange for Bathin keeping demons out of Ordinary. Which he mostly followed through on, except for the demons that Lavius controlled and sent into Ordinary to do his dirty work.”
“Possessions.” Rossi sent that toward Bathin, waiting for the demon to corroborate my story.
But I wasn’t done talking yet. “Yes, possessions, or so Bathin tells me. And while I will never trust a demon’s words, it does all fit into place. So. Bathin offered me a deal. He would release Dad’s soul in return for a favor he would grant to me. All I had to do was give him my soul.”
“Holy shit, Delaney,” Myra shouted. “All you had to do? All? And you went through with it? I cannot. I cannot believe you did this! Ever since Dad died you’ve been…no, you know what? No. You don’t get to throw yourself in the way of this bullet. Not again.”
“Myra. Hey, Mymy, it’s okay.”
“Shut up.” She slammed her coffee down on the table near her, and it sloshed. “You,” she pointed at Bathin, “are coming with me, asshole.”
She pulled the handcuffs out of her belt. Not the zip ties we used with humans, not the handcuffs we used with gods, but the brassy-copper colored ones that were intricately scrolled with spells and hexes and blessings and made in such a way that they could restrain any creature.
Though we’d never tried them on a demon.
I wondered if they’d work on him.
While I was lost in a moment of idle speculation, Myra stormed toward Bathin, gun in one hand, cuffs in the other.
He slipped the stone into his front pocket, his long fingers moving slowly as if he were putting on a show for her. As if he hoped her gaze would follow his fingers. His eyes were all pupil, his breathing a little shallow. Desire rolled off of him in waves.
I couldn’t be reading this situation correctly. He didn’t want Myra. Couldn’t be lusting after her. He was just turned on because she was going to manhandle him. He probably liked any kind of physical violence that came his way. Because he was a demon.
Or maybe I was ster
eotyping again.
“Turn around, hands behind your back.” Myra lifted the gun so that it was pointed right at his head. She was a crack shot. There was no chance she’d miss at that distance.
“Myra?” I said again. “Uh, he has my soul, so maybe don’t shoot him?”
“Hands behind your back.”
Bathin licked his bottom lip and then his mouth curled up on one side. “If you detain me, I will be unable to fulfill my contract with your sister. Every moment, Ben bleeds.”
Jame jerked, muscles in his body going tight—fists, shoulders, back, stomach—as if Bathin had just punched him.
Myra didn’t budge. “What I’m going to do to you won’t take long.”
He lifted his hands slowly as if he wanted to touch her, then paused and turned. “Isn’t that a pity?”
I knew that’s what he said. Just: isn’t that a pity? But somehow it sounded like why aren’t we having sex?
If Myra caught the subtext that was more like domtext going on, she didn’t so much as offer a flicker of interest or amusement.
She pressed the barrel of the gun against his head, then flipped the cuffs open and snapped them shut around his wrist, only pulling the gun away so she could cuff the second wrist.
Bathin grunted softly. It didn’t sound like pain.
“Walk.” She tugged him, then shoved him toward the kitchen.
He moved way too easily for a man with both hands tied behind his back. Myra paced him, her shoulders square, her jaw set.
I wondered if she was really going to shoot him.
Jame shifted on his feet, then silently followed.
“I probably should go make sure this doesn’t fall apart,” I said to Rossi.
He was still looking at me with that strange mix of kindness and sorrow. It made me uncomfortable, but the moment I thought that, the discomfort washed away.
Rossi sighed. “There are very few ways to force a demon to release a soul. But now, before his favor is served, before the contract is sealed with his action, will be our best chance.”
“No.”
He blinked and it was the eyes of a predator staring back at me. “You are not a part of this decision, Delaney. Not anymore. You’ve proved your inability to keep yourself out of harm’s way.”