Night Falls on the Wicked

FOURTEEN

They drove directly to Darby’s apartment. She followed Niklas up the stairs and inside as he carried Aimee and placed her on the bed. She got to work cleaning Aimee’s wound and bandaging it up. She changed her into the smallest T-shirt she owned, guessing they wouldn’t be able to claim her luggage from the bus station.

“We’re going to have to get her some new clothes.”

He nodded. “I’m going to get the rest of my things from my room. I need to gather some other supplies, too, so I’ll see what I can find for her. I’ll be back in a few hours. We don’t want Cyprian to get too much of a head start.”

She walked him to the door, rubbing her hands up and down her arms and telling herself that she just hadn’t warmed up yet. Even though—for once—her apartment was cozy and warm. The cold clung. A bone-deep cold that she doubted she’d ever be free from—especially after tonight. Tonight she’d shed her last scrap of hope that she could ever be safe. Ever be free of all the ugly things that walked this earth alongside the good and innocent.

She was done hiding. It was time to fight.

“How do you know where to go … where Cyprian will go next?”

At the door, he paused and turned to face her. “It’s time we’re up front about a few things that we’ve been skirting around.”

She nodded, but her throat felt suddenly tight, her skin itchy beneath his regard. “You know what I am.” They’d covered that already.

“Yeah.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “How do you know about witches?” They hadn’t covered that and it was still nagging her how he knew about her kind.

“My mother.”

She angled her head. “She told you?”

“No.” He looked away from her then, stared somewhere over her shoulder as if he saw something there, something being played out just for his eyes alone. “She was one. Like you—a witch.”

Her heart leapt, unaccountably excited to discover they had this connection. “Your mother was a white witch?”

“At first. A white witch. And then she sold her soul.”

Darby pulled back as if physically struck. It was her worst nightmare. Her mother had killed herself rather than enslave herself to a demon. As much as she struggled with her mother’s suicide, it would have been so much worse to lose her to a demon. “Your mother contracted with a demon?”

He looked back at her then, faced her with his indigo eyes flat and void of emotion—as if this information affected him not at all. “She gave up her soul and turned herself over to a demon.”

“Why would she do such a thing?”

“She did it for me. In exchange for my soul.”

Darby looked him up and down, as if he wore his soul on the outside and she could see it before her. “What do you mean? How was your soul in danger?”

“I was infected by a lycan. When I was sixteen Cyprian and his pack attacked me and some friends. I escaped, but it was too late. I was infected just like that girl in there and on my way to becoming a … monster—I think that’s what you called it.”

She nodded, remembering that she’d said that. And he’d flinched. Why? He stood before her, obviously not one of them. His mother’s sacrifice had worked and saved him. So then, why—

“My mother did the only thing she could think of. She exchanged her soul for mine.”

“So a demon lifted your curse and took her instead.” Darby inhaled, unable to imagine how that must have made him feel. How it still made him feel, knowing that his mother sacrificed herself for him. “That must have been awful for you.”

He didn’t disagree. Or agree. His lips twisted in a nasty smile. “My mother should have perhaps had more care with her words.”

A sinking sensation filled her stomach, but she waited, dreading, knowing there was more … worse to come.

“She asked for my soul … but she didn’t ask that I return to the way I was before.” He chuckled humorlessly. “Damn demons. They’re clever f*ckers. Never can trust them.”

A fist tightened around her heart. She was almost afraid to ask, but she couldn’t not know.

“What happened to you?” Because whatever happened to him was evidently what shaped him into what he was now. Who was this man standing before her? It would be a good idea to know who she was dealing with, especially considering she’d just teamed up with him for the next month.

His gaze drilled into her, as relentless as steel. It didn’t occur to her that she should possibly not trust him. He’d done nothing but come to her aid from the start … despite the danger that seemed to drip off him.

“I’m a lycan.”

This pronouncement dropped like a stone through the air—falling with a heavy thunk in her knotted-up stomach. She resisted the urge to take an instinctive step back.

Then it occurred to her that this wasn’t possible. She’d seen him on multiple nights when the moon was full. He was no monstrous furred beast.

She laughed then, the sound nervous and tinny, still unconvinced. “No, you’re not.”

“It’s true. I’m a lycan, just one with a soul.” He uttered this admission quietly, evenly and without feeling. Which had to be an act. How could you be a lycan and not have any emotion over that fact?

Her breath expelled in a rush. “How is that possible? What does that even mean? A lycan with a soul?” She shook her head, pressing her fingertips to her suddenly aching temples. It dawned on her that she hadn’t slept—not really, not peacefully, in over twenty-four hours.

“It means I have free will. I possess a soul, so I possess the choice to do right or wrong … like every other human. I don’t have to shift.”

“But you can.”

He hesitated, as if he wanted to deny it. “Yes.”

She nodded. Okay. A lycan with free will. With a soul. That didn’t sound so bad. “Except you’re not a human.”

“Yeah. That’s the catch.”

“You sound a lot like a hybrid.”

“A dovenatu?” He looked at her sharply. “You know about them?”

She nodded. “I was friends with one.” Two, she guessed, thinking about Sorcha, Jonah’s wife.

“There’s not that much difference between us, I guess. We both possess free will. Except that I seem to be aging at a normal rate, like a human. And I don’t know how it was for your friend, but it’s a real struggle every full moon to resist the shift.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Hell, I don’t know. I guess I’m more lycan than human.”

She stepped closer, touching his arm lightly. “You’re not like them. Not at all. You’re …” You’re good. She swallowed, an surge of emotion welling up inside her. “You saved us. You helped me the other night.” She motioned a hand to her window. “For God’s sake, you fixed my window.”

He laughed that low rumble again that did things to her insides. “Yeah, well, sometimes it’s hard to believe that I’m anything but a monster when every moonrise my body burns to shift into one of them.”

“And have you? Have you ever broken down and done that?”

“Not in years. In the beginning, I couldn’t fight it. I’ve mastered control over it since then. I won’t ever transition again.”

“When you did … those years ago when you lost it …” She had to hear him say he didn’t hurt someone, that he didn’t do what they did. She had to know she and Aimee would be safe around him.

His eyes fastened on her. “I held on to myself, if that’s what you’re asking. I never deliberately harmed anyone. Apparently when the demon granted my mother’s wish for me to keep my soul, he took away the lycan’s hunger for flesh.”

She released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “That’s how you track Cyprian then. Using your lycan instincts?”

“We’re connected.” He nodded. “That’s how we’ll find him. The end is finally near. There’s only him now. He doesn’t have anyone left to hide behind.”

They stood silent for a long moment, each studying the other with all walls removed, barriers knocked down. He knew what she was and now she knew the full story about him.

As different as they were, she realized they were alike. Two people—or whatever they were—isolated by their very nature. Darby could relate to him.

The air suddenly altered, became something thick, tension swirling around them so dense she could swim in it. Her throat constricted and she fought to swallow. In that moment, if she had wanted to speak she couldn’t have.

His gaze dropped to her hand on his arm, still resting there. Everything flooded back to her then. Everything. Their kiss, long and deep and smoldering. His heat, his taste. Her need and hunger for more of him. For all of him.

She’d thought he’d growled during that kiss, and now she guessed that he probably had. And still that didn’t bother her. A tremor of excitement raced up her spine.

His gaze slid up from her hand on his arm then. She fell into his gaze. That twisting flame of light was back in his indigo eyes. “You might not want to do that,” he rasped.

“What?”

“Touch me.”

“Oh.” Her hand slipped from his arm. She rubbed her fingertips together at her sides. They felt bereft, cold on the air.

“I didn’t open up to you and tell you about myself because I wanted your pity or soft looks. I especially wasn’t trying to get you to pet me like I’m some sort of puppy—”

“I wasn’t doing that,” she said hotly, scanning his six-feet-plus hard body. The last thing he reminded her of was a puppy.

“I told you the truth about me, about my mother, because you deserve to know. If we’re in this together for the next month, then you should know all the factors.”

His eyes were so cold, fathomless deep and impossible to read. The light inside them had vanished.

He spoke with such practicality. Like they were entering into some kind of business arrangement. There was nothing sentimental or friendly about his words. As much as she’d held herself from the world, something told her Niklas was an even harder case.

Not too comforting to consider, when she and Aimee would be in close quarters with him for the next month.

But they wouldn’t be with him, she reminded herself. Not really. This was strictly a mission with no emotion involved. He wasn’t invested like she was in saving Aimee’s life. A fact she should remember so she didn’t make any more overtures of friendship and embarrass herself by touching him again—by wanting and craving to touch him again. Another motive drove him and it had nothing to do with her. This was about his mother. About him.

“I appreciate you telling me everything.” She nodded, trying to look unaffected, as cool and remote as he was. “You’re right. We’re in this together.”

She still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it all. She wondered about his mother. Thoughts of her must plague him, haunt him every day. She shivered at the thought of what he must endure, the agony of living with the knowledge that his mother sacrificed her life—her very soul—for him.

As much as the memory of her mother’s death haunted her, Darby at least knew she was dead. He didn’t have that peace. Was his mother even still a demon witch? Or was she dead now? Her soul forever lost for consorting with a demon?

Once a white witch entered into contract with a demon, she gained immortality. She lived forever at the mercy of her demon’s whims.

Had his mother’s demon somehow managed to bring about her death? Because that’s what they did—tricky bastards. There was only one way a demon witch could be killed. Decapitation. Take the head and the demon was free to roam the earth in corporeal form. What every demon wanted. That was their ultimate goal.

He still watched her with his cold gaze, and she guessed he had good reason to be so cool and aloof. What happened to him could break anyone.

A small, mewling sound carried from the other room.

Niklas nodded in that direction. “The child. She’s begun the transition.”

“Her name is Aimee,” she said. He could at least call her something besides the child.

He stared right through her like she hadn’t said anything. “You may want to go to her. She’ll be very uncomfortable. At least until it ends and she wakes.”

Darby looked over her shoulder, peering into her dimly lit room. “What can I do to help her through it?”

“The fever will rage—no stopping that. Try to get her to drink. There’s not much else you can do for her. It is what it is. Her human DNA is dying, turning over. She’ll sleep for the next few days.”

“A few days?” She blinked. “That’s unnatural.”

“She’s an unnatural creature now.” He cocked his head and gave her a look that reminded her that she was unnatural, too. Just as he was.

“We should cover as much ground as we can during the time she sleeps,” he said brusquely. “It’s going to be hard enough to track him, but when she wakes, she’ll slow us down. I’ll be back soon. Until then, try to get some rest yourself.”

Rest. She doubted she could ever close her eyes again.

He opened the door and the muted light of daybreak spilled through the door, a milky violet that promised sunlight to come later.

How she’d longed for the sight of that—every breath from this hellish night, she had prayed to make it to this moment, to see daylight one more time.

“There’s something I have to know.”

He cocked his head, waiting for her to elaborate.

“If you’re not afflicted with a lycan’s desire to feed, why not shift then? I mean … could it help? Could you track Cyprian quicker?”

He shut the door and faced her, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at her that way again. That intense and unnerving way that made her want to hide from his gaze.

She resisted stepping back and held her ground. She continued, babbling, “If you have free will, why won’t you turn? It could give you an advantage, it could help—”

“It makes me too much like them.”

She blinked once and stared at him hard. “But you’re not. At least in the way that matters.” But if he could be like them in other ways—tracking, speed, strength—he might be able to find them faster. “If it could help us …”

Her voice faded. His eyes gleamed down at her, the light there bright and dangerous. He seemed untouchable. As beautiful as a fatal serpent. “All you need to know is that we do this my way.”

Indignation flared hotly in her chest. It was her turn to cross her arms. “As far as explanations go, that’s not good enough. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

His expression darkened, and she felt certain he’d had enough of her.

Bracing herself, she waited for what he would do next.

NIKLAS INHALED DEEPLY, NOT sure why he should explain anything to her at all. He didn’t owe her anything.

Then why are you here? Why are you doing any of this at all?

Ignoring the nagging voice in his head that warned him he was getting too involved, he moved into her small apartment and lowered himself to the couch. After a moment, she moved to sit beside him.

“I finally pulled myself together about a year after I was turned,” he began. “That’s when I started hunting Cyprian’s pack. I wasn’t very good at first—the scent of any lycan would distract me and confuse me as to what trail I needed to follow. I was basically hunting them all. One night I came across a pair of lycans attacking a woman, a girl really.” He winced. “Not much older than me.”

His shoulders tensed, tightening as he saw the scene all over again in his head.

“What happened?”

“I engaged the lycans.” His voice became clipped, emotionless, like he was reading off a piece of paper and not relating anything significant, but he would never forget the ugliness he had stumbled upon … what they were doing to that girl. “I tried to stop them, but they were strong.” His jaw clenched. He told himself to relax, to not let the past affect him anymore. Easier said than done, he was discovering. He’d never told this story to another soul. You never had anyone to tell it to before.

He drew a deep breath through his nose, pushing that thought away. Being alone had never bothered him before. Meeting her shouldn’t change that; it shouldn’t bother him now. “As I said, I was new to it all. Inexperienced.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I couldn’t handle them on my own, in human form. I thought I needed an advantage. So I shifted.”

“Did you beat them?” She winced at the question, clearly realizing he must have or he wouldn’t be sitting in front of her.

He nodded. “I did. And the girl …” He stopped, seeing the wide, haunted eyes, the blood soaking blond hair, staining it a deep brown.

Darby leaned forward anxiously. “Was she okay?”

He nodded again. “She was still alive, by some miracle.” Then his words came quickly. “I approached her to try and help her and she just … screamed. And kept on screaming.” Even now, he could hear the awful sound ringing in his ears, ripping through him.

Darby shook her head, a heaviness settling in her chest. “After you’d just saved her life?”

“I tried to talk to her, calm her down, but she wouldn’t stop screaming. She took off running. She left the park and ran right out into the street.” He paused, taking a breath. “A truck hit her. She died instantly.”

Darby blinked. “You can’t blame yourself for that. She was hysterical, traumatized from what they did to her.”

“She ran into that street because of me.” Because of the monster he was. “I should have left her alone.” He shook his head. “No—I should never have shifted.”

She placed her hand on his knee. Sensation zipped through him at the touch of her hand. He tensed beneath her fingers. She must have felt his tension, for she looked down to where she touched him. With a small gasp, barely audible, she snatched her hand away and buried it in her lap. Color flooded her cheeks, almost the same red as her hair, and he marveled at that. Women actually still blushed these days? Modesty and reticence had long since been absent from his life.

She moistened her lips and he followed the quick darting of her tongue, desire twisting in his belly. The air around them altered, became thicker, heavy with an aching awareness of each other.

“She ran into the street because of the lycans who attacked her. Not you.”

He tore his gaze away from her mouth. “Don’t you get it? It didn’t matter. I looked like them. To her, I was one of them.”

“Looking like them doesn’t mean you’re like them.”

“That was the last time I ever shifted. I don’t need to shift in order to beat them.”

Something passed over her face.

“What?” he demanded.

“Maybe you do … I mean, you needed to do it then to overpower them, and you’ve been hunting Cyprian for a long time. Maybe you would have found them sooner if you weren’t so hung up on shifting.”

Her words struck a nerve. “It’s the way it has to be,” he growled. “I won’t risk shifting again, losing control—”

“You never lost control—”

“Drop it,” he bit out, rising to his feet and moving toward the door again. “You mistake yourself if you think your opinion matters enough to change my mind on this.”

That did the trick. She flinched, staring at him with hurt eyes. “I’m trying to help.”

“You can help by following my lead on this.” He drew a ragged breath and wondered why the way those hazel eyes stared at him affected him so much. Why she should affect him? “And stop asking me so many f*cking questions.”

NIKLAS LEFT WITHOUT ANOTHER word and Darby locked the door behind him, noticing that her hands shook. Moving into her small bedroom, she checked on Aimee before stripping out of her clothes and stepping into the shower.

She arched her throat and let the warm water beat down on her body, luxuriating in the wet heat, letting it ease her sore muscles, thankful for being alive.

She envisioned Niklas as he had been tonight, fierce and wild fighting the lycans intent on devouring her, then almost tender as he told her about his past, revealing pieces of himself she felt sure he’d never shared with another soul. Until he shut her down, spoke to her so harshly at the end.

Except she couldn’t forget his eyes.

Her hand brushed her breast and with some surprise she felt her nipple pebble-hard, aroused and sensitive. She released a moan and ducked her head under the spray of water, perfectly aware of the reason why her body was in such a state.

It had been a long time since she’d even been close to a man as sexy as Niklas. His body, his voice, everything about him aroused her.

She wanted him—no, she craved him. She ached just thinking about him. It took all her willpower not to fling herself at him.

The problem was that kiss. Maybe if she had never kissed him, she wouldn’t be so convinced at how good they would be together—how amazing it would be.

She sighed. It was going to be a long month. Especially considering he looked at her as if she were an unwanted child foisted upon him that he must babysit. He was all hard resolve. There would be no repeat kisses.

When this was all over and she reentered the land of the living, the first thing she needed to do was get herself a boyfriend to satisfy the itch that Niklas had roused in her.

Who says you need a boyfriend to do that? Who says you can’t push Niklas into relieving that itch himself? You have a month…

A wicked smile curved her mouth at such bold and totally uncharacteristic thinking. She wasn’t one to be aggressive—a lifetime of staying below the radar and what you got was someone good at being invisible.

Her hand drifted leisurely over her breast, her palm abrading the already stiff nipple. A rattling sigh escaped her lips, and a deep twist of liquid-hot wanting shot through her body.

She leaned her forehead against the tiled wall, her neck suddenly too weak to support her head, and took a deep breath, telling herself to calm down. She needed to pull it together before she saw him again.

She needed to remember who he was and who she was. Alike and yet different. Different in a way that she couldn’t easily forget. She never had. She never would.