10
A fury like I’ve rarely known consumed me. “What?” I roared with a voice that was part demon. Shoving him off me, fangs extending, I glared at him. “You bastard!”
“Pandora, listen to me. It’s not what you think.”
I couldn’t sit with him. Couldn’t even look at him.
Grace had betrayed me. Betrayed us all. Because of her machinations, I’d lost the only true friend I’d ever had.
I knew my eyes were glowing; I’d fallen for his lies. For what I’d thought were truths. I’d shown him my soul and he’d trampled it. And as much as I wanted to end him, I needed to get away.
Pivoting on my heel, I ran, ready to trace out of there when I was tackled violently to the ground.
“Get off me!” I screamed, kicking and punching, lashing out at him. “You gonna kill me now? That it? There were no zombies here, you guys set me up.” I laughed, the sound hollow and empty, just like me.
“Listen to me.” He shook me and I was reminded of all the times we’d been in similar positions.
“What?” I hissed. “I’m done listening to your lies. Go ahead, Priest, break my bones, kill me. Whatever. I was stupid enough to walk into this trap. I deserve to die.”
Jamming his face as close to mine as he could get without smashing our noses together, his face contorted into a violent mask and Lust hissed.
The bitch still wanted him.
“I’ve had a million opportunities to end you. What I told you back in that cave was true. You want to know why you don’t change when I look at you? Because I want you. I want to be inside you, I want to kill anyone and anything that harms you. I hate Luc. Hate that you let that bastard touch you, use you.”
His words spurred my fury but also my lust. My legs widened as heat built between them.
“And I swear by all that’s holy that if I ever see another prick inside you, I’ll end them. Luc. A human. A demon. You’re mine.”
My eyes widened and my throat was dry and parched. Because he was claiming me like a demon would.
I laughed. “You’re a fool if you think I would ever allow myself to be claimed. You don’t know me at all.”
“Oh, I know you, little demon.” His eyes turned soft and I hated that I was whimpering like a dog in heat, thrusting my breasts up into his hard chest and asking without words that he quench my thirst. “I know who you really are. I’ve seen inside your soul.” His hands were gentle now, his touch soothing, his fingers moving like a crawling tide down the line of my flat stomach.
I was full-on porn-star panting now. Asher and I, we weren’t of this world, we weren’t even from this time. We were drifters moving through it but always outside it. Every immortal was.
I vividly remembered a world where women had no choices, where if a man saw her and wanted her, he took her. And I should hate that now—I had choices, I was independent. A fierce, modern warrior woman who wouldn’t be told what to do, who to take into myself. Who I’d fuck.
But even as I told myself all this, that primal cavewoman in me couldn’t deny the attraction, the thrill of being claimed and possessed. Not owned, but taken. Marked. My body burned.
“Why are you working with Grace?” I panted, trying so hard not to let him see the conflict burning in my brain.
He was rubbing his cheek against mine, and the touch only enflamed me more. He sprawled out on top of me so that every bit of him was pressing against every bit of me, so that the thick ridge of his cock was right at the juncture of my thighs. I groaned and couldn’t stop myself from rocking up.
Lust was as excited as I was, but it would be a lie to say that she was making me do this. Asher was a powder keg ready to explode. He was violent and dangerous, but so was I. I wrapped my legs around his hips and squeezed to the point that if he’d been mortal, I’d have crushed him.
Hissing, he clenched his eyes shut and I couldn’t keep from rubbing harder, causing the friction between us to increase exponentially.
“Because Billy needed to die.” He groaned and now he was actively thrusting against me.
We were fully clothed—this shouldn’t be so erotic. Shouldn’t be bringing me to the threshold. But my hunger for him knew no bounds.
“So the ring? Hell?” I clamped his shoulders as my vision began to swirl.
“It was the only way to make them believe I’d died.”
My mouth widened as the coiling heat tightened to the point of almost pain. He grunted, and his eyes were watching me. Studying me. Memorizing me.
“Kemen?”
Clamping his teeth together, he shook his head. “I didn’t know he was going to be there... Grace hadn’t told me that night.”
I narrowed my eyes because I heard the words he wasn’t saying. “But you know something about it now, don’t you?”
His growling nod rushed through me like fire.
The tingling rush of a pending orgasm spread through me. I tossed my head back, exposing my throat fully to him. “The recording?”
“All. Part. Of. Her. Plan. Little demon—” He hissed. “You need to talk to her.”
“Yes. Yes. Go, Asher. Go.”
And then his teeth were locked on the side of my throat and that was all it took before I was fracturing into a thousand particles of bliss.
Never in my life had I experienced an orgasm like that one. It took me a full minute to stop shuddering against him.
His chuckle was self-satisfied as he stared between us. “I can’t believe we just did that.”
The evidence of his arousal was stained all over the front of his jeans.
I laughed. “Fully clothed, no less. Priest, you’re going to get me killed.”
His thumbs traced my cheeks. “So soft,” he murmured, and the post-coital tenderness I’d never gotten with another, not even Luc, made me self-conscious and suddenly unsure.
“Never be ashamed of what we do. For years I stood by and let you do what you had to, but this thing between us—I know you feel it.”
He was right.
“I need a lot of sex.”
His grin was wolfish as he said, “I can assure you, that won’t be a problem.”
Stomach fluttering, I snorted. “Fine, you bastard. I promise not to sex up anyone else if you vow to do the same. My demon has grown rather fond of you. I’m pretty sure she’d have no problem ripping of any hand that dares to touch you.”
“You’ll get no arguments from me there.”
Narrowing my eyes, I tangled my fingers in his soft hair. “Plan to ever clue me in about this?”
I still wasn’t sure what to believe where Asher was concerned, but for now it was just nice to live in this moment.
Propping himself up on an elbow, he lifted his brows. “When I died in Hell, my organization deactivated me.”
He didn’t say anything else but it was easy enough to put two and two together. “So are you a natural brunette, Priest?”
Nipping at the finger that I let linger around the corner of his mouth, he growled. “I can dye it silver if you really miss it.”
“Nah.” I wrinkled my nose. “I think you’re kinda hot just like this.”
But I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said; it bothered me that I’d still managed to have that orgasm even after hearing that Kemen’s death was somehow part of Grace’s master plan. Demons could never be accused of being innocents, but that’s what Kemen had always been to me—the hot, scruffy teenage brother who was a total slob but whom you couldn’t help but love.
As if sensing my shifting mood, he cocked his head. “What’s the matter?”
Rolling my eyes, I shrugged. “Nothing.” Confused, aggravated, I turned my head to the side, and that’s when I noticed that the ever-darkening sky wasn’t because of clouds pregnant with rain but rather a wake of vultures. “What in the hell?”
Asher caught what I was looking at before frowning and following my gaze. “I think we might have found our zombies.”
Standing, he held out his hand for me. I took it and was instantly back on my feet. After dusting off my ass and taking the time to get a few twigs and some brush out of my hair, he led me toward the living black funnel.
The vultures that were feeding on the ground scattered, but they still circled heavily in the sky.
It was easy enough to figure out what they’d been feeding on.
Three bodies were lined up in a neat row.
And my heart slammed in my chest. Not because their eyeballs had been picked out or that their stomachs were open with chunks of bowel and intestines draping out.
But because I recognized them.
There was a man, a woman, and a small child.
I squeezed Asher’s fingers. “I know them.”
He turned to me. The hot breeze carried the stench of rotten meat. I started to walk closer, but Asher tugged me back.
“They don’t smell like zombies, Ash. I’m fine.”
His jaw set, but he reluctantly released my hand. Narrowing my eyes, I studied the face of the man I’d seen in the bar. He was also the man from the taco stand. And beside him, half her face ripped off, was Juanita. Her fingers were clutched tight to a smaller figure which I knew had to be Carlos since he was wearing a Forty-niners shirt. Kneeling, I stirred the dirt beside the small one’s body.
The vultures hadn’t picked at him much. His body was the best preserved of the three, so it was easy enough to spot the multiple bite marks down both arms, his legs, and on his neck.
“They slaughtered them.”
It was a myth that a zombie bite would instantly infect the host and turn them into zombies too. That was a story born straight out of Hollyweird’s strange imagination. Zombies, the real ones, were more similar to what you see in voodoo.
They were dead, that much was true, but they could only be brought back by a queen. Each zombie hive operated similarly to bee culture with the queen being at the epicenter, her workers keeping order within the hive, and her drones doing whatever task she handed them.
Nothing is ever done without the queen’s knowledge. For the most part zombies kept to themselves and rarely stepped out of line. They were Switzerland in monster society, aligned to no one side, ensuring that war never came to their doors.
“I don’t get it.” I dusted my hands, staring at the boy. He couldn’t have been more than ten. Maybe even nine. “Why has the hive suddenly gone rogue like this?”
Asher’s hand gripped my shoulder. “We need to report this.”
I rolled my eyes. “To Grace you mean? You know I’m still not sure what to think of that.” I glanced at him over my shoulder.
But Asher wasn’t looking at me. His jaw was clamped so tight I could practically hear his molars grinding, and he was looking at the layout of the land with hard eyes.
“I want you to go home now. Get back to the carnival and stay there. I’ll come find you.”
I cocked my head. “That’s not how this thing is gonna work, Asher.” Standing, I tapped his chest until he looked at me. “You hear me? I’m not running from this like some coward.”
His nostrils flared. “I’ve seen the messes you get yourself in, and I’d rather know you’re safe. Please,” he finally grunted.
And even though I knew he was coming from an honest place, I also knew that if I let him dictate to me now, things would only get worse later. “If you’re serious about being with me.”
“You know I am,” he ground out.
I touched his chest. “Then respect me as a peer and a fighter. You know what I can do. I’m not going to do anything stupid, I vow it. But don’t you dare try to coddle me or we’ll have problems, you and me.”
“Being with you isn’t going to be easy, is it?”
I laughed. “Did you honestly think it would be?”
“I’d hoped.”
“I’ll go back, but it’s because I want to and I know it’s the right thing to do. I can’t stomach Grace right now—I have to digest all this.”
“And you should.”
“Yeah.” I tucked my thumbs in my jean loops. “I want to bury the bodies.”
“Okay.”
I was surprised that there was no pushback. Luc would have given me a withering look, telling me in so many words how weak I was that I cared. But Asher didn’t. He helped me dig three graves, and when we covered them back up with dirt, he murmured something below his breath.
I’m not sure what, a benediction maybe? He was a priest after all, even if he was the most unconventional one known to mankind.
“What are you going to tell Grace?” I asked after I finished placing the final stone to mark their graves. “She sent me here to find a hive. Seems like we’ve found something. What more is there to know?”
Pulling me into his arms, he nodded. “Yeah, but you’re smart and intuitive, and it can’t be a coincidence that the same humans who disappeared suddenly showed up here.”
“Asher, how can you be so sure that Grace isn’t part of this giant conspiracy? You say it all was planned, but—”
His finger was gentle when he placed it against my lips.
“Deep down you know I’m telling the truth, that Grace is on our side. It’s why I didn’t let you kill her that night. She is the only one standing between us and Armageddon.”
I shivered. No demon liked to even think of the end of days. Let’s just say things weren’t going to turn out so good for us.
“Do you think the Order is setting me up again?”
“Yeah.” His eyes were hard and dangerous, and I was suddenly so grateful that he was on my side. Asher wasn’t an enemy you ever wanted to have. “I do. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, and then we’re going to kill anyone involved.”