chapter 4
I was rubbing wrists grown raw from the abrasive scrape of rope, when the door opened. I half expected it to be Billy returned with a change of heart and a bigger knife, but instead it was Luc.
He looked at my wrists, my face, then at my shoulder, which was caked with blood. Luc moved as only a demon could. It wasn’t a walk, but a thought. He wanted to be near me and from one second to the next, he was.
Kneeling, he drew my wrists into his warm hands and turned them over to expose the angry red abrasions marring the milky white of my skin. His shoulders grew tense and his breathing heavy. “Who did this?”
I licked my lips.
Luc watched me like a wolf stalking its prey. He’d turned down his glamour, sensitive to the fact that changing would have been too painful for me right now. He sniffed the air, then a rumble, similar to the guttural growl of a panther readying itself to strike, vibrated through his chest. His eyes narrowed. He pushed the hair away from my face none too gently and jerked me by the chin so that I faced light.
“Who did this to you, Ya-el?” A flicker of apprehension skated down my spine like black ice as I watched his eyes turn from blue to molten lavender. Thankfully, he wasn’t in the mood for sex, turning now would have hurt like a mother.
“Pontifex Mortus,” I whispered.
He vanished in a plume of black smoke, leaving in his wake the faint scent of sulfur.
My head, my shoulders, wrists, ankles...it all hurt. It was beginning to ache so bad now that it was making me sick. My head swam from the blood loss, but I had to clean myself up. I still smelled that vampire all over me. I stood and for a second the world swayed.
There was no way I could even walk the short distance to my bathroom without emptying the contents of my stomach. Swallowing down the bile, I pushed through the pain and dematerialized.
Typically dematerializing feels like fading into a cold, wet mist. It’s painless, seamless. Like slipping into the velvet warm heat of bath water. Every part of your body breaking down into its basic form, free floating atoms made up of excited protons, electrons, neutrons and a pulsating nucleus. Energy in its purest form and multiplied by about a trillion.
But tonight it was neither painless, nor seamless. The second I misted I knew I shouldn’t have. I’d have screamed if I had lungs and a mouth to do it with.
It took me longer than normal to reform. If I didn’t do it right, if I didn’t grab every part of me that had misted, I’d forever be less than. Not a shade and not fully corporeal. Just...less than.
Taking deep breaths, I focused around the nauseating pain throbbing at my temple until I’d gathered the last bit of myself. The final atom slid into me with the happy warmth of a devoted puppy.
I gripped the sink with knuckles turning white from the strain of trying to hold myself upright. Sweat beaded across my brows, black hollows added shadows to my eyes. My skin, already porcelain fair, was now so pale that I could make out the small blue and green veins in my cheeks. Saying I looked bad was probably the understatement of the year.
“Friggin' death priests’,” I grumbled beneath my breath.
Quickly I turned on the faucet, warm tendrils of steam fogged the bottom half of the mirror.
I wet a rag, and cleaned myself up the best I could. The water was scalding and I hissed when the heat touched my wound. Standing was making everything worse. The headache was awful, like someone had taken a cleaver to my skull. I blinked, seeing stars swim before my eyes. The walls bulged, then sank in. The floor rocked beneath my feet and I groaned, feeling as if I was trapped in a house of horrors.
My stomach revolted and it was all I could do to throw myself upon the toilet before I upchucked everything I’d eaten today—which hadn’t been much, a hamburger with all the fixings. It’d been tasty going down, not so pretty coming up. The sight of it only made me gag the harder. I hugged the porcelain like my life depended on it, staying put until there was nothing left but the dry heaving. I flushed the toilet, but couldn’t seem to get my body to move.
I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the sights and smells.
Clearly I had a concussion, maybe even some bleeding in the brain. Sitting still had helped, but moving was awful. Contrary to popular belief, demons could get hurt. And since I was only half demon, well that meant I could get hurt even worse.
Short of being decapitated, we could heal all wounds. Even dismembered limbs. A fast or slow healing depended entirely upon the type of demon that possessed you. For Bubba, that meant being able to get to a food source—animal or otherwise. For me, well...I’m sure you get the picture.
After a few seconds, I was finally able to stand, feeling somewhat better now that my stomach was empty.
I washed my face again, gingerly applying the rag to the large purple bruise spreading across my temple. I brushed my teeth twice, and then gargled with mouthwash for good measure.
I sensed his presence the second before he materialized.
“Ya-el.”
Luc wrapped me in his arms, he smelled so good, like pine and aftershave. He was so warm, so safe. I leaned against him, letting him take the full weight of my body.
“You need to rest.”
I closed my eyes, exhausted and upset. I said the first thing that popped into my head. “You know I hate that name. Don’t ever call me that.”
If he heard me, he didn’t acknowledge it. He swept me in his arms, one hand at my shoulder, the other beneath my legs. I groaned and buried my face in the curve of his neck.
He was trembling as he walked toward my bedroom.
I laid my fingers against his whiskered cheek.
He turned his face into my hand and laid a kiss against the tips of my fingers. I shuddered, and it wasn’t from pain.
The lavender was gone, the blue of his eyes filled with unspoken words. I knew what he was thinking. He’d let me down. I’d nearly died while he’d been caught up in Lust’s grip.
And again this is all part and parcel of the complicated relationship we share. Luc’s hurt me before. But age and time has softened him. He’s responsible, not the reckless and wild thing I remember from our youth. Now, he almost seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Always thinking somehow everything’s his fault, especially as it pertains to me or any other neph under his care. I’d often teased him of being a martyr, but there was always some truth in teasing. If he was possessed by a second demon, I didn’t know it and he wouldn’t share it. I feared that one day his sense of justice would lead him to do something stupid...like get himself killed.
I wanted to kiss that torture from him.
His fingers dug into my back. He squeezed me in a tight hug, as if he never meant to let me go.
Pain and pleasure became one. My body was broken, but my hunger grew.
“Share my body, Dora,” he said in a voice grown soft and unsure. He’d made the offer before and I’d turned him down. Was he worried I’d do the same again?
It wasn’t often I saw Luc like this and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. He was everything a true neph should be. I’d always been the freak, the outsider. The one talking about things like love and hope. He’d always been the one to correct me, warn me away from thinking like that. Love and hope didn’t exist in our world. It was a weakness we couldn’t afford.
He frowned and I could see some of that legendary control of his slipping. What was wrong with him?
He closed his eyes, turned his face to the side as if he didn’t want me to see something. He was shielding himself, and I didn’t like that.
I ran my fingers through the softness of his hair, tugging on it enough to force him to look at me. “Do not hide yourself from me. I would have truth between us.”
The look in his face was so raw it was almost too painful to look upon. He shuddered, buried his face in my hair and inhaled my scent. “Let me take away this pain.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and let him see how much he meant to me. How much I wanted him, needed him. This had nothing to do with Lust. What I felt for Luc in that moment transcended something so carnal.
He kneeled on the bed with me still cradled in his arms. My body hurt, but it also tingled with the rising awareness that I was about to get the drug I needed. I might curse Lust, wish her dead, but she had her useful moments. Tit for tat. Give her sex and I’d be whole again.
Luc moved back, standing at the side of the bed as he started undressing. His fingers found the buttons of his shirt. He took his time with it, undoing one at a time, letting his hand linger before moving on. His gaze, hot with need, never swerved from my face.
After so many years together he knew what I liked, how I liked it. Sometimes watching a man undress was almost more exciting than the sex itself.
Lust stirred, like a lazy cat smelling something tasty in the air.
Once done, he rolled the shirt over his shoulders, letting it spill behind him to the carpet. Heat crashed between my thighs. He was so beautiful. Long and lean. Every sinewy muscle in his chest and abdomen flexed as he reached for the zipper of his jeans. Again, he was excruciatingly slow, every movement a deliberate seduction that made me whimper with desire.
Unzipped, I could see he’d gone commando tonight.
That golden, sun-kissed skin of his seemed to glow in the flickering flames of candlelight. His little brown nipples were hard. I wanted to draw them into my mouth and bite them, twist them, rake my nails across them until they flushed a bright pink.
His eyes were twin pools of liquid amethyst; his demon was fully awake and very aroused. So was Luc, judging by the hard bulge in his jeans.
A sound, very much like a purr, fell from my lips.
He pushed the jeans down, then kicked them to the side and stood before me in all his nude glory. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to. Clothed, we’re gorgeous, nude...we’re breathtaking.
Luc crawled onto the bed on all fours and my pulse sped. He touched me and my back arched. My fingers bunched at the sheets and a cry, both of pain and unbearable desire, spilled from me.
He found the zipper at the side of my corset.
“Hurry,” I gasped, frantic with the need to feel him touch me, bare skin to bare skin.
My nipples pebbled the second they touched cool air. I shifted, helping him to take the corset off. He threw the corset over his shoulder and groaned, his irises dilated with a hunger so intense it made my mouth water.
He dropped down, taking one nipple into his mouth and pulled, hard. The velvet heat of his mouth made me cry out. I drew his head down harder, my nails scraping his scalp, mumbling things I couldn’t quite understand.
One last, long lick and then he turned to my other nipple, giving it the same tender care.
“Luc, please...”
“Please what?” his voice was a guttural growl. His eyes were cold, calculating. “What do you want, Pandora?”
I moaned, squeezed my eyes shut against the delicious torture. “You. I want you.”
“Look at me,” he demanded.
I looked.
“I want to watch every look, every shadow that crosses your face. When you come I want to see your eyes grow soft for me. I want you to scream my name.” His hands moved between us and he hooked his thumb under the band of my skirt. He yanked hard and it tore with a loud rip.
I gasped.
Luc leaned back, but his hot gaze never moved from mine. His eyes glittered like jewels and were filled with something both dark and possessive. But I knew he was still holding himself back, because I wasn’t transforming, when Luc was ready, I would no longer look like me.
Fear slammed through me like a fist to the gut.
Only once have I seen him this wild—my pulse thrummed violently, fear laced my nerves endings—and when it’d happened, I’d nearly died. Luc wasn’t just having sex, he was marking me. I was scared, lust was not. She roared to life, her desire pouring through me with the swiftness of wildfire.
Luc grabbed my thigh, pinning my leg to his waist, his eyes swirled. The purple and silver crashing and rolling like a turbulent sea. My scalp prickled.
Have you ever been outside in an electrical storm? Ever smelled that metallic scent of ozone and felt the raw shiver of air charged with millions of volts of pure power?
Well, Luc’s power felt like that. And that is not good. It meant he was losing control to the demon.
All the fine hairs on my body stood on end. I tried to look away, but he grabbed my chin.
“No,” he growled, sharing his voice with another.
He ripped my skirt from top to bottom, not giving me time to shift, he yanked and when he did the last of his self-control vanished.
My muscles tensed. This was gonna hurt.
His power fell on me with the force of a tsunami, my bones shifted, my skin stretched and pulled. Blonde hair tore through my head like hypodermic needles pushing from the inside out.
I screamed, bucked beneath him, clawed at his chest.
He swallowed my screams with his lips. I heard whispers, but couldn’t make them out. I writhed, heaving for air that didn’t burn.
Hands were on my face, eyes that were no longer so purple held my own. Words that had seemed jumbled, now began to make sense. “Breathebreathe...breathe. I’m sorry, Pandora. So sorry.”
I blinked, his beautiful tanned face coming back into focus—the blackness in my skull washing slowly away.
“Pandora.” His voice shook. My name felt like a plea to understand he’d been lost and not to judge him for it.
I took a deep breath and tried to focus, counting slowly to five before I trusted myself to speak. “Ssh.” I laid my finger to his lips, not willing to let him shoulder the weight of anymore guilt. “I’m okay now.”
His lashes fluttered and his body covered mine, he wasn’t moving, just holding me like one would a treasure. Cradling me in his strong arms, his face turned from mine so that I couldn’t read the recrimination in his eyes.
Something thick and wet and warm pressed against my chest and I knew if I looked that I’d see I had sliced him deep and that wetness was his blood. I licked my lips; my body still felt battered from the rush of that violent and swift change. Normally it didn’t hurt, but normally Luc was much more in control of himself then he’d been tonight.
I hurt everywhere. I needed this sex now more than ever. No way could I hope to get any type of rest with not only the beating Billy had put me through, but now this change. Human Pandora didn’t want sex, demon Pandora did.
Demon won out.
Gently, I sifted my fingers through Luc’s shoulder length blond hair, massaging his head with circular strokes until the tension eased from his body.
I should be scared, but I sensed his fear of hurting me again would help keep him in check this time around.
“Luc,” I whispered, “kiss me.”
He groaned, still not looking at me. “How can you ask me that? How can you still trust me after what I just did?”
I didn’t stop the massage, which seemed to help, because he shifted, looked at me with that familiar blue gaze. There was such need, such emotion. I wasn’t used to this, Luc was steadfast, his emotions never betraying how he truly felt. Frost bitten, I liked to call him.
He moved, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and holding me as close as could be without slipping into my skin. And yes, the act is possible given proper conditions.
“You were hurt...and I lost my head.” He shuddered.
You might think it’s crazy, but Luc and I have never had a heart to heart. We were sexual partners, and we’d risked our bodies for the other on more than one occasion, but we never shared.
Well, let me rephrase that.
He’d never shared.
I had tried once, many years ago. He’d stopped me, told me that talk like that could get a neph killed. I had to bury it, speak of it to one, not even to the night’s breeze. Everything had ears, danger was everywhere. This was a dog eat dog world, show any weakness and your enemy could, and would, exploit it. I hadn’t listened, and paid the price.
He didn’t seem to want to say more, and honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear more. All I wanted from Luc in this moment was his body pressed to mine.
I ran my finger up his spine, beginning to feel more myself with each minute that ticked past. And as the pain slipped away desire began to slowly take its place.
The feel of him pressed against my thigh made me more wet. He wasn’t as hard as he’d been since we started talking, a problem I rectified immediately. I shifted, my knee grazing that piece of velvet.
He groaned and I smiled.
I grabbed his face, turning him to me and nipped his chin.
His nostrils flared and his body stirred.
Luc grabbed my breasts, giving the nipples a tight squeeze. “Are you sure?” Desire was riding him but so was that thread of uncertainty.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, opening myself, forcing his solid thickness against my wet core and pressed into him. He hissed. “Answer enough?”
With a possessive growl, he slipped inside, pumping up and down. Moving in long, sure strokes.
I gasped. I could feel the magick of our joining run like a heady intoxicant through my veins. It was fire and ice. It burned, but it felt so good. He sat up, still joined to me but freeing his hands.
I got my first good look at his chest and cried out at the angry lacerations of his shredded flesh.
“Oh, Luc,” I whispered, the apology heavy on my tongue.
He reached between our bodies, his thumb finding my center and he rubbed it while still keeping the pounding rhythm of sweat-slicked skin slapping skin.
I forget everything but the pleasure of his touch after that. I closed my eyes and pumped him harder. My head thrashed from side to side as the climax built. Blood rushed through my heart, chest, head until I felt that I’d burst from it.
My own power rushed back. It filled me, kissed my temple, my shoulder. The skin grew warm and it felt like gentle fingers piecing me back together.
“Open your eyes, Pandora.” Luc’s voice was strong, but not savage. He was himself.
I opened my eyes and watched him watching me. There was something erotic and very intimate about that. About seeing a man’s body flex and pump against you.
Then it came. That blinding, ripping orgasm that steals all the breath from your lungs so that all you can do is scream into the black void of nothingness and hope you can find your way back to sanity.
After several seconds of labored breathing, I opened my eyes and returned his smile. The cuts on his chest were gone. I touched my shoulder and it was smooth, perfect again.
Luc stared at me for a second. It was thoughtful, full of hidden meaning. He traced the curve of my jaw. Then he blinked and his eyes were again shuttered, impersonal, distant.
He stood. “Let me go clean myself. I’ll be back and then we’ll talk.”
I watched him walk from my room. His exquisite rear flexing with each step and I bit my lip. My body was sated, I wasn’t horny. But when a man’s that easy on the eyes it’s a shame not to appreciate it.
I rolled over, feeling like a contented kitten and grinned, stretching lazily before I too got up to walk into the bathroom and freshen up. I opened my dresser drawer, got out the first underwear I found—a black and purple see through thong—and slipped it on.
What girl doesn’t like a piece of dental floss riding her cheeks, right? My one fatal flaw was that I never bought clothing for comfort.
There are only two undergarments I ever buy. I have no use for bras. My breasts are an average B cup and as perky as an eighteen year olds. Some women don’t like the feel or look of bouncing tits, men do. Simple as that.
My dresser had six drawers. Three were stuffed with my sexy as sin underwear collection and the others with socks.
I don’t know why, but my toes always freeze. Seriously. I can handle any type of weather. Cold can never be cold enough and heat, no matter how high, would barely break me out into a sweat. But my feet can never seem to stay warm.
I grabbed a pair of black and white striped knee-high toe socks and put them on. I was crawling back into bed when Luc returned.
He wore a pair of black satin sleep pants and nothing else. One of the many he had tucked around here. He carried a plate with two sandwiches on it in one hand, and a glass of red wine in the other.
We didn’t live together. That would give the illusion of domesticity and whatever you might think about the neph, domestic we are not.
Though he was here often enough that it was easier to give him his own drawer.
He sat down next to me. Handed me one sandwich and kept the other. I took the glass of wine and sat it on the end table.
I nibbled on the bread, but I wasn’t that hungry. I’m not sure what it was about Luc, for some people an after sex ciggy was an absolute must, for Luc, it was food.
He took several bites, staring straight ahead at the wall. I lifted my brow, but didn’t say a word. I lifted the slice of white bread and stared at the pinkish brown nest of roast beef, the odor reminding me of the chunks I’d left in the toilet bowl earlier.
My stomach somersaulted with the reminder. I wrinkled my nose, groaned, and sat the sandwich aside, grabbing the wine instead.
After several more seconds of contemplative silence Luc finally turned to me and frowned.
“How did a priest of death find us, Pandora?”
I crossed my legs at the ankle and leaned back against the headboard, my heart thudded fast picturing Billy as I’d last seen him. I had nothing to offer on that subject, I was as confused as Luc. I shrugged, taking a drink of the red wine. It was cool, spicy, and a sweet balm to the burn in my stomach.
“What did he do to you?”
I recounted everything to the point where Billy had found me, then I paused. It had been nagging at me for some time but I finally voiced my thoughts. “You know, Billy aside—”
Luc raised his brow. “Billy?” There was a chilly edge to his voice.
“Huh?” I raised my eyes from the glass of wine to him, not sure why he sounded so peeved and bristly. I waved it aside. “Priest whatever, aside from all that...what was a vampire doing here tonight?”
He watched me for another tense moment and again I wondered what was wrong with him. He was acting all weird and moody and I didn’t like it. Finally he blew out a deep breath, as if attempting to gather his thoughts.
“Bubba and I wondered the same thing,” he said, sounding almost normal again. But there was still a betraying hint of anger quivering behind those words.
I sipped on my wine, mulling it over. There was an unspoken hatred between all things parasites—our all encompassing way of grouping by name those things not quite human—and neph.
To understand why, you’d have to go way back in history. History bores me. I lived through it, so I rarely feel the need to revisit it. Let’s put it this way...what you think you know, you don’t. A vampire is not some blood sucking fiend who can bite someone, exchange blood and create more baby vamppies.
That’s a romanticized version of the ugly truth. But, there is always some truth in myth. And I guess to understand the paras, you first have to understand their creators.
Here’s the shorthand account of what’s what in monster society. Everything starts with us, the demons. One day a group of angels in the heavens saw the daughters of man, they lusted after them, they mated, some were raped, some were willing, but in the end children were born from the union. The nephilim. My people.
As punishment for their crimes the fallen angels were cast out of heaven. Once on Earth their names were changed to demon.
The Father was so incensed by the depravation of his creation that he had them chained and thrown into the fiery pit. AKA Hell.
Though the demons had been cast out they were plenty powerful in their own right. Even chained, they still wished to rule Earth by Lucifer’s side—aka Satan—so they created minions or another name for them, lower caste demon—LCD for short—much the same way God created Eve from Adam.
The LCD’s are a little like us neph. We all have the same patriarchal lineage. But unlike us, the LCD have no humanity within them to battle the inherent evil that is a demon’s nature. They are pure bad and mindless little lackeys for their masters.
And now we’re back to where we started, the paras. In one form or another they are all the creation of the fallen ones that mortals petitioned power for.
Who knows why the humans make the deal. Whatever the case might be, there is always a price to pay.
Loss of will.
A demon cannot force you to sign on the proverbial dotted line. But once you do there’s no going back.
It is with the LCD that the human’s make the trade. Their human souls for earthly power.
Demons require total and absolute allegiance. You are no longer your own. Remember that song: signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours, yeah something like that.
It’s the ultimate irony really. People crave power and total domination and what they wind up becoming is whipping posts for the homicidal, masochistic, sadistic perversions of a demon’s will.
So next time you think about dancing with the Devil... just an FYI, I wouldn’t. Can’t say I didn’t warn ya.
Anyway, you become what you crave. That’s the stripped down, simplified version of it.
You want beauty, wealth... the demons turns you vamp. You want power... shifter. Long life... zombie.
But of course it’s never what you expect. Vampires aren’t immortal, they drink blood but their canines aren’t much longer than a house cats. More often than not you’ll see a vamp feeding with a syringe or razor. They live long lives compared to mortals. Two, three hundred years, but they age. Slower than normal, but still age nonetheless. They’re strong, but nothing like us.
In short vamps have everything to fear from us and we have very little to fear from them. Which is why they usually make themselves scarce when we’re around.
I looked at Luc. He was bent at the waist, elbows resting on his knees looking out at nothing.
“Don’t you think that’s weird?” I finally said. “That makes vamp number three in less than a month?”
He rubbed his jaw, sighed and sat back, pierced me with one of his frosty stares. I had to admit it was good to have edgy Luc back, moody guy weirded me out for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom.
“Yeah, but they were all young. Kids with too much balls and little bite. Coincidence?”
I didn’t believe that and neither did he. Coincidences got you killed. My weird-dar said vamps and now priest were somehow connected. Don’t press me to try and explain why, I couldn’t if I tried. It was a hunch. Nothing more.
I growled, the synapses’ in my brain unable to find the connection between A and Z.
“What we need is to talk with Grace.”
I cocked my head. “Hasn’t she contacted you yet? We’ve been here two days already.”
Luc threw his hands up, stood and stretched. “Not yet. Second she does I’ll let you know.”
He was halfway out the bedroom when I asked, “By the way, did you see anyone else out there?”
The feral gleam was back in his eyes the minute I mentioned it. “No, but if I find him, I’ll kill him.”
Then he was gone, scent of sulfur the only proof he’d ever been. He was pissed, moody, and frankly, I didn’t know how to deal with that. No doubt however that he was out there somewhere close, watching, maybe hoping Billy would return.
I hated to admit it, so was I.
For entirely different reasons.