A Little Fate

by Nora Roberts

  he started the car. “Yeah, baby, but it’s one I wouldn’t mind you taking literally.”

  5

  THOUGH sheer will kept Harper conscious, he was in considerable pain and woozy from the loss of blood by the time he pulled back into his slot at the garage. Kadra’s idea of how to deal with the problem was to carry him.

  He had just enough strength left to stop her from slinging him over her shoulder. And just enough wit to realize she could have pulled it off.

  “No.” Since his limbs had gone watery on him, he warded her off with a scowl. “I’m not being carried across the Lower East Side by a woman.”

  “This is foolish. You’re injured. I am not.”

  “Yeah, yeah, keep rubbing it in. Just give me a hand.”

  When she frowned and held one out, he shook his head. “You’re a literal creature.” He slid an arm around her waist, let her take some of his weight. “Walk and talk,” he told her. “Tell me more about this change.”

  “After the kiss of change, the victim falls into a trance—a sleep that is not a sleep, for one day. During the sleep, the demon blood mixes with the human’s. The human becomes what has poisoned him, with the demon’s instincts, his habits. His appetites.”

  Since Harper’s breathing was ragged, she tightened her grip and shortened her stride. “When the human wakes he is demon, though some wake before the change is complete and are demi-demons. In either stage, the one who has changed is bound to the one who changed him.”

  “Is there a cure?”

  “Death,” she said flatly, and shifted her grip on him as they stepped outside. He was pale, she noted. And his breath was only more labored. It would have been easier to carry him.

  But she understood a warrior’s pride.

  “Your hut is only a short journey. We will go at your pace.”

  “Just keep talking.” His shoulder was going numb, and that worried him. “I need to focus.”

  “Why did you become a seeker?”

  “I like to find things out. Without a PI license, it’s called nosiness. With one, it’s called a profession. Insurance fraud, missing persons, some skip tracing. I try to stay out of the marital arena. It’s just humiliating for all parties to stand outside a motel room with a camera.”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she liked his voice. Despite his wounds, or perhaps because of them, there was grit in it. “Are you a successful seeker?”

  “I get by.” He looked around but couldn’t quite pinpoint where they were. The sounds of traffic, the busy music of the city, sounded dim. She was the only thing clear to him now—the supporting strength of her arm, the firm curves of her body, the scent of the sacred waterfall that lingered in her hair.

  It was as if both their worlds had receded and they themselves were all that was left.

  “What must you get by?”

  “Hmm?” He turned his head. He’d been right, he thought, there really was nothing but her. “I mean I do all right. I do regular legwork for a lawyer. Jake, the one I thought had hired you. He’s got a sick sense of humor. That’s why I love him.”

  He staggered at the curb, tried to orient himself when she steadied him. “It is this way.” She turned the corner, glanced up and down the street. “Where is the well? You require water.”

  “Doesn’t work that way here.” But she was right about one thing. His thirst was vicious. He nodded toward a sidewalk vendor. “There.”

  With her arm banded around his waist, Kadra watched Harper exchange several small disks for a bottle. He fought the top off, drank deep.

  “You must pay for water? Does it have magical properties?” She took it, drank. “Nothing but water,” she said with some amazement. “The merchant is a robber. I will go back and speak to him.”

  “No. No.” Despite the dizziness, Harper laughed. “It’s just one of the acceptable lunacies of our little world. When water comes out of the tap, it’s free. Sort of. When it comes out of a bottle, you pay on the spot.”

  She pondered this as they came to the intersection. She’d watched the way the people, the cars, the lights worked together. When the metal tree ordered the waiting group to walk, everyone hurried, often sliding and swooping between cars that jammed together and faced other metal trees with lights of amber, emerald, and ruby.

  Everyone in the village played along.

  She felt Harper sag, and pinched his waist ruthlessly to snap him back. “We have only . . .” She flipped back to his earlier term for the section of road. “One more block.”

  “Okay, okay.” He could feel sweat running a clammy line down his back. His vision was going in and out. “Let’s talk about me. I’m thirty. As of yesterday. Unmarried. Came close a couple years ago, but I came to my senses.”

  “Had the woman bewitched you?”

  “No.” He had to smile at the term. “You could say that was the problem: she didn’t bewitch me. This is a huge disappointment to my parents, who want grandchildren. As I’m an only child, I’m their one shot at it.”

  “Is it not possible in this place to make young without a lifemate? Can you not select a breeding partner for this purpose?”

  “Yeah, you could, and a lot of people do. I guess I’m more of a traditionalist in that one area. If I have kids, I want them to have the package. You like kids?”

  “I am fond of young. They have innocence and potential, and a special kind of beauty. In time I will select a breeding partner so that I may make life. It is a great honor to make life.”

  “I’m with you on that.” Nearly there, he told himself. Please, God, we’re nearly there. “Anyway, my parents live in New Jersey. Another world.”

  “Was Old Jersey destroyed?”

  “Ah . . . no.” His head was spinning now. Concentrate, he ordered himself. Just put one foot in front of the other. “Geography and world history lessons later. Let’s stick with personal revelations. I didn’t want to tie on my dad’s cop’s shoes, so I veered off into private investigation. I apprenticed with a big, slick firm uptown, but I didn’t like the suit and tie brigade. Went out on my own about five years ago. I’m good at what I do.”

  “It’s wasteful to be bad at what you do.”

  “You know, my dad would lap you right up. He’d like you,” Harper explained, breathlessly now. “He was a good cop. Retired three years ago. He’d go for your sense of order.”

  He fumbled out his keys as they approached his building’s entrance. She wanted to ask him why everything had to be locked, like a treasure box, but his face was dead white now.

  She dragged him to the elevator, puzzled out the buttons. They had come down, so now they would go up. It pleased her enormously when the doors opened.

  “Four,” he managed. “Push four. If we have to call 911, I’m going to leave it to you to explain that I’ve been clawed by a Bok demon.”

  Ignoring him, and regretting that she couldn’t fully appreciate the ride this time, she dragged him out when the doors opened again. She took the keys from him, selected the proper one, and unlocked his door.

  “You don’t miss a trick, do you? You’d make a damn good PI.”

  She merely booted the door closed behind them, then bending, lifted him onto her shoulder.

  “Honey.” His voice slurred. “This is so sudden.”

  She laid him facedown on the bed, peeled off his ruined jacket, then tore away what was left of his shirt.

  His breath hissed through his teeth at the bright burn of pain. “Can you be a little more rough, Nurse Ratched? I live for pain.”

  “Quiet now.” The wounds were deeper than she’d thought. Four ugly grooves and one jagged puncture. The blood that had started to clot flowed freely again. “This must first be cleansed. How do I fetch water?”

  “Tap. Bathroom tap. The sink. Damn it. The white bowl—ah, the taller one,” he added as he got an image of her scooping water out of his toilet. “Turn the handle.”

  She found the bathing room, and the sin
k. And was delighted when water gushed out. She soaked a towel and carried it sopping wet into the bedroom. She felt his body shudder when she laid it over his back.

  He fought well, she thought again as she cleaned the wounds. And was stalwart in his pain. He had more than the strength of a warrior; he had the heart of one too. She remembered how his hand had whipped up and closed around the hilt of the sword she’d tossed him.

  A good team, she decided. She’d never found a partner she could admire, respect, and desire.

  She retrieved her supply bag, reached in for the vial of healing powder that all warriors carried. Her fingers brushed over the cloth Mav had wrapped around her hand.

  Lips pursed, Kadra studied her own unmarked palm. Perhaps some of the healer’s powers were still in the cloth. Quickly, she made a paste from powder and water.

  “This will sting,” she told him. “I’m sorry for it.”

  “Sting” was a mild word for the blaze that erupted under his skin when she spread the medication over his wounds. His hands fisted in the spread, his body jerked in protest.

  “Only a moment,” she murmured, wrenched by his pain. “It eats any infection.”

  “Does it chew through flesh while it’s at it?” He spit the words out through gritted teeth.

  “No, but it feels that way. It is no shame to scream.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” But he swore instead, softly, steadily, viciously, and earned more of the slayer’s respect.

  When the paste began to turn from sickly yellow to white, she breathed a sigh of relief. The infection was dying. Over the smeared wounds, she lay the thin healing cloth.

  “If there is any magic in my blood,” she whispered, “let it help him. Sleep now, Harper the valiant.” She brushed her fingers through his hair. “Sleep and heal.”

  HE dreamed, strange, colorful dreams. Battles and blood. Storms and swords. Kadra, with her war cry echoing through dark, dank tunnels. The king of demons feasting on flesh in the shadows.

  And he himself delivering the killing blow that sent green blood gushing.

  In dreams he knew her body, the feel of those luscious curves under his hand, the taste of her skin, the sound of her moan. He saw her rising over him, warrior, goddess, woman.

  He felt, real as life, the warm press of her lips on his.

  And woke aching for her.

  He sat up, instinctively reaching for the back of his shoulder. He found nothing, no wound, no break in the skin, no scar.

  Had it all been a dream after all? One wild booze-induced dream starring the most magnificent woman ever created?

  The idea that she was only in his mind depressed him brutally. What were a few Bok demons between friends, he thought as he pushed himself out of bed, when you had a Kadra in your life?

  Was the only woman who’d ever stirred him on every level just a product of his imagination? Of wishful thinking? If he could only fall in love in dreams, why the hell did he have to wake up?

  Back to reality, Doyle, he told himself, then took a step toward the bedroom door and nearly tripped over his leather jacket.

  He scooped it up, fingers rushing over the battered material. Nothing, nothing in his life had ever delighted him more than seeing those bloodstained rips.

  He tossed it aside and bolted for the door.

  She’d changed back into her own clothes. And was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her nose all but pressed to the television screen, where the Yankees were taking on the Tigers.

  “I like this battle,” she said without turning around. “The warriors in the white are beating the warriors in the gray by three runs. They are better with the clubs.”

  “Girl of my dreams,” Harper said aloud. “She likes baseball.”

  “There were other images in the box.” And each had startled and fascinated. “But this is my favorite.”

  “Okay, that does it. We have to get married.”

  She turned then, smiled at him. His color was back, and that relieved her. His eyes were clear, and held more than recovered health. The lust in them aroused her. “You healed well.”

  “I healed just dandy.”

  “I hunted among your stores,” she told him. “You have little, but I like this food and drink.” She gestured toward the bag of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips and the bottle of Coors.

  “You’re perfect. It’s just a little scary.”

  “We must eat. Fighting requires fuel.”

  “Yeah, we’ll eat. We’ll order some pizza.”

  He looked hungry as well, she noted. But not for food. She rose smoothly. Her blood was already warm for him. “I’m pleased you are well.”

  “Yeah. I’m feeling real healthy just now. You can tell me how you managed that later.”

  “You do not wish to talk at this time.” She nodded, stepped toward him. Then she circled around him to check his shoulder—and to admire his form. When she stopped face-to-face again, her eyes were level with his. “Do you wish to join your body to mine?”

  He blinked once, slow as an owl. “Is that a trick question?”

  “You have desire for me.”

  Charmed, perplexed, he dipped his hands in his pockets. “Is that all it takes?”

  “No.” She was never as sure of herself as a female as she was as a slayer. But this time, with him, she felt sure. “But I have desire for you as well. It is a heat in my belly, a burn in my blood. I want to join with you.”

  “I wanted you before I even met you,” he told her.

  “This is like a poem.” And softened her under the skin. “You are well named. I cannot speak as cleverly, so I will say we have time for this and for food before we hunt again. And that our minds and bodies will be stronger for appeasing both appetites.”

  On those long, tantalizing legs, she walked past him into the bedroom.

  Worlds, he thought as he followed her, were about to collide.

  “Whoa. Wait. Hold on.” She’d already stripped off her top, and was pulling off her boots. “What’s the rush?”

  She looked up, a crease between her brows. “Are you ready to sport?”

  “Yeah. But we could take a minute to . . .” He stared at her, golden skin, naked breasts. “What am I saying?” He scooped her off her feet and made her laugh by tossing her on the bed.

  She rolled, came up on her haunches. Saliva pooled in his mouth as she grinned at him. “You have energy. Good. Strip,” she ordered. “We will wrestle first.”

  “You wanna wrestle?” He unbuttoned his jeans.

  “It is stimulating,” she began, then lowered her gaze. “You seem to be very stimulated already. I admire your body, baby.” It pleased her to use one of his terms of affection. “I want to touch it.”

  “Are you sure you’re not a dream, brought on by one too many bourbons and bumps?”

  “I am real.” Watching him, she stroked her hands over her breasts, cupped them. “Touch me.”

  When he came forward, reached, she rolled away laughing. And crooked her finger at him.

  He dived.

  She obviously took her wrestling seriously—he was pinned in under five seconds. “Two out of three,” he said and put himself in the game.

  They tumbled over the bed, hands gripping, sliding, legs scissoring. Bodies straining. He wasn’t sure if he pinned her by skill or because she’d allowed it. He didn’t give a damn. Not when she was sprawled under him, her hair spread out, her eyes hot and green.