by Michele Hauf
Gripping the door for life, Mersey huffed. “You can’t scare me.”
“Yeah?” He put the car in park and leaned across the shift. “You’re playing with the big boys now, little girl—”
“Would you bring the macho bullshit down a notch? You might carry a big gun, but that doesn’t mean you know how to get the job done right.”
He quirked a brow. “Is that supposed to be some wonky sort of reference to sex?”
She let her eyes drift to his crotch. “It wasn’t,” she said. “But if you’ve a deficiency—For what it’s worth?” She released the door handle and let out her breath. “I think you’re telling me the truth about not being a familiar.”
He slammed his shoulders back against the seat and tapped the steering wheel. “Damn straight.”
“Which means you could be tapped unawares.”
He’d heard of that. Demons can tap completely normal mortals to use as familiars to bridge to the mortal realm.
But not him.
“What are you trying to do, Bane? Falsely accuse me?”
“I want to close up the leak. If you’re responsible—”
“Assuming that you are not.”
“But—”
“First you say you believe me, and now you’re right back to accusations. You’re a nut. Now get out of the car before I do something—”
“Violent? Isn’t that original. A hunter going Rambo on something he doesn’t understand.”
Jack pounded a fist on the steering wheel. If he came right out and questioned her alliance to the Cadre would that scare her away? No, he’d keep that information in his pocket for now. He had to do this right.
Why was he getting so angry?
Because she was dead-on-the-doornail right about him and his easy anger. And he still had to deal with the fact she wasn’t who, or what, he’d thought her to be.
“If it’s violent to protect mankind from a horrendous death by demon, then I accept the accusation. I’m trying to keep one more person from being eaten for lunch, Miss Bane. But if you’ve got a problem with that…”
“The problem I have with you, Mr. Harris, is that you don’t discern good from bad before blasting. There are paras that come here with no intention to harm. If you’d take a moment to observe before pulling the trigger, you might realize that.”
“I know enough to understand that sometimes a man doesn’t have time to observe, Bane. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
“I should hate you. For your beliefs. For your lack of belief. For your quickness to violence. For your idiot macho posturing.”
“Macho idiots need love like all the rest of the blokes.”
“Yes,” her tone softened. “I suppose.” She shifted closer, her muscles gliding into submission. “Especially when the macho bloke kisses so bloody well.”
“Ever kiss a paranormal?” Weird question, but it just occurred to him, and he needed to know.
Mouth falling slack, her voiceless expression answered the question much louder than Jack had expected. So she had kissed an OE? Yikes. Jack pressed back into his seat. “Not a demon, I hope?”
She gripped the door handle. “I think it’s time to leave.”
He hit the automatic door lock. Things were getting too interesting to let her loose now. Besides, he was allowed a few rules of his own in this game; it was only fair.
“I want to know what sort of creepy can attract a woman like you?”
“He wasn’t creepy,” Mersey defended. “And remember, I’m a para, too.”
“Yes, but you’re normal.” Yeah, she was, wasn’t she? That was where his vote cast right now. “A bogeyman?”
“No!”
“Vampire?”
“Eww. I don’t do the blood thing.”
“Shape-shifter?”
“Jack.”
“I’ll get it, give me a minute.”
“A faery, all right? A harmless, forest-variety faery. When I was eighteen years old.”
“And how’d that work for you?”
She shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. “Un-eventful.”
Yeah? But he’d hit a nerve. And she looked all pouty and kissable. Jack boy, you really could care less that she’s not one hundred percent human. So don’t let the idea of her familiar-ness offend you, eh?
“I won’t.”
“You won’t what?” she asked.
He leaned across the seat, and threaded his hand up and behind her head to pull her in for a kiss. She pressed against his chest, but not hard enough to make Jack believe she actually wanted him to stop. She was sweet, but the kiss verged on wicked. Soon Mersey threaded her arms around his neck and moved closer so their positions weren’t so awkward. He pushed a hand along her waist to draw her up, and felt the hard impression of what he knew were crystal pyramids clank against the back of his hand. Was there a demon in her pocket? He traced her lips with his parted mouth, liking how her grin tickled her, as if by surprise. “Why do I get the feeling you haven’t done this all too often?”
She lowered her eyes and toyed with the cuff of his sleeve.
“Unless it’s with faeries?”
“It was just the one,” she said softly. “And he wasn’t overly impressed by the encounter. But you…Jack, you don’t mind kissing me? Even now that you know?”
He didn’t mind, but only because he didn’t want to go there. Not right now. “Your kisses are like lemon drops, Mersey—a man can never get enough of those sweets.”
“I…haven’t kissed all that many men, Jack. I guess…I’ve been waiting for the right one.”
“I see.” He sat back. And tried not to pay attention to his cringing heart.
The right one? Jack Harris wasn’t the right anything. And he’d hate to disappoint a girl on a quest for Mr. Right. “So, ah, this your stop? Waterloo?”
“What did I say? Jack? Did I do something wrong?”
“Nope. Just don’t want to let you down.”
He shifted into Drive, but kept his foot on the brake. He had let her down anyway. Not keen, Jack. But he was no one’s Mr. Right. He just wanted to kiss them, take them home for a tumble in his bed, deposit them out on the stoop, and then with a pat to their heads, send them off.
Easier not to become involved. Easier because his life was filled with too many unknowns right now. Easier never to admit his feelings because that was like cracking open his chest and exposing his heart for the world to examine. It wasn’t a pretty sight. This old heart of his had seen too much, and was likely scarred for it.
“Guess I’ll be off then,” she said. “Do you intend to follow me again tonight?”
He smiled at her in the rearview mirror. “Probably.”
“Luck with that.”
Chapter 10
J ack pulled into the alleyway, looking for a parking spot. There were broken pieces of hematite on the seat. He scooped them up, starting a collection. She was leaving a trail. And he intended to follow it. Luck with that.
He smirked. “Tricky bird.”
Make that a cat.
“A familiar,” he whispered, not as freaked by it as he suspected he should be.
The gray seekers at P-Cell dealt with familiars. It wasn’t his specialty. Beyond knowing they served as demon bridges, he knew they were basically human. Humans who could change to cats.
Was she like other women? Her body, all her…parts? Did he care? She kissed like any other woman.
The only way to really satisfy his curiosity was to stay on her. Right then. He’d be on her tail in two seconds—
A fierce burn ignited in Jack’s chest. He jerked, the back of his skull banging none too gently against the hard rubber headrest. A chill rode his spine, picking up speed with each disk it traveled upward, until prickly barbs encompassed his shoulders and neck.
He could barely breathe. Each gasping inhale seemed to close the back of his throat even more.
“What the hell?”
A visceral chill dug deep i
nside him. He let out an abbreviated yelp as dark shadows scurried over his eyes—evil things of blood and muscle and exposed organs. Dreadful. They screamed, they yowled. He couldn’t stop them from infiltrating his brain.
“Jaaaaack,” pressed in on a dead tone. It filled his veins with icy bile.
“Jaaack.”
It toyed with his fear. The presence seeped inside him and filled his system, occupying his very being. Dread melted over him. Fear was a valuable gauge that kept him aware and alert. Yet the day Jack gave over to fear was the day he lost his head to a crafty demon.
“What the hell are you? Where are you?”
“You bore me, Jack.”
“Show yourself!”
“It’s me, Jack. Don’t you remember?” The sepulchral voice slid from baritone to a sexy female whisper. “You excel at showing me the tasty bits. Brought me right to the mortal female in the warehouse. Nummy. This new bit I won’t eat. Not right away. She can serve me far better alive. Perhaps better than her mother did.”
Jack slapped a hand to his burning pectoral. Smoke rose from the mark on his chest. The scent of burned cotton coiled beneath his nose.
“I knew I’d chosen correctly,” the voice, now male, rasped inside of him. It was inside him, occupying his brain and twanging his muscles with a vibrant need to clench. How to fight something with his limbs literally paralyzed?
“Follow her, Jack. Seduuuuce her.”
The chokehold unclenched from his throat—enough so Jack could speak.
“Get out of my head!”
Jack couldn’t see the demon, and didn’t bother giving it the pleasure of seeing him look for it. Instead, he gripped the steering wheel. Driving would do him no good.
His rifle and the salt grenades were in the boot.
“Yes, yes, you plan your attack. Blast me to Kingdom Come? Big words for so small a man.”
Gripped by a clenching red ache, Jack’s limbs stiffened. Shoulders pressed backward, and his wrists swung out, stretching his arms farther back, threatening to completely wrap to either side of the car seat. An impossible move. The strain of his muscles tore in his armpits and across his chest where smoke still tendriled from the scar.
“You’re letting the girl get away.”
“No thanks to you!”
Jack groped for the door handle. His fingers would not bend to clasp it.
“Follow Mersey Bane to the Cadre as your commander insists. Be my eyes, Jack. It is what I need from you.”
“I—” His molars bit hard on the back of his tongue. Jack yelped, and the movement of his jaw released it from the tight lock. “Who are you?”
“You know not? You wound me with your ignorance. I have thought of you, Jack. Endlessly I replay our first encounter. You were lucky, nothing more.”
Was it the same one? The demon he’d hit in the field?
“Ah…so you do know.”
Jack exhaled, and while doing so, he felt as if he were not expelling the breath so much as it was being sucked out of him.
“Yes, the air of you. Your life. It gives me strength.” The demon sucked in, its throat rattling. “Still don’t remember me? If I must. Ba’al Beryth,” the entity hissed inside his head. “Know me. For I know you, Demon Frightener.”
Bloody hell. It was the very same. “I don’t take orders from demons.”
“I thought you’d be eager to follow the girl. Doesn’t P-Cell want you to infiltrate the Cadre? You shirk your duties. Bad Jack, very bad form.”
That last sentence came out in Belladonna’s chiding tone. Everything about Jack clenched. His fingers, his muscles, even his gut. The demon was somehow controlling him.
Dreadful. The same way he’d felt that night he’d had to watch this bastard demon from hell tear out Monica’s heart.
“It is what I do,” Beryth purred in a voice that was at once liquid and then stone. It shifted inside Jack and hummed in his heart. Not a gentle rhythm, more a defibrillating pace. “I conjure dread in the hearts of common mortals. A neat trick, but unsatisfying after one has known mortal love—ah! Let’s try this on for size, shall we?”
A face appeared in the seat next to him. A hand dropped upon his chest. Feminine, the touch.
“Jack, I need you!” The same scream he’d heard over the walkie the night he’d sat in the car, waiting for Monica’s signal. Jack closed his eyes, not wanting to look. Knowing what he would see. Her perfume overwhelmed the brimstone. Chanel No. 5, she’d once told him, in the snappy businesslike manner that signified she was a trusted partner who had his back, but no one should ever forget she was a woman.
He had never forgotten. She had been a woman through and through. But he’d never the courage to tell her…
“Jack,” Monica’s voice cooed. “Tell me you love me.”
If he could but place his hands to the rifle.
You never take the time to determine if they’re good or bad. There is fallout.
This one was bad to the core.
He needed to focus. To master the control exercised over him. Then, he could dash for the boot and send the demon to Kingdom Come.
“Don’t you want to kiss me like you kissed that strange girl, Jack? What’s so special about her?”
He’d respected Monica. The fine line between work partners and potential lovers had never been crossed.
“You’re not here,” he managed to say. But he could see her platinumblond curls edging the periphery of his sight. She smelled so familiar. Sitting in the car with Monica for long hours on stakeout, until he wore her scent on him, and could still smell her in his clothes the following morning. “Get. Out!”
The figment vanished.
“Perhaps you need inspiration?” hissed a baritone whisper.
“Fuck you.”
Fingers kinked into distorted hooks, and Jack’s legs stiffened, pressing his back into the seat. His insides froze. The icy prickles of something cut into his kidneys. Kidney.
Hell, could the demon know he had but the one remaining?
“No!”
That shout broke the demon’s influence. Body going limp, Jack’s muscles released the tension and his body seeped against the seat.
“You stay close to her, or I eat her for a snack.” The demon chuckled in a mixture of female and male tones.
Jack swung out to his left. Gone? Not a tendril of brimstone in the air. He tried the door handle. It opened to let in the chill autumn air. Swinging out his legs, he leaned forward. Breaths formed before him like so much dread spilling out. Heartbeats thudding, he exhaled and pressed his forehead to the interior frame of the car, summoning reason.
The demon had demanded he track Mersey. Would it go after the woman should he fail to lead the demon to the Cadre? It couldn’t if it didn’t know the way. Maybe it did know the way. Obviously it couldn’t access the place if it had asked him to lead it there. Or maybe the Cadre wasn’t its ultimate goal? Did it seek to tap Mersey? Why could it not?
Clutching his shirt, he fisted his knuckles against his chest. The scar felt new, freshly open and burned into his skin. A smoldering hole smoked right through his shirt.
Are you a familiar, Jack?
Attached to Beryth?
Mortals can be tapped, even familiars can be tapped without their knowing.
Any creature could put images into his head. It was what demons did; they fed off mortal emotions, shortcomings and desires.
“Tapped?” he muttered. “I can’t be.”
The dungeon was always cool and quiet. While the stone walls gave it an ancient, creepy castle feel, the accoutrements were all high tech. Most of the instruments Mersey had no clue how to use, nor did she wonder. Capturing a demon in crystal was one of her skills. Very few others who were not familiars could master the crystal capture method, unless they had studied for years and reached the level of adept. It was not easy. The four levels were novice, apprentice, fellow and adept. Lady Aurora and the earl, along with few others, were currently the only Cadr
e adepts in residence.
There were a few exceptions; Lady Dawn—Aurora’s twin—was still at fellow level, yet she had the ability. It all depended on the focus, level of study and determination.
Mersey had been watching Squire play World of Warcraft on the computer for a while now. That the man had to go online into an imaginary world to defeat strange minions and monsters stunned her. There were so many more interesting beings right here in the St. Yve manor!
“Squire.” She stood and rubbed her chin. Leaning on her hand had put a dent in her jaw. “Is there any way to verify a familiar? Beyond watching it actually be tapped by a demon?”
“You’re a familiar. There.” He gave her a split-second glance up from the computer. “I just verified you.”
“Squire. I mean, someone else. Someone I suspect may be one.”
“Not sure.”
He put the game on pause and strolled down the aisle of stainless-steel tables to the bookshelf at the end of the wall. He tugged out a slim volume and Mersey saw the spine as the gold letters flashed. Familiars 101, by Caractacus Bane. Her father.
A shiver of longing startled her so that she looked away. She avoided her father issues as she avoided being tapped. Both were distasteful and not worth the energy spent. And yet, both provided life. Every time a familiar was tapped, their lifespan increased due to the ley-line energies.
“Let’s see…”
Mersey curled her knuckles against the cool steel lab table. This was so not good on all the various scales of measuring not good. If Jack was a familiar, then it must have been he who had called up the two demons in the warehouse. Just to blast them? Familiars didn’t do that. Kill a demon, you kill its familiar.
Jack had a grudge against demons. That had been obvious. But why? Mersey could relate to holding a grudge. The memory of being imprisoned in a wee silver cage for three days by a mischievous demon that had tapped her a few years ago, would never leave her. It was one of the reasons she rarely shifted to her animal form now. Though, the other day on the tube train had been necessary. Silver held a feline familiar like iron trapped faeries. She hadn’t agreed to be tapped since her imprisonment. It wasn’t even worth the increase in lifespan. Tapping required an agreement between demon and familiar. Unapproved tapping occurred when the dark denizens of the demon world tried to come through with evil in mind. Which was why Mersey had a job as retrievals specialist.
