Envy fa-3

by J. R. Ward

  Suddenly, she was alive.

  Well, alive wasn’t technically correct. But that was what it felt like: In the space of a moment, her mood had gone from buried to flying.

  Except she was not going to be stupid about this.

  Confident of her hemline, her neckline, and her hairline, she went into the bathroom.

  “How do I look?”

  She did a little twirl in front of the young man who was hanging upside down over her tub. Except he didn’t have anything to say, even though his eyes were open.

  “Oh, what the hell do you know.”

  She bent down and dipped her fingertips into the blood that had been steadily draining out of his carotid artery. Impatient with the delay, she quickly traced around the doorjambs and the floor, going back and forth to the tub to get more. The purity of his essence formed a seal that was better than any security alarm any human could ever create—plus, the process rid the world of one more mortal creature.

  Made her job easier.

  Closing herself in with Mr. Chatty, she turned to face the ancient mirror that hung in a mangy frame that had rotted out centuries and centuries ago. The leaded-glass surface had a constantly shifting reflection, waves of dark gray and black swirling around a background the color of a rug stain. The thing was a hideous portal, and the only way for her to get to her well of souls.

  “Hang out,” she told the stiff. “I’ll be back.”

  Stepping through the surface of the mirror, she was pulled into a vicious suction, and she gave herself over freely, the body she assumed going taffy through the wormhole. On the far side, she emerged at the base of her well, spit out of the tempest, but requiring no time to recover.

  As she patted her hair, and smoothed her tight skirt, she thought how stupid it was not to have a mirror here.

  Then again, she didn’t care what her minions’ opinions were, and her souls . . . oh, her lovely souls . . . well, they had other things on their minds.

  Tilting her head back, she looked up at the miles of shiny black walls that rose up from the stone floor. The tortured damned writhed against the confines of their viscous prison, faces and hips and knees and elbows straining for a freedom that they would never attain, their woeful voices multi-layered and muffled.

  “How do I look?” she shouted upward.

  The chorus of moans rose in reply, but told her absolutely nothing.

  For fuck’s sake, couldn’t she get a witness somewhere? Anywhere?

  After a last double-check of herself, she granted access to Jim, summoning him forth. And as she waited, her heart beat triple-time, a flush charging every inch of her skin with an electric sizzle. But she was not going to show it. Cool. Keep it cool.

  Jim arrived in a swirl of mist, and her breath caught.

  The chosen savior was the very best of the male sex. Built big and lethal, his body was an instrument of warfare, but it was also made for fucking. Raw, pounding . . .

  “You want me,” she said in a low voice.

  His eyes narrowed, and the hatred in them did more for her libido than the best plate of oysters anyone had ever served up. “Not like that, sweetheart.”

  Oh, how he lied.

  Swaying her hips, she went over to the worktable and trailed her fingertips across the pitted, discolored surface. Memories of him tied down naked, his legs spread and his sex glistening from use, made her breathe deep.

  “No?” she said. “You called me. Not the other way around.”

  “I want you to tell me who the next soul is.”

  Interesting. “So Nigel turned you down when you asked him, did he.”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “Well, I find it hard to believe you’d come to me first,” she muttered bitterly. “And you think I’m going to tell you?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  She laughed in a violent burst. “You should know what I’m like by now.”

  “And you’re going to tell me.”

  “Why in the world would I . . .”

  His hand lifted to his heavy chest and slowly, oh, so slowly, drifted down his stomach. . . .

  Devina swallowed hard. And then her mouth went totally dry as he cupped himself between his legs.

  “I have something you want,” he said roughly. “And vice versa.”

  Well, well, well . . . She wanted to be with him, yes, but this was even better than voluntary coupling. He was going to have to force himself to have sex with her, sacrificing his flesh to her for information . . . in front of his dear, sweet Sissy.

  Devina looked up to her wall and found the soul he was so goddamned concerned with. Willing the girl downward, she leaned back against the table.

  “Exactly what are you proposing.”

  “Tell me who it is and I’ll fuck you.”

  “Make love to me.”

  “It’ll be fucking. Trust me.”

  “A rose by any other name . . . But I’m not sure.” What a lie. “That’s very valuable information.”

  “And you know what I’m like.”

  Oh, she did, and she wanted him again. Wanted him always.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll tell you who it is, and in return, you will give yourself to me whenever I want you. You will be at my beck and call.”

  His eyes narrowed again in that way they did, turning into slits that made him look like a predator.

  And then there was only silence. As the quiet stretched out, she held tight. He was going to come around, and oddly enough, she had Nigel, the tight-ass rule abider, to thank for it. If that archangel had breathed the name of the soul, this wonderful sacrifice wouldn’t be getting made.

  “Done.”

  Devina began to smile—

  “With a caveat.” As she froze the expression, he said, “I’ll be with you now and you give me the name. Then we’ll see if it’s the right one. At the end of this round, if you didn’t lie . . . you’ve got me. Whenever you want me.”

  Devina growled. Fucking piece of shit free will. If she could just own him properly, he wouldn’t get a vote at all. But that was not the way it worked.

  Although there were still loopholes to be had, she told herself. Ways to shade this so that she didn’t give too much away and yet managed to have him regardless.

  “Do we have a deal,” he demanded.

  Walking forward to him, she focused over his shoulder at the small shape in the wall that she had called down for a close, ringside seat at what was going to happen.

  As Devina stepped into that hard body and rose up onto her tiptoes, she reveled in the utterly rigid flesh she brushed against. Into Heron’s ear, she whispered, “Take off your pants.”

  “Deal or no deal, demon.”

  He was unbending before her, perfectly capable of denying her, not just now but in the future: Even though he was right in front of her, he was completely untouchable.

  Except as he’d said, they both had something the other wanted.

  “Take off your pants.” She stepped back, ready to enjoy the show. “Do it slowly—and we have a deal.”

  “What the hell is he doing up there?”

  As Adrian barked out the rhetorical, he didn’t expect a response from his roommate. Then again, you could drop a Lexus on Eddie’s combat boot and maybe you got an ow. More likely the angel would just blink and kick the sedan off his big toe.

  Frankly, the strong-and-silent bullshit got to be annoying.

  “It’s been two hours.” He stopped at the foot of the bed Eddie was sprawled out on. “Hello? You tracking at all? Or were you planning on sleeping through this round.”

  The lids on that red stare lifted. “I’m not sleeping.”

  “Meditating. Whatever.”

  “I wasn’t meditating.”

  “Fine. Psychically manipulating energy fields—”

  “You make me dizzy when you pace. It’s vertigo diversion.”

  He didn’t buy that for a second. “Would it kill you to get worried once in a while.”
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  “Who says I’m not.”

  “I do.” Adrian ran his eyeballs down his buddy’s long, still body. “I feel like rolling in a defibrillator and paddling your ass.”

  “What am I going to do, Ad? He’s going to come back when he does.”

  Images of Nigel, the dandy, going galactically stoopid all over Jim came to mind, and made Adrian wonder if they’d need to plan a memorial service. That archangel up there might pass his time playing croquet and polo, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t rip into a guy—and Jim had left here with a whole lot of throw-down on his mind.

  Maybe the bastard had gotten what he was looking for.

  Adrian started up with the pacing again, but the hotel room didn’t offer much in terms of floor space. He supposed he could go down to the bar—

  Next door, there was a creaking sound. Like someone had sat down on the bed. Or opened and closed something.

  Reaching behind to the small of his back, Ad withdrew his crystal knife. If it was just some human breaking in to steal a laptop, he wasn’t going to need what was in his palm. But if Devina had sent over a minion or two to distract them, the weapon was going to come in handy.

  Pushing the connector open an inch or two, he leaned in.

  A black shirt came flying out of the bathroom. Then a pair of beat-to-shit jeans.

  Boot.

  Boot.

  The shower started running and then there was a hiss, like Jim hadn’t waited for the water to warm up first.

  Shit. He hadn’t just been to see Nigel, had he.

  Reholstering his dagger, Adrian shoved the door wide, walked through and sat on the other angel’s bed.

  God knew there was no reason to ditch the duds and hot-water it right after you met with the archangel. Poor bastard must have been to Devina’s—and nobody needed two guesses to figure out what had happened.

  Listening to the sound of Jim washing the stank of the demon off, Adrian was weary to the point of blurry-vision exhaustion. This path the savior was on? Been there. Done that.

  Lost his mind over it.

  That was the thing with Devina. She got into you. Even though, in the beginning, you thought you were the one in control? Eventually, what you were making yourself do with her, for reasons that sounded entirely sane, ate at you until she was inside your skin and driving your bus. It was how she worked, and she was very successful at it.

  When Jim eventually stepped out of the bathroom, he stopped with the towel stretched across his back, one arm up, the other down. There were scratch marks on his thighs and abdomen, and his sex hung low, as if it had been used hard and left for dead.

  “She’s going to eat you alive,” Adrian said.

  The angel who was responsible for saving everyone and everything shook his head. “The hell she will.”

  “Jim—”

  “She’s going to tell us who the soul is.” Jim wrapped the towel around his hips. “We’re meeting her tomorrow morning.”

  Holy. Shit—“Wait, she didn’t give the info to you now?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  Ad just shook his head. “She’s fucking with you—”

  “She’ll show. And she’ll tell. Trust me.”

  “She’s not a reliable source. And this is not the way to win.”

  “So you liked last round’s outcome better?”

  Well . . . fuck.

  Jim went over to his black duffel and took out a pair of fatigues. As he turned away and pulled them on, that massive back tat of his, the one featuring the Grim Reaper in a graveyard, distorted and then refound its shape.

  Maybe Jim was tougher.

  Which would be a slap in the balls, and something Ad would admit only over his own steaming carcass. But if the guy could hold it together . . . if he could somehow sustain himself . . . then they had the best weapon in this fight because the demon had a jones for the guy. Bad.

  Jim went over to the jeans he’d tossed out of the bathroom and rifled through the pockets. When he stood back up again, he had a square of folded paper in his hands.

  Hands that shook ever so slightly.

  As the guy carefully brushed off the thing, even though there was no lint on it, Adrian scrubbed his face and wished a Lexus would fall on his own head: He knew damn well that had to be the article on that girl they’d found hanging over Devina’s tub—the virgin Jim was obsessed with.

  Tougher his ass, Ad thought. They were fucked.

  They were so fucked.

  CHAPTER 5

  Veck woke up on his living room sofa. Which was sort of a surprise, because he didn’t have one.

  As he rubbed his eyes against the cheerful spring sunlight, he was amazed that he’d taken the desire to sleep closer to the fine Officer Reilly as far as dragging the POS in from his man cave of a family room.

  Sitting up, he looked out into the street. The unmarked was gone, and he wondered when she’d left. Last he’d checked, she’d still been out there at four a.m.

  Groaning, he gave things a stretch, his shoulders cracking. Details from the night before filtered back, but he instinctually stayed away from the Monroe Motel & Suites part. He already felt like hell; he didn’t need to add a headache to the steaming pile of fuck-me he was rocking.

  When he stood up, he had to rearrange an obscene morning erection—which gave him another thing to studiously ignore. He had a feeling he’d been wrapped up in a fairly raunchy and totally spectacular dream about him and his Internal Affairs shadow. Something about her riding him raw . . . he’d been mostly clothed; she’d been completely naked—

  No, wait, she’d had her badge and her gun and her hip belt on.

  “Fuck . . .” As his cock kicked hard, he put in a prayer for another round of short-term memory loss, and cursed at the porn cliché.

  Then again, he could now see why guys found that shit attractive.

  Given the direction his brain was heading in, he wasn’t sure that adding caffeine to the mix was a good plan, but his body needed the lift. Too bad he’d discovered he’d lied to Officer Reilly: after coming back inside from talking to her, he’d realize hern out of Folgers.

  Upstairs, he showered, shaved, and put on his working uniform of slacks and a dress shirt. No tie for him, although a lot of the detectives wore them. No suit jacket; he didn’t wear one unless it was leather and of the biker or bomber variety.

  Downstairs, he got his backup coat out of the closet, grabbed the key to his bike, and locked things up. As he walked over to the BMW, he was dogged by the night before, but also feeling too light: No cell to check for voice mail. No badge in his breast pocket. No gun in his holster. No wallet on his ass.

  Officer Reilly had all of that. And his BVDs.

  Squeezing on his helmet and mounting up, the morning was too frickin’ bright and shiny for him—and this was without the sun being fully up. Hell, given the squint he was rocking, it was a good thing his bike knew where he was going.

  De la Cruz had introduced him to the Riverside Diner just the other day, and already Veck wondered how he’d managed without the greasy spoon. Heading for the place, he took the surface roads in, because even at seven forty-five, the Northway was going to be crowded.

  The dive was right on the shores of the Hudson, only about four blocks from HQ—and it wasn’t until he pulled into the parking lot full of unmarkeds that he second-guessed his destination. Chances were good that half the force was sucking java inside, as usual, but it was too late to go anywhere else.

  Just before he went in, he palmed up seventy-five cents and grabbed a Caldwell Courier Journal from the dispenser box outside. There was nothing about last night on the first page above the fold, so he flipped the thing over, looking for an article—

  And there was his name. In bold.

  Except the reporting wasn’t about him or Kroner. It was something on his old man, and he quickly avoided the piece. He hadn’t kept up with the charges, the trial, the death row sentence, anything that had to do with his f
ather. And gee whiz, when he’d been taking criminal justice, he’d been sick the day they’d covered the case.

  The rest of the first section was clear, so was the Local, and naturally, there was nothing in the Sports/Comics/Classified caboose. The lack of coverage wasn’t going to last, however: Reporters had access to the police blotter, and the story was probably on the television and radio news already. A homicide detective so prominently associated with the mauling of a psycho? That shit sold papers and justified ad prices.

  Pushing open the glass door, he went into the Riverside’s cacophony with his face buried in the nonheadlines of the Sports section. The place was packed, and as loud and hot as a bar, and he studiously didn’t make eye contact with anyone as he scanned around for a free stool at the counter or an empty booth along the edges.

  Nothing was vacant. Damn it. And he wasn’t about to join a table of CPDers. The last thing he needed was a lot of questions from his colleagues. Maybe he should just go on to HQ and hit the vending machine—

  “Morning, Detective.”

  Veck glanced over to the right. The fine Officer Reilly was sitting in the booth closest to the door, her back to him, her head cranked over her shoulder to look up at him. There was a cup of coffee in front of her, a cell phone in her hand, and a whole lot of no-nonsense on her face.

  “Care to join me?” she said, motioning across her table.

  She had to be kidding. There were about a dozen members of the force staring over at them—some more surreptitiously than others.

  “You sure you want to be seen with me?”

  “Why? Do you have terrible table manners?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She shrugged and took a sip from her cup. “Our meeting with the sergeant is in about twenty minutes. You’ll be lucky to have a seat by then.”

  Veck slid in opposite her. “I thought in Internal Affairs you guys always worried about propriety.”

  “This is just two eggs over easy, Detective.”

  He put his newspaper aside. “Fair enough.”

  The waitress came over with her pad out and her pencil ready. “What’ll it be.”

  No reason to look at a menu. Riverside had every omelet, egg, and toast known to man. You wanted pie for breakfast? A BLT? Cereal, oatmeal, pancakes? Fine, whatever—just order quick and eat fast so someone else could get a seat.