Skin Deep

by Evans, Anna J.

  Read on for a sneak peek of

  KISSED BY DARKNESS

  Coming from Signet Eclipse

  in May 2010

  Samantha Quinn wasn’t afraid of the dark. Even when she was walking at the edge of the ruins, where demonic attacks had transformed New York City’s Greenwich Village into a maze of rubble inhabited by bloodthirsty predators, the darkness could be an unexpected ally.

  The scary things got cocky in the shadows. Careless. They made noise—claws on the concrete, rough skin scraping along crumbling brick—things even sighted people could hear if they were really listening. To a woman who’d been legally blind since age six, the sounds of an approaching demon were like gunshots—impossible not to notice, and easy to avoid if you had practice ducking and covering. Which she did. A girl couldn’t grow up on the south end of the island without learning how to run and hide.

  Or when to pay attention to the feeling that something bad was going to happen.

  “I’ll be there in ten, fifteen minutes, tops.”

  “Wonderful! We can’t wait to—”

  “Gotta hang up now. Bye.” Sam tapped the bud clipped to her ear, ending the phone call without waiting for Mrs. Choe to say her good-byes.

  Ellen and her husband, Chang-su, had lived in the neighborhood for forty years and raised four children in the wake of the attacks twenty years before. They knew there were times when safety dictated the rude termination of a phone call. But they wouldn’t be worried. Demons were easy to avoid if you stuck to the main streets and made a run for it on the rare occasions when the creatures prowled too near the edge of the ruins.

  The descendants of the ancient dinosaurs weren’t particularly quick. They had to rely on their prey being careless, and letting them get close enough to employ their various deadly natural weapons. Sam wouldn’t let them get close. She had these streets memorized and her ability to distinguish areas of light and dark kept her from running into any large obstacles. Sure, she had her share of spills from time to time, but she felt confident in her ability to take care of herself, even on the city streets.

  It’s just dumb luck, Sam. Someday you’re going to fall at the wrong time, and something’s going to get you.

  Ah, Stephen. Brother, friend, voice of doom. Why was it always his voice that got going in her head at night, when she was trying to pull off the whole “brave New Yorker” thing?

  Because I’m right. You know I’m right. You should move back in with me and—

  Sam did her best to banish her brother’s voice, focusing on where she was going, not where she’d been, increasing her speed until her sandals made tiny scraping noises against the concrete as they chased the white cane tapping ahead.

  The Choes hadn’t been surprised to hear she’d finally gotten her own apartment. But then, they’d never treated her like an invalid or an oddity. To them, she was just another girl from the neighborhood, and the only florist they wanted to handle their daughter’s wedding. Arranging flowers based solely on smell and texture created some fairly fantastic and unusual-looking combinations. Obviously Sam had never seen any of her own arrangements, but she took her clients’ word for it that they were visually stunning. Old friends or not, the Choes wouldn’t hire anything less than the best for their daughter. They’d finally gotten Sin Moon hooked up with a nice Korean boy and wanted her wedding to be perfect. And they wanted to approve every last detail months in advance.

  Hence the centerpiece Sam was presently cradling with her left arm. She’d promised to bring the sample arrangement over as soon as she finished cleaning up the shop for the day, no matter what the hour.

  But as the pungent smell of fresh demon waste mingled with the scent of lavender and wild roses, she began to doubt the wisdom of journeying out alone after seven o’clock. Demonic attacks had been on the rise in recent months. Attacks always increased in the spring, when the warmer temperatures brought certain breeds out of their winter hibernation, but this year it was worse than usual.

  Just like her dreams. Worse than usual. More vivid, more horrific, with a heavy dose of childhood terror churned up in the mix. Unfortunately, Sam’s kid fears weren’t the kind that could be dismissed as pure imagination. A lot of those horrible things had really happened. And some of the things she dreamed about were going to happen. Stephen had never believed in her ability, no matter how much proof she presented, but she knew when a bad dream was going to come true.

  She could smell it on the air. Taste it on her tongue, sharp and bitter.

  Somewhere, deep in the ruins, a girl screamed, startling Sam and nearly making her drop the flowers she’d worked on all afternoon.

  “Damn it.” She stumbled to the side, regaining her grip on the basket, but clocking her shoulder on something big, hard, and stinky in the process.

  A Dumpster, but one that had recently been emptied. The stink wasn’t fresh, more the lingering sourness of ancient vegetables mixed with rotted meat and coffee grounds. Gross, but it was the best hiding place she was going to find around here.

  After using her cane to check the area behind the Dumpster, Sam set the centerpiece on the ground and turned back to the ruins. She’d never ventured inside by herself, but for some reason, she knew she had to follow the cold, slippery energy oozing across her skin to its source.

  Her certainty that something horrible was about to happen was stronger than ever. A woman had screamed in her dreams last night and there had been blood, so much blood. She was positive that if she didn’t find the woman before whatever hunted her, blood would be spilled and an innocent person would die.

  For a moment, the rational part of her mind argued that she should call for one of the many demon control patrols always a scream away in this part of Manhattan. It was their job to keep the streets safe, to make sure the thousands of tourists who came to New York to see the demonic urban habitat didn’t get themselves killed trying to get a picture of some of the more fantastic species. They would take a report, get a police task force down here within a half hour, and—

  The scream came again, higher and even more terrified. “And they’ll be too late,” Sam said, setting a swift pace toward the sound before she could second-guess herself. She tripped twice on the uneven pavement before she reached the first bend in the path, but she didn’t think of turning back.

  She was the only one who could save this woman. Hell, she might be the only one who could even hear her. Whether it was simply that her ears functioned better than an average person’s because she was missing one of her other senses, or something more paranormal in nature, Sam had always heard things other people missed.

  Like the sound of something breathing nearby. Something big. Really big.

  Sam tasted the mocha she’d made just before leaving the shop and swallowed hard. God, Stephen was going to lose it when he found out she’d been wandering around here by herself, acting like some too-stupid-to-live environmentalist determined to go Jane Goodall with the demons. He’d warned her a thousand times not to go within fifty feet of the ruins. He was going to kill her for getting killed like this.

  The thought was almost enough to make Sam laugh, even though the giant breathing thing was so close she could taste it. Fire and sulfur and the hint of some exotic fruit, mixed with the unmistakable smell of demon waste. It was definitely a demon, but not the one she’d followed. The scent from her dream was gone, vanished along with the cold energy that had summoned her from the safety of the street.

  Whoever she’d heard, the woman was probably already dead. And now, because she was a stupid blind girl who thought she could play the hero, she was going to die too.

  “But I’m going to hurt you first,” she whispered to the thing in front of her as she thumbed open the secret compartment on her cane, flicking the switch that turned the red-tipped end deadly.

  Switchblades were illegal in the city, so she assumed switch canes weren’t something the police would approve of, but abiding by the letter of the law wasn’t a pr
iority for most Southies and Sam wasn’t any different. Being blind didn’t automatically mean she was a law-abiding citizen or helpless or sweet.

  Or willing to wait for someone else to make the first move.

  “Come and get me already,” she yelled, lifting her cane and lunging forward.

  An outraged squeal echoed off the bricks, but there wasn’t time to celebrate her hit. Seconds later, her cane was ripped from her hands and the smell of fruit got even stronger as something whizzed by her face. Shit! She’d heard of demons that shot poison quills into their prey to immobilize them before they began to feed.

  Sam ducked on instinct and felt the air stir above her head. Whirling around with her hands held out in front of her, she started to run, praying she remembered the obstacles she’d encountered on the way in well enough to avoid them. Without her cane, she had no way of “seeing” the ground in front of her before she stepped, no way of—

  She cursed as she tripped over something round and hard she hadn’t noticed before, and fell to the ground, the needles of the demon who hunted her pinging against the concrete near her scraped hands. Sam curled into a fetal position, her body still trying to protect itself though her mind knew this was it. She was down, and the thing behind her was coming, and this time there would be no escape.

  All of sudden she was six years old again, bound and tied and waiting for the cold evil to crawl inside her body and take what her parents had invited it to take, to steal what it needed to steal. But this time, it wouldn’t just be her eyes. This time, it would be her life.

  If he were a different kind of man, Jace would have let the woman die. The hard core of him might still have considered it, just for a second, if it had been anyone else. Anyone other than her.

  But as he watched Samantha Quinn fall to the ground, her long, silky black hair tangling around her frightened face, obscuring those big brown eyes, there was no way Jace could do anything but shoot the creature he’d been tracking for three days. Even though killing the Ju Du demon would mean forfeiting his bounty and facing a death threat or two if any of the other hunters found out he’d put the thing down.

  The city wanted demons taken alive or not taken at all. They didn’t pay for dead meat, and his competition wouldn’t be pleased to hear he’d taken out one of the rarest species to roam the Southie ruins. But he didn’t have a choice. She wasn’t just a friend’s kid sister or a girl he’d watched grow up in the neighborhood. Jace couldn’t say exactly what she was to him—just that something inside him threatened to snap when he thought about a world without Sam Quinn. She didn’t deserve to die like this; she and her brother had been through enough already.

  “Don’t move,” Jace shouted as Sam curled into a ball on the ground.

  Sam didn’t scream when he fired—Jace had to give her credit for that. She lay perfectly still and quiet until the Ju Du was in pieces and the sharp reports of gunfire had faded, echoing away down the twisted corridors of the ruins. But when he crossed to her, satisfied to see she hadn’t been hit by any quills, she was crying, big fat tears that streamed out of her haunting eyes.

  Damn crying women. The sight sickened him. He couldn’t help it. Seeing a woman cry made him want to slam his fist into a wall, or run until his lungs exploded, or kill something. Or maybe all three.

  “I’m sorry. Sorry,” Sam said, sucking in a deep breath and biting her bottom lip, as if she could tell how her tears affected him. “Thanks, Jace,” she said, looking right into his face as he helped her up off the ground and fetched her cane from where it had fallen.

  It was hard to believe she was blind when you looked into those wide, melted chocolate eyes. Sam’s eyes seemed to see everything, more than the average person’s. Hers were eyes that looked all the way to a man’s core and took his measure. When it came to Jace, he could tell she’d never entirely approved of what she saw.

  He could understand the feeling. It was one of the reasons he avoided mirrors.

  “I’ll walk you back to your place.”

  “I’m not going back to my place.” She twisted her arm, pulling free from his grip on her hand.

  “Oh, yes, you are.” He reached for her, but she sidestepped him, almost as if she could see him coming.

  “No, I’m not.” Up came her chin as she half jogged toward the street, cane tapping quickly in front of her. “I have an errand to run.”

  “I don’t give a shit if you’ve got an—”

  “I have an appointment!” She tried to twist away from him again, but this time Jace held firm. Still, even though he had at least six inches and fifty pounds on the woman, Sam wasn’t easy to hold on to.

  “You can reschedule. I don’t want to see you anywhere near this area again.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Stay clear of the streets near the ruins. Call Stephen to come get you, or call a car service if you need to—”

  “Where do you get off?” she asked, stepping closer until he could smell the light floral scent that clung to her hair. “You’re not my father or my brother or my boyfriend. Hell, I wouldn’t have even said we were friends, would you?”

  Jace stared down into those eerie eyes of hers, not knowing what to say, only knowing that the outraged look on Sam’s face made him want to show her exactly where he “got off.” And how he’d get her off, again and again, until she came so hard, she screamed his name and clung to him, those strong, smooth legs wrapped around his hips as—

  “Would you?”

  Would he what? He couldn’t seem to remember the question. His thoughts were too shocking, too wrong.

  “Honestly, I’m curious. Would you say we’re friends? Is that why you feel entitled to order me around like a child? Or is it because of my brother?” she asked. “Since he’s your friend, it gives you the right to play big brother when he’s not around?”

  She stepped even closer, her chocolate-and-coffee breath warm on his chin. If he tilted his head just the slightest bit, they’d be close enough for him to taste her. And, fuck, did he want to taste her. Bad enough that he forced himself to take a small step back, putting a safer distance between them.

  “I’m old enough to take care of myself, Jace. And to know what I want.”

  “And what is that?” he asked, the feeling that he was crossing some forbidden line making his heart beat faster than it had in years. Demon hunting was dangerous, but not as dangerous as Samantha Quinn. And it wasn’t the fact that her brother would try to kill him for touching his sister—it was Sam herself. He’d had no idea she was so . . . irresistible.

  “I think it might be you,” she said, standing on tiptoe, bringing her lips closer to his.

  “You think. You don’t know?”

  “Not yet, but I will.” And then she kissed him. She kissed him. He let a woman make the first move for the first time in years, and it felt inexplicably right. Everything about Sam felt right—her ass in his hands, her fingers digging into the back of his neck, her mouth hot against his, her moan as he slid his tongue between her lips, tasting the unique flavor of this woman who had totally blindsided him.

  Blindsided by a blind girl.

  It should have been an amusing thought, but Jace didn’t feel like laughing. This wasn’t funny. This was a mistake, a huge mistake. But that didn’t stop him from spinning Sam in his arms and pressing her up against the wall. It didn’t slow his hands as he grabbed her behind the knees and spread her legs, hitching her up around his waist. It only made him feel like the very bad man he truly was. The last kind of man Sam should even think about getting involved with.

  If he were a better person, he would have cared enough to stop. But he wasn’t. So he didn’t. He just kissed her harder, and let his fingers trail up the silky smooth skin of her inner thigh.

 

 

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