by Susan Illene
His gaze hardened. “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“You know what,” he said, voice clipped.
Cori rose to her feet from where she’d been sorting clothes. “Then put a damn shirt on if you don’t want me to look. I’m only human!”
“It’s my home,” he argued.
She lifted her brows. “You asked me to be here. I swear I won’t even come close to you if you don’t want, but I can’t control my eyes. They have a mind of their own.”
His expression flattened. “Your eyes operate independently of your body?”
“When you’re around they do.”
He clutched the dirty clothes he’d carried out, squeezing them. “There is nothing about me that is worth looking at.”
He was so wrong.
Kerbasi had certainly done a number on Bartol’s ego. Cori needed to pay the guardian a visit sometime soon so she could empty her revolver into his thick skull for being such a horrible person. At least with Kerbasi, she wouldn’t feel guilty about shooting him since he couldn’t die. It would just hurt him a lot.
Cori crossed her arms. “I’ve never seen a more sexy man in my life than you.”
His jaw ticked on the side where the scars were located. “Then you are blind.”
“If you say so.”
“You mentioned you wish to go shopping,” he said, lifting a brow.
Cori decided to let him change the topic. “You are in dire need of food in this house, and unless you want me to keep using your shampoo and soap, I need to buy some for myself.”
“You used my…” he paused, and seemed to gather himself, “soap?”
Cori smiled. “I didn’t have a choice. I rubbed it all over my body, which consequently, was right before you used it.”
He twisted the dirty clothes in his hands further. “Give me a few minutes and then we can go.”
“Okay,” she said brightly. “I’ll get the wash started for your sheets while you do that since, you know, I slept all over those, too.”
Bartol escaped into his bedroom without another word.
Twenty minutes later, they were on the road in her truck. Cori was grateful it had been parked far enough away from the cabin not to get burned, so at least she had one big thing that had survived intact. Bartol sat in the passenger seat utterly still. She figured she’d given him a hard enough time that morning and chose to leave him alone for the moment. Helping him overcome his past was a marathon, not a race. Cori didn’t want to push him so far that he might regress into his hermit state again. She’d feared that enough after their last kiss and swore she’d drop it down a notch with him. But saying was one thing and doing another. Keeping herself in check around him took a lot more effort than she’d expected.
They were nearly to Fairbanks when she decided to take a detour. After what had happened last night, she needed to check on something else even more important than her cabin. It had been on Cori’s mind when she’d fallen asleep on the couch.
“Where are we going?” Bartol asked.
She kept her eyes on the road. “This won’t take long, but it’s something I have to do.”
They reached the gate and proceeded down a long, narrow road.
Bartol gave her a questioning glance. “A cemetery?”
He must have seen the sign when they turned in.
“Yeah,” she said softly.
She parked the truck without another word and got out. He followed her as she made her way across the graveyard to a large, granite headstone engraved with the name “Faith Elizabeth Landry” on it. Cori crouched in front of it and traced the letters as she always did when she came there, which was usually once a month. She was relieved to see Griff hadn’t done anything to disturb their daughter’s grave. With his crazy obsession about hurting her, she hadn’t been sure what he might be capable of under the circumstances.
“Your daughter?” Bartol asked, hovering a few feet away.
Cori blinked back a sheen of tears. “Yes.”
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. She kept her fingertips on the headstone, thinking of Faith and how much she missed her baby girl. How could someone so amazing and precious leave this world before she’d truly had a chance to live in it? How could God let that happen? No matter how much time passed, Cori couldn’t make sense of it.
Bartol moved to kneel next to her. “Tell me about Faith.”
It took a moment for her to speak as the memories flooded her. “She hardly cried as a baby. Other women used to tell me I got it easy with her because she was such a happy child.”
“It sounds like she was wonderful.”
Cori wiped a tear from her cheek. “Sometimes I think God took her from me because I didn’t deserve her.”
“I am no fan of God,” Bartol said, working his jaw, “but I do not believe He had anything to do with her death. That was entirely on your former husband.”
“But I tried to kill Griff for it. How does that make me worthy as a mother?” she asked, despair in her voice.
“I have no answer for that, but I can tell you that until you forgive yourself you won’t be able to move on.” He reached up and grazed her cheek with his knuckle. “You deserve to move on and perhaps have another child someday.”
Cori shook her head. “I don’t think I can go through that again.”
“With the right person, you could.”
Because of the curse on nephilim, Bartol could never be that man.
She looked away. “You’re wrong. There’s no way I can ever trust someone again to make that kind of commitment after what happened with Griff.”
Bartol gave her a reproving look. “Not everyone is like him.”
“I know,” she said, dipping her gaze toward the ground. “But I don’t even trust myself enough to tell the difference. I have a history of picking the wrong guys.”
He slid his arm around her and pulled her close until her head rested on his shoulder. “Do you know you are the only woman who can make me feel better about my own problems?”
Cori choked out a laugh. “My life is usually not this bad.”
“Neither was mine…before.”
They crouched there together, staring at her daughter’s grave for a while in silence. Her life was a wreck but having him at her side made it a little easier. If he could manage to hold her for a few minutes despite his intimacy issues, then maybe there was hope for her as well.
Chapter 22
Bartol
Riding in a human vehicle made Bartol edgy even though he’d done it quite a few times recently. He suspected it was the part about having to sit while someone else was in control. Someday, he would have to learn how to drive the modern version of a car, but he wasn’t quite ready for that yet. He still needed to master how to operate a computer, which he’d been told repeatedly was very important, despite the fact humans had existed for thousands of years without them.
“Are you doing okay?” Melena asked, glancing over at him from the driver’s side of the Jeep.
They’d been traveling around the area southeast of Fairbanks for most of the day as they searched for Cori’s former husband. As of yet, they’d only found two unidentified vampires close enough in age to fit. Neither turned out to be Griff.
Bartol stared out the window at the passing trees. “I’m fine.”
“You’re having a hard time sitting still for this long, aren’t you?”
“I do it all the time at home,” he replied.
“Right.” She adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. “Which is why your house—inside and out—is clean and spotless. Because you sit around all day.”
“That is different.”
Melena sighed, quiet for a moment. “Has it been tough having Cori staying with you?”
Bartol could already see where this conversation was headed. “The human woman is tolerable, mostly.”
“Tolerable.” Melena laughed. “That’s the understatement of the year. You probably thi
nk she’s a pain in the ass and can’t wait to get rid of her.”
Was the sensor baiting him? He decided to play along.
“Her cooking makes up for her other deficiencies. She’s also better than expected at picking up after herself, and she’s at least trying to give me some space,” he replied.
Cori hadn’t been half as bad as he’d thought she would be when he decided to have her stay with him. He still marveled at the sheer amount of food available in his kitchen. Every time he went in there, he didn’t know what to eat. Cori had stocked the cabinets and refrigerator with everything he could imagine and many things he couldn’t. The only thing he didn’t like was how she’d taken over his bathroom with her myriad female products, and she’d decorated! Nothing about his bathing chamber appeared the same anymore. Bartol felt as if he was stepping into another time and place whenever he went in there.
Melena tapped the steering wheel. “This is probably none of my business, but I’ve got to ask. Have you ever been in a serious relationship with a woman before?”
He considered not answering her, but perhaps it was for the best that he did. If the sensor was ever going to stop her matchmaking manipulations, she needed to understand why Bartol would never be right for Cori. “When I was young, I thought I was in love with a few different women, but it never lasted more than a year—if that.”
“Why not?”
He thought back to that time. Kerbasi had meddled with many of his memories, but he hadn’t quite reached the first century of Bartol’s life when he was young and inexperienced. The guardian must have thought those weren’t worth the effort to manipulate.
“Boredom in most cases,” he replied honestly. “Human women were fascinating at first because of their short lifespan, and their need to fill their brief years with as many experiences as possible—at least, for the ones that interested me. I went through several before I realized such relationships could never work. They wanted to settle down and have children at some point, which I could not offer them.”
The sensor turned off the highway onto a dirt road. They’d been crisscrossing the area, trying to cover as much ground as they could in the hopes they would not miss anything. They bumped along the ruts for a minute before she responded again. “What about supernaturals? None of those worked, either?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I developed feelings for a beautiful vampire once and thought she might be the one for me, but then I found her with another nephilim. She said immortals had no reason to limit themselves to only one sexual partner. Back then, I was young and idealistic, so that rather ruined me to try again.”
“I got the impression you were with that angel for a while before you were caught,” Melena said, keeping her eyes on the road.
Bartol should have known this was the real question she wished to ask. “A few months, yes.”
“How did you seduce her? That couldn’t have been easy.”
“I didn’t seduce her.”
Melena hit the brakes on her Jeep. They came to a grinding halt, turning up dust on the road. “Holy shit, you’re telling the truth. Then what happened?”
He didn’t know why he was telling her since he’d kept the details to himself for all these decades. In the beginning, he’d allowed people to believe the lie because it bolstered his reputation. After he was caught and sent to Purgatory, it seemed a moot point. The archangels were unlikely to care about his side of the story.
“She seduced me.”
The sensor’s eyes rounded. “She what?”
Bartol sometimes forgot that just because Melena was immortal didn’t mean she didn’t still have a lot to learn about the supernatural world. He would have to take the time to educate her on this one point. “Have you ever wondered how nephilim are born? Consider it—do you think humans are tracking down angels and seducing them? No, because it has to be the other way around. Some angels watch over Earth for so long that they begin to get curious. Then they latch onto a human who truly interests them and make contact. The same happened for me.”
“So an angel found you.” A million thoughts seemed to pass through her eyes. “Did you try sending her away?”
He knit his brows as he attempted to think back to that time. Many of his memories of Clarissa were distorted by Kerbasi’s tampering, but most of the first couple of weeks before they slept together were intact. “I laughed at her the first time she appeared in my bedroom naked. I thought for certain it was some kind of joke, and that she could not be serious.”
“But she kept trying.”
“Yes,” he said, lost in thought. “She was beautiful, graceful, and desperate for a human experience, but she did not want to risk getting pregnant so she thought a nephilim would be a safer choice. I think she also felt the highly forbidden nature of our relationship made it more exciting. After a while, I couldn’t hold back my curiosity, though I honestly tried at first. I’d known nothing good could come of being with her.”
“What was it like? Did you fall in love?” Melena asked.
Bartol shook his head. “She was smart and willing to try anything in bed. I enjoyed her very much, but I could not develop feelings for her beyond friendship. Our connection just didn’t work out that way. We did talk for hours about our lives, which was pleasant, and she told me about how bored she was with her work. Angels often spend centuries doing the same thing without a break from the monotony. It is why some choose to fall despite the consequences.”
Melena studied him. “Were you upset when they sent her to Hell?”
“Not particularly. Clarissa was the one who confessed to the archangel council about what we’d done and placed the entire blame on me.” He ground his jaw. “It was hard to feel sorry for her after that.”
“Why would she do such a thing?”
Bartol clenched his fists. “She started to feel guilty about us, and I think she believed they’d give her clemency for confessing.”
“Couldn’t they know that she was the one who started it?” Melena asked.
“Why would they check?” Bartol lifted a brow. “I had a reputation back then for seducing women, so there was no reason for them to doubt her. It likely didn’t help that I didn’t deny her accusations. At the time, I never guessed the punishment would be so severe. Even with all of Lucas’ transgressions, he was never confined for that long.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, regret in her eyes. “It was extreme.”
Bartol shrugged as if it wasn’t the worst experience of his life. “Since I was the first nephilim to sleep with an angel, they had to make an example out of me. I should have known that would happen.”
“You should tell Cori about this.” Melena started driving the Jeep again. “She’d probably want to hear it.”
“I do not see how it matters.”
Melena veered around a large rut in the road. “I think she wants to know everything about you, whether she realizes it or not. In all the time I’ve known her, she’s never gone after a man or paid attention to him the way she has you. She needs to see you can open up as well.”
“Nothing good can come of her and I being together.” Bartol stared straight ahead at the road. “We are both damaged, and she’s mortal.”
“Maybe there’s a way to…”
“Don’t,” he growled.
Melena sighed. “I’m just saying where there is a will, there is a way.”
“Not everyone gets a happy ending.”
The sensor stiffened. At first, Bartol thought it was something he’d said, but then she sped up the road. A minute later, she parked the Jeep off to the side. Her brows were furrowed in concentration as she worked something out in her head.
“There’s a vampire not far from here.” She pointed toward the woods off to the left. “He’s about the right age—somewhere between four and six.”
“You’re not certain?”
Melena shrugged. “It’s only around the first year or so after they’ve turned when I can pinpoint the
age almost to the month. After that, it becomes vaguer. This guy could be it, though.”
They’d already come upon two other vampires today who were a close fit, but it turned out they weren’t the ones, either. Bartol hoped they’d have better luck this time.
“Tell me where exactly,” he said.
She pointed again. “About two hundred feet in that direction.”
Bartol used his flashing sight to check the area, but all he saw were trees and brush. There was no cabin or anyplace for a vampire to hide. “Are you certain? I do not see anything.”
“He’s there,” she promised.
Bartol grunted, having a bad feeling about this. “I will return shortly.”
Flashing to the approximate location she gave him, he touched ground next to a thicket. It was still daylight outside, so even the trees and brush would not be enough to protect the vampire from the sun’s rays. Bartol walked the area, looking to see if some sort of underground shelter might be around. He found nothing. No caves, trap doors, or even a small shack. Then his gaze fell on freshly turned dirt just inside a thicket.
Had the vamp been caught out too close to dawn and taken shelter beneath the earth?
His flashing sight told him nothing since it was too dark to discern anything below ground. The only way he would find out for certain was to dig, but if Bartol did so, it would mean death for any vampire hidden there. He would have seconds to look at the person’s face before they’d burst into flames.
Resigned to do what he must, Bartol kneeled and began scooping away the loose dirt. Since it was freshly tilled, it was not difficult. He had to go about two feet down before he came across the sleeve of a shirt. Quickly covering it, he adjusted his digging to where he believed the head would be located. A few minutes later, his fingers grazed a man’s jaw. Bartol swept more dirt aside, hovering over the site as best he could to block the sun. It wouldn’t stop a vampire from burning, but it would slow the process down. He’d cleared most of the dirt from the man’s face when the vamp opened his eyes.
