by Elise Marion
She smiled. “Get yourself out of here, Jack. Get back down there and use the information I gave you to win this fight. Then, take Addison away with you and never look back. Give her everything you and I never had a chance to experience.”
He swiped away a tear as she began to back away and the passage back into Heaven opened behind her.
“I will,” he promised. “Hey, Trace?”
She paused in the rift, turning to face him. “Yes, Jack?”
“See you on the other side.”
“Hopefully much, much later,” she said. “I don’t want to see you again for at least another fifty or sixty years. Think you can manage that?”
Without waiting for a reply, she stepped through the circle. It closed behind her, shutting him off from Heaven once more. Flopping down onto his chaise, he threw his legs over the side and stared up at the endless expanse of white overhead.
This time, instead of feeling despair over being left alone, he felt hope. With a smile, he closed his eyes and began counting the seconds until Michael reappeared to ask him the dreaded question.
This time, Jack would have an answer for him.
Chapter Ten: Ghosts
Before he even opened his eyes, Micah registered the painful hammering just behind the lids. His head felt as if a lead weight rested on it, causing it to cave inward from the pressure. On the other side of his closed eyelids, the sun burned bright, exacerbating the throb and making the veins at his temples pulsate and throb.
He groaned, turning away from the window and facing the wall. His stomach heaved and his chest burned, sending him rolling back the other way, toward the edge of the bed.
“He’s going to hurl,” a voice murmured.
Addison.
She’d whispered, yet, because of his sensitive head, had sounded like a grenade going off in the otherwise quiet room.
“Here, Micah. Use this.”
Reniel.
He felt a plastic trashcan thrust into his hands and he gripped it tight, hanging his body over the side of the bed and emptying his stomach. He shuddered at the taste of soured liquor coming back up, cringing as his forceful heaves made his head hurt even more.
It didn’t make sense. Even when he drank until he passed out, he never got this sick. A hangover was one thing; this felt like another matter entirely. Letting Reniel take the trashcan away, he gingerly lowered himself back against his pillow. Forcing his eyes open, he ignored the sting and let his bleary gaze settle on Addison.
She sat in a chair near the door, dressed in shorts and a tank top, her hair piled into a messy bun on top of her head. He scowled when his gaze lowered and locked on the ugly purple bruise ringing her throat.
“What the hell happened?”
“You don’t remember any of it?” she asked.
As much as he tried, he couldn’t remember much. The last thing he recalled was collapsing into bed after a long night of demon-fighting. There had been some very disturbing dreams which ended with him kissing Addison, two seconds away from snatching her clothes off and pounding her into the mattress.
Meeting her gaze again, he felt the back of his neck heat. Glancing away, he grit his teeth. That should have been the last thing on his mind after waking up with a splitting headache and a knot the size of a grapefruit forming on the back of his skull.
Embarrassment and physical pain caused his voice to come out gruff and strained.
“Would I be askin’ if I did?”
Her mouth tightened at the corners, but she didn’t respond. She focused her stare out the window and seemed to pointedly attempt to ignore him.
Fair enough. He’d been a jackass to her last night, and she felt sore about it. All the better. If she kept her distance, he didn’t need to worry that he’d do or say something stupid, like “I’ve wanted you from the second I laid eyes on you, but was too stupid to face the truth”, or “I wish Jack hadn’t had you first, because then, I might stand a chance.”
Yeah, being an asshole seemed like a better choice.
“Nybbas attacked last night,” Reniel said, re-entering the room sans puke-bucket. “Or rather, he infiltrated and caused you to attack each other.”
His jaw dropped as he gazed down at his meaty hands, then up at Addison’s throat. Despite the fact that she wasn’t a small woman, just then, her neck looked like the most fragile thing in the world.
His throat constricted.
“I did that to you?”
She stood and approached the bed, pausing just at the foot, hands on her hips.
“Nybbas did this, Micah. He just used you to do it.”
He shook his head. “Still. I didn’t … I would never …”
“It’s okay,” she said, forcing a smile.
His gut clenched, and he forced his eyes back down to the comforter.
“I know you’ve never really liked me, but you’re not a guy who beats up girls. It wasn’t your fault. You were asleep and Nybbas did what he’s known for. Derek told me a person is most vulnerable in their dreamlike state, which makes it easy for him to get in and manipulate dreams to make them seem real.”
Her eyes widened as she stepped closer to the bed. Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned toward him.
“Do you understand?” she whispered. “None of it was real.”
Oh, he understood. Loud and clear. Nybbas had used his lust for Addison against both of them. What he’d thought had been a dream had actually happened.
They’d crossed the line, but it wasn’t happening again. They couldn’t acknowledge that it had been real.
He nodded. “Okay. So, did you get the son of a bitch?”
Grinning, she reached up and clutched the ring, still hanging from its chain around her neck. “You bet your Cajun ass I did.”
Pride swelled inside him at her declaration. Jack would have been stoked to see her finally stepping into her own as a Guardian. She’d handled the situation last night on her own, with an incapacitated partner.
Thinking of Jack only brought him more guilt and his smile faded. “Good to know.”
She seemed to sense the shift in his mood, because she backed away from the bed, turning to Reniel.
“Is Daniel here yet? If Micah has a concussion, he really needs to be seen.”
Daniel was an Angel of Healing. Knowing he was on the way flooded him with relief. He couldn’t be of much use to anyone laid up with a pounding head.
“He should be here any minute now,” Reniel replied. “I’ll repair the door later on, as well.”
“Get that throat looked at first,” Micah said, closing his eyes. “I can wait.”
“You’re hurt way worse than I am,” Addison insisted.
He opened one eye to find that Reniel had gone, leaving them alone. “Don’t matter. I said, take your turn first. Can’t get on stage with bruises. Wouldn’t want to diminish your worth.”
At first, she looked as if she wanted to be angry at him for his crass remark, but then the flicker of anger in her eyes melted away. In its place rose confusion.
“Micah, maybe we should—”
“Don’t,” he whispered, shaking his head. “We’re not doin’ this right now.”
“I think it would help to talk about what happened.”
A harsh bark of laughter escaped, causing his head to spin.
“What is there to talk about?” he snapped. “Isn’t it obvious? Nybbas can’t use things that aren’t already there. He reached into my subconscious, saw that I’m physically attracted to you, and used it to fuck with me.”
Addison lowered her gaze, fumbling with a loose thread on her shorts. “It wasn’t just you. He compelled me to do things, too.”
“I think we both know you didn’t want it,” he insisted, refusing to look away. He needed her to believe him so she would say away. Otherwise, he was liable to do something stupid, like drag her into his bed and kiss her senseless—until Jack became just a distant memory for them both. “It was all me, cher. Beca
use the truth is … I want you.”
Her head snapped up and she met his stare once more, her eyes wide. Her lips parted, and he could hear her breath racing.
“You … you do?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Who wouldn’t? I mean, the first time I saw you at Temptations, lookin’ so sexy up on there on that stage and your ass hanging out of them shorts … I knew. I knew I wouldn’t rest until …” he clenched his jaw and forced himself to maintain his steady gaze.
“Until?”
He couldn’t determine if she sounded hopeful or frightened. He decided to play the devil and push her right over into terrified. Terror was good. Terror would be better than the alternative.
“Until I’d fucked you,” he said nonchalantly. “What else?”
She came toward the bed, her mouth pinched and her eyes wide. He could have sworn he saw tears glimmering there a split second before her arm snaked out. Her palm connected with his face like the lash of a whip, throwing him sideways on the bed. Nausea roiled in his gut as the room began to spin and pain radiated across his cheek.
“Screw you, Micah,” she growled, backing away.
He sat up, rubbing his face, and watched as the light of pure hatred filled her and radiated through her gaze.
Good. Hate was good. It could put a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between him and his best friend’s girl.
He gave her a lazy grin despite the pain, making him feel as if his head would explode.
“I’m just sorry Jack got to you first,” he said, raking her body from head to toe with his gaze for good measure. “Not that I’m averse to second helpings.”
Her hands curled into fists at her sides and for a moment, he thought she might knock him senseless. Then, she sighed, shaking her head.
“You’re pitiful,” she muttered. “I thought I was wrong about you, but it turns out I was right. You’re pathetic.”
He shrugged again. “Never told you I was any better than I am, cher. I’m not him, and I never will be. I told you what I want, and it’s all I’m ever gonna want from you. So, you should do yourself a favor and keep your distance. Nybbas won’t be around to interrupt next time, and I won’t stop if you’re givin’ it up.”
Backing toward the door, she shook her head at him. “Someday, this is going to end. This war will be over and I’m going to be someone. I’m going to have a degree and my freedom, and I’m going to go far away from this place and have a life. Maybe even a husband and some kids. But you, Micah? You’re never going to be anything more than what you are right now. A pitiful waste of oxygen, a drunk, bitter bastard. While I’m living the life I always wanted, you’ll be growing old alone. And you can be sure I’ll put you out of my mind and never think of you again.”
With that, she spun on her heels and disappeared through the open frame of his doorway. Falling back onto the bed, he closed his eyes and waited for the room to stop spinning.
“That’s exactly what I expect you to do, cher,” he murmured just before blackness claimed his vision.
Addison spent the rest of her week working, attending classes while trying to keep up with her homework, and training with Elian to become better at demon fighting. She’d managed to rid the world of Nybbas but just barely, and Micah had almost been lost in the process.
Shooting a glance at him from across the taproom at Temptations, she scowled, a bitter taste filling her mouth.
I don’t know why I even care. It’s not like anyone would miss him if he were gone.
Well, that would be only partially true. His mamère would have been heartbroken if he’d died, as would Reniel. If Jack were still alive, of course he’d have mourned his partner.
But Addison couldn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to Micah, and was done saving him from trouble. She’d put up with far more than any girl should have from him, and enough was enough. Bad enough she had to share an apartment with him.
However, that didn’t mean she had to talk to him. He didn’t seem to have much to say to her, either—and why should he? He’d pretty much laid everything on the line the night after the incident. At first, his confession that he’d been physically attracted to her had caused anxiety. How was she supposed to live in the same house with a hot-blooded man who’d confessed wanting to have sex with her? Especially when that man was her dead lover’s best friend? Or when she couldn’t admit, even to herself, that his kiss hadn’t affected her?
Yet, since then, she’d seemed to cease existing for him. While on guard duty at the club, he sat with his back to the stage, refusing to watch her perform. Usually, one of the others accompanied him, and they kept a close watch. At home, he avoided her and hardly ever came out of his room. He rose early, continuing his new workout regimen of going for a run before returning home. She would remain in her room, trying to concentrate on her homework as the sounds of his grunts and pants as he performed pushups and sit-ups filtered beneath her bedroom door.
Meanwhile, the deep ache of loneliness she experienced without Jack had returned, and she felt worse than ever. She’d thought she and Micah had started to come to some sort of understanding. She’d thought they could become friends.
Now, she realized how stupid that had been. Micah was too screwed up to form normal relationships with anyone. Hell, maybe she was, too. Either way, she had a mission to complete—as the heavy ring hanging around her neck constantly reminded her. Her fingers grasped it, lingering once she’d finished getting dressed. It seemed heavier than before—as if the weight of Jack’s death, the discoveries she’d made about herself and her parents, whatever the hell was happening with Micah … it all hung around her neck like a yoke. The only way to be free would be to finish this. Maybe then, Jack’s death wouldn’t have been for nothing, and her past wouldn’t have to matter, and she and Micah would never have to see each other again.
Determination gripped her as she left the dressing room, her bag slung over one shoulder. Micah leaned against the stage, arms folded across his chest. Through the open front door, she could see Alice, a cloud of smoke trailing off into the night as she indulged in her hourly cigarette.
She breezed past Micah without even giving him a glance, trusting him to follow as usual. Sure enough, his heavy tread sounded off behind her, trailing her through the door.
Alice dropped her cigarette to the sidewalk and put it out with her booted foot. “Well, another uneventful night at the titty bar,” she grumbled. “And here I thought tagging along behind the Naphil would mean some action.”
“Trust me,” Addison replied. “I’m as annoyed as you are. You’d think they’d want to get it over with already. Or, better yet, try to come take me out all at once. It’s what I would do if I were part of a badass demon crew.”
“Think like a demon, not a human,” Micah said, more to Alice than her. “Making people suffer is their specialty, and if that means making you dangle a bit—”
“Right,” Alice said, sighing. “Meanwhile, it’s Thursday, and I’ve missed yet another episode of Scandal. I’m happy to babysit, but maybe next Thursday, Antoine can be on guard duty.”
Annoyed with them both, Addison sped up, putting Micah and Alice behind her.
“I never asked for either of you to be here,” she muttered. “I can look after myself.”
“Yeah, ’cause we both know how good you’ve been at that in the past,” Micah murmured.
She had stopped in her tracks and turned, dead set on giving him a piece of her mind, when a dark shadow pried itself away from a nearby alley and appeared behind Micah. It hovered on the tip of her tongue to warn them when the apparition took the form of a man and a familiar face stole the breath from her lungs. Her eyes widened and her throat clenched so tightly, she didn’t think she’d be able to swallow past the gigantic lump swelling in her throat.
Her knees buckled and her hands shook as she took a step back. Wiping her sweaty palms on the front of her jeans, she blinked, shook her head, and tried to tell herself she was seeing t
hings. Yet, here he stood in ripped Wranglers, a dirty plaid shirt, and faded cowboy boots, with a Marlboro hanging between his thin lips. His skin was reddish and weathered, the lines of age and a hard life marring his forehead and the corners of his eyes and mouth. He flicked some cigarette ash onto the sidewalk, then took another long draw, eyeing her in that way of his … a way that made her feel sixteen and helpless again.
“Buck,” she whispered. Then she shook her head. “But … you’re dead.”
Micah and Alice turned to face her stepfather, who approached them slowly. Shrugging, he inclined his head.
“I look dead to you, gal?”
She shivered at the sound of his voice. This couldn’t be real. Her stepfather was dead. She had literally cleaned his body parts up off the floor of their trailer. Yet, those were his cold, dead eyes boring into hers, and his raspy, smoke-roughened voice, just as she remembered it.
“No, but if you come any closer, you will be,” Micah growled, stepping between them and effectively blocking her view.
She cowered behind him, fighting for composure. It didn’t matter how much power she’d discovered within herself. No one could make her feel fear and revulsion like Buck.
Buck laughed, holding his hands up as if in surrender. “Whoa there, boy,” he drawled, teeth still clenched around the smoldering cigarette. “No need to get feisty. I just wanted to talk to her. I heard she’s workin’ at Temptations, and thought I’d catch her here. What are you, her boyfriend?”
“I’m the guy you don’t wanna mess with,” Micah replied. “Let’s just leave it at that. Now, what do you want with Addison?”
Buck tried to crane his neck to glance around Micah’s broad body, but Addison merely shrank even more behind him.
“I just wanted to be the one to tell you,” he said to her, ignoring Micah. “Us being family and all.”
“You’re no family of mine,” she snapped, finally finding her voice.
“I helped your mama raise you, which is more I can say for that no-good daddy of yours … whoever that is.”
