by May Dawson
“Already told you, slaying is cheaper.”
“I think you need both,” I told him, crinkling my nose at him.
“You don’t think you can heal me with just your magical…” his voice trailed off, but there was a faint mischievous quirk to his split lips.
“It’s a start,” I said. “But no. You need some significant work, Jacob Kerr. But it’s going to be worth living for in the end.”
I ducked low, pressing my lips to those bruised abs. “Now tell me where it hurts.”
I had done enough to make a difference, making up for the internal damage that beating had done to him, when the door opened.
Nimshi walked in, followed closely by Samael.
I crouched, gathering my legs beneath me even though I could already feel my knees trembling, and stood awkwardly. I couldn’t put myself between them and Jacob, bound by the limits of my shackles, but I leaned over him as much as I could. I watched them with what I hoped were cold and steady eyes.
Samael smiled, as if he knew I was trying to be brave, as if it were amusing. But Nimshi stared back at me, his eyes alarmed, and shook his head just faintly.
I stared back at him. If he really was the Fourth, then I bet it was killing him to hurt me. Even if he was demon-spawn.
I didn’t want a damn thing to do with Nimshi. But I would make him hurt me if it was going to hurt him. If it would buy time for Ryker and Levi to get here, and if it would give me the chance to save Jacob in the meantime.
“Come on,” I said to Nimshi, my voice mocking. “We’ve got a bet, Jacob and me. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Nimshi closed the distance between us. His glittering eyes met mine evenly. “Your mouth is moving with the brave words that you think you should say, but deep down, you know better, sweetheart.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I told him.
“Give it time,” he promised me.
He turned on his heel, stepping back with his usual showman’s flair, and we were once again beside the burning wreckage of the Jetta. Flames crackled up, sparks flying, lighting up the dark night like a bonfire.
Two EMTs carried my sister’s body on a gurney towards the ambulance. A third, a big hulk of a man—oh my god, it was Burly—helped them load her onto the ambulance. And inside, I glimpsed Dr. Parrish, leaning over her, putting a mask over her face.
“How do you know what happened that night?” I asked softly.
Samael was behind him, so he couldn’t see Nimshi’s eyes steady on my face, or the quick, sly movement as Nimshi pressed a finger over his lips.
He knew.
He had to betray us to Samael sooner or later. I sent up a silent prayer—did God listen to the prayers of a Lilith?—that Ryker and Levi would reach us soon. And that when they did, they would be able to overpower two demons and their human minions.
“Enough of your mind games!” Samael exploded. “They haven’t worked yet. Bleed her out.”
“Why are you telling me what to do?” Nimshi asked, his voice icy. “You half-killed this one. Didn’t break him.”
“He will,” Samael promised. “He’ll welcome the dark lord soon.”
“The dark lord,” Jacob said, his lips cracking open in the faintest smile, even though he was prostrate on the floor. “You all have such a flair for the dramatic.”
Nimshi stepped forward as if he was going to kick him, and I saw Jacob, despite himself, curl up into a tighter ball. But Nimshi hesitated, looking to me.
Samael strode forward, raising his foot high, and stomped on Jacob with all his considerable bulk.
“Leave him alone!” I shouted as Samael raised his foot again.
Samael, quick as a wink, stepped across Jacob. He wrapped his hand around my throat.
I could feel his two fingers pinning my windpipe, his thumb and first finger distinctly, and that was before he squeezed. He lifted me off my feet before I even realized I couldn’t breathe—I couldn’t even gasp for air—and his eyes on mine were cruel and triumphant.
His light eyes went wide with recognition.
“Who is this, Nimshi?” he asked without looking behind him. “I know this girl.”
“Just another Hunter,” Nimshi said.
“No,” Samael said with deadly certainty.
Nimshi stepped to the door, which he swung open. “You’ve got to leave her to me, uncle. You don’t know how to really hurt these humans.”
“No. You’re trying to avoid hurting her, no matter what you say. Why is she so important to you?” Samael asked, studying my face carefully.
My lungs ached and strained, but I couldn’t even gag. The edges of my vision went black. Samael’s curious face was all I could see.
Samael drew a startled breath. “I know this one. Boy, you have Lilith and you didn’t even know—”
He broke off suddenly. I felt his grip release. I gagged before I hit the ground. My knees couldn’t bear me up and I fell heavily.
Through the haze, I saw Nimshi hit him again with a shovel. Blood splattered across all three of us. Jacob was up, on his feet, staggering for the door that Nimshi had left open.
Samael crawled across the floor on his elbows, but Nimshi hit him again, in the head, and his skull cracked open. He fell face first into the slick tile, his arms moving futilely through his own blood, as if he were swimming in it.
I ran after Jacob.
There was a guard coming around the edge of the doorway, a human. Jacob grabbed him and fell heavily against the wall with him. Where Jacob normally would have snapped his neck easily, instead the two of them grappled, pushing each other back and forth across the hallway, slamming into the walls.
Another guard turned the corner at the other end of the hall. I headed towards him, ready for a fight, but Nimshi was already stepping between the guard and me. For a second, I saw how his shirt and face were splattered with blood, and then he turned away from me towards the guard.
“Hey there!” he called to the guard, his voice chipper, throwing him off just enough that the guard paused with his hand on his gun.
The guard began to ask a question. Nimshi closed the distance between them, chattering about something that didn’t quite make sense, and buried a knife hilt-deep in the man’s side. He caught him by the shoulders with one hand, still holding the knife in, until the man fell to his knees. He bent with him, pulling the knife out, and turned back to me.
“There are two more human witnesses,” he said. “I’ll take care of them. No one can know who you are.”
“And who the hell are you?” I asked.
He stared back at me. “Nimshi, remember? Did Samael addle your brain?”
“You’re half human.”
“And already dead if we don’t run for it.” But he still stood there staring at me, his eyes perplexed. Blood dripped from the blade of his knife and fell in small droplets to the ground. He cocked his head as if he couldn’t make sense of me.
“What are you?” he asked. “Is the Lilith just… magnetic?”
Jacob dropped the man at the end of the hall that he’d just killed. He turned back towards us, his face grim. But even so, he snorted at the thought of me being magnetic.
Nice to see he was still a dickhead. I would hate for him to have been changed forever by the demon’s case.
Maybe that anti-love spell had finally taken effect.
“I don’t know,” I said tartly. “Maybe you found a bit of your soul after all.”
“My soul’s in a lockbox,” he said, without a trace of irony.
“Well, if you find it one day, look me up.” I said. I wasn’t about to explain to him that we were destined to be together. Or that he’d just tortured his own brother half to death. I wasn’t bringing the demon with me. I wasn’t claiming him for my harem.
Jacob looked over my head at Nimshi as if he wanted to kill him, but he merely rested a hand on my lower back, possessive and protective.
“Get us out of here,” Jacob said, his voice gruff.
27
Nimshi went ahead of us to kill the last two guards.
“Stay close,” Jacob muttered to me.
“As if there’s a chance I wouldn’t,” I said.
“I don’t trust him.”
“Me either.”
He glanced down at me, his eyes troubled. “Do you really think he could be the Fourth?”
“I hope not.” But I thought of his touch on my skin trailing icy sparks, and the way he’d gone soft—for a demon, anyway—around me. It seemed like he’d tried to protect us in his own way.
When he wasn’t torturing me with my sister’s death. So that was going to be a pretty hard thing to overcome.
“Whatever,” I said flatly. “We can master the Far. You, me, Ryker, Levi. It’s time to get serious.”
“I’ve been serious the whole time.”
Nimshi reached a pair of doors ahead of us just as they flew open. Two human guards plowed in. Nimshi stepped into the one on the right, burying his knife in his gut, and took the guard’s gun from his hand in one smooth move. He extended his arm and shot the other guard before he could react. The hall filled with the echo and with the smell of Sulphur.
Jacob studied him dispassionately. “I guess I could believe he’s my half-brother.”
“Because he’s good at killing?” I shook my head. “Hell of a legacy, Kerr.”
“We don’t get to pick our families, Landon.” He rested his hand on my shoulder, swaggering casually, like we were going to get ice cream. “Just like we don’t get to pick our lovers.”
“We’re supposed to be un-spelled.”
He nodded. “You feel anything now?”
“Nah,” I lied through my teeth. “I mean, I do feel like I’d prefer not to see you die. Or be tortured. That got old.”
“Really? Even though I was such a jerk to you?”
“Burning flesh smells terrible.” I leaned into his side, despite myself. “You feel anything?”
He shook his head. My heart sunk.
Then he said, “Let’s talk about it when we’re one-hundred-percent sure we’re not going to die. It’s distracting.”
“I’m distracting to you?”
“I said it’s distracting.”
Nimshi stepped back from the doors the guards had come through, which had swung shut again while he fought them, and went to the keypad. He keyed in his code and looked at the doors expectantly.
Nothing happened.
He keyed it in again, with a bit more of a sense of urgency.
“Damn it,” he muttered. “Samael shouldn’t have gotten zapped back that fast.”
The doors flew open again. I stepped forward and to one side, pressing myself against the wall, my fists up and ready for a fight.
But it was Ryker and Levi, swords held high, ready for a fight.
“Stop!” I shouted at Nimshi as he knelt and drew his knife from a guard’s body in one smooth gesture, and as Ryker rounded on him with the sword. “No killing. But someone, please hold the damn door.”
Four sets of eyes swiveled to me.
Nimshi, reluctantly, dropped the knife and raised his hands.
Levi, the man who actually listened to me, took a step back and put his heel in the door. He glanced around for something to prop the door open with, and then leaned over and dragged a guard’s body forward to do just that.
“We’re all friends here,” I said. “More or less.”
Maybe not friends. They were brothers. They were my destiny.
But that didn’t make us all friends.
Ryker pointed the sword at Nimshi. “Who the hell is this? Smells like a demon.”
“I do not smell like a demon,” Nimshi said. He indicated the haze of air in the hall still from the gun discharge. “That’s from a nine-millimeter, idiot.”
For once in his life, it was Jacob who held out a placating hand. “He’s half-demon, but he did help us get loose. So let’s not kill him. Yet.”
“Let’s get out of here.” Levi stepped forward, his gaze intent on me. “You okay?”
Levi’s voice was unusually rough, as if he were mad at me too.
“Fine,” I said.
I’d already paid dearly for my sins, so maybe the boys could skip the part where they were angry that Jacob and I had wandered off and then been kidnapped.
I headed for the door. The four of them closed in around me automatically, making a formation with Nimshi taking the lead. Jacob started to fall in behind, and then Levi held back, waving him ahead. Levi’s gaze was appraising, as if he knew Jacob was hurt, and Jacob reluctantly took his spot on the right. Levi fell in behind me.
“You’re mad,” I said to Ryker, who was on my left.
He twisted his body away from me, but that might have just been because he was right-handed. He rotated his sword in his hand, holding it high, his body twisted so that he held the sword on the outside of our tight little square. We moved together up down a brightly lit hallway, up a set of fire stairs and emerged into the dimly lit lobby of an apartment building.
“Seriously?” I demanded, looking around at the dirt-tracked green and red carpet and the row of shiny metal mailboxes. “We were being held hostage here? And no one heard us screaming?”
“The place’s warded,” Nimshi said. “And everyone who lives here is… supernatural. No one would’ve called 9-1-1 for you anyway.”
“Have to remember the address,” Levi said bleakly.
“You might want to forget it.” Nimshi glanced nervously towards the elevators. “Let’s move.”
“Thank for the tour,” Ryker said. “But I think this is where we say goodbye.”
“No,” I said. “We can take him with us. At least get him clear of D.C.”
“I’m touched,” Nimshi said.
“Don’t be,” I said. “I just don’t want to see you die. At anyone else’s hands.”
Ryker glanced at me, his eyes full of steady anger, even as we crossed the carpet quickly for the double glass doors. “You’re still not in charge here, Firestarter.”
I popped my eyes at him—maybe don’t give away my supernatural powers in front of our maybe-enemy—but Nimshi was still moving quickly ahead of us, opening the glass doors.
We all piled out on the stone steps in front of the apartment building. The night was warm, the air like a blast of welcome heat after the chill of the demon’s case. I shivered with the wash of warmth over my body. I felt like I’d been cold for days, and the cold had settled in, a deep ache in my bones.
Levi handed his sword to Jacob and quickly shucked off his jacket. He threw it over my shoulders. “You ever dressed, girl?”
“I still don’t understand why Jacob got to keep his t-shirt,” I said lightly.
There was a flicker of something on Jacob’s face. Ryker said, “Well, no one wants to look at him.”
“Gross,” I said. The idea of demons looking at my body with lust made me want to gag. I flashed back to how Nimshi had tried to kiss me on the rooftop. Maybe I should leave him here to die after all.
“This way,” Ryker said, taking the lead now, and the five of us ran down the street.
My bare feet ached on the rough cement. We hadn’t gone more than half a block, a quick-moving block of ever-changing shadows of trees and blocky buildings, before I felt Levi behind me, swooping me up. He held me cradled against his chest, and I threw my arms around his neck. He sprinted faster with me in his arms than I could have run on bare feet, but I hated to be helpless.
“Here,” Ryker said, turning onto a side street.
There was a Land Rover—well, that was new—with a bright yellow citation tucked under the windshield wiper. Ryker hit a key fob in his pocket, and the doors unlocked. We all piled in.
“Good thing you weren’t towed,” I said.
Ryker started the car up. He twisted in his seat to back out, his eyes briefly meeting mine as his muscular arm went across the passenger seat back. I couldn’t read those deep blue ey
es this time.
My stomach fell. Right. We’d been fighting.
It felt like it had been years ago. But it might not feel that way for him.
He put the car into drive and burned down the street.
“What day is it?” I asked.
“Tuesday,” he said briefly.
An icy chill settled over the car. Jacob had claimed the passenger seat, leaving me sandwiched between Levi’s broad shoulder and Nimshi.
The half-demon definitely didn’t smell like Sulphur. He smelled like cedar and fresh-peeled oranges and cloves. And despite all my better sense, I realized that while I’d been noticing the way he smelled, my heart had sped up.
I leaned towards Levi, as much as I could since his broad shoulders took up more than his fair share of space in the car. I rested my head against his flannel-covered shoulder. A little bit of Levi’s calm flowed into me, and I moved my hand to his leg, brushing my thumb against his. His fingers knit around mine automatically.
I looked up at him and smiled.
“I’m still mad at you,” he mouthed.
I frowned back at him. Levi was not supposed to get mad at me. Levi was supposed to be the one who I always liked and who always liked me back. Things with Ryker could be all sarcasm and sparks.
I didn’t know what my relationship with Jacob was going to be like now. We knew all about each other, and we knew all about each other’s hell. We’d seen each other at our worst. But we might be out of love, magically speaking.
Levi squeezed my hand anyway. Right. He might be mad, but it wasn’t the end of the world; he was still going to be my constant. I felt right now like I’d be lost without Levi, or Ryker, or Jacob. Like the world would be lonely if I had to choose just one.
The guy on my right, though? I wouldn’t mind opening his car door and kicking him out. Literally.
As if Nimshi knew what I was thinking, he glanced over at me. But instead of seeming concerned for his well-being, he asked, “What did you do?”
“What did you do?” I asked. “I’m only in trouble because you kidnapped me.”
“Technically,” Nimshi said, “Turner kidnapped Jacob. I was merely doing my job.”
