by Hall, Marie
But as if sensing what was a second away from happening, Asher rushed me to the bathroom just in time, holding my hair back as I upchucked green slime. It wasn’t pretty and I just wanted him to go. I kept swatting at his arm pitifully, but he insisted on staying.
By the time I was through, I was ingloriously hugging the porcelain and wishing I’d died instead.
“It’s okay, little demon,” Asher crooned, rubbing my back. “Just get it out.”
“Go away,” I moaned, hating how understanding and nice he was being. Why couldn’t he grasp the concept of personal space?
“You heard the lady,” Luc drawled, and I only just now realized he was blocking the door, his big arms crossed over his broad chest as he glared daggers at my priest.
“Ugh.” I turned my face aside as my stomach clamped down tight. “Both of you. Don’t watch this.” That was all I had time to say before another powerful surge of glop expelled from my body.
Tears crashed out the corners of my eyes as my entire body rebelled against me. I couldn’t remember feeling this bad, ever.
“She isn’t healing,” Asher growled in frustration. “Why isn’t she healing?”
I doubted he was asking me.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t fucking do this, Priest!” Luc snarled, his bulky body shoulder-bumping Asher hard enough to make him stumble back.
A vicious snarl ripped from my priest, and I couldn’t believe these assholes were doing this while I was practically dying in front of them. The humiliation and anger all blended and I found just enough strength to snap at them. “Get the hell out of my house, both of you, now!”
But my threat lost something when once again I was kissing the porcelain throne.
At least they actually listened. Both of them disappeared and I was free to throw up in peace.
I had no idea how long I was in there, but it seemed like my entire long life flashed in front of my eyes before I was done.
Pathetically weak and smelling of vile things, I dragged myself into the shower, bringing the toothpaste and toothbrush with me.
I screamed when the first drop of hot water washed over me, only just now noticing that Asher was right. I wasn’t healing at all. My wrist was useless, I had gouges (literally hunks of flesh) gone, exposing the red muscle beneath.
Remembering the zombie that’d made a snack of my ankle, I looked, and you’d think after everything else I’d just seen that a small, crescent-shaped bite wouldn’t be the tipping point. But it was. Frustrated, angry, confused, and scared, I tipped my head back and howled from the depths of my very soul.
My door was slammed open and the curtains torn off. Luc was there and the demon who didn’t care was wrapping me up in his arms, trying so hard not to cause me more pain. But there wasn’t a spot on me that wasn’t hurting.
For the longest time he didn’t say anything, and everything hurt so bad all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and let the blessed darkness take me. It would be nothing to pass out now. I could literally will myself down Alice’s rabbit hole if I wanted, I was that much of a mess.
But I’d always been weak for any shred of kindness he’d shown me.
Holding on to his head, I rubbed his hair and hummed under my breath, giving him whatever strength I had left in me. I could feel the trembles of his muscles jumping in his back like Mexican beans. He didn’t say anything, just buried his face in my neck and let me hold him, let himself become vulnerable for just a moment, and that more than anything lent me strength.
“Luc, what happened tonight?” I whispered after several silent minutes.
This time when he pulled back, I noticed that while he wasn’t as savaged as I was, he was covered in scrapes and cuts. But unlike mine, his were actively healing. I saw the skin sealing, saw the wounds closing up like some invisible Band-Aid had been stretched across them, turning the angry red flesh sun-kissed and golden once more.
Grabbing my palm, he splayed it open, playing with the webbing between each digit, eyes distracted and thoughtful.
“You know about as much as I do,” he finally said, turning frosty blue eyes my way. His demon was fully under control and I couldn’t help but breathe a relieved sigh.
“Well.” I chuckled weakly, skin tingling when he planted my palm against his heartbeat. “We’re screwed, because I don’t know crap.”
Squeezing his eyes shut as if reliving some horror, he moaned. “I have never in my life witnessed a zombie hive do what they did tonight.” Fingers feathering my hair behind my ear, he grabbed the back of my neck until our eyes locked. “They killed Lynx tonight.”
I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, biting down on it hard. Lynx was a Wrath demon. She’d had a violent sense of justice, right and wrong, black and white. Unyielding and often unemotional, she saw the world with eyes that judged worthy or unworthy and felt no qualms about squashing out the darkness.
But regardless of her not always having been the easiest Nephilim to get along with, I’d liked the iron butterfly, named so because of how dichotomous her appearance versus her personality really was.
Lynx had often appeared fragile and delicate. She’d been a slip of a girl with long black hair and ivory-pale skin. Coming only to my chest, she’d been the shortest of us and was often disregarded by those we hunted down as not quite demon enough to be worth their time.
But she’d fought like a Valkyrie in battle.
I sniffed. “Our numbers are dropping like flies. Not like we have many to lose.” Our carnival was run by thirty-one Neph. Thirty now, I guess. A tall order for such a few.
Losing one was bad enough, but losing two in so many weeks was turning into a cluster of the highest order. You have to realize that Nephilim are much tougher than we might appear. Kemen had been over a thousand years old when he’d died, Lynx close to eight hundred. We weren’t young bucks fresh out of diapers who didn’t have a clue how to handle the darkness around us.
Luc stood then, his hands dropping to his zipper as he kicked off his expensive Italian loafers.
“What are you doing?” I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I didn’t want sex. I felt like shit and yeah, sex might make it all better. But Lust and I weren’t exactly chummy at the moment; I wanted nothing to do with her. That cowardly bitch had now twice abandoned me when I could have used her strength in battle.
Apparently Lust was more the make love, not war type.
Luc was as nude as the day he’d been born when he crawled into the tub with me, and I might have fought harder if I hadn’t wanted friendly arms around me so badly.
Maneuvering in the stupidly small tub until I was on his lap, he wrapped me up and rested his head against my chest.
And as that hot water soaked through me, I closed my eyes and wondered if he realized that even a year ago if he’d done this I would have belonged heart and soul to him only.
Running my fingers through his wet hair, I held as tightly to him as he held me. We didn’t say sorry for how things had gone down for us lately. That just wasn’t what we did. Well, it wasn’t what he did anyway.
The beat of his heart against mine, the way his breath shuddered in and out of him, this was Luc speaking as loudly as he ever would. I closed my eyes and was close to drifting off again when he finally said, “The priest and I killed the final surge of them—they’re all gone.”
“And the people?”
“Bubba wiped their memories. Most of them were injured, but we couldn’t fix that.” He pushed a wet strand of hair away from the corner of my mouth, his lips tight. “I made it right this time, Dora.”
I knew he was referencing the slaughter he’d committed in South Dakota after he’d thought me dead, a topic we had to at some point discuss.
I nodded.
“Kane and Bubba are burning the corpses.”
“You sure there aren’t any more?” I shuddered, wondering if the memory of the walking dead would ever truly leave me or become just another nightmare in the chapter of my l
ife.
He nodded. “I may not like that priest of yours, but he’s deadly. I smelled no more of them around. Whether the queen sent them or the Order, this wasn’t meant to be anything other than a warning.”
I laughed. “Meanwhile, I look like maggot food and Lynx is dead. Why is the Order doing this to us?” Because I was almost one hundred percent positive that even if the queen was in on this, it wasn’t her doing only. The Order wanted me dead, the question was why? What was so damn valuable about one lust Nephilim?
Shaking his head, he cradled my own and it was such a tender gesture that I couldn’t help but respond. Closing my eyes, I took deep meditative breaths.
What we were doing wasn’t sex, but his touch was making my rioting insides at least feel halfway normal again. Sighing, I pressed my cheek to his shoulder, inhaling the crisp scent of absinthe and Luc, a smell unique only to him.
“A zombie tore my mark off,” I whispered, the second my missing mark came to mind. I didn’t say it to startle him or shock him, but I must have.
Pushing me back, he stared at my face with startled eyes. “What? Let me see.”
It took the disentangling of limbs to free my leg and show him.
His fingers were like moth’s wings as he brushed tenderly along the tear mark.
“Luc.” I stilled his hand because my body was beginning to tingle in response and regardless of how I felt for Luc, I’d made Asher a vow. “The zombie seem determined. Not like the rest of the killers around us. It took my leg and ripped, then it ran off.”
“What the hell is going on here, Dora?” His frustration mirrored my own and I shrugged helplessly.
“God, I wish I knew. I know the Order has their hands deep in this shit, but why? It’s killing me that I can’t figure it out!”
Feeling fatigued again, I pressed my hand to my forehead. “I need to clean up and get back to bed. I feel like crap.”
“Dora?” His voice was a whisper, a question. I knew immediately what he was asking and I shook my head.
“Not tonight.”
His jaw clamped shut, but he didn’t argue. Helping me to stand, he turned me directly into the spray and gently—dare I even think it... reverently... rubbed soap all over me. Cleaning me off.
I melted into his touch, wishing so many things were different, that we hadn’t gone beyond the point of fixing it, but we had. My heart, my soul, yearned for Asher.
Turning off the nozzle, he scooped me up and I knew I should walk. It would be painful, but I could. I just didn’t want to. I wanted to revel in his kindness, in the all-too-brief moments still left to our dying relationship.
Laying me on the bed, he pulled the covers up over me, tucking them beneath my chin like I was a child. “I’m going to go make sure Bubba and Kane are good. I’ll tell Vyxen to swing by.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “You don’t have to. Anyone but her.”
“Dora, I trust her.”
And those words, the way his eyes stared at me so stoically and intensely, told me everything I needed to know. Luc and Vyxen were seeing each other. Maybe not seriously, it was probably just a casual affair, but it was a red-hot poker to my heart.
I chuckled and shrugged, because I knew I’d be a hypocrite if I cast stones about it. “Fine. Send her over, but tell her to stay the hell out of my bedroom.”
Nodding, he turned and walked into the bathroom, got dressed, and was just ready to trace out when I asked him the one question that’d been bothering me since he showed up in my room.
“Luc, where did Asher go?”
“Grace’s.” He cleared his throat, looked down at the carpet and then back at me with ice in his eyes. “Said he’d be back tonight.”
The chills returned the moment he left, and with a vengeance too. Teeth chattering so hard I thought I might actually turn into a human Popsicle, I snatched up Kemen’s oversized sweater and attempted to put it on.
Only having one good hand was bad enough, trying to actually shove that mangled-up thing through a sleeve just about had me passing out. Gasping for breath on the pillow, I stared at the ceiling, feeling weak and pathetic.
Sex would speed up the process, but even without it, I should be healed already. Not only was I not healed, the wounds were raw and wet looking and seemed worse by the minute.
Heart racing like a rabbit on crack, I grabbed my chest as dark spots danced in and out of my vision.
I had no underwear on, no socks on my completely frozen feet, and a sweater three times too large for me only halfway on. I’d definitely looked better. But already the magic of Kemen’s warm scent of patchouli and dreams was soothing my frazzled nerves.
“Damn zombies,” I hissed, grumpy at this forced confinement. The more alone I was, the more my mind kept racing.
Zombies, creatures that had pretty much always taken a hard-line stance on not ruffling feathers, had descended on our carnival in a murderous stampede, running roughshod not only over humans but also the Neph.
I’d had no idea they were as powerful as they were either. That they could kill one of us. I shuddered, squeezing my eyes shut. It wasn’t easy to kill a Neph; it required an extreme amount of violence and force because you had to twist our heads off, then stab us through the heart. Demons were the toughest SOBs on the block, but tonight, I hadn’t felt so tough.
The moment those teeth had chowed down on me, it’d felt like not only were they sucking out my life’s blood but my strength right along with it. I’ve been disemboweled, shot up, stabbed (through the heart, no less), lit on fire (that was really not fun, the scent of burnt hair was probably worse than the rest of it), hung—hell, I’ve even been racked. And nothing, nothing had felt like this.
I was covered in open wounds that refused to heal, my blood felt like flowing lava in my veins, and I couldn’t get warm enough.
I don’t mind dying; I fully expect someday it’ll happen to me. What I don’t want to do though is suffer through it.
Granted, only a little was truly known of zombies. They were such a secretive bunch, but something about this whole damn night just wasn’t making sense. What would cause a zombie hive to suddenly go active the way there were?
And what the hell had been up with the ones in the carnival tonight? They’d looked like mangled chew toys. The few zombies I’d ever seen had been much better preserved than that. These guys were straight out of a horror movie, splattered in gore and piss and reeking of all sorts of nasty.
I shifted in the bed and shuddered when the open wound on my ankle rubbed the sheet. Why had that zombie taken my mark?
All Neph were born with the mark of our heritage, a shredded moth’s wing. We didn’t all have it in the same place; mine had been on my ankle.
Once, I’d hated that birthmark. Hated that it marked me as an abomination against humanity. But through the ages I’d learned that that marking was as much a part of me as Lust was. That moth’s wing had been my constant reminder to be more than what I’d been born to be, to try to reach for better. When my demon side would rage, I’d look at that thing to remind me that there was more to me than rage and hate and evil.
Now it was gone and I couldn’t even begin to fathom why. That zombie hadn’t eaten it. It’d taken its bauble and run.
“Why?” I growled.
But thinking about this shit was making my head ache. My butt was going to sleep and my back was twinging. But there was no way I’d be rolling over. The constant aching throb in my wrist had me wishing narcotics worked on my kind.
I’d dump a pound of crack down my throat right now if it would work... anything so I wouldn’t have to feel this.
Kemen would tell me to breathe. That the only way to escape the pain was to accept it, not fight it, to breathe through it and forget it.
That demon had been too smart for his own good.
Taking two deep breaths, I thought about Asher and couldn’t keep from chuckling even though it made my sides ache. That man was always coming to my damn rescue; i
t was actually beginning to get really annoying. And I would be so much more ticked off about it if he hadn’t looked like some delicious, swoon-worthy god bearing down on the undead the way he had.
I toyed with the loose threads in Kemen’s quilt. The man had been terrible at home maintenance, preferring sleep over home improvements any day.
“Oh, Kem.” I sighed, wishing my greasy-haired Jack Sparrow was back. “I miss you so much.”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Vyxen’s green eyes swirled with thinly veiled hostility. Her stench of sulfur permeated the room when she traced in. Hand making the universal symbol of my being a nag, she yanked a chair over to the bed and gave me sneer. “You done feeling sorry for yourself t? Not like you’re the only one to get dinged up, ever.”
Dressed in neon-green tights, wearing a cotton-candy-blue wig, and sporting her perpetual cat ears, the Visual Kai knew how to make an entrance. She’d clearly had a chance to shower and change before coming here.
God, I hated her.
I squeezed my eyes shut, totally being dramatic about it as I tossed my good hand over my eyes. “Anyone ever tell you that green and yellow clash? ’Cause they totally do. Take that acid-trip shirt off before I go blind.”
I laughed when her face turned a bright shade of red.
“What-the-fuck-ever.” She stared at her hot-pink, round-tipped nails. “Oh Kemen, oh Kemen, come save me. You’re so pathetic.”
I hated Luc. And clearly he hated me. Why he would stick his cock into this black hole of gross was a great mystery to me.
“Yeah, you can go now. Thanks. Tell Luc I don’t need a babysitter.” I rolled my head to the side, biting down on the inside of my cheek so as not to let her glimpse my grimace. Hot tears gathered in the corners of my eyes.
Memo to me: stop moving.
She laughed and the sound was as evil and nasty as she was. “You know the more you say you don’t want me here, the more I wanna stay, right?”
Vyxen was an Envy demon. Living in a constant state of perpetual jealousy had to be a real bitch, and if she were anyone else, I might have cared. Her? I just hoped she suffered. A lot.
