by Misty Dietz
“What part of incompatibility don’t you understand? And let’s not forget about the archdemon knocking at my door. How could you ever think it’s a good time to try to have a baby?” She pushed his hands from her shoulders and slipped past him as he stood frozen by an uncharacteristic despair. “We’re done here,” she said, and he felt the finality of it like an open air pyre cremating the remains of their love.
But these icy winds wouldn’t carry his soul to Valhalla.
Kat yanked open the door, and Jade stood in the hallway, her arm raised to knock.
“What now?” Kat snapped.
Jade’s arm lowered slowly as her gaze flicked over Kat’s shoulder to Ari. “We’ve got trouble.”
Chapter 5
Thank God. Something else to focus on besides making babies with Ari. Katherine dashed at her eyes as she pushed past Jade toward the hallway that led from her private staircase to the main lounge. Jade’s boots clicked down the hall behind her.
“Kai was returning from lunch when two possessed females pounced on him outside in front of the club. He could have handled one with his crucifix, but the second one came at him from behind, saying she had a message from Leviathan.”
“I’m assuming he’s all right since you’re not organizing armaments for World War III,” Katherine said, reaching the main room’s twenty-foot-long bar. Konani and a couple of the other bartenders were busy organizing the liquor displays. Ari had already streamed there, his charm casting its usual spell on her people. He winked at her when she approached the black marble-topped bar, but the twinkle was gone from his gaze. She frowned, staring at him a moment longer than necessary after he turned away. Something was missing in his demeanor that obviously only she could sense.
“Stark was making a pass on the second story terrace and saw it all go down.” Jade’s gaze settled intimately, but briefly, on Katherine’s head of security. “Between the two of them, they got both possessions contained in the Devil’s Trap in the employee lounge.”
Katherine looked back and forth between Jade and Stark a couple more times, but neither glanced at the other again. “What was Leviathan’s message?”
“That she looks forward to working with you. What the hell was that supposed to mean?”
It meant that Leviathan knew how well she’d gotten under her skin. Knew they shared a lot of the same pain. Daddy issues, Jade had called it. Katherine’s stomach tumbled unpleasantly. “She’s quite mad, of course. She’s finally letting loose the dogs of war—or in this case, the demons of war. Isolated terror attacks orchestrated to begin unraveling our nerves before the real battle begins.” According to Jinx Tanaka, another partner in the Unholy Inc network, it was a classic archdemon tactic she’d seen played out in her Tokyo club AER more than once. Katherine pulled a stool out and sat down. “Are there any other irregularities at the moment?”
“When I was restocking the poolside bar, a demon was staring down at me from one of the hotel balconies next door,” Konani volunteered.
Katherine’s heart began to pound. “You’re certain?”
Konani nodded. “He had black eyes with no color in the irises.”
Damn. Another person whose soul had lost the battle. Konani’s announcement was bad news because it meant Kat’s recent ward-reversal wasn’t working. Usually Guardians welcomed possessions and demons into their clubs, setting wards to trap the demons inside so the evil could be dealt with—either by exorcism or extermination. But since Leviathan’s arrival in Waikiki, Kat had reversed her normal wards in order to repel possessions and demons.
She’d originally decided to open a club in the Unholy Inc network because she liked the idea of protecting humanity on her own terms, in her own place. Not traveling all over the world like free-agent Guardians like Ari and Raj.
Nightclubs were the perfect venues for luring the possessed—humans whose souls hadn’t lost the fight yet and still retained their eye color. Alcohol dropped peoples’ inhibitions, and alcohol was all over Waikiki Beach. The possessed who wandered into AQUA, or were brought in by Katherine’s small Waikiki street team of informed humans, were usually healed by her before last call.
If a black-eyed demon had just managed to push through her reverse-ward to get within two blocks of the club, it meant one of three things: the demon on the balcony next door was being powered up by a higher order demon; it was a higher order demon in disguise; or, her reverse wards—and probably her regular wards, too—were failing.
Higher order demons meant rephaim, nephilim, succubus, or incubus. All scenarios indicated five-alarm trouble.
And then of course, there was Leviathan, Satan’s offspring via a succubus. An archdemon had powers second only to Satan himself, though the Dark One was still trapped in the cage the Archangel Michael had put him in after the Fallen Angel Rebellion.
Katherine wiped damp palms on her dress. Don’t panic and don’t exaggerate a problem until it’s warranted. She could and would deal with Leviathan’s tricks and aggressions. Maybe the demon next door who breached her reverse-ward was an astral projection. Just last month, Raj had tracked a demon in South Africa for two weeks before realizing it was a setup. Apparently some higher order demons used astral projection to trick a hunting Guardian, so their true forms could pillage and destroy an entire city, while the Guardian was occupied with the false image in another location.
Katherine was ill, yes, but surely she wasn’t so feeble that her wards had failed in such an epic way. She rubbed her temples, turning to where Ari leaned his hip against the bar. His eyes were calm, but alert and almost clinical. Fully focused on her, but bereft of their usual warmth. She’d never been on the receiving end of that look. Like she was a stranger, and he was sizing her up.
She didn’t like that look one damn bit.
She wasn’t some stranger. She’d lived with him. Had battled for and healed souls beside him. He’d been in her mind and in her body—and she in his. Her heart beat on a slow throb as her gaze mapped a course she’d once loved traveling. Chiseled jaw, sinful lips, tight ass, powerful arms, and those baby-I-got-you shoulders that did her in every single time.
One side of his lips tilted up lazily as though he could read her mind.
Stay out of my head, Grimm, she deliberately pushed at him.
Settle down, kitten. You’ve got your walls up so high I can’t hear the exact words unless you harpoon them at me like you just did. But I can sense the tone. And I’d be delighted if you keep that naughty train rolling.
Put your adolescent hormones away. You’re embarrassing yourself, she replied, but heat sang through her body at the outrageous images that poured into her mind.
Ari rapidly straightened and vaulted over the bar like an Olympic gymnast on steroids. “High-five, I’m all-in for woman on top.”
Katherine tried to calm her thundering pulse as she stared pointedly at his raised hand, then up into his burning blue eyes, feeling the gazes of her staff locked on her and her wicked Viking. Ari’s heat felt so much better than that Godawful chill that had emanated from him moments ago. “Some people need a high five in the face with a chair.” He laughed in that hedonistic, full-bodied way that made her knees weak. How could someone be so disgustingly jolly all the time? “You really need to start taking some things personally,” she snapped.
“If you chose to share the explicit thoughts you had just now, I’d be more than happy to take it personally.”
Venom and veal. The man’s confidence knew no bounds.
The male bartenders snickered, but pivoted to straighten their expensive top-shelf bottles the second they met her you’re-on-borrowed-time glare.
Ari smirked. “Is it sexy in here, or is it just me?”
The laughter in the room rankled. Even crabby Stark hid a chuckle in a cough she heard clear across the dance floor. Jade was the worst offender, though. Tears of mirth rolled down her cheeks by the time she got herself under control.
Katherine rubbed her temples. “I hat
e all of you. Now, someone had better start telling me about the human witnesses who observed the two possessions whaling on Kai. Any mind wiping needed?”
Jade wiped her eyes, smudging her smoky black eyeliner. “It happened by the benches next to the trees out front. A few tourists had their cameras out, gigglin’ and promising to come back tonight when we open. They thought it was an exhibition to drum up more business for the club.”
Thank heavens. Katherine briefly closed her eyes and rolled her shoulders back. She despised going in search of humans who’d witnessed something they were never supposed to see. Mind wiping had never been one of her strengths. If you weren’t careful in singling out the nightmare episode, you could accidentally erase something important, a memory that could never be replaced.
Stark laid his towel on the bar. “You want me to contact Spencer to see if he can get his tech guys to watch out for any strange Waikiki Beach YouTube videos that show up?” Spencer Jameson was another Unholy Inc partner whose San Francisco club IGNIS was a Guardian intelligence-gathering hub.
“Yes, that’s a good idea. Thank you, Stark.” He nodded at Katherine and headed to the office on the main level. When a loud cry ripped through the air, he broke into a run. Katherine and the others followed, but Ari beat them there.
The two possessed females, contained in the Devil’s Trap in the storage room, had broken free of their rope bindings. Now there was blood and chunks of hair on the floor where they rolled around, unable to resist the malevolent wills attempting to take over their human souls.
Ari stepped into the circle and pulled the wild brunette off the blonde as Stark and Kaikoa sprayed the blonde with holy water to immobilize her. The brunette snarled and writhed in Ari’s iron grip, but he held her fast against his large body, speaking ancient words of the exorcism rite in her ear. The evil inside the woman made her scream and convulse as though in unspeakable agony.
Katherine shuddered. It was so rare that she was on the outside, watching someone else perform an exorcism. She wasn’t sure what to do. When she was the one absorbing the evil, the one scrubbing a human soul, she didn’t think about what was actually happening. She acted on the innate knowledge Purifiers had been given to complete the steps of the ritual.
She’d watched Ari do this hundreds of times, but his process was so different than hers. Whereas she placed her hands on the possessed’s forehead or chest, he held the person tight to his frame. It was a testament to their differences. He was such a physical man, always relating to the world with his whole body.
It fascinated her. What would it be like to be so literally, physically, in touch with life? She had no idea. She had trouble even letting someone shake her hand, much less give her a hug.
“Boss, a little help with this one!” Konani yelled. “I don’t want to damage her skin too much with all this holy water!”
“No, Kat, you’re still too weak,” Jade said, blocking her from ministering to the blonde. Jade turned to Konani, yelling over the screaming, but weakening brunette in Ari’s arms. “Hold her off—just a little more holy water—until Ari can fix her up her, too.”
Katherine shoved Jade’s hand off her arm and hurried across the threshold into the Devil’s Trap toward the blonde, whose skin was still steaming from the effects of the holy water.
“Kat, no! Please don’t do this!”
She ignored Jade’s censure, knowing her human staff wouldn’t defy her standing orders to never enter a Devil’s Trap. She breathed deep, trying to find her old mojo. Don’t fail. Not in front of her staff.
Definitely not in front of Ari.
She stared into the wild hazel eyes of the blonde and saw the woman’s humanity hanging by a thread. The evil spirit was close to overcoming the good inside her. And once it was gone, it would take a tremendous ritual—if not a miracle, if one believed in those—to overcome the fully-fledged demon she would become.
Katherine had only moments to save her. Only an instant before the disabling effects of the holy water would fade and the monster inside the woman would attack. Katherine closed her eyes, shut out all the sounds around her and built the light within. Hot, brilliant, it was a calm so perfect it made her doubt her faithlessness. She smiled inwardly at the irony, opened her eyes, and stretched her hand toward the woman’s forehead.
“Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis…”
The sudden rush of hate and rancor that barreled into Katherine’s mind and body sent her to her knees. Contact with the woman’s forehead lost, the evil inside the blonde roared with triumph and followed Katherine’s descent to the floor as though in slow motion.
The fluorescent lights of the room blinked out, but only a moment, confusing her. No. No blink…a small child’s body. Following her down through the murky water.
Down, down. Down.
DROWN.
Mary, no! Please somebody help my sister! Help her, she’s drowning!
Katherine heard her own screams, echoing, and she was suddenly so very cold.
Frozen.
Teeth clacked. Hers and…another’s.
Tearing. Searing pain in her chest, stealing her breath, her fingers suddenly wet and slippery with something warm and scarlet. What was happening? I’ve lost control. The worst sin. Something bad would happen now.
Was happening.
Katherine fought to separate illusion from reality. From somewhere in the gloaming, Ari bellowed her name. Then all went silent. She struggled to open her eyes. Ari lunged for her, his beautiful face twisted in anguish, tendons in his neck standing out furiously, his lips moving, but she couldn’t hear the words. Couldn’t hear his deep voice that was like a coming home. Could only hear her heartbeat.
Ba, bummm. Ba…bummm.
Heartbeat.
Slowing.
Ba…
bumm.
A sudden release of pressure on her midsection. A body flying. Ari lifting her.
Stay with me, Kat, goddammit!
Please, warm me, she tried to say. Wanted to run her finger across his warm lips like she often had after making love, his ardent gaze melting the iron forged about her heart like a blowtorch to a candle.
Ba…
Bum.
Touch—
Chapter 6
Ari’s gut wrenched, throat closed, breath stopped as he looked down at the woman in his arms. He couldn’t hear his compar’s heartbeat any more. He stood there, holding her, muscles frozen. His hands, arms, chest—all were covered in Katherine’s blood. “Kat-Katherine,” he gasped. “Stay with me.” Her body was so cold.
“You can’t save her, big man! You big, tempting, violent man!” the possessed woman screeched, then laughed, her unearthly high tones like shattering glass.
He jolted when Jade’s hands pounded against his back. “Take her, Ari! Heal her—hurry!”
Hurry. The word mobilized him. He quickly streamed to Kat’s quarters on the second level. He burst into her bedroom, carrying her straight through the sunlit space to her bathroom where he entered the shower fully clothed. He shielded her from the water until it ran warm, then angled his body so the water sluiced down his shoulders to gently cascade over her, washing her blood in scarlet rivers down the drain. Heal her. Skin to skin always worked best, but the possessed woman had fused pieces of Kat’s dress into her flesh with a fiery brand of her demonic hand. Would thinking his compar’s clothes away damage her more when her muscles were bonded to the dress? He boosted her higher in his arms so his lips could feather over her cheeks, her closed eyes, her nose and eyebrows.
He hadn’t protected her. “Fight, Katherine! You can’t be finished tormenting me yet.” His body shook, his breath fast and hard. What if he couldn’t revive her? Gingerly angling her toward him, he watched her chest begin to knit together.
He leaned back against the shower tiles, lightheaded.
A small sound, barely audible, made his eyes open. “Katherine,” he whispered, letting water—her be
autiful element—stream down the sides of his face, thrilling in that simple sensation now that she was on her way back to life. To him. She wasn’t awake, but he sensed her Guardian consciousness rise, could feel her heartbeat begin to throb against his chest where he cradled her.
His head bent down once more to taste her lips when her eyes opened. With the extent of her injuries and the state of exhaustion she’d been suffering for so long, she wouldn’t be completely herself for a while. He held her gaze, his body surging to life when desire darkened her eyes. It was merely her Guardian survival instinct—not a look she’d give him if she were whole and well—but one his body responded to nonetheless.
Her hand lifted to the back of his neck. “I need.”
I am yours.
Their mouths met, and she came alive. She drove her fingernails into his scalp, her torso twisting, shifting upright. He resituated her, hiking up the remaining strips of her dress, pulling her legs apart to wrap around his hips. As her center met the heavy ridge of his wet denim, her gasp flowed into a moan. The water swirled around them with her rising passion. His fingers tunneled under the elastic of her underwear and curled into her soft buttocks, finding her seam and following its curvature until he reached her slick heat. He ached to put his tongue there and taste her as he had in an outdoor shower in Bali before he’d carried her inside their hut, and they made love so fervently they created a life.
Miraculous what love could do.
Memories poured in on him in a rush. Her soft smiles by candlelight. Her flashing eyes and imperious posture as she challenged his every belief. Her hand in his, laughing that full-throated sound as he pulled her along toward new adventures.
His head on her belly, listening to the sounds of their baby.
Relief flooded him as her skin knit together becoming whole again. He turned to ease her against the smooth gray and white tiles. Wet locks of her hair stuck to the wall as his hips rocked her up and down. “Command me, elskan,” he whispered. “I am yours.”
