by Sarah Blair
Sidney made a face.
“Suffice it to say, we all stayed well clear of Paris during the Revolution.” Dimitrius poured himself more mead.
“How do you do it? How do you keep going when everyone you love, everyone you’ve ever known is gone?”
“Some days are harder than others. On the bad days. . . .” He tilted his head back and drank.
“What does any of this have to do with me?”
“You’re a daughter of Sulis. Her blood runs in your veins.”
“You said that before.” Sidney shook her head. “I still don’t really know what that means other than I won’t turn into one of those things that bit me.”
“Her blood is your blood. You’re a direct descendant. The color of your eyes is the color of the waters which gave her power. The red of the iron runs through your hair. Sulis revealed herself to you that day at the Chalice Well because she recognized you as one of her own.”
“Am I still human?”
“You’re everything you’ve always been.” Dimitrius stared at her, then focused on his glass. “There’s something else you need to know. The reason I sent Renny to find you.”
Dimitrius stood and circled once around the chairs, as if it would help him figure out what he needed to say.
“As the acting General, it was my responsibility—my duty—to pay homage to the Goddess Sulis in order to receive her blessings and protection in battle.”
He came over to her and leaned his elbows on the balustrade. “So, we were bound together, even before the predicament with the werewolves, to ensure lasting peace and success among our people.”
“Bound together, as in, married?”
“In a marriage, two people are symbolically joined as one.” Dimitrius faced her. “Our souls were entwined with one another. Inextricably connected for as long as we lived.”
Sidney’s breath caught in her chest. “You weren’t supposed to live this long.”
“No, I wasn’t. Magic is unpredictable at best. We didn’t realize what the full consequences would be when we performed the ritual on the Tor.”
Sidney downed the rest of her drink, as if it would stave off whatever he was about to tell her.
“Sulis was quite a bit more powerful than even she knew.” He traced one of the red highlights in her hair with the barest tip of his finger. It sent a shiver through her body. “I believe you are as well.”
She shook her head and turned to him. “I’m not.”
His eyes were black in the dim light, but she wasn’t afraid of him anymore. The longer she stood there with him, the more familiar he became, like a word on the tip of her tongue that she couldn’t quite remember.
“I can see you feel the truth. Even if you don’t believe it yet.” His breath mingled with her own. It went straight to her core, warming her from deep within, intoxicating her faster than the mead.
Sidney didn’t know what to believe. What she did know was that she liked the way her hair curled around his finger, almost of its own volition. Their fingertips rested millimeters apart on the balustrade, and a pull tugged between them like two magnets trying to link together. Dimitrius followed her gaze to their hands, his hair fell across his strong, square jawline.
Before she could stop herself, Sidney reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. It really was as soft as it looked. As she pushed his hair back, she saw the faded line running down his neck behind his ear.
Suddenly, she wanted to explore every inch of his skin to see how many scars she could find. She wanted to lay in bed all day and listen to him tell the stories behind each one of them. She wanted to feel his touch on the most intimate places of her own body. His lips were a breath away and she had no idea how he’d gotten so close.
Except, she’d just been in the car with Mitch, wanting to tumble into bed with him. Dimitrius was alluring. There was no doubt about that. But, he didn’t know her. Not like Mitch knew her.
Sidney was fully aware she had some issues regarding her romantic life, but she was definitely not a hussy.
“I have to go.” Her words barely rose above a whisper, as their breath mingled in a white haze and dissipated between them.
She fled to the stairs with Dimitrius close behind. The mead and the twist of the stairwell made her dizzy. She slipped on the well-worn stone, but he reached out and caught her hand before she went down all the way.
His touch burned like fire and lightning.
Sidney pressed her back against the cold stone wall. They stared at each other in stunned silence, but neither could bring themselves to let go. It was painful, yet despite herself, she wanted more. She reached up, traced the line of the scar down his neck, and the wildfire spread.
Dimitrius shut his eyes. His breath came fast and ragged through parted lips. She could hear the thud of his heart in his chest, just like the beat of the music down below. He snaked his hand up the back of her shirt and splayed his fingers across her heated skin.
Sidney tilted her head back, the rest of her body pressed forward against him. He loosed the fingers of his other hand from hers and cupped his palm around the back of her neck. She traced her finger around the coin pendant into the dip of his collarbone.
All she could think about was getting more of him.
As if he could read her thoughts, his mouth came down on hers.
They devoured each other. Lips parted. Tongues explored. Hands grabbed and tugged. The more skin touched skin, the harder it was to pull apart.
The room and all the things around them disappeared. They were caught up together in a fire of bright, burning colors. Heat swirled around them, consuming them both. The more they fed it, the more insatiable it felt. Sidney couldn’t think of anything but absorbing him, losing herself in him, making them into one thing and nothing at the same time.
Steel closed around her body, trapping her, and suddenly she tore in two. As if a piece of her was ripped away.
She screamed.
Another roar echoed hers from across the room.
Sidney forced her eyes open and she was back in the office, near the door she’d entered from. Dimitrius lay sprawled out on the bottom step, propped up by the stone wall. His torn shirt revealed long red marks down the front of his sculpted chest.
A sinister laugh echoed throughout the room, so low and frightening Sidney could feel it in her bones.
Twenty-Two
“You thought I could be disposed of so easily?”
A thick mass of pure darkness swirled and billowed in the middle of the room, a storm cloud gathering into a tornado. Fear shot through her veins in less than a heartbeat, drawing up the fine hairs on the back of her neck to full attention.
The demon she thought she’d vanquished stilled in front of her. A mouth of familiar, sharpened teeth appeared out of the darkness in a most evil version of the Cheshire Cat. “You still smell delicious. Fear tastes good. I like it.”
A thick line of drool oozed out onto Sidney’s boots.
“These are my favorite boots,” she said. If it was feeding off her fear, she had to calm down. Allowing the fear to overcome her would only make the demon stronger. She touched the cross at her neck.
“I didn’t get a chance to taste you earlier,” the demon rumbled. “Perhaps I’ll start with your toes and work my way up.”
The stink of its breath drifted over her and Sidney shuddered.
“Be gone, devil,” Dimitrius said.
“Oh? What have we here?” The thing swept a circle around him like he was something new and interesting to be studied.
Dimitrius held completely still, except for his eyes. He glanced at Sidney, then toward the bookcase filled with all the antiquities and carefully extended two fingers by his side.
Sidney followed his gaze and spotted a wooden crucifix on the second shelf. She returned his look with the smallest possible of nods to let him know she understood.
“If you were going to eat me, you would have done it already.” Sidney
squared her shoulders and walked over to the bookshelf as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “Maybe you’re the one who’s afraid.”
The demon billowed up between her and the bookshelf, blocking her path. Big yellow eyes with vertical pupils stared her down.
Dimitrius said something in a language Sidney couldn’t understand. The demon roared, its teeth gnashed right in front of her face and Sidney flinched. He repeated the phrase and it screamed in rage as it flew back to him.
Sidney grabbed the crucifix and held it straight out in front of her.
“You don’t belong here,” she said, genuinely surprised at how strong her voice sounded. “Get. Out.”
The one-way mirror exploded into glittering dust.
Screams erupted from the crowd below. Sidney and Dimitrius ran to the edge of the window to look down on the people. The door swung open and Sidney held out the crucifix as a reflex.
“Are you all right, sir? Ms. Lake?” Dag asked.
“Fine,” Sidney said.
Dimitrius ignored them all. He stared intently at the crowd below.
“It’s still here,” he said. He nodded casually to the people staring up from the dance floor. Sidney scanned the crowd and spotted a man staring up at them with a grotesque grin on his face that was too big to be natural.
“Ten o’clock,” Sidney said without pointing. “In the suit jacket.”
“I see,” Dimitrius said.
“Please tell me you have some Holy water.”
“No. But, I do have salt and a silver knife.”
“Salt and silver?”
He touched the cross at her neck. “Works wonders.”
Dimitrius grabbed a beautiful knife with a hand carved ivory handle from the shelf and offered the hilt to Sidney. She wrapped her hand around the smooth ivory. Mitch would have told her to stay where she was. Dimitrius simply traded her for the crucifix with no question.
“Do your best to keep everyone calm and evacuate the building,” he ordered Dag and Dave. “Ms. Lake, this way.”
Dimitrius took a leather pouch from his desk drawer, then pulled a book on the shelf halfway out. The shelf swung open revealing a narrow staircase similar to the one leading to the bell tower. Sidney felt her way down the pitch black stairwell, hoping she wouldn’t accidentally touch Dimitrius again. She had no idea what the demon had interrupted, but her body was still buzzing from it. Normally, she’d attribute it to an adrenaline rush, but adrenaline didn’t typically gather between her legs.
Before she knew it they emerged from the back of the coat check closet. Dimitrius held aside a coat and Sidney ducked through. The Narthex was packed with people. She pushed through the crowd, brushing by a girl in a black lace corset, a man in a red hooded jacket.
Dimitrius grabbed her hand causing that same tickle of electricity to shoot up her arm. She didn’t have time to protest.
If she freed herself from Dimitrius’ grip, the crowd would easily carry her to safety. She heard Mitch inside her head, telling her to get out. But the demon was in the opposite direction.
The thing thought it could nearly rip her arm off, and come back to finish the job? She’d work on her impulse control later. As far as she was concerned, she had a score to settle.
When they got to the main dance floor, the swarm of similarly dressed club goers made it impossible to distinguish the dark suit jacket from the rest of the crowd. The stink of sulfur hit her nose and drew her attention to the left.
“This way,” she told Dimitrius.
She followed the awful rotten egg smell toward the back near the DJ stand. A woman’s scream directed them to the man in the jacket with the unnaturally large smile plastered across his face. His hand disappeared inside her chest.
As they approached, the young woman’s eyes rolled back into her head. She slipped to the ground like a discarded toy.
Blood dripped from his fist. Sidney fought back a gag when she realized he clenched the woman’s still beating heart. The man bit into it. Blood oozed through his teeth and dripped down his chin.
Dimitrius threw a handful of salt. The man collapsed in an instant. A laugh echoed in Sidney’s ear and a woman next to her seized up like she’d been hit with a taser. Her body went stock still for a second. When she turned, Sidney saw those ugly yellow eyes peer out from her face.
Just as quickly as the demon entered the woman, Dimitrius threw more salt and her body went limp. Sidney remained still, watching with her peripheral vision to see if the same thing happened again. It entered a man with spiky purple hair this time.
“Wait.” Sidney held her hand out to stop Dimitrius before he threw more salt. “It’s going to keep doing that. It wants you to use it all.”
Dimitrius’ eyes lit up with a spark of admiration. “What do you suggest?”
The question caught Sidney off guard. That was usually something she’d ask Mitch or Peters. She turned the dagger in her hand while she considered her options. Her mind went completely blank. All she could think about was that man’s guts spread out on the floor of the mid-town conference room.
“Fuck if I know. Don’t you have some kind of ancient incantation or something?”
“I need an old priest and a young priest,” Dimitrius deadpanned.
It surprised her how calm he was, as if he’d seen it all before. After two-thousand years, he probably had seen it all. “You’re kidding. This thing is about to rip our hearts out and you’re cracking a joke?”
The purple-haired man in front of them laughed. Sidney felt like she’d been tossed into a snake pit as the sound slithered across her body.
“He thinks it’s funny.” Dimitrius shrugged and kept his gaze aimed on Sidney. “Though, it’s not as funny as what you did with that letter opener.”
Sidney sucked in a deep breath to tell Dimitrius exactly what she should have done with that letter opener, but he tilted his head to the side and she understood the hidden meaning of his words.
She secured her grip on the dagger, took one step forward, and drove it up under the man’s chin. The demon gushed out of the mouth in a rush of blood and thick, black goop similar to bog sludge.
The force of it all knocked Sidney to the floor. The dark cloud hovered above her, gathering energy. She shut her eyes and covered her face as it came at her. Pricks and slaps hit her body and she wondered if this was what it was like to be caught up in a swarm of bats.
It stopped as quickly as it had begun. She found herself cradled in Dimitrius’ arms, warm, and safe, and whole. But the demon was still there. The slits in its eyes narrowed at her.
“What are you?” it asked.
Sidney spit out some goop that had managed to get into her mouth. “If you find out, I’d love to know.”
The thing choked. “What are you?”
Before she could stop herself, words welled up from within her. She knew the meaning, but the language that came out of her mouth wasn’t English. It sounded similar to what Dimitrius had spoken upstairs.
“I’m your end.”
Sidney grabbed the bag of salt and threw the entire contents at the cloud in front of her.
The air exploded and blackness covered her vision.
Twenty-Three
Eyes. Claws. Teeth.
Sidney pressed the barrel of the gun into thick fur and squeezed the trigger. She didn’t stop until the clip was empty.
The creature collapsed on top of her.
She was stronger now. Strong enough to shove the thing off.
The hand lay lifeless in the moonlight.
She tried to scream but no sound came.
The fur was gone. Nothing but pale, smooth skin remained.
Gray eyes stared blankly behind familiar gold-rimmed glasses.
“I should have stayed.”
Blood.
“It’s not your fault, chief.”
There was so much blood.
She stood there, frozen, watching the life leak out of his body onto her bare feet
.
“She actually is all right, you know,” a third voice said from somewhere far away.
A soft touch smoothed the hair out of her face. Sidney gasped and opened her eyes. She squinted against the light. Her mouth was dry, like she’d swallowed sand. Her head throbbed. It was the worst hangover ever.
Those familiar eyes gazed back at her with worried lines tucked behind the edge of the gold-rimmed glasses. She reached out and felt his chest. No blood. No bullet wounds.
“Are you okay?” she rasped.
“I think I should be asking you that question,” Mitch said. He squeezed her hand. With his other, he rubbed her arm between her wrist and elbow. It wasn’t fire and lighting, but it felt good, like a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer.
“What happened?” She touched Mitch’s chest again with her free hand, to be sure he was whole.
“The demon came back. Nearly killed you. Again,” Mitch said.
“I meant—” Sidney rubbed her face, as if doing so would erase the terrible dream from her brain.
“You spoke in tongues. Then you threw salt. The demon got all splodey,” Williams said. “You were badass.”
She took a glance around the room to get her bearings. The bookcase of artifacts stood on the other side of the room, and there was the desk in front of the window. The worn couch in Dimitrius’ office really was as comfortable as it looked.
“Splodey?” she asked.
Williams shrugged. “Caroline’s new word. It feels appropriate in this situation.”
“What are you doing here?”
“There was no sign of the WIF so we came back.”
“Yeah, just in time to find everyone evacuating,” Mitch said.
“And you being a total bad ass.”
Her gaze drifted over to the bottom step of the staircase where Dimitrius sat. He gave her a small nod. His white shirt was torn and splattered with dried blood. A smear of black cut across his jaw and down his muscled forearm.
She remembered talking with him by the bell.
Remembered his skin.
The taste of honey mead on his tongue.
