by Jenn Stark
Something about his words nagged at me. “What happens if they don’t have a host?”
“Unless their domain is destroyed, they are returned to it, usually within twenty-four hours. But they can get very creative about staying in the mortal plane. The stories of demonic possession have at their core an essential truth.”
“Then how could I have brought all of them back?”
“I suspect that Viktor’s expectation was that they would return within the bodies of the young men and women he captured. If they had done so, we were prepared. The ley lines have been fortified to contain the possessed.”
“That was you!” I stared at him. “You didn’t tell Danae.”
“For a witch, she has a tiresome need for details. But had the children come back carrying the djinn, it would have been enough. We were not prepared for you bringing them all back, however.”
I tried to lift a hand, but it was held beneath heavy covers. “They’re dead,” I croaked. “The children. All of them, from when they were—”
“No, Miss Wilde. Those were illusions. The six missing children remain trapped in their elaborate cage until the demons are returned. Viktor had to wait for them to reach maturity before they could sustain the demonic possession, but instead he now has the demons without the children—and he doesn’t have control over the demons.” Armaeus looked particularly intrigued. “This was unplanned.”
“But where did they go when we came through?” A new thought occurred to me. “They’re not in me anymore, right? I’d know that.”
“You’d know it. They seek out others.”
My eyes rounded as I stared at him. “Oh my God. Nikki—they took Nikki.”
Armaeus nodded. “Dixie and Brody were passed over, perhaps because of their fledgling bond, perhaps in the confusion of the release. But Nikki—we have no sign of her. She’s missing.”
I half rose from the bed, fell back. “I have to find her.”
“Detective Rooks has already issued the alert throughout the LVMPD, and Dixie is tapping her vast network within the city. They will find her. You, on the other hand, must heal.”
“I can’t!” Real alarm shattered through me. “I did this, Armaeus, I did this to Nikki. I can’t let her—” I closed my eyes, jolting with pain as a tear slid down my cheek, scalding hot. “This will happen to her, won’t it?” I whispered. “I did this.”
“Miss Wilde.” Armaeus was at my side again, leaning down. “You can do nothing for Nikki until you recover.”
“Then heal me, dammit,” I breathed.
“You are too weak,” he rumbled. “Your body is barely a husk. The weight of six demons effectively incinerated you from the inside. The Atlantean blade served to protect you somewhat, but you will need time to return to normal.”
“Oh my God, Nikki.”
“She will, at most, serve as host to one demon. Not six. It will not affect her the same way.” Armaeus shrugged. “And the demons can assume any form they choose for the first twenty-four hours of their time on earth. They may elect to possess no one at all for that time period.”
“We can’t take that risk! Please, Armaeus, I beg of you. Heal me. I will do whatever you want, be whoever you want. I can’t let Nikki die because of me.” My eyes flared. “And those children. If they’re alive, I have to go back, to get them. Without the djinn there guarding them, the way will be clearer, right?”
“We have no way of knowing that.”
“Death will know,” I spat. “She probably knew all along.”
He didn’t respond, which was all the answer I needed.
“What is it with you people?” I snarled. “Are you just that damned bored? You’ll let mortals go and do everything you can’t do because you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human?” Unaccountably, the tears welled up inside me again. I didn’t want to feel them, didn’t want to feel anything. My insides were cooked, despite the healing mist Armaeus had woven around me. Every breath in was a blessing, but it became superheated in my guts, and by the time it released, it was like exhaling acid. “I didn’t think I could hurt this badly.”
And what was that about, anyway? I’d known Armaeus for a long time, long enough to know the man pounced on me every time I so much as had a hangnail, all in the interest of me being at my best. Had I become too broken for him to save? Was he no longer interested in trying?
I hated that I cared, but I did. I couldn’t help it.
Everything was falling apart. I hadn’t saved the children. I’d lost Brody. I’d lost Nikki. I’d lost people I’d barely found, or re-found, and I might never get them back. And now, Armaeus himself was distant from me, his hands on my wrists clinical, not carnal. Not even caring.
What had happened?
The obvious answer bubbled up without me realizing how close it was to the surface, breaking through before I could stop it. “Am I dying?”
“No.” The word was sharp, almost a slap. Armaeus leaned toward me, his gaze searching my face.
I hadn’t looked in a mirror since I’d come back, but the coolness radiating off him was a balm to my abraded skin. I must look like five miles of bad road.
“No,” he murmured again, more softly this time, his tone decisive, almost resigned. “Do not close your eyes, Miss Wilde. Maintain every connection with me you can.”
“You usually just kiss and make it—ah…” Ignoring his directive, I winced as the blood rushed to my face, the embarrassment I felt at the ridiculous statement rewarded immediately by a surge of pain. “My God, I feel like crap.”
“God has very little to do with your condition, but your extreme condition is why I cannot kiss you, embrace you…or pound you into the back of the bed. Miss Wilde.”
I clicked my eyes open again. Yep. He had my attention. “Um…”
“And believe me, I want to.” Armaeus was close enough that I wasn’t merely inhaling the pungent healing mist he had surrounding me, but the cinnamon fire of him, the scent of deep spices and sensual heat…a heat completely different from the crumbling embers inside me.
He moved his face, his lips not touching mine, but his cool breath played over my skin, and my body couldn’t help but react. A thrill chased along my nerve endings.
“I have wanted to stretch you out beneath me and fill you to the brink since the first moment I saw you. I’ve wanted to make you cry out in passion and exhaustion, to hear my name on your lips as you begged me to take you to places you’ve never glimpsed before. I have wanted it. Yearned for it.”
“Ahh…” I couldn’t help it, I squirmed beneath his non-touch, wanting more than anything for him to rip the blanket away and do everything he was telling me. “Really?”
“Open your mind to me, only a little. You will see.”
Never had my mental barriers dropped so quickly. The hollow husk of my brain, blackened and crispy at the edges, was suddenly filled to the brim with images so intense and real it was impossible for me to tell what was happening and what was mere illusion.
Okay, scratch that. I remained under the covers, and Armaeus was not. But in my mind’s eye I saw him naked and glorious, bending me back onto his enormous bed and climbing up on top of me, every inch of him rock hard and trained solely on me. In my ears, I heard the rush of a language I’d never known, a language that triggered my nervous system to hyperawareness, from the balls of my feet to the crown of my head, each of my chakra points lighting up like signal flares. And though Armaeus wasn’t touching me, not really, my senses believed wholeheartedly that his lips were on my neck, my collarbone, my breasts. His hands skimming down my body and between my legs, touching, exploring, learning me like a master sailor knows every inch of his instruments, his ship, and lavishing me with the same single-minded care that a man who made his life at sea poured out over the one thing that would either be his salvation or his ruin. I arched in the bed beneath the covers, desperate to feel the taste of his mouth, but Armaeus kept me just out of reach.
At least in re
al life.
My mind, however, was filled with what had never happened next between us, what should have happened next between us so many months ago when we’d been drawn together like twin flames and then burst apart so shockingly, and my mind had collapsed under a surge of panic because it couldn’t—it wouldn’t—
None of that panic filled me now. There was only Armaeus, his arms powerful and sure, his hands at my breasts, my waist, my thighs, sliding around the curve of my backside to lift me up to his questing mouth. All I wanted was this, more of this. All I wanted was him inside me. I breathed out a long, ragged sigh, a distant part of me realizing that even that didn’t hurt anymore. There was no fear. “How…?”
“It’s a dream within a dream. Your mind knows the difference.”
His answer made perfect sense, yet something within me rejected it. That something was shunted off to the side as his mouth came down on the most intimate part of my body, and illusion or not, I fairly jackknifed in the bed as he licked and kissed and held me braced in his powerful grasp, riding my building reaction. Muted pleas fell from my lips, but there remained no fear, no pain, nothing but the glory and wonder and a rapidly building tide of need, of want, and of the incredible rightness of this moment.
“Please!” I begged, though I had no sense of what I wanted beyond this power, beyond this fulfillment.
Armaeus did.
The mental image of him lifted above me, sliding up my body in a long sinuous movement. When his shaft nudged against the vee between my legs, I gasped, lights exploding in my head, but there was still no fear. He raised his head and saw me—truly saw me—and smiled. A glorious, triumphant, almost primal smile.
And then he leaned down and kissed me on the forehead.
In real life.
The forehead.
I sank down into the covers as he levered himself away from me, not even a button undone from the crisp perfection of his suit.
“That,” he said, with pure male satisfaction, “worked better than I would have imagined.”
I gaped at him, but he continued. “Your body is regenerating at an extraordinary rate now. The healing process should be complete in approximately twenty minutes.” He studied me, apparently not impressed by the confusion and latent desire I was trying to stuff down. What had just happened?
My mind latched on to his next words.
“When you are ready to find Miss Dawes, I can assist you with that.” His lips twitched. “Since you are reclining anyway, you will not have far to fall.”
I gaped at him. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“I assure you, having gone through what you have, travel in this plane will not affect you nearly as much.”
I suspected he was probably right. Worse, my mind was already losing the insane perfection of the images he had poured into me, already returning to earth. An earth where I had a job to do, and people to find.
An earth I’d just seriously screwed up.
I let out a long sigh and braced myself for the crazy again.
“Say the words, Armaeus.”
Chapter Twenty-one
I tranced so quickly, I thought I’d have permanent whiplash.
“Nikki!” I managed as lights once more exploded in front of my eyes, but this time not at all in a good way.
Armaeus had slipped both my hands from beneath the cover of the bed and taken them in his, and his calming voice overrode the terror that consumed me.
Noise—noise. Everywhere is noise. Nikki was in the center of a maelstrom, her eyes wide, her mouth open, screaming like a little girl. Her thoughts were so jumbled, there was no possible way I could figure them out, but I got the impression of wind rushing through me, around me, chilling me to the bone.
“What do you see, Miss Wilde? What is she seeing?”
Hands reached for her, tearing at her clothes, ripping at her skin. I blinked, wild-eyed, desperately trying to get my own bearings, my eyes watering in the wind as I kept batting away more hands, always touching always seeking, clutching picking trembling being—all throughout and around her.
Trying to get inside her, trying to breathe the way she did and think the way she did. And laugh and cry and see and sigh and be the way she was and trying above all else to STAY.
Armaeus snapped a word, and I burst back out of the trance in a rush, unable to stop myself from burying myself in his arms.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he murmured, the words sounding awkward and foreign as he held me close. Waves of healing energy spun between us, filling me up, making me whole.
“There were djinn—demons. Whatever they are.” I gasped, gagging on air. “They were trying to pull her apart.”
And one of them, the largest one, had filled my vision even as he’d filled Nikki’s, dark and menacing and full of power.
Warrick. His name was Warrick.
“Where?” Armaeus’s words were clipped. “You did not provide a location when you saw her. What did you see around her, where was she?”
“I didn’t…” I shook my head. “There were too many lights. It was some kind of rave, loud and insane, people writhing, dancing, and Nikki in the middle of it, pulled in all directions.” I closed my eyes, trying to remember. “Black—everything was black, like midnight. The walls, the floors. The lights had all this color, but the walls were black.”
Armaeus nodded. “Viktor’s domain, the tower. He’s opened it for mortals, and they’ve flooded in.”
I pulled back to stare at him. “You can do that?”
“There are many things the Council can do. You don’t truly think Kreios keeps Scandal going day and night for his own personal meditation?”
“I guess… I never thought about that. I’ve never been inside Scandal.”
“The mortals who have aren’t aware that it’s Scandal either, if that’s any consolation. And those filling Viktor’s halls do not know that they have shifted planes. Nikki is in the middle of the rave, you said?”
“She was, but I didn’t get the feeling she was staying. More she was being pulled through it, to some other destination.” My stomach twisted. “Life gave her a pretty raw deal, Armaeus. She doesn’t deserve this.”
“You can find her.” He watched me. “But I cannot go with you. Viktor has committed no crime.”
I pulled my hands away from him. “Did you miss the part where he brought demons into the world?” As soon as I said the words, however, I realized my mistake. “But I did that, didn’t I? So he’s off the hook.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Armaeus said. “Viktor’s role in the release of the djinn is not to be discounted, but yes, you, as a mortal, were the agent of their summoning. He might have pointed you in the right direction…”
“But I did the running.” I closed my eyes. “You don’t seem really worried about all this.”
He patted my hand, and I wondered how boring the Council’s lives must have been before they met me. What do you give the immortal who has everything? Something new to puzzle out. Armaeus’s next words confirmed it.
“Your abilities are growing with every challenge. You will come into your own soon.”
What, I hadn’t already?
His phone bleated, and he removed his hand from mine, reaching down for the device. He turned the screen toward me.
“Detective Rooks is waiting for you outside the Luxor,” he said. “I took the liberty of summoning him.”
“Viktor will let us in?” I frowned. “I wouldn’t, if I were him.”
“I’ve also taken the liberty of cloaking both your and the detective’s psychic imprints.” He held up two small devices. “If you’ll do me the favor of actually wearing these.”
This time, I had no problem with that.
Several hours had apparently passed while I’d been getting my insides restored. Night had fallen on the Strip. As Brody and I set off on the short walk to Paris, the brilliant casino homes of the Arcana Council loomed large over us.
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��When Dixie first showed me these, I couldn’t believe it,” Brody muttered. “Now it’s as if they’ve always been a part of the landscape.” He gazed up and around, his eyes as wide as any tourist’s. “She said that I might not see them again, eventually. Not sure how I feel about that, but it’s not as if I have much choice, right?”
I slanted him a look. That almost sounded like a request, but a request to do what? “I don’t know how long you will either.”
“But you will, right? You and Dixie and Nikki. This is how you always see Vegas.”
I blew out a breath. “Yeah.”
We walked on in silence then, our gaze on the looming Black Tower, so focused that we barely noticed the change in the night sky. It happened so fast, we almost didn’t see it coming.
Shadows suddenly darkened the brilliantly lit Strip, like blankets thrown over a building fire. There was a rushing swoop of wings, a startled shout. Brody’s hiss at me to get back.
And then we looked up…way up…as shadows soared up the sheer black walls of the Emperor’s tower. The whole thing had taken precisely three seconds. Two people were gone from the street, but in the crush of people, it seemed that no one had noticed.
Except us.
“Christ, please tell me that you’re seeing that too,” Brody whispered.
“They’re getting…bodies.” I nodded. “Looks like the djinn want to stick around.” I trained my eyes on Paris and on the black monolith rising above it. “Nikki is in there, Brody. And they want her too.”
“Yeah. No.”
We moved quickly, approaching Paris like two love-struck partiers, hand in hand. I’d been to Viktor’s domain already. I knew where to go. The gleaming black elevator bay beckoned, and Brody and I moved toward it resolutely.
I punched the button, and the elevator doors slid open. We stepped inside, still holding on to each other, though it was no longer needed.
