He Loves Me, He Loves Me Hot

by Stephanie Rowe

  She pushed at his chest. “Stop trying to woo me with compliments. It won’t work, you know. I’m immune to your charm.”

  “I have charm?” He looked surprised and pleased at the thought.

  Paige shrieked, and they both turned around to see her leap off Roxanne and start clawing at her skin. “Mother fucker! I hate this part!” She started beating at her left breast. “Get out of there, you pervert!”

  Becca sighed at the sight of her apprentice trying to subdue the newly harvested soul. “She’s a piece of work.”

  “I like her pluckiness. I think she’s got potential. I can see why she and Dani hit it off…” His smile faded, and Becca felt the angst building inside him again.

  “So, how’d you know he wasn’t right?” Becca asked, not wanting to feel his pain when hers was so close to the surface.

  “He wasn’t giving off the right emotions. He didn’t feel like love or guilt. There was joy to see you, but it was a dark joy, not a happy one that I’d expect from someone who’d loved you.” He looked at her. “It wasn’t the kind of love you were feeling for him.”

  She looked away from his dark gaze, watching Paige as she sat up and brushed the rubble off herself. “Just because I slept with him didn’t mean there was love.”

  “I felt it from you.”

  “No, you didn’t. It was guilt.”

  “Both.”

  She looked at Nick. “I would be a fool to love anyone except Satan.”

  He traced his finger over the tip of her nose. “Sometimes we’re fools. It happens.”

  She smacked his hand. “Go away.”

  He raised his brows, as if there was no chance of that. Which there wasn’t, of course. But before he could say anything, Paige interrupted. “Hey, Nick.”

  He turned toward Paige. “What’s up, little one?”

  Paige was studying him, her forearms draped over her knees as she caught her breath. “What are you, exactly?”

  Becca felt Nick tense beside her. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re talking about how you can sense all these emotions and stuff. So, you’re not human. Plus you survived the acid pit conduit because of your supposed dark side.” She hauled herself to her feet, walked up to him, and peered at him curiously. “So, I can’t figure out what you are.”

  He smiled down at her, as if he had nothing to hide. “I’m an elf.”

  Becca had to turn away at the innocent look on his face.

  “Elf?” Paige studied him as she picked some dirt out of her hair. “Elf? An elf can make it through an acid pit?”

  “I’m a very sturdy elf.”

  Becca giggled, and they both turned to look at her. Her giggle faded under their surprised expressions. “What?”

  “I’ve never heard you giggle before,” Nick said. “Since when do you giggle?”

  Paige beamed at Nick. “You made her laugh.” She peeked at Becca. “You’re way prettier when you smile. Not nearly as scary and cold-looking.”

  Becca immediately stopped smiling.

  Nick was still staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. “You really giggled.”

  “So?”

  “So, it was cute. I didn’t think you did cute.”

  She snorted, even though a part of her felt like cleaning out her ears to make sure she was hearing correctly. “I’m not cute.”

  “That was cute.” He looked at Paige. “Wasn’t it cute?”

  Paige nodded. “Definitely cute.”

  Becca set her hands on her hips and gave them her best glare. “Would you guys cut it out? I’m not cute.” But it did feel sort of fun to be called cute. It sounded so innocent and pure, two things she so wasn’t.

  “Well, not now that you’re thrusting your breasts out while wearing your soul-harvesting outfit. Now you look like a prostitute,” Paige said.

  Becca rolled her eyes, not quite as annoyed as she wanted them to think. “I’m leaving.”

  “I’m coming with you.” Nick threw a warm, muscular arm around her shoulders while Paige latched her fingers around her wrist.

  Nick leaned down near her ear. “Cute and deadly is a very good combination.”

  Becca’s belly tightened, and she turned her head to look at Nick. His gaze was intent, and she knew he was completely serious. And her traitorous body hoped he meant it personally. “Nick…”

  Then they dissolved into the floor, and she didn’t have to finish the sentence that she’d had no idea how to finish.

  They popped up in the Council’s dungeon floor just in time to see an old man and a businessman throwing a trussed-up pirate into the Chamber of Unspeakable Horrors.

  Thirteen

  Jerome!” Nick lunged across the room and dove into the Chamber just as the pirate slipped out of sight.

  “No!” Horror knifed through Becca as Nick disappeared into the Chamber and the old man and the businessman slammed the door shut and locked him inside. “Nick!” Becca yanked herself free of Paige’s clinging grip and hurled a fireball at the men. Both men flew up and back from the explosion, and crashed into the wall. “Deal with them, Paige!”

  “I’m on it!” Paige shouted as she leapt over a coffee table and landed on the businessman. “You move and I’ll fry you!”

  Becca rushed over to the Chamber and yanked on the lock while Paige shouted threats and obscenities at the men, naming tortures in hell that Becca didn’t even know existed.

  The lock didn’t give. “Dammit! Nick!” She slammed a fireball into the lock, but nothing happened. She shouted her frustration and slammed another against the door, then another, and another and another, until Paige grabbed her arm and hauled her back.

  “Let go of me! I have to get him out!” What if he was dead already? Or insane? What kind of hell was he going through? She hurled a blue fireball at the door, but it didn’t even rattle. “Nick!”

  “Boss! It’s not working!”

  Becca froze and stared at Paige, suddenly realizing what she was doing. Of course her fireballs wouldn’t open it. Satan had made that lock strong enough to keep Rivkas inside, before he’d traded it to the Council. Since when had she lost her ability to think strategically? Since Nick had thrown himself in that damned Chamber, apparently. She banged on the door. “Nick! Nick! Can you hear me?”

  Nothing, but the sounds of screams, which is all anyone ever heard coming from the Chamber of Unspeakable Horrors. Very few emerged from the Chamber alive, and those who did were so scrambled that they were no good for anything but walking in circles in fenced-in areas, chattering gibberish and being kept away from sharp objects.

  It might already be too late.

  No! She wouldn’t think like that!

  Her hands shaking, she whirled away from the door and grabbed the businessman by the shirt and hauled him to his feet. “How do I open that door?”

  His face was white, and he was still coughing from the explosion. “Let me go and I’ll make you rich.”

  She leaned her face against his. “I’m from hell. I have all the money I need.”

  Paige grabbed the old man and pulled him up. “I will pull out all your entrails and eat them for dinner if you don’t tell me!” When he turned ashen and passed out, she cursed and started patting the old guy’s face, ordering him to wake up.

  Becca’s hostage’s eyes widened. “You’re Satan’s favorite Rivka! You can’t threaten me! We have a peace accord. If you hurt me, then the peace accord is off.”

  Becca hesitated for a fraction of a second, knowing that Satan would be beyond livid if she broke the peace accord. There was nothing he valued more than his political power, and even Becca wouldn’t be spared his wrath if she screwed that up.

  Screw it. Nick was in the Chamber.

  “If you don’t help me get my man out of that Chamber now, the peace accord will be the least of your concerns. I assume you have personal fire insurance?” She flared up a fireball and held it under his chin, watching his skin turn red. “Open the door, or I�
��ll kill you.” She let him look into her eyes and showed him exactly what she was willing to do.

  Paige was suddenly over her shoulder. “Just stick it between his legs.”

  A bead of sweat dripped down the man’s brow. “There are two keys!” he blurted. “I have one, and Paul has the other. They both have to be turned at the same time, by two different people, and you have to chant ‘Satan is my hero’ three times in a row while you’re doing it, and then they’ll open.”

  Becca grabbed the key out his pocket while Paige retrieved the one from the old man. Then they both ran across the room and inserted their keys in the lock. “Ready?”

  Paige nodded. “So ready.”

  They both turned their keys and there was a click. Paige made a grunt of satisfaction, and then they began to chant the magic words.

  The instant they finished, the door popped ajar. Becca yanked it open, and Nick fell out on top of her, holding on to a screaming, convulsing pirate. “Nick!” She grabbed his face, forcing him to look at her so she could see into his eyes. They were clear and green and sane. She nearly collapsed with relief and kissed him hard on the mouth. “Don’t ever do that again, or I swear I’ll shove a gold fireball down your throat. Got it?”

  He grabbed her hair and pulled her close so he could kiss her back, just as hard, with a desperation that had her fists digging into his shirt as his body jerked with the effort of holding the pirate still.

  Paige took a flying leap and landed on top of Jerome, trying to catch his flailing limbs. “I’m with you, Nick. I’ve got your back.”

  Nick’s fingers tightened in Becca’s hair, and she could feel him drawing on her self-control, and she let him, realizing he was still fighting the Chamber and needed her inner strength. “Take it, Nick,” she whispered, sending him everything she had, her throat tightening when she felt him building his own walls against the Terrors racing around inside him.

  He rested his forehead against hers and took a deep breath, even while he and Paige fought to keep the pirate from hurting himself in his seizures. “Take us to my place.”

  She wrapped her arms around all three of them immediately. “Where is it?”

  He muttered an address in upstate New York, and she took them there instantly.

  “Ma!” Nick shouted for his mother before they’d even come up through the rich pine floor of the log cabin she had raised him and Dani in. “Are you around?”

  “Out back!” Yasmine Rawlings’s voice bellowed through the French doors.

  Nick turned to Becca. “Take him upstairs. There’s a room at the top. I’ll be there in one second.”

  Without hesitation, she grabbed the convulsing Jerome under the arms. “Paige. His feet.”

  “I’m on it.” Paige grabbed his feet, then yelped as he kicked her in the shin. “I’m okay. I got it.” Groaning softly, she followed Becca up the stairs, Jerome twisting and flailing between them.

  “Wait.”

  Becca turned to look at him. “What?”

  “I…” God, where did he start? “Thanks.”

  She smiled down at him. “It was purely in my own self-interest.”

  He raised his brows, knowing full well that he’d sensed a lot more than that when he’d fed on her self-control outside the Chamber.

  Becca frowned. “I hate that look.”

  He couldn’t help but chuckle; then he turned and bolted out into the backyard. He didn’t see his ma anywhere, just a broad expanse of woods and lawn. “Ma?”

  “Up here.”

  He looked up, tensing immediately. His ma was at the top of one of their huge pine trees with a chainsaw, wearing a helmet over her gray hair. She let go with one hand to wave down at him. “I was about to do some trimming before winter hits. Keeps the trees healthy. What are you doing here? I thought you were helping Jerome with guard duty. And what is that godawful screaming?”

  At fifty-seven years of age, his mom was too old for tree trimming, not that she’d ever accept that. “I need your help.” He tried to keep his voice calm enough to get her down safely before he told her what was going on. “Can you come inside for a minute?”

  His mom stared at him for a long moment, then slung the chainsaw over her shoulder and started climbing down the tree as fast as she could. “What’s going on? Talk to me, Nicky. It is Dani?” She landed on the grass in front of Nick and shoved the goggles onto her hard hat. “Tell me it’s not Dani.”

  He ignored the question about Dani, for the moment. “It’s Jerome. He was in the Chamber of Unspeakable Horrors.”

  “Are you kidding? Where is he?”

  “In Dani’s room…”

  Yasmine was already running into the house, ripping off her helmet and goggles, and tossing her gloves over her shoulder. “How long was he in?”

  Nick sprinted after her. “A minute. Maybe two.”

  “Then we have a chance.” She leapt up the three steps into the house, her gray hair flying as she bolted around the old pine dining room chairs and vaulted up the stairs two steps at time.

  She flung open the door to the bedroom, and Nick cringed when he saw Jerome writhing on the bed, Becca sitting on his legs while Paige tried to hold his arms still. Paige’s tongue was out to the side and her brow was furrowed with concentration, but it was Becca he really noticed. Her eyes were wide and she looked terrified. Not for her own safety. For Jerome’s? He reached out for her emotions, confirming his suspicions. His Rivka was truly worried about Jerome.

  His throat tightened and she cocked her head at him, her brows puckered together ever so slightly. What was she reading on his face right now? “Could use a little help here, big guy.”

  He scooted past his ma to grab Jerome’s legs from Becca, and she sat on his chest, using her weight to keep him on the bed.

  Yasmine clasped her hand to her heart. “Dear Lord, the poor boy.”

  “Want me to kill him and put him out of his misery?” Paige asked. “This is a bad way to go.”

  Yasmine smacked Paige in the forehead with her palm. “Don’t say that! He can hear you! I will not allow that kind of attitude in here. Shape up or get out!” Paige’s mouth dropped open as the tiny lady palmed her once more.

  “Ma, she’s a kid. Leave her alone.” He grunted as Jerome’s foot slipped free and clocked him in the nuts. He gritted his teeth against the pain, then noticed the look of surprise on Becca’s face. “Yeah, that’s the other way besides gold to get to me.”

  “Nicky!” Yasmine looked stunned. “You told her what you are?”

  “Yeah, a sturdy elf,” Paige said. “Who cares? Can you fix this guy already or what? He’s really strong.”

  “I don’t know yet.” Yasmine gave Nick a long look, then leaned around Becca and set her hands on Jerome’s forehead.

  “Should I move?” Becca asked. “Can I help?”

  “You’re a Rivka?”

  Becca nodded.

  “I am, too,” Paige said, her teeth gritted with the effort of trying to keep Jerome’s arms from flailing. One wrist got free and he clocked her in the side of the head. She cursed and sat down hard, blinking several times, but not letting go of his left wrist.

  Yasmine shot a skeptical glance at Nick, then laid her hand on Becca’s belly, testing her for healing skills, as she always did with someone new when she needed help. Almost never found anyone, but she always checked anyway.

  But this time her eyebrows went up in surprise. “Apparently, you can help me. Put your palms over his heart.”

  “She can?” Nick looked at Becca in shock. How was that possible? She was a Rivka. Born to destroy. Not heal.

  Both the women ignored him as Becca scooted to the side and Paige struggled to her feet again, locking Jerome’s left wrist between her thighs while she lunged for the other one.

  Nick moved closer to Jerome’s head to help hold his upper body still, his shoulder brushing against Becca.

  Becca laid her hands over Jerome’s heart. “Now what?”

  Yas
mine laid her fingertips on Jerome’s forehead. “Close your eyes.”

  Becca did as instructed.

  “Now go into his heart and find one of the Terrors that has hold of him.”

  Becca’s forehead furrowed in concentration; then she sucked her breath and her body jerked. She cursed under her breath. “Found one.”

  “No swearing, please,” Yasmine instructed, her own eyes closed. “This is a healing process, not a bar in hell.”

  “Sorry.” Becca was pale and trembling, and Nick shifted so his shoulder was against her back. She immediately leaned into him, and he felt her draw on his energy. “Now what?”

  “Draw the Terror into your own body. Then find another one and do it again until there aren’t any more left. I’m doing the same thing. Now stop talking and concentrate.”

  Becca nodded, and she scrunched her eyes shut. Beads of perspiration formed on her upper lip, and she flinched suddenly and let out a small noise of pain. “Got one,” she whispered.

  Yasmine was too absorbed working on Jerome’s head to respond, so Nick leaned forward and set his chin on her shoulder, the only contact he could give her with his hands occupied holding down Jerome. “Good work,” he said quietly. “Are you all right doing this?”

  She nodded once, not opening her eyes. “Keep touching me. It helps.”

  “You got it.” Jerome started struggling more fiercely, and Nick shifted his position to keep him pinned down, but not losing contact with Becca. He reached out and sent her his worry, his admiration for what she was doing, and she drank it in, drawing on it even while she sucked Jerome’s darkness out of his heart.

  He caught a glimpse at the darkness in Jerome, and a sudden flare inside him answered, and he knew he hadn’t gotten out of the Chamber unscathed, though he’d been able to use his Markku indestructibility to protect himself fairly well.

  Becca’s eyes flipped open and she looked at him. “I felt that. You need help, too.”

  “Jerome first. I’m fine for now.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, then closed her eyes and went back to work.

  Twenty minutes later, Jerome stopped twitching. Paige sighed with relief when Nick dismissed her, and staggered to the door, muttering something about disability benefits, pressing her palm to her rapidly swelling eye. Nick shifted position to sit behind Becca, wrapping his arms around her and placing his hands over hers while she worked. She pulled on his life force as hard as he gave it to her, and he knew they were a team.