Shadow Rising

by Cassi Carver

  “So you said.” She felt his large shaft nudging the cleft of her ass, and she started to sweat. This time she was sure it was from pure panic. If he forced himself on her, what could she do? Go for his eyes? Scald him with more macaroni?

  “I need to sleep,” he said, his voice already sounding groggy.

  She lay stretched out beside him, her body as rigid and fragile as an ice sculpture. “Feel free. Don’t let me keep you up.” Shit. She cringed at the double meaning he might find in those words.

  “I haven’t slept, but I’m tired.” And for a frighteningly powerful being, he sounded tired.

  “You haven’t slept since when?”

  “Since time began.”

  She knew he was referring to when he rose from the earth. “Are you saying you haven’t slept in days?”

  “Weeks.”

  She might have felt worse for him if not for his thick cock pressing into her towel and his exotic scent causing sweat to trickle down her cleavage. “Is that normal?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She wanted to pull her hair out in frustration. What the hell was going on? “You don’t know your name, where you came from or why you look like the man I loved. They tell me it’s not possible, but you’re either him or one sick bastard.”

  “I know my name.” Dragging his chin from the top of her head to her temple, he flicked out his tongue and caught the drop of moisture beading on her skin. “Tonight, it’s Julian.”

  “And what happens tomorrow, Julian? What are you going to do with me?”

  She felt the low rumble of his chest vibrating in her back. “No more questions. Sleep now.” He shifted, wrapping his huge hands around her waist as he inched lower.

  “Ah!” She felt the sting as he bit the curve between her shoulder and her neck. But when he latched on, her body ignited like dry tinder. She was ashamed at the involuntary response, but as he suckled the wound, her pussy grew slick and her clit engorged. Even knowing he might kill her tomorrow, she wasn’t sure she could deny him tonight.

  She waited for the touch she knew would come. Waited for him to bite deeper, or to stop nursing altogether and thrust himself between her legs. But as the minutes ticked by, his swallows slowed until his lips finally parted and his head lolled gently against the pillow.

  He fell asleep? He’d rather sleep than ravish me? She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful—or roll over and wake his lazy ass up. Sometimes being Demiáre sucked.

  Chapter Eight

  Kara opened her grainy eyes to a sunny day. Her neck ached, but otherwise, she seemed okay. The curtains were pulled to the side, affording her a view of the seagull perched on the balcony railing, preening its feathers.

  She sat up and looked around, tucking her tangled hair behind her ears. Judging by the chaos in her room, last night hadn’t been a dream. She didn’t remember going to sleep—in fact, she’d lain awake in Julian’s oppressive grip for what seemed like hours, afraid of what would happen if she closed her eyes.

  She looked out the open bedroom door to the living room beyond. “Julian?”

  No sound. She rose from the bed and walked to the balcony. The seagull eyed her suspiciously. “Julian?” she asked through the glass and started to open the door.

  The bird squawked in protest and dove from the balcony, startling his friends out of their early morning routine and into the sky. The flock circled around and headed in the direction of the bay. She couldn’t imagine the Julian lookalike, a self-professed god, flying with a squabble of shit-spraying seabirds.

  Kara walked to the kitchen. The macaroni littering the floor was turning dark yellow at the edges and the wall still had the dent where the pot hit it. “Nope, not a dream.” She wasn’t that lucky.

  She spent the next hour cleaning the kitchen and her room the best she could, and all the while, she racked her brain over what to do about her uninvited visitor. There was no doubt he was unstable, and if she told Aiden, the Mercury lord would get himself or other warriors hurt trying to intervene. And telling Jaxon wasn’t even an option. He and Abbey were right where Kara wanted them for now, far away from her, safe in the mountains under the protection of the witches.

  No matter what excuses she came up with, she couldn’t find one good enough to get out of strapping on her tool belt and getting work done around the apartment building. With all the insanity going on, she hadn’t been focusing as much on stuff around the apartments, and now she had a to-do list a mile long. If she did survive black-wing Julian and Claudius Sellers, she’d still need a place to live. She didn’t want to get sacked as the apartment manager in the meantime.

  Did she miss the new Julian? The thought kept coming to her as she adjusted the hinges on the door leading to the roof. Would she get a thrill from seeing him if he found her on the streets, or would he threaten her and tell her he was going to kill her again?

  She snorted and shook her head. She couldn’t spend any more time worrying about something she didn’t have control over. But the witch summons and Abbey’s grandma hanging up on her, now that was something she could look into. She didn’t want to get Grammy D in trouble, but she’d known the lady since she was in fifth grade. If that didn’t merit a few questions answered, what did?

  After she’d accomplished all the needed repairs for the day, it was time to focus on the next problem. Kara revved the throttle on her newly renovated scooter and headed down Harbor Drive. It took about ten minutes to get to Grammy D’s shop, Midnight Magic, now that Kara had a scooter. It wasn’t the coolest ride, but it sure as hell beat walking or riding the trolley. She pulled into the parking lot of the shop and parked the scooter, then hung her helmet on the handlebars and crammed the keys in her pocket.

  The bells on the door jangled when she pushed inside. The place smelled of incense and magic, though Kara doubted the average human stopping by for a palm reading would detect it. They generally thought these places were a sham, and Abbey and her grandma let them think it.

  The front of the store held mostly benign substances—homeopathic cures, tarot cards, crystals. Only those who knew to ask were allowed past the beaded partition to the serious magic that lay beyond. Even those ingredients weren’t usually a problem. It was the witch using them that put the power behind the spell.

  Kara walked to the counter, smiling at the young woman behind the glass case. “Hey, Teri. Is Dora available?”

  Teri’s smile was as strained as Kara had ever seen it. She was one of the three women, including Abbey, who worked regular hours at Midnight Magic, and Kara had always liked her. Today, though, something was making the brown-haired woman’s smile wobble.

  “Hi, Kara. Dora isn’t in today. She’s taking some time off.”

  “Really?” Dora practically lived here. Time off usually meant she was holed up in the back office watching talk shows and eating cup o’ noodles.

  “Yeah. Sorry. I’ll tell her you stopped by.”

  Kara didn’t like the feeling in the air. She cast out her senses, trying to “feel” the shop. She’d never been able to sense much more than evil until she met the Mercury men. Now that she had Jaxon to learn from, she was experimenting with what it was like to take in more from her environment. She centered her thoughts, then expanded them past her body, past the walls before her. It was quiet in the back, but she felt energy there. Old and angry and scared.

  “Teri, I know she’s there. I just need to talk with her.”

  When Kara made to step through the space beside the register, Teri blocked her path. “I’m sorry, Kara. I can’t let you back there.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “I can’t resolve this, Teri, unless I know what’s going on.” When she passed the partition, Teri grabbed her arm—not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to get Kara’s attention. Kara’s breath vibrated from her lungs. She tried to rein in the growl, but it was no use.

  Teri snatched her hand back. “It’s true. You’re one of t
hem.” She looked at Kara as if she’d never seen her before.

  Kara had known her five years, but it didn’t matter. Now she was simply Fallen. “I have to talk to her.”

  “Well then you’re going to have to walk through me to do it.” The mousy woman tilted her chin up, frightened and obstinate at the same time. “That’s the only way you’re getting past here.”

  Kara stepped back and looked away. She couldn’t bear for Teri to see the shock and pain that flashed in her eyes at being treated like a stranger—a dangerous stranger—after all this time.

  “Whatever.” Kara whirled and turned for the door. As the bells jangled her departure, she glimpsed Teri with her hand to her chest, huffing like she’d barely survived the run-in.

  Kara yanked on her helmet, not bothering to fasten it, and kick-started the scooter. The early evening air felt good on her hot cheeks. How could they treat her like this? Was being Demiáre really that bad? Sure, there had been times when she’d wanted to screw half the male population of Mercury Island—but she hadn’t done it. If they’d simply look deeper, they’d see she was nothing to be afraid of.

  She pulled onto Main Street and merged into traffic just as a car came around the corner, traveling too fast. She thought for a moment about gunning the scooter to outrun it, but she knew the bike didn’t have enough power, so she pulled closer to the curb, allowing it to pass.

  The roar of the engine was the first sign that Kara had problems. She glanced in her rearview mirror to see the sparkly green sedan bearing down on her. She veered onto the sidewalk, hitting the brakes and almost spinning sideways as the low-rider rocketed past. It looked like a tricked-out, early-model Impala she might see at a gangbanger car show, but with the darkly tinted windows, she couldn’t make out who was in the driver’s seat.

  “Jerk!” she yelled after the car, flinging her hand up, hoping the driver saw her in his rearview mirror. “Crazy ass,” she mumbled to herself, catching her breath.

  She fiddled with her brakes and glanced at her tires, making sure everything was still working. The car stopped at a red light a block up, and Kara snickered. She loved it when someone screamed down the road only to get caught at a stop. “Wasn’t worth it, was it?”

  The car waited for oncoming traffic to pass, then turned left and made a U, heading back her way. Crap. Maybe shouting at gang members when you were in the rougher part of San Diego wasn’t such a great idea.

  Kara heard the engine rev from two blocks away and throttled her bike into motion. Instead of getting back onto the street, she went right, taking a small cross street that stretched between the run-down businesses.

  The car screeched around the corner, barreling down the alley faster than her scooter could go. Her heart hammered. Wings would be good right about now.

  She glanced in the mirror, pushing her bike to its limit, but when she felt the first punch of the car’s bumper, she knew she was in trouble. Her tire caught under the bumper, her handlebars jerked to the right, and the rest was a blur.

  She flew through the air, instinctively drawing her limbs tighter around her as she hit hard and rolled. Her helmet deadened the initial impact of her skull smacking the asphalt, but by the second flip she’d completed, it flew off and there was nothing between her face and the street.

  The car screeched to a stop, dragging the scooter along with it. It took her a second to figure out if she could still breathe and follow that thought with an actual breath. Her skin was raw and bloody, and she wasn’t sure her arms and legs worked since she couldn’t feel them. It didn’t hurt, but she had the feeling it would when her brain started firing enough to send the signals.

  The driver-side door opened, then slammed shut. Kara saw the outline of black shoes walking around the bumper through her squinted eyes and took stock of her options. Since she wasn’t sure she could move, “play dead” was at the top of the list.

  The passenger door opened and another set of large shoes joined the first, hovering over Kara. “You think she’s dead?” the passenger asked nonchalantly, like he was inquiring about the weather.

  “Nah. I heard the only way to kill one of these is to cut off their heads,” the driver responded.

  “It’s going to be hard to make it look like an accident if we cut her head off, dipshit.”

  “People get decapitated all the time. It wouldn’t be farfetched to lose your head riding a bike like this one. Hell, most people who had to ride a piece of crap like this would probably take their own life.”

  The passenger laughed. “She doesn’t look that important to me.”

  “Who knows? I just follow orders. You got the sword?”

  “It’s in the trunk.”

  “Well, get it. And hurry up.”

  As the passenger went to the trunk, Kara decided it was time to get the blood flowing to her extremities again. Without much movement, she tried to flex her toes within her tall boots. With her brain fuzzy, she couldn’t decide if she should try to summon Jaxon, or if moving her hand to her throat would get her head chopped off all the quicker.

  “Hey, what about this crowbar?” the passenger asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Well, if we can get her head off with this, it might look more realistic than if we use a sword, more like she’d had a real accident. You know, rougher around the edges.”

  “What are you, a forensics expert now? They told me you should use the sword—so use it,” the driver said.

  The second man returned with the long blade and dropped the crowbar beside Kara’s body. “Just in case,” he said to the driver.

  “Are you forgetting something, Steve?” the driver asked.

  “What?”

  “A cloak would be nice. I don’t really want to get caught out here with our pants down, so to speak.”

  Kara flexed her muscles, careful not to move. When she felt the responding tension in her arms and legs, she was amazed her battered limbs were listening to her at all.

  “Seriously?” Steve huffed. “I have to do everything? I’m the one doing the decapitation here. You can’t do one little spell?”

  “You have your job, I have mine. I drove.”

  “You loved it! The car has hydraulics.”

  The driver snickered. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ve always wanted to try that.” He stepped closer. “Okay, here goes.”

  Kara heard him chant and felt the power being called down around them. It was strange. Not the same words Abbey used, and the spell seemed to cover an area instead of just a person.

  “Thanks, man,” Steve said.

  When she glimpsed the passenger’s face hovering above her, pondering how he wanted to go about severing her head, she knew her moment of truth had arrived. When she moved, she was doing it full force, with the expectation her body was going to obey. If she was wrong, she was dead anyway.

  Kara rolled to her side as the sword came swinging toward her shoulders. She snatched the crowbar as she went, rolling from a somersault into a crouch with the crowbar out in front of her—and then she promptly fell on her ass.

  “Shit! She’s conscious,” the driver shouted.

  “Not for long,” the other man said, swinging the sword like he knew how to use it as he walked toward Kara.

  Now that Kara had her eyes fully open, she took in the men before her. Caucasian, average height, mid to late thirties, both with brown hair.

  “Put down the crowbar, Fallen. It’ll all be over soon. It won’t hurt, I swear, and then you can go back to hell where you came from.”

  “Fuck you,” she choked out, rising to her knees. The pain radiating out to every muscle was almost too much for words.

  The driver laughed. “Too bad about this one. She’s got spunk. And she’s not bad looking…for a filthy demon spawn, I mean.”

  Steve-the-passenger lifted the sword and brought it down with all his strength. She countered with the crowbar at the same time, and the force of the two meeting rang through her whole body. He
was strong, but then so was she. When he stumbled back a step, she swung and knocked the bar into his stomach with enough power to pick him up off his feet and launch him backward.

  “Shit!” The driver looked as though he was deciding if going after her was in his job description, and Kara saw when he decided it was.

  She stood and twirled the crowbar in her hands, then caught herself when she wobbled sideways. Hopefully she looked scarier than she felt. When the driver bent down to pick up the sword Steve had dropped, Kara growled. “Don’t even think about it.”

  But apparently, a bloody, clumsy woman wasn’t scary enough. When he clenched his teeth and lifted the sword, Kara hauled back her arm and chucked the crowbar like a spear, aiming straight for his heart. When the weight left her hand, she fell to one knee, glancing up in time to see the driver scream and clutch his impaled chest on the way to the ground.

  When Steve got his shaking hands under him and pushed off, trying to stand, Kara stalked forward and planted her boot in his face as hard as she could. Blood sprayed from his nose and mouth in an arc as he flipped onto his back.

  The driver whimpered and started to chant, his hands trying to steady the bar protruding from just under his collarbone. Blood gushed from the wound, and he didn’t look like he could chase her, but the energy in the air was dark and getting darker by the second. She wasn’t going to wait around to see exactly what spell he threw.

  She turned and ran, hoofing it down the street as fast as her Demiáre feet could carry her. She wasn’t bothering with human speed. Let the passersby wonder if they were seeing things.

  All that mattered was making it home with her head.

  When Kara finally got through the front door, she collapsed in the entryway. The only thing that had gone right in the past few hours was entering the building through the parking garage and riding the elevator up without any other tenants.

  She rubbed the grit from her eyes. Framed in the balcony window, the sun was sinking low, turning the clouds red and lavender. It was too beautiful for what she’d just been through.