Any Given Doomsday

by Lori Handeland

  “I’ve heard them. Myths.”

  “Remember the Titans?”

  My eyes widened. For an instant I thought he was talking about the Denzel Washington movie, and I had a little brain freeze as my mind scrambled for the sense in that.

  “A race of godlike giants who ruled Greece in ancient times,” he explained. “The more famous gods of Greece are descended from them. Gods who had amazing supernatural powers.”

  “The Greek gods weren’t real.”

  “No? What about the pyramids? You think human hands could build something like that? You had help, seer, from the Nephilim. Giants of stature and strength. Only they could have performed such a feat.”

  “There are pyramids all over the world.”

  “As there are Nephilim everywhere.” He waved away any further protest and moved on. “In the time of the Crusades, we joined in. We were the very best of the best, warriors who never died.”

  “I’d think you would have joined the—” I tried to remember what the “other side” was labeled during the Crusades. “Infidels. Cut down on the competition.”

  “Humans aren’t competition, and religion is irrelevant to us.” He pointed at the map. “There are seers and demon killers everywhere. The way they worship, whether they refer to their deity as God or Jehovah or Allah has no bearing on their being called to the fight.”

  “Angels, fallen and otherwise, are Christian beings.”

  “The angels fell long before Christ.”

  Rats. Good point.

  “The Old Testament happened,” he continued. “It’s history, not myth. As we are.”

  “How are you blending in these days?”

  “Captains of industry, lords of the boardroom, leaders of governments worldwide.” He bowed and swept out his arm before straightening. “Wherever there’s a success story that pushes the boundaries of believability there you will find us.”

  “Make hay while the sun shines,” I murmured.

  “Precisely.”

  “Get ready for the rain.”

  His smile faded. “I do not know where your arrogance comes from. You are in our power. You are his slave. You do not even have clothes to cover yourself. You have been stripped of everything.”

  Not everything, I thought. I had powers they didn’t know about. They had to be good for something or why have them? Why give me this gift if it couldn’t be used to win the war?

  I was going to figure out how to bring the Strega down, and Jimmy too, if he didn’t snap out of it, or I was going to die trying.

  But I guess that had been the plan all along.

  One of the minions handed the Strega a phone. When he began to chatter in Italian, I lost interest.

  “Let’s go.” Jimmy took me by the arm and led me from the war room to the elevator. “You need to rest.”

  “Is that what you call it?” I muttered.

  “Wouldn’t you like some food?”

  “Not hungry.” My stomach growled.

  “Making yourself sick isn’t going to change anything.”

  He was right. If I wanted any chance of getting out of here, I had to eat, to sleep, to find some freaking clothes.

  The elevator opened on the penthouse. The table was set for one. Steak. Baked potato. Spinach salad. Cabernet. Was I was being fattened up like the proverbial sacrificial lamb?

  Yes.

  Nevertheless, I made myself sit at the table and consume everything on the plates; then I sat back, swirling the wine in my glass, sipping slowly.

  The sun fell, casting shadows across the towering buildings of Manhattan. Up here, it was hard to believe millions of people scurried around down there. Up here, it was hard to believe there were any other problems in the world but my own. But then my problem was the world and how to save it.

  Jimmy lounged on the leather couch, bare feet on the coffee table. His shirt was unbuttoned, hanging loose, framing his beautiful chest. All the cuts made by the Strega were gone, his skin smooth, toned, and tanned. Perfect.

  I glanced away and took a gulp of wine.

  “You want me,” he said.

  “No.”

  “I can smell your desire, Elizabeth. You can’t hide it.”

  I met his eyes, tried not to flinch from the obvious difference in them, in him. “You’re delusional.”

  “Our slaves become slaves to that craving. Eventually you won’t run even if I let you. You won’t be able to leave me. You’ll call me master, and I won’t even have to ask.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He smiled. “You’ll see.”

  “Just because my body responds doesn’t mean I want you.”

  “No?” His smile grew. “What does it mean?”

  Though I was tempted to throw the rest of my wine in his face, I managed to drink some instead before trying to reach him one more time.

  “If I don’t look at you too long, or listen to you too hard, I can remember what it was like. I loved you then.” I took a deep breath and admitted the truth. What could it hurt? This wasn’t Jimmy anymore. “I loved you more than anyone in my life. Next to—” My voice broke, but I forced myself to continue. “Next to Ruthie.”

  “Love is irrelevant.”

  “Love is everything.”

  He came off the couch in one swift movement, startling me so much I sloshed wine over my fingers. The Cabernet dripped onto the tabletop, so closely resembling blood beneath a full moon—crimson, almost black—that I had to set the glass down and glance away.

  Jimmy hauled me up roughly by the elbows. Lucky I’d set aside the wine. “I told you not to talk about the past.”

  “Loving you is definitely past,” I muttered.

  “Good,” he said, and kissed me.

  He was holding me too tightly, kissing me too hard. I could do nothing but stiffen and struggle. Not that struggling did me any good. He only held me tighter, kissed me harder.

  He lifted his head. His eyes, onyx with a pinprick of ruby, stared into mine. “Kiss me back.”

  “You can’t make me respond.”

  His fingers clenched on my arms, and I fought a wince. “I bet I can.”

  He let me go without warning, and the chair I’d been dragged out of hit me in the knees. I plopped into it. He punched several buttons on the wall—and I do mean punched—his fist shooting forward, the plastic crunching in protest.

  The heavy drapes slid over the windows. The lights went out with a muffled thunk.

  Across the room, more plastic protested, followed by thuds and swooshes from the area of the couch. I stood, though, as usual, I had nowhere to go.

  “Come here.” His voice whispered out of the gloom; he sounded so much like himself my breath caught.

  I could see pretty well in the dark these days. Not great, not everything, but considering there was no light and I could easily distinguish Jimmy’s outline as well as that of most of the furniture in the room, I was impressed.

  He scooted across the distance between us—quick as a wink, literally. I didn’t have to fake my gasp of surprise when he touched me. Speed like that was a shock even when you were expecting it.

  “Kiss me back,” he repeated.

  Goose bumps rose all over me. The last time I’d heard that voice in the darkness, I’d have done anything.

  Last time.

  He caressed me with a gentleness that left me breathless. How could he not remember how it had been between us and touch me like that?

  He couldn’t. Because he did remember; he just didn’t care. However, considering his order to kiss him back, this setting of seduction, maybe he did.

  His lips brushed mine like a whisper. My mouth parted on a sigh. He tasted the same, smelled the same too. Shouldn’t he smell like a vampire? Rotting flesh, graveyard dust, something bad. But all I could smell was Jimmy.

  I wanted to bury my face in his neck, draw in that scent so deeply I’d never know anything else. I wanted to brush my fingers through his hair, coast the tips along hi
s eyelids, feel the flutter of his eyes beneath, his lashes against my skin.

  Instead of tossing me onto the bed, he sat, pulling me between his legs, rubbing his cheek along my bare belly, resting his forehead between my breasts. My arms cradled his shoulders; my hands cupped his head. My heart gave one heavy thud and began to race. I couldn’t think when he was touching me like this.

  His breath puffed across my skin, cool like a spring breeze. It felt so good, so right, as did his hands at my hips, his lips along the underside of my breast.

  When 1 couldn’t see the occasional flare of red at the center of his eyes, when he didn’t speak and say horrible things, I could forget what had happened to him, to me. I could pretend it was then and not now.

  In the dark, in my arms, I could pretend he was still Jimmy.

  Chapter 37

  I curled into him, pressed my lips to his hair and just held on. Amazingly, he let me.

  I’d tried to talk to him of the past, tried to get him to remember love, but that had only made him retreat more deeply into the creature he’d become.

  But what if I showed him what we’d had? What if I could make him remember himself, remember us, by loving him?

  I was afraid. Not so much that he’d figure out what I was doing and kill me as he’d threatened, but that I’d be captured more thoroughly by my feelings than I’d been by this building of marble and glass. If I let myself love him, would I ever be able to get over him again? Would I be able to kill him if I needed to?

  If I didn’t do something and quickly, I’d be dead or wishing I was. I had to take the chance no matter the cost.

  His lips moved against my skin; he whispered words I couldn’t understand, softly, like a prayer. I knew that couldn’t be true.

  “Shh,” he murmured, as if soothing me, and kissed the well between my breasts before rubbing his face over me, as if memorizing the plane of my soul.

  He mouthed my nipple, no tongue, no teeth. He didn’t suckle; he didn’t kiss; just a quick caress and he was gone, trailing those lips—so deliciously cool amid all this heat—over my stomach, my hip, then lower still. He rubbed his face in my soft curls, trailed a thumb over my center; then before I could protest, or agree, he fell back on the bed, taking me along.

  My gasp of surprise turned into a tiny squeak when he rolled, pinning me beneath him. I expected a change— the gentleness gone, the monster returned. He’d roughly thrust; he’d make me come. I wouldn’t be able to deny him any more now than 1 had before. But he surprised me. He forever surprised me.

  His chest pressed into mine, naked and slick, like fine marble. If I turned on the light would I see the trace of veins beneath the surface—blue beneath pale brown, instead of black tracing white?

  He lifted his head; I captured his face in my hands and kissed him. Sweetly, like the first time. Tentatively. Mouths only, tongues later. Much later, when I couldn’t wait any longer for a taste.

  The first touch of my lips and he opened. I didn’t delve inside. Instead I made my way downward, savoring his jaw, his neck, his chest. When I couldn’t go any lower, a tiny shove at his shoulder, and he fell back; he let me take the lead and the top.

  His nipples pebbled beneath my tongue; my fingers traced the ridge of his ribs and belly. I forgot he was different, that I was, and concentrated on the things that were the same.

  He still liked it when I rubbed my mouth over the fluttering muscles in his stomach. He still moaned when I reached into his loose cotton pants and closed my palm around him. He still gasped when I eased the elastic waistband clear and swirled my tongue over his tip.

  If I were a slave he’d grab my head, push himself into my mouth, and make me stay there while he pumped harder and faster, while he grew larger and larger, the tight, slick heat making him spurt.

  Instead he let me do anything that I wanted. Did he trust me that much? Probably not. He merely trusted that there was nothing I could do that would hurt him— at least not permanently.

  In the old days, we’d had to sneak around. Ruthie would have killed us if she’d caught us together. So there’d been a lot of back-seat sex, quite a few blow jobs in the closet. One of the few times we’d ever done it on a bed had been our first time.

  Ruthie had taken the little ones to the zoo; Jimmy had come home a day early from the farm, and I’d just gotten out of the shower.

  Afternoon sun through the window, just-cut grass on the breeze, my body wet, my skin flushed. Jimmy had walked by my bedroom, his footsteps slowing, the door creaking back. His shirt unbuttoned, the top of his jeans too. I can still feel the jab of lust that had hit me when I’d seen the paler skin beneath the sweat-darkened jeans and licked my lips, wondering at the flavor.

  We’d come together like thunder in the middle of a summer night. He’d tasted like danger. Hell, he still did.

  While I’d been reminiscing, he’d lost the pants. He no longer bothered with underwear or socks, which only made things easier for me.

  I took him all the way in, then let him slide almost all the way out, swirling my tongue around the tip, then down to the base; my palm cupping him, at first gently and then more firmly still.

  His fingers clenched in my hair, then released just as quickly. He didn’t want me to stop, didn’t want me to slow. He wanted this, and he wanted it my way.

  Increase the rhythm, the pressure, a scrape of the teeth, so close, a few more strokes and he’d be mine.

  But he wouldn’t give in; he wouldn’t give it up. Instead he entangled our legs and did some fancy wrestling move, flipping me onto my back and sliding between my thighs.

  “Hey.” My protest was cut short by his mouth. He kissed me as if he wanted to crawl inside me forever. He hadn’t kissed me like that since we were seventeen.

  The memory made my eyes sting, and I nearly panicked. I couldn’t lose control. I had to keep trying to reach him, and the only way to do that was to let him in completely, to become as captured by the past overwhelming the present as I wanted him to be.

  Our lips fit together like the last two pieces of a puzzle; our tongues met like rain across a wind-washed desert—moisture and heat, desperation, salvation.

  “Touch me,” I said.

  Love me, I thought.

  We kissed for what seemed like hours; maybe it was. I’d never gotten tired of kissing him back then. Sometimes that was all that we’d had.

  They say you never forget your first love or your first time. When they’re one and the same, you dream of it, dream of him, for years, maybe forever. I don’t know.

  Now I had him in my arms again. His mouth on mine, his hands, both rough and gentle, wandered everywhere. I needed him inside me. I had to see if the dreams were even close to the reality.

  I opened myself, welcomed him in, the slick slide, the way that he filled me, familiar. Though I no longer recognized him in the light, I knew him in the dark. There he wasn’t a monster. There he was only a man.

  He leaned his forehead against mine, took a deep breath as if to speak.

  “Don’t talk.” I crushed any words with my mouth.

  Oh, God, please don’t talk.

  We continued to kiss; I wouldn’t let him go. With one hand at the nape of his neck I held him to me, the other at his hip showed him the rhythm. Slow and deep; I didn’t want it to end. Not yet. As long as we were like this, in the dark, the bad things couldn’t reach us. I was still me; Jimmy was still Jimmy; we were together again as if we’d never been apart.

  But nothing good lasts forever. I knew that as well as anyone, probably better.

  I pulled him to me too fast, let him in too far, and he tensed, his whole body straining to hold back, but he was unable to.

  Once he lost control, so did I. The waves of sensation washed over us both. He plunged in one last time and stilled. The tiny movement, the release so deep within, made me gasp and wrap my legs around him, tilting upward, trying to draw him closer. It had always been like this—never long enough, never deep enough,
never, ever enough.

  His mouth left mine, trailing over my chin, down my neck to my breast where he gently kissed first one slope and then the other as the last shivers died away.

  My chest ached from holding in what I felt. How could he touch me like that and not feel it too?

  We’d made love like this half a dozen times before, and every time we’d lain in the same way afterward. His mouth at my breast, tracing the fine blue lines with his tongue, my fingers caressing his face, his back, his arms.

  We’d whisper secrets, dream of the future, profess a love that would last forever. I’d believed it then; I believed it again now.

  His breath on my neck was soft as he nuzzled me, but his tongue was hard, insistent, as he traced first the hoi-low and then the slope. My nipples tightened. I still wanted him.

  I lifted my arms, tilted my head, arched, and he grew hard again while still inside me. I knew that I’d reached him, that he would come back to me. Together we’d escape. We’d save the world, exact vengeance for Ruthie.

  “Jimmy.” I put all the love, all the trust, into the response of my body and the whisper of my voice. With that one word I asked him for the truth.

  He answered by sinking his fangs into my neck.

  Chapter 38

  The arch of my body went from pleasure to pain. I tensed, tightened, gasped, and I swear as he began to suckle my neck, he came again in a rush that made me dizzy.

  Or maybe that was just blood loss. He was sucking on me like a dehydrated kid with a straw.

  I would have fought back, but I couldn’t move. The first strike of his fangs had paralyzed me.

  The betrayal was almost more than I could bear. He could have drunk from me the first time we’d been together, I’d expected him to, but he’d waited until I was at my most vulnerable. Then he’d struck like the evil thing that he was.

  My hands fell away from his neck; my body went limp as my eyes fluttered closed. I could see us below me, as if I floated somewhere near the ceiling.