Once Upon a Kiss

by Nora Roberts

  “It’s an expression. Endearment or insult, depending on your point of view.” On the second level, he crossed the lines of cars and stopped at his beloved ’68 Mustang. He unlocked it, opened the passenger door. “Climb in.”

  She sniffed first, caught the scent of leather and approved. She was already fiddling with dials and jiggling the gearshift when he got behind the wheel. “Don’t touch.” He slapped her hand away. She kicked her elbow under his jaw. “Cut it out.” Shoving her arm down, he reached for her seat belt. “You need to strap in. It’s the law of the land.”

  When he bent to buckle her up, he saw that she was still miffed. “You sure push my buttons,” he muttered.

  “This is an expression?”

  “Yeah. It means—”

  “I do not need an explanation. You are aroused by me.”

  “And then some.” He trailed his fingers over her cheek. Then he opened the glove compartment and tossed a pair of wraparound shades in her lap. “I guess we have to go kick some demon butt before we deal with our buttons.”

  4

  SHE HAD A great deal to think about.

  She was primarily a physical creature. When she was hungry, she ate. When she was tired, she slept. And all of her life, her purpose, above all others, had been to hunt.

  It was a sacred trust, a sacred gift. She could laugh and weep, desire and dislike, dream and act. But over it all, through every cell in her body was the purpose.

  She had been born, raised and trained for it.

  But no slayer lived long if she didn’t use her brain as well as her might.

  Even with the wonder of her first car ride, the thrill of seeing the structures and the people, hearing the blasts of horns, of music, of voices, her mind still chipped away at the puzzle.

  She had been sent to this place, and to this man. So their destinies were joined. She would protect him and his people with her life.

  He was a seeker, and deserved respect. But as a slayer she ranked highest, save for the sorcerer. And if Rhee had spoken true, she had that in her blood as well.

  The man had no right to usurp her authority. He would have to be put in his place for it.

  But he was correct. This was his world, and his knowledge of it exceeded hers. If he was to be her guide, then she must follow. However much it rankled.

  She desired him, which both pleased and irritated her. Pleased because he was strong and handsome, amusing and intelligent—and he desired her in turn. Irritated because she was unused to experiencing a desire this keen without the time and means to act upon it.

  And she was not prepared for what was tangled in and woven through that desire. Lust was appetite, which could be easily sated. But this longing fluttering inside her, like a wild bird fighting to be free, was stronger, stranger than any need of the flesh.

  It distracted her, and she could not afford to be distracted. If the Bok escaped her, this world, and her world, were doomed.

  “So, how’d you get into the slayer business?”

  She turned her head, and even with the dark glasses, Harper felt the heat of her gaze. “It was a gift, given me at my creation. It is woven in my blood, in my bone.”

  “Let’s put it this way. You didn’t pop out of the womb with a broadsword in your hand and a little dagger clenched in your teeth.”

  “I was trained.” She liked watching the lights turn colors. She’d processed their purpose herself because she was tired of asking questions. “To track, to hunt, in weaponry. To fight, to build my body, my mind, my spirit.”

  “How about your parents?”

  “I know no father. It is the way of slayers.”

  “All slayers are women?”

  “We are female, birthed by females, raised, trained, and tested.”

  “What do the guys do? The men.”

  “Males hunt, farm, become warriors, scholars, seekers like yourself.” She shrugged. “Whatever path is open to them. Some, in protecting their land, their families, in battle or in defense of self, kill demons. But they are not slayers.”

  “Are there more like you back home?”

  “There were ten, now there are nine. Four weeks past, Sorak killed one of us. A trap. He drank the blood of a slayer. That is how he had the power, the strength, to elude me, to get this far. She was Laris. She was my friend.”

  “I’m sorry.” Harper closed a hand over hers. “He’ll pay for it.”

  The gesture, the simple warmth and connection, moved her. “There is no payment rich enough. His death will have to do.” She looked over quickly when he lifted her hand to his mouth, brushed his lips over her knuckles.

  “A custom,” he said, reading her shock. “Like an expression. Comfort, affection, seduction. Whatever fits.”

  Her lips curved. “In my world you would be thrashed for taking such a liberty with a slayer.”

  “We’re in my world now, baby.”

  “And here the sky is different, and the ground. The customs. I enjoy many of the new things in this place. The drink called coffee, the elevator, and the car. I have not decided if I like the box called television or all your expressions, but I enjoy the sensation of your mouth on my skin.”

  He parked the car, turned off the ignition. “You got a man back home? A lover?”

  “No.”

  “You’re going to have one here.” He climbed out, skirted the hood, and opened her door. “We’ll walk for a while,” he told her and took her hand again. “Stay close.”

  She let him lead. It gave her the opportunity to observe and absorb, to identify scents. Food came to her again—sweet, spiced, tart. Her stomach tightened in hunger. Perhaps traveling through the portal sharpened the appetites, she thought. If that were true for the Bok, they would already have fed at least once.

  She caught the scent of animal among the human. Great cats, reptile, fowl, and more she couldn’t identify. And then she saw them, exotic beasts, prowling or dozing in enclosures while people strolled past or stopped to stare.

  It gave her a pang at the most elemental level. “It is not right to lock them up. They are not born for this.”

  “Maybe it’s not,” he agreed. He hadn’t come to the zoo since childhood because it invariably made him sad. “I can’t say I care for it either.”

  “This is a cruel thing you do here. This is a sorry place, this zoo. Is this what you teach your young?” she demanded, gesturing to a little girl being wheeled in a stroller by her parents. “That one species can be locked away for the amusement of another?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it to you. Civilization has encroached. There isn’t as much room as there once was. In captivity, they’re safe, I guess, and tended. They can’t be hunted or taken as trophies.”

  “They are not free,” was all she said, and turned away.

  “Okay, maybe this was a bad idea. It’s depressing, and the place is jammed. I wasn’t thinking about it being Sunday. It doesn’t seem like the time and place for a demon snack. Maybe we should try the animal shelter—dogs and cats. Or hit the stables.”

  She held up a hand, bared her teeth. “Bok,” was all she said.

  She was on the scent and ran like the wind. People scrambled out of her way, and those who caught a glimpse of the sword under her coat scrambled faster and farther.

  It was a challenge to keep up with her under normal circumstances, but with the obstacle course of people, children, benches, and trash receptacles in the zoo, Harper’s lungs were burning by the time he caught up.

  “Slow down,” he snapped. “You mow down innocent bystanders, we’ll get arrested before we get where you want to go. And I can’t begin to tell you how much fun the cops will have with your demon story.”

  “There!” She pointed to a building, seconds before a stream of people rushed out. Screaming.

  She drew her sword as she raced through the doorway.

  Whatever Harper had expected, it hadn’t been this, this stench of blood and death, of fear and rot. In the cages
, monkeys were wild. Screeching, screaming, leaping desperately from branch to branch.

  He saw the blood and gore on the floor, tracked it with his eyes, and found—to his horror—a man, no, a demon, feeding savagely on a body. A human body.

  When the demon lifted his head, his teeth, his eyes glistened red.

  It all happened in seconds. The shock, the disgust, the fury. All of those vicious sensations burst through him as Harper drew his gun. And something hideous pounced on his back.

  Claws dug into his shoulders, gouged as the thing that attacked him let out a predatory howl. He spun, ramming back into the wall. His gun flew out of his hand and slid across the floor. Cursing, he battered the thing against the wall as his own blood spilled hot down his back. He felt the rough edge of a tongue slide through it, slurp hideously.

  Revolted, he flew back with his elbow, aiming high for the throat, hammered down with his heel on the instep of a booted foot hard enough to hear bone snap.

  There was a shriek, inhuman. Harper jabbed behind him with his fingers where he hoped to find eyes.

  Now it screamed, and the claws released.

  He saw what it was now, as he spun around. The face of a man, the eyes of a monster. It came for him, and Harper sprang into the fight.

  It was limping from the bones he’d crushed, but it was still fast. Lightning fast. Harper whirled, and the thing hurtled past him. When it turned to charge again, he met its face with a flying kick.

  Kadra fought her own demons, swinging her sword to block the slice of a curved blade, evading the swipe of claws as she carefully retreated. She gauged Harper’s position by sound. She couldn’t risk even a glance behind her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sorak, behind the bars, grinning, grinning as he feasted and watched the battle.

  Kadra flipped her dagger out of its sheath, managed to turn enough to judge Harper’s distance and position. She feinted, thrust, then leaped to cleave the demon’s sword arm from his body.

  “Harper Doyle!” She shouted, then heaved him her sword as she snatched the sickle blade from the air to battle the next demon.

  They fought back-to-back now, Harper wielding the sword, she slicing with the dagger and blade. Green blood mixed with red.

  Still, she saw, Sorak watched.

  “I will have you,” he called out. “I will have your blood. I will have your body. I will have your mind.”

  “I am Kadra!” she almost sang it as she thrust through slicing claws and pinned the point of the dagger in the demon warrior’s throat. “I am your death.” She spun, prepared to leap into the other battle. And watched Harper’s sword cleave his opponent’s belly.

  Through the smoke curling from the demon dead, she scooped the Glock up on the fly as she rushed to where Sorak fed and gloated. She saw only the quick flash of his teeth, the taunting swirl of his cloak as he bolted toward an open door on the side of the cage.

  She fired, the explosions of sound roaring through the building. Even so, she could hear the demon’s laughter. She vaulted over the safety rail, closed her hands on the bars of the cage where beasts lay slaughtered, and battered at the steel.

  “Come on.” Riding on adrenaline and pain, Harper wrenched her around. He shot the sword back into her sheath, snatched his gun and holstered it. “Put this away. Now,” he snapped, handing her the dagger. “We’re getting out, fast. There’s no possible explanation for what just happened here, so we’re not going to make one. Move!”

  She ran with him, through the building, out the rear. He tugged the coat over her sword, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and tried to look as normal as a couple could who had just battled a pack of demons.

  “Keep it slow. Cops are already heading in.” He heard the sirens, the shouts. They turned away from the noise and kept walking. How long had they been inside? he wondered. It had seemed like hours. But now he realized it had been only minutes.

  “Can you track it?” Harper asked her.

  Alone, on her world, the answer would have been yes. But here, with the crowds of people, the scents and sights so unfamiliar to her senses, she was unsure.

  “He will go to ground now. He knew. He knew I would come here. Sorak has more knowledge than I thought. Now he has fed, he has amused himself. He will rest and wait. He will not feed again in the daylight.”

  “Just as well. The place is going to be crawling with cops. Since we’re covered with blood, and armed, we wouldn’t get very far.”

  And he had a bad feeling that a lot of the blood was his own. He wouldn’t be any good to Kadra in the next round if he was light-headed and shocky. First things first, he thought as he concentrated on staying upright. Get bandaged up, get steady. Then think.

  “We’ll hunt the bastard down and kill him with his belly full.”

  It was difficult to turn away from the hunt. But she had seen the demon attack him from the rear and knew he was wounded. She would not leave him behind.

  “He has disguised his scent with the animals, and the humans. He will take time for me to find his lair.” She steadied him when he swayed against her, and the hand she pressed to his shoulder came away smeared with his blood.

  “How bad is your wound?”

  “I don’t know. Bad enough. Fucking claws. Went right through the leather. I’ve only had this jacket five, six years.”

  She turned her head to look at the gouges and was relieved to see the demon had torn more cloth than flesh. “It is not so bad. It was a good battle,” she said with sudden cheer. “You fight well.”

  “Three out of four. It’s just the one now.”

  “He will make more.”

  The horror of that seized Harper’s belly. “We have to stop him.”

  “We will do what must be done. Now we go back to your hut. Your wounds must be tended. We will rest, eat, think. We will be ready for the night.”

  Her unerring sense of direction took them back to his car. “Can I sit on the side with the wheel now?”

  “No, you can’t sit on the side with the wheel now. Or ever.” Hurting, exhausted, he jabbed the key into the lock, wrenched open the door.

  “Are all so selfish with their possessions here?”

  “A man’s car is his castle,” Harper stated, and limped around to take the wheel. “Are you hurt?” he remembered to ask.

  “No, I am unharmed.” Realizing he might take this as a criticism of his skill, she took his hand as he had taken hers. “But I am a slayer.”

  “Kiss ass.”

  She cocked her head. The battle had lifted her mood. “This is another expression?”

  He had to laugh, had to hiss in pain. On a combination of both, he started the car. “Yeah, baby, but it’s one I wouldn’t mind you taking literally.”

  5

  THOUGH SHEER WILL kept Harper conscious, he was in considerable pain and woozy from the loss of blood by the time he pulled back into his slot at the garage. Kadra’s idea of how to deal with the problem was to carry him.

  He had just enough strength left to stop her from slinging him over her shoulder. And just enough wit to realize she could have pulled it off.

  “No.” Since his limbs had gone watery on him, he warded her off with a scowl. “I’m not being carried across the Lower East Side by a woman.”

  “This is foolish. You’re injured. I am not.”

  “Yeah, yeah, keep rubbing it in. Just give me a hand.”

  When she frowned and held one out, he shook his head. “You’re a literal creature.” He slid an arm around her waist, let her take some of his weight. “Walk and talk,” he told her. “Tell me more about this change.”

  “After the kiss of change, the victim falls into a trance—a sleep that is not a sleep, for one day. During the sleep, the demon blood mixes with the human’s. The human becomes what has poisoned him, with the demon’s instincts, his habits. His appetites.”

  Since Harper’s breathing was ragged, she tightened her grip and shortened her stride. “When the human wakes h
e is demon, though some wake before the change is complete and are demi-demons. In either stage, the one who has changed is bound to the one who changed him.”

  “Is there a cure?”

  “Death,” she said flatly, and shifted her grip on him as they stepped outside. He was pale, she noted. And his breath was only more labored. It would have been easier to carry him.

  But she understood a warrior’s pride.

  “Your hut is only a short journey. We will go at your pace.”

  “Just keep talking.” His shoulder was going numb, and that worried him. “I need to focus.”

  “Why did you become a seeker?”

  “I like to find things out. Without a PI license, it’s called nosiness. With one, it’s called a profession. Insurance fraud, missing persons, some skip tracing. I try to stay out of the marital arena. It’s just humiliating for all parties to stand outside a motel room with a camera.”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she liked his voice. Despite his wounds, or perhaps because of them, there was grit in it. “Are you a successful seeker?”

  “I get by.” He looked around but couldn’t quite pinpoint where they were. The sounds of traffic, the busy music of the city, sounded dim. She was the only thing clear to him now—the supporting strength of her arm, the firm curves of her body, the scent of the sacred waterfall that lingered in her hair.

  It was as if both their worlds had receded and they themselves were all that was left.

  “What must you get by?”

  “Hmm?” He turned his head. He’d been right, he thought, there really was nothing but her. “I mean I do all right. I do regular legwork for a lawyer. Jake, the one I thought had hired you. He’s got a sick sense of humor. That’s why I love him.”

  He staggered at the curb, tried to orient himself when she steadied him. “It is this way.” She turned the corner, glanced up and down the street. “Where is the well? You require water.”

  “Doesn’t work that way here.” But she was right about one thing. His thirst was vicious. He nodded toward a sidewalk vendor. “There.”