Possession fa-5

by J. R. Ward

  “What the fuck!”

  Sissy ignored whoever it was, utterly focused on her inferno as she wondered what else she could put in it. The drapes. She could rip down the—

  Hard hands grabbed onto her shoulders and yanked her back—and that was when she lost it. Just f’in lost it.

  As if detonated, she went crazy, screaming, kicking, biting at whatever she could get access to. And as she attacked, her vision whited out, nothing registering except the need to hurt someone, anyone—

  With the inner explosion came a freakish strength.

  Which was how she ended up twisting around and kneeing her captor right in the balls.

  “Fucking hell—fuck!”

  For a split second, the hold on her loosened, and she took advantage of the release, bolting out from the smoke-filled parlor and tearing for the front door. Grabbing the handle, she ripped things open and launched herself off the steps, landing in a messy sprawl on the wide sidewalk. Shoving her hair out of her face, she—

  Headlights.

  Down the lane on the left, coming toward her.

  Jumping up to her feet, she ran for the car or truck or SUV, streaking out into the road, facing off, thinking of how Jim had gotten hurt. She wanted to feel the impact, wanted to be solid enough to sustain the strike, to have at least one of the old rules of life apply to her: Don’t play in traffic because you will get hit.

  “Sissy! Shit!”

  “See me!” she screamed at the approaching lights. “See me!”

  “Sissy, goddamn it!”

  Her prayers were answered for once. Just when she thought she’d be denied, the car’s horn blared loud enough to get through the fury that was driving her. Then she had a brief impression of the driver looking right at her in terror, some inside light in the sedan illuminating his pale face with eyes stretched wide and a mouth open as if he were yelling—

  She was bodily removed from the path, a far greater weight muscling her out of the way as brakes squealed and the world spun.

  She landed on the grass strip on the far side of the road, her savior’s body crushing her, pain both clearing her head and scrambling it in a different way. Instantly, she was spun onto her back, her arms pinned over her head, her legs trapped in between two heavy thighs.

  Above her, Jim looked as pissed off as she felt—

  “Where did she go?”

  Dimly, she turned her head. A man was getting out of the BMW that had almost hit her and looking around frantically. “She was right there in the middle of the road.”

  A woman emerged from the other side of the sedan. “I saw her, too. She came out of nowhere.”

  Just like that cat, Sissy thought numbly as her anger dissipated. The one that had jumped in front of Jim’s truck earlier.

  “I’m over here,” she called out weakly. “God … I’m over here…”

  The two of them focused in her direction. “Did you hear that?” the man asked.

  “Hear what?” the woman said.

  The man approached, but it was clear he couldn’t really see her anymore. And as she opened her mouth to yell again, Jim clamped his hand on her mouth, silencing her.

  “Don’t you think we have enough problems,” he hissed.

  She tried to fight against him, but without her fury, there was no contest: He was way stronger, and stilled her without any real effort. And as expected, shortly thereafter, the couple got back in their luxury car and drove off.

  As their red taillights flared, her frustration rekindled.

  This was it? After all the good deeds she’d done in her life, after everything she’d unfairly been through down below, her eternity was getting stuck in the halfway-house version of an afterlife? Neither here nor there, Heaven nor Hell—nothing but a shadow that could take shape on rare occasions and maybe make car drivers hit their brakes in passing?

  Fucking bullshit.

  “I’m going to let you up,” Jim said. “Okay?”

  Sissy nodded and waited for him to pull back, giving him all the time in the world to misjudge how calm she was … and when he finally did—

  She went back at him, flailing with her fists and kicking with her legs until the pair of them were rolling around on the sidewalk, the concrete scratching her forearms, her calves, her cheeks. She didn’t care—she was crazed again, her fire finding another corner of her emotions that had yet to be immolated.

  And maybe Jim knew that. Because instead of sitting on her again, he let her go while still controlling her, fending off her attack with moves so practiced, it was as if he anticipated her strikes before she even thought of them.

  Which naturally just pissed her off even more.

  Eventually, even though she felt at her core that she could go on for ages, she ran out of gas, her body getting sloppy, her strength ebbing: The anger didn’t disappear; there was just no more physical energy left to provide an outlet for it—

  Sissy ended up collapsing against his chest, breathing in ragged bursts, unable to lift her head, much less her fists.

  Closing her eyes, she cursed long and hard inside her head … because, God knew, she still couldn’t get enough air down into her lungs.

  When she finally found her voice, she said hoarsely, “Why me…”

  And then abruptly, she shoved herself away from him. “And why do you care so much about me—I don’t know you—”

  “Sissy, look, I know you’ve been through a lot—”

  “Just leave me alone, okay? If I want to get hit by a car, let me do it—”

  “Sorry, but I can’t.”

  “Then actually help me! Tell me where I am—”

  “I wish I could—”

  “Whatever,” she derided. “You want to keep your day job as an angel? There’re another two hundred and fifty million people in this country—go save them. But as of this moment, I’m not your problem, and you are not mine.”

  Getting to her feet and brushing herself off, Sissy stared into the street and felt cheated. But at least they had seen her; they really had—

  A rough hand clamped onto her arm and snapped her around.

  Her savior didn’t look like anything close to a saint. His eyes were narrowed into slits, his upper lip had curled off his teeth, and the rage radiating out of him was probably the only thing that could have gotten through to her.

  His voice, when he spoke, was a snarl. “I saw you dead, how ’bout that. I broke through a door and found you bled the fuck out. I was too late to save you then, so call me stupid for trying to do right by you now.” He stuck his finger in her face. “You want to get all frustrated and shit because you don’t know who you are? Fine. But don’t burn down my fucking house, and don’t resent me because I don’t fucking know what your deal is.” He jabbed his finger at his own chest. “You think I know myself in this mess? I don’t. I don’t have a goddamn clue about so much of it all. Jesus Christ.”

  With that, he was the one who spun off and went back for the house, all the while dragging that injured leg behind him like it hurt like hell.

  How he was walking on that cast, she had no idea…

  As she watched him go back across the road, she regretted the whole evening. And yet even as she calmed down, under her surface … the anger was still there, simmering along.

  To think she’d assumed that Hell would be the worst thing that happened to her.

  This … seemed so much harder.

  Chapter

  Twenty-two

  Jim locked himself in his bedroom. And it wasn’t because he was sulking.

  He didn’t trust himself at the moment. He was beat to shit, partially starved, and angry as hell—not exactly a trifecta of healthy relating.

  Rifling through his stuff, he found, through the grace of God, a pack of unopened Marlboros in his winter parka. As he lit one up and sat down on his bed, he ran through what he was going to need to cut the cast off his leg. Some kind of saw?

  Underneath the plaster or whatever the hell it was,
he knew damn well the bone was probably still broken, but similar to the way the scratches on the backs of his hands were healing in front of his eyes, the leg had to be doing the same. Guess it made sense. What kind of savior would he be if he was sidelined by injury?

  Wonder if he cut off his arm, would it grow back?

  Exhaling, he watched the smoke curl up toward the ceiling. Then he put the cig in between his teeth and went for his crystal knife—the one he had left. ’Cuz the other was in the cab of his truck—or in the CPD’s evidence room, more likely.

  The weapon was as beautiful as it was deadly, the ultimate lights-out switch for minions and harpies alike—two subspecies of demon he had had the joy of coming into contact with lately. It was also handy-dandy when it came to exorcisms, as he’d learned in the first round.

  Shit, that felt like forever ago.

  As he turned the blade over in his palm, the prism caught the illumination from the lamp on the bureau, a rainbow of colors flashing and making him think of Eddie.

  That angel wouldn’t have approved of any of this. Not the trade. Not Sissy here on this side. Not the distractions.

  Jim took another drag and angled the tip onto the cast, right in front, below his knee. As he pushed down, there was some initial resistance, but then the plaster gave way, the blade cleaving a path down, down, down along his shinbone. Jim was careful to go slowly—and as he progressed, all kinds of in-the-field injuries came back to him, times when he’d been cut or wounded and had had no medical anything to fall back on.

  Just like the good ol’ days. Except he wasn’t getting shot at while he was treating himself.

  Things were looking up.

  Although, meh … if he were honest, he felt like he’d been popped in the sternum by a forty. As long as he lived, in any sense of the word, he was never going to forget the sight of Sissy rushing into the path of that car.

  Seeing her dead once had been more than enough—and then he’d had the chaser of her being in Hell. Yup, more than plenty, thanks.

  Just leave me alone, okay?

  Refocusing, he finished the cutting job at his foot and laid the blade aside on the messy sheets. After taking a drag on his cigarette, he turned his fingers into claws and penetrated the fault line he’d created in the plaster, prying the cast apart until it cracked free and fell off.

  His leg looked just the same. So not a compound fracture, obviously.

  Rubbing his calf to get rid of the itchies, he finished his coffin nail and ground the thing out. Then he stood up and put some weight on his leg as a test. Held like a dream. Achy? Yes. But it worked—and with the help of its twin, took him out and to the bathroom, where he ditched the johnny, showered, shaved, and brushed his teeth.

  His stomach was hungry. The rest of him was not. In fact, as he went back to his room with a towel around his hips, all his brain wanted him to do was get drunk. Really hammered, seeing-double drunk. Tragically, he didn’t think there was any alcohol in the house—at least not that had been made after Prohibition.

  Throwing the towel into the dirty pile, he collapsed on his bed, sprawling out on his back like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man—

  The lamp across the way flickered as if the bulb was fritzing out—or maybe the electricity was failing.

  Then everything went dark.

  “Annnd something else breaks in this house.”

  Crap, he really should go back out there and get Sissy. Bring her in from the proverbial rain. Apologize for biting her head off.

  And he intended to do all that—just after he rested his heavy eyes for five minutes. Besides, she probably needed a little more time to cool off. What a temper—and bizarrely, that made her even more attractive.

  Suggested there might be passion—

  Like a cop facing off at an armed suspect, he ordered, “Stop it. Right there.”

  Put down the inappropriate thoughts and step away with your hands on your head, not on your cock.

  Huh. Wonder what Miranda rights would look like under that scenario … You have the right to remain erect, but anything you do to yourself will be used against you in a court of conscience—

  Okay, he was losing it. And it was time to take everyone’s advice and pull it together. He was going to have a five-minute TO followed by clean clothes and a good solid attempt to try to talk to Sissy again.

  Taking deep, easy breaths, he chilled himself out, willing his emotions back into the closet that they’d jumped free of—

  Knock. Knock.

  Jim lifted his head. “Yeah?”

  As the door opened a crack, light sliced through all the pitch-black. “Can I come in?”

  At the sound of Sissy’s voice, Jim grabbed the covers and yanked them over his crotch. “Now’s not a good time.”

  “I just want to apologize.”

  “Can I meet you in the kitchen?”

  “I’m really sorry, Jim,” she said hoarsely.

  “Shit. Me, too.”

  With a graceful shift, she peered around the door, and God, in that illumination streaming in from behind her, her blond hair looked like a halo. Momentarily struck by her presence, he rubbed his eyes, thinking maybe this was a dream. Maybe he’d fallen asleep quick, and his subconscious had presented this chance to make up.

  “I’m cold,” she said in a small voice.

  “I’ll give you a sweatshirt.” He went to get up, and remembered the whole naked thing. “Actually … ah, it’s over there.”

  As he gestured to the corner where the clean-clothes pile was, Sissy stepped inside and stayed where she was. “I wasn’t…”

  She cleared her throat.

  Oh, right. This actually wasn’t about any kind of body-heat issue. She didn’t know how to properly take back what had happened out there—and yeah, he knew what that felt like.

  “You don’t have to say it,” he murmured.

  “Really?”

  “Nah.”

  “Oh, good.” She shut the door. “I’m glad.”

  Jim frowned as he heard her closing in on the bed … and then the mattress dipped under her slight weight. “What are you—”

  “I’m cold. I’m so … cold, Jim. I just need … to be warm.”

  Jim felt his eyes bulge, but there was no time to react beyond that: Before he knew what was happening, she had stretched out next to him and curled up into his chest.

  “Just … put your arms around me for a little bit. I need it so badly.”

  Her voice was tortured, sadness and exhaustion cracking it. But this was a serious no-go.

  Holding his arms out to the sides as far as he could stretch them, he shook his head even though she couldn’t see him. “Sissy …” His voice was rough to his own ears. “You can’t … no, this isn’t right.”

  “Why?” Her voice deepened, reminding him yet again that she was not who she had been. “I’m not asking for sex.”

  Jim recoiled, shocked by the candor. But he believed her on that one. The issue was him. Plus, oh, heeeeeey, he was naked.

  “Please,” she said. “I feel lost. So lost, like I’m going to float away. And there’s nothing holding me here … just let me stay the night. I promise I won’t bother you.”

  Not likely on that one, he thought.

  Except he wasn’t going to turn her away. He couldn’t.

  Pushing himself to the far edge of the mattress, he mummied himself in the sheeting. “I’ll…”

  What, he thought. Tell her he was going to keep his hands off of her? He didn’t want her to know he’d even gone there for a second.

  “Come here,” he muttered.

  Sissy came in close again, once more snuggling up against his chest, but this time she took it even further—she tucked her arms in between them, and put her head under his chin.

  The rough sigh she let out was such a commentary on where she was that he wanted to kick his own ass for getting tangled in the head for even a second about any attraction bullcrap.

  She was lost, and h
e was, for the time being, her imperfect anchor.

  Made him wish he were a better man; it really did.

  With some stiff herky-jerky, he adjusted himself to her position, but he didn’t touch her and kept his hips way back. There was still a lot of skin exposed on his part, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  He was all too aware of it.

  God, she was so small against him—not because she was short, but rather because he had, what, almost a hundred pounds on her?

  She smelled so good. Not fake perfume-y, just lovely, beautiful, fragile woman. And the fit with her was perfect, as if their bodies had been made for each other.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Jim squeezed his eyes shut. Then he gently put an arm around her, holding her very loosely. As she shuddered and inched in still closer, he realized that she wasn’t the only one who needed warmth. He did, too.

  Had for a long time, actually.

  After a while, Sissy’s breathing became deep and even, and with her safe, he let himself follow her lead. The war was still going on; Devina was out there and so was the soul; time was passing.

  But in this room … there was peace—and he was hard-pressed to say that he and Sissy didn’t deserve it, at least for a little while.

  Chapter

  Twenty-three

  Talk about your one-eighties.

  As Cait sat at her desk and stared out at the overcast, gloomy morning, she was a shadow of yesterday’s productive artist: She’d been sitting here, staring at a blank page for well over an hour. And this was after she’d slept through her alarm, and then wasted another twenty minutes just lying in bed and enjoying the aching stiffness that lingered in her legs … and various other places—

  Riiiiiing. Riiiiing.

  Cait slammed her hand over her cell phone, grabbing it and turning the thing over. Local area code. Local exchange. This could be—

  “Hello?” she said breathlessly.

  “Hi, this is Cindy over at…”

  As Cindy from Cindy’s Alterations and More informed her that the suit, pants, and two skirts she’d had taken in were ready, Cait wanted to scream. Instead, she led with, “Oh, thank you. Yes, I’ll be over to pick them up today, or tomorrow at the latest.”