by Marie Hall
“How?”
“Because when Dean asked me if it mattered, I said no?”
“Dean?”
I smiled. “Yeah, Jack the Ripper himself paid me a visit, and do you know what he told me after I said that?”
He shook his head.
“Fate. Death. Whoever came to you that night, they never did it. I chose you, Ash. And I still do. Always you.”
A wild, choking sound spilled from his chest, and then he tugged me to him, and that’s when we sealed our permanent vow.
Chapter 18
Pandora
Once we’d crested the horizon, the soaring and familiar peak of Bubba’s tent taunted me. I fidgeted with my top. We were less than five hundred yards away from the carnival. The sky was just turning a shade of lavender, and in less than an hour the carnival I’d sworn would never run again would be up and hopping with mortals.
Life had moved on for my family.
Ash grabbed my nervous hand and squeezed it gently as he pulled the truck into an empty lot across the street.
Poteet wasn’t a very large town. In fact, it was pretty small. As were most of the places we stopped. The grass was yellowed and weathered from draught. Opening the window a crack, I almost choked on the hot, dry Texas air and immediately felt a wash of sweat on my brow.
Cars were lined up for miles in every direction, full of people ready to be entertained by the best show in town.
“I can’t do this.” I squeezed his thumb. “What if I kill them?”
Asher chuckled, patted my cheek, and simply shook his head. “They’re your family, Pandora. You won’t kill them.”
“You don’t know that,” I whispered, staring out the window at the already glowing neon lights, my gaze shooting immediately to the lone white trailer parked behind the rides: Luc’s office, where more than likely the bastard sat, tallying totals from the night before.
“Hey.” He nudged my jaw until I turned to face him. “I know you. And you got this. You’re stronger, little demon, ten times stronger than you were.”
I breathed in his words. They were a soothing balm to my tormented mind, easing my nerves. Grasping his hand, I planted his palm firmly against my cheek, wishing there were some way to crawl inside his skin and be as brave and bold as he always thought me.
“Priest, I love you more than life itself.”
The words were coming so much easier now. Not that I hadn’t always felt them, but Ash and I had come through hell and back, and sometimes when that happened a couple could drift, like Luc and I had.
But other times it only caused the bond to grow tighter, stronger.
“‘Strong walls shake.’” His deep voice pulled at my soul.
Smiling, I placed a kiss on my thumb and then pressed it to his lips. “‘But they never collapse.’”
“You’re here to learn how to control the demons that now live inside you, Pandora. Each one of them walks through this place. They are your friends, your brothers and sisters.”
“Even Vyx?” I snorted. “I don’t think I’d call her a sister. More like a frenemy.”
He shrugged. “Whatever works. But they can teach you what I can’t. They can help you to focus and harness your powers. And then—”
“We go burn Creatus to the ground,” I said with gleeful delight.
His brown eyes gleamed. “Send them straight to Hell.”
Taking two deep breaths, and pressing a flat hand to my belly, I nodded. “Okay, I’m ready. I can do this.”
“Yes.” He threaded his fingers through mine. “We can.”
Walking through the fairgrounds felt a little like a dream. I wasn’t sure what had me so on edge, but I didn’t want anyone to know I was there until I was ready for them to know. So each time I saw a familiar face walk out of a trailer or bend over to tinker on some electrical equipment, I’d turn my face into Ash’s shoulder.
He always seemed to know exactly what I needed. He’d never tell me I was okay, or that I was overreacting, he’d simply rub my shoulder until I nodded, brave enough to keep walking through.
I was wearing a pair of sunglasses and baseball cap I’d found crammed between the mattress and wall of Kem’s trailer. I mean, as far as disguises went, it wasn’t the most inventive. I could have changed my appearance, but I didn’t want to mess around with my demons too much. Not even Lust, who I knew like the back of my hand.
I didn’t want to deal with any of them until I learned how to control all of them.
I licked my lips as we neared Luc’s office. I stared at the lights glowing inside, feeling a lot like a moth caught in the glow of a campfire, unable to turn away even as the dread of falling into that light consumed me.
“We can come back tomorrow, Pandora, if you need to,” Ash whispered, toying with the shell of my ear with one hand while rubbing my lower spine with the other.
And even though I’d just decided not to play around with my demons, Lust perked right up, coming awake like a slumbering kitten ready to be fed her catnip.
She’d been quiet for so long that I’d feared she’d suffered irreparable damage, but Asher was bringing her to life just as he was me.
The man was our catnip.
“As much as I would love to shove you up against the wall and have my wicked, wicked way with you right now”—I nipped the line of his jaw, making him hiss and break out in a wash of goose bumps along his forearms—“if I don’t do this now, I never will.”
He groaned, rubbing his erection against me. For the past few nights, we’d been like rabbits, going at it whenever we could. And sometimes we hadn’t even stopped driving to do it.
It’d made the ride extremely memorable, to say the least.
I grinned. “Don’t worry, man meat, I’ll make you come long time.” I planted a kiss squarely on his lips.
Swatting my ass, he growled, then took a giant step away from me and adjusted himself. He failed at hiding anything—the man had some serious girth.
And should any of the numerous Lust demons in this place get any ideas, I would murder them.
Not even joking.
We were there, standing just outside Luc’s doors. I inhaled, planted my foot onto the first step, and then jumped off like I’d been burned.
“Nope. Nope. I can’t do this. I can’t. I won’t.” I twirled, flinging my hands into the air. “We’ll come back tomorrow, I’ll do this la—”
I smelled sulfur a second before a hard and very familiar voice growled, “And just where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
My tongue felt like it’d suddenly swollen to twice its size as I slowly turned on my heel, almost in a daze, to face Luc.
His eyes were flinty blue, his hair longer than it’d been last time I’d been around. It was tied up in a knot behind his head, and he wore a Viking-style beard. I couldn’t remember him ever looking so slummy.
But more than that, he was clenching his fists, his entire body vibrating with the pulse, the beat of his energy. His body was so stiff, so tense, that I knew he was working like hell to keep himself in check.
Words fled me.
There was nothing in my head.
The anger.
Gone.
The pain.
Gone.
The familiarity he and I had always shared.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
I reached for Ash’s hand. Luc’s gaze flicked to that movement like a snake striking, and before I had time to brace myself, to even know what was about to happen, he yanked my hand into his, hissed at Ash, and then traced us away.
Disoriented, and shocked by the suddenness of it all, I blinked, taking a solid minute to figure out we were in his trailer and something was banging on the door.
Ash’s voice roared from the outside, threatening to rip Luc limb from limb if he didn’t return me. “Luc, you can trigger her, you dick! Let her go, you don’t understand!”
But Luc was giving me a look I’d seen only onc
e before. His skin was gray and his claws long, and I knew he wasn’t listening to Ash’s warnings.
Then he traced us away again.
I spiraled through the wind, sailing on the breeze of time, clinging to him, but not scared. The next time we settled, we stood atop a snowy mountain cap. The sky was a reddish orange streak, the clouds nothing but fluffy blots. There was nothing there but us, the mountains, and miles of craggy, hilly countryside. I had no idea where we were. It could have been Alaska, Russia, or, hell, it could even have been one of the poles. I had no idea, and Luc didn’t seem to care.
A powerful gust of wind knocked into me, forcing me to take a step back. The air up there was incredibly thin; my head grew dizzy from the lack of oxygen.
“What are you doing, Luc?” I yelled above the wind.
But he wasn’t talking, he was holding me, squeezing so tight I felt my ribs might crack.
His nose was in my hair, slowly tracing down the length of my neck. The gesture was so familiar, so warm, that for a moment it was easy to embrace him back; to remember what we’d felt like.
But then he was pushing me down onto the snow, lying on top of me and kissing me, ramming his lips to mine, whispering one word beneath his breath in the tremulous and guttural voice of man and demon.
“Dor…ra.”
I slammed my palm against his shoulder as the arctic cold bit into my skin. I wouldn’t freeze, but I didn’t want to be here. Not like this.
“Get off me!” I bucked my hips, attempting to shove him away, but he was completely overtaken by Lust. I was stronger; I could make him, but it was important to me that he do it himself.
That for once he respected my choice.
Then I felt the slam of his will brush against mine, and I knew he was trying to change me, turn me into his blond bimbo. And I can’t explain what happened to me. Lust didn’t just blink her eyes open, she came awake with a vengeance.
Growling, I gripped his arms, and in one swift move, rolled him over, slamming him into the ice and snow.
His eyes widened as the reality of what was happening began to fully penetrate his thick skull. Not only was I not changing, but now I was stronger.
“No more!” I snapped. “You hear me, Luc? Never again. I am Pandora. Me.” I touched my left breast, the one he’d scarred over a millennia ago.
His nostrils flared, and for a second I could see the man beneath the beast, could see the desire mingled with something else, that strange, indecipherable emotion he’d always tried so hard to keep hidden from me.
But instead of it making him soft, it only seemed to make him angry, and this time when he pushed his will against me, it was like being blasted into a wall. It was so powerful it just about knocked me back.
“You prick,” I snarled, and shoving my fist into his throat, I let Lust take me. I let him feel the power of it, the enormity of her will, and with a hard grunt, I shoved it through him like steel blades.
With a jerk, he roared as his body began to shift, began to take up the only form I’d ever want again. His hair shortened and turned brown, his eyes became the same color. His face lengthened, became less harsh and more symmetrical, more aquiline.
My heart lurched to see Asher staring back at me, knowing it wasn’t really him. My fingers curled into his shirt.
“How does it feel?” I asked.
Glaring hotly at me, he stuck his jaw out. “I don’t care,” he muttered, more in charge of his faculties now that my demon had conquered his. “Want you anyway you come.”
Those words made me jerk, made me twitch, because that’s exactly what Asher would say, not what Luc would say. Luc would never have admitted to wanting me, would never have admitted to needing me. The sentiment was so far beneath him.
And yet he was breathing heavy, his erection pressed firmly into the seat of my pants, and I could tell he meant every word.
“You don’t care? You don’t care that I only crave this.” I touched the bristled jaw just like I would Ash’s, my heart thumping harder in my chest as reality and fantasy blurred. Lust was still alive inside me, and she was confused by her arousal, confused by her need of a man who did not smell like her catnip but who spoke in the same words as her lover.
He nipped my finger, and I hissed.
“Need you.”
My breathing became shuddery. “You left me, Luc. Left me to rot in the prison.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You were dead.”
My eyes snapped open, and I punched his chest. “I wasn’t dead! I wasn’t dead!”
With a violent shudder, he sat up and clutched me to him.
“Dora, my Dora.” He ran his calloused palm down the back of my skull. His touch was so similar, so familiar. His smell like sandalwood. But he wasn’t my Ash, because my Ash had stayed.
My Ash had never given up. He’d held on to hope, he’d fought to bring me back. My Ash loved me.
Sniffing, I pulled away from Luc’s touch. “You aren’t him, Luc. You can never be him. What he did for me…” I stuttered and turned my face to the side. “I owe him everything.”
Those softly spoken words seemed to penetrate where force had not. And the only word that could describe what he looked like was “devastated.”
For the first time ever, Luc showed me what he’d never dared to show me before.
“Pandora, I…” He grimaced, and the words seemed to be ripped from inside him. “…love you.”
There was such entreaty in his eyes and earnestness to his words that I knew he did not lie, that these words were one hundred percent true. And once upon a time it would have been all I needed. I would have razed an entire kingdom to hear him say them, to admit what I’d always felt had to be true even though he’d denied it so often and with such fervor that at times I’d doubted even my own conviction.
But I’d changed. I’d been reformed, forged in a crucible of fire and pain, and come out a different woman. I was no longer his and no longer conflicted about who I was.
I did not need Luc’s love to feel whole, not anymore. I was exactly who I’d always wanted to be.
I was at peace.
I crawled off him and shook my head.
He crawled on his knees back to me. “Say something, Dora.”
“Why now?”
It was really the only thing I had left to say. Because the truth was that even the answer didn’t really matter. When I stared at my heart, it no longer felt so raw or fractured; it no longer hurt when I was around him. My heart was whole, and it was full.
“Because you thought I’d died? Because you saw a ghost, one you thought you’d never see again, and now you have a chance to say everything you’ve always kept bottled up?” My smile was sad, but soft. “It’s too late, Luc, you’re way too late.”
A visible shudder rippled through him. “I saw you standing outside my office and I thought it was a vision, thought it was a dream, because I knew you were dead. I knew you were. I no longer felt you, Dora. Your soul and mine, always beating in tandem, it was gone.” He palmed his chest. “You needed me, and I left you, but I thought you were dead. If I’d known. God, Dora, if I’d known…”
He’d been a lover. A friend. And for a time, he’d been my world. And though the intensity of what there’d been was no longer there, he would always be my Luc.
Stepping into the cradle of his arms, I framed his face, and brushed my nose against his, breathing him in as I let him breathe me in.
At first he seemed reluctant to hold me, but after a moment, he rocked me in his arms, and I rubbed the back of his head, humming a gentle lullaby.
And when the warmth of his tears brushed the side of my neck, I pretended I didn’t feel it. I just rocked with him and whispered that I was all right, and so was he, and no matter what he was my brother. He would always be my family and I loved him.
“No matter what, Luc.” And with those words I forgave him for giving up on me, forgave him for the years of pain I’d felt, because I could see now
I’d always demanded more from him than Luc could give.
Turning haggard eyes rimmed in red toward me, he nodded. And on that cliff, sheltered within his arms and buffeted by winds pregnant with the scent of frost, I closed that chapter of my life.
Chapter 19
Pandora
The moment I returned us to the carnival, I headed directly for Luc’s trailer, expecting to find Asher there waiting on the steps, but he wasn’t. Instead I saw Vyxyn.
She also looked different from when I’d seen her last.
Her hair fell in graceful soft-pink waves down to the base of her spine. Dressed in a sheer bubblegum-pink corset gown that flowed around her ankles, she reminded me a little bit of Glinda the good witch. Her makeup was no longer bold and glaringly bright, and her nude eye shadow sparkled, bringing out the brilliant greens of her eyes.
She was staring at me with her hands covering her mouth and as still as a statue. Only her eyes moved, and they looked me up and down over and over again as if unable to believe what she was seeing.
“Dora?” she squeaked, then glanced at Luc, who stood just to my left, as if for confirmation. “So it’s true. You’re back?”
I did not expect to see the tears glimmering on her cheeks or hear the strain in her voice. And I really did not expect her to suddenly rush me, grabbing me in her slim arms and squeezing me as she did.
I sensed Luc back away, sensed him slinking off to corners unknown, and I was fine with it. I was actually okay, and the relief of that made me bold enough to hug Vyx back.
“Vyx.” I smiled and then kissed her cheek, chuckling because for just a second I’d felt her soften under my touch, but then, as if remembering who I was and who she was, she shoved me back.
“Yeah, yeah, let’s not get all wimpy about this, whatever.” She rubbed her cheek, as if scrubbing my kiss off. “So the bitch is back, eh?”
My lips curled. “In the flesh.”
Rolling her eyes, she crossed her arms. “I didn’t miss you.”
“Me either.”
