Dark Obsession

by Sydney Somers

“I’m not waiting for Rae.” That would be kind of like waiting for hell to freeze over. Hoping she’d show up to hustle some poor sod at pool was much more realistic.

  “No?” Drew mulled that over. “So if I told you she was—”

  A faint buzz slid under Parker’s skin.

  “—outside,” Drew finished. “But then I’m guessing you just realized that.”

  He turned, sweeping his gaze toward the entrance. One of the occasional perks of being initiated by a lust demon left him hyperaware of the opposite sex, a sensation he’d been both annoyed and pleased to discover was magnified when it came to Rae. He hadn’t been looking to fall for anyone and he’d gone down in flames for her almost overnight.

  Seconds ticked by.

  “What is she doing?” He glanced at Drew, knowing the other agent’s superior hearing gave him an edge.

  Drew cocked his head. “Hunting, maybe.”

  Parker withdrew his tracker from his pocket, but the device didn’t register any traceable distortions created when a demon escaped their mystical prison and crossed over.

  “Tell me you don’t put your faith in those things.” Drew shuddered.

  “Not exactly.”

  Seeing as he spent the majority of his time monitoring those who survived demon attacks, using what he learned about them to gauge how they’d deal with any possible DNA mutation, trackers weren’t that necessary. It would have been a different story if he were in the field, tracking and slaying demons like the rest of the team.

  Since his reassignment to a rising hot zone, he’d begun carrying it more out of necessity than habit, preferring as much advance notice as possible if he was about to cross paths with a demon.

  Not that it often came to that. Drew and others usually had any stray hostiles covered.

  Drew pushed the beer Kane deposited on the counter toward Parker. “I need to head out anyway. Might even get lucky and come across a hostile on the way home.” He grinned. “Stay out of trouble.”

  Parker tipped his bottle in farewell, watching Drew and Braxton take off for the night, part of him wishing he could join them on the streets.

  Most of those in the know assumed Destroyers initiated by lust demons weren’t field agents because they didn’t have healing, speed or telepathy on their side. Since most Shadow Demons couldn’t tell the difference between average humans and the Destroyers dispatched to vanquish them, skill alone usually took the bastards down.

  Complicating matters though was how easily hostiles, who manifested human bodies when they crossed over, could blend in—and that wasn’t counting the ones capable of changing their appearance in the blink of an eye.

  Unfortunately, Parker’s ability to draw people like a proverbial moth to the flame made actively slaying demons nearly impossible. Most of the world remained ignorant of the existence of demons, and drawing unnecessary attention wasn’t the best way to keep that kind of thing under wraps.

  Most people, maybe even the brunette, didn’t have a clue why they were drawn to Parker in the first place, and that was without him trying.

  “Buy me a drink?”

  He could have stopped the tipsy brunette from approaching, from wasting her time. It took a lot more effort to put people off, often leaving him with a throbbing migraine, but the darkest part of him craved sex too much to remain alone.

  Another perk—at least he used to think so.

  “I like the little ones with the pink umbrellas,” she continued.

  Her smell hit him first, soft and feminine. Warmth simmered in his gut, but he knew most of that came from denying himself for weeks, determined that the next woman in his bed would be Rae.

  He took a drink of his beer instead of checking out the brunette. If he hung around any longer, he’d have a harder time talking himself out of using her to take the edge off. Better to go back to the office and take a cold shower than torture himself here.

  “Kane, get the lady whatever she wants.” He laid some bills on the counter and headed for the door.

  Outside, the main street was deserted with the exception of a few parked cars and a couple making out in front of a waiting cab. An impatient honk brought the pair to their senses and they stumbled toward the vehicle.

  At least they were getting some tonight.

  The cab pulled away from the curb, leaving Parker alone on the street. He headed the couple of blocks east to the front company that masked the field office, arguing with himself at least twice about going back to the brunette. The odds of getting under Rae’s skin and into her bed were seriously stacked against him.

  Whoever thought it would be amusing as hell for him to attract almost any woman he wanted, while still hung up on the one woman who couldn’t wait to get rid of him, must be laughing their ass off by now.

  A frisson of awareness darted up his spine, and he stopped. He glanced down the alley to his right.

  Nothing moved beyond the shadows that drenched the narrow space between the buildings. Still, he felt the heavy weight of a predator’s stare. Sizing him up, probably. If the hostile had recently crossed over, Drew or Braxton were probably already on it.

  Parker frowned, dug in his pocket for the tracker Braxton had given him. Nothing on the screen indicated the presence of a demon, but it was there. He replaced the tracker and bent to remove the dagger strapped to his calf. He might not regularly come face to face with them, but that didn’t make him stupid.

  Armed, he stepped just inside the mouth of the alley, out of immediate sight to any passersby. Laughter and music drifted from an apartment overhead. The small crowd having a good time had clearly drawn the demon’s attention—at least until he’d come along.

  Gaze trained on the darkness, he waited. No identifiable sound betrayed the hostile’s location, yet Parker felt it draw closer, felt the push against his mind.

  Telepath demon.

  Well, wasn’t that just fantastic? No hot water, no Rae, no one to back him up.

  His night was officially in the toilet.

  Chapter Two

  “So you’re not sleeping with him?”Rae took two seconds to process the question. Two seconds too long. The war demon opposite her snarled at the already-healing slash to its chest, and retaliated with a punch, nailing her in the jaw.

  Damn it.

  The bitter taste of blood pooled across her tongue, and she staggered back, avoiding the next swing of the bastard’s meaty fist.

  Her back came up against Darcy’s. Darcy fought off a second war demon with a chunk of two-by-four.

  “So why not?” Darcy prompted.

  There were times Rae missed being in the field, missed hunting down Shadow Demons that hungered for the human emotions they’d been stripped of centuries ago.

  Tonight was not one of those times. Not when her arm trembled from the still-oozing wound—courtesy of the war demon’s dagger. And certainly not with Darcy screwing with the hostiles by making conversation as though the two of them weren’t both bleeding, exhausted and drenched from an earlier thunderstorm.

  “You still have a thing for him. Everyone knows.”

  Everyone? Jesus, it was like being back in high school. “I’m not discussing Parker.” Not with Darcy. Not with anyone.

  She didn’t take the hint. “I’m just saying that you should sleep with him—” she drove the two-by-four into the demon’s gut, “—and put the two of you out of your collective misery.”

  “I am not miserable.” Rae pivoted and snapped her wrist, severing the war demon’s hand. The hostile howled, cradling the bloodless stump to its chest as it retreated a few steps. Black, red-rimmed eyes glared at her though a curtain of dirty-blonde hair plastered to the demon’s human-looking face.

  Satisfaction curled through her. It had been way too long since she’d gone head-to-head with anyone except the agents who worked under her, but she only indulged in the minor victory for a second. Any longer and it might go to her head, make her overconfident.

  “Now just imagine i
f you took some of that enthusiasm and channeled it into your sex life—” Darcy grunted, skidded across the cement, her back slamming against the chain-link fence that separated customer and employee parking.

  Rae swung her leg out, tripping the demon about to launch itself at Darcy. The move gave the telepath the precious seconds she needed to regain her footing. “My sex life is just fine—”

  Pain ripped across Rae’s skull, the second demon’s fingers gouging at her head as it whipped her around. Jamming the hilt of her sword into the hostile’s side, she wrenched free. The length of her blade sliced the demon’s back, and the second it cursed Rae in its ancient language, she dropped and swept her leg beneath it.

  The hostile’s arms flailed outward, but the air it grabbed for didn’t save the demon from hitting the ground. Slashing her sword down, she severed the demon’s head.

  She spun on her heel, watching as Darcy went down beneath the hulking frame of the remaining demon. A heartbeat later Darcy kicked the demon off, and Rae brought her weapon up, slaying the last one.

  It landed at her feet, blue flames disintegrating the manifested body and destroying the demon’s aura permanently. Darcy’s murmured chant vanquished the other demon as well, plunging the lot into darkness when the flames evaporated, taking with them all evidence of the Shadow Demons that had crossed into their realm.

  Rae snatched up the two sacrificial daggers left behind. The geometric symbol carved into one of the blades snagged her attention. The same symbol that had been popping up in reports from field offices across the globe, written on the walls where demons had taken up residence, even scratched into the bodies of innocents the hostiles had sacrificed.

  More pieces to the puzzle.

  Limping, Darcy retrieved her sword a few meters away and slid it back into the thin scabbard on her back. “Well, wasn’t that fun?”

  Sensing that it was a rhetorical question, Rae checked her wound, relieved to see the injury was already healing.

  Darcy leaned against the fence, tearing a strip off her ripped T-shirt and using it to stem the blood flow from a cut on her thigh. “Days like this I really wish I had been initiated by a war demon—” she gave Rae a pointed look, “—instead of a telepathic one. It’d be nice if we had control over the whole DNA mutation thing.”

  “Better to be able to get inside their heads and prevent them from taking a chunk out of you in the first place.”

  “Too bad it doesn’t always work out that way.” Darcy sighed and straightened, winced at another injury on her side. “The last one had fists like titanium anvils. I think all that sex talk got it excited.”

  Rae picked up her abandoned backpack, and after slipping her sword into the concealing scabbard sewn right into it, she slung it over her shoulder. “At least they weren’t lust demons.”

  Darcy grinned. “Too bad, then you might’ve had a reason to work off some tension with Parker.”

  “Uncontrollable arousal is the last thing Parker and I need to deal with.”

  “So says the workaholic whose last date was almost a year ago.”

  Rae scowled at the other agent. “I didn’t tell you that.”

  Darcy shrugged. “You get to heal quickly. I get to sneak inside people’s heads any time I want. Not your head,” she added quickly. “Year-ago guy stopped into Kane’s for a beer a couple weeks back and asked about you when he saw some of us playing pool.”

  Suppressing a shudder, Rae thanked whatever cosmic forces prevented her from crossing paths with Mr. Love Muscle again.

  “Tell me that’s not what he called it?” Darcy might have looked apologetic if not for the smile she struggled to bite back. “Come on, you damn near shouted it.”

  Rae gave up on chastising Darcy for slipping in through the cracks. It wasn’t Darcy’s fault she had let her guard down. She’d blame that on the war demon that took a chunk out of her arm. And Parker. She could count on one hand the number of times either Darcy or Brax had caught more than a glimmer of her thoughts, and they’d all been since Parker had strolled back into her life.

  “So how was buddy’s love muscle?” Darcy managed to keep a straight face for a whole two seconds.

  “I wouldn’t know.” Pet names were fine—for vibrators. Rae drew the line at getting intimate with men who had nicknames for any part of their anatomy.

  And wasn’t there a line somewhere that agents under her command weren’t supposed to cross? Lines that involved the discussion of her sex life in general, let alone anyone’s love muscle? More importantly, when had they all started crossing it?

  She purposely projected that last thought.

  “Little over a month ago,” Darcy answered aloud. “So this thing with Parker…”

  Parker. Why did everything come back to her ex anyway? It was bad enough she couldn’t turn around without running into him—except when she was armed. Apparently the biggest pain in her ass knew better than to push her buttons when she was within reach of a sword.

  They had almost reached Darcy’s pickup truck when thunder rumbled in the distance. Not that Rae was holding her breath the beat-up antique Chevy would actually start before the next downpour. She’d lost track of the number of times Darcy had been late because the faded red beast had died in the middle of an intersection.

  “It’s obvious you two still have a thing for each other.”

  “According to who? The writing on the locker room walls?”

  Darcy stopped, her earlier humor giving way to a startling insight that had nothing to do with her telepathic abilities. “Sooner or later you’ll have to deal with him, you know.”

  “The only thing Parker and I need to deal with is work.” Everything else was in the past.

  “I’m not so sure he sees it that way,” Darcy murmured.

  Awareness twisted down her spine, and she closed her eyes, concentrating. Another hostile was close by.

  “See, as if healing wasn’t enough, you have that cool advance warning system to boot.” Darcy sighed, referring to Rae’s ability to sense demons if they were close enough. “That makes three that crossed over tonight. Some kind of demon convention in town or something?”

  Tonight and every other night for the last couple of weeks.

  Rae dug out her tracker, gave it a light tap since it wasn’t picking up anything. “I’ll check this out. It has to be within a couple blocks, near Kane’s maybe.” Rae was already moving. “You head to the field office and get your side taken care of.”

  Looking like she wanted to object, Darcy changed her mind. “Watch your back.”

  “Always.”

  Parker tightened his grip on the dagger, and more importantly, tightened his grip on his mind.

  Ten seconds—maybe less—until the hostile got aggressive. War demons were homicidal and hands-on, stealth demons enjoyed toying with their prey, but telepath demons preferred good old-fashioned psychological warfare.

  Keeping his apprehension under wraps, Parker searched the darkness. While he couldn’t see or hear as well as Drew, his senses were still more heightened than the average human.

  Chilling laughter rode on the air, but Parker didn’t have a clue if he heard it in his mind or aloud, precisely the confusion the demon counted on. But for every burst of feminine laughter he didn’t acknowledge, the hostile would grow more desperate, more bold, craving the paranoia and fear it thrived on.

  He shoved one hand into his pocket, his fingers sliding over the keypad without withdrawing his cell phone. He keyed in the speed dial for the field office. Darcy was on duty tonight, assuming she wasn’t already tracking the demon and on her way.

  Suddenly skull-piercing pain ripped through his mind. Parker grunted, wrenching his hand out of his pocket as though he could use it to combat the mental assault.

  Drawing a deep breath, he struggled to keep his mind locked up tight, knowing the hostile would find something in his head to use against him. They almost always did. The trick was ignoring their sneak attacks, no matter
how real they felt.

  A glimmer of red in the dark. The bitch was crouched atop a dumpster, watching him.

  The pain in his head twisted sharply, but he was already moving, getting closer. The edges of his vision blurred and he gritted his teeth. Almost there.

  The demon cocked its head.

  Rodeo Drive. One look at the designer pants, shirts, shoes, even the perfectly styled hair and he felt like he was staring at a Beverly Hills princess. One with a fetish for dumpster diving.

  “Hey.” He knew the second the hostile’s curiosity with him overrode its hunger for human emotions. It wouldn’t last long—just enough to get him close.

  He caught the demon’s ankle, jerking it to the ground.

  The hostile snarled and kicked. “Bastard.”

  “Wow, now I feel really special.” Except for the demons who knew how to stay under the radar, hostiles seldom spoke. Even when they swore, it was usually in their native language.

  He slashed down with his dagger, only nicking the demon’s arm.

  “Parker.”

  He knew it wasn’t real—the voice in his head. He nearly turned around anyway, half expecting to see his mother behind him.

  “Put the dagger away, Parker.”

  He shook his head at how real his mother’s voice sounded and went on the offensive.

  “Parker James Walsh, you listen to me right this second.”

  Telling himself it wasn’t real didn’t stop his heart from racing. Anger and hurt swirled through him, and the second the hostile smirked, Parker clamped down on his emotions.

  Any pleasure the demon might have derived from using his memories against him was short lived. Parker drove his dagger into the hostile’s chest and wrenched hard to the right.

  Blinding light exploded behind his eyes and he staggered back. He gripped his head, stunned to find it still attached when it felt like another demon had snuck up behind him and split it wide open. He concentrated on shielding his mind and keeping the hostile out of his head.

  The demon waved something in front of him. He blinked rapidly to erase the cobwebs trailing across his vision.