by Michele Hauf
“Really? That’s so cool. I didn’t know demons could do that. So a life event? Like what?”
“Anything. Dangerous encounters. Life-changing events. The move to Paris from Italy a decade ago. Defeating Himself’s plans to send a dangerous demon into this realm. Growing into my horns. And I’ve already explained coming into my shifting abilities with the feather.”
She eyed the hematite nubs at his temples and then tapped his gloved knuckles. Ed pulled away.
“Does that hurt when I touch them? I touched the ones on your temples earlier this afternoon when you had me pressed against the wall.”
“I know you did. That touch was...” He blew out a breath laden with what she guessed was repressed lust. “Just take it easy, will you? Should you get cut, the thorns on my knuckles are capable of imbuing poison into your bloodstream, resulting in death. As for the horns on my temples...they are...sensitive.”
“Oh.” She’d take that sensitive as meaning sensually sensitive. Interesting. But she wanted to learn more about the thorns. They were a new bodily enhancement to her. “Poison? So you never take the gloves off?”
He clasped his hands together. “Only when I’m alone.”
“Bummer. Must make for some weird—” She almost said “sex.” Tamatha swallowed the last of her wine awkwardly. “So that mark on your lower neck looks like a scythe, actually.”
“It imprinted after I got my horns. Puberty stuff, like the feather. This here.” He traced his inner wrist, which featured a series of black wavy lines, almost as if a drunken bar code. “Was a fight with a werewolf. I won. And this one is a witch ward.” He tugged up his sleeve to reveal a small, solid black circle on the side of his forearm.
Tamatha smoothed her fingers over the ward. He didn’t flinch. Nor did she. “For or against witches?”
“It was supposed to be a sort of warning alarm should a witch come too close. Apparently, this one is bogus since I’m not feeling so much as a tingle from your touch. I’ll have words with Sayne next time I see the guy.”
“You had an ink witch tattoo you with a ward against witches? Doesn’t that sound a trifle ironic? I mean, did you really expect it to work? It came from a witch.”
He shrugged and a tiny smile softened his dark features. Compelled by his levity, Tamatha touched the corner of his mouth briefly. “I’m glad it doesn’t repel me,” she said.
“It has alerted me to other witches previously. I’m sure it’s because you are so strong. Of course, that makes little sense. Unless you’ve a ward to repel my witch ward?”
“It may be my white light.” Which she’d taken off. Hmm... That was weird, but not so startling she need worry about it. They were sitting here now. And he no longer seemed repelled by her presence.
And he leaned forward to kiss her, but stopped, their faces but a breath from one another. “I told myself I was going to keep it strictly business this evening.”
“Me, too.”
He considered it, frowned, but then nodded. “Right. So...” He tilted his head and nudged her nose with his. He smelled like leather and icy cedar. “I’ve always thought that nothing happens accidentally.”
“Oh, it doesn’t. There are no coincidences in this realm. I’m very sure our running into one another in the alley was destined. Though for what reason, we’ve yet to learn.”
“Destiny is a big concept. Serendipity sounds cooler.” He pressed his forehead to hers. A hint of wine on his breath compelled her closer and to close her eyes. “Demons and witches have a brutal history,” he said.
Tamatha nodded. Witches had often been demon conduits through the centuries, along with their faithful familiars. But she didn’t want to discuss their reasons for hating one another right now. Not when she could feel the pulse of his heart in the air and the cool hardness of his horn nub against her skin.
“This isn’t history, Ed. It’s right now. We’re writing our own pages.”
“I can get behind that. There is something I want to ask you,” he said, breaking their connection by a few breathless inches, “but after I do, you’ll not like me so much as you do at this moment. So I’m going to keep that one in my pocket for now.”
“I can deal. Later will always be there waiting. I’ve asked enough questions for one night. I want to set work aside.”
“No more business.” He exhaled. “This you-and-I thing is really odd for me—”
Enough small talk. If he continued on that tangent he’d talk himself out of so much fun. “Kiss me, Ed.”
She tilted up his chin with her forefinger and took the lead by kissing him. He responded nicely by not uttering another protesting word. Relaxing back against the couch, his hands spreading down her sides, he lured her on top of him. His hands glided down the purple velvet to her hips and she knelt between his legs because the skirt was too narrow for her to straddle him.
Lemon and cedar mingled as the two of them breathed in one another, tasting wine and anticipation, touching warmth, hair and the pulse beats of desire.
She spread her palm over his neck and felt a soft flutter. A demon sigil that marked him as corax. Cool. She hadn’t read anything about sigils in her research so far, but knew she’d passed her hands over a book or two that detailed demonic sigils. When she returned to the Archives she’d head straight for those books.
“Do all demons have markings like this? Or wait, you said it was only certain breeds?”
He tilted a frown up at her, but it quickly softened to a light wonder. “Witch, do you want to research me or kiss me?”
“Honestly? Both.” She teased a fingertip at the corner of her mouth. “But first I’d like you to stop calling me witch as if it were a bad thing.”
“Sorry, Tamatha of the pretty green eyes.” He clasped her hand and pulled it up to look at the side of her smallest finger. “Since we’re asking about skin markings, what’s this tattoo mean? Beatus?”
“Be-aye-tus.” She pronounced the word properly. “It’s Latin for ‘blessed be.’”
“Special. A witch offering a blessing to a demon? Wonders never cease.”
“I suppose I should be more cautious around you, but I can tell a lot about a person from his kiss.”
“Is that so?”
“You’re trustworthy.”
She didn’t miss his wince and then told herself she was being too trusting. She knew nothing about this man. But that was why she was there. To learn. And to learn one must set aside caution and dive in for the experience.
“So you must kiss a lot of people to have developed such a skill?” he proposed.
“I never kiss and tell.” She traced a finger down the feather on his neck and delighted when it fluttered under her touch. “I’d like to see them all.”
He waggled a finger at her. “That would involve removing clothing. And I suspect you’re not that easy.”
“Oh, I’m not.” She tugged down her skirt and started to sit, but then immediately turned to lean into him. Because she couldn’t not look into his eyes. “But kissing you is something I’d like to do more of.”
“You perplex me.” Grabbing the wine bottle and their empty goblets, he motioned she move aside so he could stand. “You say you want to ask me questions, do research,” he said and set the bottle and glasses on the vanity, “but your body says something entirely different.”
“What about you? The man who claims to be wary of witches and yet you were the one to ask me to take off my white light so you could get closer.”
“Touché. You don’t have a lot of fear, do you?”
“You keep assuming I should fear you. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
There was. She could tell in his pause. Must be that thing he said he’d wanted to ask her, but that would make her not like him. Should she ask him about it? Asking mig
ht bring whatever they’d started to a screeching halt. Must be the history he had with witches. Well, she’d have to change his mind and teach him that some witches were trustworthy.
Tamatha stood and placed a hand on her hip as she paced before the couch. “Let’s make a deal. We both want something from each other, yes? And whatever it is you want from me, I am going to assume it’s not a simple office cleansing.”
He nodded and swiped a palm over his mouth, and behind that swipe she saw his smoldering smirk. It was sexy, yet secretive, and the unspoken lust in his eyes made her heart thunder and parts of her simmer and grow wet. Oh, so wet.
“Whatever you want from me is a doozy,” she decided.
“On the scale of trivial to doozy, I’d say you are correct.”
“Must be dark and dangerous if you’re so nervous about it.”
“I’m not nervous. Nervous is not a word in my vocabulary. I am confident.”
“If a trifle cautious.”
“Caution is smart.”
“Like I said, I can read a person, and you are nervous. You can’t stand close to me. You keep touching your face, fidgeting. And you won’t look me in the eye.”
“And you are too perceptive. But I’ll let it go because you’re so pretty.”
She twirled a finger within her hair. “You think?”
He clasped his hands together before his mouth and considered it a moment. Were it not for the black markings, he would appear a businessman standing in his high-tech office. An organization that sought peace? Dare she believe such a ruse?
“I need a witch,” he finally said. “At least, I think I do. It’s to do with my mission to keep the peace.”
So it was a mission? That was...big. And magnanimous. Yet what reason could he have to be so secretive about it?
“I feel as though I need powerful magic to help rectify the situation.” And at that moment his phone rang. He put up a finger that he needed to take the call. “Yes,” he said to the caller. “Another? I’ll be right there.” He tucked the phone in his inner suit coat pocket. “I’m afraid I’ve an urgent appointment.”
“Oh.” She bent to gather her wand and athame from inside the salt circle. “Right. It’s late anyway.”
“After midnight.”
“Yep, and I have work in the morning.”
“Where do you work?”
“In the Council Archi—er...hmm.” Should she actually reveal that to him? She hadn’t been told to keep it a secret. It wasn’t as though she worked with secret stuff. And most paranormal species were aware of the overseeing Council.
“The Council Archives?” he guessed. “Sounds like a bunch of stuffy old books.”
“It is, but books are awesome. I could live in the stacks, reading everything about all things. I never want to leave. My boss usually has to remind me to go home.”
“There is something about librarians that arouses most men’s imaginations.”
“Is that so?” She stood from collecting her things, then swiped the toe of her shoe through the salt circle, effectively rendering it but a broken circle of salt and no longer a protective barrier. “I’ve never considered myself a librarian. Bookish, I guess. But I know how to party it up. I’m down with all that.”
Ed chuckled. He took her hand, and when she thought he would lead her to the door, instead he kissed the back of it. Clutching a candle and the knife to her chest, she sighed at the chivalrous move. But when he licked her skin, she flushed to her core. Goddess, what would that feel like on other places on her body? Like her breasts?
“Tasting me?” she tried lightly.
“We demons can tell a lot from taste,” he said. “That’s a freebie for your research.”
“It’s only a freebie if you explain yourself. What can you tell about me from tasting my skin?”
“Let’s talk on the way out, shall we? That call was urgent.” He led her down the hallway, and as they waited for the elevator, he again clasped her hand. “I can taste the wine in your blood and a salty remnant of the pommes frites you downed five or six hours earlier. Possibly on your way home from our less-than-stellar encounter here earlier.”
“There’s a Greek restaurant down the street from my apartment. I love their fries and chicken gyros. Tell me more.”
“Your blood pressure is slightly elevated.” He winked and smirked. “I’ll attribute that to being here with me, your hand in mine.”
She shrugged, acquiescing to that one.
“You are indeed very powerful because I could feel those electric vibrations tingle at my tongue, as if the white light, but I can differentiate and know it is your magic. You’ve been on this earth for about a century...” He tilted his head. “I can feel the ancient ways in you, but not so old that I sense you were around preautomobile.”
The doors opened and they stepped into the elevator.
“You’re very good,” Tamatha said. “I was born in the 1920s.”
“I assume you’ve taken a source?”
“A decade ago.”
When a witch wished to maintain her immortality, she had to consume the live, beating heart of a vampire once a century. Witches called them sources; vamps called them ash. Nasty work, but immortality was well worth the mess and vulgar taste.
“And you emanate light,” he finally said. “And joy and curiosity. But I didn’t have to lick you to learn that. Such lightness is written all over—” he spread his hands before her to take in her shape “—this gorgeous piece of work.” He exhaled. “I’ve that thing to get to.”
And she sensed he was giving her an escape from what could turn into an evening of debauchery. That neither of them would protest. Yet she wasn’t quite ready to dive in so quickly with this intriguing yet deeply mysterious man.
“Tomorrow night?” she asked as the elevator doors slid open. “Another research date?”
“I’m...hmm. Can I get back to you on that one?”
“Oh? Sure.” She’d expected a quick response that he’d love to see her again. Didn’t he want to drop the big question on her? So her shoulders dropped as she headed for the door. “I live in the 6th,” she said.
“I know. By the Luxembourg.”
She cast a look over her shoulder.
“I can smell the pear blossoms and roses from their gardens in your hair. It’s a unique blend indicative of the garden on the Left Bank. If I want to find you, I will. We demons retain scents far better than any werewolf can. You’re in me now, Tamatha.”
And he turned to stroll toward a door set near the elevator bay. Without a goodbye or an au revoir. As last night when he’d left her in the alleyway after that devastating kiss.
Tamatha stepped outside under the moonlight and stroked the back of her hand where he’d licked her. With a shiver, she decided to draw her white light back up.
Chapter 6
The last of a few black feathers dissipated as Ed’s body re-formed into human shape. He tilted his head to the left and right to stretch the kink in his neck, then shook his shoulders to shake out his clothes and return to normality. Or as normal as it got shifting from a conspiracy of ravens to demonic flesh and blood.
There were other terms for a group of ravens, such as an unkindness. He’d stick with conspiracy. As it was, he got enough bad press.
The phone call had come from Inego, whom he’d directed to post guards at the Montparnasse. There were no dead witches in the cemetery this time that he could see. Nor a dismembered demon corpse. But between two mausoleum fronts with rusted iron doors he did find a telling pile of ash. Obsidian flakes clued him in that one of his own had died there. Recently, for the red embers and lingering sulfur that tainted the air.
Yet the sickly smell of rot clinging to the air was not demonic. And the ward on his forearm tingled.
/>
“Witches,” he muttered. “Again. How is it possible? Unless they are alive and just really ugly?”
No, he’d seen exposed bone on more than a few of them the night he’d witnessed Laurent’s murder. Whatever the creatures were, they could not be alive. And they seemed to have a death wish for demons.
Perhaps the situation was more urgent than he’d initially thought.
Kneeling before the ash, he held his palm flat over the pile without touching it. Rising warmth teased at his skin, as if the essence yet remained. He couldn’t get a read that would clue him in to what breed of demon it had been or if it had been male or female.
Scanning the surroundings, he wondered if the demon had been wandering about the cemetery—for what reason?—or if he or she had somehow been lured here. Because it was the same cemetery. It seemed too coincidental to be mere happenstance. Could dead witches do such a thing? Or was someone else luring hapless demons to a sure and terrible death?
The thought was disturbing. And he would find answers.
From a witch like Tamatha Bellerose? He wasn’t sold on her being the most powerful in Paris, but he wasn’t yet prepared to admit to that doubt. She seemed open-minded. She’d even suggested she was not into summoning and then commanding demons to her will. With hope, she would at least hear him out regarding this situation.
He should have been direct with her earlier. But after watching her smudge the office, the whole time he’d slid his eyes over her gorgeous figure and had thought thoughts he wouldn’t want anyone to know about. Lust had altered his initial goal. He’d been thankful for the phone call only because he was pretty sure he might have pushed her down on the couch and made out with her right there in the office.
And what was wrong with that?
“Everything,” he muttered. “She’s a witch.”
