by Zoe Forward
Ashor said, “Have I ever been MIA when needed? Have I ever not been there to back you up in a fight?”
“No. I doubt you ever will. That’s not the point. The problem is you might make a mistake and kill an innocent. Also, you’re starting to draw attention with that trail of hacked-up bodies you’ve left behind. Did you know the cops labeled you the Slasher killer? They think a bigoted anti-Arab serial killer is on the loose. Saw it on the six o’clock news yesterday, not that they have any leads. You and your knife fetish. Wasn’t it you who demanded all of us keep a low profile in public?”
Ashor smiled slowly. “Seems we’ve all been having some trouble with that recently.”
Christian turned beet red. “Listen, I didn’t know that girl was the governor’s daughter or that she was engaged.”
“It was an engagement party and her fiancé is Senator Fulford’s son. It’s been in the headlines for months.”
“She was smokin’ hot and not particularly enthusiastic about her father’s choice of…Stop trying to sidetrack me. You continue on this path and it might just speed up the process of Turning. Who knows. One of us has to take you out when kem-seki wins and you go insane. You think we’re looking forward to that?” Christian’s face reflected fear for a second before he masked it. “You look like you’re about to go feral. A year ago this wasn’t an issue.”
Ashor remained mute. He knew the menace rolling off him looked bad, but he was back in control. For the moment. Why let him in on that fact? He enjoyed Christian’s scared shitless look. He deserved it, if for nothing other than the disrespect he was throwing.
Christian continued, “You need to find your senariai. She can pull you back from the edge and prevent the Turn.”
“You think I’ll find my destined woman in a Jacksonville meat market?” Ashor waved derisively at his surroundings. An image of Kira in those skin-tight jeans flashed through his brain. Silently he cursed and shifted as renewed arousal spiked with a vengence.
“I think you might find an easy lay here that’ll be a better outlet for whatever is causing you to go out alone. Try something different tonight.”
“It won’t work.” He glanced around, giving the scenery an actual scan. None interested him. He considered a brunette at the bar. All his body’s southerly activity died. A part of him sighed in relief. The other half of him cursed the gods.
“How long has it been since you’ve been bar trolling?”
Ashor grunted noncommittally. For years he’d been the master of the easy hookup and an idol of sorts for Christian, right up until ten years ago when he met Kira. Then, nighttime became a game of roulette. When he didn’t nightmare it up and black out, Kira came to him in dreams. And, holy shit, those dreams were worth taking the occasional gamble on sleep. Renewed arousal spiked. He shifted and did the scan-and-consider thing again. Didn’t work as well this time, as if his body knew he wasn’t serious.
The stubborn look on Christian’s face meant he wouldn’t drop this form of prescribed therapy until he gave it a try. Ashor looked three tables over and caught the eye of a blonde. Her sorority letters hung on a delicate gold chain around her long, tanned neck.
The blonde grabbed her look-alike friend and both strolled to their table. Her alluring hip sway drew his eyes to the junction of her thighs, which were barely concealed by a black ultra mini and a lacy strip beneath. Once she reached his table, she smiled flirtatiously and leaned in low, giving him an unobstructed view of her tanned breasts, encased in a lacy camisole. An unoriginal rose tattoo decorated the top of the left peak. His interest level registered somewhere around twenty below zero.
“Looking for a little fun to ring in the New Year?” She fluttered her mascara-crusted eyelashes and ran her tongue slowly over glossed lips.
The look-alike sat next to Christian and slid her hand along his thigh while whispering low. Christian shot her a charming smile that made her giggle and straddle his lap.
Ashor replaced his shades and took a sip of the scotch. He felt nothing but a sense of detachment when he scanned the girl giving him a peep show. She was young, easy, and arguably close to a ten on any male’s rating scale.
Christian raised an eyebrow in challenge.
Ashor turned his attention back to the blonde and forced a smile. “What’d you have in mind?”
****
Ashor followed the busty blonde out of the club. He struggled to remember her name. It was Shelly or Kelly or something like that, not that he cared. This wasn’t happening, at least not the this that she was thinking.
“What happened to your car? Something go through the windshield?”
“Had a little fender bender.”
All too accepting of that feeble description, she shrugged.
“Want some blow?” She laid out a string on the busted-up hood of his car. “It’s the good stuff.” She snorted, pinched her nose, and stared sightlessly into the night for few seconds.
“No. Got any meth?” A few grams might keep him awake a bit longer. He’d do any drug that promised an upper effect, but few worked on him unless taken in a high-octane quantity that scared dealers. The paltry string she laid out was unlikely to touch him.
“Nah.” She staggered toward him and playfully backed him into the car. “Here, let me take those shades.”
“They stay.” He pushed her hand away.
“You’ve got killer abs, ya know.” She ran her hands beneath the dark T-shirt, tracing the muscular ridges.
“How about we let your hair loose?” She giggled as she pulled the hair tie. Once loose, she twirled the tie in an attempt at cool, but it flew out of her hand, zinging off the driver’s window onto the asphalt.
A French manicured fingernail traced one of the tats coursing down his neck.
“Like ink, do you?”
Ashor gave her an indulgent smile while struggling to appear relaxed. Aversion to her touch was almost painful. His stomach rolled like the Atlantic in a hurricane, threatening to spew at any second.
Her movements were well practiced as her hand massaged between his legs. Yet, she got nothing, which seemed to puzzle her.
“This happen to you a lot? I hear plenty of men at your age have this type of problem.”
My age. If she only knew. “Maybe tonight’s just not the right night for this.”
The girl shrugged. “I’m gonna take another hit. Sure you don’t want one? It’s almost as good as sex, probably better.”
“You go ahead.”
After the second hit, the girl staggered back until she was leaning against a light post, giggling.
“Gimme a min, Pops, and then we can do whatever you want.” She closed her eyes, floating high. He was forgotten.
An area scan for evil came up clean. The girl was safe here. With no desire to touch her again, he grabbed his hair tie and jumped in the car.
As he pulled out of the parking lot, a familiar sensation slithered down his spine, one only he of all the magi experienced. He yanked out his cell. Quickly he texted the others.
Time to kill a daemon.
The icy sensation of daemon dancing down his back went double strength. Shit.
Not one, but two.
Chapter Four
Kira eased into her office chair and took a swallow of the double-shot mocha she had acquired from the kiosk up the hall. Her desk was lost under a mound of unfinished files and assorted sticky notes. She punched the power button on the archaic desktop computer. With a sigh, she glanced around at the empty, beige-themed office she shared with three other residents here at Baltimore Regional Medical Center while waiting for the computer to cycle through its three-minute start-up routine. The desk across from hers had one framed five-by-seven of a smiling little kid. That was the only piece of personal decoration in the whole cubicle.
The flight from Jacksonville had landed a little over an hour ago. She’d missed her original flight last night, the last one out of Jacksonville International. After an all-nighter in an airp
ort seat just about every joint in her body ached. Yet, despite exhaustion, sleep had eluded her. All she could think about was him. Or more correctly her hallucination of him.
God, her head hurt. She pawed through the hodgepodge of disorganized crap in her top desk drawer. There had to be a sample pack of ibuprofen in here somewhere. She twisted, reaching for the back of the drawer.
“You never gave me an answer two nights ago, babe.”
Kira jolted upright. A lightning bolt of pain shot down her leg where a Hashishin blade had grazed her, drawing an involuntary groan. “What are you doing here, Vance? I thought you were off today with the holiday and all.”
“On call. And got called. Happy New Year, by the way. Where were you yesterday and why didn’t you answer your cell?”
Vance Wilkins, MD, propped his hip on the corner of her desk and smiled with perfectly whitened teeth. His right hand fiddled with the ear tips to the stethoscope draped around his neck. The subtle scent of an expensive cologne hovered in the air around him.
“Wasn’t feeling well.”
“Too bad. You missed a great party. You have a rough night?”
“You could say that.” Kira fingered the edge of an ibuprofen packet. With a relieved sigh, she ripped it open and downed the two tablets with a swallow of mocha.
“I need an answer.”
“You were serious? Really?” What she wouldn’t give to avoid this. She could handle a shootout, life-or-death medical situations, and even Hashishin torture, but intimate relationships…definite problem area. Given the obstinate look on Vance’s face, she was in trouble.
She squeaked out, “It’s only been about five months, Vance, and I thought we were keeping things casual.”
“It’s been seven. Guys don’t put that kind of question out there on a whim.”
“That doesn’t mean we should get hitched.”
She assessed him quietly for a few long moments. She’d stuck with this relationship out of fear he might be her only chance for long-term, especially with the big three-O coming up in less than a month. The stability of a normal life partner sounded good. Good enough to settle? Vance was attractive, super-intelligent, financially secure, and a nice guy. Most women would qualify him as a great catch. He just wasn’t…him.
Never comfortable with silences, Vance forged ahead. “It’s time to take the next step. Once we finish our residencies, we can both find positions in a major practice. Me in neuro, of course. You in internal med. When we have kids, you can go part time. You’re such a workaholic that I know you’d never give up your career.”
Kids? Her pulse roared through her ears. Somehow she choked out, “I’ve always said I have no plans for kids.” She refused to curse a child to a lifetime of dodging Hashishins.
“I think we’re delaying the inevitable.”
“I don’t think now is the right time for us to marry.”
Vance rested his gym-toned muscular forearm less than casually on her desk. He launched into a litany on why they were destined to be together.
With drowsiness pressing her brain, Kira zoned. She recalled the very real feel of hallucination-Ashor’s muscular forearm against her body—a forearm that put the one resting on her desk to shame. And those sinful lips…He had almost done it. They had almost connected in what she considered the most intimate way. A part of her felt crushed that it hadn’t happened. Years of nighttime fantasies had taken her on sexual adventures she didn’t think Vance’s imagination could ever conjure. Yet, through all those fantasies Ashor had never kissed her. Not even almost. Asking why drove her nuts since the dream guy never answered.
She relived the feel of being pressed against that massive chest. Each breath from him had reverberated throughout her body. As if he had physically touched her, sensual heat buzzed her from head to toenails. Her nipples peaked.
“Maybe I need to remind you why we’re so good together? It’s been a while,” Vance suggested softly close to her ear.
“What?” Kira’s mind slammed back to reality. She glanced around, disoriented. The wrong man stared at her chest.
Getting hot from a hallucination replay and sending the wrong signals to Vance was wrong, not to mention utterly embarrassing.
“Good daydream? Let me make it reality.” Vance leaned in with clear intent to lip-lock. The smell of his cologne saturated her nostrils.
Kira turned her head and mumbled, “Not now.”
His lips grazed her nose.
“What’s wrong with you? You’ve been distracted for at least two months. There’s someone else, isn’t there?”
“No. There’s no one else.” At least no one real. Fantasy-Ashor had to be fiction.
“You’re acting like there’s someone else.” Vance grabbed her chin to force eye contact and towered over her. “I deserve the truth, Kira. And I want it now.”
“Let. Go.” In a moment of instinct, she yanked her face free and landed a solid palm strike to his chin.
Gripping his chin, Vance backed away. “Goddamn it, that hurt. I just want the truth.”
“There’s no other man in my life.” She rubbed her eyes against the subtle irritation of her contacts. Time to resolve this. Her mind struggled to find a diplomatic way out. Break-ups had never been her forte.
Vance’s pager went off. He glanced at the device. “My motorcycle accident finished his MRI. I’ve got to take off. We aren’t finished with this. How about dinner tonight?”
“I’m busy. Got a lot of records to catch up on.” She waved at the pile cluttering her desk.
“Maybe afterwards? I can come over to your place.”
He looked so crestfallen, she reflexively added, “Maybe tomorrow.” The minute the words left her lips, she wanted to bang her head on the desk. Stupid.
He smiled with relief.
“Later, then, pretty eyes.” His eyes dropped to her chest once more before he hopped off her desk. He shot her a smile as he shoved a preening hand through professionally cut, sun-kissed brown hair and exited the office.
Instantly concerned she’d knocked her contacts out of place, Kira swiveled to meet her reflection in the small magnet mirror on the file cabinet. The brown contacts were in place, completely masking the pale green irises ringed by blue. Against wavy black hair and untannable pale skin, the brown eyes were unequivocally boring. Perfect. The closeness required to perform a medical exam didn’t work well when anyone who got good look into her real irises couldn’t stop staring. Contacts prevented enthrallment.
Vance and all of her colleagues at the hospital thought she was a normal girl, gifted with an ability to solve medical puzzles, and she liked it. None of them would believe one touch revealed everything medical about a person. She had no intention of full disclosure to Vance, no matter how exhausting the effort to perpetuate the lie. Camouflage was imperative. A single slip might cause them to notice her.
Three years ago while on her med school emergency rotation, she’d almost been caught. In a moment of weakness, her healing power slipped out. She repaired a man’s soon-to-be-fatal car accident injuries. It took maybe a minute. Although the energy’s use had been heady and gratifying, Hashishins homed in on the “miracle” within a day. Luckily for her, the hospital’s staff barely noticed med students. They pointed the Hashishins naively toward her mentor. The poor man had no chance against them. She overheard the medical examiner say there were mysterious burns covering the body after his gruesome “suicide.” That meant black-magik torture.
Medicine had been a bad choice of careers. She should’ve chosen law school or taken the FBI up on its offer when they tried to recruit her out of college. Unfortunately, she had been compelled to choose this by the mysterious healing power within her. Most would say internal med presented the biggest challenges of all the specialties, but there were no diagnostic puzzles for her. She tried not to cheat, but it was too easy. Even so, diagnosing no longer appeased the healing power. It demanded more. It wanted her to actually heal and not simply dia
gnose. Over the past year, the instinct to go that one step further had become almost painful to suppress.
Kira focused on the problem of Vance. She already wanted out of their rendezvous. Knowing herself well, she would spend the next twenty-four hours figuring out how to do just that. What had possessed her to even suggest it in the first place?
Insecurity. Her fear of being alone. The problem with finding a good relationship and settling down was her fixation on fantasy-Ashor. It was a major dilemma bordering on obsession that now seemed to have gone to the next level: hallucination. Somehow she had to get beyond him. Perhaps, she should see the shrink she’d planned to visit ever since Mr. Fantasy revved up the nighttime sexy a few months ago.
Her cell beeped and lit with a text: “Phone me now. M.”
As she identified Markus’s number in her cell, she wondered what new disaster he had found to suck her into.
****
Ashor ducked, avoiding contact with the raptor-like nails of the daemon as they arched toward him. Although he avoided the nails, the daemon’s arm slammed into him. The tremendous force threw him nearly out the cathedral’s front doors. Pain exploded when his hip crashed onto the stone floor of the narthex.
This one was smart. And stronger than most. Damn.
All daemons were viciously strong. Their addictive euphoria from destroying life became all consuming once summoned into the human realm. They would kill anything living in their path. Their history of wide swaths of devastation throughout time was easy to identify, if one knew where to look. Ashor laughed at Hollywood’s fallacy that such evils couldn’t enter sanctified land. Complete bullshit. They seemed to prefer the consecrated ground, often taking pleasure in the destruction of religious iconography.
