Omens (The Dark in You Book 6)

by Suzanne Wright

  “Be sure you can stick to the terms of the wager,” it said, its tone flat and utterly without emotion, “because you will lose.”

  The amount of confidence in that statement was a little unnerving. “You can’t even be sure your incubus powers will work on me.” She was resistant to the incubi mojo, so there was a possibility that she was also immune to—

  A delicious, spicy, aphrodisiac scent surrounded her. The air turned warm and muggy, like sultry summer heat. She sucked in a breath as that heat swept through her entire body.

  Lust twisted her insides. Her nipples pebbled. Her breasts began to ache. Her clit started to throb.

  The corner of the demon’s mouth kicked up. “They’ll work.”

  “Stop,” she clipped. To her surprise, it did. The spicy scent dissipated, the air cooled, and the heat within her dwindled.

  The demon’s black eyes flicked to the hallway clock. “It is 1:05am. The countdown begins now. This time next Monday, I will come for you. And I will take what you owe me. Be ready.” It then subsided, and she found herself staring into familiar blue eyes.

  Khloé inhaled deeply. “Your power sure does pack a punch.” He could make her come like a freight train without even laying a finger on her, but he didn’t have a prayer of winning their little wager. His demon might be arrogant enough to think it could hold out, but the entities often were so supremely self-assured.

  Keenan skimmed the tip of his finger down the side of her face, leaving a trail of fire in his wake. “That was only a tiny demonstration of what I can do to you.”

  He called that tiny? For the first time, unease slithered through her. She swallowed, her eyes flickering.

  A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Ah, so you’re finally coming to see what you’ve gotten yourself into. Good. But it’s a little late now.”

  His gaze dropped to her lips again, glittering with a dark need that answered her own. She thought he might kiss her. He didn’t. He took a single step back, blanking his expression with an enviable ease.

  “A week, Khloé.” It was a warning and a promise. And then he was gone.

  She blew out a breath. “Well fuckadoodledo.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Hey, wake up.”

  Lying on her stomach, Khloé grunted. “Fuck off.” There was an awful draft as the covers were dragged off her body.

  “Wake up,” urged Ciaran. “Grams needs your help. Like now.” Just like that, tension zipped through her. Khloé lifted her head. “Help? Why?”

  “I don’t have time to explain. Come on, we need to go.”

  She edged out of bed and began pulling on clothes. “Give me the bare bones of the situation.”

  Facing the wall to give her some privacy, he replied, “Some shit’s gone down with Enoch. It’s just … fucked up.”

  Enoch had been a member of their lair since before they were born. She didn’t know him well—he mostly kept to himself. That suited her fine, because something indefinable about him rubbed her demon up the wrong way. “I’m ready. What do you mean by fucked up?”

  Ciaran turned to face her and grabbed her hand. “Brace yourself. You’re not gonna like what you see.”

  A slight breeze swept over her skin, the world around her flashed white, and then Khloé found herself stood in—ah, hell—a basement. She hated basements. They were dark and creepy and dank. And, God, the stench in this one was foul. Like rot, decay, and old blood.

  Hearing two voices behind her, she spun. Her mouth fell open in horror, and she almost jerked back a step. Her inner demon recoiled, just as disgusted.

  Oh God, this was wrong. So very, very wrong. Twisted, even.

  “Ah, your grandchildren have come to join you, Jolene,” Enoch said, a bitter twist to his mouth. “Isn’t that sweet?”

  Jolene didn’t glance their way. Like the two sentinels at her back, Orrin and Mitch, she kept her attention locked on Enoch.

  He cut his gaze back to the Prime. “You won’t take my daughter from me,” he told her, his jaw set, his chin high, his chest thrust out—clearly aiming to look as intimidating as possible as he stood between her and the twisted sight behind him.

  “You think this is good for Molly?” Jolene challenged, clearly not in the least bit rattled. The woman might be crazy, but she was also a strong, shrewd Prime who could blow shit up with a mere thought, so she had every right to be confident in the face of a threat. “You think it’s fair to her?”

  His nostrils flared. “It’s better than her being six feet under the goddamn ground.”

  She sighed. “Enoch—”

  “Leave,” he bit out. “This isn’t your business.”

  Jolene lifted her chin a notch. “Oh, this is very much my business. When you first joined my lair, you made me a promise that you wouldn’t use your main gift without consulting me. You broke that promise.”

  Oh, he’d broken it in a spectacular fashion, thought Khloé, as she and her brother flanked Jolene. She could already guess why her grandmother had sent for her, and she wanted to be ready to make her move.

  “I haven’t done anyone any harm,” he insisted.

  “If the parents of those poor children behind you knew what you’d done, they’d be devastated,” said Jolene. “That means nothing to you?”

  “I brought their children back from the dead—they’d be pleased. Grateful.”

  Grateful? This guy was warped for sure. The decomposing kids breathed, moved, and sluggishly shuffled around on their little feet within the translucent forcefield that surrounded them. But there was nothing of those kids there. No personality or spirit or life.

  With the exception of little Molly, Khloé didn’t recognize any of them, so she could only assume he’d exhumed them from human cemeteries. None appeared to have been dead more than a few years, but there was no way their parents could look at them and fool themselves into believing their kids were “back” from the dead. They were just empty shells.

  Although he’d clearly cleaned and redressed them—even going as far as to brush and style their hair, which she couldn’t help but find seriously freaking weird—the sight was still nauseating. Especially with their rotting, pale, sagging flesh and their vacant soulless eyes. And he treated them like they were dolls or something.

  “You didn’t resurrect their souls, Enoch,” said Jolene. “You merely took control of their corpses; you use them as puppets. You desecrated their graves and disturbed their rest.”

  His mouth tightened. “Molly needed friends.”

  “Molly is dead. It’s tragic, but it’s true. That isn’t your child over there. It’s her body. It’s no more than a suit she no longer needs. Her soul has moved on.”

  “She talked to me. She knew me—”

  “At first, yes, she probably did. But I’ll bet it wasn’t long before she lost whatever echoes of herself were left in that body. It’s an ‘it’ now, not a ‘she.’ Not a living person. Not Molly.”

  “Just because she’s not your definition of alive doesn’t make her gone. What she is now … it’s just another state of being. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  Jolene sighed. “I understand you must feel very alone right now, especially since your mate walked out on you a few years back. But no amount of pain or loneliness gives you the right to do what you’ve done. You need to return all those bodies to their graves—”

  “I won’t lose Molly,” he gritted out.

  “You already lost her, Enoch. Let her rest in peace.”

  His jaw hardened. “She stays with me.”

  “Don’t make me take this matter into my own hands. I’ve been gentle with you because I know you’re in great pain, but that can change in a heartbeat.”

  He smirked. “There’s nothing you can do. Any living thing that touches that forcefield will die. You have no way of getting past it. Of course, you could kill me, but you’d fail to make it a permanent death—not even you could destroy a Lazarus demon. My body would turn to ash, but I
wouldn’t psychically be dead, so the forcefield would remain intact. And when my body regenerated, I’d come back for my girls. You can’t get to them.”

  “Last chance, Enoch,” said Jolene. “Agree to return the children to their graves.”

  His mouth twitched into an ugly smirk. “Or what? Oh, I get it, you intend to sic your granddaughter on me.” He chuckled and cut his gaze to Khloé. “My kind is resistant to mind control, so you can’t force me to do your bidding, no matter how strong you are.”

  Well of course he’d assume that was why she was there. He didn’t know of Khloé’s other ability—many didn’t. “Jolene didn’t call me here to hijack your mind,” she said, flexing her fingers as the potent force humming in her belly pushed for freedom.

  Sliding her gaze to the forcefield, Khloé lifted her hand, palm-out, and sent out a blast of electric fire. A beautiful mix of blue and amber, it crackled and flickered as it rippled through the air. The power enveloped the forcefield like a net, buzzing and sizzling. She snapped her fist closed, and the electric net sliced through the forcefield.

  “No!” yelled Enoch, his eyes wide. A smoky, black sphere appeared in his hand. The fuck? He tossed three in quick succession.

  Her grandmother slammed up a hand, causing a protective shield to pop up in front of her, Khloé, Ciaran, and the sentinels. The shield absorbed two of the orbs, but it didn’t pop up fast enough to block all three.

  The other sphere crashed into Khloé’s head and … God, it was like having someone pour noxious gas up her nose and into her mouth. It seemed to burn her insides as it dived down her lungs and consumed the oxygen there.

  Dropping to her knees, she coughed and gagged and tried sucking in fresh air, but it was like the dark force blocked her airways. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t fight it.

  She was distantly aware of the mayhem around her—of the sentinels surrounding her, of hellfire orbs being tossed, of Enoch screaming in agony, of the corpses collapsing to the floor, of a cluster of ashes zooming out of the basement window like a swarm of bees. But she was mentally caught up in the fact that she was choking.

  Spots filled her vision. Her burning chest screamed for air. A feeling of weightless fluttered through her.

  Her demon went apeshit, knowing they were both going to die—

  A hand slapped against her back, and power punched inside her like a cold breeze. It drew her own power like a magnet. The two forces clashed and melded into one. Then it exploded.

  Wave upon wave of power rushed through her, clearing the darkness that clogged her lungs. Khloé sucked in a sharp breath. And another. And another. And another. God, fresh air had never tasted so good.

  “Stop, or you’re going to hyperventilate,” said Ciaran, his hand still on her back. “Breathe slowly. Come on, deep breath in, deep breath out.”

  Struggling to fight the reflexive urge to suck in mounds of air, she concentrated on trying to calm her breathing. Soon enough, the dark tinge to the edges of her vision cleared, but panic remained a living thing inside her. And, Jesus, what was that godawful taste on her tongue?

  Looking up at her twin, she gave him a nod of thanks. They’d always been able to join their collective power that way, but they didn’t do it too often as it left them both wiped.

  Ciaran rubbed her back. “You okay?”

  “Never better,” croaked Khloé. She coughed to clear her throat. “What the fuck did he hit me with?” She coughed again as Orrin and Ciaran helped her stand.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” said Jolene. “I’m assuming it was a poisonous gas of some kind, considering you almost choked to death. Mitch, go get her some water.”

  The sentinel promptly disappeared up the basement’s staircase.

  Jolene rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’d apologize for bringing you into this, but I had to send for you. You’re the only one in our lair who could have collapsed that forcefield. I had no other way of freeing those children.”

  Rubbing her aching chest, Khloé said, “It’s fine.” She looked at the spot where Enoch had stood. “Shame you didn’t kill him for good.”

  Jolene sighed. “I had hoped to make him see reason, but that didn’t work so well.”

  Just then, Mitch reappeared with a tall glass of water. “Here, drink this.”

  “Thanks,” said Khloé. She took the glass and practically inhaled the water.

  “Feeling better?” asked Orrin.

  She nodded. In truth, she felt like utter shit.

  “How long do you think it’ll be before Enoch’s body regenerates?” asked Ciaran.

  “Probably a few days.” Jolene smoothed a hand down her blouse and swatted at the material of her sleek pencil skirt, as if she felt stained by the whole encounter. The veneer of elegance she oozed was an innate quality that Khloé couldn’t help but envy.

  “If he has any sense, he’ll disappear,” Jolene went on. “I might not be able to kill a Lazarus demon, but I can certainly make him suffer a terrible death, over and over.” She looked down at the corpses. “Since bodies can’t be resurrected more than once, these poor little ones will be safe from him in the future.”

  “Jolene,” said Mitch, who’d wandered over to the other side of the basement and was staring into a large wooden trunk. “There’s something you need to see.”

  Khloé and the others followed her grandmother, who sidled up to Mitch. Peering into the trunk, Khloé felt her stomach lurch. She jerked back. “Holy fuck.”

  “Lolita,” said Jolene with a sigh, staring at the dead body. Much like the children, its clothes were clean, and its hair had been styled into a tidy braid. But it was mighty clear by the state of decomposition that the corpse had been dead for a number of years.

  “Either he lied that Lolita walked out on him or he caught up to her,” said Mitch. “Whatever the case, it seems highly likely that he killed her.”

  “If she threatened to leave him, it’s possible he killed and then reanimated her to keep her with him,” mused Orrin. “Why wouldn’t he have kept her body with Molly’s?”

  “He sees them all as living beings of a sort,” said Jolene. “To him, they’re truly not dead. If he’s angry with Lolita, he wouldn’t reunite her with their daughter.”

  Khloé nodded. “Keeping her trapped in a trunk seems something of a punishment to me.”

  Ciaran shoved a hand through his hair. “This is all so unbelievably fucked up.”

  Orrin turned to the Prime. “Me, Mitch, and the other sentinels will take care of moving the bodies. You, Khloé, and Ciaran should go breathe in some air that isn’t filled with death.”

  Jolene put a hand to her throat. “It just devastates me that we’ll have to cremate the human children’s corpses if we can’t locate their resting places. They don’t deserve that.”

  “Enoch probably would have taken them from local cemeteries,” said Ciaran. “Want me to make some calls and find out if there’s been reports of bodies being exhumed?”

  “Yes,” said Jolene. “He must have taken them at some point in the last month, since they were supposed to be ‘friends’ for Molly. She died four weeks ago tomorrow. I can’t say for sure how soon after that he reanimated the other corpses. If one of our lair members hadn’t noticed that Molly’s grave had been desecrated, I might never have learned what he’d done.”

  “He could come back for her body,” said Orrin. “It would be pointless, I know, since he can’t resurrect her again. But he’s not ready to let her go yet. It might be best to have someone watch over her grave.”

  Mitch nodded. “Then we can grab him if he reappears.”

  “Once she’s back in the cemetery, arrange for some of our Force to stand watch but to stay out of sight,” Jolene ordered. “The rest of us need to work on tracking him. He doesn’t have many living family members. Those that are alive belong to another lair. I’ll pay them each a visit and see if he’s contacted any of them. They could even give him sanctuary.”

  “I want to b
e there,” said Khloé.

  “Yes, I thought you might,” Jolene groused. “I’ll allow it, since he may well pop up a shield to protect himself. And while it vexes me that you’d make such a request to come along yet refuse to accept my offer for you to join our Force’s ranks, I won’t comment on it.”

  “You just did.”

  “Then I won’t comment on it again.”

  “I’ll go make those calls and see if I can find out where he took the human kids from,” announced Ciaran.

  Khloé put a hand to her stomach. “I say we both go throw up first.”

  Her brother pursed his lips. “Sound idea.”

  *

  Slurping her mango smoothie, Khloé glanced out the window that overlooked the Underground. The place was busy twenty-four/ seven, and this part of the strip got a lot of foot-traffic due to it being close to the mall and the most popular eateries and bars. “No sign of Harper and Devon yet,” she told Raini.

  It had become their ritual for all four women to meet at the coffeehouse before work, since their tattoo studio was located next door. Whoever arrived first at the coffeehouse often bought drinks for the others to save them having to wait in the long-ass queue.

  Around them, voices murmured, machines hummed, and dishware clattered. The delicious scents of fresh pastries, coffee beans, and vanilla filled the air.

  “They’ll be here soon,” said Raini. “I hope they bring Asher. I haven’t seen him in over a week. I miss my little dude. Is he or is he not the most adorable thing ever?”

  “Totally. And he cracks me up.”

  Demonic children were more advanced than humans, so the eighteen-month-old could talk a little and had excellent balance. He also had a very firm grip on his abilities—some of which were seriously impressive. But if he were her kid, it would make her a little nervous that such a high concentration of power lived within him. There was a current rumor going around that he could conjure the flames of hell, though she had no idea where it came from.

  “God, my head is killing me. I don’t get why they call it a hangover,” said Raini, rubbing her temple. “Shouldn’t it be called, like, a drunk-over? I don’t see where the ‘hang’ part comes in.”