Demon Bait: Children of the Undying, Book 1 (6 page)

Mark her. Wind her in magic until anyone with a drop of demon blood knew she was his.

That part would be easy. The hard part came later, when he had to let her go.

Marci hoped she looked calm on the outside, because inside she was a mess. Her stomach churned with something a little more like anticipation than fear, and she damned herself a fool for it.

She didn’t know him, and yet she was about to trust him with everything. If he wanted, he could command her to do anything—
anything
—and she’d not only do it but smile. Thank him.

Beg for more.

She shook away the thought. Gabe hadn’t moved, and she touched his arm. “It’s stupid, but I’m ready. I trust you.”

The words made him smile even as his muscles tensed under her fingers. “You’ll have to, because this won’t work if you don’t. Even if I flipped you now, I couldn’t force you to accept a mark. It’s the one thing we can’t do.”

Only when he stopped talking did she realize she’d been staring at his mouth. “What do we do first?”

“Put your hands in mine.” He extended both, palms up, and waited.

Marci met his gaze as she complied. That simple touch shouldn’t have sent shivers rushing through her, but her skin prickled with goose bumps and heat began to gather low in her belly.

“That’s it…” Something ghosted past, like music she couldn’t
quite
hear, and his thumbs folded over to stroke the backs of her fingers. “Think about trusting me. Why you trust me.”

Because she believed him. Because he seemed genuinely concerned about her comfort as well as her safety. Because no one with eyes that clear and pure could be truly awful.

Because he could have had her already.

“Are you ready?”

His voice felt like a touch, warm and soothing. “Mm-hmm.” The feeling grew as he stroked her hands again. “You feel safe?” It was what he wanted, for her to see him as a protector, a safe haven. “You won’t let anything happen to me.”

“I won’t.” The power rose differently than before. Slowly, folding around her in layer after layer, like sinking into a warm bath. Marci felt the same peaceful hush when it finally enveloped her. She was weightless, suspended. Cradled.

Belatedly, she dragged in a breath and opened her eyes. “You’re beautiful.” He laughed, and it tickled over her. “You’re high on magic.”

“Lies.” But she laughed too and gripped his hands. “What do I feel like?” Gabe tilted his head and seemed to consider it. “Soft. Strong. Like the ocean.”

“I’ve never seen the ocean.”

“Not many around here have. I lived in the west until I was ten.” It was so normal. Just idle conversation utterly at odds with the magic that had just bound them.

“Gabe?”

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Isn’t this…”
Bizarre.
She never finished the sentence because she needed to touch him more than she needed to talk. So she slid her hand up his arm to his shoulder and shifted closer.

Kiss me.
Would she be forcing the issue if she whispered the words? Leaning on him like she’d sworn not to do?

It didn’t matter, because
she
kissed
him
, driven by the freedom she’d tasted in his aura. She wanted it—to feel that way, as if nothing mattered but the moment.

A strong hand settled at the nape of her neck, fingers warm and gentle. Gabe licked her lower lip once and eased back until his breath skated over her mouth as he spoke. “Are you drunk on magic, Marci? Or do you want me to kiss you?”

“Do they have to be different things?” she asked. “Isn’t that why you want me, because of my bloodline?”

“I need you because of your bloodline.” The pad of his thumb stroked up the side of her throat, a soft caress that did exactly what it was supposed to do—inflame her libido. “I don’t have to kiss you to get what I need. That’s something I want to do.”

A tiny but valid distinction, she supposed, but the truth was that she was beyond separating the two.

“I’m new to this, so you’ll have to forgive me for being unsure.” Talking was getting her nowhere, so she closed her teeth on his lip in a gentle bite.

He groaned, and the gentle hand at her nape tensed, holding her in place even as he surged forward.

Her head tilted back, and his mouth opened in a kiss that demanded everything.

Everything
, and it still wasn’t enough. Marci’s head buzzed with pleasure—at his taste, his touch, how it felt to mold her body to the hard wall of his chest. She gasped for breath and wiggled closer, protesting with a moan when the sheet she’d worn to bed tangled around her legs and halted her progress.

At least that was easily dealt with. She worked her way free of the sheet without taking her mouth from Gabe’s, and she sighed with relief when she slipped into his lap, wound her legs around his hips and rocked against him.

Another groan, and his fingers twisted in her hair, urging her head back until his mouth settled against her throat. “Hell, woman, that was one enthusiastic kiss.”

“You’re the one asking if I really want to kiss you.” She arched her back and clutched at his shoulders. “It’s a stupid question.”

“Mmm, maybe.” He kissed the spot where her pulse beat frantically. “And maybe I think this is too fast, not the right time.”

Marci groaned. “I hate you for being right.”

“No, you don’t.” The words were cocky and utterly self-assured. “If you want to kiss me when we get to my drop? I’ll kiss you anywhere.” Teeth scraped her skin. “
Anywhere
you want.” She was already shaking, and the words only intensified the ache that plagued her. “It’s really not the magic, is it?”

“Magic’s not helping us slow down.” The grip on her neck eased as he inched his hand away. “But I’m pretty sure we’re stepping on the gas all on our own.” Shaking her head didn’t help to clear it, so Marci eased off his lap and blew out a sharp breath. “Six hours.”

“Six hours.” His gaze swept over her before he looked away. “But if you’re going to spend them naked, we’ll be in trouble.”

Damn it.
Marci snatched up the blanket and covered herself. “There are a few security weaknesses I’ve found that I can exploit. I’ve been saving them, just in case.”

“And you didn’t exploit them to get away from me?”

She hadn’t had time, not before she’d started climbing him. “Honestly, I didn’t really have the chance, or I might have.”

“Mmm.” A smile tugged at his lips as he eased a hand into his pocket and pulled out a compact tablet with a shiny silver back and a clear screen. “Trip used some sort of hacker trick to download a list of what he needs onto my handheld. Most of it means nothing to me.”

“May I?” She held out her hand and took the tablet. A quick skim of the list left her nodding. “I can handle it.”

“In six hours?”

“Maybe less,” she told him with no small amount of pride.

His appreciation showed in his eyes. “Good. You’re the expert with this. But once we get out…” He paused. “Have you ever spent time topside?”

It was unthinkable. “Only in transport. When I had to.”

“Demons are damn close to blind in the dark, but it’s going to be near dawn by the time we get out. We’ll have to move fast, down river, and spend the day in my bolthole. Stick close to me, and I’ll get you there safely. I promise.”

Skeptical, Marci squinted at him. “If they’re so blind, how are they still so dangerous?” He hesitated, long enough to make it clear he didn’t want to tell her. But he did anyway, voice quiet and firm. “After they pop humans, they can use their eyes to see, control them like puppets. A popped human doesn’t come back. Soul’s just…gone. Body keeps living though, as long as the demons want it to.” Nausea twisted in Marci’s stomach, sharp and sour. “Oh.” Gabe rose in one graceful movement and closed his hands around her shoulders. “First off, that’s only humans. A summoner who gets popped can come back. Second, it’s damn hard to pop someone who’s been marked. That’s the point, Marci. It’d take them a long time to do it, and I’d kill ’em before it happened.” So he kept saying. She’d never seen him fight, but he looked like someone who could take care of himself—and her too. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated, rubbing his thumbs over her skin in a soothing rhythm. It didn’t ease all her tension, but it helped. “Let’s get out of here.”

Three hours in the network, and Marci was starting to see double.

She ground her teeth and dropped her head to the desk. “That was it—my last idea.” Across from her, the blond tech—Trip—clucked his tongue and waved a hand. One wall of the makeshift room vanished in a dizzying rush only to reappear as a computer screen with the Gold Mills schematic traced in glowing lines from floor to ceiling. “We’re most of the way there. Alarms are down. Alerts are rerouted. No one will know you opened a door…if you can open a door.”

“That’s what I’ve been
trying
to do,” she shot back. “Every little hole is secure.”

“So we move on to the tiny ones.” Trip rose like a cat. The man seemed full of lean, leashed energy, even virtually. “The cracks. And if we can’t find them, we can make one or two.” It had been drilled into her head from her first day on the job. “They’ve always said the only way to reverse a lockdown is a mainframe-generated keycode.” Trip scratched the side of his face and considered the map. “That’s a damn dangerous game to play, unless you figure everyone in the building’s replaceable.”

“Everyone irreplaceable stays in Nicollet,” Marci muttered. It wasn’t right, but she couldn’t act as though she hadn’t known this could happen. She and everyone else who signed up to work in places like Gold Mills knew the score.

“Tough break.” He leaned closer to the wall, tracing his fingers over the west side of the building, where the river powered the generators. “This sector isn’t on the same lockdown grid. It might not be fun, but you could probably climb through the ducts from the bathrooms to the generator room. Might be a tight fit for Gabe, but he could make it.”

Marci had been to that area exactly once, when she’d been new and gotten lost on her way to the west-sector dormitories. “Most of the doors in that area of the sector have been taken down. They use the rooms for storage, and maintenance crews only go there when they have to, so they didn’t bother outfitting the place with expensive updated locks, just the overall building security measures.”

“That’s it, then. Your yellow brick road.”

Marci vaguely recognized the pre-Fall movie reference. “Okay, now we just have to get out of the lounge. Maybe Gabe should start digging through the wall with a soup spoon.”

“I considered it,” Gabe drawled, speaking for the first time. “They’re not tough enough.”

“So find something that is and lay the halfblood smack down on that door.”

Marci snorted. “Pry open the door? Just like that?”

Trip raised both eyebrows. “Are you being modest, Gabe?”

“I’m being smart.” His stance was still relaxed, casual, but something about it rang hollow.

Sometimes body language lost something in the network, but Gabe seemed distinctly uneasy. “Brains before brute force, right?”

Marci stared at him as a shudder wracked her. “Holy shit. You
can
open the door, can’t you?”

“Probably.” He shifted his weight, straightening. “It wouldn’t be my first choice, and I’ll need to take apart one of the beds for leverage and have Trip look up the weak spots.” Of course he hadn’t admitted it. Why would he, when he’d gone to so much trouble to trap her with him in the first place? “Fine.”

Gabe sighed. “How would volunteering the information have helped? I could have let you out into the unprotected hallways and…what? Pried open another door so everyone on the other side would know I wasn’t human?”

“And ruin how hard you worked to get me stuck with you in the first place, right?” His jaw clenched, and he looked away.

Trip didn’t. “If there’s something going on…”

“There’s not,” Gabe snapped. “Can you bypass the perimeter alarm?” Marci dropped her gaze to the display in front of her. “It doesn’t look like Asha and Christian ever reset it.”

“So pull up the specs on those doors and do the math, Trip.” It didn’t take long. Trip returned to the display and typed something. “Knee height. The doors should spring if you can find something that’ll work as a lever.”

“The bed frames should work, then,” Marci told him. “They’re solid steel.” Gabe nodded tightly. “Do we need to do anything else?” Trip waved a hand. “Both of you, get out of here. I can handle the rest.” Without a word, Gabe blinked out. Marci followed as fast as she could, rubbing her eyes under the disposable glasses as the virtual room dissolved.

She rose as soon as she dared, and her legs wobbled a little. “Is there anything else you want to tell me before I discover it by accident?”

“I snore.” He stripped the sheets from the mattress and dumped them on the floor next to the blankets.

“I hate eggs.”

She stalked over and stilled his hand. “Have you misled me about anything else? I’ll ask now and let it go, but I want the truth.”

Gabe didn’t meet her eyes. “I didn’t mislead you about that. It’s not going to be easy to get the door open, and I might hurt myself trying. I’m stronger than a human because I’m
not
human. I never pretended I was.”

It stung, though she didn’t know
what
she’d expected. “Okay.” She released him. “Go ahead. Act like I’m being unreasonable, like I have no right to ask.” The mattress joined the growing pile, tossed with a tiny bit of temper. It slid across the narrow room and rattled a plastic chair. “I didn’t want to tell you it was possible,” he admitted, his voice full of spiky edges. “Not until I thought you’d want to come with me.”

“Then that’s what I want to hear.” She clenched her hands into fists. “The truth, Gabe, that’s what I want.”

“I’m strong.” The bedframe was metal—solid enough, until he wrapped his fingers around the back and the base and began to bend it. “Most halfbloods are. Most are stronger than me.” The metal creaked under the force of his hands. If most were stronger than Gabe,
most
scared the hell out of her. “I—” Those same hands had touched her gently. “Okay.” The frame snapped. Gabe didn’t look at her as he tilted the frame up on its side and began the same process with one of the legs. “We get good shit and bad shit. At least this can be useful.” Marci stared at the rent metal for a moment and squeezed her eyes shut. “How do you do that? Make me feel like I should apologize even though you actually
were
an ass?”