Blood and Kisses (6 page)
It was dark in the room. Light from the hanging fixture in the hall spilled onto the wide bed like a spotlight, highlighting the still figure sprawled on its vast surface. Inky shadows hovered thick in the corners, disguising their contents.
Thalia whispered the final word of an illumination spell, and a cool yellow flame sprang to life above her curved palm. She raised her hand to dispel the shadows, revealing a room furnished in dark wood. She’d seen this suite in the catalog of a furniture company way out of her price range. A deep, rich red colored the walls. Dark wood plantation shutters decorated the window, but she knew the same heavy metal shades that covered the windows in the rest of the house were present behind them. She owned several of the same colorful prints that hung in the room, but she had a feeling these weren’t prints.
Her gaze drifted back to Gideon, who lay on his side. A white sheet covered him below his smooth chest. It emphasized the trim line of his waist and made his skin look like pale honey. Thalia drew a ragged breath. Even unconscious he was magnificent.
She tore her hungry eyes away from his large form and surveyed the room. A dresser against the far wall seemed a logical place to start. With one leery glance in Gideon’s direction, she crossed to the dresser and slid open the first drawer.
“That’s my underwear.” Gideon’s voice was soft as liquid velvet and as difficult to read as a Sanskrit text, but he had to be furious.
She sighed, closed the drawer, and spun to confront him, pressing back against the dresser. A knob dug into her hip, but the minor pain couldn’t compete with the danger on the bed. She stayed put. “So I see.”
He propped himself up on one strong elbow. “Find what you were looking for?”
She stared at the flexed muscles of his bare shoulder. How could such an innocuous body part be so beautiful? The light in her hand played golden over the planes and depressions of his torso. Her other hand flexed and her fingers tingled, as if already forging a trail over forbidden territory. She gulped and tore her eyes away. “Obviously not.”
Gideon waved his free hand and the lights came up. His eyes were burning pitch in the stern frame of his face. He reached out and grasped her slim wrist, pulled her toward him, brought the flame in her cupped palm close to his lips and blew it out. His breath both tickled and cooled her sensitive skin. She shivered.
He skewered her with his scorching gaze. Thalia’s fevered brain seemed to lose the ability to command her body. She watched helplessly as his dark head lowered over her hand once more, his fingers iron bangles around her arm, not tight enough to hurt, but unbreakable. His mouth was a smoldering coal on the tender flesh of her palm, and she gasped. She felt as if he were drawing a different sort of flame from every fiber of her body down her arm and out through the place where his lips burned. The pleasure was so intense it verged on pain.
She moaned, and he was out of the bed, her body clasped against his.
He took her mouth.
She had never been kissed, not like this. She wasn’t even sure she’d been alive until this moment. Her lips reveled in his taste, sweet and spicy, and in the stroke of his tongue against her own, slick and wet. A more intimate touch than she had ever known.
She fought for air, placing her hands on his shoulders and pushing away. But that only brought her soft breasts into contact with his hard, bare chest. The sensation fed the fire, and she pressed closer. Her eyes fell shut. Her hands strayed up to his nape, her greedy fingers burrowing into his silky mane, kneading his scalp. He groaned and slid his scalding mouth to her cheek, laving the edges of her birthmark with his tongue. As if plunged into an ice bath, she froze, coming to her senses. She ripped away from his grasp and fled from the room.
Thalia gazed out her bedroom window. The navy sky was singed with the last fiery streaks of sunset, the trees mere charcoal shadows against the darkening sky. Gideon was due to arrive any minute, and she still hadn’t answered the question of how she could possibly face him after the events of that morning.
The growing darkness turned the transparent windowpane into a mirror. Her face reflected back at her, pale and indistinct, like a ghost. The memory of the kiss brought her hand to her full lips. Despite the hours that had passed, they seemed to have retained the imprint of his mouth. She could close her eyes and bring back the feeling of his lips feasting on her own, remember the taste of him, his scent.
Tears glazed her vision. It hadn’t been her first kiss, but it might as well have been.
“Idiot!” she said to her reflection and stalked downstairs to the kicking bag in the basement, warming up her neck on the way. Once in front of the red column, she kicked off her shoes and punched the bag hard enough to rock it on its black, water-filled base.
Her first real kiss. Why couldn’t she let that go?
Thump. She struck the bag again. Knuckles still stinging, she palmed her birthmark.
Her family had carried the mark for generations, but none of them had ever had one so large. Her mother’s mark had been a tiny crescent near the corner of her left eye. It had seemed more like a beauty spot.
A rueful laugh shook her chest. If the size of the mark were equal to the size of her talent, she’d be hell on wheels.
She leaned her forehead against the cool plastic of the kicking bag. Of course, she’d never thought anything about her mark, except to be proud of her family’s heritage, until she’d gone to school.
She could still remember walking to the bus stop that first morning. Her mother had sent Spirit with her, although actually he’d watched, invisible, from afar.
It’d been a warm, sunny day. They’d had an unusually wet summer. Only a few leaves had begun to turn, and the grass was still bright green, but the tree growing at the bus stop corner had turned early. Its leaves glowed ruby-red in the morning sun. The sky was a brilliant blue, unmarred by clouds.
She’d worn a pretty new dress, pink gingham with white daisies embroidered on the bodice, and shiny white shoes. God, she’d loved the dress.
Then the other had children arrived, one by one, until there were five in all, and the whispering began.
The stares didn’t bother her at first. It was an awfully pretty dress.
A boy about her age, or maybe a year older, showed up. He possessed a shock of dark hair, a snub nose, and thick red lips. He walked around her silently in a slow circle. His eyes fixed on her mark. Not knowing what he was doing, she stood still, looking down at the shiny white patent leather of her shoes.
Then he spoke. “What’s that on your face?”
“A birthmark,” she said, peering up at him. Her mother had told her not to tell the other children the significance of her mark.
“Looks like you need to wash your face.”
She’d stomped her foot. “It’s a birthmark.”
“I don’t think so. I think you’ve got a dirty face. Why don’t you wash your face, Messy Bessie?” he’d sneered, upper lip drawn back to reveal missing front teeth. “Messy Bessie, Messy Bessie,” he’d chanted in a singsong voice. The other children joined in.
He’d laughed and picked up a clump of dirt from a ridge of raised earth, tossing the clump from hand to hand. “Wash your face, Messy Bessie!” With that, he threw the clump at her, striking one of the pretty white daisies on her dress. The clump exploded into a cloud of dust, and dirt rained down on her shoes, dulling the veneer. Forbidden by her mother to use magic, Thalia could only shield her head with her arms and sob as the other children began to follow his lead, scooping up clumps of dirt and lobbing them at her, soiling her dress, her hair and her legs, while continuing to chant.
When they ran out of dirt, they began to push her. She stumbled back and forth, bouncing from shoving hands to shoving hands until finally she’d tripped and fallen to the ground with a loud ripping sound. She sat on the sidewalk for a moment, shocked, and then picked herself up and ran back home, her face smudged, her dress destroyed.
She hadn’t made it to kindergarten that day, but she’d gone the next. Her mother’s angry phone-call to the other children’s parents’ made their jeers more subtle, but no less hurtful.
Billy Lasher, the boy who’d started it all, seemed to make it his personal duty to hound her, and the name Messy Bessie had followed her until middle school, when her schoolmates had chosen a new name.
God that was a long time ago. She bounced back on the balls of her feet and took another swing at the bag. It landed with a solid thunk. If only the past could be defeated with your fists.
She was twenty-five years old and she had never made love, had never even dated. It seemed unlikely she ever would.
But she had been kissed, well and truly kissed this morning, even if it had been in anger. In spite of the fact that it could never be repeated, it was a memory she would savor.
A disgusted chuff exploded from her chest and she planted a fist in the bag.
God, she was pathetic.
In the dream, Gideon didn’t see a man, he saw a demon. A monstrous creature bent on annihilation. Devoted to death. An unstoppable force guided by shadows. Driven by madness.
Men screamed as he ripped out their pumping hearts with his bare hands. Cries of triumph spilled from his chest as he wallowed in the sounds of hearts beating, lungs fighting for coveted air, and living flesh being rendered from bone. The smell of death haunted the stale, hot air.
Blood was everywhere. It spattered the walls of the tent, flowed in rivers off the carpets and fed the hungry sand. But it did not feed him. It couldn’t.
The beast was not of the living dead. It did not require blood to survive. It was human, with all the venal needs that state implied. It was he.
Gideon awoke with a strangled cry. The harsh rasp of his breathing filled the room. He sat up and stared at his broad palms, expecting to see them stained with red. He hadn’t had the dream in years.
No explanation for its sudden reoccurrence was necessary. Thalia had awakened the slumbering demon.
He closed his eyes, rubbed his hand over his face, but the image of her face in the seconds before she’d run away lingered in his mind. Lush mouth pink and swollen, irises a mere aquamarine ring around enormous ebony pupils, a flush tinting the creamy satin of her cheeks. And that look in her eyes, guarded by the feathery sweep of her lashes, that flash of something soft and vulnerable. That look that seemed to plead,
please don’t hurt me
.
And hurt her he would, if he couldn’t keep the monster at bay.
The doorbell chimed just as Gideon prepared to leave. He considered slipping out the back, but quickly discarded the idea. June days were long. It was almost ten, and twilight had not quite given up its nightly fight. Whoever was outside must have a good reason for calling this late.
He opened the door. A man and a woman stood on his doorstep. He didn’t bother scanning their minds; their clothing and body language screamed, “Police.”
“Mr. Damek?” The woman, a tall, pretty, slightly plump redhead in a lettuce-colored summer weight pantsuit smiled and extended a hand, her voice a bit breathy. “I’m Detective Dana Cole. This is Detective Edward Poole.” The other police officer was young, blond, and snub-nosed. A scraggly moustache draped over his top lip. Still, his denim blue eyes held a keen intelligence.
Gideon shook her hand. “What can I do for you, detective?”
“May we come in?”
He hesitated.
Just plant a memory and send them on their way
. No, he sighed inwardly. That could backfire, and they might have information he could use.
“Certainly.” He stepped back so they could enter the foyer, then led them into the living room. The detectives ran curious gazes around their new surroundings, reminding him of Thalia’s reaction to his house, but he shrugged away thoughts of her and focused on the here and now.
“You have a beautiful home.” Detective Cole echoed Thalia’s earlier words as she pulled a notepad out of her suit pocket. “We’re sorry to come by so late. You’re probably aware two bodies have been discovered beside 390 in the last few days. In both cases, the last place the victims were seen alive was a Goth club in the High Falls District we believe belongs to you.”
“That’s right. I own the Bell, Book, and Candle.” Gideon gently probed the surface of the detective’s mind. He found a detached amusement at the kind of people she assumed frequented places like his tavern. Beneath that was a rock solid belief that he or one of his regular patrons was a serial killer.
“You were at the club those evenings?” Her tone turned the question into a statement.
“I’m there most nights.”
Cole nodded, her smooth bob sliding forward as she noted the information in her pocket notebook. “What time did you leave?”
He skimmed through her surface thoughts. She’d already spoken to his staff, probably why the pair had arrived so late, and knew the answer. He shrugged, “Too early, apparently.”
Her head came up, hazel eyes intent.
“Or you wouldn’t be here, would you?” Gideon smiled, and the woman flushed, her pupils dilating. He could hear her heart rate speed up. She cleared her throat and checked her notes.
“Where did you go after you left the club Monday night?”
“Home.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm.” The detective made a noncommittal sound as she made another note on her pad. “And there’s no one who can verify this?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Gideon didn’t have to invade her thoughts to know he had just jumped to the top of the list. Still, they’d no other evidence to implicate him. There was no need to plant an alibi or manipulate them. If things went well, he and Thalia might catch the rogue tonight. This would all be mercifully over and he could return to his quiet life.
“What time would you say you went to bed?” The question seemed irrelevant, but he knew she was trying to get information she could confirm. His next-door-neighbors were going to receive a visit.
A high brick wall with a wrought iron gate guarded his property, but the upper story windows could be seen from the street. He used the lights, although he didn’t need them, and left the aluminum shades up at night. If not, people assumed the house was empty and it became a target for thieves. Not a problem for him, but he didn’t like to eat at home.
“About four thirty.”
Detective Cole raised an auburn eyebrow.
“Owning a bar, I’ve gotten into the habit of working at night.”
“Hmm.” Cole’s tone was neutral, but she and Poole exchanged pointed glances.
“Thank you for your time.” Cole slipped her notebook into her pocket and extended her hand once more.
Gideon took it. He held it firmly, making eye contact, wondering why the touch of Thalia’s hand, no different really from the one he held now, affected him so profoundly, while this woman’s touch did nothing at all. She blushed and drew her hand away, rubbing it on the fabric of her jacket, her eyes still on his face.
Outside, darkness had fallen, and Gideon escorted the detectives to their car.
“Let me know if I can be any help,” he said as Cole got into the black car on the driver’s side.