Bloodlust (38 page)

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Authors: Michelle Rowen

Tags: #Fiction, #Paranormal, #Romance, #Horror, #Occult & Supernatural

BOOK: Bloodlust
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I hugged her back. “I’m sorry. I should have.”
She pulled back from me and there were emotions sliding through her gaze—relief, happiness, and a little bit of annoyance with her uncommunicative sister, who didn’t follow rules like a normal person. “What the hell happened to you, anyway? They told me you went out for a coffee break at work and that scary man grabbed you. He had a gun. Where the hell have you been all this time?”
I tried not to think about the scary man with the gun. He’d destroyed my normal life by dragging me into his. And I missed him already so much it felt as if I’d been stabbed through my heart. That pain fought with the pure joy I felt at seeing Cathy again.
“It’s a long story,” I said. “But I’m back and everything’s going to be okay now.”
Her expression turned quizzical. “What on earth did you do to your hair?”
I touched it absently. “It’s different now. Do you like it?”
She leaned back and pursed her lips. “I think I can get used to it.”
My hair was different. Permanently. Kind of like me. I knew I’d changed at a cellular level, just like my hair had. Like my blood had. It hadn’t been all that long since I’d been ripped out of my normal life, kicking and screaming, but everything was different now.
She glanced over her shoulder to see the girls in the family room, turning on the television. “Did they have a good time with you and . . .” She frowned. “I forget his name. The handsome blond man with the gray eyes.”
I wasn’t surprised she didn’t remember past Kristoff’s strong mental influence. “They did.”
She shook her head. “Where were you all this time? The man—the one who grabbed you—”
“He’s gone.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, then opened them up and smiled at her. “It’s okay.”
She stroked my long black hair back from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to begin. But nothing really matters as much as the fact that you’re back. Everything can go back to normal now, Jill. Everything. And I’m not letting you out of my sight ever again.” She laughed. “This is better than I ever could have hoped for.”
“It’s exactly what I hoped for, too.” I hugged her again, my chest felt tight. “I love you so much, Cathy.”
“I love you, too.”
“Please take care of yourself and the girls, okay?”
She pulled back from me, a frown creasing her brow. “What?”
I smiled, a truly genuine smile. “I need to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“I’ll be in touch, I promise. Soon. Please don’t worry about me.”
I turned and left the house, walking down the driveway to the sidewalk. Seeing Cathy again, returning the girls safely, it was everything I thought it would be. It made me happy. It made me remember my life before—how normal and regulated everything was. There was a comfortable structure to having a job, having a set of friends, a sister and nieces I visited regularly. I could have that again, I’d just seen it.
But I wasn’t the same person I’d been. I felt it deep inside me. I didn’t belong there—not anymore. And that was okay. It was a part of my life, but not the sum total of it. I could have followed the rules. Could have stayed there. Hell, I was sure Cathy wouldn’t have had a problem with me moving in and starting my life over here in Los Angeles.
But there were other things in store for me now.
“Jill!” Cathy called from her front door. “Where the hell are you going?”
I just waved at her. She probably thought I was crazy. Maybe I was. But I knew this was the right choice for me. I walked down the sidewalk in my short black dress, the high heels pinching my feet.
No matter what happened now, everything was going to be okay.
I believed it.
The car came to a stop at the curb beside me a few minutes later. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed that it wasn’t some jerk who wanted to give me a lift to the nearest motel room after mistaking me for a hooker.
“Are you getting in or what?” Declan asked through the open passenger side window.
I smiled, then grabbed the door handle, opened it up, and got in beside him. “I thought you were leaving.”
“Me, too.”
“But you came back.”
“I did.” His jaw was tight and his attention was on the road again.
“Isn’t it torture to be close to me?”
“It is.”
I bit my bottom lip and watched him carefully. “So why did you come back?”
He finally turned to look at me. “I guess I’m just a complete masochist who’s fallen in love with you.”
My heart swelled. “That was probably not a very smart decision.”
“Tell me about it.” His sunglasses were off, and I saw the raw emotion in his pale gray eye—emotion he’d never had to experience in the past thanks to his serum.
No more serum. No more dhampyr.
Just a vampire who could go out in the daylight. Who had survived my blood. Who’d dragged me into this life, and I was in no hurry to escape from him anymore. This was where I belonged, come what may. With Declan.
I looked out of the window back in the direction of my sister’s house and my normal life. “So where are we headed next?”
“Honestly? I have no damn idea.”
I smiled at him. “That sounds like a pretty good start to me.”
He reached down to take my hand in his as we pulled away from the curb.
Turn the page for a special preview of the
next Living in Eden novel by Michelle Rowen
That Old Black Magic
 
Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!
 
 
 
“READY TO HEAR YOUR ULTIMATE FATE?”
Eden glanced warily at the shirtless demon sitting at the tiny dinette table in her tiny apartment with the daily newspaper’s horoscope section in front of him. Seemed harmless enough, and yet a chill ran down her spine. Something about Darrak’s statement felt like an omen. A bad one.
Maybe she was just being paranoid. Nothing new there.
She pushed back against the unpleasant vibe. “Sure.”
Darrak absently raked his messy dark hair back from his forehead. “You’re a Gemini, right?”
“Present and accounted for.”
“Be prepared for a blast from the past as an old acquaintance, one whose destiny is irreversibly intertwined with yours, wants to reconnect. Also, buy more crunchy peanut butter as soon as possible.”
She nodded. “Let me take a wild guess here . . . You added the last bit yourself.”
“Doesn’t make it any less true. We’re out. And I love it.”
“I’ll put it on my grocery list.”
“Life is good.” He studied her for a moment longer before his grin began to fade at the edges. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Eden crossed her arms. “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all. Everything’s wonderful. Fabulous, in fact.”
“Overcompensating in your reply only leads me to believe that something’s seriously wrong.” When he stood the horoscope page fluttered to the carpeted floor at his feet. His brows drew together. “What is it?”
It was surprising how quickly Darrak could switch from amusement over a horoscope and a craving for crunchy peanut butter to deep concern for her well-being.
He wanted to know what was bothering her. That was a very dangerous question these days.
Ever since Eden woke this morning, she’d felt the unrequested tingle of magic moving down her arms and sparking off her fingertips. She didn’t allow herself to tap into her recently acquired powers despite it being a constant itch for her. Magic—at least
her
magic—came with nasty consequences.
She could control it, she kept telling herself. She
could.
Sometimes she even believed it.
“You need to get dressed,” she said instead of answering his question. Her gaze moved over his very bare and very distracting chest. “We have to leave for the office in five minutes.”
Black jersey material immediately flowed over Darrak’s skin. Since he’d come into Eden’s life a month ago, she’d wanted to take him shopping at a mall, but other than a leather coat he occasionally wore—short sleeves in Toronto in chilly mid-November might be a tip-off that he wasn’t exactly human—he magically conjured his own clothing, which seemed to solely consist of black jeans and black T-shirts.
She slid her hands into the pockets of her navy blue pants and turned away from him.
Darrak caught her arm. “It’s your magic, isn’t it?”
The peanut-butter-loving demon could be very insightful. “My magic?”
“I can feel it, you know. Right now. It’s coming off you in waves.”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
She grabbed her purse, which was hanging off the back of one of the dinette chairs, to fish into it for her new BlackBerry. Andy McCoy, her partner at the investigation agency they co-owned, insisted they become more technically savvy now that their caseload had increased, so he’d bought them both brand-new phones. Triple-A Investigations had been on the brink of bankruptcy only a month ago, but now they were busy with new cases.
The sudden surge in business was directly related to Darrak coming into Eden’s life. While working as an occasional psychic consultant for the police, she’d been possessed by the cursed demon after the death of his previous host, a serial killer gunned down right in front of her.
Darrak was able to take solid human form during daylight hours, but when the sun set, he became incorporeal and had to possess her body. She’d recently had the chance to end the possession once and for all, but that would have destroyed him completely. Her privacy was a great motivator to find a solution to their problem, but not at such a high price.
After all . . . she’d come to care a great deal for the demon since they’d first met.
Unfortunately, all roads in their search for mutually beneficial separation had led to dead ends. Some deader than others.
She finally tore her gaze away from the screen of her phone to look at him and cringed when she noticed the searching look in his ice blue eyes. “I said nothing’s wrong. Please, Darrak, don’t worry.”
“Your phone is on fire.”
He was right. A spark from her magic had ignited her BlackBerry. She shrieked and threw it before it burned her. It skittered across the breakfast bar and landed with a
sizzle
in the kitchen sink. “Well, damn.”
Before she had a chance to move, Darrak was right in front of her. He pulled out the chain she wore around her neck so her amulet lay flat against her freshly ironed white shirt.
“It’s even darker than it was yesterday.”
She clamped her hand over the visible state of her soul. The more she used her magic, the more damage it did. A black witch, even an extremely reluctant one like her, started with a pure white soul, but it grew darker and darker every time she accessed her very accessible black magic. Eden’s amulet was still pale gray, but it had darker veins branching through it, making it look like a piece of marble.
She shook her head. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Then what are these?” He pushed her hand away and slid his index finger over the veins.
She grimaced. “A glitch.”
“A glitch,” Darrak repeated skeptically. “Not sure it works like that.”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Eden”—all amusement was gone from his voice now—“I’m worried about you.”
A demon from Hell was worried about her immortal soul. It sounded like a joke. But Darrak wasn’t any normal demon. And she wasn’t any normal black witch.
Once upon a time, Darrak had been just as bad as any demon who’d ever existed—as immortal as he was immoral, sadistic, powerful, selfish, manipulative, and deadly. He’d even conspired with a demonic pal to overthrow Lucifer himself in an attempt to take his power as Prince of Hell. However, they’d failed. Rather spectacularly, in fact.
Darrak had been summoned into the human world over three hundred years ago, and a curse was put on him that destroyed his original body and his ability to manifest a new one. He’d been forced to possess humans ever since. A side effect of this was that he’d absorbed humanity slowly but surely and it infused his being. The demon had developed a conscience. Morals. A sense of right and wrong.
But that wasn’t the whole story.
To add to Eden’s growing paranormal résumé, she’d recently been shocked to learn that in addition to being a black witch she was also a nephilim.
A human mother plus an angel father equaled one very confused twenty-nine-year-old woman—black witch plus half angel in the same body. It wasn’t exactly a combination that was working out perfectly, more like oil and water.

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