Bound by Light (4 page)

Jake’s expression turned dark, along with his eyes, which seemed to reflect every nuance of his mood. "We have to stop them, numbers or not."

"Really? No kidding. I thought we were just supposed to pick our noses on night patrol." Merilee gripped the doorframe with one hand and dug her nails into the wood.

Jake looked confused all over again, and Merilee realized he didn’t completely follow sarcasm.

Give him time. If he sticks around this place, he’ll learn or die.

Understanding dawned across Jake’s perfect face, faster than Merilee expected. "I’m sorry," he said. "No offense intended."

Merilee relaxed her grip on the door.

Just like that he apologizes?

She narrowed her eyes. "Are you sure you’re related to Creed and Nick Lowell?"

Jake shrugged. "Scholars of demon creation could debate that point."

Under the force of his gaze, Merilee’s nipples tightened, distracting her beyond measure.

Hecate’s torch, she needed a good night’s sleep. Without an Astaroth in her bed.

And without nightmares of a man who seemed to be carved out of stone, or the abominable Keres, either. Those black faceless monsters with their creepy feathered wings and longs fangs terrified her like she was a little girl hearing horror stories from adepts at the Motherhouse.

More jets of wind slipped from her control.

Jake’s yellow towel flapped, and Merilee’s entire body flushed hot scarlet in response to her sudden glimpse of paradise.

Jake glanced down at his settling towel, then at Merilee again.

This time the bastard did smile.

He looked on the verge of asking her something, but Merilee panicked before he could say a word. "I really need a shower so I can crash. Can you—uh, shove off now?"

Once more, Jake seemed disappointed, but she didn’t see any hint of anger or annoyance as he started toward her. She also didn’t see any of the arrogance or cockiness she expected. Overall, Jake Lowell appeared to have more humility and self-control than his brothers, and he was tons harder to read than any Astaroth she had met so far.

His talisman necklace gleamed in the bathroom lights as he drew even with her in the doorway, paused, and gazed down at her with those heart-grabbing eyes. His unusual Caribbean scent washed over her, along with the heat of his nearness.

Her breath jerked and stuttered like the inner wind she was trying to suppress.

She mentally grabbed hold of buzzing emotions and gave herself a forceful inner shake.
If a bad guy takes control of that necklace, you could wake up and find Jake Lowell ready to eat you for breakfast.

If you wake up at all.

She stepped aside to let Jake pass, heart thumping so hard she was pretty sure he could hear the
pound-pound- pound.

He kept his eyes on her for a few more agonizing seconds, heating the wind inside Merilee until it became a sirocco.

Then he walked past her without making a sound and without looking back. Seconds later, he vanished from view, heading down the stairs.

Merilee leaned against the bathroom door and tried to gather herself. She had experienced powerful initial physical attractions before—but that—that—

Damn.

That wasn’t natural.

Eyes closed, she rubbed the sides of her head, trying to chase off a dull, tired throb and the hazy stupor of Jake’s presence.

There had to be an explanation for her over-the-top response to him.

Like, way too long since she’d been to the gym and picked herself up a fine boy toy for a night of recreation. Or, not enough time for deep yoga and more meditative workouts.

He’s a
demon,
for the sake of Olympus.

Hmm. Maybe Astaroths had hidden powers when it came to sexual attraction.

Maybe a person could be allergic to a demon presence, and manifest that allergy with mindless lust.

In this crazy world, anything was possible.

Right?

Merilee opened her eyes and glanced toward the door of her large combination library-bedroom, at the end of the hall on the right. She’d have to drag out all the papers and research info on Astaroths and make sure she hadn’t missed anything.

Some of those documents were so dry and boring, they ought to help her fall asleep in a hurry. That would be a plus.

As she closed the bathroom door, Merilee couldn’t take her eyes off the spot where she had last seen Jake on the townhouse stairs.

"At least I might not have nightmares tonight," she muttered to herself. "I could
definitely
handle a juicy erotic fantasy for a change."

(2)

Bartholomew August preferred the dark. The modern world always seemed cleaner in the soft yellow glow of streetlamps, or the silver shine of the moon.

He stood on the dock and took a long, slow breath of night air, tainted by brine and rot and pollutants, but oddly satisfying nonetheless.

August’s first and truest home was darker than night itself, and cool, and deadly, a place where the slightest traces of scent drifted for miles unaided. He had just departed from that home without making a sound, reached this gods-forsaken spot, and assumed his alternate shape as fluidly as a magician closing his fist to complete some mystical transformation.

One moment, August was nothing—and the next, a man.

Tonight as he shifted, he chose black silk for his suit and light overcoat, not unlike Armani signature pieces. Once he settled into the human world, into his human surroundings, he would gather real garments—or rather have the woman and the boy gather clothing for him. Granted, the boy was mostly useless, but August
had
fathered him many years ago, and the boy had the lightest touch of August’s formidable gifts. Time and poor habits had ravaged the boy and the woman, but by his own choice August himself had remained unchanged in both appearance and attitude.

New York City stretched before him, a festival of glaring lights, activity, and absolute disorder. The stench of human life surrounded him, assailed him, and he hated

it, and he hated the dilapidated abandoned dock creaking beneath his feet. Human waste. So prevalent and pathetic. The chilly spring air pushed at his skin and bones, and his ears ached from the grating noise of traffic and music and the chaos that was Hell’s Kitchen and its Hudson River boundary.

He had no place here.

He had no place anywhere.

August worked his newly solidified jaw and walked off the dock, trying not to stare into the black pit of loneliness that always waited, no matter where he went or what form he took. His all-too-human hands shook from the power of that awful, dark hole in his mind. He wanted to tear out his hair to make the sensation of loneliness stop. He would rip off his fingers or chew through his own feet if he thought it would help the pain in his now-beating heart.

But it wouldn’t.

For now, he’d just have to endure it as he had so very many times before.

"You’re later than what you said," said the gnarled, rheumy-eyed woman as she stepped from the shadows of the gray warehouse looming on his right. "But that’s nothing new, now is it?"

The sound of that unmistakable Irish brogue, the ring of that never-ending defiance, dragged August from his despair. His acute senses registered garlic, cooked meat, and yeast as he appraised the wizened creature standing before him. Thin. Wrinkled. Hair whiter than cotton, combed into a frizzled bun. All of this he saw in the partial light of one flickering streetlamp, because the rest of the bulbs had exploded upon his arrival, before he placed barriers around his energy.

His human-looking skin crawled with the realization that this woman’s spotted, lumpy hands had once touched him with a supple, fiery grace. Those wrinkled lips had once kissed his own, and driven back the raging emptiness and loss inside him, at least for a few days, a few years—seconds, really, in the span of his life. His gut ached from the memory, and from the weight of his own disgust.

Never again.

But he had vowed that before about relationships with humans, only to surrender to need, to natural desire. A night’s pleasure or a month’s satisfaction—anything but return to his home alone. Always alone.

"Where’s the boy?" August asked without preamble or apology. He owed this woman no special treatment for her recent infiltration of his enemy’s strongholds—nothing but perhaps a peaceful death, which would come soon enough.

The woman grunted. Her expression seemed grim, frightened, a little angry and worried, but she gestured toward the shadows from whence she came.

A tall, thin, scarred boy—in human terms, a man, though August couldn’t see him that way—with raggedy blond hair stepped forward. He had on a blue suit and the odor of cigarette smoke clung to the cheap cotton—but for once, August didn’t detect the reek of marijuana, hashish, heroin, crack cocaine, or any other substance he had forbidden the boy to touch on penalty of tortures only August could provide.

"Good," he said, hoping his approval would mean something to his son, though he knew that even with decent mental barriers in place, his natural energy was churning through the boy and the woman, too. "I’d prefer you give up tobacco. Bad for the body and in the end, the mind. If you treat yourself well, more of my gifts—the gifts that set you apart, raise you above—might make themselves manifest."

"Cigarettes won’t send me back to jail." Color rose to the boy’s pallid cheeks as he spoke in the same brogue as his mother. His dull blue eyes showed a smidgen of the defiance so characteristic of his mother, of his species, but his voice issued forth in its typical whine as he looked away.

August thought of his other children in cities all over the surface of this planet, and how none of them whined as insistently as this one. The boy couldn’t help his defiance, his quarrelsomeness, what with August so physically close to him, of course. August knew his energy engendered such behavior. He forced himself to ignore the smoke-smell and his own irritation, and he ruffled the boy’s greasy hair with something like affection.

Then his hand paused at the boy’s crown and he squeezed, feeling the pitiful, weak bone beneath his fingers. Human bone. To August, little better than a brittle paste made of twigs and toothpicks.

The boy groaned, but made no effort to physically fight his father. August knew that after these many years, the boy realized such a battle would be not only pointless, but fatal.

He does learn from
some
past mistakes. I could crush his skull to powder, and he would allow it rather than face my wrath.

If the boy chose to destroy the powers inside him with his drug use, so be it, but he would at least remain as well trained and loyal as any street mutt—or August would put him down.

"Stop," the woman said from beside him. "I told you if you hurt the boy, I’ll see you dead."

August let go of the boy, turned toward the woman, and smiled as he imagined human parents smiled at wayward children. "I understand that my presence stirs rage and discord, but don’t think to threaten me."

"You promised never to raise a hand against him." The woman didn’t whine like the boy. Her voice had the sharpened edge of a lifelong felon, a con accustomed to getting what she wanted, when she wanted it. "You promised—"

August kept up his smile, but let loose the slightest bit of his power to scold her for her impudence.

The woman fell back as if slapped, clawed at her throat and burst into tears. She dropped to her knees, then rolled on the ground, sobbing and gasping "No" again and again.

August felt the flick of the boy’s fist against his cheek.

"Let her be!" the boy yelled. "I’ll—you—you let her alone!"

Another brush of knuckles, this time against August’s gut.

The woman’s agony didn’t stir August on any level, and the boy’s punches had no effect. Human strength—like butterfly wings. Yet he was pleased, and he stopped sending the woman visions of their son’s bloody, mangled corpse.

"Good." August gave his wretched offspring a pat on the shoulder. "I’m proud of you for defending your mother."

He tried not to notice how the boy glared at him, or how the old woman cursed him as she rose. They weren’t worth much, these two. Perhaps the worst of his many poor choices in moments of desperation, before he fully accepted he could not restore his race by interbreeding with inferior stock. Yet these two had their practical uses, and he rather enjoyed the woman’s larcenous spirit in her younger years.

All in all, August preferred their company to being alone.

"I have business in the city, with the Sibyls—perhaps for the last time," August told them. "You’ll spend time with me and see to my needs, and continue your work observing my enemies as well—until I release you." His gaze traveled from the boy to the woman. "Both of you."

He hoped his meaning was clear.