Cause of Death: Unnatural (The Cause of Death Series) (11 page)

“So, how long have you been going out with my
goofy brother?" said a voice behind her. Lucy was there, pressing another
glass of champagne into Em's hand.

Em smiled politely. She didn't really want
the champagne. Damn it, she didn't know what she wanted. She was feeling almost
overwhelmed by a whole range of feelings that had her confused and anxious. She
was scared, she realized. Scared of whatever had caused the mess in the
warehouse, whatever was causing her headaches. She was scared that Jarek's
tempting darkness might lead her home. She was scared that she'd somehow ruined
whatever was between Robert and her, and she was scared that if she didn't grab
Nick and hold him tight to her right now that she might lose him forever.

She looked at Lucy, and realized most of the
other women were waiting on her response. So, this was a test, she thought.

"We've been working with each other for
a few years now," she said smiling and sending out a whisper of dark
energy through the window and out into the garden. She was searching for one of
the children. "But I guess we started seeing each other, you know,
properly, about two years ago."

There he was. Jack. Her dark energy found him
where he was sitting to one side of the group of older children and Nick still
playing wildly together.

"Though I must say I had no idea how good
he was with children," she said. "Hardened crims and drug dealers,
sure, but who'd have thought he'd be such a pushover with kids."

The women laughed, and Em's dark energy
flowed inside the boy, through his blood, around his heart, into every cell.

Lucy gave Em a sly look. 'It's attractive,
isn't it? A bloke who's so good with kids..."

The other women groaned. "Oh, for
heaven's sake Lucy," one of them said. "Give the girl a break. Your
matchmaking pitch needs a little work!" They were all laughing again.

Inside Jack's blood Em found what she was
looking for. The blood was thin and boiling with chemicals, but there it was.
One cancerous cell that had found a way to survive the drugs.
One cell with the potential to start the cycle of the death
all over again.
Just one little cell.

Em met Lucy's eyes and smiled. She raised her
champagne glass.

"Yes," she said, meaningfully.
"Very attractive."

She
clinked
her
glass against Lucy's and inside Jack that one little cell turned to ash.

Later she found Nick and leant up against
him.

"Remember how you asked me if I was
okay?" she said.

He nodded.

"I'm not."

Nick's face softened and his hands took her
by the shoulders and turned her around to face him.

"The warehouse?" he asked. "Or
do you still have that headache? How thoughtless of me. I can't believe I've
made you suffer through my whole family when you're still feeling so bad."
He shushed her as she tried to defend his family. "No, my fault, I'm sorry
sweetheart." He hugged her. "How about we just get you home,
ok?"

* * *

Nick was a good guy, Em thought, but not so good he
wouldn't fall for her big eyes, a few well timed sighs and her fluttering
lashes. She didn't even have tug at his hand all that hard when she dragged him
over her doorstep and into her bedroom.

Her dress was off before either of them knew
it, and soon Nick was in nothing but his socks too. He kissed her hungrily, she
pulled him down onto the bed and they wrapped themselves around each other.

Em was close to tears. Everything that had
been going on recently had upset her more than she liked to admit. She wasn't
used to feeling so out of control and she certainly hadn't liked Jarek turning
up to remind of her the contrasts between this life and her old one. A
beautiful afternoon watching Nick play with his family had just about topped it
off. She was a wreck. She felt a little guilty using Nick for sex just to cheer
herself up, but...

That thought made her feel even sadder. As their
bodies writhed around each other Em discovered she'd opened up her heart and
was leaving little whispers of dark energy all over the place. Small clouds of
energy clung to their skin, to the sheets. Em pulled Nick into her and held on
to him fiercely.

"Em, babe," Nick whispered.
"I've never felt this close to you before."

And finally, there it was.
Laid
bare willingly in front of her.
Nick's soul.

Em was astonished. Nick's soul was beautiful.
In all her nine hundred years, she thought, she'd never seen a soul so
beautiful. Then she realized why. All the souls she'd drained up til now had
been taken forcibly from their owners, ripped apart in Em's hunger. She ate
their fear, their despair and their horror. The only flavours she'd ever known.

You're a monster, Emilia, she told herself.

Nick's hands were on her face, brushing away
her tears.

'What's the matter, babe?"

She kissed him and nuzzled into his neck.
His throat.
She realized she was lost. She was a creature of
the dark, a member of the Family above and beyond everything else. How could
she possibly have even dreamed of a normal life with Nick? How could she have
imagined a life with children and laughter, and Sunday barbecues? And what the
hell was she doing today, saving the life of his nephew like some guardian
angel or a fairy-godmother? She was a monster - the daughter of one of the
oldest and cruellest monsters alive.

Who had himself loved a human
woman.

Em sighed. Life was never easy, even for the
immortal. Is
this what
being human was all about?
Doubt and confusion.

"Babe?" said Nick.

Em reached out for Nick's soul. She wrapped
it slowly and carefully in a thin veil of her own dark energy. Nick shivered a
moment.

"Nothing," she said soothingly.
"Nothing's the matter. Everything's fine."

Nick stared at her and smiled, and Em looked
deep into his eyes and loved his simplicity.
How trusting he
was, how confident, how ... loving.
Feeling like a bitch she allowed the
veil of energy to become thicker, stronger. She felt Nick's soul begin to
flutter against the edges of the embrace she'd wrapped it in and she tilted her
head back as the feeling spread like butterflies through her chest and down
into her belly.

Nick cuddled her closer and shivered again.

She wasn't sure why she was doing this. When
she'd chosen to live amongst humans she'd also realized she didn't have to take
souls to sustain her own life. She did though, from murderers, drug dealers,
pimps and rapists, the lowlifes she met around the city who had never deserved
a soul in the first place. Had she
drunk
too much
hatred and filth lately? Was it rubbing off on her?

But here was Nick's soul still open and
trusting, and pulsing gently against the walls of dark energy she'd built
around it. She was so, so tempted to tear that soul away and gorge herself on
it and
enjoy
the goodness she knew she'd find in it.
Could she do that? Could she do that to Nick?

She looked at his face and the kindness that
glowed out of it. No, she decided, of course she wouldn't do that to Nick. She
loved him. What a mess she was in. She was more rattled by this headache and
Alina's mystery killer than she thought. She was losing her grip.

She smiled at him and he kissed her, and she
couldn't help herself. She slipped.

It was divine. Nick's soul was a million
times deeper than fear, sweet in a way that revenge could never be, richer and
fuller than hatred, more luscious than any horror she'd ever known. So this was
what love tasted like. She couldn't stop herself. She drank and tugged hard at
Nick's soul, pulling it into her.

Suddenly Nick stiffened in her arms. His body
straightened out in a
rictus
of pain, he moaned low
and frightened, and in her mind his soul suddenly screamed in fear.

The sudden taste of fear in her mouth was
hideous. That old flavour she'd grown up with suddenly tasted like ash. What
had she done?

She sprang away from Nick, letting both his
mind and his soul fall back into his body.

'I'm sorry," she said, without thinking.
"I'm sorry, babe. I was never going to hurt you. Are you okay?"

His body relaxed, and he sucked in a lungful
of air, then curled onto his side like a baby. When he looked at her, it was
with fear still in his eyes.

"What was that?" he said, his voice
hoarse and low. And then a horrified realisation dawned in his eyes.
"You're sorry? What does that mean
...
You did
that?" He sucked in the air in big petrified gulps. His fear was physical,
heaving at his chest. "What did you do?" He looked at her like he
didn't know her. He looked at her like she was a monster.

Em hated herself.

She reached out a hand to touch his arm and
he jerked his body away retreating to his side of the bed in a panic of
movement.

She stretched out her mind again, letting her
dark energy uncoil a little less subtly than before. She could clean this up,
she thought. She jumped into people's minds all the time and rewired things to
suit her. She could do it now. She could make Nick forget this.

He was rolling over to get away from her and
swung his legs over the side of the bed. Her mental energy hit him like a wall
and he stopped moving and sat staring at the window on the opposite side of the
room.

Inside his mind she smoothed out some
memories. She gathered up the fierce bundle of anger, fear and disgust that had
formed at the front of his thoughts and gently massaged them until they
subsided into confusion.

"Honey," she said softly,
projecting all the calmness should could into her voice. "Everything's
fine. Come back to bed."

She could feel his emotions beginning to
yield, his mind beginning to listen to hers again. Now he was open to her once
more she could rewrite the story the way she wanted it to go. His mind became
easier to shape.

The tension went out of his back. His shoulders
slumped and his breathing slowed. With a sigh he turned his head back to her
and slowly
laid
back down on the bed.

She reached out to touch him, and with a few
more mental nudges she made him want her again. He grabbed for her and began
kissing her greedily, almost violently. She decided she didn't mind at all. She
had him now.

She relaxed her hold on his mind just a
little and stretched out in the bed, her arms above her head, her body rising
to his heat.

She let go.

He kissed her for a moment longer and then
she felt something snap back into place inside his mind.

Shit.

"Em," he
said,
his
voice low with horror again. "What
are
you?"

She threw Nick out after that. She'd been on the verge
of saying something dumb, revealing her true nature, but as she opened her
mouth to explain she'd realized there wasn't anything she could say that made
any sense. "I'm sorry darling, but I'm actually a thousand year old
vampire
halfling
and I just needed a snack"
wasn't going to go down very well. She'd stuffed up, and she knew it.

All she could do was apologize, which she did
over and over again as she gathered up his clothes, pressed them into his arms
and pushed him out her apartment door. She couldn't stand the look of disgust
in his eyes, but she leaned up against the door after she'd closed it on him
and listened for a long time. He pulled on his clothes and left. She slid down
the door and sat there with her face resting against the wood and sobbed.

What an idiot she'd been.

When Jarek found her she was still there. He
materialized in front of her, the hem of his coat trailing black smoke and
smelling of the void between the worlds. With his strong hands he dragged her
to her feet, then picked her up and carried her to bed.

He pulled the covers up to her chin, and
kissed her forehead. She snuffled at him, still in tears.

"You poor stupid thing," he said
gently. "You're your father's daughter, that's for sure."

And then he was gone.

The alarm went off at seven in the morning
and she dragged herself out of bed, only to stand staring at
herself
in the bathroom mirror for far too long. Her cell phone bleated in the kitchen
and she let it ring, but the noise did a lot to haul her back into reality. She
showered, dressed and drove to work still feeling numb, dreading seeing Nick.

At the door of the lab, Robert pulled her
aside. He held her arm tightly and whispered angrily.

"I can handle being just a side show for
you, but I would have appreciated being told about it. I thought I entirely
respected what you and Nick have together, but now I see you've gone and used
him too. What the hell have you done to him? He looks terrible, and you don't
look any better."