Dates From Hell (27 page)

4

I
fumbled for the phone, knowing it was too late
for 911, but I had to try. Unfortunately, at the first press of a button, the first tiny
beep
, the man on the balcony walked into my room.

I dropped the phone.

“You!”

Chavez bent and picked up the bedspread from the floor, then calmly flipped it around my shoulders and turned away. I hadn’t gone to bed naked, but I was now. How much of that dream had been real?

“What are you doing here?”

“I thought—”

“We’ve been over this. There aren’t any demons, Chavez. Go away.”

“I couldn’t just let him come back and murder you.”

I nearly dropped the bedspread. “Murder me? Since when does he want to murder me?”

“What part of incubus didn’t you understand?”

“The part where he kills me.”

“He feeds off of sex.”

“Still not hearing death anywhere in that explanation.”

“After he’s through with the women he’s chosen, they…” He paused, stuck his fingers into his pockets, and shrugged. “They’re sucked dry.”

“Which means?”

“He has sex with them until they turn to dust.”

Chavez had an answer to everything. I still wasn’t buying any of it.

“Thanks for the info,” I said, “but you don’t need to stay. I’ll be extra careful. Besides, I’ve got great locks and an even better security system.”

“I got in.”

That stopped me.

“How?”

“Breaking and entering. The demon will have an even easier time.”

“Because…?”

“They can teleport.”

“That’s it!” I pointed to the door. “I’m sick of your fairy tales.”

“Fairies aren’t my department.”

“Out!” I shouted.

Chavez was unimpressed with my theatrics. His gaze wandered over the room, over me. I pulled the bedspread tighter across my breasts.

“I wanted to watch for a while, just in case he was nearby. Then I saw someone moving around in your apartment.”

“You mean someone like me?”

His dark, serious eyes met mine. “Definitely not you.”

Despite my brave words, I glanced toward the bedroom door.

Chavez laid a hand on my arm. “I searched the place. No one’s here.”

His touch, in my bedroom, in the night, with me wearing nothing but a blanket, should have been unnerving. Instead I found it comforting. My reactions to men tonight were nothing short of bizarre.

“No one except you,” I muttered.

The room was dark, his figure shadowy. I was reminded of the dream, and my skin suddenly felt too small for my body. I shifted, and he stepped back quickly, as if he didn’t want to get too close to me, almost as if he were afraid.

I glanced up, and his eyes glittered in the small amount of light from the half moon that spilled through the open French doors. What time was it? How long had I been asleep?

I was so confused—going from unconscious to conscious, from fear to safety, from arousal to…arousal all over again. With Chavez looming over me while I was still naked, my body humming from an orgasm that had seemed pretty real, my head spun. I swayed and he grabbed me by the shoulders.

“
Chica
?”

That voice trilled along my flesh like warm water in winter. Both familiar and foreign, I could listen to him all night.

“Did you touch me while I was sleeping?”

I hadn’t meant to ask that, but now that I had, I wondered.

Instead of an answer, he kissed me, and I forgot the question.

He was so tall my neck crackled as I leaned back, so good at kissing I automatically went onto my tiptoes to get more.

His mouth was soft, sweet. Now that I was closer I caught the tang of the cigarette he’d no doubt been smoking on my balcony. He must have chewed gum to get rid of the taste.

I shuddered as his tongue tested my lips. Opening, I let him all the way in. I wound my arms around his neck, and the quilt slid to the floor.

I’d never been kissed the way Chavez kissed me, as if I were the only woman in the world, the only woman he’d ever wanted. Foolish, I know, but that’s how he made me feel, and I began to wonder, in a far corner of my mind, exactly who was the sexual demon.

Even though my naked body was pressed against him, he did nothing but kiss me. He didn’t slide those big, hard hands over my skin, no matter how much I might want him to. In fact, when I ran my fingers across his shoulders, down his arms, I discovered he was clasping those hands behind his back as if to keep them under control.

I don’t know how long the embrace would have continued, how far we would have gone. I was certainly in no hurry to end it. But Chavez stepped back, shook his head when I would have followed, then snatched the blanket again and covered me.

“
Lo siento,
” he murmured. “I don’t know why I—”

He glanced away, and the movement pulled the collar of his shirt in a different direction. He
did
have a tattoo on his breastbone, but I still couldn’t see what it was.

My fingers touched my lips; they felt swollen, sensitive, needy. I craved the taste of his mouth.

Was not having had sex, ever, turning me into a nymphomaniac? Although I had to say that what I’d felt while kissing Chavez had been far and away better than what I’d felt with Eric. Then I’d been out of control; this time Chavez had been.

I liked that he had been fighting the lust. I was not the kind of girl who inspired it. When we weren’t talking incubus demon anyway.

“I shouldn’t—” he continued. “You’re a—”

I stiffened. “A what?”

“A job.”

My eyes narrowed, but he still wasn’t looking at me.

“I’m supposed to take care of you, not take you.”

“So why did you?”

His glance snapped back to mine. “I didn’t! I wouldn’t.” He sighed. “I can’t.”

“Can’t?”

Chavez’s lips twisted. “That’s not true, as you can easily see.”

My gaze lowered to his jeans. He definitely could.

“I mean I can’t and still live with myself. You’ve been influenced by an incubus. They mess with your mind. All you want is sex.”

“That doesn’t sound like me.”

“Exactly.”

“The incubus hasn’t influenced you.”

“What?”

“
You
kissed
me
. Why?”

“I couldn’t help myself. You were so small and lost.” He shrugged. “And those glasses…All those books.”

“I—what?”

“I never finished school. I don’t read that well. I like women who do.”

“You’re attracted to women who read?”

“Yeah.”

I shook my head. This was all still insane and so was he.

“Maybe you’re the one whose mind has been messed with,” I muttered.

He gave a short, humorless bark of laughter. “I haven’t had sex in a very long time. I kind of forgot how much I missed it.”

“Forgot?”

Even I, who’d never had sex, certainly didn’t forget about it.

“Until I saw you, on the bed, with him.”

I stiffened. “I wasn’t with him.”

That had been a dream, hadn’t it?

“He’s in your head now. He’ll haunt you. He’ll make you so insane with lust you’ll have no choice but to—”

“I don’t believe this,” I interrupted.

“I do.” He pulled a cigarette from his coat, which he’d laid on my unused exercise bike in the corner. “I’m going to—”

He nodded toward the balcony.

He seemed so sad, so defeated somehow. Even though I thought he was crazy, I still wanted to soothe him.

Chavez thought my glasses were sexy, my dumpiness cute, my penchant for reading on a Friday night attractive. No wonder I wanted to keep him around forever.

Which only made me as nuts as he was. But I was starting to wonder if that wasn’t the case.

“You want some coffee?” I blurted.

“Yeah.” He slipped out the doors and into the night.

Quickly I threw on my sweats, grabbed my glasses, and hurried through the darkened apartment. In the kitchen I reached for the light switch, and someone grabbed my hand.

I drew a deep breath to shriek, and another hand slapped over my mouth. This was happening to me with far too much regularity lately.

“Did you think I’d let you go?”

The voice wasn’t Eric’s. Come to think of it, the guy was too tall to be Eric. His body was pressed to the length of mine and then some.

Whoever he was, he really, really liked me.

I tried to speak, but he tightened his hold, pulling my neck backward until I thought he might break it. I went silent; I had no choice.

“You’re mine now. I need what only you can give.”

He kissed my neck, scraped the throbbing vein with his teeth. A weird lethargy came over me. My blood seemed to thicken and slow; my pulse beat in my ears as if I’d been running for miles, or making love for a long time.

I was suddenly free—to scream, to fight, to escape. I did none of those things. Instead, I turned around and flicked on the lights.

As I’d suspected, the man in my kitchen wasn’t Eric. I’d never seen him before. Taller, broader, his hair was dark blond, his eyes brown.

He shrugged out of his shirt. The garment slid down his arms and spilled onto the floor.

His skin was glaring white, like marble, the muscles shifting and bunching as he moved. I was seized with a sudden urge to lick every one of them as he rose above me, came into me, took me over and over, until I—

I shook my head, hard, tempted to slam it against the countertop until I found myself again.

“Wh-who are you?” I asked.

“You know.”

His fingers slid down his chest, caressing himself, lowering to the zipper that bulged over an erection my mouth went dry at the notion of seeing.

The sound of the zipper being opened made me start so violently my skin tingled.

“You’ll die willingly in my arms,” he whispered. “They always do.”

As if from a long way off, I heard his words, puzzled over them, discarded any unease. The sex would be amazing. I’d come screaming. I’d beg him to do me again, and he would. He’d keep at it until I was—

Chavez loomed behind him. His presence brought me back to myself, so when he snapped, “Get down!” I did, hitting the floor just as a sheet of flame streaked from his hand.

I cried out as the strange man in my kitchen, the one I’d been willing to screw seven ways from Sunday, became a burning ball of fire.

My smoke detector went off; the sprinklers rained water on us all. The man, whose name I didn’t know, stopped burning. There wasn’t a mark on him.

He stared at Chavez. “You again.”

“Me always.”

The stranger turned to me.

“We aren’t finished,” he said.

And then he disappeared.

5

“Y
ou believe me now?” Chavez asked as we
dripped all over the carpet from the kitchen into the living room.

He’d turned off the alarm, which had shut down the sprinklers, while I called security and lied. “I burned some toast.”

No one asked why I was making toast at 3
A.M.
One of the perks of living in a building like this—money not only got you attention, it got you left alone.

“The guy disappeared.” My voice sounded as dazed as I felt. “Poof.”

Chavez gave me a slight push, and I collapsed onto the couch. Water darkened his hair, ran down his cheekbones, dotted his eyelashes. “Towels?”

“Hall closet.”

He retrieved a stack, divided them, and sat in a chair as he began to dry his hair.

“That wasn’t Eric,” I said.

“No.”

“He also wasn’t human.”

“No. Shape-shifter most likely.”

I tried not to gape, but failed.

“Like a werewolf?”

“In a way. Demons shift into different people. Werewolves change from a man, or a woman, into a wolf, then back again.”

“You say that as if they exist.”

He lifted a brow.

I lifted my hand. “I don’t want to know.”

Chavez went silent for a moment, then said slowly, “Why did he come back?”

“I’m irresistible?”

“Sure, but…” He trailed off.

I was still stuck on
sure
. Was he being a smart-ass? And why did I care? Why did my chest, which had felt like a cow was sitting on it, suddenly feel like butterflies were twirling merrily inside?

Because of that damn kiss. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

But I had to. Maybe he wasn’t crazy anymore, actually he never had been, but that only meant he was a demon hunter. He was
so
not for me.

“He’s an incubus,” Chavez murmured, thinking out loud. I yanked my eyes and my mind from his mouth and listened. “He needs sex to live. But there are a million plus women in this city. Why not get it somewhere else?”

“Yeah, why not?”

His head tilted. “What did he say to you?”

“That we weren’t finished. He needed something only I could give.”

“What?”

“Got me.”

I was new at the whole sexual demon gig.

“If I can discover why he’s obsessed with you, I might be able to figure out exactly what kind of incubus he is.”

“There’s more than one kind?”

Chavez nodded. “The heading
incubus
covers a wide range of sex-feeding demons. Each one of those has its own particular method of death.”

“Terrific,” I muttered.

“As soon as I know exactly what he is, I can find out how to kill him.” His dark eyes met mine. “You’ll be safe as soon as I kill him.”

Funny, I felt safe now.

An hour later we’d cleaned up the apartment, cleaned up ourselves. I was dry and dressed. Unfortunately, so was Chavez. I’d kind of enjoyed the short period when he’d worn nothing but a towel around his waist and another looped around his neck as his clothes tumbled around the dryer with mine.

We sat in the living room, lights blaring against the remnants of the night. I’d made the promised coffee, and we both sipped from the largest travel mugs I had in my cupboard. I needed more sleep, but since I wasn’t going to get it, I’d have more coffee.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

He glanced up. “We?”

“We,” I said firmly. “I don’t plan to sit around waiting to be demon raped.”

His hands jerked, sloshing hot liquid very near the rim. “He won’t rape you; he’ll make you want him.”

“
Make
being the operative word. Even if I think I want him, I really don’t. Which means he’s raping my mind as well as my body.”

I set down the cup. My hands had begun to shake at the thought of what was after me, of my complete lack of control whenever it came near.

“I want him dead.” I lifted my chin. “Preferably last week.”

“Okay,” Chavez murmured, staring at me with newfound respect. “I guess it’s we.”

“What do we do now?” I repeated.

“You know where Eric lives?”

“No. And he wasn’t supposed to know where I lived, either. That’s the beauty of Internet dating.”

“Not exactly. If you know what you’re doing, an address is pretty easy to find. Can I use the computer?”

Moments later, we had Eric Leaventhall’s address on the Upper East Side.

“Let’s pay him a visit.” Chavez glanced at the window. The sun was just coming up. “We’ve got only so many hours of daylight.”

“What difference does daylight make?”

“Dark spirits arise at sunset.”

“Seems like there’s too much evil in the world all day to have demons only available at night.”

“Just because the demon is sleeping doesn’t mean it isn’t still whispering.”

Which actually explained quite a lot.

Not too long afterward, we paused on the sidewalk opposite Eric’s building. He had a doorman, too.

“Now what?” I asked, but Chavez was already cutting across the street.

I hurried after him, catching up as he slipped around the corner and headed for the service entrance.

Chavez stopped and handed me a pair of plastic gloves. After donning a pair himself, he withdrew a long, thin strip of wire from his pocket.

“Done this before?” I asked.

Chavez didn’t bother to answer as he jimmied the lock. At Eric’s door he used what appeared to be a pocket calculator and a squiggly power cord to disable the security system. My feeling of safety was rapidly disintegrating.

“Where did you learn this stuff?” I asked. “Rogue demon hunter school?”

He shook his head and used the wire again, popping the lock as if it were a toy. “On the streets like everyone else.”

“Everyone?”

Chavez glanced over his shoulder and smiled. His teeth were so white they blinded me. Or maybe I was dazzled by the excitement in his eyes. He was having fun, and at the moment so was I. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d felt this alive.

Was it because I might be dead soon? Or was it because I was with him?

“Everyone
I
knew,” Chavez answered. “In Mexico City there were way too many people, not enough houses or jobs.”

Mexico City explained the accent. I doubt Chavez would ever be able to completely explain his occupation. How did one become a rogue demon hunter?

Chavez pushed open the door, motioned for me to stay in the hall. I was about to argue, but did I really want to be caught breaking and entering? Of course just being here was probably enough to get me arrested. Nevertheless, I stayed behind. For about thirty seconds.

When Ricky Ricardo–like cursing erupted, I trailed the sound to where Chavez knelt next to Eric’s dead body.

“Oh-oh,” I muttered.

I was suddenly
not
having fun.

Chavez glanced up. “He was dead when I got here.”

“The cops are
not
going to believe that.”

“Which is why we won’t tell them.”

I blinked. “But—but—we have to.”

Chavez examined Eric, hands still covered in the plastic gloves. “Where is that written?”

“In the code of common decency.”

“Never read it.”

Why wasn’t I surprised?

Chavez went on with the examination. Pushing at Eric’s skin, turning him this way and that, ruffling through his hair before leaning back. “There’s no visible means of death.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Could help to reveal what kind of demon this is. For instance, if the demon killed Eric, then inhabited the body, he’d want to kill him so as not to leave a mark.”

“Okay.”

“But if he inhabited him, then killed him when he was finished, no reason not to cause graphic bloody death.” At my sharp glance he shrugged. “Demons are evil. They like to make a mess.”

“Wait a second.” I was suddenly so dizzy, I had to sit and I didn’t want to do so next to the body. With no convenient chair nearby, I made do with leaning against the nearest wall. “Are you saying I had a date with a dead guy? I
kissed
a dead guy?”

“Sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

I dragged the back of my hand across my mouth and got a good taste of plastic glove. At least it made me stop tasting Eric.

“Look at the bright side,” Chavez said. “At least you didn’t screw a dead guy.”

Hey, there was a silver lining to every cloud.

“If Eric was dead on our date, how could he seem so alive?”

“When demons animate a body, the postmortem changes are frozen. Once the demon exits, the decomposition begins.”

He lifted Eric’s arm, or tried to. Eric was stiff as a…corpse.

“By the state of rigor mortis, the demon has been gone less than eight hours.”

“Why bother to exit at all? He’d found a perfectly good body.”

“Several reasons. One—I’d seen his face, and he knew I’d be searching for it. Two—decomposition can only be stopped for a few days. Demon reanimation or not, dead is dead.”

Chavez stood, but continued to stare at Eric, thinking out loud. “A demon inhabiting the newly dead makes me think night wanderer—a Rakshasas.”

“Hindu,” I said.

His gaze flicked to mine. “How do you know that?”

“I have a degree in ancient civilizations.”

“Why?”

A question I’d often asked myself.

“I was interested.”

“So am I. What else do you know about Rakshasas?”

“Squat. I remember the name, but I didn’t spend too much time on ancient religions. I was more concerned with the rise and fall. Weapons and wars.”

“I wouldn’t think that would be up your alley at all.”

I shrugged. “I do recall that one thing most civilizations have in common is a belief in a greater good, as well as a greater evil.”

His gaze sharpened. “Exactly. Demons by any name are still demons.”

“And God is still God. If you search long enough you can find a similarity even in the most disparate societies.”

“Too bad no one ever takes the time to look.”

“Too bad,” I echoed. “Now tell me about the Rakshasas.”

“A Hindu demon that reanimates corpses. Except the Rakshasas isn’t interested in sex. Unless it’s with the dead. Or maybe they eat the dead.” His lips tightened. “I can’t remember. Either way, fire is how you kill them, and it didn’t work on this one.”

“You didn’t use fire on Eric, that was on the other guy.” I frowned. “Whoever he was.”

“Has to be the same demon inhabiting different men. Otherwise why did he come back for you? Why did he say, ‘We aren’t finished’? Why did he know me?”

I shrugged since I didn’t have a clue. “Why do demons inhabit people anyway? Why don’t they just come to earth and do their thing?”

“Demons in their natural form are so hideous, humans can go mad from the sight. Their voices are so god-awful, eardrums rupture. People can die from the shock before a demon ever gets its jollies. As terrible as possession is, the alternative is worse.”

We went silent for several moments just contemplating it.

“Any other ideas on what kind of demon we’re dealing with?” I asked.

“No. Every one that I know of would turn to dust at the touch of salt, fire, or silver.”

“Which means?”

Chavez lifted his gaze to mine. “We’ve got a demon I’ve never heard about.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

He lit a cigarette and took a drag.

“Never.”

“Never?” My voice rose so high, he flinched.

“Here.” He held the cigarette to my lips.

I jerked back. “I’m not so hysterical that I need to start smoking. But thanks anyway.”

“Smoke keeps the demon from possessing you.” He glanced at the body. “I think this one’s gone, but it never hurts to be cautious.”

He stuffed the unlit end between my lips with a little too much force. The filter smashed against my teeth. I shoved him away, then took a drag. I wanted to avoid demon possession as much as the next person.

“There.” I let the smoke trail out through my nose—hey, I’d gone to college. “I thought this demon only inhabited dead people.”

“Since I don’t know for sure what type of demon this is, it could do just about anything.”

“Terrific,” I muttered.

“Mmm.”

My curiosity was piqued by something else he’d said. “Possession really happens? That isn’t just in the movies?”

His face went still, his eyes hard. “Demons inhabit anything and anyone they damn well please.”

I’d been curious, but suddenly I didn’t want to know what he’d seen, what he’d done, what he’d killed. His eyes were haunted for a reason.

Chavez stared at me for several seconds, as if he planned to say something else. Then he took the cigarette, pinched the lit end between his fingers in a macho display that I refused to acknowledge, and placed the butt into one of his pockets.

Without another word, Chavez trailed around the apartment, picking through the mail, then moving on to the phone messages. Not wanting to be left alone with dead Eric—I had the nasty suspicion he’d open his eyes and try to seduce me again—I tagged along.

“We need to find the other guy,” Chavez murmured.

“According to you, he’s already dead. What’s the rush?”