Demon Night (19 page)

“No, I can't say as I do know that.”

“But you know about my singing, if you've seen pictures.”

The house came into view below them. The drive wound down from high on the hill, and the lake spread out behind it, the city in the distance. She could fall in love with this place, far too easily.

A careful note entered his voice. “What's that to do with it?”

“Well, for example, I can play the piano—but although I'm proficient, I don't have a real talent. But my singing…it was
amazing
. And I studied, and practiced, and worked my ass off making it better—but compared to what I saw some of the others at Juilliard go through, it came easy to me.”

The truck halted in front of the house, but Ethan didn't make a move to get out. “So it was your one thing.”

“Yeah.” Charlie propped her elbow up on the armrest, stared blindly out of the window. “Maybe if I'd had to work a little harder at it, I'd have been more careful about keeping it. Because it sure was nice having
something
that came easily. And not just anything, but the one thing I really, really loved, because having it made up for everything else I couldn't do. But I did this instead.” She waved her fingers at her throat, then turned to frown at him. “And I'm starting to feel sorry for myself again, so—”

Two feet of bench seat was apparently nothing when a man had a reach as long as Ethan's. His hands slid around her waist and he hauled her against him so quickly that she prepared herself for an onslaught on her mouth, but the first touch of his lips was soft and searching.

That sweet heat slipped through her again, warming and melting her from the inside, leaving her skin hot and tight. He groaned, and it sounded like a denial, but then his big palm curved up from her stomach, and the light brush of his fingers over her breast was followed by a possessive stroke of his tongue past her lips.

And it imploded, the burning ache sweeping from her skin to her core. His fingers tangled in her hair. He shifted, turned until he was half-lying on top of her, never relinquishing her lips. The seat cushioned her back, but there was nothing soft about Ethan's body above hers.

She could hardly breathe, he was so heavy and he was practically fucking her mouth with each deep lick, and then blazing a hot trail of need to her womb when she returned the penetrating thrust and he caught her tongue in a suckling kiss.

Jesus.
Excitement tore through her in an erotic wave, pushing her hips up, arching her back. Her fingers clenched on his waist. He was tilted awkwardly, his legs still beneath the wheel, but she pushed her foot over his thighs to grind closer, trying to kick and pull and do
anything
to have him big and hard between her legs.

A flat, loud honk split the air. Ethan jerked his head up and away from her, turning to check each of the windows.

“The horn,” Charlie gasped. “I hit it.”

His eyes closed and his head dropped forward. His hips rocked toward her, giving her the pressure she'd wanted so, so badly, in just the right place.

“God Almighty,” he groaned as she pushed her foot against the door and rocked him again. “I just meant it to be a little kiss. But I'm so fuzzy I can't keep my hands—ah, not like that, Charlie—”

“Then how?”

His lids were heavy as he stared down at her, his fingers cupping her jaw and his thumb running across her moistened lips.

She rolled her hips beneath him. “How?”

“Not like this.” His scar whitened as he pressed his jaw tight. “Not this at all.”

He had to be joking. But he wasn't; he sat up and began untangling her legs.

Her stomach aching, she shook off his hands and scooted away. “I don't understand you, Drifter. You tell me not to want you, not to rely on you for anything but protection, that I'm too needy, and then you kiss me here and in the house and in the bar,
knowing
how much I—”

She couldn't continue. Hurt was ripening into anger and she began thinking that the knuckles of her left hand could use a good taste of his face, too.

The window beside Ethan's head shattered.
Oh, fuck fuck.
Her heart thundering, Charlie jumped for her door handle and turned to look, expecting vampires and demons and anything but the steel door crumpled around his elbow and hanging drunkenly in the frame.

Ethan was staring straight ahead, frustration in every taut line of his body, in his hard profile.

Goddamn him. It was one thing if he didn't want her, but he was breaking doors and had an erection the size of a tree. “Why don't we just fuck and get it over with? I'll bend over the tailgate, and it'll be done, and I swear I won't ask for anything more from you and you won't be sitting there with your dick busting through your pants.”

He didn't say anything, didn't look at her. She picked up her milkshake and threw it at him. If he wouldn't acknowledge her then he sure as hell wasn't worth the pain of hitting.

Ethan simply plucked the cup out of the air and set it upright on his knee without turning his head. “Now, Charlie, let me just ponder that image for a minute.”

You bastard.
But the words wouldn't pass the constriction in her throat. She quietly pushed open her door, certain she'd never felt so stupid and
dismissed
in her life. The air was pungent with the fragrance of pine needles, the fresh scent of the lake, but she couldn't breathe it in deep.

Metal screeched behind her; then Ethan stood in front of her, blocking her exit from the cab. The edges of his lips were pale. “That was a damn fool thing to say. I meant to set you laughing, and then lay it out straight. Not put a hurt on you like this.”

Her fists clenched. “Are you in my head?”

“No. No, I could feel this without looking into you.” He caught her chin when her cheeks flared with heat and she'd have turned away. “I'm the one who ought to be embarrassed, Charlie. I ain't doing right by you. But bending you over the tailgate won't be doing right, either.”

Oh, Lord. She'd said that? “I actually meant the…the…” She waved her hand at the front of the truck. Then the visual struck her, and she ground her teeth together before the laugh escaped.

He brushed a strand of hair from her face and seemed relieved by what he read there—his shoulders not so straight, his muscles not so rigid beneath his clothes. “I'd give anything to bend you there or just about anywhere, but I suspect the one relying on someone else and needing too much would be me.”

Charlie closed her eyes, unsure if she was being slow, if he wasn't making any sense, or if she was rattled by his proximity. Their position was too intimate, the height of the seat putting them almost on eye level, his big body taking up too much space in the door. She'd been half-outside when he'd appeared in front of her—he only had to step forward and he'd be between her legs.

But he had “indirect” perfected, so she'd bet it wasn't just her. She met his gaze again and said, “This isn't laying it out straight, Drifter.”

His jaw tightened for an instant, then he was shaking his head. “All right. I ain't good at storytelling, so I'll just say that what I told you at Cole's was mostly true. And that in order for a man to become a Guardian, he's got to sacrifice his life to save someone else's.”

What had he told her at Cole's? Her brow furrowed, until she realized she was holding the two encounters separate in her mind.

Oh, Lord—he hadn't told her as himself, but as the older gentleman. “Your brother's life?”

He nodded, tension carving lines beside his mouth. “I figured he got out. There's no way he could have been living, so I didn't expect—” He paused and lay his forearm on the top of the door frame. His gaze searched her face. “And I'm losing you again, most likely because I can hardly think straight about it myself.”

She'd seen and spoken with enough grieving customers to recognize it in him now. “It's okay. I'll catch up.”

He swallowed, looked down at his boots. After a minute he said, “We'd gotten into a spot of trouble, Caleb and me. And there wasn't a way out of it—even before we rode into Eden. But the opportunity came for me to make a bargain, and for him to get out.” He lifted his head. “Not just out of Eden, Charlie, but to get to California or Oregon, and start over. When the two of us were together, no one could mistake us for anyone else. But Caleb alone? He could get by. And it was a chance for him to get back to the life he should have been living. So before I took the poison, I made him promise he'd give up what we'd started. Made him swear he'd do right again, have a family.” He reached up, touched his lip. “Fair had to beat the promise out of him.”

Charlie's stomach was a hard knot, and she didn't understand all of what he was talking about, but she nodded.

“We had no inkling that Michael would know when someone sacrificed himself like that—and Caleb never could have known that I became a Guardian, because the sheriff had let him go before the poison killed me, before Michael showed up. So Caleb took off with that promise, and me dying in a furnace of a jail cell so he'd have another chance…and he went right on back to thieving. He got himself hanged a month later.” His thumbs slipped in low on his suspenders, and his throat worked a couple of times. “I got the news yesterday morning.”

Gingerly, Charlie ran her fingers along his left suspender until her hand rested against his. A light touch, a connection that wasn't asking or taking anything.

He seemed grateful for it, though; he turned his wrist to cup her hand in his palm. “I can't help but think that maybe my sacrifice didn't mean anything to him. Leastwise not enough to quit, to do what he'd sworn he would. So it's tore me up some, Charlie. It would feel awful good to slip into your arms, and I want you so bad I'm damn near dying for it. But I don't know that my head's on straight after the blow Caleb laid on me. And I don't know if I'd be taking what you're offering for wanting you or because I'm hurting. I just know I ain't going to use you as a salve.”

Charlie understood
that
all too well. “All right,” she said softly.

His fingers flexed around hers. “All right?” His brows lowered over his eyes with his frown. Had he expected her to argue, to talk him into letting her fuck his grief away?

She looked away from that piercing gaze, tilting her head so that her hair hid her expression. She didn't know exactly what she was feeling; exhaustion, sadness, grim amusement, and resignation all seemed to be playing their notes within her, but she didn't want to put on a show with any of them.

But he probably knew this about her, too, so there was really no reason not to explain. “Mine crept up on me instead of hitting me fast, but after a while, it was the same—so that if I didn't have a…a salve, I couldn't function, and I'd start planning my day around just getting it,” she said quietly, and had to swallow before she continued. “And you tell yourself that it makes you feel good—but really, you're just getting by. Because you feel like shit with it, but you
really
feel like shit without it, so you need it to get through the day. And after a while, you're desperate to get through the day without it, but know that stopping will feel worse than going—and you don't know if you're clinging to it as much as it's clinging to you. But you're constantly looking for a way to get rid of it without hurting yourself…but there's no way. And eventually you hate it as much as you need it.”

She tugged lightly on Ethan's suspender before meeting his direct gaze with a sincerity she hoped he couldn't mistake. “So I never,
ever
want to be anybody's salve.”

He'd figured Charlie all wrong.

Ethan watched the tight curves of her waist and hips as she trotted up the stairs, the lean length of her legs. She'd called her body the result of her dependency, but it was evidence that he'd overlooked when he'd been focusing on the inside and avoiding what he'd perceived as a weakness.

The emotional neediness was there; he hadn't been mistaken in that. But like the fool who missed the forest for the trees, he hadn't seen the whole right in front of him: Charlie knew herself so well that she'd created a layer of pure steel that was physical and emotional, keeping those tendencies contained. She'd channeled weakness into strength, and he'd wager anything that if she found herself being trapped by her need, she'd chew her arm off escaping it—knowing that the brief agony of loss was better than a slow starving death.

Had it been her lack of shields? He hadn't had to expend any effort getting in. He'd noted how well she chose which emotions she revealed, but only considered it relevant as to his need to get into her head to read her. Maybe that was why he'd missed seeing how strong she'd built the gate that led into her emotions; it had swung open so easily to admit him, he'd never imagined that she'd built an impenetrable lock on the other side.

And when she'd closed it, she'd surely gotten a part of him caught up in there.

Part
of him? Hell, she'd gotten him so worked up that the slide of his breath over his tongue was like kissing air. And the memory of the sympathy in her eyes as he'd spoken of Caleb, her soft touch against his hand, was fuzzing him up, making him want to reach out for more.

Making him a right useless son of a bitch.

The security room was at the center of the house, a sleek and modern heart buried in the rustic design. Jake didn't turn from his computer when Ethan came in, but remained hunched over the keyboard, furiously typing away.

“I didn't hear a thing,” Jake said.

Which, Ethan figured, was a fair indication of how much he
had
heard. Living in Caelum, surrounded by Guardians with enhanced hearing, twisted a man's conception of privacy; Jake hadn't yet reverted to a human way of thinking. “It don't matter much to me, but it does to Charlie. So you just keep on saying that, should it ever occur to her that you might have listened to anything that went on outside.”

Jake straightened up, face forward. “Sir! Yes, sir.”

Ethan bent low, braced his hand on the desk, and waited until Jake broke his smart-ass military pose and looked at him. “And now that you know it matters to her, I reckon that if you don't close up your ears next time, I'll have to skin you. And I'll do it real slow.”

A grimace pulled the boy's face tight, and he had the sense to thread his apology through his psychic scent. “I never did like the tattoo on my ass.”

With a sharp nod, Ethan said, “I don't much care for it, neither. You got anything new on Legion or Sammael—or a response on those pictures I sent Lilith?”

“Not a thing, and Lilith says that neither she nor Hugh recognize the MO. But they'll call around a few vampire communities while she's waiting for Michael to pop in.”

Ethan suspected there wouldn't be much. The heads of too few communities trusted SI enough yet to give out that kind of information. And in any case, vampire remains were easy to get rid of—it only took a moment in the sun to reduce them to ash. The communities might have had similar murders taking place without anyone knowing exactly how they had occurred.

And there was no reason to have Jake hanging around waiting for something that wasn't likely to come in. “Is there anything else pressing on your time?”

“A big ugly negative on that, as well. Have you got something for me?”

“That I do. There's about an hour and a quarter until sunset—I need you with Charlie for an hour of it, or I won't be any good to her by tomorrow. You'll shield up my room, and make certain to fetch me if you have the faintest notion of trouble.”

Jake's brows shot up. “You can drift here? With everything around?”

“Well, sure I can.” And a good thing, too. If he'd had to wait for the sterility of Caelum to settle down and release the buildup, he'd never be venturing far from a Gate. Ethan turned toward the door, then paused. Between the vampires, her sister, and their encounter outside, Charlie was fairly wound up as well.

“Charlie likes to hit stuff,” Ethan added. “And I'd be much obliged if you gave her something to aim at.”

 

When Jake had knocked on her door and invited her to a round of sparring on the deck, Charlie hadn't been certain it would be a good idea. Going up against a Guardian seemed a pointless exercise—and that he'd known to ask her at all was just another reminder of how long they'd been watching her. It was frustrating, she decided, to be both grateful for and resentful of that surveillance.

Ultimately, it was that same frustration that led her to change into her sports tank and yoga pants, and make her way down.

Jake must have heard her coming, but his face was pensive until he saw her, and then he broke into a wide grin. “First rule of Guardian Fight Club is,” he said, hopping down from the deck railing, his jeans changing to a pair of track pants, “you don't talk about Guardian Fight Club.”

That was cute, though by all rights, nothing about him should have been. Young, yes—but he was tall and whipcord lean with muscle. Yet his exuberant energy and the way he was bouncing into his footwork, mock-punching the air, made her want to rub his shaved head.

“I've heard that before,” Charlie said, and set her cell phone on the table.

“In a theater? A real live theater?” His eyes widened and he tossed her the roll of tape that appeared in his palm.

Charlie shook her head. “No, there was this guy I knew…” And she was already losing him. His brows were drawing down and she thought he looked ready to pull a DVD out, sit her down, and educate her. “Never mind. And yes, I've seen it.”

He fell quiet as she began wrapping her knuckles, but when she glanced up she realized it was only because he was keeping himself from exploding with laughter.

“What?” she asked warily.

“I was trying to put you at ease, going to play it innocent and naïve, see how long it took you to catch on. Instead we ruined each other's jokes.”

“Oh.” She wound the tape around her hand a few more times. “Maybe we should have a signal, so we know whose turn it is to pull a story over on someone else. Obviously it won't work on each other.”

“You're a smart lady, Charlie. I team up with you, and I might be able to pull one over on Drifter for once.”

“You can't now?” She jogged in place, rolling her shoulders. Lord, but this deck was incredible. Stretching and warming up in a gym that was lighted and clean, but always smelling slightly of body odor and sounding of thin carpeting and exercise equipment, couldn't compare to the lake, the sun, the wind through the trees.

“Not only was he my mentor for a while, I've been playing poker with him too long. I can't bluff him for shit—pardon my language.”

She shot him an incredulous glance, but his embarrassment seemed genuine—and his flush was so
cute
—that she decided not to point out that she worked in a bar and often said worse. “Where is he now?”

“Drifting, so you don't have to worry that he can hear our diabolical plan. It's like meditation,” he added when she cast a puzzled look at him. “Deep breathing and focusing on an inner point, until all of the buildup just drifts away.”

She pulled her arm over her head until she felt the burn in her triceps. “Is that why they call him Drifter?” She'd assumed he'd gotten his name by never staying in one place very long.

“Well, the spaghetti western bit doesn't help.”

That response had come quick, and Charlie smiled to herself. Jake was apparently a talker, one of those gregarious types who couldn't keep something to themselves if their lives depended on it, and she was suddenly very glad she'd come down. Ethan's description of the events surrounding his brother's death had left a lot of holes and raised more questions—but she wouldn't ask him to revisit those memories just so that she could catch up.

Jake might be able to provide some answers. And if she started him out by showing that she was already in-the-know, he'd probably be less likely to balk at sharing personal information.

“He said the western bit was something he'd adopted.”

“Did he?”

Responding with a question was never good—so maybe Jake was more careful with information than she'd thought. Or maybe just aware of when someone was manipulating him; he'd quickly recognized her tall-tale mode. A glance beneath her lashes confirmed the cuteness had dissolved into pointed, sharp attention.

“Yes,” she said.

He regarded her with that expression for a long moment. “Drifter tells me that your privacy is important to you.”

Dammit. That sounded like a polite way to tell her to mind her own business. She sighed and nodded. “It is.”

Jake rubbed his palm over his head, in much the way she'd imagined herself doing only a few minutes before. His grin appeared again. “The thing is, I'm the kind of guy who's a big believer in equality, and I got him a lot of information on you. And I don't suppose there's anything I could tell you that you couldn't just look up in a history book, anyway…or by digging around a few obscure archives and rifling through copies of personal letters. Some of it, like his name on a list of graduates from Harvard Law School, 1878, you can find just by searching for it online. And his brother's name is there, two years later. You ready to start?”

Not if it was going to interrupt his recitation of Ethan's history. “Can you talk while…” She looked him over as he stepped in close, his hands at his sides, and she frowned. “Are you just going to stand there while I punch and kick you?”

“Basically. Anything else would be picking on you—but don't worry, I'll give you a workout. And we'll make a wager: when you hit anywhere on my body or head, you win.”

Charlie bounced up on her toes, flexing her fingers, her eyes widening. “Win what?”

Her enthusiasm seemed to amuse him; he closed his eyes like he was fighting a laugh and turned his head to the side.
Sucker.
Pulled in by the same tactic he'd attempted to use on her. “A few details that you can't find in history books…” He huffed out a breath when her fist connected with his ribs. “Hot damn!”

“Sorry,” she said as he rubbed his side. “Okay, not really. He told me he was born on Beacon Hill.” Many of the wealthy opera patrons in the Boston area had Beacon Hill addresses; she'd been there a couple of times, and the houses were old, but not all of the money was. Ethan might have been from either. “A good family?”

This time, Jake was ready, and he blocked her without effort, simply sliding his flattened palm in front of her fist, using his forearm to brush aside her kicks. “His mom, yes—his dad, no. McCabe, Sr., worked himself up through a law firm. Made a nice name for himself, but when the war started, he enlisted. The Civil War,” he clarified when she paused for a second.

“That was…” She blew a strand of hair out of her face, tried desperately to remember. “1860? So Drifter was six?”

“Yes. Does this ever make you feel like saying, ‘Wax on, wax off'?”

Only a strange gravity beneath the question kept her from rolling her eyes, and she said carefully, “It might have twenty years ago. Why?”

Jake ran his hand over his hair again, but this time his expression was troubled. “The only exposure I've had to pop culture is the magazines and books the others brought back through the Gate. So I'm figuring out where it all fits, what's passé and what's relevant, so that when I go active duty I can pass as someone who
hasn't
lived forty years on Caelum—or sound like a hippie.”

“Ah.” What had Ethan's adjustment been like? Even with news coming in from outside, Charlie imagined going from the 1880s to the 1980s would be even more difficult than adapting to all of the changes in four decades. “Well, okay—for someone like me, I've just heard the Karate Kid thing too many times. But if you said something similar to Jane, she'd probably laugh her head off.”

In fact, Jane had done exactly that when Charlie had made a similar joke not long after she'd first begun visiting the gym.

Jane.
Charlie's fists clenched as anxiety grabbed hold.

“Just a second, Jake.” She didn't have much hope that Jane would answer, but she used the cell phone and left yet another voice mail. She closed the phone, noted the time, and realized she had another call she needed to place. A heavy weight settled in her stomach. “I'm not going to make it to Cole's tonight, am I?”

“Probably not.”

She'd done this before, at all of the crappy little jobs she'd had before Cole's, before Jane had given her ultimatum and Charlie had been forced to decide between her self-pity and her sister. With Charlie's voice as hoarse as it was, no one had questioned whether she was really sick—at least not the first few times. And she hadn't cared when they'd eventually told her not to bother coming in, only felt a vague sense of relief that they weren't depending on her anymore.