Devilishly Sexy (4 page)

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Authors: Kathy Love

BOOK: Devilishly Sexy
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“Yes.”
He smiled. “I’m his ... son.” Was that really the most believable lie he could come up with? Yes.
Allie smiled, the gesture filled with something very much like relief. Michael supposed his explanation was a relief. Far better than seeing things.
“I should have guessed that,” she said with another smile. “You look just like him.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
She smiled, and then to his surprise, took the stool beside him.
“I was a good friend of your father’s,” she told him and her smile turned wistful. He understood that expression completely. He wanted to go back to those days too.
But even as his own melancholy filled him, he managed to ask casually, “What’s your name?”
“Allie Gomez ... well, your father would have known me as Allie Lewis.”
Gomez. She’d married. Of course she would have in over thirty years. Her life had gone on, just like everyone else’s. Everyone but him.
As a slayer he didn’t age like normal humans, so it wasn’t unusual that the humans he knew aged, changed, but this was different. In his past, he ended relationships, he changed names, locations, jobs. And The Brethren were exceedingly careful not to encounter any of their past. They did the moving on.
This time everyone else had moved on, and Michael didn’t like it. He didn’t like seeing Allie as she was now. Totally different from his memory, with only fleeting glimpses of the woman he’d once known.
“What happened to your father?” she asked. “I mean, his friend Gabriel told me that he was transferred to a new assignment. Gosh, I haven’t seen Gabriel in years and years either.”
Of course he could count on Gabriel to try to smooth things over as well as he could. And it was an easy enough lie to tell her. She’d thought all of The Brethren were Secret Service, which in essence they were. They used that cover to make it easy to move on without being in touch again. Reassigned with no forwarding address. But it was still hard that he hadn’t gotten to tell her that lie himself.
“Yes, he was reassigned.”
Allie nodded, not asking any more. She’d learned early on in their friendship that he wouldn’t give her any answers. So why would his son. Maybe his son didn’t even know either.
She laughed then. “Would you believe that your father and I dated?”
Michael didn’t hesitate. “Sure.”
She smiled at him, the gesture almost grateful. “Well, I did look a lot different in those days. But life hasn’t always been easy, and I guess its taken its toll.”
“You look fine.”
She smiled at him again, then waved to the bartender. She must be a regular still—or maybe she even worked here—because the tatted bartender came over immediately with a glass of white wine.
“Is she giving you a hard time?” the bartender asked sternly as he set the glass in front of her.
Michael opened his mouth to assure him she wasn’t, but Allie spoke first.
“Devon, I can still spank you for being fresh.”
The bartender, Devon, smiled, his big grin ruining his whole angst-filled look. His smile suddenly seemed very familiar too.
“This is my son,” Allie said, and it suddenly made sense that Michael knew that smile.
“This is the son of an old friend of mine,” Allie explained to Devon. She turned to Michael. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“Mi—Mark,” Michael said, catching himself. “Mark.”
Devon nodded. “Nice to meet you.” Then he left them to wait on a new customer.
“My life hasn’t always gone the way I wanted,” Allie said, after taking a sip of her wine. “I lost my husband, Devon’s dad, to a stupid car accident. I worked two jobs to keep Devon fed and clothed and safe. But all of that was worth it.”
“I’m sorry,” Michael said, wishing she’d had a different life.
But she surprised him with another of her familiar, huge smiles. A smile that really did make her look lovely.
“I’m not. Life is about change, and survival, and making the best of whatever the fates offer you. I’m sure your father knew that.”
Michael stared at this old friend, who might look different, but was still the same amazing, positive, beautiful woman he remembered.
“Yes, he does know that.”
Chapter Four
“H
oly shit,” said Simon, the most outspoken of The Brethren, as soon as Michael stepped into the mailroom the next morning. “You look almost normal. I mean, you know, normal for this decade.”
Gabriel and Jacob turned to look at what had garnered such a reaction.
Gabriel raised a suspicious eyebrow, but Jacob smiled and nodded with approval.
“Looking good.”
Michael smiled back, running a hand over his newly cut hair, a style the hairdresser had assured him was popular now. Then he adjusted his plain oxford button-down shirt, and ran his hands down his black trousers as if to smooth the already wrinkle-free material. No more silky, floral disco shirts. No more bell-bottoms—which wasn’t a real loss actually.
“Looking good? Isn’t that a seventies phrase?” Michael teased, ignoring Gabriel’s skeptical expression.
“Hey,” Jacob said, “I didn’t say ‘Dy-no-mite.’ ”
Michael laughed.
“Seriously,” Jacob added, “you look good. I think the twenty-first century is going to agree with you.”
Michael nodded, still not looking at Gabriel. “I think you are right.”
“Great,” Simon muttered from behind his mug of coffee. “Michael is back, and he’ll get all the chick action again.”
“Damned right,” Michael said, feeling like the dynamic with his fellow slayers was finally normal again. He could do this.
Then he glanced at Gabriel, who was the only one still not smiling.
 
“So what brought about this sudden change?” Gabriel said, jogging up behind Michael as he headed toward the mailroom’s employee break room.
Michael glanced at him, entering the room. “I just realized that I have to try to fit in here.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I know things have changed and I have to try to change along with them.”
Gabriel raised that damn eyebrow again. “This is a sudden change of heart.”
Michael nodded. “I know, but now I understand I can’t not be a slayer. To stay in the game, I have to learn how to be a slayer now. I have to reinvent myself, just like I have other times before.”
Gabriel studied him for a moment, then finally nodded. “Okay. I’m glad you are starting to understand things have changed in the last three decades, and you have a lot to learn.”
Michael nodded too, wishing he felt all the conviction he managed to put into his tone. A part of him still found this new way of battling demons ludicrous. A big part, but he knew he had to give this way a try or he wouldn’t be a slayer at all.
Make the best of what the fates give you.
He would do that. Even if it killed him.
“This is Elton Silver,” Eugene said to Michael. “He will be showing you around the mailroom. He will show you around down here, and he will also take you to the fifteenth floor and show you around up there as well.”
Michael stared at the man in front of him. Or rather down at the man. Elton Silver was a petite, almost frail-looking old man with skin like overly tanned leather and gray hair.
This would be his superior. Damn, Silver was even worse than Eugene. This man should be retired, hell, in an old folks’ home, not a lead player in a war with evil.
“Elton, this is Michael. He’s a part of Gabriel’s team.”
The stooped man stopped sorting mail only long enough to glance at Michael. With hazy eyes that reminded Michael of some ancient voodoo priest, the old man gave him an unimpressed once-over, then returned to his mailroom duties.
“Elton is the best at seeing what needs to be done up on the fifteenth floor,” Eugene said.
Michael frowned for a minute. He understood what Eugene was saying. This man was a seer. He could tell who the demons were. But was he really the best, the one they sent into the middle of the devil’s lair? This old man?
“He has access to the whole fifteenth floor,” Eugene explained. “So you can get a full understanding of what the mailroom is dealing with.”
It was on the tip of Michael’s tongue to ask why The Brethren didn’t just go up there with this brilliant old seer and take out every demon he sensed. But that would defeat his determination to at least learn this new way of demon hunting. He was trying to go into it as open-minded as possible.
He looked back at the slight, hunched man who would teach him how this new DIA worked.
But damn, this was going to be hard.
“That is all that we ask,” Eugene said quietly from beside him.
“What?” Michael frowned at him.
“Oh, you must have missed the first part of what I said,” Eugene said in his placid way. “I said all we ask is that you learn as much as you can.”
Michael regarded Eugene for a moment, again feeling like the old man hadn’t said that, but rather just answered his thoughts. Read his mind.
“Well, come on,” Elton said, sounding just as doubtful about dealing with Michael as the slayer was to be dealing with him.
Michael glanced at Eugene, who nodded like an encouraging father.
He could do this. Keep an open mind. An open mind.
 
Okay, his mind was quickly closing.
Michael followed behind the doddering Elton as the man ... delivered the mail. The very thing he’d been doing for the past two hours. He pushed his cart, leaving stacks of letters or packages—or sometimes even both, which was particularly exciting—at the desks and offices of
HOT!
employees.
Behave, Michael.
Sarcasm wasn’t going to help him keep an open mind. But damn. So far, he wasn’t feeling any more confident that the DIA’s new way of dealing with demons was working. So far, he didn’t see anything happening. Period. Well, except for fairly efficient mail delivery.
Of course, Elton hadn’t actually explained anything to him. In fact, aside from muttering to himself in some senile, old-man way that Michael couldn’t really hear or follow, Elton hadn’t said much. Period.
Michael looked around the offices and cubicles of the ultra-modern fifteenth floor. Really, with the red lights and sleek glass and chrome office furniture, broken up by velvet oversized chairs, he sort of felt like he was back in the seventies.
But again he was reminded he couldn’t behave the way he would have in the seventies. With a sigh and another determined reminder to try to learn this new way of doing things, he asked, “So are all these employees—you know?”
For the first time, Elton’s movements were sudden, not slow and tottering. He jerked the cart to a stop and his head snapped in Michael’s direction.
“Are you trying to be overheard?” he demanded harshly through his clenched teeth.
Okay, not the right start, obviously.
“No. But I figured I should start asking you something, since you aren’t offering me any info on your own.”
Elton raised an eyebrow, his dark eyes still rheumy, but somehow also sharp, intent.
“I’ve heard of you,” he said softly, his voice filled with disdain. “Your friends talked about you like you were a legend.”
Michael didn’t know how to react to Elton’s comment. He was surprised to hear that his team talked about him that way. Especially given how little they had backed him since his return. Michael also didn’t get the feeling that Elton was impressed, or saw him as a potential legend. In fact, Elton’s narrowed eyes raking over him looked far from impressed.
“I’m not sure what you find so objectionable about me,” Michael said. “I’m just trying to understand what you do, and how this all works now.”
Elton stared at him a moment longer, then began pushing the cart again, apparently not about to offer him any more thoughts or information.
Michael stood there a moment, debating just heading back to the mailroom. Clearly Elton didn’t intend to show or tell him a thing. But just as he would have turned and stalked back to
HOT!
’s main lobby, Elton surprised him again by calling out.
“Come on. You want to know everything, right?”
Michael frowned, but nodded. He didn’t understand what had just happened, but he jogged the few steps to catch up with the old man.
Elton wheeled the cart past a few more cubicles, placing mail in the bins on the desks, and Michael wondered if Elton really had any intention of sharing what the DIA was doing. Maybe he just didn’t want Michael heading back to report that he wasn’t sharing his knowledge.
Michael looked at the old man, again pushing the cart, or maybe using it more like a walker. Again, Michael wondered what this elderly man could really share with him.
But he followed, as he had for hours. Only after a few more moments did he realize Elton was leading him away from the cubicles and offices. He stopped in an alcove that was far enough away so Elton could talk.
“I don’t agree with all that the DIA is doing,” Elton said, his deep, gravelly voice so low that Michael had to lean forward to hear him.
“You don’t?” Michael was surprised.
“No,” Elton stated. “I want to see all the demons killed. Destroyed.”
Again, he managed to surprise Michael.
“I don’t like that we have to wait around for the computer geeks and scientists and other brainiacs to figure how to save all of them.”
“Save them all?”
“The ones who have lost their souls already.”
Michael shook his head, not following. What was the old man talking about? Michael knew that the demons who’d taken over
HOT!
were here to gather souls and ultimately take over the human world. How could the DIA get back lost souls? Once a person made a deal with the devil, they either followed the letter of the contract and saved their souls. Or they broke the contract, and their souls were all his. There was no way to get those lost souls back. But maybe that had changed now.
“So we are just here to monitor. For the time being,” Elton said. “But I have a hard time stomaching all these damned demons.”
Suddenly Michael felt a kinship to the older man that he hadn’t before. Elton was struggling with how things were done too. It was good to know someone else felt the same way he did.
Somehow that made dealing with the situation a little easier. To not feel that everyone thought he was completely mad.
“Sorry to be such an old grouch,” Elton added, as he started pushing the cart again. “But I feel like we have the most elite team available, and every day we are losing more ...”
He glanced around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “More people.”
Michael nodded. He understood that. That was how he felt and he’d only been back for a few weeks. Elton had been doing this for years. Michael really did feel a camaraderie with the old man.
“Elton, Elton, wait.”
Michael turned to see who was calling, and instantly recognized the speaker as the woman from the elevator.
“I’m sorry,” she said, a little breathless, as if she’d run to catch him. Michael’s pulse sped up at the sound. Strange something like that could make him react.
Although there was no denying she was beautiful.
She waved an envelope at Elton. “I need to get this in the mail today.”
Elton turned too, and a smile split the man’s face, revealing slightly crooked front teeth.
“Liza,” he greeted the woman, “I swear you are always dashing after me with something you forgot.”
The woman, Liza, smiled too, the gesture seeming somewhat ... sad, although Michael couldn’t be sure.
“I know.” She sighed. “I guess I just have too much going on in my head.”
Elton nodded sympathetically, then took the envelope from her. “No fear. It will be on its way today.”
“Thank you, Elton. You’re the best.”
Liza immediately started back to wherever she’d come from, but then finally noticed Michael. She paused, frowning slightly.

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