Howler's Night (12 page)

“Fine.” I nodded, set my spoon down, and then grabbed the bottle of dry red wine beside me and poured her a drink. “Then drink this.” I nudged it across to her. “It’s red, your favorite.”

Her shoulders drooped just a little, and she gave me a small tilt of her lips. It wasn’t much, but I knew she was trying. “Thanks.”

I’d heard a woman singing in the kitchen for over an hour and suspected our meal of lentil soup and crusty bread was courtesy of a mortal keeping Grace’s home. But Cain had barred the door, and I’d not bothered trying to prove my theory.

“Well, if you’re not going to drink it,” Adam drawled and reached for the cup just as Pandora did.

Typical Greed move, but their fingers tipped the stemmed glass over, and the crystal shattered the instant it hit the carved wooden dining room table.

Muttering under his breath, Adam went to pick up the shards of glass then hissed and drew his hand back.

A large drop of blood welled on the tip of his thumb.

And the room went silent.

Pandora’s eyes jerked to his thumb and instantly I felt the tension rolling off her.

“Dora?” I murmured low.

Cain, who sat next to me, went stiff, his hands clenching the silverware until his knuckles turned white.

Abel, who was sitting beside Dora, wouldn’t take his eyes off the back of her head.

I slowly got to my feet. “Pandora,” I said again, this time louder. She didn’t stir.

Adam pulled his thumb toward him, but she latched onto his wrist, and a strange purr rolled through her chest.

Just then Adam’s blue eyes blazed like hottest flame. His demon was coming alive, and that only seemed to spur Pandora on. Her lips curled into a macabre smile, and she whispered one word.

“
Mine
.”

Then it was chaos. I jumped onto the table as Adam attempted to grab her and shove her face down onto the floor.

But Dora was nothing but a blur of shadow. In one swift move, she’d clenched her fingers around Adam’s thick neck, digging her claws into the sides and drawing blood as she slammed him down violently on the ground.

I yanked on her arm just as Cain and Abel reached my side. She shrugged me off like I was nothing, causing me to stumble into the table forcefully. Pandora moved so fast I literally lost track of her. One second she’d been kneeling on Adam’s sternum, the next she was grabbing hold of Cain between the legs, squeezing hard enough to make him roar, then tossing him against the wall.

Abel and I tackled her from behind at the same time, but she twisted away from us, moving like a snake, always one step out of our grasp. Then a flat palm shoved into my chest, and I was thrown back.

I jumped immediately to my feet, but she now had Abel, and in a move I’d never seen her use before, she flipped over his shoulder, latching her claws onto either side of his head the moment she landed.

I knew immediately what she was doing. She was going to decapitate him. I wouldn’t reach her side in time, so I called the gray man to me. Then, closing my eyes, I willed him to pick up the butter knife and stab her with it.

The gray man shoved it straight through her hand.

I yanked her into my arms the second she screamed. She stared at her bloody hand in shock and then trembled as her gaze turned to the three men slowly coming to at her feet.

“Oh my God,” she gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh my God, I’m so, I’m...sorry.”

No one had a chance to respond because she traced away from us, the scent of sulfur thick in the air.

I whirled on a stunned-looking Grace who said, “She can be triggered. Your demon, Adam, it triggered hers.”

“Fuck,” he groaned and rubbed his head. “I feel like I just took a hammer to the head. What the hell did they do to her?”

“I should have realized that.” Grace looked at me, “I’m sorry, Ash.”

I had no idea what she was apologizing for. I clenched my jaw and swatted her words away. Pandora wasn’t a lost cause, and I refused to let anyone convince me otherwise.

“Where did she go?” Grace asked no one in particular.

Adam, Cain, and Abel were growling. The boys’ bodies had thickened and turned twice as muscular as before. That she’d had the power to do that... I shook my head, shoving that thought away.

“Some place she’ll feel safe and alone. She won’t go far.”

“How do you know?” Adam growled, and then scowled as he pulled bloody fingers away from his scalp.

“Because I know. What do you have like that here, Grace?”

Her hand was shaking as she said, “The springs. Natural springs about half a mile beneath us.”

I turned and pointed. “Which way?”

“Straight ahead and to your left,” Abel said. “And if you see her, tell her I don’t think I’ll be forgiving her for this one unless she springs for a box of chocolate chip cookies.” He rubbed his neck, which was already starting to blossom a dark purple color.

“We’ll need a room too, something far in the back, more cave-like, where she won’t feel so exposed.”

Cain was wincing and holding onto his genitals. “Take mine. I’m sleeping in Flint’s anyway.”

“Thanks,” I said, and then went in search of Pandora. This problem was becoming almost more than I could handle alone. As much as I didn’t want to think it, the time might have come to consider bringing Luc and her hoard back into the picture.

I found Pandora almost twenty minutes later. I felt the smack of the heat wafting off the spring the moment I stepped inside the hulled-out room.

Pandora’s clothes were scattered on the floor, along with the long-handled silver butter knife. She was fully immersed in the large spring, sitting on the bottom with her head tipped forward and her legs crossed Indian style.

Sighing, exhausted, but unwilling to leave her alone, I stripped off my clothes and joined her. The calm waters with curls of steam rolling off the surface was almost too hot to bear.

But I grit my teeth and did it anyway.

The waters were deepest at the center, where they came almost to my chin. Scooting back, I headed for the makeshift bench that’d been chiseled out of the wall itself and sat. She finally kicked to the surface, taking a deep breath when she came up. I wasn’t trying to look, but even so I could see all the scars that lined her once- flawless body. I curled my fingers on my lap and looked away because staring at them only made me want to do something stupid and violent.

“You need to leave me alone, Ash.”

I lifted a brow. “No.”

Flicking water my way, she moved to the opposite side of the spring and sat down. Her breasts floated enticingly, and I hated that my cock suddenly stood to attention at the sight of them. This wasn’t the time, but my body always seemed to have other ideas when she was around.

“You saw what I did back there. I almost killed them. I would have killed Abel.” She stared at her hand.

The spot where the Gray Man had stabbed her was now smooth. So she was clearly still capable of healing. Whatever they’d done to her at Creatus had to have been done with spelled knives, just like the one Luc had used on her centuries ago.

“But you didn’t.”

“Because you stabbed me!” She pounded her fist into her seat, causing the water to bubble up to the surface. “How is it that I can think, and feel, and know that it’s not right and not want to do it, and yet I still couldn’t stop from snapping? There’s no excuse for this, Asher. None.”

“And I’m not making one,” I barked.

Her eyes widened, because up until now I’d been nothing but patient, but my patience was wearing thin. I wasn’t a saint, and I refused to let that place drive her insane anymore.

“But you have to stop pissing and moaning about what you can’t change and fucking realize that you are different, Dora. You are. But you can fight it. You did fight it, so stop flagellating yourself about it.”

Her mouth snapped shut, and she glared unholy fire at me. But she didn’t say anything, and I blew out a breath because I knew my risky gamble had paid off. The last thing I wanted was to send her deeper into her killing rage, but staying where she was, that wouldn’t help either. And deep down I think she knew that.

“You can’t live that way.”

She turned her face to the side.

“You ever wonder how I got my scars, little demon?”

I could sense her curiosity in the way her fingers began to twirl through the water. “How?” she finally said.

I hated talking about my scars, about how I’d gotten them. I’d never told another soul why I had them, but I would tell her.

“I got them because of you.”

“What?” Her brows formed a question mark, and I knew I had her full attention.

There was still a lot I couldn’t tell her, but this wasn’t one of those things. Leaning my head back, I stared sightlessly at the red rock above me.

“I was sent to kill you. It took me months, but I finally found you.”

The waters swished around me as she moved in closer.

“I remember you telling me that.”

“I finally found you, and you were holding that little girl. Holding her and whispering that she wasn’t alone. You intrigued me. So rather than kill you, I followed you around. When that little girl breathed her last, I saw you bury her. But what impressed me most was that you read her last rites. I wondered why. Why would a demon do such a thing?”

Her thigh slipped against mine as she sat down beside me.

“So I followed you the next day, and the day after that. And every day I told myself, I would finally do it, rid the world of more demon scum. It was my sovereign right and duty as a priest of the Lord to end you.”

For a while I stopped speaking, just allowing myself to remember Pandora as she’d been then. There’d been no purple streak in her hair back then. It’d been black and silky and had fallen to below her ass. Even the hideous clothing of the day had done nothing to hide the lush, feminine curves of her body.

“God, I wanted you,” I groaned as my cock grew even harder. “And I hated you for it.”

“But you didn’t know me.”

I turned my face so that I could look at her. “You were a Lust demon. A born siren built to ensnare men. It’s what I kept telling myself. All around you, I saw your family acting as they should. Luc screwing around and fucking any woman he deemed worthy. Vyxyn and Kane and Bubba, all of them, rotten to the core. But I wasn’t sent to kill them. So even as I hated them and hated you, I couldn’t seem to make myself do it. And each night when I went and reported back to my master that I’d not yet found you and the lie sat hot and heavy on my tongue, I’d go back to my room afterward and cut myself as penance to my Lord.”

She wrapped her fingers around my face, and I moaned, so desperate for more of her touch.

“You’re covered with scars, Ash.”

My jaw clicked from one side to the other. “I didn’t stop cutting until I realized I’d never be able to do it. The day I was visited by a seer.”

Her hands dropped, and I clenched my jaw. We were headed into dangerous territory. I needed to be careful what I said to her, but I also was tired of keeping secrets.

She shook her head. “Why? What did she tell you?”

“The truth. About you. About me. About who it was I actually worked for. About our fate.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in destiny.”

My lips twitched. “I believe in choices, little demon. In will. But I also believe that sometimes there is something even greater out there than what you dreamed possible.”

“So she told you to love me, and that’s that.” She clapped her hands together.

I smirked. “I already loved you. I didn’t like you for making me feel it, but you were different, and now so was I. And it finally made sense why.”

“I wish you would tell me why.”

“It’s in the book.”

She licked her lips. I remembered what that honeyed tongue of hers tasted like, and I was hungry for more.

“Grace told me where your key is.”

My grin was half-hearted at best. “I knew coming here was the right choice. I suspected she’d have learned something by now.”

She nodded, looking straight ahead as though lost in thought.

“Dora, I think we should go find Luc first.”

She frowned. “No. It’s time I learned the truth, Ash, all of it.”

“Yeah.” I scrubbed my jaw. “I figured you’d say that.”

Pandora

F
ire.

My body is convulsing and foam is seeping from my cracked and bloody lips.

Ya-el. Ya-el. Ya-el.

My eyes roll to the back of my skull as their hands reach inside my cracked rib cage.

“Look at me.”

It takes everything I have to look. The leather wraps on my wrists have rubbed me raw. My skin is oozing and torn, revealing the meat below. But I barely feel it. I stare on in horror as the man in the white lab coat smiles and yanks my heart out, massaging it gently and caressing it.

“This, Ya-el, this is the seat of power.”

His black gloves are covered in my gore as he slowly rotates my heart. The red organ beats powerfully in his hand.

Drool slides down the corner of my mouth as I cough and hack, knowing it’s impossible that I’m still alive. How can they do this to me?

“Show it a little love”—he glides his finger along the smooth muscle—“and it’ll do anything for you. But wound it”—swiping up a pen knife, he nicks the left ventricle and I scream—“and it’ll never be the same again.”

I slammed my hands over my ears and screamed from the depths of my soul, raging and kicking out at the heavy weight bearing down on me.

“Pandora!” Asher’s voice penetrated through my fog. “Wake up. It’s just a dream, wake up.”

Still stuck somewhere between awake and the haze, I punched out wildly, connecting with his jaw hard enough to make his teeth snap together.

There was a low growl, and then his hands grabbed mine and pinned them powerfully above my head.

My heart raced so hard and fast I swore it was going to jump out of my chest. The ragged sound of our breathing was the only thing I heard.

Slowly, slowly the dream peeled back, replaced by a vision of his warm brown eyes staring down at me. A lock of hair had slipped over his right eye, and he looked more exhausted than I felt.