Life Cycle (14 page)

Anna didn’t seem to know about the caves, if the look
of confusion on her face was any indication. Luc probably hadn’t
thought to mention them yet.

“I don’t know why you’re sleeping with him, and I
don’t even want to think about it. It’s icky. But you have to stop.
He’ll kill you.”

Tam snorted. “Not at the rate he’s going, he
won’t.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just forget it.”

Anna’s eyes widened. “You
want
him to kill you.
Why? We’ll find Jack. You’re safe here. You don’t have to sacrifice
yourself. God, Tam. Nobody likes a martyr.”

Tam dropped onto the couch, feeling suddenly drained.
“Try to imagine dying—but not really dying—and being a kid again.
Try to imagine having your mental and emotional sexual development
all set, but having to be celibate for several years until you can
find someone to scratch your itches again—until you look like an
adult again. Try to imagine having to move every time it happens,
or if your friends start aging but you aren’t aging fast enough.
Sure, I’ve had witch friends, but I’ve had to keep them all at
arm’s length to keep my secret, and eventually I have to leave them
as well because even they would figure out something about me was
different. You were the first regular person I’d let into my life
for a long time. And it was only because I knew Henry was getting
older and I’d be alone again.”

“But, it’s not like that now,” Anna said. “You’ve
got immortal friends. You don’t have to keep losing everybody...
and I mean, sure the celibacy thing is a little annoying,
but...”

“You’re not listening to me. I’m tired of this. I
don’t want to live this way any longer. It’s unnatural. It makes me
feel out of sync with everyone and everything. With the other
cyclers mostly gone, I’m a freak. I don’t want to be a freak
anymore, Anna. I want to have a tribe of others like me, however I
might be. Can’t you understand that? I’ll reincarnate. I’m sure
I’ll keep some memories. We’ll find each other.” She wasn’t about
to mention the other dimension thing.

“I need some air. I’ll get Luc to come by and grab
your clothes. We’ll take them to your house and wash them for
you.”

“Thanks,” Tam said, but the word came out forced. A
couple of years ago, Anna wouldn’t have given up on her so easily.
Things were so different between them it made her heart hurt. Anna
was with Luc and a part of this new demon world now, not Tam’s
anymore. She was really alone now.

***

Cain tromped through the streets of Cary Town. It had
taken a lot of threatening to get one of Anthony’s guardians to
tell him where Dayne Wickham’s cottage was. He’d never gone to a
magic user for anything, he didn’t trust them, but it was beginning
to feel more dangerous to sleep with Tam without giving into her
death wish.

Even with her books locked away, she could still
create a chant to curse him. Hell, she may already have. He thought
about her far too much. He’d been sure she’d be out of his system
in a week—like the flu. By that time, he’d come to his senses and
not try to hold on. Just because she was two thousand and
understood what it was to be in the same form for so long didn’t
mean he’d make her his mate. He’d never take a mate.

Was he keeping her on reserve for if he became bored
enough to settle down in another thousand years? Wasn’t he the one
who’d ensured all books referencing demon mating in his dimension
had been destroyed? Hadn’t he discouraged his demons from enslaving
themselves like that? Caring about anybody but yourself was a
curse. It made you weak, vulnerable. It made you do stupid things
to destroy your life.

He’d tried to kill Anna to save Luc from such a fate,
but she’d gone through with the mating ritual at the last minute
because she couldn’t bear to be separated from him. Now Cain had to
watch them make googly eyes at each other all the time, both of
them looking so happy and at peace with the world. Surely that
would wear off at some point, and then they’d be miserable but tied
to each other for eternity.

The demon growled. He wasn’t about to let some wisp
of a girl come along and seduce him away from his freedom like
that. Certainly not a witch. They were too dangerous, which was why
he had to be smarter. He should have sought magical protection
after the first time he’d spared her. If her death wish was this
strong, she’d use magic to control him if she got angry enough. He
knew how that went.

There was no way for an incubus to protect himself
wholesale against all magic or magic users. The man upstairs had
made sure of that, wanting to limit and restrict demon powers. But
with a personal object from a specific witch, he could gain
temporary protection with the help of a strong magic user. It would
be enough to buy him some time.

Dayne fit that bill, and Cain had a pair of Tam’s
panties in his pocket to seal the spell. She’d left them in the
caves. What else was he going to unobtrusively take without her
notice? They were ripped, anyway. It wasn’t as if she’d miss
them.

On his way to the forest, he caught a pretty blonde’s
eye. She smiled at him, then blushed and turned away. Yes, he’d
just fed from Tam, but not fully. He was pulling his punches now
that he couldn’t decide if he wanted to kill her. He didn’t want to
kill the witch by accident until he was sure.

He strode across the street to the woman, demon
swagger fully engaged. “Hello.”

The sunlight glistened off her
hair. She looked a bit like Tam, except her hair was longer.
Goddamnit. Stop that! Stop comparing her.
If he couldn’t stop thinking about the bane of
his existence when he was about to catch another meal, he was truly
lost. Tam wasn’t his. She wasn’t going to be his. He didn’t know
what the hell she was, but the only way out was to sleep with as
many women as possible until he could do it without distraction,
until he could enjoy being a demon again. This
interest
he’d taken in the witch was
unnatural.

The woman gave him another of those shy smiles,
unaware of the conflicted emotions going through his head.
“Hi.”

“Let’s go to your place,” Cain said
without preamble. Why mince words? He took her hand and looked
deeply into her eyes, projecting thoughts and feelings
th
at would make a whore blush.

Her face flushed a deep red, and she appeared as if
she might faint. Cain hadn’t encountered many fainters since
corsets went out of fashion. He used to believe it was the intense
power of his charms, until he realized they couldn’t breathe
properly in those whalebone cages. It didn’t take much to quite
literally take their breath away. He missed those days. He’d found
the corseted look sexy.

He reached out for her. “Steady, there. My name is
Cain,” he said, knowing the effect the rumble of his voice had on
her.

“Gloria. It m-must be low blood sugar,” she said,
clearly not wanting him to suspect the thoughts running through her
mind. She’d never guess he’d put them there.

“That must be it,” he replied. “Why don’t we go to
your house, and I’ll make you something to eat?” He gave her a sly
look that let her know there might be something on the menu more
than food.

This was always the fun part,
finding out how much a woman was controlled by her baser desires.
Popular myth insisted it was the men who wanted sex all the time
and the women could take it or leave it. Cain’s experience showed
this idea to be unfounded by a wide margin. On rare occasion, a
woman could have the full force of
his
thrall working against her and still manage to push through that
fog to say no, no matter what she wanted or how desperately he’d
made her want it. And that was her free-will right. As a demon, he
couldn’t feed without some form of capitulation.

“I-I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” She
looked around for someone to save her, but this particular street
was clear of other Cary Town residents.

He arched a brow. “Such willpower you have. I bet you
never indulge in chocolate, either.” He sent her an image of
herself licking chocolate off him. He gripped her elbow to keep her
steady on her feet when she swayed again.

“I h-have somewhere I need to be,” she said.

Where she needed to be was in her bed underneath him.
This was getting tiresome. The demon pulled her to him and kissed
her. She moaned against his lips, her body melting into him, giving
in. He chuckled and pulled away.

“Now, where do you need to go?”

“M-my house,” she said.

He nodded his approval. “With whom?”

“You.”

“She
can
be taught.”

Chapter Eight

Cain held back a growl. The blonde was curled against
his chest, sleeping, her breathing shallow. He’d nearly killed her,
and he should have. And yet, he’d stopped. He wanted to hurl the
woman across the room. He was an incubus. His kind killed women. It
was just what they did.

Sure, they didn’t have to, and he didn’t always, but
eventually he did—when he got bored. But this wasn’t about that.
She’d been a quick bite, a distraction, something meant to prove he
still had it, that he was still demon enough. He had no plans to
come back to her again. There was no reason to keep her alive.

He couldn’t deny the truth of the
situation. He’d shown
mercy
to someone outside his own species. The word made
his lip curl in disgust. That witch had worked magic against him.
She had to have. This wasn’t normal. And the whole time he’d been
in bed with Gloria, who had he been thinking of? Tam.

He slid out of the bed, careful not to wake her.
After coming so close to killing her, she really would be weak.
Without letting himself think about why, he went to the kitchen and
made her a sandwich and poured a glass of juice, then left it for
her on her nightstand.

Angry with himself at the display of kindness for a
mere meal, he allowed a fireball to form in his hand. It glowed and
hissed. He tossed the ball in the air and caught it over and over
as he contemplated throwing it at her and ending her.

It was one thing for him to spare Tam. There were
multiple reasons that might be a good idea. He could use a witch
that powerful as an ally. Anthony clamping down with his police
state would affect Jane, and Jane was one of his. It made Tam
useful.

At the last confrontation with the
vampire king, Tam had fought by his side like one of his demons.
There were reasons to keep her breathing. But this woman?
This
stranger
?
She was just some woman he’d fed from. Her only redeeming quality
was that she resembled Tam. But if he was sparing meals who
reminded him of the witch, it would be admitting he kept Tam alive
for reasons he didn’t want to acknowledge.

Gloria woke then, a satisfied smile on her face—until
she saw him across the room with fire in his hand. It wiped the
smile away as the pieces began to come together that something
about their encounter was off.

“W-what are you?”

“You know, that nervous stutter was endearing for
about the first twenty minutes, but it’s played out now.”

Her eyes welled with tears, her lower lip trembled,
and she pulled the sheets up around her to shield herself from his
gaze. Too late for that.

“I’m a demon. Incubus. Eat your sandwich.” He’d made
it, she was going to eat it, then he was going to kill her. He’d
made up his mind.

“So all those stories on the news are true? A-about
demons? I thought the protesters were just crackpots.”

“More or less,” he said. The
stories were partly true and the protesters probably
were
crackpots. Or
plants Jack had put in place to further his agenda of a big reveal.
What did he care if Gloria knew the truth? She’d never see the
outside of this room again. He could lay out every detail of each
preternatural faction and it wouldn’t make any
difference.

She eyed the fireball in his hand, and he allowed it
to shrink and puff out. It wouldn’t do to throw fire at her. There
was no need to raise suspicion with police, and no identifiable
source for the fire would raise suspicion. Things were too delicate
for another unsolved mystery that suggested the preternatural.
Ordinarily he wouldn’t care, but this was bigger than isolated
weirdness. Anything could be tied to a larger magical world by the
human media.

“What are you going to do with me? I-I won’t say
anything if you’ll just go.”

“Eat. The. Sandwich.”

Her hand shook as she reached for the food on the
plate. “Did you put something in it?”

“Guess you’ll find out,” Cain said. He wouldn’t let
her tears or pleading affect him. He was a demon for fuck’s sake.
Human misery thrilled his little black heart. Only it wasn’t
thrilling him right now.

She ate the sandwich as he tapped his foot against
the hardwood floor, his arms crossed over his chest, looming over
her like some nightmare. He could say it served her right for
taking him to her bed, but she’d made a valiant effort to resist
him. Maybe that was worth sparing her. No. That was compromise. He
wasn’t about to let Tam reshape him into something tame and
housebroken. He had to kill this woman to convince himself he
wasn’t under a spell.

“The juice, too,” he said when she’d finished the
sandwich.

He’d gone to the trouble of making
the sandwich. He couldn’t stand to see it sitting there mocking him
as a sorry excuse for a demon.
Humans are
food. They are not pets, or friends, or any kind of equal
lover.
Did humans keep pet chickens or
cows?