Life Cycle (16 page)

“This is nothing but forgetting spells. It’ll take
me forever to figure out which one it is. Thanks, baby. You can go
change back now.” The cat rubbed against his hand, then hopped off
the shelf.

“As enlightening as that was, I need that protection
spell.”

Greta hissed at the demon and
dragged her clothes into the hallway. By the time she returned,
Dayne had set up a circle of salt and put together a potion in a
small iron cauldron, adding the
personal
object
of Tam’s with a glare aimed in the
demon’s direction. What other personal object but panties was an
incubus going to have from a woman he’d been sleeping
with?

“Remember anything that happened?” the sorcerer
asked when Greta reached his side.

She shook her head. “Just shifting, after that it’s a
blank until I took my clothes to go shift again. And I think I
hissed at Cain.”

“I expected as much.” Dayne took her hand. “Don’t
worry, we’ll figure this out.”

Cain cleared his throat.

The sorcerer kissed Greta, ignoring the throat
clearing. “Let me do this spell so we can get the demon out of our
hair, then we’ll work on it.”

“I’m standing right here,” Cain said.

Greta rolled her eyes in the
demon’s direction and went upstairs. Dayne finished dropping herbs
into the cauldron. He took a book, the cauldron, and the ring into
the center of the circle, dropped the ring in, raised his arms, and
began to chant. Whether or not it was the spell Cain had asked
for,
something
was happening. A green, shimmering wall came up around the
cauldron, then the ring rose out of the potion, spinning as Dayne
incanted.

When he finished, the green wall dropped first, then
Dayne slid his hand underneath the ring and the piece of pewter
dropped into it.

“Done,” he said, handing it to the demon.

“You’re sure this thing will work?”

“Have a little faith.”

Faith was something Cain had discarded long ago, but
he put the ring on.

Chapter Nine

“
Tamar,” It was a whisper, like a hiss that
floated through the still air of the demon dimension. The place was
deserted except for her sleeping guards. Something about that
scenario tickled at the back of her mind, but she was too panicked
to think it through.

“
Cain!” she shouted. But he wasn’t there
either—probably out feeding on some random guileless woman who
didn’t know it was going to be her last orgasm.

The whisper got closer. “Tamar.”

As she ran down the cobblestone streets, the tents
and marketplace collapsed in a flutter of fabric and knocked over
support poles. In their place, old stone and brick buildings rose
so high they seemed to go forever into the sky, sealing her into a
labyrinth she’d never find her way out of. The cobblestones beneath
her feet chipped and crumbled, aging before her eyes, and suddenly
she was in an alleyway she recognized.

She froze at the sound. It was like fingernails on a
chalkboard—or like a sharp knife scraping over stone, dragging
closer and closer. She cringed.

“
Tamar.” His voice was snakelike. It seemed to
wrap around her, constricting the life out. And then that horrible
knife scraping, raspy as his voice when he kept saying her
name.

“
Cain!” She tried to scream it again, unsure why
he was the one she called out for. Why not Luc or Anna? Why not the
wolf pack she’d met when they’d fought Anthony? Why not anybody but
the other monster in her life?

There was a deep chuckle behind her. She spun toward
it, but the alley was dark and empty. Still, she heard Jack when he
finally whispered something besides her name.

“
Sweet, Tamar. Don’t you know he’s busy with his
own whores? Let’s not bother him right now. You’re not that
special.”

If that were so, why was Jack so obsessed? It had
been centuries, and he couldn’t seem to let go. Had he taunted the
others this way before coming for them? Her guess was no. It was a
special torment he’d saved for the one who’d left his bed.

The endless alley opened onto a street with
carriages and horses and properly dressed Victorian ladies all
going about with parasols to protect them from the harsh sun—even
though it was dark and cool. Maybe it was to protect them from
something else. When they’d passed, Tam saw the carnage. Everyone
he’d killed, laid out like dolls.

He’d dressed them all in white like a macabre angel
massacre. Some had fewer organs and less blood than others. Some
were more rushed and hurried. Some of them more methodical. She
averted her eyes from her sister, the one image she’d tried not to
see or know too much about. The others were hard to look at, but
not like Naomi. They’d all been friends, companions as they
traveled through the changing world together, until Jack had gone
mad and put an end to all that.

Not everyone could handle immortality.

Tam cringed when the flat of a blade dragged across
the back of her neck. She closed her eyes at the sensation of his
hot breath in her ear.

“
Soon, my sweet Tamar. Soon, I’m coming for
you.”

She turned, surprised when he wasn’t hiding again in
the shadows. He stood dressed in white like the others, like a cult
leader who’d chickened out of drinking the Kool-Aid at the last
minute. Tam looked down to find she, too, was dressed in white.

“
Is there a ball I don’t know about?” She
couldn’t help it. She knew it was a dream, and there was only so
much he could do to her here. There was no sense in letting him
know how much he scared her, even in a place where the danger was
minimal.

He smiled. She wished the things he’d done could
have made him just as ugly on the outside as the bloody death he’d
wrought, but his outward appearance refused to reflect the evil
within. Like Cain, he was an enticing, pretty spider, waiting for a
woman to fall into his web. Tam had been there, done that.

“
You still want me,” he remarked.

“
Like hell I do.”

“
Oh, yes, that’s right. You’ve got a new monster
to scratch that dark itch for you now. You’re just as bad as I am,
Tam. You think a good girl would do the things you’ve done with a
demon, knowing what he is? No, you’re my lovely dark girl. I’ll see
you soon. I’ve missed you.”

She couldn’t run or scream when he moved toward her,
his warm lips brushing against hers. He wrapped his arms around
her, and for the smallest second she remembered them before all the
carnage, before he’d lost his mind—back when she’d loved him, and
she wished they could go back there.

His voice fell over her like a blanket while she
pretended he was pre-crazy Jack. “Why didn’t you take my offer? I
would have spared you.”

His embrace turned into a vice, and then he
transformed into a giant snake, wrapped around her, constricting
until she couldn’t get air.

Tam sat up from the bed of fluffy pillows on the
ground in her tent, her heart palpitating wildly. It would be nice
to believe it was just a dream—her confused fears and past feelings
all mixing together in a tapestry of nocturnal images that meant
nothing. But she knew better.

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, that had been
Jack. Not an apparition of him or an imagining or fear of him. Him.
She knew the difference. He’d visited her in dreams before when
they’d been close enough for him to form a connection. The blood
that bound them all together in the spell, that had made them what
they were, made such connections difficult, but not impossible,
especially for someone of his power.

He’d grown too strong for her to initiate connection
with him by herself, his magical wards high and always in place.
Otherwise she might have been able to lead Cain and the others to
him. But there was a slim chance she could, now that he’d opened a
connection.

She threw some clothes on, and
after a brief argument with her guards, made her way to Cain’s
tent. He was sleeping.
Officially, demons
didn’t need sleep, f
eeding alone
replenished them, but it wasn’t hard to see how someone as old as
Cain would choose to sleep anyway. It was the one place he could
escape and forget himself. Tam understood that need more than most.
Even though she required sleep, still tied to normal human needs,
she’d used the night and the dream world for the same reason. To
forget. Not that she ever wanted to sleep again right
now.

For a moment, she watched him. In sleep, there was
none of the arrogant asshole bravado to taint things. His face was
peaceful and not as perfect, since he’d shed the glamour. She
wanted to trace her finger over the scar a god had marked him with,
but was afraid he’d wake up. She thought about waking him anyway,
but if she did, it would be back to the disturbing dynamic they
had. All she wanted right now was to feel safe, not banter.

She slid underneath the blankets next to him and was
surprised when his arms came around her in his sleep, pulling her
close. She waited for the constricting evil feeling from her dream,
but it didn’t happen.

A few minutes passed like this, and she finally
relaxed.

“Tam, nobody walks into my tent without me waking
up,” he rumbled.

So he hadn’t been asleep. But he’d
still held her like he cared. No. She wasn’t going there. All she
was doing was trying to transfer some residual feeling for Jack
onto the lesser evil because it felt less traumatic. But was Cain
the lesser evil? Of course not. He was the worse evil.
He didn’t kill my sister. But he tried to kill
Anna.
And hadn’t Anna been the next
closest thing to a sister?

As far as she knew, Jack had killed ten people.
Gruesomely, yes, but it didn’t compare to the vast number of women
Cain had killed. It hardly mattered how they died. By numbers
alone, Cain was the bigger monster. Transferring anything onto him
was foolish. Feeling anything for either one of them at any point
in time was shameful. Jack was right, she wasn’t an innocent. Why
couldn’t she have loved Henry? He was good. Kind. Decent. Nice.
He’d always had her back through everything for two centuries.

Maybe the more important question was, why couldn’t
Henry love her like that? Had he been too kind to tell her what
he’d thought of her? He’d had a soul mate waiting for him on the
other side, but had he known that? Was it from his most recent life
or a previous one?

Even though Cain had revealed he was awake, he hadn’t
let go of her.

“Your heart was beating too fast when you got here.
Was it wild lust for me or something else?”

It was easy to forget how evil he was. Sometimes he
seemed so damned normal. An asshole, yeah, but normal.

“Jack came to me in my dream.”

He gripped her tighter, but even so, it didn’t feel
stifling like it was supposed to. “It was just a dream,” he said.
He stroked her back, and she tried not to read too much into the
gesture.

“No. It was real. Jack was there.” She couldn’t help
the tears. The last thing she wanted was for Cain to see her cry.
Showing that much weakness to a demon was stupid, but she was so
tired. Of everything. “Why do you all have to be so evil?”

“You’re old enough to know it isn’t like that,
Tam.”

“Isn’t it? How many people have you killed?”

He pushed her away and sat up, his eyes glowing red
and angry in the dark. “Is that how it is now? I knew you’d start
falling for me, but you don’t get to make demands. I said you’d beg
me to keep you. Looks like I’m right. And if you think that’s a way
to get your life spared, trotting out all my crimes and trying to
domesticate me like a puppy, boy do you have the wrong demon.”

“Then fucking kill me! I never asked to be spared.
Put me out of my misery like I’ve asked you to a hundred times. I
told you I’d never beg you to keep me, and I never will, Cain. Let
go of the dream. This is getting serious. You don’t want to keep
me. I’ll never ask you to. I can’t cope with what you are, what
Jack is. I want to be free. Just end it. You don’t need me to fight
a war with Anthony! You don’t need me at all.” She was tempted to
throw an energy ball right at his pretty monster face.

He gripped her shoulders. “You
aren’t going to control me. When have I ever claimed to be a good
guy? You don’t get to shout out orders and get whatever you want.
I
do
need you for
a war with Anthony. You’re strong. But if you really want me to
kill you, beg me to keep you and mean it. Tell me you love me, Tam,
and maybe I’ll take your request into consideration.”

If he was that gung ho about
keeping her to use her in a war, he wouldn’t kill her even if she
begged him. He was just sadistic and bored. He could play that game
with someone else. “I know you’re use
d to
stupid women wh
o were born yesterday. I’m
not one of them.”

He pulled her to him, his lips
pressing against hers. It was like Jack in the dream, but
different. He slid a dark image of something she’d never trust him
enough to do for real—bondage. Whips. Of course, Cain would go for
the freaky stuff. He was eight thousand. Nobody that old just did
it missionary. Not that they’d just done
missiona
ry. In the time she’d
bee
n in his care, they’d made it through
the entire Kama Sutra. In spite of herself, she melted against him
and wrapped her arms around his neck.

The demon pulled away while she was still dazed with
the images, half of her wanting to act them out. She was a bad
witch. She couldn’t even remember to keep her shields up. Was that
how Jack had gotten into her dream? Had he been trying before and
failed?