Life Cycle (20 page)

She rolled the parchment
scroll out flat. T
he
drawings and notations had been done in a blue pencil. She skimmed
to the current month and her mouth dropped open. This full moon
would also be the biggest planetary alignment in five centuries.
The fact that it was happening on a full moon was even bigger.
Maybe she would have noticed if she hadn’t been having a meltdown,
but she tended to do each phase of the chart separately. Moon
phases, then anomalies, then planetary alignments. By the time
she’d gotten to planetary alignments, she hadn’t been thinking
about where they were falling, or making the connection with
Jack.

He’d be willing to kill the girl before her on a
random day and get less power out of her if he could get his last
kill on this particular date. Thinking back, wasn’t the last
planetary alignment like this close to when he’d killed his first?
Jack was all about magical symmetry.

It was too late to chase Cain down. He’d be out of
the dimension by now. And the last thing she was about to do was
stop another demon to say something like “Hey, could you be a dear
and go grab my demon lover? I really need him to screw me right now
for the good of preternatural beings and puppies.”

She shoved the scroll and the rest of her books and
tools back into the bags and hid them behind the big rock. Then she
took the tarot cards with her back to her tent. Something about
being out here alone in these caves spooked her now. It was too
dark and sinister, and knowing there were demons in the walls
wasn’t comforting. She’d much rather be back in her own brightly
colored tent with her demon guards.

When she got back, she sat on one of the large, round
pillows on the ground and took the cards from their red, silk
wrapping. She closed her eyes and tried to focus, breathing slowly
in and out. She wasn’t sure reading her own cards would do her any
good, despite Henry’s insistence.

She needed somebody else who was good at this, but
contacting her coven was out of the question. She’d kept them out
of it this long, no sense endangering them so close to the end. And
the end was coming, she could feel it. Most likely the end for
her.

She couldn’t ask Anna to do it, either. In the first
place, divination wasn’t her gift. Incantations were her thing. It
wasn’t that a witch couldn’t have more than one strong gift, Tam
had two, but Anna hadn’t been a witch for as long as Tam had.
Either way, she couldn’t touch the cards, and you needed physical
contact with the deck.

Tam had just laid out the spread when Anna passed
through the curtain in her wispy, ghost-like way.

“Who’s future are we looking at?” she asked,
hovering.

Tam knew her friend was trying to be casual, but it
fell flat. “Mine,” Tam said, grimacing. The cards were much the
same as they’d been before she’d fled her house, which meant that
running to Cain, or intending to—he’d kind of just showed up on her
doorstep—hadn’t changed her future to any great degree.

There was still the death card, the tower, the
lovers, and now judgment, a card that symbolized rebirth and hard
and final decisions. The rebirth part was hopeful, at least, but if
she had to fall off a tower and die to get there, she wasn’t sure
how she felt about it. Henry had told her to follow her heart, and
he’d made the quip about young love in the caves, but he couldn’t
possibly mean she was meant to be with Cain. Could he? Would that
be so bad?

“Well?” Anna said.

“I know what I want the cards to say and what I
think Henry means, but I can’t get myself to believe in it.”

“And what is it you can’t believe in?”

Tam let out a deep sigh, knowing before she said it,
how this would go. “That Cain and I are meant to be together.”

Anna let out a bloodcurdling shriek that had the
guard demons darting into the tent to see what the fuss was
about.

“We’re fine. Anna is just being dramatic,” Tam
said.

The guards didn’t seem to be buying it, but since
they’d been asked to guard Tam and not Anna, they went back to
their post without a word of comment.

“You are insane,” Anna hissed. “You know you can’t
be with Cain. Whatever he’s making you think or feel, it’s an
illusion. It’s what he does.” She made a disgusted face. “He’s done
it to me, even. He’s toying with you. He’s not Luc. He’s not going
to take you as his mate and love you. That’s not who he is.”

“I
know
that! Jesus, give me a little
credit for not being a stupid twit. I didn’t say it was what the
cards meant. I said it was what I wanted them to mean. Well, maybe
not the mating part. You’re right about that one. Cain won’t mate
with anybody. I’m not as good at reading my own future. I’m not
unbiased enough. But it seems like Henry thinks it, too, so
maybe...”

“You saw Henry again?”

“Séance,” Tam clarified. “In the caves a little
while ago. He noticed the thing with me and Cain and commented. He
seemed supportive, at least.”

Anna shuddered, far from comfortable with Tam
sleeping with the enemy. Tam couldn’t explain to her that the enemy
was the only person she felt safe with and the only time she wanted
to be here anymore. If they could have something together, he was
someone she could never lose to death. He was solid and forever,
and he understood—maybe not the cycling part—but all the rest—the
endless continuity of it all. He was old enough that next to him,
she didn’t feel like a freak.

Regular people thought they wanted to remember their
previous lifetimes, but if they did, they would be pressed down by
the crushing weight of it. Forgetting was a mercy she hadn’t had
the opportunity to partake in for far too long. She wanted to drink
the cup of forgetting and start over. She wanted a clean slate, but
a part of her also wanted Cain, to see where it went, to see if she
could be genuinely happy again.

Maybe when all this was over, if she survived it,
they could see where things might lead. It didn’t have to be a
forever thing. Maybe they could just have something for a
while.

“He’s not being faithful to you,” Anna said, as if
she could see the wheels in Tam’s head turning. And most likely she
could. “He can’t be faithful to you. He’ll never change.”

“I don’t care about that,” Tam said. And she really
didn’t. She was too old for that silliness.

“How can you not care?”

Tam shrugged. Over the past several years, there
hadn’t been many moments where she’d felt completely disconnected
from her friend, but this was one of them. How could she explain
her general lack of jealousy? She’d been like this for a few
centuries now. Jealousy seemed so stupid once enough living time
had passed and you’d settled into life in a way a seventy-year
lifespan didn’t allow. Average humans saw things in terms of
forever when they couldn’t even properly conceptualize that term
and “til death do us part”. But when death never really came for
you, as it did for all your lovers, you saw each encounter as more
temporary, and the possessiveness and clinging stopped making
sense.

If she had something with Cain, they’d have it until
they didn’t, whether or not he was feeding from other women. She
looked up to see that Anna was still waiting for a real answer.

“Look, Anna, you just can’t tie
somebody down like that. If they want to be with you, they do. If
they don’t, they don’t. If they want to be with you and other
people, you can choose to accept it or walk away. I just want
somebody who is
there
, someone who can’t die on me. I don’t care what else they’re
doing.”

If Cain mated with her, it would be only her: it was
the price the demon paid. But it was a price Cain never would pay.
And she was okay with that. It was nice to know she’d have the
option to break the cycle and get out of all this—that she and the
demon could have something that didn’t have to be everything. Then
they could part and go along their separate courses.

Though their blood had mingled, she
didn’t think he’d ever go through with it. That had been a weird
crazy moment. It was an accident. From what Anna had described of
the incubus-human mating ritual, there was no way to do the real
thing
accidentally
. There was no way she’d ever be doing that with Cain. Could
she be his part-time concubine? Yes, without question. But Anna
wouldn’t understand. She was too different in this way.

Anna shook her head. “I don’t get you. This is just
lust. If you’re not jealous... If you could share him and not have
a problem with it, it can’t be love.”

“Possession and restriction aren’t love.”

If her pride wasn’t in the way, she’d ask Cain to
keep her. He might do it if he knew she wouldn’t tie him down or
restrict him. He could still be the badass glutton hunting and
feeding like always. She didn’t want him to give up who he was. She
just wanted a constant in her life. Maybe he could feel the same
way. Maybe they’d have a chance to talk about it when this was
over.

Anna sighed. “Can I at least take this to mean you
don’t have a death wish anymore?”

A small smile. “I think I could stick around a little
longer.”

When Cain finally did get tired of her, and her of
him, he could take her out for real and let her start over. She
wanted it to be him when the time came.

***

Cain hadn’t spoken a word to Jane or Cole as he’d
followed them out of the demon dimension and back into the human
world to the hive where the Cary Town wolf pack lived. He was too
lost in thought. Despite his feigned anger, he was glad he and Tam
had been interrupted.

He was out of good answers for why he kept missing
opportunities to kill her. When he’d lost control and taken too
much, he’d backed off just soon enough to save her. The fear he’d
felt in that moment dwarfed any emotion he’d ever felt. He didn’t
want to examine that. The longer he could stay in denial, the
happier he’d be.

By the time she’d come around, he’d
gotten himself under control enough to give nothing of his
emotional state away. He just didn’t want her gone. Was that a
crime? It was okay not to be bored with someone in a week. He
wasn’t bored with his brother. He wasn’t bored with his friendships
with Daria and Jackson. Why should it be so strange that a woman
who shared his bed could interest him in a long lasting way? And if
she did, wasn’t that a good thing? He’d been feeling less excited
about his demon existence before Tam, everything blending and
merging together, no joy in the hunt anymore. He’d been doing it to
do it, to prove he still had it. Whatever
it
was.

It would be simpler once Jack was destroyed and he
could get Tam out of his dimension and back into her own house. But
would he be able to get her out of his mind? What excuse would he
make to keep coming back? And would he even need to make one?

He snapped back to the present as a computerized code
was punched into a panel inside the pack’s network of caves.
“Welcome, Cole,” the pre-recorded voice said as the metal door
whooshed open.

The wolves in the main den were unusually silent,
watching the news on the big television.

“This one is bad,” Cole said, clearly having seen
the reports already. It must all be on repeat. Humans liked to do
that. “It’s a child.”

“Not really,” Cain said. The witch must have made an
attempt to take herself out like Tam had—before Jack could get to
her. She must have failed and restarted a new cycle. Whatever she
might look like on the outside, she wasn’t some defenseless street
urchin.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s what the humans will think.
They see a kid there. They don’t know that’s a
two-thousand-year-old magic user. They don’t even believe in
magic.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” A male wolf
approached their circle and pushed a button on the remote. “They’ve
been talking about the last letter and the new letter all day. Mara
transcribed it.” The wolf handed a piece of notebook paper with
careful block lettering on it to Cole. He read it and then passed
the paper to Cain.

Dear Boss,

By now deep down people know it’s me. Maybe not
everyone, but that will come soon enough when I reveal myself to
the world in person. Eleven down, one more to go.

I’ll take the last one soon, then this bloody and
unpleasant mess will be over and the humans will find out what goes
bump in the night. I will lead them to freedom. They’ll know I have
never been a threat to them, only to that which is unnatural. I
will be their savior.

Be afraid. Your hunting of humans will end, and I
will run this world while you starve in caves and crypts, hiding
from the sun. The apocalypse the holy books foretold is drawing
near.

I’m excited for the finale. I hope you are, too.

Yours truly,

The Cycler

Cain read the letter a couple more times. Even if
they succeeded in killing Jack, even if the crazed lunatic wasn’t
able to raise an army to carry out his plans, he’d planted the
seed. If the humans accepted what they were seeing, the genie was
out of the bottle and there was no memory wipe by vampire or demon
that could put it back in again. In a way, it was amazing the
secret had been kept so well this long with all the security
breaches and the magic users, themselves humans. It was bound to
come out eventually.

He looked up as the sound on the television got
louder. The protesters were in greater numbers than before,
carrying much of the same signs and a few new ones. They demanded
that the vampire and demon and werewolf problem be taken care of,
calling for the government to admit they’ve been lying and keeping
secrets.