Life Cycle (24 page)

Hadrian let out a howl as Cain poured the water into
the cut he’d just made. Smoke rose off the vampire, sizzling like
an egg frying on pavement.

“One less mystery of life to unravel,” the demon
said. “Ready to chat yet?”

“No,” Hadrian said between gritted teeth. “You may
as well just kill me.”

The demon laughed. “As if that’s going to happen.
I’ll never kill you. I’ll keep you alive and torture you slowly and
painfully until you talk. If you never talk and Tam dies, it’ll
turn into vengeance, and you don’t want to see that side of me.
Trust me.”

If it came to that, he might even lose interest in
feeding, only doing it often enough to survive. Hurting the vampire
who’d taken Tam away from him would become his new obsession.

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t want to hurt Tam. I
just wanted to stop Anthony.”

“It’s worth nothing,” Cain shouted.

Hadrian shuddered and jerked in the
chains as the demon pressed a silver cross against his chest. Part
of Cain was disturbed his reaction was so strong to the witch being
in trouble, but he shoved it down. The witch was
his
. That alone was
enough to torture the filth who’d taken her.

Chapter Fourteen

Tam groaned as she struggled to sit up, her eyes
still shut against the light. She felt like she had a hangover. A
cup of water was pressed into her hands as another hand stroked
through her hair. For the briefest moment, she felt safety as she
gulped the water gratefully down—until she heard his voice.

“I thought you might sleep right through the full
moon.”

Jack.

She recoiled from his hand, fighting to keep the
water down.

“Oh, don’t be that way,” he said. “You loved me
once.”

“Before you became a psycho,” Tam said. The power
he’d absorbed from murdering the members of his coven was beginning
to take a toll on him. You couldn’t make up crazy like this. His
eyes were wild and a little unfocused. Unpredictable. While
intellectually she knew she had a couple of days before he killed
her, maybe time enough to find a way to escape... with Jack, you
just couldn’t know.

Despite the moon coming and its ritual significance
and the kind of power boost it would give him to drain the blood
from the last remaining cycler on that night, he could lose his
shit and kill her at any time.

“So this is where it ends?” Her voice was hoarse
when she spoke. That was the fear coming out. Yes, she’d wanted
out, but not like this, not the way Jack was going to do it. Beyond
the coming pain of the experience, it twisted her stomach to think
he’d done this to her sister.

She should have known this would be where he’d take
her. It was the cavern where the original ritual had been
performed. If she’d been hidden anywhere but the demon dimension,
Jack would have had to work harder to get her here. Irony was a
bitch.

“It seemed poetic,” he said. “What could be more
powerful than completing the cycle here? You’ll die in the same
place you were reborn. I saved you for last because I thought you’d
appreciate that.”

Tam grimaced. “You saved me for last because you’re
obsessed with me.”

He chuckled. “Maybe just a little. I’d still give it
all up for you. I’m strong enough. When I die, I come back an adult
now. With you, I might not be killable at all. Or I might die for
only a few minutes at a time. I’m not sure. I’d like to find out,
but I’ll keep you around. You just have to say the word. We could
rule this place together.”

She sat on a stone altar—a moat had been dug around
it in the ground. They were beside the water where they’d found
that stupid immortal jellyfish. It had been foolish trying to
become gods. They’d thought keeping the same form, remembering
everything, would be a blessing, would give them power. But in the
end, all it had been was a curse that had slowly eaten away at her
sense of what it meant to be human.

She stood and jumped over the moat. Jack didn’t try
to stop her. He just backed out of her way, giving her space to
wander.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I’ve brought some food
for us.”

Tam’s head whipped around, trying to figure out if he
was kidding, but he seemed sincere. For the moment, his fantasies
of world domination and ultimate power must have taken a backseat
to his fantasies of riding off into the sunset. Lucky her.

“I’ll just go get it,” he said.

Jack disappeared down a dark path that she knew led
to the entrance of the cavern. No sense in trying to escape, yet.
He’d gone toward the only exit.

As she paced, she tried to think of how to play it.
Could she stomach seducing him after what he’d done to her
sister?

Probably not. But
if
she could... wouldn’t
it buy her an opportunity to get away? He might drop his guard if
he was thinking about their future together, instead of eating her
internal organs. Such a fine line with him.

Then what? She was back to running, stuck in this
form. But she could get back to Cain. It was odd that should be her
thought. Shouldn’t she want free of him? She put her hand against
the mark he’d left on her throat with his fangs. It tingled when
she touched it.

She wanted to believe it was just their blood
connection that made her feel this way, but she’d felt it before
their blood had exchanged, and she still felt like she had a
choice—even now. Being with Cain wasn’t some magical foregone
conclusion, and she was sure it was the same from his end. They
weren’t drone-like slaves. The mark hadn’t been in effect long
enough. And anyway, he’d initiated it.

She wondered if she’d start getting the dreams Anna
had gotten with Luc. Seeing into Cain’s past was a prospect that
both intrigued and terrified her, but the bond was still so new,
and it hadn’t been done like Anna’s had. Perhaps she wouldn’t dream
at all.

With regards to the demon, she was torn. At
times, Cain seemed oddly normal, but then, she knew how that
worked, how one hid their age and tried to pick up on the current
trends of the times to blend in. If they both dropped the
affectations they’d picked up over the centuries, they’d be like a
couple of old fossils. Nobody else would understand them. And
wasn’t that what she liked about him? That they were like the last
two members of a secret club that had found each other long enough
to do the secret handshake?

She was still angry with him for trying to lock her
up in the caves. For her protection or not, it was a shitty thing
to do. She thought about the tarot spread again. Maybe she was
meant for Cain and he for her. It didn’t matter now. It was too
late. And no matter what she wanted to be true, she couldn’t decide
if he was toying with her or not. As long as he’d been around and
resisted settling down, he must have figured out all possible
permutations of mind games.

What he said and what he meant could be opposite
things. Even what he did and the intention behind it could be that
way. Her experience with Jack had killed her optimism for men. She
just didn’t want to be some stupid girl waiting for Cain to ride up
full of self-righteous vengeance to sweep her away like a fairy
tale. It wasn’t like they had the big epic love. Ninety percent of
their time together had been a grudge fuck—or a power struggle,
using sex as the weapon they had both learned to wield.

“What are you thinking about?”

Tam jumped, too lost inside her head to hear Jack’s
return. His voice came out soft and needy, like he was still
planning a white picket fence and evil babies. Even the idea of
seducing him—even if it would take her back to Cain, and even if
Cain wanted her back—made her skin crawl like little ants.

“Nothing,” she replied.
My demon lover
seemed
like the kind of answer that would get her spleen ripped out in
short order. Because no matter how sane and puppy-like he seemed
this second, things could shift at any time.

“No, it’s something.” He moved toward her and put a
hand on her arm, closing his eyes.

She tried to pull away, not sure what he was doing,
but then she remembered one of the coven’s witches had seen visions
when they touched things or people. But it was too late for Tam to
stop her thought train or get away from him.

His expression was closed and cold when he opened his
eyes. “I see.” The jealousy over no doubt seeing her in the demon’s
arms was only barely concealed beneath the surface. “Well, I guess
you’ve made your choice. You’ve ripped out my heart, Tam. Do you
know that? So I think I’ll eat yours when the moon is right.”

“It meant nothing,” Tam said, taking an instinctive
step back. The moment she said it, she knew how deep the lie ran.
And so did Jack.

“Save it, you little whore. I knew you’d been with
others, but this... a demon? And you think to judge me? At least
I’m still human.”

Jack hadn’t been human for a long time.

She wanted to throw an energy ball at him so badly
she could barely contain it, but escalating to that kind of
violence with a sorcerer much stronger was too foolish even for her
short temper. Instead, she used words.

“Please tell me you’re kidding. You’ve violently
murdered all our friends, the only people who understood who and
what we are because they were the same, and you think I’m the bad
one for having a little sex, no matter who the partner was?”

Even if she’d thought to play the role of seductress
to get out of this mess, and even if Jack wouldn’t be onto her
game, she’d lost her stomach for it.

She didn’t know why she defended her actions. He was
treating her like she’d betrayed him, like she’d cheated on him.
Apparently her leaving him hadn’t been a strong enough indicator
that they’d broken up.

“You know we’re not a couple,” she said.

“Not now, we aren’t. Until about three minutes ago,
I still thought it could work.”

“Then you’re delusional. You
killed
my sister! You
killed nearly all my friends. You thought I was going to roll over
and cuddle with you after that?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Your lover is a killer, too.
He’s killed more women than you could count.” There was still the
note of jealousy in his voice, like he wanted to play some martyr
role. Like he was the victim in all this and somehow the good
guy.

“You chose power over me, Jack. You think I don’t
know Cain has killed? You think I’m stupid enough to whitewash it?
I know what he is, but I also know he’s not human. It’s what he has
to do to avoid suffering.” The demon couldn’t really die, after
all, just starve and suffer indefinitely if he went on a hunger
strike. “You had a choice. Besides, Cain hasn’t killed anybody I
love.”

She didn’t feel like getting into the grayness of the
Anna situation. Since Anna had come back as Luc’s mate, and Tam
hadn’t really lost her, and Cain hadn’t had completely evil
motivations, she tried to just skirt right around that issue.
Either way, it wasn’t like what Jack had done to her sister, or the
rest of their coven for that matter.

Part of her wished Jack would just go ahead and kill
her to spare her and get it over with so they wouldn’t have this
stupid argument like an old married couple for the next two days.
That might be even more painful and annoying than the ritual.

***

Cain stepped out of the caves, wiping Hadrian’s blood
off his hands. The vampire had lasted longer than he’d expected,
nearly a human day. He hadn’t killed him, even though Hadrian had
finally given up the information he needed. He wanted to leave him
to suffer more. And if Tam didn’t survive, he wanted to start on
him again. He tried to shut out that possibility.

The others were waiting impatiently when he got back
into town. Greta had fallen asleep curled up next to Dayne, and a
few of the others seemed like they were about to drop as well.
About a hundred of his demons were gathered, waiting for word.
Among them were Daria and Jackson, several of the demons who had
guarded Tam, and some who apparently didn’t think she was all that
bad. Either that, or they understood the value of stopping Jack
before the world slipped into complete chaos.

Cain cleared his throat, and a few of those who had
been snoozing sat up. “I’m going to need everybody to rest or feed.
Whatever you need to do to replenish. The vampire finally gave up
Jack’s location as well as other information. I was very
persuasive. We’re going in tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night? Why not now?” Anna demanded. “Luc,
are you going to let him...”

Luc shook his head at her in warning, and Cain
continued, used to the woman’s histrionics by now. “We can’t fight
him before tomorrow night. He has to start the ritual. It’ll be his
one weak moment when he’s absorbing her power. He’ll be unable to
defend himself, and that’s when we’ll all strike.”

He worked to keep his face
indifferent. It had become exhausting wearing this mask. Jack might
not kill her before the full moon, but he could be doing anything
to her in the meantime. It wasn’t hard to imagine what The Cycler
might like to do with his former lover. And Cain couldn’t stop him
from hurting her. He’d lose the battle
and
the war if he did. Still, the
demon wanted nothing more than to blaze in and rip the bastard’s
head off.

“If he’ll be so weak, why does it take us all?”
Anthony snarked, not happy with having to play the minion role.

“Do you want to take any chances?
We’re going to go in and annihilate him. I don’t do
losing
. We have plenty
of firepower to bring him down, but it’ll take a lot to kill him.
There are only two ways they die for real, by the hand of one of
their own, or by a very strong and old preternatural being, using
their power. I can throw a bunch of fire at him, but I can’t
actually do him in. Do any of you girl demons want to fuck
him?”