Life Cycle (6 page)

He looked sheepish but quickly recovered his badass
demeanor. “What kind of magic were you doing in here?”

“Just unpacking my things.”

“For what purpose?”

“What do you mean for what purpose? To fucking have
them. To wear normal freaking clothes! You think I want to flounce
around here wearing something a micro-step above a negligee? Are
you for real?”

Cain pushed past her and emptied the bags, sorting
through her things. “I’m taking the books and all magical tools and
herbs and potions. You’ll have no use for them here, and if you
think I’m sitting around while you concoct some incantation to seal
me in a jar for all eternity, you’re insane.”

She wouldn’t tell him that she hardly needed any of
that to incant. She was far past that level. All she needed was her
mind and voice. Even so, it took everything in her to keep her
anger at bay. If Cain intended to kill her, taking her books and
tools away was like he was taking her identity with him. Asking him
to kill her had seemed like a smart option, but if she was going to
just sit on death row waiting for him to lose control with her
while everything that held any meaning in her life was taken
away... It made her blood boil.

She struggled with the last energy reserves she had
to throw a ball of gleaming purple energy at him. He dropped the
books and rounded on her, his eyes glowing red, fangs descending.
He let the demon come out and shifted fully, letting his true face
and form out. He was larger as a demon, with reddish-brown-scaled
skin. Deadly claws forced their way out of larger fingertips, and
horns popped out of his shoulders like antlers. His clothing ripped
from the transformation like a cheesy Hulk movie. In his true form,
he oozed menace and fear and hatred and anger and every bad feeling
in the universe.

His voice was distorted when he spoke. “Do you have a
death wish?”

Maybe someone else would have huddled in a corner and
cried, but Tam wasn’t someone else. “Do you have a thirty-second
memory? We’ve had this conversation. I want you to take me out of
this world. Are you tired of me yet? Bored yet?”

She threw another ball of energy. It had formed much
more slowly than the others, but she didn’t care. She threw it
anyway. Cain leaped out of the way and charged her. He gripped her
wrists so she couldn’t throw any more. The joke was on him, because
she was tapped out.

“Not even close,” he growled. He was still in the
demon form, looking her over like she was prime rib. “Let me tell
you how it’s going to go, little girl. You’ve pissed me off for the
last time. I will take you out when I’m good and ready, but before
I do, I vow I’ll make you love me. You’ll beg me to keep you. And
then I’ll laugh and kill you.”

Tam was out of magic, but not out of stupidity. She
spit in his face.

He let go of her and glared. Tam rubbed her wrists
where he’d held them so tightly.

“Let me let you in on a secret,” she said. “In order
for me to love you, you’d have to be charming and halfway decent. A
task you’re failing miserably at.” She doubted he could pull off
charming and halfway decent even on his best day.

“I’ve got more experience in the art of seduction
than you’re prepared to handle.” He went back to the circle, packed
up her stuff and lugged it out of the tent behind him. It took him
three trips.

She rushed to the doorway and pulled the tent flap
back to yell at him. “Oh, and taking all my shit? Brilliant first
move. I’ll be swooning by dinnertime.”

The demon guard showed up with a bag from a fast food
joint and a soft drink. She glared at him and ripped it out of his
hands, then went back to her tent. First food. Then nap. Then she
wasn’t sure what, but something.

***

Cain returned to the caves to hide Tam’s books and
tools behind a natural rock formation. When he was sure they were
secure, he headed back into town, still angry with the witch, but
wanting nothing more than to take her again. With his age, he
didn’t need to feed every day, but he often did—just like humans
ate chocolate not out of hunger, but because it tasted good. Unlike
his brother’s situation with Anna when she’d still been a living
human, Cain was confident he could sleep with Tam more frequently
without killing her.

To kill a two-thousand-year-old witch with the level
of power she’d acquired just from living and using it for so long,
he’d have to make an actual effort. He’d have to gorge himself on
her—not an unpleasant way to spend an evening.

But before he killed her, he wanted to make good on
his threat. Maybe it was the danger she posed to him, or maybe it
was his own ego and the fact that he had to use a heavy dose of
thrall to make her give in to him... and even then her smart mouth
still fought to the surface. He would break her. By the time he was
finished, she would be desperate for his approval. And then he’d
toss her aside like all the rest. It was what he had to do. There
was no other acceptable option.

When he got back, Jane, Cole, Anna, and Luc were
standing outside his tent looking impatient and worried.

“Did the meeting run on this long?” It seemed that a
lot of time had passed, though it was so easy to lose track of it
in the demon dimension with no day and no time keeping machines
like clocks or watches.

“We should speak privately,” Jane said.

Cain nodded and led them into his empty tent. “What
is it?”

“It would be convenient if you had a cell phone,”
Cole said.

“Cell phones don’t work between dimensions, and
technology doesn’t work here at all. This place is made of too much
magic. The two interfere and the magic wins.”

Jane and Cole both pulled out their cell phones only
to discover them dead.

“Huh,” Jane said. “So we can’t have TV or Internet
or...”

Cain shook his head, amused. It was
easy to forget Jane was still such a new demon. Of course she would
have known by now that such things didn’t exist in his dimension,
but that they
couldn’t
exist hadn’t penetrated. But then, she’d been preoccupied
with raising her young pup back in the human realm.

“But cell phones are really convenient,” Jane said,
as if it were some arbitrary rule Cain could change.

Luc cleared his throat. “Nobody cares, Jane. We’ve
got more important matters to attend to here than your instant
communication withdrawals. Some day you’ll be glad there’s a place
you can go without those annoying things ringing for your
attention.”

Cole growled. The werewolf alpha didn’t do well when
anyone talked down to his mate. He lost all his sense and reason.
Another thing Cain didn’t find very attractive as a lifestyle.

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Cain
was growing irritated.

“Fine,” Cole said. “The Cycler has struck.”

“Already?” Only two little Indians left.

The pack leader continued, “It’s hit the human media.
It’s bad. Come with us, we need to show you.”

“I’m staying with Tam,” Anna said. Luc nodded and
kissed her, then she left the tent, going right through it in her
ghostly form without Luc to hold onto.

Cain looked away from the display
of affection. There was no reason to be jealous of his brother. In
the mating, Anna had fundamentally changed—a slow transformation
that, over time, would make her more demon than human, but changes
had happened in Luc as well.
He could only
feed from her. L
uc had given up the
freedom of the hunt, the freedom to seduce and kill. He'd given up
what he was as an incubus.

The demon leader growled, and they all looked at
him.

“What?” Luc said, his eyes narrowing.

“Nothing. I was just thinking.”

But Luc knew him too well; the suspicion didn’t leave
his eyes. The man upstairs had royally fucked Cain and all the
other demons he’d created. They could either be free or happy. They
couldn’t have both. Maybe Cain would never be enslaved by his own
guilt, but he’d always known that if he took a mate, his freedom
was over forever. Luc had known it, too. But he hadn’t cared. That
stupid witch had wormed her way into his heart. What was it with
witches and their kind?

Luc couldn’t play around with others. Not based on
some internal moral code, but literally, it wouldn’t work. If he
tried to harm his mate in any way, it would only hurt him twice as
much—that was how tightly he and Anna were linked. Cain had
discouraged his demons from mating, playing up the freedom they’d
lose. In truth, he didn’t want the man upstairs to be right about
anything. He didn’t want to believe his punishment had been
deserved or that it served any rehabilitative purpose. It made it
easier to maintain the anger.

It was mid-morning when they reached the hive in Cary
Town. Cole took the lead—after all, they were his caves that his
pack lived in. The pack showed deference to Jane and Cole, but
pulled back when they saw Cain and Luc.

“They’re all right,” Cole said. “I told you, we have
an alliance with the demons because of Jane.”

Most of the pack relaxed a fraction at the
reassurance, but the rest drew back and tried to make themselves
invisible against the walls.

“Mara, get the television set up, please,” Jane
said. The wolf disappeared down one of the cave’s corridors. She
returned several minutes later, rolling a large cart with a flat
screen TV on it into the center of the main den which served as a
rec room and meeting hall of sorts.

“Please remove all small children back to the living
quarters. We don’t want to frighten them,” Cole said.

Mother wolves ushered children down a separate
hallway. Whatever was about to be revealed, the pack hadn’t seen it
yet.

“All right, brace yourselves. There has been nothing
but this on the news for the past hour.” Jane clicked a button and
the television blinked on.

A newscaster stared out at them with a blank look
plastered on her face as she spoke. “The president has issued a
statement asking that everyone remain calm. We don’t know what this
means yet.”

Jane changed to another channel. This one showed an
image of the crime scene. This time a man on the scene spoke into a
microphone.

“Full information of the state of
the body is not being released, but if the killer is trying to
emulate Jack the Ripper, it doesn’t take much imagination to guess
the grisly details. The alleged killer released a bizarre letter
directly to the media only thirty minutes before the body was
discovered. In this letter he seems to be implying that he
is
Jack the Ripper. Of
course, this is quite impossible.”

“Not everybody is that skeptical,” Cole said.
“Unfortunately.”

On cue, Jane flicked past several more channels until
she stopped on a news special that claimed to be covering all
details on this fascinating case, up-to-the-minute and live.

“This is what we wanted you to see,” Jane said. She
turned the volume up, as if it were necessary. It seemed to be a
weird quirk from her human days: if something is important, make it
louder, even if everyone can already hear it.

“... So you’re in the process of analyzing the
handwriting of this letter?”

An academic type, with Einstein-crazy blond hair and
thin-wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, nodded vigorously.
“That’s right. And what we’ve learned so far is that the
handwriting is remarkably close to the original Ripper letters.
We’ll need to do more intense study, of course, but if it’s not
him, it’s a remarkable forgery.”

“What do you mean, Doctor Horner?
It
must
be a
forgery. Jack the Ripper has no doubt been dead for over a
century.”

The doctor looked at his hands, an embarrassed flush
creeping into his cheeks. “We’ll see what the final tests say.”

Jane flipped through the channels again, worry
creasing her brow. “You know what they’ll find when they run the
final tests. Some will always think it’s a forgery, of course, but
you know how the media is. They’ll amp the Ripper angle. And that’s
not even the worst of it.” She stopped on another station where
angry protesters gathered, chanting around a government
building.

“Stop hiding the truth. We know
what’s out there!” protestors chanted. They held signs that read
things like:
Demons among us, The Ripper
is back, Tell the truth, We’re not alone.

Over the din, a pretty brunette in a raspberry-pink
suit and matching lips spoke into a microphone with the ringleader
of the protest group.

The man she spoke with wore flannel and had wild
eyes. “We’ve always known something like this would happen,” he
ranted, flailing his arms. “It’s time the people knew about magic
and witches and demons and vampires and shapeshifters and all the
rest. They’re out there. They’re all out there, and they’ve been
preying on us for years. It’s time the truth came out.”

The reporter raised an eyebrow. “Could you elaborate
on that thought, sir?”

“You heard me. The world we live in isn’t the world
we think we live in. People need to wake up to what’s out there and
fight for their freedom!”

“A-and what do you think the killer is?” The woman
looked like she was watching a train wreck, too morbidly fascinated
to look away or stop the cameras rolling.

“He could be anything. But he’s evil. They all are.
We have to rally the people together, make sure the world knows,
and stop this. Stop it now.”

Jane clicked off the TV and Cain just stared, trying
to absorb it all.

“They can’t possibly take any of that seriously,” he
said, still not believing what he’d seen. How could the human world
become so unsettled in such a short period?