Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 (44 page)

But Asher wasn’t looking at me. His jaw was clamped so tight I could practically hear his molars grinding, and he was looking at the layout of the land with hard eyes.

“I want you to go home now. Get back to the carnival and stay there. I’ll come find you.”

I cocked my head. “That’s not how this thing is gonna work, Asher.” Standing, I tapped his chest until he looked at me. “You hear me? I’m not running from this like some coward.”

His nostrils flared. “I’ve seen the messes you get yourself in, and I’d rather know you’re safe. Please,” he finally grunted.

And even though I knew he was coming from an honest place, I also knew that if I let him dictate to me now, things would only get worse later. “If you’re serious about being with me.”

“You know I am,” he ground out.

I touched his chest. “Then respect me as a peer and a fighter. You know what I can do. I’m not going to do anything stupid, I vow it. But don’t you dare try to coddle me or we’ll have problems, you and me.”

“Being with you isn’t going to be easy, is it?”

I laughed. “Did you honestly think it would be?”

“I’d hoped.”

“I’ll go back, but it’s because I want to and I know it’s the right thing to do. I can’t stomach Grace right now—I have to digest all this.”

“And you should.”

“Yeah.” I tucked my thumbs in my jean loops. “I want to bury the bodies.”

“Okay.”

I was surprised that there was no pushback. Luc would have given me a withering look, telling me in so many words how weak I was that I cared. But Asher didn’t. He helped me dig three graves, and when we covered them back up with dirt, he murmured something below his breath.

I’m not sure what, a benediction maybe? He was a priest after all, even if he was the most unconventional one known to mankind.

“What are you going to tell Grace?” I asked after I finished placing the final stone to mark their graves. “She sent me here to find a hive. Seems like we’ve found something. What more is there to know?”

Pulling me into his arms, he nodded. “Yeah, but you’re smart and intuitive, and it can’t be a coincidence that the same humans who disappeared suddenly showed up here.”

“Asher, how can you be so sure that Grace isn’t part of this giant conspiracy? You say it all as planned, but—”

His finger was gentle when he placed it against my lips.

“Deep down you know I’m telling the truth, that Grace is on our side. It’s why I didn’t let you kill her that night. She is the only one standing between us and Armageddon.”

I shivered. No demon liked to even think of the end of days. Let’s just say things weren’t going to turn out so good for us.

“Do you think the Order is setting me up again?”

“Yeah.” His eyes were hard and dangerous, and I was suddenly so grateful that he was on my side. Asher wasn’t an enemy you ever wanted to have. “I do. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, and then we’re going to kill anyone involved.”

I
didn’t particularly enjoy leaving Asher alone in the desert. I’d offered to trace him to Grace’s (much as I hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near her), but he’d sworn he’d have no problem getting to her.

Fact was he was a big boy. Asher had gotten along without me just fine in the past, he’d do it now.

I shed the dusty layers of my clothes the second I got in the bedroom. I shucked off my jeans and tossed my used-to-be black, now mostly reddish-brown tank top onto the floor. Dusk was fast approaching. I’d be manning my Ferris wheel tonight, which was exactly what I needed, some freaking normalcy for once.

I smelled the sulfur a split second before a hard hand slammed down on the bathroom doorknob.

Closing my eyes, I waited for Luc to bark or snap or do something. But as the silence stretched tighter than a rubber band, I knew he was waiting for me to give him an explanation.

“Luc, please. I have to shower.”

“You look fine to me.” He wasn’t paying me a compliment, trust me.

Turning, pressing my back against the door, I lifted a brow. Luc had seen me naked more times than I could count, plus this body had never been much of a turn-on for him.

“I smell his stench all over you.” His nostrils flared. “Surprised to see you back.”

“Did you think he was taking me out there to slit my throat?”

Lips thinning, he just continued to give me the evil eye.

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have time for your crap tonight, Luc. I just can’t deal right now.”

He laughed, the sound dripping disgust. “But you sure as hell have enough time for him, don’t you?”

“What’s the matter, Luc?” I hissed. “Don’t like it that someone else is actually paying attention to me? Actually giving me what I need?”

“I can give you what you need. I always have!” His blue eyes began to swirl with bands of deepest lavender.

Flinching, I averted my gaze, in no mood to be sucked into his game. Not tonight. Not again.

“No, Luc, all I ever wanted from you was to admit even just once that you loved me.”

“Love.” He scoffed, shoving away from the door, and the air was no longer so charged or electrical. Having Luc’s eyes focused solely on you was like being trapped in the snare of an advancing predator that was ready to rip out your throat. “He loves you, oh how sweet. Why don’t you go tattoo his name on your ass while you’re at it?”

“Dammit, Luc!” I shoved him so hard he bounced against the mattress. Any other person would have fallen unceremoniously onto it. But not Luc, not mister cold, suave, and heartless. Somehow he’d managed to defy gravity so as not to appear foolish. “I never said he loved me, I said I only ever wanted you to give me that. It’s what I offered you, my bleeding, broken, shriveled-up heart on a platter. I wanted you and you almost killed me. Why? Why can’t you just let go of that demon pride and show me the truth?”

“You want to know the truth?” He snarled and then he was on me, pressing into my space again, hard body pinning me against the door as he breathed heavily.

My heart was a jagged, tearing thing trying to rip out of my chest. I sensed his wildness, his demon clamoring for release. But it wouldn’t have been for sex. Once, Luc had almost killed me.

The night I’d confessed my love to him. He’d taken my words and stomped on them, then stabbed me with a spelled knife that had forever left its mark on me. I now bore a jagged scar in the shape of a twisted heart on my breast, a silent reminder that I could never open myself up to another again.

Never allow my humanity to control me.

It was why what I was doing with Asher scared me to death. I wouldn’t survive it again.

A grinding rumble vibrated through my chest. I sensed Luc trying to gain control of himself, so I didn’t move, didn’t stir. Anything would unleash that wildness in him, and even though I sometimes hated Luc, a part of me would never stop loving him. He was my first.

And Asher would destroy him if he ever harmed me. So I let Luc breathe me in, let him do whatever it was that he needed to do to get himself contained. Cold. Detached.

A minute passed.

Then two.

On the third, he slowly released me, taking steady steps back until ten feet separated us.

Luc was about as beautiful a male as they came. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, with a five-o’clock shadow on his normally polished face. His eyes were bright, as if he’d been drinking himself into a stupor for hours, though of course we couldn’t get drunk.

“What did you learn out there?”

And just like that, we were back to where we always were—him denying that he ever felt a thing, me disgusted. At him, at myself, at the whole damn situation.

Flicking at a stray thread on the cuff of his white silk shirt, he was once again cold and immaculate.

I banged my head on the door and chuckled softly. Fine, he wanted to play that game? Whatever.

“I found three bodies out there. They were the ones missing from yesterday.”

“Juanita and Carlos?” His tone was cordial, sophisticated and almost polite, were it not for the slight growl in it.

“Yes. And the man at the taco stand.”

He licked his canine, then started pacing. “They were obviously planted there by the Order.”

“That’s what Asher thinks too.”

His eyes narrowed. “Who’s Asher?”

“The priest, that’s his real name. It’s not Billy.”

He was so still I could visibly make out the throbbing of his pulse in his neck. “What else did you learn about your
priest
?”

From now on there’d be nothing but transparency between Luc and me, because I was done keeping secrets. In order for us to figure this thing out, to learn what the Order was really up to, there had to be trust. So I would share anything that mattered to the case.

“He’s working with Grace.”

Frozen. He’d gone completely cold. His eyes. His body. Luc wasn’t just pissed, he was volcanic. “He’s working with Grace? Do I need to remind you how that ended for you? For Kemen?”

I flinched. Didn’t matter that I’d thought the same exact thing, because Luc was saying it to hurt me. “Low blow, Luc.”

“Someone needs to wake you up. What the hell are you thinking? Do you honestly think you can trust him? He’s a death priest,” he bit out.

“He says Grace is still on our side, that they’re working together against somebody.” God, that sounded lame even to me. I rubbed my temples.

It was crazy that I was buying this. But I was, one hundred and ten percent. It wasn’t Asher’s words that had convinced me, because anyone can lie.

But a touch, a caress. That doesn’t lie. It never does. I’m skilled at the art of seduction, at doing and saying one thing while thinking another. And I would know if he was lying.

Yes, maybe I’m saying all this right now to force myself to believe it. But there was so much more than wanting his body. For once it wasn’t Lust driving this bus.

“He says, huh? Well, that’s just great.” Luc snorted. “Glad to know that’s all it takes these days. Tell me, Dora, how long did you make him wait before giving it to him?”

My hand was on his face before I even had time to think. Scarlet throbbed on his cheek and he just stood there, still and silent as death, staring at the carpet.

I covered my mouth with my still-aching hand and shook my head. “Don’t you ever imagine yourself above me.” I literally vibrated with anger. It was one thing to have another breed of Nephilim mock me for the demon I was slave to, it was another to have one of my own turn his nose up at me.

Glacial blue eyes rolled toward me. “You have ten minutes to change. Lilith took the night off—you’re taking the fortune-teller booth.”

“Luc, wait.” I grabbed his hand, wanting to make things right. He’d had no right to talk to me as he had, but I should never have slapped him. He was my boss, my mentor, and once upon a time, a friend.

Sliding his hand out of mine, he turned and traced away without saying another word.

This thing with Asher was so new, so scary, and Luc was my compass. And yes, the compass was cracked and broken, but it’d always pointed to true north. Now the dial was spinning and I wasn’t sure what to do.

I took a two-minute shower, dressed in my most garish, sparkly red mermaid dress, and applied an obscene amount of makeup to my face to heighten the mystique. Then I grabbed a lady’s top hat with a black lace veil and silky gloves that rolled up to my elbows and started for the door with barely a minute to spare.

Touching the wood of the frame lovingly, I glanced back at the bed. “Sandman, I sure miss you tonight.”

And for just a second, I could have sworn I heard the rumble of his snore. It was enough.

~*~

HIS EYES WERE old, his face weather hardened. The man sat across from me at the two-top fortune-teller’s table, wetting his lips and drumming his fingers nervously. I wasn’t a mind reader or seer.

But all Neph are intuitive, some more than others. Lilith was by far and away the best at it, and I hated having to take up the mantle. I didn’t suck at this gig, but it was my least favorite in Diabolique. Mainly because humans came to me to fix their problems, and it was easy to bullshit my way through when all they wanted was sex or drugs or something else vain and stupid.

It really bothered me though when they came to me with the stench of desperation, not for worldly gain, but to simply figure out a solution for how to survive.

“My crops.” His aged voice trembled. “It is all my grandson has to survive on. I am an old man; my time comes any day now. But my grandson is only thirteen. Last year our crops failed and this year the cabbage and beans both are disease riddled. Please, Madam Mariposa (which meant Madam Butterfly in Spanish), please tell me this nightmare is going to end soon. We will not survive another failed year.”

I swallowed and took a deep breath, remembering to sit up straight, shoulders back, and stared deep into his eyes. Lilith was always in character, always on. She’d told me once that an air of confidence was what sold it. What kept the crowds clamoring night after night to her red-lit tent.

But Lilith was also a Greed demon and those sapphire-eyed freaks took their job of gain very, very seriously. This wasn’t just a job for me. It’s why I hated doing this crap, because every time I got a client like Mr. Moreno, I wanted to make the impossible possible.

Pursing my painted, ruby-red lips, I grabbed his hand and squeezed. I tilted my chin haughtily and spoke an octave lower than my normal range. “Arquimedes.”

His crinkled eyes grew huge and his breathing hitched; the pounding of his heart was a turbulent bump bump in my ears. No, I didn’t know him and hadn’t known what his name actually was until Lilith’s assistant—Greta (an Envy demon with mad pickpocketing skills)—had whispered it in my ear just seconds before the man sat.

“The ground is angry.” I was totally winging it here. “You’ve planted atop an ancient burial site…”

It was so easy to sell superstition in this part of the world. It pricked my conscience that I was gaming this poor man. But this was part of the deal—make them buy what you were selling.

“I did not know that.
Dios mío
, what do I do?”