Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 (58 page)

The sharp angles of his face were set in harsh lines when he said, “Priests are immune to Nephilim dark arts, but we are not immune to either LCD or HCD. Caste powers can kill us.”

Pestilence had been a lower caste demon when I’d killed him, instantly absorbing his powers as my own. It also explained why his powers seemed infinitely stronger than Lust’s.

“Why can Luc handle it?” I asked.

His thumb rubbed my cheek. I loved when he touched me. I loved that he not only wanted to but seemed to enjoy it as much as I did.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because he’s possessed by more than one demon, just like you.”

While that might be true, I wasn’t entirely convinced. When Wrath had called to me, I’d felt like my soul was going to explode from my chest if I didn’t do as he said. And when Vyxen had grabbed me, I’d tossed her through a wall. She’d been shaky for a day afterward.

It seemed to bother Luc, but not with the same force. Luc could take it—no one else could.

“I hate that I can’t help you.” Hard lines formed around his eyes.

Smoothing my fingers down them, I shook my head. “I know.”

“Luc!” Asher snapped, still cradling me tight to his chest.

The bite marks and scrapes on his body were gone by the time Luc reappeared. Lifting a brow, he glanced between us.

“Luc.” I didn’t need to ask him to help me, he understood.

Walking up to us, he pointed at the wall. “Give her to me, and you stand over there.”

A fierce growl tore from Asher’s lips and his fingers dug into me as if he didn’t want to let me go, especially not to Luc.

Patting his hand, I nodded. “He’s right, Ash. I don’t want any part of it touching you.”

With an air of superiority, Luc snatched me from Ash’s arms and tucked me into his chest. His musk of Nephilim (a mix of sex and man) intoxicated me. He was pumping out a flood of pheromones.

“Luc, turn it down.” I shuddered, feeling Lust begin to stir in response.

That’s just what we needed, for Luc to get her primed and ready in front of Asher.

“Now!” I snapped when he didn’t obey right away.

Immediately the smell ratcheted down. Asher was glaring daggers at Luc and the prickle of his own energy washed through the small confines of the room.

Deciding to just ignore the power play, I closed my eyes and called to Pestilence. The demon surged forward like a well-trained dog. It seemed the more I used his powers, the easier it was to contain and control him.

Visualizing his power not as a metaphorical presence but a tangible one, I gathered the green fog to me like a cloak, wrapping myself up in it tighter and tighter. I felt the pulses of it building and gathering, condensing into a taut helix.

Opening my eyes, I caught Asher’s hot gaze on me.

“One.” Luc’s chest expanded. “Two.”

“Three,” we cried in unison, then his hand clamped down on mine and I screamed as the magma heat of so much power drained from me into him.

Head dropping to his chest, Luc sucked air through his nose. Skin turning gray and clammy, he still hung on until I’d drained the last drop of it.

Free of the fire, I inhaled a sweet breath of air. Luc was on his hands and knees and gasping. Rubbing his back, I dropped my head to his shoulders.

“Was it too much?”

His lashes fluttered, but not before I noticed the unmistakable glow of lavender eyes. And now that I saw that, I realized his thigh muscles were quivering, his arm muscles flexing.

Luc
wasn’t
in pain.

Asher must have realized that at the same moment I did, because he ran to me and snatched me into his arms, clinging tight.

A moaning chuckle echoed through the cave as Luc slowly unfurled to a standing position. “What’s the matter, Priest?”

“Stay away from Pandora.” His hands curled into my biceps.

“Sucks to share her, doesn’t it?” Luc snarled. “And you know I can’t stay away, because you’re not man enough to take it.”

Asher punched him. Hard. And even though Luc’s jaw was now a fiery shade of ruby red, I knew my priest had held back. I felt it in the tenseness of his muscles, in the way he bristled beside me like a rattler coiled to strike. His jaw was clenched so tight his molars were grinding.

Luc just laughed and rubbed his jaw. His eyes were a frosty glacial blue. “No matter what you do, or who you do, you’ll never be rid of me, Dora.” He was talking to me but looking at Asher. “I vow it.”

And then turning, Luc traced out of there.

A
sher and I traced to the chapel across the street from Grace’s adobe home. I needed to talk with her one last time, needed to understand what it was we’d found in that cave and how the Triad was connected to all of this. Who the Triad even was. Just as I made to step out of the shadow Ash had pulled around us, he tugged me gently back.

“Ash?” I asked when he grabbed the arm that’d been bitten earlier but was now flawless, smooth skin again.

Turning it, he dropped a kiss on my elbow. It bothered me that he was letting Luc get to him this way.

“Luc wants what he can’t have,” I whispered, threading my fingers through his soft brown hair.

A stoic, handsome face stared back at me.

“You don’t have to worry about him.”

“You two have a connection, little demon. One I do not share.”

I could lie to him now and he’d accept it as truth, but that wasn’t the foundation I wanted to set for us.

“You’re right.” I nodded. “We do. We have a past. And I did love him. Do love him.”

Brown eyes flicked away. Grabbing his chin, I forced his gaze back to me.

“He’s insane with jealousy. Not because he loves me. But because he can’t have me. He had a lifetime to claim me.”

Moving into him so that he was forced to wrap his arms around me, I brushed my fingers on his chest, over the spot of his heart.

“But the love I feel for Luc is more of the brotherly kind. I don’t want him, and if you walked out of my life, I swear to you he wouldn’t want me either. I’m sport for him, that’s all I’ve ever been.”

Moving his hands up until he cradled the back of my head, he shook his own. “Nothing on this Earth could hurt me.” He lowered his head and the moment was fraught with tension as I felt him grapple with words he wasn’t sure whether to say. The air was charged like the delicate threads of a spider’s web ready to snap up unsuspecting prey. Inhaling deeply, he forced me to hold his gaze before he whispered, “Nothing but you.”

Asher’s dichotomous nature compelled me in ways I didn’t even want to analyze. He was deadly to me. I was the moth to his flame, but even knowing the possibility of death breathed down my neck whenever he was around, his siren song was too hard to ignore.

Leaning forward on tiptoe, I brushed my lips once, twice, three times, against his own until I finally felt him relax and sigh into me.

“I’m drunk on you, Priest.”

Dropping his forehead to mine, he breathed me in and I did the same.

His shadow pulled away and he nodded. “Let’s go talk to Grace.”

When I knocked on the door, there was no answer.

Frowning, I turned to him. “You think she’s not home?”

It was odd, because Grace was always home. She was too old to go out and about anymore. Stepping beside me, Ash knocked harder.

Again, silence.

A lone child playing with a soccer ball across the street stopped and stared at us.

“Something’s wrong,” I murmured, curling my hand into his ruined silk shirt.

Nodding, he tried the handle. It was locked. “Stand back.”

Taking three steps back, I threaded my fingers together. The air popped and tightened a second before Asher slammed his body into the door. It slammed open with a boom.

Papers were scattered everywhere. What little bit of furniture Grace had was ruined. The cushions were slit open and had stuffing popping out of them. The murals on her walls were slashed through and there was a definite smear of blood leading from the living room to the closed bedroom door.

Something crashed in the bedroom.

“Grace,” I cried, running for the room.

Asher got there before me and we were both ready for whatever grisly sight met us. My claws had lengthened and I was fully expecting a charging hive of zombies to rain down on us the second he opened the door.

Grace was gasping, slashing a blade through her assistant Lupe’s stomach. Lupe’s eyes were staring up at the ceiling, filmed over and blue. Just based on that I knew, she’d been dead many hours, maybe even days. Her red shirt was completely unbuttoned, exposing her pink-and-black bra. Her legs were arranged in such a way that it looked like her kneecaps had been blown out so they’d point in the wrong direction.

Grace’s silver hair was dripping gore and coated in blood. Her white muumuu was sprayed a dark red. She reached her hand into Lupe’s gut and yanked on the entrails, dumping them around the body in an exhibitionist style.

“What the hell did you do, Grace?” I growled, unable to believe that one tiny woman had been able to kill a human well in her prime.

That’s when I heard the crash of glass in the bathroom. There was someone else here. Exposing my fangs, I was ready to rip her throat out.

“Not what you think,” Grace huffed, wiping her brow with the back of her hand, streaking the blood so that it looked like a crimson rainbow on her cheek and forehead. “I’ve been made. Lupe double-crossed me.” She pointed with the blade at the body. “I didn’t realize it until I saw her bend over and noticed the mark of the Maltese cross and All-seeing Eye tattoo.”

She closed her eyes and for the first time I scented fear on Grace—it was a thick, cloying stench in my nostrils.

“I don’t know what she’s already given to the Triad, but Pandora, it is no longer safe for you here. You and your family need to get into hiding. Leave, run away.”

I shook my head as the figure from the bathroom finally emerged. It was a blond-haired teenage boy who looked to be no older than seventeen, eighteen max. He was carrying a box overflowing with toiletries and other personal items of Grace’s. His nails were stained red.

Likely he’d been the killer. Stopping, the boy pulled his gaze toward Grace and a glimmer of red rimmed his irises. He wasn’t much to look at, in fact he looked like he could be all of 150 pounds soaking wet. He was tall and lanky and you’d never think to look at him that he was as deadly as he truly was. His faded red shirt was riddled with holes around the collar, and his jeans were a size too large at the hips and too short for his out-of-control hormones, which were causing him to grow at an exponentially rapid rate. Likely what looked raggedy right now had fit him perfectly this morning.

I could scent the musk of wildness thrumming through his veins—he was on the verge of his final metamorphosis, maybe a week away, two max, from becoming the stuff of nightmares and legend.

I knew immediately what he was.

Asher shielded me with his arm. A berserker, even one as insignificant-looking as this boy, could wreak serious havoc.

“Thank you, Thanatos.” Grace nodded. “Grab my safe from underneath the kitchen. We leave in ten minutes.”

Setting the box down gently, Thanatos never took his eyes off us as he backed slowly from the room.

The second he left, I turned to her. “What’s going on, Grace? Aren’t the Triad part of the Order? Who’s the berserker, and why are you arranging Lupe that way?” I needed answers and she was leaving.

Dropping the knife to the ground with a clatter, she looked once again like the aged woman she was. Grace had a manner about her that made people look beyond her age, until she dropped the mask and you realized she was well over eighty and as frail and human as any natural eighty-year-old actually was.

“Dora, we haven’t much time.” She sat on the corner of the bed beside the body. “Thanatos and I will move to a safer location. The Triad knows I’ve double-crossed them. I’m no longer safe here. Once I get to shelter, I’ll reach out to you and help you in whatever way I can.”

“Grace.” Asher dipped his head. “We found a generator in the hive you led us to. It had a sonic bomb set to detonate the moment we destroyed it.”

Nodding, she took a shuddery breath. “I’m not surprised to hear it. The Triad is a nasty bunch. Dora, whatever they’ve found in those scrolls, they must be absolutely certain you are the key. They will come for you and they will not stop.”

“Who’s the Triad?” I snapped, feeling like the grains of sands were quickly running out.

Her rheumy eyes flicked to Asher. “We don’t know for sure. The Triad are three and it’s from them the Order takes their cue. I’ve suspected for some time that they are not human, nor are their intentions entirely honorable for the human race. It wasn’t until I’d heard rumors that they were coming for you that I realized I knew very little of the organization I’d worked with my entire life. That is why I sought out Asher.”

I looked at Asher, who was working his jaw from side to side, his hand still locked on my elbow.

Head buzzing, mind muddled, I felt slow and dumb, confused by everything.

“I don’t believe for one second, Pandora, that you are who they think you are. But as certain of that as I am, I’m equally as certain that you are the key to unraveling this conspiracy.” She took a deep breath.

“Why’d you kill her? Why like this?” I pointed to Lupe’s body.

“It’s a message to them.” She spat on the corpse, then turned to me. “But that’s not important. Dora, she wasn’t worth saving. I discovered her communiqué—she was sharing everything with them. About you, about your family. Everything. When we killed her, Thanatos discovered this in her purse.”

She grabbed a file from beneath the mattress and held it out to me. “I was going to drop it off for you, but since you’re here.”

Thanatos came back in the room then. “We’re ready.”

His voice did not match his body. Soon he’d come into his berserker form. All berserkers looked small for their age when born. To a human they were runts, incredibly little at birth. Undersized even. Until they hit maturation, when their bodies were flooded with the berserker virus, and they became a formidable opponent for any monster, including a Nephilim.