Red Demon (19 page)

“You’re a monk, huh? Yeah, get thee to a wiseassery.”

“
Kolos
,” Ari muttered, hurling a pillow at his brother’s head.

“
Pousti
,” came the laughing reply, as Jax turned out the overhead light. “Get some sleep. I think you’re going to need it. I have a feeling your life’s just changed forever.”

Ari wanted to share that enthusiasm. The problem, however, was that he just couldn’t shake the eerie, unsettling feeling that Mason Angel was going to be a threat. To Juliana, her safety, her new life—and to the love Ari still shared with her. Mason might be troubled and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but one fact remained. He was nothing if not deadly vigilant in his duties as a hunter.

“M
ace, it’s damned near two in the morning.” Jamie stood at the opening to the wine cellar that concealed the Deadly Nightshades’ lore. The hidden room cealed the Deadly Nightshades’ lore. The hidden room contained five generations of accumulated knowledge and expertise about demon fighting. A few key ancient texts were kept in special glass storage units with temperature and moisture control; the rest were on pine shelves that sagged in the middle, worn by time and familial usage.

“What are you doing exactly?” Jamie pressed, walking into the room.

“Trying to find some proof about that female,” Mason said. “Something to show that she’s a demon.”

Jamie caught his arm. “Knock yourself out down here, but the Oracle herself signed on, and so did Emma and Sophie.”

“Shit.”

“And . . .” Jamie sighed heavily before adding, “I hate to break it to you, but so did your baby sis.”

Mason looked up at that one. “Shay didn’t believe me?”

“She accepts Juliana, but that’s not really the same thing as not believing you.”

“Of course it is.”

Jamie shook his head. “No, but the Delphic word of four Daughters, Mace . . . that’s pretty strong corroboration.”

“When your own family won’t stand with you . . .” He let the words trail off, realizing then that something had been changing between his siblings and himself. One of those minute, grain-of-sand-at-a-time-type subtleties that became obvious only in a crisis. Without his noticing, some essential faith or trust had begun ebbing away.

Jamie crouched down in front of him and made a great show of neatening the stack of books. “Mace, it’s just . . . you’re the only one who’s getting the red alert on this one.”

Mason searched through the pile, agitated. His adrenaline was rushing so intensely, it was as if he were in a fire-fight with only moments to lead his marines to safety. If he couldn’t make the cadre understand that this “Juliana” was related, somehow, to the female Djinn he’d encountered in Iraq, she might lash out at him again. By attacking, maybe even killing someone else he loved . . . like Jamie or Shay or Emma. Or, God forbid, Nikos.

His heart began thundering harder.

“Damn,” he said, dusting off the stack with his palm. “This cellar’s dirtier than some of those fleapits I had to sleep in over there.”

Over there! Over there!
The tune marched right up into his brain, catapulting him to a roadside. Up ahead in the convoy, an IED had exploded. The radio was going nuts, acrid smoke making his eyes and nostrils burn.

Mason blinked back the vivid images, struggling to stay in the moment. When he spoke, he heard his own voice from the end of a tunnel. “We both know that in warfare, all it takes is letting your guard down once,” he explained distantly. “Relying too much on routine. Betraying that weakness to the enemy. One false move and a whole platoon dies. Or a civilian . . .”

“Well, Ari’s friend isn’t that kind of threat, Mace.” Jamie actually laughed a little. Trying to make light of things. He’d always, always pulled that maneuver.

“Remember how we used to bring dad his dinner down here? When he worked late?” Mason asked. “Mom would make us do that, remember?”

Jamie nodded with an understanding grin. “Yeah, nobody wanted to come to the cellar at night.”

“You used to laugh when it was my turn.”

“Really? I don’t recall that.”

“I do. Know what else I remember?” Mason asked. “That you’d poke me in the ribs and take the plate down for me. You’d try to protect me, even though I wanted to scream at your back, tell you I wasn’t afraid of the bogey-man . . . and it wasn’t because my demon sight was awakening. It was all the stuff I couldn’t see, all those unseen forces that scared me most.”

Mason stared down at the book he’d opened, studying a reproduction of an ancient sketch. It depicted a warrior with thick, roping muscles. He was an epic creature, presumably intended to represent one of the Nephilim. In his arms, he held a winged female, stunningly beautiful, with hair that wound about her hips and the giant’s. The image was erotic and sensual but also threatening, possibly lethal.

Mason looked up and met his brother’s eyes without blinking. He felt the muscle in his right jaw begin ticking. “I
told
you what I saw in the desert, James. You
know
what I encountered there.”

Jamie hit him with a gaze like high beams. “Whoa, now. You saying this has something to do with that female Djinn that spooked you so bad over in Iraq?”

“Everything to do with it.” Mason sucked in a breath. “I lost someone over there, to that demon. Someone I really cared about, and it was ugly and violent and . . .” Mason rubbed at his temples, forcing himself to continue. “I can still see the look in that demon’s eyes, the way they glowed, the smell coming off her skin. Rank, man. Death masquerading as life. I’ve only ever seen that same expression one other time . . . and it was tonight. The same hunger, same piercing, draining stare,” Mason said, squaring his chin. “I’m gonna figure out the connection, and when I do . . .” He made a motion like he was cocking a semiautomatic. “I’m gonna get my payback.”

Jamie shook his head warily. “Vengeance isn’t a good motive, bro.”

“This is protection. I can’t let that Juliana hurt you or Shay or Emma or . . . Nikos. Not any of y’all.”

“Nikos, huh?” Jamie’s voice was odd, pitched higher than usual.

“Any of you,” Mason rushed to explain, but Jamie didn’t back down.

“Funny how you and Nik just get closer and closer, while you and I only drift further apart.”

Mason blinked, his heart suddenly thundering. “That’s not true,” he denied after a moment. “I . . . Why would you say that?”

“If I asked Nikos about this person you lost, the one you cared about over in Iraq, would he know more—or less—than I do?”

Mason blushed, staring at his hands, only then realizing that they’d begun to shake. He could never confess the truth about Kelly or Nikos to his macho, totally hetero big brother. Jamie would never regard him the same way again, never consider him the strong, capable marine he’d once been, or the kick-ass demon hunter that he
still
was. Yet—and this fact galled him worst of all—he had no doubt that Nikos’s masculinity would remain untarnished in Jamie’s admiring eyes. He could practically hear Jamie excusing those ancient inclinations away with a “that was their training, how they bonded.”

The heat in his face blazed even hotter as he struggled to explain away the relationship in question. “Nik is a decent guy; that’s all,” he mumbled awkwardly.

“Who probably knows all this secret crap you’re hauling around like sixty pounds of fighting gear on your back, Mace. I’m your brother, not him, so tell me about this person you cared about and lost.”

Mason scrubbed a palm over his bristling hair. “It’s not that . . . Nikos doesn’t make me talk. I can just be quiet around him, you know?” He looked up, hoping Jamie would understand. “It’s not that I can’t tell you shit. It’s just he’s cool with me
not
talking.”

“I am, too, but that’s not the question I asked.”

Mason blinked back at his brother.

“Who did you lose in Iraq, Mace? Was it really a married woman or something? Is that why you’ve kept it so quiet? I mean, whatever it is, there’s no shame. Were you in love with her? Is that it?”

Oh, I was in love, all right
, he thought, his breath catching hard. But Jamie was waiting for some kind of answer, and he deserved at least part of the truth. Mason opened his mouth, then closed it, then stammered, “She . . . she . . .” He practically choked on the dishonest word, the betrayal that it represented to Kelly’s memory. He tried again. “She . . . was . . .”

“She
was
married, wasn’t she?” Jamie said, sitting back with a satisfied look—as if he’d solved the riddle. Then he leaned forward, a much kinder expression in his eyes. “That’s got to be why you’re keeping all of it a secret. Because she had a husband. Were there kids, too?” Jamie rambled on, as cocky as always that he’d nailed the facts like a bull’s-eye at midnight.

“No, no, not married. A sergeant,” Mason said awkwardly, forcing the words like pumping water from a rusty spigot. “Name was Kelly. Kelly O’Connell . . . ,” he began, swerving around the pronoun problem. “
Kelly
was a sergeant, in my battalion. We were just, well, good friends from the start. A big group of us would go out, and Kelly was a killer pool player, and that became a thing with us. Whipped my ass most every time, too.”

Jamie’s eyes flared. “That’s hot. A woman who can drop ’em in the pocket like that.”

“There wasn’t anything Kelly ever did that . . .
she
, you know, couldn’t excel at. Challenged me that way. So we started dating stateside, and then I got transferred and we were in the same unit, and that was awkward. Things just got weird over there in Iraq, not like we could fraternize or date, not when you’re fighting insurgents and eating sand twenty-four seven. And then . . .”

Mason buried his face in his hands. The thought of spewing these lies about Kelly and their relationship was almost more than he could bear. Especially to Jamie, who’d been his best friend for their whole lives, such a loyal brother, and who’d tried to understand how lost Mason had felt for the past months.

He felt his brother’s reassuring hand on his shoulder. Looking up, he found Jamie squatting right beside him. “Go on,” he said with a firm nod. “Tell the rest.”

Mason sucked in a breath. “Kelly was killed by the demon. The one I told you I saw.” He kept the words staccato, gender neutral. “That Djinn . . . caught me in Kelly’s arms, and it set her off. She attacked me, and Kell got caught in the cross fire.”

The truth flashed through his mind—an image of Kelly moving to protect him, absorbing the demon’s assault with his own mortal body. A marine always watched his buddy’s back; he’d give his very soul to protect the ones he loved.

He kept those words to himself. “Kelly died because that demon wanted me, Jamie,” he continued. “Wanted me bad, had some kind of obsession . . . wanted to have sex with a hunter, she said. There was some kind of power she sought to gain by seducing me.”

The words came tumbling out, the story of how she’d come to them in that clandestine doorway, appearing as a beautiful woman with hip-length flowing hair, packing hot curves. Then she’d revealed her true nature, claws and all, murdering Kelly in the process.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Mace?” Jamie had settled right beside him, the two of them leaning against their father’s old rolltop desk, the only light the antique green lamp above.

Mason clutched one of the dusty volumes against his chest. “I couldn’t . . . just couldn’t talk about it.” He managed to squeeze the words out of his tight throat, feeling relieved at what he’d just confessed, but even more broken by all that he’d concealed. “My heart was just turned to stone inside me, man,” he mumbled. “After losing . . . Kelly.”

“So talk to me now.”

“I am. I’m blabbing my ever-loving ass off.”

“You’re telling me more than you have before, sure.”

Why was it his big brother sounded so totally dubious? Like some shrink poking around inside his head, hoping to expose all the dark secrets lurking there.

“I’m telling you the important shit, man!” he shouted suddenly, rubbing a shaking palm over his heart. “I don’t talk about this, not to nobody.”

“Except Nikos. You talk to him a lot,” Jamie reminded him again.

“So the fuck what?” Mason barked, bounding to his feet. “Why the hell should you care who I spend my time with?”

“Look at you,” Jamie said quietly. “You’re sweating bullets right now. Your eyes are darting all around. That tells me you’re hiding something.”

Panicked, Mason began pacing the small wine cellar. “I gotta move. . . .” He should go upstairs, where he could breathe. Rivulets of sweat were running down his spine, making his polo shirt cling to his skin. He glanced toward the steps that led to the main floor, needing to break free.

But if he went upstairs, that would feel too open, exposed, where the enemy could strike. Vaguely, he understood he was in the middle of one of his attacks, but that didn’t mean he was capable of stopping it. “I can’t just sit here,” he said, shaking out his hands, rolling his shoulders. Jamie watched him patiently without uttering a word.

He wandered into one of the aisles that housed the oldest part of the wine collection, trying to breathe, but got only nostrils filled with dust. He put his back to the shelf, scrubbing a palm back and forth over his hair. He still wore it marine regulation even now, ten months after his honorable discharge due to post-traumatic stress disorder. And the PTSD could still surface this viciously, too, even after almost a year.

Jamie followed him into the deeper part of the cellar. For a long moment they assessed each other in silence. “You can tell me anything,” Jamie said at last, his voice so quiet and earnest that Mason had to look away. “You know that, right? That there’s nothing I can’t handle,” Jamie persisted. “Nothing I’d ever judge you for.”

Mason snapped his gaze to Jamie. “What would you judge me for?”