Shadows Fall (18 page)

“Titus?”

“Uh huh?”

“Are you jerking off?”

Shit
. Did I want him to know? Was it creepy? “No… Okay, maybe. A little.”

His chuckle in my ear was like a full body caress, washing over me as if he were there in the room with me.

“Good,” he answered in his growly cop voice.

He didn’t often use that tone with me and, while I valued Charlie’s even-tempered calmness, I got off on the occasional toppy attitude. In that moment, I realized that he was touching himself too. I wasn’t sure when he’d started, but I could hear the wet clicking sound of lubed skin flying over lubed skin.

I stayed silent for a while listening to that, as well as the sound of his breathing. I tried to time my strokes to his, my breath to his. If I could hear his heartbeat, I’d have tried to line those up too. Something about the feeling of being totally in sync with him made an otherwise rather ordinary act that much more intimate.

My thighs shook as I fought the urge to thrust into my hand. I wasn’t ready for this to end.

“Are you close?” His voice sounded like it had been rubbed with sandpaper. His breath came faster and louder, and I could tell he was asking because he was the one who was close.

“Mmm,” I moaned, because I didn’t really think he expected an answer. I was wrong.

“Let me hear you, Titus. You gonna come for me?”

Holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder, I stopped stroking in favor of cupping my balls, pulling them tight against my rigid shaft. My other hand drifted down, teasing my perineum, and then I slipped a finger inside my entrance—just enough for a little ache, a little burn. “Not yet,” I whispered in answer.

Charlie growled in my ear through his panting, sounding not quite angry, but determined. “Fuck yourself Titus. Fuck your gorgeous little ass, jerk your pretty dick, and pretend it’s me.”

I could practically hear the clench of his jaw in those words he bit out, and I sure as fuck did what he said. I went back to pumping my cock with one hand and finger-fucking myself with the other, with Charlie’s lust-roughened voice in my ear delivering his iniquitous commands. I felt a strange disconnect with my reality. I was so completely wrapped up in Charlie’s words and his voice in itself, that his words became my thoughts, my hands became his hands.

My orgasm was like getting struck by lightning. It completely snuck up on me and electrocuted me with its intensity. I howled at the exquisite agony of it as my seed splashed on my belly and ran down my sides. Feeling turned inside out, I closed my eyes and listened to Charlie groaning out his own climax. My cock gave another halfhearted leap at the sound, but the rest of me was well and truly finished.

For a while, there was nothing but the sound of our breathing in unison. Sleep was trying to pull my mind under now that my body was wrung out and blissfully weak. I would have been perfectly content to fall asleep listening to Charlie’s silence.

“Titus?” He was once again shy, gentle Charlie when he spoke up. I wondered if he’d surprised himself, or if he had this whole other personality, this alpha thing, that only came up when sex was involved.

“Uh huh.”

“When can I see you again? I need to see you.”

I smiled even through the haze of exhaustion. I agreed with him. Yeah, I needed to get my hands on Charlie. “Tomorrow,” I said. My voice sounded slurred in my own ears. “I’ll be around the shop most of the day. Stop by when you’re free.”

He gave a deep sigh, and it sounded like relief. “Good. Get some sleep, baby. You sound beat.”

“Mmhmm.” I was already most of the way there. “Be careful at work, Charlie.” He might have said something else before hanging up, but the phone was already slipping out of my fingers and onto the floor.

Chapter Twelve

I awoke feeling more exhausted than when I started. Hester had warned me that might happen as a result of all the energy I expended charging the sigil. The sleep had been restorative, but not refreshing. My arm still throbbed beneath its bandage and bacon grease poultice. I absently wondered how many showers it would take to get the smell of bacon off my skin.

I had to go to the shop later to check on things but first, I was dying to test out the efficacy of the sigil tattoo. Even though I was a witness to the paranormal on a daily basis, deep down, I still couldn’t imagine it working. Maybe I just hadn’t wanted to get my hopes up.

Hastily, I yanked on my usual uniform of jeans and an Uptown Java shirt. I wanted to start slowly, so I crept through the quiet house and let myself out onto the front porch. I made it halfway down the walkway before I froze. The silence from the
mule
was stark, hollow. The sounds of the world were deafening

I imagined it was the way a deaf person who’d recently received a Cochlear implant would feel—completely overwhelmed by the noise of life that they were almost paralyzed by it. So used to life having the soundtrack I chose for it, I was unprepared for the cacophony of the busy, living city.

The sounds of passing cars were like the growls of mythical beasts. The shrill calls of birds perched in the trees were skull splitting. I could hear the crack and rumble from the baseball game going on at nearby Knights Stadium, and it may as well have been a volcano preparing to erupt. Even the low-level buzz from the power lines were part of the dissonant melody that reached my ears.

Momentarily stunned by the noise no longer drowned out by headphones and spirit-voices, I fell to my knees, covering my ears. All I could hear then was the rapid
thump-thump-thump
of my own heartbeat. I used that sound to ground me. It helped me get my bearings until I was able to center myself… or so I thought.

A hand landed on my shoulder, and I leapt to my feet, whirling around and bringing my hands up close to my face for protection—from what, I had no idea. Riot stood in front of me giving his best ‘what-the-fuck’ face. Struggling to catch my breath and calm my jittering nerves, I clenched my fists as hard as I could which somehow forced the rest of my body to relax—slightly.

“Um…hey,” I said between pants.

“Y’okay, dude?”

“Yeah, I’m… yeah.”

Riot eyed me dubiously, because I was pretty sure I looked like a psychopath having a meltdown in the middle of our front yard, but if I could convince him that I was okay then maybe I could convince myself.

“Really? ’Cause you looked like you were out here getting beat to death with an imaginary baseball bat.

How apropos
, I thought—in more ways than one. “Yeah, no, I’m good. Just a migraine. Came out of nowhere that time. I’ll just pop a couple Excedrin and it’ll be fine. You just startled me.”

“Yeah, sure,” Riot said, seemingly willing to brush off the incident if I was.

He kept talking, his voice booming to my ears as if it was echoing in a cavern, but I was still having trouble focusing through the noise and the silence respectively, that I had to interrupt him.

“Sorry, what?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I
said
… I have to go to the studio for a couple of hours, but I’ll be at the shop for my afternoon shift. My publisher is having some kind of VIP party tonight to schmooze some of the new talent—great music, expensive booze, no cover if you know somebody. Wanna go after we close?”

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I actually thought I’d be able to survive going to something like that. I found that I’d rather spend time alone hanging out with Charlie than going to some crazy party that sure as shit would get out of hand. “Nah, thanks, man. Maybe I’ll hit the next one. I have a date,” I said, unable to control my blushing.

“No shit! The cop again?”

“Yeah,” I said. I kept my eyes on the toes of my shoes, but I was smiling.

“He bringing his handcuffs?”

“Oh, fuck you,” I laughed. Then I paused for a moment, because
that
was a hell of an idea.

“I’m not the one applying for the job, bubba. All right, I gotta jet. See ya later.”

I waved him off, my head filling with images of handcuffs and uniforms—and lots of lube.

Shaking my head, I started off on my walk to the shop. I took the usual route, saw the usual
mule
in their usual spots, but I heard nothing. It was brilliant!

I still flinched when one of the construction workers started using a jackhammer on the sidewalk, and I thought I’d jump out of my skin when someone in a minivan laid on their horn after a Hummer cut them off.

But these were the noises I was supposed to hear; these sounds told me I was alive, that I was normal. I was just down the street from the shop when I saw him—Brandon Meyers. Even without his voice, it was impossible to ignore him. I’d found him… I felt like I
knew
him, and he was staring me down with accusations in his eyes.

My hands plunged into my pockets, automatically reaching for my iPod out of muscle memory. Instead, my fingers closed around something metal. Pulling it out, I saw that it was the necklace Hester had given me, the one that was supposed to allow me to communicate with a
mulo
if I needed to. It was my right as a
chovihano
.

This was as good a time as any to try it out, when I was less than a block from the shop and could run if I needed to. Taking a deep breath, I looped the metal and leather chain around my neck. Immediately I heard the familiar rattle, hiss, and then murmur of the spirit-voices. It was more of an echo now, merely a trace of what it used to be.

I stared hard at Brandon, trying to channel all of my energy towards him. I wasn’t a trained shaman, so I didn’t really know what I was doing. After a few seconds, it seemed to start working. The crooning susurration eventually coalesced into a faint voice, rolling around inside my brain.

The blood… Follow the blood. It’s what he wants, what he hates.

Before I could make heads or tails of that chilling rant, he reached for me. I freaked out, afraid to let him touch me again after the way he’d burned me before. I darted around him and ran like death was chasing me.

Thus came about the second time Amanda caught me slamming the door and panting, casting hunted looks through the glass. She gave me the same look Riot had earlier, but didn’t bother to comment this time—Smart girl.

* * * *

Hours later, Amanda had left while Chelsea and Riot had come in for the afternoon-evening shift. This gave me time to get some accounting done in the back office. By the ‘Information Age’ standards, the shop computer was a total relic, but it served its purpose. It ran Quickbooks, the inventory tracker, and email. That’s pretty much all we needed.

I was neck deep in my projected budget for next quarter when the screen on the old tube monitor flickered. As soon as it settled down again, I quickly saved my file and restarted the beast. I stared unseeing at the black screen as I waited for the thing to cough and sputter back to life.

My reflection blinked back at me from the glass, and I gasped when I saw a hazy figure hovering behind me. I only got a vague sense of black hair and deathly pale skin, but somehow I knew it was Brandon Meyers. Shivering from the palpable temperature drop in the room, I marveled that I hadn’t noticed it before.

I whipped my head around, but there was no one behind me. There couldn’t be, anyway. The shop was warded.
So how do you explain the guy’s face in the computer screen?
“Probably just my imagination,” I said out loud, answering my own question.

When I turned back to the computer, the thing was going nuts, scrolling random numbers. If they’d been green, it would have looked like a scene from
The Matrix
.
But wait…
Squinting, I leaned closer to get a better look. They were random numbers, all right, but only ones and zeros. I slapped the monitor, hoping to jar it back to working, but it had no effect whatsoever.

“Hey, Riot!” I shouted. Riot was a genius with computers, but whenever I asked him to work on this one, he always said he wasn’t an archaeologist, so he knew nothing about fossils. He’d probably be able to jury-rig it until I could afford a new one.

I looked over when I heard him jog through the door.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I’m not finished with the budget yet and the computer’s freaking the fuck out. It’s just scrolling random numbers over the blank screen. Can you fix it?”

Riot didn’t even bother to try not to roll his eyes. He sighed and pulled up a chair. When he saw what was going on, he frowned. He tapped a few keys and scowled some more when nothing happened. “They aren’t random numbers… it’s binary,” he said distractedly while holding down the reset button on the tower. Nothing happened.

“Shit, now it won’t even turn off,” I griped. “Binary?”

“Binary code is like… computer language. Various combinations of ones and zeroes represent numbers, letters, even phrases. Computers store data and complete calculations using binary, but it shouldn’t be all over the screen like this. The processor converts it into the operating system, programs, and files that we’re used to seeing.”