Succubi Are Forever (23 page)

They say time heals everything, but when you’re immortal, even time is your enemy. More than five hundred days had passed and I still missed Zane like my heart had been ripped out of my chest.

I put my paddle on the bench in front of me and reached into one of the pockets of Zane’s coat. It was too big and bulky on me, and the night was humid, but I couldn’t stand to go a moment without it. I brushed my fingers over the feather in my pocket, and then pulled out a cigarette and lit it. I only puffed once, just enough to get the taste—the flavor of him—on my lips again. Didn’t inhale, just let it burn down as I held it between my lips, staring into the star-filled jungle night.

I had defeated my enemy. Where was my satisfaction?

“Do you have to smoke right now?” Remy said crossly from behind me.

I touched my tongue to the filter of the cigarette, inhaling the smoke and then letting it out. I needed to anchor myself to him. Remind myself what I was fighting for, because some nights, the darkness seemed like it was going to overwhelm me. “I guess not,” I said softly, and flicked the cigarette into the black waters of the river. “Sorry.”

“Jackie,” Remy said behind me. “We need to talk, girl. I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” I said flatly. I picked up my oar again and began to paddle. “We can talk when we’re back on the boat and I’ve looked over these documents.”

Remy didn’t protest, and we made it back to the
Angel of the Amazon
after a short time, mooring our little boat beside it. A deckhand was waiting and I thanked him in Portuguese, asking him to haul the small rowboat back up on board. The maps in my pocket burned my mind. I couldn’t wait to be alone and take a look at them. I twisted the ring on my finger anxiously. So close to that second halo. So close.

Remy stepped in front of me, her hands on her hips. “You. Me. Talk. Now.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No,” she said, grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the cabin she shared with Ethan.

I rolled my eyes but allowed her to drag me off. If this would get it out of her system, might as well let her say her piece.

She hauled me into her room and turned to Ethan, looking at him expectantly. The big warrior bent down and she gave him a quick, affectionate kiss, then patted him on the arm. “Stay in front of this door, baby, and don’t let anyone come in until I give the word.”

“Of course, my beautiful heart.”

I rolled my eyes again. At least Ethan had given up on the slang. Now he just showered Remy with ridiculous, flowery nicknames.

It would have been cute if my own heart weren’t so dead.

She pinched his cheek, slapped his ass lightly, and then turned back to me. She shut the door to the cabin behind her, and leaned against it, blocking my way. “Sit, Jacks. This talk has been a while coming, but I think it’s necessary.”

I shook my head at her. “Remy, I know what you’re thinking—”

“Pretty sure you don’t,” she said tartly, and pointed at the lone chair in the small cabin. “Sit.”

I sat, eyeing the cabin. My own cabin was tiny and sparse. Noah’s was the same. Remy and Ethan’s was a mess of rumpled sheets, empty candy wrappers and chip bags, laptop cords, and a stack of DVDs in the corner. Remy’s now-fat journal lay off to one side, the pen hanging out of it.

“Jackie, I’m worried about you,” Remy said.

I twisted the ring on my finger. “I know you are.”

“No, I mean, I’m
really
worried about you.” She came toward me and knelt in front of me, putting her hands over mine. “When I look at you, I don’t see my friend anymore. I look at you and all I see are the burned edges of my friend. I see someone who is too hard. And I worry that you’re going to cross a line that you won’t be able to recross.”

I tried to tug my hands from hers. “Remy—”

“No, listen to me,” she said, her hands digging into mine. “No one starts out as one of the bad guys. Road to hell, good intentions, and all that. I just look at you and I see someone who has no boundaries anymore. I can’t believe you went and snapped Phryne’s neck.”

“Why not? Sophie did it.”

“Sophie was an assassin,” Remy pointed out. “It was her job to kill people. Not yours.”

“Phryne shot us both in the back of the head, remember? She called a demon on me.”

“And so instead of sticking with our original plan to follow her when she went on land, we boarded her ship in the middle of the night, snapped her neck, stole her documents, and tied her lover up?” She paused, her eyes widening. “You just tied him up, right? You’re not just saying that?”

“I didn’t kill him, Remy.”

She looked unsure.

“I didn’t. Jesus, I’m not that much of a monster.”

“Not yet,” she said. Her hands squeezed mine again and she looked up at me with solemn gray eyes. “But you wear Sophie’s weapons at your waist, Jackie. You have more knives strapped to your thighs than they have over in the mess hall. You carry a gun with you at all times.”

I did. After Sophie’s death, I’d confiscated her weapons. They reminded me of my new goal, and more than that, I practiced with them. I wasn’t so great with the knives, but my aim had improved with the gun. If it came down to killing, I’d be ready for it. “That doesn’t make me an assassin, Remy.”

“But where do you draw the line, Jackie? If I were standing between you and the halo, would you call a demon on me? Shoot me in the head to get what you want?”

My mouth went dry. Because I knew the answer to both of those questions, and it wasn’t pretty.

“That’s what I’m worried about,” she said. “I look at you, and I see Phryne. I see that same ice she has in her eyes. I look at you and I see someone who’s willing to use and abuse others to get what she wants.”

“I just want Zane back,” I said softly and licked my lips so I could taste the cigarettes once more.

“I know, girl,” she said. “But I want you to stop and think. Let’s say you get him back. Let’s say this all works and we can go back to how we were before. Are you even going to be the same person? Will he recognize who you’ve become? Because he didn’t fall in love with Phryne, and he didn’t fall in love with Sophie. He fell in love with
you
because you have a good heart. Because you’re smart and funny and optimistic. Not because you’re a brutal, single-minded destroyer.”

I said nothing.

She moved in to hug me. “I just want you to stop and think, is all. Don’t cross a line that will change who and what you are.”

“Thanks, Remy,” I said softly. “I’m going to go to my cabin now and take a look at Phryne’s papers.”

She patted my shoulder and stood, then began to clean empty chip bags off her table, shutting the laptop and tossing it onto the bed. “We can look at them here if you want.”

I hesitated. I’d wanted to look over the information privately, to obsess over Phryne’s notes, but I forced myself to pull everything out of my pocket and hand the stack to Remy.

She turned to the table and began to spread it out, and I watched her, my blackened heart aching all over again. Because I knew the answer to her questions, and I had no doubt in my mind that I would have cut down my own best friend to get him back.

And I wasn’t proud of it.

~*~

The next morning we packed our gear and met on the deck of the
Angel
. Noah rolled his eyes at my bulging backpack, Zane’s long leather duster stuffed into it. I’d almost worn it, but the oppressive daytime heat of the jungle was too sticky for leather. I wasn’t about to leave it behind and trust that it would be here waiting for me, though. Instead, I was dressed in a plain white tank top, short cargo shorts, and sturdy hiking boots. My knives were strapped to my waist, my belt, and one was strapped to my lower arm. A gun was holstered under my arm. My hair was pulled into a tight braided crown and I wore a bandana over it to protect my head and keep the sweat out of my eyes. I was ready.

At my side, Remy straightened her clothing. She wore Daisy Duke shorts and cowboy boots with a matching red cowboy hat that glittered with rhinestones. Her red tank top proclaimed
I’m with a stallion
and had an arrow pointing to the side. Ethan, I noticed, was wearing a matching shirt that pointed in the opposite direction and said
I’m with a goddess
. Ethan’s bo was held in his hand like a walking stick rather than strapped to his back as it normally was. I noticed he had hitched Remy’s pack over his own.

Noah had a wide-brimmed hat and wore jungle khaki as well, his tattoos stark on his lower arms and across his neck. I knew that under his shirt, they covered his chest. The last year and a half hadn’t given him much time to work off his servitude. His pack was smaller than mine, and he looked rather cross with me, since he’d found out this morning about my midnight escapade and hadn’t approved.

It didn’t matter if he approved, though. I had the map and I knew exactly where to go.

The rest didn’t matter.

The last eighteen months with Noah had been a bit rocky. Truth was, he was slowing me down. Every time I would get close to Phryne, she would throw something in our path to delay us. I had no idea how she did it, but she always managed to arrange situations that would make Noah stop in his tracks, determined to do the right thing. We’d almost caught up to her in Australia a few months ago when we’d found a man on the side of the road, a shot to the groin causing him to bleed out. Noah had insisted on helping him, as we were the only people around for miles. I’d wanted to leave him and catch Phryne. The man was obviously a decoy.

And it had worked. That galled me. We are immortals, Noah had told me. It doesn’t matter if it takes ten years or a hundred to find her.

But it mattered to me. Every day without Zane was like a knife in my heart. Every day, I felt a little less connected to everything around me. All that mattered was getting that halo. And if it made me cold and hard like Phryne, then I’d unthaw when I had my vampire in my arms again.

A wooden plank ladder was lowered to the shore, and the guide we’d hired frowned at us. “You need more clothing,” he said in thickly accented English. He wore long sleeves and almost every inch of him was covered. “The bugs will attack you. Malaria. Disease. Very bad.”

As I watched, he slapped his skin, brushing a bug away.

I glanced down at my pale, bare arms. Nothing was biting me. Nor Remy, Noah, or Ethan. How to explain to the man that we were immortal and not affected by things like disease? Even the bugs avoided us.

“This is as far as you take us, my friend,” Noah said to the man. “We can handle it from here.” He pressed a wad of money into the man’s hand.

To our guide’s credit, he tried to hand the money back, shaking his head. “If you go into the jungle alone, it will mean your death. Please be sensible about this.”

Noah shook his head, pressing the money on the guide again. It would be damn hard to try and go treasure hunting with a guide along, but we hadn’t been able to charter a boat without one. The man was genuinely concerned for our well-being, refusing Noah’s money again and again. Eventually, he and Noah switched to Portuguese and continued to argue. Despite Noah’s commanding Serim presence, he couldn’t convince the man that us walking into the jungle was not a mistake.

And damn it all if they weren’t going to sit there and argue the entire morning. I looked over to Remy and Ethan, but they were lost in their own little lovey-dovey world. Remy had her fingers looped into Ethan’s belt and was grinning up at him, her pose suggestive. They wouldn’t be much help. The crew stood around, watching our guide argue and gesture at the jungle while Noah crossed his arms grimly and shook his head.

I looked at the watch on my wrist. While they stood here chatting, Phryne would be healing from her broken neck. Even now her crew could be turning their boat and coming after us. We didn’t have the time to spare.

I calmly walked up behind the guide, unsheathed my knife, and slammed the butt of it against his head.

He went out like a light.

The crew began to yell at me. Noah gave me a look of disbelief. “Jackie!”

I sheathed the knife and picked up the wad of cash Noah had been trying to give the man. I turned and slapped it into the hand of the closest crew member. “We’re going into that jungle alone. You keep this boat here for us until we come back and we’ll give you a bonus. You keep him,” I said, gesturing at the guide, “from following us and I’ll double this when we get back.”

I turned to Noah. “Come on. We haven’t got all day.”

He stared at me as if he didn’t know me. Then he shook his head as I passed him and headed down the plank ladder into the Amazon.

~*~

The Amazon sucked. While I’d initially been fascinated by the lush greenery, after a day of hiking through the jungle, I hated it. There were vines and trees everywhere. The undergrowth crawled with insects the size of my hand, as well as snakes. Jaguars roamed the area. It was hot and humid and there was not a bit of a breeze. Nor was there a path. Within a few hours of hiking, Ethan had strapped the packs to his front and was carrying a complaining Remy in his back.

We’d been forced to stop at nightfall, and though the mosquitos and bugs weren’t biting us, they crawled over everything. We’d managed to find a fallen tree that wasn’t completely covered with ants and built a small fire next to it so Noah could rest for his sleep. He slept encased in netting while the rest of us huddled around the fire and tried to keep our spirits up. At least, Ethan tried to keep Remy’s spirits up. I just studied the map by firelight, obsessed.

We were so close to the halo. I glanced over at Noah’s sleeping form. He didn’t know the Serim was still alive—though how anyone could live in this hot mess, I didn’t know. Noah thought we were going in to retrieve the halo and just walk right back out. He didn’t know that the halo might not want to go with us.

That was okay, I thought as I touched my backpack. I had a plan B. Before we’d left for Brazil, I’d purchased a few vials of unholy water and some implements Luc had sold me with the assurance that they would harm an angel. If I had to destroy the current holder of the halo to take it from him, that was what I’d have to do.