The Mephisto Mark: The Redemption of Phoenix (34 page)

“I was kind of in a hurry.” I couldn’t believe it, but a lump formed in my throat. She knew. Last night, she knew what it meant to have sex with me and she did it anyway. In her own quiet unassuming way, she accepted me as I was. Overcome, I set the bags on the small desk.

She moved over and patted the bed next to her. “Let’s be heathens and eat right here.”

I pulled off my T-shirt and spread it on the bed like a picnic blanket
, then emptied the bags in the middle. Ditching the shoes, I took a seat beside her and we watched Bugs Bunny while we ate.

“These are delicious,” she said, halfway through her
second burger. “Where’d you go?”

“Shake Shack in New York.”

“Let’s go to New York. I want to see the Statue of Liberty, and the Empire State Building, and all the museums. I know we can transport there, but could we maybe fly? I’ve never been on an airplane before. Oh, and can we go to the opera? I’ve always wanted to see an opera.”

“We’ll go wherever you like. Guess who I ran into at Shake Shack?”

“Eryx?”

I jerked my head around. “How did you know?”

She shrugged and reached for her third burger. “You look weird, like you’re afraid and excited and maybe you’d like to cry. When you left, you were very chill, and since I seriously doubt anything at a burger box place would make you want to cry, I assume the person you ran into was Eryx, who’s been stalking all of you lately, and he told you what he did to me.”

“When were you going to tell me?”

“As soon as I finished these cheeseburgers.” She waved her hand toward the TV. “Let’s see the end of Bugs Bunny and I’ll tell you all about it.”

There was such an element of surreal comedy to it, what could I do but go along with her? I ate my food and watched cartoons and continued reveling in absolute unequivocal glee.

When Bugs was done and I’d taken all the trash to the bathroom and tossed it, I went back to her bed, stripped off my jeans and laid down, pulling her with me. I kissed her and her mouth was cold and chocolaty. She reached between us, wrapped her hand around me, and mumbled against my lips, “Insatiable.”

Our third time, and it was nothing like the first two. I was
bemused. To me, sex was always sex. Different face, different girl, different language – but the mechanics were always the same and my objective never wavered.

With Mariah, it was like it had been in the very beginning, when we first joined humanity in the real world, when we figured out how to attract females into dark places. Every touch, every caress, every look, every kiss felt new and different. It took all my self-control not to be too aggressive, too over-the-top. She was small and delicate, still hesitant and unsure of herself, of me.

In the middle of things, I slipped. My self-control took a walk.

“Phoenix, what are you doing?”

Carrying her to the chair by the fire, I said, “Remember when I told you to imagine you’re Danielle and I’m Rupert?”

“I remember,
but—”

“This is me
not
being Rupert. He was a nice guy. Mr. Gentleman. I’m not nice, Mariah.” I sat and turned her so she had to straddle my thighs. Watching her eyes widen in surprise as I maneuvered her body to slide down onto me, I was gratified.

“Oh,” she whispered. “
Oh.
”

Her scent was heady, as if I stood in a field of heather. Her eyes were closer to midnight blue.
I slipped my hands into her hair and cradled her head while I pulled her close for a deep, hot kiss. “Move for me,” I whispered. I was insane with need for her. “Make it happen for you, Mariah.”

She began slowly, shyly, but it wasn’t long before she forgot to be self-conscious. She loved the control, reveled in her ability to set the rhythm. I have no idea how I lasted as long as I did. Watching her was tantalizing and so erotic, the sway of her perfect breasts, the rise and fall of her breath as it increased, the tightening of her muscles around me – I was scarcely a nanosecond behind her climax. Her head went back and she cried out, her body quivering.
As I completed, I snatched her close to hold her tight against me. I never wanted to let her go. I would never let her go. She was mine, and I was overcome with protectiveness and aching affection for her.

We stayed like that for a while before I gathered her up and carried her back to the bed. She snuggled beneath the covers, her eyes drifting closed.

I laid down next to her. “Now would be a good time to tell me.”

She
burrowed deeper under the covers. “Mm, yeah, but let’s take a nap first.”

If I let her go back to sleep, it’d be hours before she
’d wake up. I moved on the bed to lean against the headboard, and pulled her along with me, propping her against the pillows, pulling the covers up to her waist. “I promise you can sleep all you want, just as soon as you tell me.”

She pulled the covers up farther, covering her breasts, but not before I noticed her birthmark. She was almost entirely changed to that unique blend of Anabo and Mephisto that would allow her to take out the lost souls, and still have the capacity to love me.

Probably a very bad idea to think about that at the moment. We were friends, and now we were friends with benefits. Could I love her? I didn’t know, mostly because I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant to love someone. I loved my brothers, and I loved Sasha. I didn’t doubt I’d someday love Jordan. I loved Mathilda and Deacon and Hans – all the Purgatories meant something to me. And the Luminas.

But to love a woman
selflessly and completely? How did that happen? And how could she ever love me if I didn’t love her? Eryx was right. Jane had loved me, but I realized now it was more like the love I felt for Sasha. Close and warm, but not intimate. When we became intimate, it was a disaster. She’d cried and sobbed and wanted her sister. I’d felt like an ass, and there’d been so much blood, I was totally freaked out. In retrospect, it hadn’t been that much, but I’d expected a little spot. Instead . . . what I didn’t know about females was pretty much everything. I said I was sorry at least fifty times, until she told me to stop, to just leave her alone for a while so she could pull herself together. That’s when I left, and I knew I wasn’t going back.

The contrast to how it was with
Mariah was night and day. She had taken all I had to give and returned it to me tenfold. Even now, she was sitting in bed completely naked, trusting and comfortable with me. Jane had never been easy in her own skin, and I had no idea whether that was a product of the times and her upbringing as an aristocrat, or because she knew on some level that I wasn’t her intended.

It didn’t matter now. It was done and she was gone and I’d made peace with my brother. I may have screwed it all to hell again by sleeping with Mariah, but I’d deal with it. I’d make it right however I could.

Mariah began her story. “Just after lunch, Denys took me to see the other side of the mountain.” She leaned away and looked into my eyes. “I’m not going to tell you unless you swear not to go all commando on Denys. Swear?”

“I swear.” But I was already wondering if he’d done something out of resentment or spite because he was so angry at me.

“You’re lying, Phoenix. I’m serious. Don’t get mad at him and get in a fight, or say something cruel to him. Promise me.”

I wasn’t liking this at all, but my need to know outweighed possible retribution, so I nodded and said, “I promise.”

She meandered through the day, describing everything, including the little cabin where I’d stored all of Jane’s things, which I’d gathered piece by piece over a couple of years after her death. Her parents never noticed. They’d closed up her room and moved on with their lives. When one of the maids boxed up what was left of Jane’s belongings to take to a charity house, I took them all before they ever reached their destination. I put them in the little cabin I’d found in the wilderness, and as time passed, I was drawn back to it, again and again, some kind of penance, I suppose.

I found it odd that the cabin was where Mariah
mentally escaped to when things were too much for her mind to handle. She’d never seen it until yesterday. I wondered why, and she said, “I’ll get to that in a while.”

She talked on and I was hanging on every word, feeling bad all over again for Denys, who’d been as hurt by Zee’s cover-up as Zee and I. It was
terribly sad and I wished so much it could have been different.

When she got to the part about Eryx taking her, I could no longer sit still. I got up
, put on my boxers, then went to build a fire, taking my time, finding comfort in a task I’d done a million times in ten centuries.

By the end of her story, I was reeling.
So much to absorb: her nocturnal visits from an angel who turned out to be my
mitera,
her unprecedented visit to Hell on Earth, Eryx joking with her, Eryx telling her he didn’t rape Jane – and Mariah believed him, Denys completely clueless of what went on while he was banging the barmaid then passing out cold. She’d had the most extraordinary day, yet she sat there and told me all without the slightest hint of upset.

I stood behind the chair in front of the fire and watched the flames lick the split logs. “Why didn’t you tell me last night, Mariah? Why did you let me make love to you? It’s permanent now, and you can never go back.”

“I don’t want to go back.”

I looked across the room at her, sitting in bed, her long dark hair flowing across her shoulders, her hands resting on the
covers, her eyes ten shades lighter than they’d been yesterday morning. Her Anabo glow was beginning to show. Was she happy? She was looking at me with that poker face, giving me no hint of what she was thinking or feeling. “You’re stuck with me.”

“I was stuck with you the night I arrived. Why put off the inevitable?”

“You make it sound as if you’re simply resigned to your fate.”

“Oh, come on, Phoenix. Do you want me to tell you I love you madly, deeply, and
will as long as I live, which will now be until the end of time? I’ve known you a week. A lot’s happened in that week, but still – it’s a week. Maybe I’ll love you, maybe you’ll love me. Does it matter? We’re friends, and now we’re friends who have sex. Let’s just let it be and carry on.” She slid further back against the pillows. “It’s your turn to tell me why you changed your mind about the sex thing.”

“You won’t like it. You’re going to regret letting me mark you.”

“Regret is something I refuse to have, ever. I did what I did and I won’t be sorry, even if you tell me I’m right and Jane was intended for Denys, and you knew it and had sex with her anyway.”

“You’re a scary girl, you know that?”

Her eyes widened. “Me? Scary?”

“It’s like you know th
ings, and then you throw them out there and point to them and kill any chance of secrets. Don’t you know, people hide things because they’re ashamed of them?”

“Are you joking?
Until you, I hid every single thing in my life because I was so ashamed. Get over yourself and tell me the truth about Jane. All of it, even the parts that make you feel like a douche.”

“I don’t
feel
like a douche. I
am
a douche. And a jackass, and a liar, and a very bad guy.”

“Says who?”

“Lucifer. He said it the night Jane died. He said of all my brothers, I am the most like my father.”

“
So you’ve actually seen Lucifer. That’s heavy. I want details. But first I’ll say, maybe he meant you look like him, or that you have the same personality. Why assume he meant that you have the same character flaws?”

I began to pace. “
I’ll tell you the story, and you’ll know exactly what he meant.”

She nodded and folded her hands across her belly. “Okay, go.”

For a guy who isn’t big on talking, I was a guy who couldn’t stop talking. I went on and on. She asked questions and I answered, but mostly she watched me pace and listened.

I fully expected, when I got to the end, that she would tell me to get out and never come back.

But, then, Mariah never did what I expected.

S
he sat up in bed and said, “That’s all well and good, but you still haven’t told me why you changed your mind about sex. Two nights ago, you said you’d never mark me, even if I wanted you to. The very next night, we were naked and I was marked. I’d love it if you said it was because you were overcome, that you couldn’t help yourself, that I’m irresistible to you, but the truth is—”

“That’s exactly why.”

“Bullshit!” She scrambled out of bed and stalked toward me in all her naked, beautiful glory, her blue eyes snapping with indignation. “You and your brothers are like wolves, claiming their territory. I’m surprised you don’t pee on things so the others know,
Hey, this is mine. Back off.
You told Zee you’d step aside for my sake, for his sake, but you didn’t do that. You never
intended
to do that. The instant Kyros brought me here, the second you laid eyes on me, there wasn’t a force of nature strong enough to make you let me go. You can kid yourself that you tried to do what you think is the right thing, but why lie? You knew when you climbed into bed with me that I’d wake up with your mark. Maybe you should go out there in the hall and howl so they’ll all know you’ve claimed me.”