Untouchable Darkness (8 page)

I ignored his jab. “Alex, make yourself useful, seduce the waitress and get more bread.”

“You know, that technically breaks council rules.” Alex grinned. “Seducing a human woman for a Dark One’s benefit.”

Ethan groaned and pinched his nose. “For the love of God, Alex, just do it, Genesis is starving, I can hear her hunger, which in turn makes me hungry, and nobody wants to see me bite.”

Mason shrugged. “I don’t know. It would be kinda nice, dinner and a show…”

Stephanie stifled a laugh. “Maybe Alex doesn’t think he can do it anymore… lost your touch, brother?”

His eyes narrowed just as the waitress came by again. I think his hesitation had more to do with the fact that she was in her late seventies, and looked like someone’s nice old grandma—the grandma who knits sweaters for Christmas and crafts homemade cards for every special occasion.

“Are you ready to order?” She tilted her head. The nametag flashed Fran. Threads of silver hair wove around dark hair, all pulled tightly into a bun. “I see you’ve finished your bread.”

“One of us has,” Genesis grumbled in my direction.

I gave her an apologetic smile and received a kick from Ethan that hurt like hell, did the man forget I was breakable? He’s lucky he didn’t break my leg in half!

“Fran,” Alex said in a smooth voice, his blue eyes brightened, his skin took on a flawless appearance, his words were spoken slowly in a lazy drawl that had Fran leaning forward, eyes heavy. “I know we’re only now ordering but is there any way we can get our food… say, in a few minutes? We’re positively…” he licked his lips. “Starved.”

“Too far.” Mason coughed under his breath.

Fran blinked. “Yes well, yes that… that would be nice.”

“Two orders of the filet mignon.” Alex grinned. “Six orders of the New York Strip, six Caesar salads, and I think we’ll also take some more bread.”

Fran wrote everything down and then glanced up. “I’ll be sure to get this to you as soon as possible.”

She didn’t move.

Alex yawned.

Stephanie smacked him across the chest.

His smile was anything but guilty. “Oh thanks Fran, you’re dismissed.”

“But…” Her eyebrows pinched together, like she was trying to solve a puzzle. This was the problem with Sirens. They flirted, they gave off such an intense emotional charge that if they didn’t follow through, usually, the spell was broken within minutes. He had to touch her to solidify it—kissing her would be better. I’d known Alex for a long time—I imagined he was too lazy to do either.

With a sigh he slowly rose from his seat and reached for her hand, bringing it to his lips with a quick kiss.

Fran flashed a toothy smile and walked off.

I gave one solitary clap. “Could you have gone any slower?”

“Could you be any more jealous?” he countered.

“Of your love affair with the elderly?” I tilted my head. “Jealousy wasn’t really the word I was thinking.”

“You’re welcome.” He leaned back in his chair, placing his hands behind his head. “At least now you won’t have to resort to eating the table cloth.”

“You can eat the table cloth?”

“Sarcasm!” Alex said in an exasperated tone. “Learn it!”

I smirked. “I was kidding.”

You’d think I’d just announced I was going to go on a killing spree. All eyes fell to me, movement ceased.

“What?” I reached for my water and took a tentative sip.

“Dark Ones don’t joke.” Mason said seriously. “Did this whole humanity thing also replace your personality?”

I glowered. “Really, it’s like you’re begging me to kill you once this is finished.”

“And what
is
this?” Ethan’s eye narrowed. “You haven’t really said. And I can’t imagine you taking this type of…
test
sitting down.”

“Standing.” I licked my lips. “I was standing actually.”

“Sariel said nothing else?” Stephanie asked, her voice dripping with doubt. “Nothing about his reasoning?”

My mind flashed back to a few days earlier, when I offered up everything for a chance at—everything. A chance to fix an error.

A lapse in judgment.

The council members, the individuals sitting at that very table, knew me the best.

They’d seen me raze cities. Save lives. And do my fair share of destroying.

Yet even they didn’t believe me capable of having a shred of humanity. Which in turn made me question everything I’d come to know about myself. Was I their leader because they respected me?

No.

I was their leader.

Because they feared me.

Because they had no choice.

They weren’t my friends, hardly even colleagues. It had never been so painfully apparent as it was in that moment.

I truly had nothing in this world.

And maybe that was Sariel’s plan all along, his last cruel trick. Make the Dark One—who has no feelings—feel.

Because I felt a hell of a lot while I sat there.

Shame, disappointment, rage, embarrassment.

I felt it all.

And I had nobody to blame but myself.

Stephanie

“I
WANT TO SHOW
you something.” Cassius’s deep voice caused my body to shiver in anticipation, delight, lust—take your pick.

I lifted a shoulder. “Oh?”

“I doubt Ethan would mind if we borrowed his car for the evening.”

“Evening?” My entire mouth went dry. Hadn’t we just spent the evening together? At least dinner? I watched helplessly as the rest of the crew piled into Ethan’s car and drove off, leaving me alone with Cassius, so very much alone. “The whole evening?”

Cassius grinned. “You look scared.”

“Tired,” I blurted. “This is the look of exhaustion.”

“Pity.” He pulled the keys from my hand and opened the passenger door, ushering me in. “I guess I’ll have to do my best to keep you from over exerting yourself, then.”

I gulped. “Guess so.”

Cassius didn’t respond, but he did seem amused at my expense as he started the car and weaved through traffic, nearly clipping two cars in the process.

“Thought you didn’t know how to drive.” I said through clenched teeth.

“Fast learner.” He flashed another smile and kept driving at breakneck speed until we took the next exit.

I frowned as he went toward Lake Stevens.

The sun was setting, the sky was growing dark. Demons would soon be out and about, seducing humans, biting them, drinking their blood just because they could. Vampires would be sleeping because as much as people liked to believe they only came out at night, they could do whatever the hell they wanted—within reason.

“What will you do?” I cleared my throat at an attempt to rid my mind of what dangers prowled at night. “If you haven’t finished this little test before the next council meeting?”

Cassius stared blankly at the road ahead, giving nothing away. But the dim light from the dash revealed that he was gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were turning white. “That won’t happen.”

“But it could.” I frowned. “And if the Vampires, Demons, heck if anyone sees you like this—”

“They won’t!” He yelled.

I held up my hands. “Okay, sensitive subject, but I’m glad you’re that confident in this whole testing thing.”

He scowled. “Confidence has nothing to do with it.”

“Oh?”

As the car rolled to a stop at the light, he turned toward me, his face void of emotion. “If I fail, I die, case closed.”

What? Panic rose in my chest. “If you fail as a human you die? If you fail with me?”

Color tinged his cheeks as he slammed down on the accelerator. “Right, something like that.”

“How many days did he give you?”

“Thirty.”

“As of today?”

“As of two days ago.”

“You have twenty-eight days!” I shouted, frosting the windows with ice.

He muttered a curse and quickly turned on the defrost. “Careful, you’re going to make me think you actually like me.”

I crossed my arms and gazed out my window. “You know I like you.”

He was quiet for a minute then cleared his throat. “Do you like me enough to trust me? Do you like me enough not to kill me?”

“What is this? First grade?” I laughed, his teasing eased my fear. “Cassius, I like you, I’m circling yes on the note you just passed me, what’s your deal?”

“I’m not familiar with that expression.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “You aren’t familiar with anything.”

“That’s not true.” He steered the car down a winding road near the lake.

“Yes it is! What have you been doing, you know other than watching over me making sure I don’t know my full potential, keeping your dirty secrets and making sure immortals don’t go to war?”

“You want to know what I’ve been DOING?” he yelled as he stomped on the brake and the car jerked to a stop.

“YES!” I matched his voice. “Where do you go when shit gets real, Cassius? When life gets too hard. When you’re forced to face your demons.”

“We’re here.”

“We aren’t done discussing this!”

Cassius sighed and pulled the keys from the ignition. “I meant we’re here, here is the place I go to. My home.”

I jerked back and fumbled with the handle to the car door and jumped out of the car.

We were in front of a house.

A giant modern white house, with large bay windows, nestled between at least a dozen or so trees, just feet from the lake.

It was beautiful.

Not what I’d imagine a Dark One living in. “This doesn’t look like you at all.”

“Oh?” Cassius chuckled. “And what did you expect?”

“A cave.” I nodded as the white pristine house caused unwelcome sensations to bubble up within me. This part of Cassius just made me more curious. “Possibly hell.”

“Great,” he said in a low voice. “You think I spend my time in the fiery pits of hell until I’m ordered to go eat small children, is that it?”

I shrugged, technically the shoe fit, not that I’d say it out loud.

He cursed.

As if things had been going well up until this point?

The sound of crunching gravel as he walked away was really the only indicator that Cassius wanted me to follow. I moved slowly behind him as we neared the house. He pulled a key out from under the mat and slid it in the door.

“Clever, nobody would ever look there.” I nodded my head.

Cassius stopped and turned, his blue eyes menacing. “Do you truly think I care if someone steals from me? Or tries to break in? Believe me, it would be more of a nightmare for them, than for me. I’d simply… make sure they ceased to exist.” He snapped his fingers into the air.

“Done it before, have you?” I arched my eyebrows up.

“Once.” Cassius shrugged and moved in through the doorway. “He was at least eighty, I thought it a kindness to further things along, his memory wasn’t well, had no family. I touched him and—”

“—he died?”

“Quickly,” Cassius said smoothly.

“That’s horrible!”

“As opposed to him dying alone in his home? He died with me—an honor I don’t bestow on just anyone.”

I frowned. Is that what was going to happen to me? I’d touch nice old men and decide to steal their lives? As if on cue, a Darkness started spreading throughout my stomach, like a warmth I couldn’t control, and then as soon as it appeared it dissipated like it was never there in the first place.

Unsettling.

I hated feeling out of control.

“You forget.” He turned to face me, his face dazzling beneath the moonlight and stars. “We are better than them. We always will be. That’s not me being cruel or arrogant, it’s a simple fact. The blood that runs through your veins…” His fingertips danced across the pulse point on my wrist. “It’s holy.”

I licked my lips in irritation. The last thing I felt was special—and definitely not holy. “Doesn’t feel that way.”

“You’re part Angel,” he said slowly. “It will never feel the way it’s supposed to simply because you are missing half of the whole. Being a Dark One means being in a constant state of loneliness without any way to alleviate the pain.”

I flinched. Was that what this feeling was? This hollowness in my chest that made me stare like a lunatic at every single human relationship like I was starved for attention? For physical touch?

“Ah…” Cassius nodded knowingly. “You’ve been wondering if something’s wrong with you, am I right?”

I swallowed and broke eye contact unable to bear his scrutiny; he saw too much, even as a human it was like he saw beneath the surface of everything.

“So, you really were at a coffee shop…” He reached out and touched my face. His fingertips were warm. “Watching humans hold hands, laugh, love…” His head tilted to the side, not in a mocking way, almost like he was puzzled. Or maybe I was the puzzle. “Tell me, did it burn?”

“What?” I croaked, how did he know?

“After the hollowness slices open your chest.” He moved closer to me, dropping his hand so that his body was almost pressed against mine. “I used to call it the burn of wanting what I knew I could never have. Humans were created for partnership, companionship. Angels, as you know, are the exact opposite. Thus, the burn, the feeling of being ripped in half. Your Angel blood tells you it’s ridiculous, stupid even, to want what you can’t have, and why it says, why want something so weak when you are who you are, what you are?” His voice broke. “But the human side of you… it longs. It desires.” His forehead touched mine. “Oh… it burns all right. It burns you from the inside out. And the darkness beckons during the burn, it calls.”