All Hallows Night (Night Series) (17 page)

I was rocked to sleep by that lullaby.

I came to later to find a pensive Luc sitting beside me and a warm body cradling me close. Frowning, still feeling horribly jittery, I turned to look and sighed when Asher’s arms squeezed just slightly.

Somehow I was back in Kemen’s trailer, on his bed and being held by two impossibly powerful, angry men. Luc refused to even look at me, but his hand kept rubbing gently through my hair.

Asher must have sensed the shift in my breathing; he cocked his head and then a slow smile spread across his pensive face. “You’re awake,” he murmured against my lips.

“I don’t feel good,” I reluctantly admitted, clutching my stomach, which was still rolling and topsy-turvy.

Luc growled, jerking his head in Asher’s direction. “She’d be a hell of a lot better if you’d just let me feed her!”

By feed her, he didn’t mean food. Asher narrowed his eyes because he clearly understood the implication as well. “Then she can take from me.”

“God, will you two just shut up?” I squeezed my eyes closed, fighting nausea. “Go mark circles outside if you need to. I don’t want to have sex with either of you right now. What I do want is a toilet though.” I moaned as the bile churned straight up my throat. I didn’t even get a moment to warn them.

But as if sensing what was a second away from happening, Asher rushed me to the bathroom just in time, holding my hair back as I upchucked green slime. It wasn’t pretty and I just wanted him to go. I kept swatting at his arm pitifully, but he insisted on staying.

By the time I was through, I was ingloriously hugging the porcelain and wishing I’d died instead.

“It’s okay, little demon,” Asher crooned, rubbing my back. “Just get it out.”

“Go away,” I moaned, hating how understanding and nice he was being. Why couldn’t he grasp the concept of personal space?

“You heard the lady,” Luc drawled, and I only just now realized he was blocking the door, his big arms crossed over his broad chest as he glared daggers at my priest.

“Ugh.” I turned my face aside as my stomach clamped down tight. “Both of you. Don’t watch this.” That was all I had time to say before another powerful surge of glop expelled from my body.

Tears crashed out the corners of my eyes as my entire body rebelled against me. I couldn’t remember feeling this bad, ever.

“She isn’t healing,” Asher growled in frustration. “Why isn’t she healing?”

I doubted he was asking me.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t fucking do this, Priest!” Luc snarled, his bulky body shoulder-bumping Asher hard enough to make him stumble back.

A vicious snarl ripped from my priest, and I couldn’t believe these assholes were doing this while I was practically dying in front of them. The humiliation and anger all blended and I found just enough strength to snap at them. “Get the hell out of my house, both of you, now!”

But my threat lost something when once again I was kissing the porcelain throne.

At least they actually listened. Both of them disappeared and I was free to throw up in peace.

I had no idea how long I was in there, but it seemed like my entire long life flashed in front of my eyes before I was done.

Pathetically weak and smelling of vile things, I dragged myself into the shower, bringing the toothpaste and toothbrush with me.

I screamed when the first drop of hot water washed over me, only just now noticing that Asher was right. I wasn’t healing at all. My wrist was useless, I had gouges (literally hunks of flesh) gone, exposing the red muscle beneath.

Remembering the zombie that’d made a snack of my ankle, I looked, and you’d think after everything else I’d just seen that a small, crescent-shaped bite wouldn’t be the tipping point. But it was. Frustrated, angry, confused, and scared, I tipped my head back and howled from the depths of my very soul.

My door was slammed open and the curtains torn off. Luc was there and the demon who didn’t care was wrapping me up in his arms, trying so hard not to cause me more pain. But there wasn’t a spot on me that wasn’t hurting.

For the longest time he didn’t say anything, and everything hurt so bad all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and let the blessed darkness take me. It would be nothing to pass out now. I could literally will myself down Alice’s rabbit hole if I wanted, I was that much of a mess.

But I’d always been weak for any shred of kindness he’d shown me.

Holding on to his head, I rubbed his hair and hummed under my breath, giving him whatever strength I had left in me. I could feel the trembles of his muscles jumping in his back like Mexican beans. He didn’t say anything, just buried his face in my neck and let me hold him, let himself become vulnerable for just a moment, and that more than anything lent me strength.

“Luc, what happened tonight?” I whispered after several silent minutes.

This time when he pulled back, I noticed that while he wasn’t as savaged as I was, he was covered in scrapes and cuts. But unlike mine, his were actively healing. I saw the skin sealing, saw the wounds closing up like some invisible Band-Aid had been stretched across them, turning the angry red flesh sun-kissed and golden once more.

Grabbing my palm, he splayed it open, playing with the webbing between each digit, eyes distracted and thoughtful.

“You know about as much as I do,” he finally said, turning frosty blue eyes my way. His demon was fully under control and I couldn’t help but breathe a relieved sigh.

“Well.” I chuckled weakly, skin tingling when he planted my palm against his heartbeat. “We’re screwed, because I don’t know crap.”

Squeezing his eyes shut as if reliving some horror, he moaned. “I have never in my life witnessed a zombie hive do what they did tonight.” Fingers feathering my hair behind my ear, he grabbed the back of my neck until our eyes locked. “They killed Lynx tonight.”

I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, biting down on it hard. Lynx was a Wrath demon. She’d had a violent sense of justice, right and wrong, black and white. Unyielding and often unemotional, she saw the world with eyes that judged worthy or unworthy and felt no qualms about squashing out the darkness.

But regardless of her not always having been the easiest Nephilim to get along with, I’d liked the iron butterfly, named so because of how dichotomous her appearance versus her personality really was.

Lynx had often appeared fragile and delicate. She’d been a slip of a girl with long black hair and ivory-pale skin. Coming only to my chest, she’d been the shortest of us and was often disregarded by those we hunted down as not quite demon enough to be worth their time.

But she’d fought like a Valkyrie in battle.

I sniffed. “Our numbers are dropping like flies. Not like we have many to lose.” Our carnival was run by thirty-one Neph. Thirty now, I guess. A tall order for such a few.

Losing one was bad enough, but losing two in so many weeks was turning into a cluster of the highest order. You have to realize that Nephilim are much tougher than we might appear. Kemen had been over a thousand years old when he’d died, Lynx close to eight hundred. We weren’t young bucks fresh out of diapers who didn’t have a clue how to handle the darkness around us.

Luc stood then, his hands dropping to his zipper as he kicked off his expensive Italian loafers.

“What are you doing?” I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I didn’t want sex. I felt like shit and yeah, sex might make it all better. But Lust and I weren’t exactly chummy at the moment; I wanted nothing to do with her. That cowardly bitch had now twice abandoned me when I could have used her strength in battle.

Apparently Lust was more the make love, not war type.

Luc was as nude as the day he’d been born when he crawled into the tub with me, and I might have fought harder if I hadn’t wanted friendly arms around me so badly.

Maneuvering in the stupidly small tub until I was on his lap, he wrapped me up and rested his head against my chest.

And as that hot water soaked through me, I closed my eyes and wondered if he realized that even a year ago if he’d done this I would have belonged heart and soul to him only.

Running my fingers through his wet hair, I held as tightly to him as he held me. We didn’t say sorry for how things had gone down for us lately. That just wasn’t what we did. Well, it wasn’t what he did anyway.

The beat of his heart against mine, the way his breath shuddered in and out of him, this was Luc speaking as loudly as he ever would. I closed my eyes and was close to drifting off again when he finally said, “The priest and I killed the final surge of them—they’re all gone.”

“And the people?”

“Bubba wiped their memories. Most of them were injured, but we couldn’t fix that.” He pushed a wet strand of hair away from the corner of my mouth, his lips tight. “I made it right this time, Dora.”

I knew he was referencing the slaughter he’d committed in South Dakota after he’d thought me dead, a topic we had to at some point discuss.

I nodded.

“Kane and Bubba are burning the corpses.”

“You sure there aren’t any more?” I shuddered, wondering if the memory of the walking dead would ever truly leave me or become just another nightmare in the chapter of my life.

He nodded. “I may not like that priest of yours, but he’s deadly. I smelled no more of them around. Whether the queen sent them or the Order, this wasn’t meant to be anything other than a warning.”

I laughed. “Meanwhile, I look like maggot food and Lynx is dead. Why is the Order doing this to us?” Because I was almost one hundred percent positive that even if the queen was in on this, it wasn’t her doing only. The Order wanted me dead, the question was why? What was so damn valuable about one lust Nephilim?

Shaking his head, he cradled my own and it was such a tender gesture that I couldn’t help but respond. Closing my eyes, I took deep meditative breaths.

What we were doing wasn’t sex, but his touch was making my rioting insides at least feel halfway normal again. Sighing, I pressed my cheek to his shoulder, inhaling the crisp scent of absinthe and Luc, a smell unique only to him.

“A zombie tore my mark off,” I whispered, the second my missing mark came to mind. I didn’t say it to startle him or shock him, but I must have.

Pushing me back, he stared at my face with startled eyes. “What? Let me see.”

It took the disentangling of limbs to free my leg and show him.

His fingers were like moth’s wings as he brushed tenderly along the tear mark.

“Luc.” I stilled his hand because my body was beginning to tingle in response and regardless of how I felt for Luc, I’d made Asher a vow. “The zombie seem determined. Not like the rest of the killers around us. It took my leg and ripped, then it ran off.”

“What the hell is going on here, Dora?” His frustration mirrored my own and I shrugged helplessly.

“God, I wish I knew. I know the Order has their hands deep in this shit, but why? It’s killing me that I can’t figure it out!”

Feeling fatigued again, I pressed my hand to my forehead. “I need to clean up and get back to bed. I feel like crap.”

“Dora?” His voice was a whisper, a question. I knew immediately what he was asking and I shook my head.

“Not tonight.”

His jaw clamped shut, but he didn’t argue. Helping me to stand, he turned me directly into the spray and gently—dare I even think it... reverently... rubbed soap all over me. Cleaning me off.

I melted into his touch, wishing so many things were different, that we hadn’t gone beyond the point of fixing it, but we had. My heart, my soul, yearned for Asher.

Turning off the nozzle, he scooped me up and I knew I should walk. It would be painful, but I could. I just didn’t want to. I wanted to revel in his kindness, in the all-too-brief moments still left to our dying relationship.

Laying me on the bed, he pulled the covers up over me, tucking them beneath my chin like I was a child. “I’m going to go make sure Bubba and Kane are good. I’ll tell Vyxen to swing by.”

“Ugh,” I groaned. “You don’t have to. Anyone but her.”

“Dora, I trust her.”

And those words, the way his eyes stared at me so stoically and intensely, told me everything I needed to know. Luc and Vyxen were seeing each other. Maybe not seriously, it was probably just a casual affair, but it was a red-hot poker to my heart.

I chuckled and shrugged, because I knew I’d be a hypocrite if I cast stones about it. “Fine. Send her over, but tell her to stay the hell out of my bedroom.”

Nodding, he turned and walked into the bathroom, got dressed, and was just ready to trace out when I asked him the one question that’d been bothering me since he showed up in my room.

“Luc, where did Asher go?”

“Grace’s.” He cleared his throat, looked down at the carpet and then back at me with ice in his eyes. “Said he’d be back tonight.”

T
he chills returned the moment he left, and with a vengeance too. Teeth chattering so hard I thought I might actually turn into a human Popsicle, I snatched up Kemen’s oversized sweater and attempted to put it on.

Only having one good hand was bad enough, trying to actually shove that mangled-up thing through a sleeve just about had me passing out. Gasping for breath on the pillow, I stared at the ceiling, feeling weak and pathetic.