All Hallows Night (Night Series) (3 page)

I felt the cold of time stood still, looked at the faces all frozen, all staring down at me. I kept expecting them to blink or breathe, but they didn’t move. Just stared at me with horror in their flat gazes. I should care more than I did. Only a few days ago I would have cared, but I had changed. The only thought drilling away at me was... just how powerful was
he
?
How
was Billy doing this?

“Billy?” I said his name like a prayer and then laughed, because absolutely nothing was making sense. I’d seen Billy die in hell, seen his body shatter into a bolt of white light; he’d been taken from me. My death priest had been violently killed in front of me, funny how I still claimed the bastard, even though he’d tried many times to kill me himself. Stabbing me, punching me in the temple until I’d blacked out, I couldn’t trust the man as far as I could throw him. Even though he was currently covered in a shadowy hoodie, it didn’t matter because I was as attuned to his soul as I was to Lust.

This man was my obsession and possibly even my destruction, but none of that mattered because he was here. With me right now, and I desperately needed answers.

“Suck it back into you, Pandora, I can’t hang on much longer.” He said it through gritted teeth, and it was the thread of annoyed desperation in his scratchy voice that finally brought me to my senses.

I’d not taken the time to learn how to properly use Pestilence; Lust and I had grown together over two millennia. This other demon was new to me, but if the mechanics were the same, then focusing on drawing the power back into me should do it.

Looking back at the fog, I mentally called it back to me. Not because I wanted it back—I wanted it out of me—but I needed to talk with Billy, and not while all his attention was focused on saving those around us.

I was shocked when the fog curled back toward me, moving in a slow helix undulation, mostly because everything was still frozen and a part of me had expected this not to work.

Lust quieted almost the second the fog rolled through my body once more. Nostrils flaring as Pestilence’s oily infection ran through my system once again, I could only nod when the last of it sank like a thorny barb into my brain.

Pestilence hissed, roiling and spitting its displeasure at being contained yet again. For many nights I’d seen visions and nightmares of what the demon had done in its previous form, the utter anarchy it delighted in creating.

There was a shudder in the air, like the snap of a taut rubber band being let go, and I knew without looking that time was back as it should be.

His hand was covering my mouth and again I felt something prickly against my flesh. My body was humming, blood singing with untold masses of energy as power rolled between us. Obscuring us from the prying eyes of witnesses.

I’d felt this level of electrifying power before, and I couldn’t deny my confusion. Things just weren’t adding up.

Billy’s face was masked by deep shadow, but his body was as firm and strong as I remembered it. His smell saturated my senses. I wanted a visual cue that what I was sensing was really him, but he wasn’t giving it to me. Why was he so covered? What in the hell was going on?

“We don’t have much time. You have to make that meeting with Grace.” His hand finally moved, but he made no move to get off me, not that I cared. I wanted him all over me. Lust was in heat again and this was an itch only my death priest could quench.

“How do you know about my meeting? What’s going on here?”

He shook his head. “We don’t have much time. I’ve been watching you, demon.”

I mean, I was all for a little Peeping Tom action, especially when it was Billy watching me, but it hadn’t exactly sounded like he’d been happy to do it. “Jeez, Billy.” I slammed his chest with my fist, wanting to hurt him even a little, because as tough as I sometimes pretended to be, that idiot had just hurt me. “I thought you were dead, you ass. The least you can do is be nicer. And my name is
Pandora
!” I bit out through clenched teeth.

“Shut up and listen to me,” he growled. “You’re already late, you have no idea what’s going on, and the truth goes much deeper than you think. You got me?”

It sat in my gut like a raging river of bile to have him order me around, but I wouldn’t deny that curiosity more than anything else kept my questions at bay.

For now.

I narrowed my eyes.

“Pandora.” The way he said my name, soft and with a hint of a growl, like he was confused and exasperated all at once, made my heart thump harder.

“What do you know? You sound like you know something. Tell me, Billy.”

My lashes fluttered. I wished I could help the way my body reacted to him, wished I could stop it, make it go away. It would be so much easier. But this man who was created for the express purpose of ending not only my life, but anyone else like me, had a way of getting under my skin and making me want things in a way that bordered on lunacy.

“You need to go,” he finally said.

“Why’d you come to me, Billy?” I gripped his shoulders, digging into them with my nails. My hair was probably coated in mud and other things, my clothes were definitely ripped, and I just didn’t give a damn. I could lay like this, with him, forever.

For the first time in days I felt like me again, like I could think and reason and breathe. The world was still in chaos around me, but my beacon had returned and maybe, just maybe, I could figure things out.

He shook his head, but no words left his lips.

I wanted to toss his hoodie back, wanted to run my fingers through his silver spikes. Wanted to drown in his taste, his essence. Lust purred inside me; she wanted the same things. We’d claimed this man as ours long ago, he was the only thing we’d ever agreed on.

“Are you letting me walk away from you again?” I whispered, leaning up a little so my mouth grazed the corner of his covered cheek.

I knew it wasn’t in my head that his muscles trembled on top of me. That his voice had grown more hoarse as he said, “We have to talk.”

“Then talk to me now.”

“Pandora, we play a dangerous game. One wrong move and it’s over. Do you understand me?”

I nodded but continued to gently rub my body along his; the movements built tension and friction between my thighs and I couldn’t stop the moan that rolled down my tongue. His fingers drove deeper into the muscle of my arms. They’d bruise tonight. I didn’t care.

“I don’t understand anything.” I shook my head and ran my nose along the length of his covered-up neck. Somehow he must have spelled the sweater not to move an inch, because no matter how I moved or touched him, the damn thing didn’t shift. “I don’t understand how you survived. I don’t understand why you keep just letting me walk away; I don’t understand how come there are no eyes watching us anymore. How you froze time. What are you doing to me, Billy? Why do you keep coming to me? Are you going to kill me?”

His fingers curled even harder, making me hiss with pleasure and pain. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have. Many times. You have to know the truth.”

“Then tell me.”

“Not now. We don’t have time. Look in that book.”

I frowned. “What book? You’ve seen my trailer—I have thousands.”

“The one Grace’s assistant gave you about me.” I could almost picture the amusement flickering in his dull brown eyes. I wasn’t even surprised that he knew. Billy had always seemed to be ten steps ahead of me. So rather than pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about, I shrugged.

“There’s nothing in that damn thing. A bunch of useless crap. The lines were all blacked out.”

“Not that one. The poems. Read it.”

I felt the pressure of his body shift, sensed he was seconds away from getting up. Panicked, I wrapped my legs around his waist like steel bands.

“You tell me we have to talk and now you’re leaving. Wait for me, talk to me after I’m done with her. What’s so important about those stupid poems? It’s Middle English scribbles. I’ve read the damn thing, none of it makes sense.”

He looked up and then growled. “If I keep us hidden too much longer, whoever’s tailing you will know.”

I shivered because I’d not sensed any eyes on me, not even his.

“Who? The Order?”

“I’m not sure yet, but don’t worry about it. There’s so much”—he paused and I sensed his anger in the words—“so much you don’t know. I’ve got to go.”

“No! Not yet. You’ve got to tell me what’s going on here... You’ve got to give me something.”

Then his fingers were trailing hot along my cheek, feathering down my neck, and I couldn’t stop myself from trembling, from whispering his name.

“I’ll find you again,” he mumbled vehemently. “Read the book.”

Then just like that, he was gone. My arms were empty and the streets were buzzing with noise again. Previously empty doorways were full of people, and they were all staring down at me lying on my back in the middle of the filthy, flea-infested dirt road, and the eyes that were always watching me were back.

With a snarl, I stood and dusted my backside. But I only smeared the mud worse. I didn’t even bother with my hair.

Knowing the night wouldn’t keep my secrets, I didn’t say his name again. There was something in the way he’d kept us hidden that let me know Billy’s secrets, whatever they were, ran as deep as mine. I wasn’t sure if we’d just formed an uneasy alliance or if he was still plotting to destroy me. But where he was concerned, my personal safety had always been a back-burner issue.

Thanks to Grace’s betrayal, I’d learned to listen to my gut. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t be possessed by Pestilence now, and for damn sure Kemen would still be alive. Something inside me screamed to trust Billy, and it wasn’t because he’d really given me any outward signs that I should. But then again, maybe it was just Lust coloring my better judgment.

With a snarl, I hid inside the deepest slice of shadow and traced to Grace’s, leaving nothing but the scent of sulfur in my wake.

***

S
itting in Grace’s one-bedroom adobe ten minutes later, I had to apply every bit of acting skill I had as I waited for the old bat to come out of the bathroom. Her new assistant had led me to a worn, overstuffed leather chair.

I sometimes wondered what had happened to Mary (Grace’s previous assistant), She’d been so scared of me when I’d first met her, but she was also the one who’d given me that book of Middle English poems that Billy insisted I now read.

I was in the middle of a giant effing conspiracy, and I hated with the heat of a thousand burning fires that I was too stupid to just figure it out. Grace was a rotten seed, the Order was nothing but a bunch of murderous bastards, Billy was still alive, Luc hated my guts I was sure, Kemen was dead...

I swallowed hard because that one still made me want to curl into a ball and cry.

“Pandora!” Grace’s shrill voice sliced through my thoughts. She walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her, and opened her frail-looking arms to me.

Once, I would have run to her. Hugged her with every ounce of love left in me. There used to be a time when I’d thought myself more human than demon, because of her. Because of the lies she’d spoon-fed me and made me believe.

But I knew the opposite to be true now. I wasn’t human. Not really. I never would be. She’d played me for a fool, and all I wanted to do was shove my claws through her chest and rip her heart out. Make her hurt in the same way she’d hurt me.

Lucky for her, Billy had gotten to me first. Made me see I needed to focus and put petty things like revenge off, at least for a while.

Plastering a smile on my face, I stood. “Grace.” I forced warmth into her name and walked to her side, where I grabbed a hold of her elbow and helped guide her to the chair I’d been previously occupying. “It’s so good to see you.” I smiled.

Why hadn’t I noticed the shifty look in her pale blue eyes before? Or the way her pulse increased by a notch, booming like a bullet’s ricochet in my ears?

But even as I asked it, I knew the answer. I’d seen it happen in a million different ways in a million different people. Because when you wanted to believe something, you would. I wasn’t fooled anymore, though I wondered what she would think if she realized the shoe was now on the other foot?

How she must have mocked me to my back, thought me a stupid idiot. I’d heard her tape recording—it’d been sent to me by the Gray Man—her laughing into the line, calling me a fool desperate to believe she actually loved me.

I smiled wider, exposing the full length of my fangs, and experienced a cheap thrill when her eyes widened slightly.

“Always good to see you,” I said, acting the part of the loving adopted daughter I’d once foolishly thought I was. “I’m sorry I’m late. I was scouting the village and heard rumors that I was trying to follow up on, lost track of time.”

Grace cleared her throat and sat. Her smile wasn’t as wide as I usually remembered it. Her skin was definitely more yellow-looking. An obvious sign of a failing liver. Grace was old and would probably die of natural causes soon. But only if I let her. I hadn’t decided yet.

She lifted a hand. “Much better furnishings this time, no?”

She referred, of course, to her previous digs. The place Mary had decorated. It’d been a hideous amalgam of Christmas and gaudy Liberace rolled into one. This small adobe structure wasn’t much to look at on the outside, but inside it was clean. The floors were a sandy-hued tile, the walls stucco, and there were exposed wooden planks in the ceiling. Traditional woven tapestries decorated the walls in a colorful burst of pinks, teals and oranges, and extremely fat beeswax candles lit the sparsely decorated room. There was just the couch I sat on, the leather chair Grace sat on, and one floor rug.

“Better,” I agreed. I’d always been of the less-is-more variety.

“Aye.” She nodded, but I sensed she wasn’t altogether here. She was more distracted than normal, and I’m sure I knew why.

I wasn’t supposed to have survived my night in Hell. And I probably wouldn’t have if Billy hadn’t been there. I saw that night so differently now, when at the time I’d been confused as to whether he meant to kill me himself or rescue me.