Darkness Descending (6 page)

“I’m not human,” she pointed out. “I haven’t been for a long time.”

He made a sound somewhere between a chuff and a laugh. It might have been amusement. She wasn’t sure. “You’re not the only one who has lost your innocence,” he said, leveling his gaze on her face.

Jesse gave him a once-over. Maddox apparently had more than a few secrets of his own. “I’m guessing you weren’t in that cemetery for your health.”

“I was following you, actually,” he countered with a grin.

Her brows rose. “Me? Why?”

A brief frown pleated his brow. “At first I thought you were one of their human servants they send to retrieve a fledgling. We call them the Kindred.”

She cut him a sharp look. “There was supposed to be another one there?”

“Yes. And I took care of him.” He waved a dismissive hand. “After that, it didn’t take long to figure out you weren’t one of them.”

Jesse felt as stupid as a rock. “Guess it’s good for me you knew what you were doing,” she allowed. “But you still haven’t said why you’d be lurking in the midnight dreary.”

He shrugged. “Just doing my job.”

“Bullshit.” The expletive rushed past her lips before she could halt it. “I don’t think slaying demon-infected corpses qualifies as a profession.”

This time a frown preceded his shrug. “It’s what I do.”

“I don’t think so,” she remarked, lacing her tone with sarcasm. “And I don’t have time to mess around with little boys with secrets, either.” It was easy to turn his earlier words back on him. She’d had to spill. So should he. The last thing she needed to deal with was more secrets and lies.

Maddox heaved a deep sigh. “I suppose that’s fair enough.” Unbuttoning his shirt, he pulled the collar aside. Scars eerily similar to hers branded his neck. “Most of us who hunt them have been victims ourselves. Like you, I was one of the taken.”

His confession triggered an involuntary shudder. Memories she’d fought to suppress came creeping out from the darker corners of her mind. Brutal, vicious images flashed across her mind’s eye, a juxtaposition of mouths with sharp teeth biting deeply into her flesh, eagerly sucking up the blood seeping from the savage wound.

Jesse remembered the feel of consciousness ebbing away and of the coldness of death beginning to wash through her . . .

She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t need to remember. Every day she lived with the aftermath of the attack.

“You’re infected, too.” At least she wasn’t alone. It was the first comforting thought she’d had in a long time.

Closing his shirt, Maddox shook his head. “No. I’m not. By the grace of the heaven above, I was born with an immune system capable of resisting the demon’s invasion. Instead of spreading through my body to latch on and grow, the poisonous thing shriveled up and died.”

She stared at him a moment. “Man alive. What luck.”

He chuffed again. “Not luck. I’m a Palindrome.”

She blinked at the strange word. “I don’t even know what that means.”

Maddox smiled slowly, but no mirth moved the act. “Simply put, Palindromes are sentinels created to fight the Telave on Earth.”

Jesse narrowed her eyes. “Well, isn’t that convenient? What makes you so special that you earned immunity while the rest of us drop like flies?”

“Since you don’t believe in the ancient lore, I don’t suppose it would do any good whatsoever to tell you that the Enlightened One has sent her own warriors into the battle.”

“Ah, right. So some humans get a free pass while the others are thrown to the vampires?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Sounds like this Enlightened One, as you call her, didn’t have much of a plan in place.”

His brows rose. “Actually, I’d say sending her archangels to breed with select human females to create an entirely new bloodline resistant to the Telave’s infection is fucking brilliant.”

“If it’s even remotely true,” she groused. “It all sounds too incredible to be believed.”

His features took on a serious cast. “Although we don’t like it, Jesse, there are some things we have to take on faith. You ask me how I know all these things, and I can give you the same answer I give everyone else. When you are in doubt, go off alone, where the only sounds you hear are your own thoughts. Close your eyes and meditate. If your heart is sincere and open, you will receive a visitation from the Enlightened One. It is then she will show you what your purpose is.”

“Really? You’ve experienced this yourself?”

He nodded gravely. “More or less. So have others I know. I can’t explain it, except to say there are other invisible forces at work around us.”

Jesse wavered. He didn’t really have any easy answers and she shouldn’t expect them. “I—I’ll try.” It made her wonder.
Is it possible?
Staring the outlaw down, she leaned forward. “Let’s say for the sake of conversation that everything you’ve told me is the absolute truth. How do you know you’re one of these Palin-things?”

“I didn’t know until I was taken,” he explained. “When I was infected, the demonic parasite activated something in my DNA. As my system absorbed the venomous thing, several mortal restraints fell away. I became stronger than most men, faster.”

His answer triggered a vague moment in her memory, of being in the cemetery when he’d appeared, the blur of a shadow morphing into a man. He’d arrived so quickly and with such stealth that her mind hadn’t been able to process what she’d seen. At the time, she’d been too damn preoccupied with the vampire to give it a second thought.

She shook her head. “That explains how you became one,” she said. “Not how you knew you were one.”

One corner of his mouth turned up in the barest hint of a smile. “Like you, I had to have an oracle of sorts to show me the way. Her name was Serafina. She guided me through my darkness, as I am now trying to do for you.”

Jesse moistened her lips. “This goes back to that end-of-days thing you were talking about, doesn’t it?” It felt creepy to be discussing a subject that had both frightened and intrigued mankind for thousands of years. Her own knowledge was sketchy. She hadn’t been raised to observe much of any faith.

Oh, ye of little
. . . , she thought.

He launched an inquiring glance. “Did you think the Enlightened One would send no warriors of her own into battle? The dominion of Earth might be Xaphan’s playground, but men are by no means unguarded against the threat of the Telave.”

At this point, Jesse wasn’t sure about anything. No one expected to be hauled straight into the apocalypse. It wasn’t as though the sky had cracked open and some great sign had appeared.

Jesse shifted uncomfortably. “Who the hell is Xaphan?”

Maddox let a bitter smile play at the corner of his lips. “Who do you think caused the angels to fall? Eve to take the first bite of that apple?”

Jesse quirked a brow. “You mean Satan?”

Maddox gave a short laugh. “Call him what you will. Mythologies get complicated over time, but those of us who know him haven’t forgotten his true name.”

Jesse’s blood turned to ice. An image of Maddox swinging a fiery sword flashed across her mind’s eye. How did he know so much? “You’re not human, are you?” A chill crept up her spine even as she spoke the words.

The man sitting a few feet away gave her a level look. The heat behind his gaze probed back. His fingers toyed with the bottle, close to empty now. “Yes, I’m still human. Just not mortal. There is a difference.”

He answered with such conviction that Jesse didn’t think he was lying—not by a long shot. She looked him up and down. “So that would give you, like, eternal life or something.”

He arched a brow in thought. “Not really. Like the Telave, we aren’t invulnerable. But because there are so few called to fight, we have a longer life span.”

Jesse’s fingers curled into tight fists. Had she not been a victim herself, she would’ve called him certifiable. However, there was nothing funny or unbelievable in his narrative. Whether or not one cared to believe, it seemed names were being taken and sides were being chosen. Who would remain standing amid the chaos to come was yet to be determined.

Though Jesse wanted to stand, the demon seething inside was determined to take her down—no doubt there. The question was, how much longer could she resist its hunger?

A wave of resentment washed through her. “Guess that makes you one of the blessed ones,” she grated. It didn’t seem fair she’d somehow gotten left out of the equation. She’d cut off her right arm to be rid of the demon inside. But divine intervention, genetics, fate—call it whatever—hadn’t smiled on her. She felt as though she’d been tossed aside, one of the dark forgotten.

His dark irises glittered like a mirror coated with frost. “No man who has looked evil in its ugly face can call himself lucky. Like those things, I exist in the shadows, hoping I can hold on to my sanity. It’s hardly a life many men would want; yet it’s mine.”

Comprehension dawned. “I understand,” she said. “All you can do is take each day as it comes. If you make it through another one, you’ve succeeded.”

A sigh of exhaustion escaped him. “Sometimes I wonder about that,” he said. “With each century that passes, the Telave grow stronger. It often feels as if we’re fighting a battle we can’t win.”

“We? So where are the others?”

Maddox let his hand drop. “There are others. You will meet them. Another time.” Reaching for the whiskey, he drained the final dregs. The bottle that had begun the evening half-full was now empty. He lowered it with a thud against the scarred linoleum tabletop. “I’m done. It’s time for bed.” By now his voice had developed a slur, proving he wasn’t invulnerable to the effects of hard liquor.

Jesse inwardly winced. After Amanda’s murder, her father had crawled inside the bottle, adding yet another stress to her parents’ already-strained marriage. They weren’t coping well, and neither was she. Part of the reason she’d left was for the sake of her own sanity. Everyone was falling apart. Life would never be the same for the Burke family. As much as she missed her parents, she had decided she’d never contact them again. They would never understand the monster lurking beneath her skin. As far as she was concerned, her life had ended the night she and Amanda were taken.

Though hardly prepared to call the night over, Jesse supposed she didn’t have a choice. Her mind raced, filled to the brim with questions. There was still so much to learn, so much more she wanted to know.

Don’t push
, she warned herself. Right now her position in Maddox’s territory was tenuous at best. True, he’d offered to protect her from his people. But that didn’t mean she was safe—not at all. She’d have to work hard to prove she belonged, to prove to him that she could handle herself.

Lesson number one had already been hammered into her head: Never hunt alone. She’d just learned the hard way it was better to have some backup.

Oh yeah. The shotgun might’ve helped, too.

But there was no time to think of those things.

Maddox abruptly stood, staggering toward the bed. Exhaustion, coupled with the booze, had obviously affected his system. Stripping off his shirt, he tossed it aside. Still clad in jeans and heavy boots, he pitched forward, landing facedown on the mattress. A moment later he rolled over, arms and legs akimbo.

“Come to bed,” he invited.

Jesse’s gaze drifted over Maddox’s prone body. The mellow golden glow emanating from the nearby lamp caressed the masculine angles of his body. Cut to a ragged collar length, a mass of brown curls shaded with red tumbled without restraint around his face. He had a battered profile that suggested the years behind him had been no easier than the endless ones stretching ahead. A long ragged scar distorted one temple, coming dangerously close to the corner of his left eye. He hadn’t shaved in a day, maybe two, and dark stubble mossed his cheeks and jawline.

Her gaze trekked lower. More scars, many of which hinted at the rough-and-tumble life he’d led, marred his upper body.

The disfigurement didn’t detract from his rough handsomeness, instead adding to his mystique as a man of shadow and mystery. His shoulders were broad, but not ridiculously bulky. A light smattering of hair matted his chest; a sleek line of it funneled down to disappear beneath the waistline of his jeans. A slab of hard abdomen ruled over an endless stretch of legs.

Even though he was at rest, an aura of great strength was apparent just beneath the muscle and sinew covering his bones. There was no doubt in her mind he was dangerous, adept at surviving on his wits and nerve.

Unable to stop herself, Jesse shivered at the delicious sight.

If nothing else, Maddox deValois was all male. For the first time in months, she felt a little spark of interest jump into her mind. Her body reacted with a sexuality that thumped into her heart, sending a rush of blood to the tips of her nipples, already bead hard from the sight of a half-naked man lying just a few feet away. Need rippled deep inside her core. The wicked feelings swept through her body, unbidden, and she felt her cheeks flush with heat.

Jesse swallowed again—harder. As one of the demon-infected, she’d shunned the touch of a man. It had been a long time since anyone had touched her skin, caressed her . . .

She shoved the unbidden feelings aside.
Not now.
Her tongue moistened chapped lips. “Uh, if you think I’m having sex with you, you can forget that right now.” The words almost couldn’t escape. Her mouth felt dry as parched wheat.

Releasing a small groan, Maddox raised his head. “Who said anything about sex?” He dropped it again and pressed his hands against his face. “I’ll find my pleasure elsewhere. Sleep is what I need now. As for where you want to sleep, suit yourself.”

Jesse had to admit the bed looked inviting enough. It had been at least a month since she’d had a mattress under her back, and the one she’d had then hadn’t been a good one at all. The jail in Jefferson Parish didn’t offer a whole lot of comfort to its prisoners. Having no permanent address, she usually spent the night in the remnants of houses abandoned by their owners after Katrina. At one time or another, abandoned public facilities or alleyways had sufficed. Except for her time behind bars, she’d never spent a night in the same place.