Deliver Me from Temptation (23 page)

It wasn’t a man on the other side of her door, and it wasn’t a knife that had cut her. It was a demon—or something that looked hellish enough to be one.

She’d never forget how that thing had smiled, saliva dripping from its razor-sharp teeth, its bottomless, black gaze inviting her into the depths of Hell. She hadn’t screamed, just grabbed her gun and started unloading bullets. But the thing didn’t even flinch, just stepped over the threshold and swiped the gun from her hand. She turned to run, her only thought to get to the knife Logan had given her. But then she tripped, crashed into the coffee table, and sent the knife skittering. She rolled, but the thing reached for her and she raised her arm. She’d never forget the fiery burn as it slashed through the skin, nor the triumphant gleam in its fathomless eyes as it had bent down and licked her gaping flesh.

She’d been shocked, horror rolled through her, but then her training snapped into gear. The knife was right there, inches away. She punched and grappled with the…thing…and somehow managed to get close enough to grab the knife. Unfortunately it had been with her bad arm so the strike she got in was halfhearted at best, the tip barely sinking into the thing’s chest. It was a complete shock when the blade flared bright in her hand, the creature shrieking before it just…disappeared. Poof, a cloud of darkness, then nothing.

She was also shocked to find herself bleeding all over her rug. It had burned so much as his claw dug in that she was sure it cauterized as it slashed. And though she tried to make a tourniquet out of a dish towel and a spoon, it was just as obvious she didn’t have the strength to do it properly.

Even as she whimpered Logan’s name, she called Mike, knowing that since the attack was over, she had to get help fast, and Mike was her best bet. And as he screamed orders at the desk sergeant to get an ambulance and a police cruiser to her apartment, and then screamed orders at her as he jumped in his car to get to her, she tried to make coherent sentences in return—and watched herself bleed out.

She didn’t want to die. Not now. Not ever. At least not without Logan to hold her.

She wasn’t sure what happened next as everything had become a blur, but she did remember the banging on the door and her attempt to tell them it was unlocked, which might or might not have been heard since they opened it anyway and came in. After that, she just let go, and then woken up here. With Logan staring down at her.

At first she thought it was a dream, until she’d noticed those lines of strain. If she was dreaming she certainly wouldn’t have made him look so dour and she certainly would’ve put them in a better setting than a sterile hospital room.

And his talk about her being the death of
him
? What the heck was that all about? If anything she was going to be the one to die first. According to him, he’d already lived for over a century; reason stood he could live almost forever…and she wouldn’t.

But
you
have
him
right
now, Jessica.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. That was the other Jessica talking. The one who’d snickered along with her sixteen-year-old twin as they picked out their favorite from
The
Bachelorette’s
lineup of men. The one who’d shared Julia’s dream of seeing her paintings in a gallery and had gone to business school to make it happen. The one who came alive under Logan’s skilled touch. But being that person was dangerous. If she let herself go, if she allowed herself to feel, she could be hurt. And he would hurt her. She was sure of it. Because former angel or not, what hot-blooded man—and damn was Logan hot—would stay with a woman when she was old and wrinkled and he was not?

“So, you’re his little secret.”

She looked up. A man stood in the door, the backlight shadowing his face but not his figure. Large, about Logan’s height though definitely not him. She would have known if it was.

“Excuse me?” she asked, her hand slipping down over the call button. If this man so much as blinked wrong…

He took a step into the room, the dim light over her bed illuminating his chestnut-colored hair. She sucked in a breath. It was still too difficult to make out his eyes but she would have taken a bet they were cloudy-day gray.

“Logan. He’s been distracted and not exactly forthcoming in his answers. I figured it was something to do with his sister but now I understand. He’s been with you.”

The way he said this suggested he didn’t think that was a good thing. She couldn’t explain why that upset her other than this man was no stranger. This man was Logan’s father. The resemblance was too uncanny otherwise. And if she’d had any lingering doubts of who, or rather what, Logan was, they would be gone now because physically Logan’s father didn’t look much older than his son. Except for his eyes. There was more than one lifetime of grief there.

Logan’s mother. He never told me how his mother died. Had she been human?

“You must be Logan’s father.”

“Oh, hooray. At least he didn’t pick a complete dimwit.”

And
you
must
be
an
asshole
. She refrained from saying that out loud, though she couldn’t seem to resist the urge to say something. “I am not some sort of flower to be picked. If I’m with your son it’s because we chose to be together.”

“Really? You’re telling me that you haven’t been inexplicably drawn to him since the first moment you met? That you no doubt fell into his arms at the flimsiest of excuses?” He laughed. “Trust me, human. There was no choice because if there were, my son would never have chosen you.”

She sucked in a breath at the tight pain in her chest. They were just words. Obviously meant to hurt. Though why a former angel would want to hurt her was beyond her. “It’s no wonder Logan doesn’t talk about you much. If you were my father I wouldn’t talk about you either.”

His mouth thinned. He tapped his leg, then sat down in the plastic chair Logan had vacated fewer than twenty minutes before. She watched as he ran his hand through his hair and sighed. Just like Logan. And damn if that didn’t make her ache to have Logan near again.

Where did he go? What was so important that he had to leave her alone in her hospital bed?

“I apologize. My unkind words toward you are borne of frustration and worry. Nothing more.” Logan’s father lifted his head, his mouth tugging up at the corner. “I’m sure you are a fine human being.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she muttered.

“You really don’t understand though, do you? You have no idea why I fear you being with my son.”

“You already said. You think I’m a distraction. That he’s shirking his duties because of me.”

“That too.”

She lifted and dropped her hand in frustration. “I don’t see what the problem is. You’re all but immortal aren’t you? Ten, thirty, fifty years—if I’m lucky—and then I’ll be out of his life and out of your hair.”

And there went the wet eyes again. Was she doomed to live her life grasping for but never being able to hold onto the things she loved? She swallowed, thinking of every absurd thing in the world to keep the moisture where it belonged. She would not cry in front of Logan’s father.

He rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger—judging her. “I forget how selfish you humans can be.”

“Selfish?” She wiped a renegade escapee tear away. “You think the thought of leaving him doesn’t kill me?”

His face clouded over, fury sparking in his gaze—still gray, Logan hadn’t inherited the changeable iris color from his father it seemed. “You think this is killing you? What do you think is going to happen when he has to watch you die just a little bit each day?” He scoffed. “A Paladin and a human? It’s just not a compatible mating. Bad enough your human qualities will taint the pureness of his soul, but the effect your certain death will have on him?”

She sucked in a breath, her heart thudding beneath her breast. Angry, hurt, confused. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, my dear, that if your human impurities don’t contaminate his soul beyond redemption, then your eventual death is sure to drive him insane. There has been only one other Paladin to ever form a full bond with a human, and he now sits by Lucifer’s side.”

She sucked in a breath, an icy chill settling into her already cold core. “Lucifer? As in the devil?”

He nodded and leaned forward. “Are you really so selfish as to condemn my son to eternal damnation?”

“Wait, pull up that last email from the ME.”

Bennett nodded, then doing some fancy dancing with his fingers across the touch screen, dragged over the correspondence and tapped it open. “You know, this would be easier with the fine detective’s computer.”

Logan grunted. Probably so. Bennett had been working his magic; shifting through the cloud, skirting privacy settings to dig up the information Logan had requested.

The mission started as a seed of an idea. An idea that had deep roots of evil. When Logan left her hospital room, he was determined to do whatever was necessary to save Jessica from herself. Tracking down Bennett and Alex in the waiting area was no harder than convincing Alex to stay and keep watch while Logan and Bennett went on a little excursion into the NYPD database. A shorter than average trip across town and less than five minutes after they’d entered The Bat Cave (what Bennett called the small room that actually lay outside the boundaries of Haven’s protective relic and thus not in a technological no-zone), Bennett had the files on Julia’s death. Logan wanted to know the names and locations of where her killers were being kept. Not sure why, unless he meant to kill them so they no longer haunted Jessica’s life, but as he stared at the boys’ mug shots, he realized he couldn’t do it. They were bastards of the highest order, but even they deserved a chance to redeem their souls. Besides, they weren’t worth the cost of his own. Especially if he hoped to one day find Jessica again in the afterlife in His realm.

Time. Time would heal all wounds. With his help, Jessica could get past her pain and anger. She had to.

The question was would there be enough time?

He currently had Bennett pulling up everything he could find on the Thomas Rhodes case. It was more than he expected and far from what he hoped. Some of it was also extremely interesting.

Mike had been researching them. Roland, Karissa, even Alexander and himself. The information he gathered was remarkable in that it wasn’t all fluff, and alarming in the way the cop had spun it in his notes, but nothing Logan really cared about. The dead informant was the key. The meeting in the alley was when the enemy had set their focus on Jessica. Logan hoped that something would pop out that would put an end to this mess. The problem was there was no end. The ME’s report confirmed what he feared: He’d been right on who—or rather what—Tom’s killer was, and that thing wasn’t someone that the NYPD could put behind bars. One, because vampires were something they didn’t believe in, and two, because if the cops tried, they’d end up dead.

No solutions. The case wasn’t ever going to be closed. Somehow, Logan had to convince Jessica to let the case die a natural death in the cold case file cabinet. She wasn’t going to be safe from the vampires until it was there.

And
you
think
she’ll be safe then? Now that you’re her mate and Ganelon knows about her?

“Damn it all to Hell.”

“Hmm?” Bennett asked absently, his fingers still flying.

“Nothing. Sorry.” He sighed, running his hands over his face, the too-long-without-sleep grit in his eyes stinging the inside of his lids. Damn, when was the last time he slept—really slept, and not just a few half-hour cat-naps while he and Jessica had recovered from the mind-blowing sex?

His phone vibrated. He straightened, shifting in the chair to pull it from his pocket. Not a call, but a text:
Heads
up. I’ve been reassigned. Thus far a steady stream of her cop friends have come through and nothing but yawns between.

He frowned, unease skating up his spine. Alexander. He started to text the Paladin back, not comfortable with Jess’s only protection being her cop friends, when a sharp voice cracked through the air.

“Logan!”

Logan grit his teeth, flicking the phone shut. One guess on who yanked Alex from guard duty.

Logan turned in his chair, drawing his shoulders back as he prepared for confrontation. “Yes, father?”

“In my study, now,” Calhoun Senior said, jerking his head down the hall.

Logan’s jaw ticked, but he pushed back the chair and stood to follow.

“Good luck, Mate,” Bennett intoned softly. Logan nodded his thanks and kept on going.

His father was already settled behind his desk when Logan reached the head council’s favored chamber. His father had a smattering of rooms throughout Haven and dozens of other little sanctuaries throughout the city that no one, save his son, knew about. Frankly Logan suspected he only knew because someone should be told about them just in case something happened to Calhoun Senior. The many relics housed in Haven were not the only ones entrusted to the Paladin to guard. There were at least two that his family personally guarded. Two that his father didn’t even trust to the brothers to defend.

Logan waited, arms folded behind his back. It was the only way he could fight the itching need to get out of Haven and back to Jessica. Frankly, he would have ignored the summons but he figured that unless his father had his say, he’d more than likely send one or more of his Paladin brothers after him, which, given Logan’s current mood wouldn’t be good for anyone.

It would be okay. Not many people had Bennett’s skills in tracking information, and the hospital was populated enough that it should be safe, especially if Jessica was surrounded by a bunch of men and women with badges and guns.

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how disappointed I am in you,” his father said.

“And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that I think you’re overreacting and trying to control things that you are not meant to control.”

“Things have gotten completely out of hand. A null slipping in and then out of the halls of Haven. My son sleeping with some powerless girl. Paladin using their gifts against one another? The very foundation of our order is being threatened and you don’t see a problem?”

“That girl is my mate.”

“Have you performed the ceremony and bonded with her yet?”

Logan tensed, his jaw clenching. He hadn’t. And not because there hadn’t been opportunity. The first being during one of the many fabulously amazing moments during the night they’d spent together. Then he told himself that he hesitated because he wanted Jessica to understand who and what he was first, but he knew it was because there was a part of him that hoped by not doing so, he could somehow shield himself from the full effects of the mate bond. It stood to reason that if he didn’t perform the ceremony to open the pathway between them, then he could somehow make it through her eventual death. Not that he’d let her die anytime soon, but she
would
die. Eventually.

“Good, not bonded then,” his father said with some satisfaction.

Logan sighed. “Have you ever heard of a mate-bond, even if not formally acknowledged, disappearing?” That he asked with even a small measure of hope made him sick. But hell, he was scared. He honestly didn’t think he could take it if she died. And he would not become his father, turning his emotions off, his life obsession, his duties, and nothing more.

Nor would he become another Ganelon.

It was his father’s turn to sigh. “This is a mess.”

“What would you have me do, father? You know as well as I that I cannot deny the call of that bond, fully formed or not.”

“You could damn well try! Stop seeing her. Let her move on with her life.”

“You think I could do that?”

His father pounded his desk. “I will lock you up for her lifetime if I have to!” He took a deep breath, ran his hands through his hair, shaking his head as he regained his control. “You will someday take my place on the council. Your duty is to the task He placed upon us. It is to Him and your brothers. Not this human.”

Logan clenched his fists, knowing that to his father there was no other argument that mattered. “And her? What would you do with Jessica? She already knows what I am. I’ve already allowed the first link to form by becoming her lover.”

His father waved that off. “Matters not.”

“It doesn’t?” he asked, taken aback by the easy dismissal.

“I can block memories too.”

Logan shook his head. “You can’t block that sort of bond. She’ll always know she is missing something.”

“I would turn her into a vegetable before I allowed some mere human to hold the balance of my son’s sanity in her whimsical nature.”

Logan sucked in a breath. The way his father said it seemed so callous. When had his father become so heartless?

He stepped forward, his hand raised, finger pointed. “If you touch a single pathway within her mind, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?”

He curled his fingers back, dropping his hand back down to his side. “Trust me, father. You don’t want to know.”

And then he turned his back on his father and took himself from the room, because the truth was he didn’t like the answer any more than his father would.

He was already hanging by a thread. If his father did anything to Jessica, flesh and blood or not, Logan would treat him no differently than whoever stabbed her. And whoever that was would never touch a hair on her head again, because though they might not know it yet, they were already dead.

***

Jessica was a popular lady. Logan and his father weren’t the only visitors she had, though they were the ones who absorbed most of her thoughts and emotional agony. Not that her location was well known. The police were trying to keep her whereabouts hush, hush. At least until they had some leads on the attack. As if they’d ever get any. She figured tracking down a demon was not something they were equipped to do. Which is why, when Mike showed up somewhere in the stream of blue uniforms and well-wishers, she played the I-can’t-really-remember card.

Stupid. For her at least, though hopefully it would keep Mike safe from harm. She realized she was in deep shit. She also realized that the only one who could fix it was the man she should never see again.

No. She absolutely
could
not see Logan again. What they had was already too scary in intensity. And if there was even a chance that what Logan’s father had said was true? She shook her head. She would not risk Logan’s sanity and she certainly would not risk the loss of his soul.

Damn, why had this happened to them? Why pair her, a simple human with belief issues, with one of His warriors? To test her faith? To test Logan’s? It just didn’t make sense.

“What am I supposed to do? Follow my heart and risk his soul?”

No, Jessica. This is where you’re supposed to make the ultimate sacrifice and let him go.

She let her head flop against the stiff pillow. What a mess.

Someone knocked on the door. She looked over, half hoping, half dreading it would be Logan. It wasn’t. Though her feelings for the man in the doorway were similarly mixed. There’d been something weird about their last interaction. He took the dumping well but something after that—

“Hey, you in here talking to yourself?”

“Hey, Damon,” she said, struggling to sit up straighter in the bed. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Only good things, I hope.” He smiled, his black eyes twinkling mischievously.

“Right…” What had she been thinking about?

He stepped in, his gaze drawn to her bandaged right arm. He swallowed, the twinkle dimming, and she noticed that his coloring looked decidedly sick.

That’s right, he’d left her to go do something. Probably blamed himself. Which he shouldn’t. She still wasn’t sure what the purpose of the attack was, but she was sure of one thing: If Damon had been there, he would have been an annoyance, nothing more, and would likely be in the same position she was—if not dead.

“Hey, this isn’t your fault you know,” she told him.

“You’ll forgive me if I think it is.” He pulled a hand down over his face, then approached and took her hand. “Damn, Jessica. I wish I could make this up to you.”

She looked around the room, at the beeping machines, the sterile white curtain. God, she hated hospitals. At least, when she was the one in them. There was nothing to do but sit and wait and ponder your own faults and vulnerabilities. Not to mention the seriously fucked-up state of your life to have ended up there.

“Maybe you can,” she murmured.

“Excuse me?”

“I need you to help me with something,” she said, her voice low like a conspirator. “Something very important and very dangerous.”

He played along, leaning in closer. “Does it involve breaking the law?”

“Maybe.” She gnawed on her lip, looking by him to the open door. No one there. “Break me out of here. They said they’d release me in the morning but I can’t…I can’t…” she bit her lip, memories swamping her of another time. Another sterile concrete building. It was a morgue, but the vulnerability she felt had been the same. They’d told her she didn’t have to do it, the ID had already been made, but she’d needed the closure. Julia was her twin. Twins were supposed to sense when the other was in danger. Only Jessica hadn’t, not until the somber-faced officers had shown up at her door had she any inkling something was wrong. A day later, she still couldn’t believe Julia was dead. Wouldn’t she have felt it? Wouldn’t some great gaping hole be present in her chest? So she’d insisted. She’d walked behind the grim-faced officer into the cold, sterile morgue and waited while they set things up. It wasn’t until the white curtain opened that she finally felt it, that deep-seated agony that told her all she needed to know: She’d lost a part of herself.

And here she was, losing the rest.

Damon sighed. “Babe, I would if I could, but I’m not going to just kidnap you out of here.”

She shook her head. “You won’t have to. Just find some poor unsuspecting schmuck just off his residency that’s been stuck on back-to-back shifts and get him to let me out of here.”

He didn’t look happy, but he eventually nodded.

He was gone what seemed like hours but he did return, a young frazzled man in a white lab coat in his wake. She could have kissed Damon, but just the thought struck her as wrong.

Logan. She wanted him to be the one rescuing her. With her whole world turned upside down and the cold sterile walls of the hospital pressing in on her, she needed his steady presence. Only he needed her to walk away.