Embraced (Eternal Balance) (5 page)

“Well, he’s not right now.” No need to upset her further by telling her I’d already tried the Inferno on the way home last night. Or that Heckle still hadn’t returned the messages I’d left, and his cell phone voicemail was now full. I tugged her away from the building. “Let’s go. I don’t want to stand out in the open.”

“Hey there,” someone said as we started walking back to the car.

I turned. The man was tall, with a lean but sturdy build and odd green eyes. The expression on his face bothered me. It was too warm. Eager, almost. But that wasn’t what put Azi on alert. Every human had colors. Happy, sad, horny, or pissed—they were always there, even if only as the faintest waves rising to tint the air around their shoulders. This guy? There was nothing. Not a wisp in sight. He smelled wrong, too, and I couldn’t peg it. Not a demon. Not human. A creature I’d never seen before. “Not interested,” I said, taking Sam’s hand and sidestepping him.

“You here to see Heckle?” the guy called.

I had every intention of getting into the car and moving on, but Sam stopped and turned. “You know where he is?”

The guy smiled at her. Beamed like the fucking sun. It made me want to put my fist through the back of his head. “He’s tied up at the moment, but I know where he is. I can take you if you’d like.”

Sam looked from him to me, expression hopeful, and I snorted. “No,” I said to her, teetering on the edge of anger. The sun was just cresting the buildings, and the Monday morning traffic was starting to increase.

“We need to find him,” she said, leaning close. A surge of gray rolled off her.

I looked from her to the guy. Still no sign of emotion. “What are you?” I asked, maneuvering myself between him and Sam. “’Cause you sure as shit ain’t human.”

The guy laughed. Not annoyed or defensive. Amused. The fucker thought it was funny. “No, I’m definitely not a human.” He looked back toward the Inferno and laughed. “I doubt there are many humans who know Heckle personally.”

“That didn’t answer his question,” Sam said.

Finally she was getting the picture.

“You truly don’t know?” he asked, taking a step toward us. Eyes on mine, he smiled.

“Not a human.” Sam tilted her head. “You don’t look like the Easter Bunny. So, what
are
you?”

“An interested party,” he replied, that same twisted smile on his face. Azi shifted, and a flash hit me like a sucker punch to the nuts—two hulking forms, their shadows looming against an unfamiliar battlefield.

“His eyes,” Sam said with a gasp.

Her voice pulled me from the vision. The man’s eyes were black as night. “A demon,” I whispered, stunned. I inhaled, breathing in my surroundings. Sewage. Old garbage. Car exhaust. Sam. That was all. Not right. That couldn’t be right. Demons had a scent. They had colors. It was unmistakable and impossible to hide.

I took Sam’s hand and tugged her close. The thing’s gaze followed, staying locked on our intertwined fingers. It laughed again, but it was different. Sharp and dangerous. Predatory.

It reminded me…of me.

“You got me. I’m a demon.” It motioned over its shoulder to a dark SUV parked a few storefronts down. “I can take you where you need to go.”

Was it that fucking stupid? To think we’d just get in the truck?

It laughed. “Do you not recognize me, Azirak?” Arms folding across its chest, the demon pinned me with a pitying gaze.

“I’m not Azirak,” I responded coolly.

“Aren’t you?” It leaned closer, inhaling deeply. A smile split the thing’s lips. “I know you feel it. The power inside you, straining against the seams of that pathetic human body. The desire to be reunited with your clan.” It leaned back, grin widening into something close to madness. “What if I uttered the name…
Malphi
? Would your body not react?”

I returned the thing’s smug grin with one of my own then flipped it off.

Or, that’s what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, at the mention of Malphi, a jolt raced through my system, seizing every limb. My feet turned leaden and my heart thundered against my ribs. It was like I’d been dipped in ice water then dropped into boiling lava. Every nerve ending was humming and my body alive.

“What’s wrong,
Jax
?” the demon drawled.

Sam watched me, her colors swirling a chaotic black and gray. “Jax?”

“I’m fine,” I managed. “And to answer your question, yes. My body did react—with the urge to rip Malphi apart one piece at a time.”

The thing’s grin widened knowingly, and it bared its teeth. “You lie. You feel their connection.”

“Whatever Malphi is to Azirak, it means nothing to me.” I shoved the demon hard in the chest. “But don’t relay the message, man. I’ll do it right before I kill the bastard.”

I turned to walk away, but it grabbed my arm and held tight.

“Unless you have an army waiting in the shadows, I suggest you remove your hand and step aside.” What I really wanted was to shred it limb from limb, but Harlow was starting to wake. There were people on the street, and odds were good someone would notice a bloody fight to the death. The police chief wasn’t a fan of mine. I’d bet good money he’d be thrilled to have an excuse to throw me behind bars and toss away the key.

It let go and stepped away. “You are mistaken, Lord Azirak. I’m not here to fight. Only to see if you’ve come to a decision.” Its eyes fell to the demon cuff around Sam’s wrist. It looked different than before. Tighter.

“Decision?” I asked.

“About the girl.”

Malphi.

It gestured toward Sam. “About the Pure.”

“Pure?” I maneuvered myself in front of her.

Its eyes were hungry, watching Sam like she was the ultimate feast. “You don’t know the power you have control of. It is that reason alone that your betrayal of the clan will be forgiven. Come back to your family. Bring the Pure and claim her.”

“No one has control over me,” Sam snapped. She pushed her way around me, glaring at the demon.

It only laughed. Turning, it started to walk away, calling over its shoulder, “Your kind was born to be controlled.”

Chapter Six

Sam

Y
our kind was born to be controlled.

The demon’s words lingered long after he’d left the alley—which felt like a trap. He pops in, chats us up, then leaves? No. Something was definitely up. Demons weren’t known for their restraint.

Over the last month, I’d grown increasingly nervous about the things I didn’t know. The things Heckle
refused
to tell me. How had I been able to create the link between Jax and me, and why was I so damn special? The cuff around my wrist gave a squeeze and my breath caught. I passed
nervous
and rolled right into panic.

“We’ll figure it out,” Jax said. He didn’t sound convinced, though. He didn’t look it, either. His left eyebrow kept twitching, and every few minutes he’d knead the fingers of his right fist into his palm. I felt his unease as though it was my own.

“
My kind
.” I repeated what the demon said, tearing my gaze away from the cuff. Every once in a while the symbols on the surface would pulsate, and the thing would tighten. “What
kind
is that?”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said again, looking left, then right. He made a grab for my arm, but I sidestepped him, and he sighed. “We really need to get off the street.”

“And go where?” The last few months had been a rollercoaster of surreal. I’d died, been controlled, used as leverage, and ultimately had my life turned inside out. But I’d come back from it, stronger and more determined to set things right for Jax and me so that we’d have the future we deserved. Not once during all of it did I consider the possibility of failure. Of surrender. That wasn’t me. I didn’t quit. Jax joked that my stubbornness was borderline terminal. Yet in that moment the weight of despair and worry was stronger than anything I’d ever experienced. We would fail. We had to. There was no scenario in which I came out on top—or alive. I held up my wrist. “I’m not sure there’s a way around this.”

“There is,” he insisted. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me, or himself. “We know that Malphi wants Azirak back in the fold. I can use that.”

“Even if we find Malphi, I don’t think killing it will be as easy as your run of the mill demon. If it were that simple, then Chase would do it himself.” I shook my head. He needed to hear it. To understand and accept things. Hopeless. This was all hopeless. “I’m going to die, Jax.” And this time it would be permanent.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He slammed his hand against the hood of Rick’s car, eyes drifting downward to the cuff. “Since when did you jump the doom and gloom train?”

“You need to understand—”

“Enough of this shit,” he roared. With a jab of his finger he said, “You better get your damn head straight, Sammy. Because this isn’t you.”

As if in response, the skin beneath the cuff tingled, giving way to a spike of pain. I gritted my teeth and held my breath. There was no point in letting Jax know.

“Even if you manage to do what he asked, there’s no guarantee Chase will hold up his end of the deal. Plus, we don’t have all the facts. He can’t be trusted. For all we know, this is a trap. Maybe killing Malphi will make things worse somehow.”

Jax took my hand and brushed his thumb over top of the cuff. The metal warmed, sending a pulse of heat deep into my skin. “Fine,” he said with a sharp nod. “You want facts? Then let’s get them.”

J
ax had me drive while he called Sadie. The conversation lasted longer than I’d expected, and he’d been quiet since hanging up. I didn’t need the link between us to tell me something was wrong.

“You ever gonna tell me what she said?” I moved into the right lane to let the guy behind me pass. He was driving too close, slowly crawling up our ass, and I was tempted to slam the brakes. God. I was so damn uneven all of a sudden. Not nuclear like Jax could be, but more volatile than normal. Either he was starting to rub off on me, or the stress of all this was causing me to lose my mind. One minute I felt like a time bomb, as if one spark would ignite me past the point of rationality. The next I felt as though life wasn’t worth living. It was making me dizzy.

“We need to hurry,” he said quietly.

I didn’t disagree with him, but we didn’t have any clue how to remove the cuff other than doing what Chase asked and hoping he kept his word. “Short of cutting off my arm or taking out this Malphi guy, I’m not sure what to do.”

No response.

“This is insane,” I said with a sigh. “Will you please talk to me? What did Sadie say?”

“Pull over.” The chill in his voice froze the air in my lungs.

“Jax?”

“Pull over!” The words boomed through the small space. I slammed the brake and cut the wheel, bringing the car to a jerky stop in the gravel on the side of the road.

“It needs to come off, Sammy. It needs to come off now,” he said, back to that quiet-yet-furious voice. He punched a fist against the roof of the car, ripping the fabric and denting the metal upward.

“Okay,” I said, twisting in the seat. “It’s okay.
I’m
okay. Do you need to fee—”

“You’re not hearing me!” he roared. “Don’t you see it?”

I jumped and took a deep breath. His eyes were rimmed with black, and every inch of him screamed tension. “See what? What did Sadie say?”

“The longer that cuff is on, the more damage it does,” he replied.

I shook my head. He was borderline, at that point where slipping over the edge would take nothing more than the shifting of the breeze. If what he felt through the link was anything remotely close to what I felt, he’d know every word I said was bullshit. “We have time.”

He raised his head, gaze meeting mine, and it was hard not to move away. There was anger in his eyes. Anger that, for the first time I could remember, was obviously directed at me.

“That thing is affecting you,” he said, his tone as close to demonic as I’d ever heard. The black ring around his irises grew a little wider.

“It’s not—”

“Don’t!” he bellowed, and I jumped. The entire car shook at the sound of his voice as the darkness took over. His eyes changed, becoming pools of midnight. “Don’t tell me it’s nothing. Don’t tell me you’re fine. I can feel it.” His fist crashed against the dash. At this rate he was going to take the car apart before we got where we were going. “Don’t you think I can fucking
feel
it? See it? Christ, Sammy. You’re not right.”

“What do you mean, not right?”

“The way you were pushing me back at the house, and how you were looking at Sadie. Fucking hell. You just got finished telling me that I had to
deal with
the fact that you were going to die! Even your colors are wrong. They’ve been that way since Chase slapped that cuff on you.”

I’d been thinking it, but hearing him say it out loud felt like a tsunami rolling over my head. It meant it wasn’t just my overactive imagination.

“We don’t know anything yet,” I said, trying to reason with him. I realized, though, his anger was totally justified. I sucked in a breath. “Yes. I feel…different.”

I blinked, and suddenly he was touching me, hands gripping either side of my face with a savage ferocity that gave me chills. “I can’t have you, but I won’t lose you.”

Gently I laid my hands over his and let my head fall forward until our foreheads touched. He was so close. So warm. Jax had been my comfort in times of stress and heartbreak when I was younger. I needed that now. To feel safe. To feel
something.
All I would have to do to taste him was tilt my head…

“You were looking for me?”

I jumped. Lounging across the backseat was Heckle, dressed in a ski jacket and boots, and holding a ski pole.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Jax snapped.

Heckle, as usual, was unaffected. “I wasn’t aware that I needed to report to you when I went out of town.” His gaze swung in my direction. His eyebrows rose slightly, and his lips melted into a grim line. “Is there a shortage of space in the car?”

I pulled away guiltily.

“We didn’t do anything,” Jax said tightly.

Heckle kept his eyes on mine. “But you were going to—which is part of the reason I’m here.”

This was nothing compared to what we’d been doing in the basement at the Viking. Or in my room. He couldn’t have chosen
then
to pop in?

I’ll admit it. The guy creeped me out sometimes—and not because I knew who he really was.

My aunt Kelly raised me after my parents died, and she’d never been an overly religious woman. We went to church on the holidays. Your typical fair-weather Catholics. But I knew the story of Cain and Abel. Cain killed his brother Abel out of jealousy, bringing darkness to the world. What the Church doesn’t tell you is that after his untimely death, Abel went on to bigger and better things.

Oh, and he’d changed his name.

To Bel Heckle.

Heckle waggled a finger between Jax and me, narrowing his eyes. “Have you figured out how to break the link?”

“No,” I said, trying hard to keep my tone even. Heckle might play the part of the wise-cracking, quirky bartender at the Inferno, but I’d seen the power he could control with a simple snap of his fingers. I didn’t even want to think about what he could do to a smart-mouthed girl who was pissy because she and her boyfriend couldn’t get freaky. “I’m working on it.”

Ever since I’d unknowingly linked Jax and me, Heckle had been on my ass about breaking it. He hadn’t told me why, or more importantly,
how
, but never failed to harp on it every chance he got.

“Well, work harder. You—” He leaned over the seat and seized my hand. His eyes widened. “Why are you wearing a Fakori cuff?”

“A gift from my brother,” Jax said coolly.

His grip around my wrist tightened, and I bit back a yelp. “Chase is here?”

“He came to the Viking last night.” I yanked my hand from his, cradling it to my chest protectively. “Gave us an ultimatum.”

“What kind of ultimatum?”

“Apparently there’s a big bad demon trolling the town. He said if we took it down, he would remove the cuff.” I peered at Jax from the corner of my eye. “He said something else, too.”

I hesitated, and Heckle tapped his finger against the seat. “Well?”

“He told us you owed us, Heckle. What was he talking about?”

Heckle didn’t say anything. He was still staring at the cuff.

“Well?” Jax prompted. His patience was waning and I didn’t blame him.

Nothing.

“Heckle?” I tried, doing my best to keep the irritation from my voice.

“What demon did Chase tell you to kill?”

“A demon called Malphi,” Jax responded. “Any idea why?”

More silence. I wasn’t sure if it scared me or made me angrier. Considering the simmering vibes I was getting from Jax through the link, I was leaning toward pissed. “What’s a Pure?”

If I hadn’t been staring right at him, I would have missed it. A flash of surprise, there and gone, in his eyes.

“You have ten seconds to start answering questions.” There was ice in Jax’s voice, and if the twitching fingers and tense set of his jaw were any indication, he was fast approaching the point of no return. “Tell me how to get this thing off her.”

“You can’t.” Heckle finally lifted his gaze from the cuff and fixed his attention on me. “If Chase put it there, I’m fairly certain he’s the only one who can remove it. Personally, or by his death. Since killing him isn’t an option, you have one choice. Do as he says.”

“Because Chase is a man of his word, right?” I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. “Do either of you really believe he’s going to remove this thing if we hold up our end of the deal? This is a trap!”

Heckle sighed. “Yes. I imagine that it is.”

Jax took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were rimmed with black. “Enough of the cryptic bullshit.”

I grabbed his hand as he reached for Heckle. “Please. You have to give us something.” Desperation found its way into my voice, and I dropped Jax’s hand in favor of Heckle’s. Squeezing tight, I said, “He told us you owed us. If that’s even a tiny bit true, then help us. Please.”

He pulled away, and with a sigh said, “Maintaining a balance between good and evil is not an easy task. There are millions of variables, and, of course, free will to contend with. I try my hardest, but the scales have been tipped, this time by my own foolish choices. I am truly sorry, Sam.”

“Sorry?” Jax slammed his hand against the dashboard. “Sorry about what? What are you not telling us?”

“When I agreed to bring you back after dying in order to sever the link with Chase, I didn’t know what would happen.”

An arctic chill invaded the car. I shivered. His words felt like the barrel of a gun, pointed right between my eyes. Fully loaded, safety off, and an itching finger caressing the trigger. “That
what
would happen?”

“I knew what you were. A Pure. I knew the rules—that once a Pure’s soul is separated from the body, its power becomes active. Claimable by anyone able to grasp their power. What I didn’t know was the ramifications of returning that soul to a body. I thought you would return to an inactive state, but you retained the power you gained in death. In fact it made you stronger and, much worse, visible to anyone with a supernatural eye.” He turned to Jax. “You must see it when you look at her. That she has sort of a glow?”

Jax turned his gaze on me. Squinting, he shrugged. “She’s always had a sort of glow. Nothing looks different to me.”

“Hmmm. I don’t understand that, but in truth, it’s not important.” Heckle’s lips pressed in a firm line and, with his eyes cast downward, he sighed. “I’m truly sorry, Sam. I’ve painted a permanent neon target on your head.”