God's Eye (3 page)

After he was done, he sat for just a moment and then got up to clean. There was simplicity in washing the dishes, in the repetitive circles and the flow of the water. Grace in doing for himself. Satisfaction at completion.

Then Allistair had peeled down to his boxers and laid himself across the cool bed. The boxers were still on only as a nod to propriety. He needed the practice with human niceties. So the boxers stayed on.

With a low thread count, the comforter wasn’t the luxury model he could have gotten. The fabric was a little rough, slightly abrading his skin as he lay on the bed. But he enjoyed the sensation. Spreading his arms wide and running his hands across the texture of the cloth, he closed his eyes and merely
was.

Thoughts tumbled low and long in his brain. There was only so much time to roll around enjoying the bed. Today had been only the start. He couldn’t do too much too soon–he couldn’t afford to look suspicious. But he needed Katharine.

And he needed her before Zachary got to her.

•  •  •

Katharine stood, hands wrapped firmly around her coffee mug, as she looked out her window at a good portion of the cost of her condo. The view of the marina stretched before her, still wrapped in the deep of night. The bar of rocks and seagulls that protected the small inlet from the waves obstructed part of her view, but there was still plenty to see. Leisure boaters were out every day, and this early predawn was no exception. Up close, she could make out boats leaving the marina with fishing poles stuck in tubes to keep them upright, waiting to get beyond the entrance and drop their lines. She’d heard there were sea bass and halibut out there.

A floating mist clung to the surface of the ocean. As thin as it was today, it still made it impossible to see where water ended and sky began. To her right she could see a finger of land that jutted out into the sea, buildings cluttering its surface and vying for dominance. She smiled at the winner. Farther out on the peninsula than the others and slightly taller than the rest, it bordered on garish. But it had won. Light & Geryon has staked its claim.

She didn’t question why she lived within sight of the building. In truth, she didn’t question a lot, not even the fact that there had been no animal visitors during the night. She had slept, deep and dreamless, all night long–which was surprising given the jolt she’d gotten from her new neighbor the evening before.

In her sweats, Katharine had pulled one of the Tupperware meals from her freezer. When her mother had died, her father had been left alone, unable to really take care of himself. He couldn’t do his laundry or his cleaning, so Katharine had hired a service for him. He couldn’t cook his own meals, so she’d hired that for him, too. Unless she quit Light & Geryon, there was no way she could find the time to take over what her mother had done. As she had no brothers or sisters, it all fell on Katharine’s shoulders.

Katharine already had a woman who came to perform light maid work at her apartment every other week, but the food service she’d found for her father was worth the money. Now Katharine too had ten meals in Tupperware show up in her freezer every Thursday. She could even email if she hadn’t liked a particular food, and it would never turn up again.

She had been eating the last container of the week when her doorbell rang. Though the sound itself was soft and lilting, it startled her out of her dinner, as Katharine was pretty certain she’d never heard it ring in the three years she’d been here. Her mother was the only one who visited her, and she was gone before Katharine bought this place. Deliveries came during the week, while she was at work. The service at the front door rang up before anyone could come in, and she was always waiting. So the doorbell was a shock.

Though she’d immediately jumped up and pressed her face to the peephole, she stared at the doorknob for a moment as if she didn’t know what to do.

The small fisheye lens distorted his features, but the sight of Zachary still packed a punch. Without further thought, she’d flung the door wide. He planned to ask her out to dinner, she could tell. He had changed all his clothing from earlier, the new light sweater molding to him over dark jeans. His hair was damp and combed perfectly into place, giving him the look of a partially reformed rogue.

His light eyes had skipped around the room, taking in the wide maple table with carved legs and the Tupperware with her mother’s silver fork sticking out of it. Only as those same eyes landed on her did she remember she was in sweats and an oversized T-shirt. Even now in the morning light Katharine cringed, remembering.

He’d changed whatever it was he had planned on saying and asked where he might get a sandwich this late at night. With a smile, she’d directed him to the deli on the corner and he’d thanked her.

When he turned away, she had pushed the door closed and ended the interlude. Not that anything could have come of it–she had duties and plans to fulfill. While a date with Zachary Andras sounded wonderful, it wasn’t going to happen now. Not in L.A., where he could walk down the street and see fifty better-looking women. It was a shame, though. It might have been fun.

As she sipped at her coffee, the light around the ocean lifted a little from the sun coming up behind her. She gripped the mug and drank more. She had duties–her job at Light & Geryon, things she owed her mother, a new employee to train, and an assistant to soothe.

She drained the cup of the last drops of coffee and rinsed it before setting it down beside its twin from yesterday. Tonight she would hand-wash the mugs; she couldn’t stand to see more than two sitting in the sink. She tugged the jacket of her suit down and skimmed her hands along the matching skirt. Best get to it.

Allistair had given up early last night. Keeping form was difficult; the energy necessary to walk as a human was far too difficult to maintain, even for one as powerful as himself.

So he’d studied his shape in the mirror for a great length of time. When he came back, he would have to come again as the “same.” Humans put too much stock in “same,” paid too much attention to the surface. The surface could be so easily altered, but that was what they read, so that was what he would repeat.

He studied his face first. His hair was medium length–he couldn’t go altering that; it would look suspicious to the people, even though it was everything else about him that should arouse suspicion.

Dark as midnight, the hair was a sign of where he’d come from. The color would be easy enough to replicate as it was now his natural color–he could force another shade into his hair, his eyes, his skin. But, unless he made a concerted effort, the shades would naturally alter as he shifted levels, and he hadn’t messed with any of it on this trip. So he was dark. Dark hair, deep, deep brown eyes, and olive skin. He needed to remember to say he was of Italian descent, and southern Italian at that. It was what the people would easily believe, true or not.

Though his coloring was a mark he took pride in, it wasn’t what he needed to study. He needed to know the shape of his hands, the breadth of his shoulders, the line of his nose. Where did his cheekbones sit? His eyes? His mouth? Those were the other cues, right after the colors, that the people would depend on. They had to. They had not been granted any further senses. Stuck with a pitiful five, and the occasional sixth, they used what they could, and Allistair would have to work within those boundaries. So he turned his face side to side, and he looked and he memorized.

He wondered if he was good-looking. In the human world a lot more would come his way if he were. But, like most humans, he couldn’t tell if he was or wasn’t. At least he knew he couldn’t tell; people all seemed mixed up about it, which made him think maybe it shouldn’t matter. But it did. Take Katharine: she walked like she owned the place–the world, in fact–but she didn’t know what she looked like, how others saw her. She missed or dismissed every sexual cue thrown her way. Allistair could smell the want on the men and a few of the women as they went by her, not as well as he could in his natural state, but he wasn’t quite human even when he looked it. And at the same time, many of the men in the office radiated jealousy. It was a bizarre combination, the want and dislike curling off them in discordant waves. Allistair wondered what it did to their insides to be so at odds with themselves.

The women were for the most part easier to read: it was jealousy, pure and simple. Some of it needful, some downright evil. Like tendrils, it reached out to Katharine everywhere she went, but she was oblivious to all of it.

Not all people were. Lisa, just outside the office, had a keen sense of those attracted to her; she reacted to what he could smell from others. Every time. Not Katharine. And because of that he would need to change how he approached her.

Allistair smiled at his reflection, frowned, opened his mouth, and peered inside. He studied every inch of his body, but concentrated on his face. If it didn’t pass, the rest didn’t matter.

When he’d done all he could, he closed the shades and lay back across the bed, this time completely naked. His last human thought was that Zachary was no stronger than he and had likely given up his form for the night as well. They would both have to claw their way back in when the sun came up.

Taking a deep breath and holding the sweetness in his lungs, Allistair was loath to give up the heightened five senses that humans so infrequently enjoyed. Though human inputs were sad in number, there was nothing wrong with them, only that their limits were so rarely tested. And to make matters worse, humans tended to look upon those who savored the tactile and sensorial as diseased. He made a mental note to try to appear disaffected the next day.

With that, he slid out of the plane.

In his true form he pulsed, felt all the pieces of life flowing within him. For a moment, he had watched through the veil into his own empty apartment, then slipped away. Moments later, in Katharine’s bedroom, he watched her, watched his own energy reach out to lick at her as she slept. She mewled softly and turned when the energy built past a certain point. So she did have some sense of him, even if only when she was asleep. Her auburn hair spread across the pillow, and even now he longed to feel his human fingers running through it. But that would not be.

His goal was to keep her from Zachary.

Zachary had plans for her, and Allistair’s only recourse–in fact, the only way to maintain his position–was to win her soul himself, to follow his own plans. He’d written his own devil’s bargain on that one. He’d failed so many times before, they wouldn’t let him back if he failed again. He’d known that Zachary was after her, and had proposed stealing her away as his personal means of salvation. He just hadn’t counted on enjoying the process.

She rolled again, this time facing him, and he wondered if those hazel eyes opened would they see him through the night? He doubted it. Katharine was notoriously unaware. It was why they wanted her in the first place.

Her full lips moved against each other, pink tongue darting out to lick, and Allistair was hit with a bolt of need. Something so rarely felt in this form. Crap.

His feeling was a flare sent into the ether. Anyone on this plane would likely see the strange emotion. He could only pray they assumed it was a human in great want. Although that was unlikely. Though they were perfectly capable, humans didn’t emote much.

Rather than send a tracer out to see where the spark had gone, he worked to rein it in. He had to stay here, had to keep Zachary from his prize. So Allistair watched and tried to make no comparisons to his own human form. Her long, slim fingers to his own thicker ones. The cut of her features was called “delicate” in the English language; his were rougher, sturdier, stronger. It seemed he was unable to look at her and not catalog the features.

Eventually, morning came and he left. She would wake, and things would be far better if she never saw him as he was. He had things to do himself, in his human form, before he presented the dark man to her again, as though he had not watched her sleep all night.

Once again over his own bed, Allistair began clawing at the veil. He worked talons into the fabric of the world until the tiny opening appeared. Pushing an arm through immediately, he managed to keep the hole from closing. His fathomless eyes watched from the other side as the dark skin burned and formed. Ashes, falling by gravity, added to the pile he created when he’d returned the night before. It was why he’d chosen this spot. Less cleanup.

He pushed the other hand through. Then a leg. Sensation, sharp and vicious, shot up his forming limbs him as he hurled himself into the gap. Like a live wire, a blue crackle of fire walked the edges, sending tendrils of hot smoke up into the air. As his head went through, the brain registered the feelings as pain and he clamped his mouth shut against the purely human scream that threatened to erupt.

His mouth opened, his lungs fighting for the oxygen he now required, and he gasped, sucking in great quantities of air. Luckily, the scream could not get out while the air came in.