My Darkest Passion (14 page)

“Sure.” And yes, he caught the sarcasm.

From his place several feet away, Kynan snorted. “You don’t know the first thing about how to protect yourself from the asshats who want you dead because of what you are. You think you can handle Petrasov or Infante if they want to come back for seconds?”

She would have said something snotty to him, but one look from Harsh convinced her to take the high road, even if it killed her.

“Sorry to say, Addison,” Harsh said, as if he didn’t know she was thinking about murdering someone in cold blood, “Kynan has a point. You
will
need to protect yourself. It’s inevitable.”

“I will destroy anyone who tries.” She leaned forward, and there was venom in her words when she spoke. She embraced the feeling down to the burning core of her soul, yet she hated it. She hated the way this made her feel. She hated the certainty of her intent to kill. “Annihilate.”

Harsh gave her a look that was made her wonder if he was about to show actual emotion. “Maybe Kynan is right about you.”

Spurred by the part of her that saw Harsh and Kynan in terms of how their power related to her, she twitched hard enough that Harsh squeezed her hand. “Kynan,” she said, “can go fuck himself. If he tries to mess with me, I will take him down.”

“Oh, honey. You could try.”

She shot Kynan a look. “I wouldn’t have to try very hard.”

Harsh tweezed out another sliver. “Is that so?”

“I know I outrank you.” Wrong. This was all wrong. She wasn’t an asshole. She didn’t go around picking fights, yet she could not stop herself. “Am I wrong about that?”

Harsh rested her hand on top of his thigh and there was a familiar silence again, one that sucked all the joy out of the air. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“You—” She jabbed a finger at Kynan. “Just stop. Stop it, all right? I don’t want to be this way, and all you do is make it worse.”

As always, Harsh was the voice of reason. The diplomat. “Don’t you think it would be wise if you at least attempted to find out what that means? To outrank someone? Not to mention the consequences of being mistaken about whether you actually do.”

She went still and blinked several times. Her need to prove she was right churned in her, pushing. Poking. Prodding. Digging at her until she clapped her hands on her head. Her bald head. She stared at Harsh. “If I swear fealty to Nikodemus, will this go away?”

“No. But it would likely be easier for you.” He tapped a finger on the first aid kit, thinking. Too hard. Thinking too hard. When he looked at her again, he said, “Make your decisions from a position of power, Addison. You are not a normal person. Not anymore. You have the ability to do a great deal of harm; we’ve all seen that. To yourself and others, if you’re not careful. If you’re right about where you rank compared to Kynan, then you’re lethal.”

“Harsh,” Kynan said. “I don’t think you’re helping.”

He didn’t look away from her, and she wanted to grab hold of the memory of how she’d felt when she tasted his blood. “If you annihilate someone, it had better be because you have no choice. Or do you not care if someone dies just because you lost your temper?” He brushed away the last of the splinters on her left hand. “Hold yourself to a higher standard, or you’re no better than Infante.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair.” His voice was uncharacteristically short, and it made her feel like shit. “If you didn’t already know that, then it’s time you learned.” He put away the tweezers and crumpled the remains of the used disinfectant wipe. “Another day or two, Addison, and you will have no visible injuries to explain to anyone. Do not go home and put your loved ones in danger because you’re too ignorant and too stubborn to accept the help you need.”

She cocked her head and pretended to smile. “Hi, Mom. I’m home. I shaved my hair off, but it’s just a phase, it’ll grow back, and, hey, check out the contact lenses. It’s the new thing for college dropouts.”

“You can learn to control that.”

“I don’t want to.” The sun beat down hard, and the old Addison would have been looking for shade. The heat felt good. She wished it were hotter. “I don’t want a life where my eyes are like this. I don’t want a life where everything is so different.”

The black hole of his silence threatened to swallow her whole. This was the middle of nowhere. The only noise came from birds and the wind, and branches moving.

“I don’t want to swear any oath to Nikodemus either.”

He was implacable. Impenetrable. “To Kynan then.”

“Oh, hell, no.”

At the exact same time, Kynan said, “Oh, yeah. Bring it on. For her, I’ll make an exception.”

“One of the other warlords, then.”

She gripped her head again and shot to her feet. “Why should I? Just tell me, why should I do anything when all I want is to go home?”

“An oath to a warlord makes us safer. All of us. It binds us in protection and companionship. A warlord’s power increases, widens, broadens, if you will, with every oath he accepts. We are more stable, all of us, when we are bound to a warlord and sworn to see his interests are carried out. We have community to turn to. To offer and accept comfort, solace, and friendship when it’s needed. In turn, a warlord protects those who have sworn fealty to him. One of the reasons you and Kynan can’t go five minutes without quarreling is that you are a threat to Nikodemus, and Kynan Aijan is sworn to protect Nikodemus.”

“That blows,” she said.

Kynan had moved off the porch and into direct sunlight, but now he looked away from the clear sky and spoke softly, but not soft enough. “You can blow me anytime.”

“Jesus, Kynan.” She clenched a fist because she wanted to clock him one and if she did, Harsh would be pissed off at her. “Can you just not be a total jerk for five seconds?”

“No.”

“You know what?”

Harsh took her elbow and drew her back.

She thumped her fist to her chest, and she managed, just, to stop herself from jerking away from Harsh. “I give great head. The best blow job you’ve ever had, and I am never, ever going to give you one. Hell, I’d blow Harsh before I blow you.”

“As delightful as that thought is,” Harsh said, fingers tightening on her, “it would be even more delightful if you two didn’t fight.”

“Sicko,” Kynan said.

“He started it.”

Harsh pulled her back several more steps, away from the sun, and she hated that. She really did. He loomed over her with an assurance that pissed her off almost as much as Kynan did. “If you go home without swearing fealty to a warlord, you might as well declare your intentions to take oaths of your own sooner or later. Every demon you encounter is going to think you’re looking to take over or intend to challenge his safety and the safety of his community. Every mage who realizes what you are is going to want to you dead or enslaved. Your oath of fealty to Nikodemus will make that harder. Not impossible, but harder.”

Harsh in this state made her feel like she had a magnet in the center of her body. She hated it. She hated what it meant. She hated that she needed anybody to recognize her. And she hated wondering what the hell he was hiding from them all. She stooped and grabbed a stick, more a twig, really. It was dry as bone and warm from the sun.

“If you swear fealty to Nikodemus, I will deal with your university and make sure you can graduate. From another campus, if you’d prefer. Berkeley or Davis, if you’d rather stay in Nikodemus’s territory.”

“No.” She broke the stick in half and kept on breaking the halves until the parts overflowed her hand.

He held out his phone. “Call your family right now. Tell them you’re fine. Just taking a break for the quarter. I will personally make sure you learn everything you need to know about how to keep yourself and others safe. When you know that much, how to pass for human and have some basic ability to protect yourself, then you can go back.”

She dropped the bits of wood and reached for his phone but he drew it far enough away that her fingers missed. “What?”

“Swear fealty to Nikodemus, and you can go home now. Your oath to him will prevent you from betraying us. The consequences of that, I promise you, are unpleasant.”

“No one forces me to do anything. Not anymore. Not ever again.”

“Nikodemus will make no demands on you but that you pass for human wherever you decide to live. Swear fealty to him, and he’ll make it happen for you. Give you what you need.”

“How do I know he isn’t going to call me up and ask me to do something because it’s in his interest?” She made air quotes when she said those last words. “I’d have to do whatever he said, wouldn’t I?”

“That would be extremely unlikely.”

“Right.” She kicked at the pile of snapped-in-half sticks around her foot. “Not the same as ‘won’t happen,’ is it?”

“If there were war, Nikodemus might legitimately require your assistance.” Harsh cocked his head. “You’re forgetting that if you swear fealty to Nikodemus, his assistance is yours. If you need him, he will help you.”

She remembered how Harsh’s oath had felt to her. His heart beat in time with that oath. “How do you know that for sure? How do you know he’d keep any of your promises?”

A smile curved his mouth. “I’m authorized to speak for him in such matters.”

She looked to Kynan because, no matter now annoying he was, she could count on him for unpleasant truths baldly stated. “Can he make deals like that?”

“Warlord’s right hand.”

“Swear fealty to Nikodemus, and I will put you on the first available flight to San Diego.”

This time he let her take his phone, and she stood there in the edge of the sun and imagined hearing her mother’s voice, and this great wave of emotion threatened to break her apart. She wanted that ember tucked away inside her to go away. She wanted to go home. She wanted her mother to hug her close and tell her everything would be all right. “What do I even say?”

He touched a hand to the side of her head. “Tell me what you need. I’ll make sure you get it.”

Tears lurked behind her fake smile. “Hi, Mom, guess what, you’re going to be a grandmother to a demon?”

He bowed his head. But he didn’t mean anything by that. That bowed head was not an admission of her status or his, and the reaction brought home what he’d been trying to tell her. Without an oath of fealty, she’d always react like this to others like her. A life spent in an endless competition to be acknowledged. “One oath and all this goes away?”

“Nothing will do that.” He stroked her cheek. “Your oath to Nikodemus will make you less worrisome to others. You’ll be bound by Nikodemus’s rules, after all. We will support you whatever happens. All of us. Even Kynan.”

She swallowed hard, but there were tears there, ready to destroy her. Harsh brought her to him, a hand on the back of her head, and she leaned in because she craved touch. The memory of those days when she’d been so killingly alone were etched into her bones, never far. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Swear fealty to Nikodemus, and you will never be without support. You’ll become his responsibility and therefore mine. And Kynan’s. And every other demon or mage sworn to him. All of us.” He drew her closer. “Even if you don’t, even if you continue in this stubborn refusal of our assistance, you will not be without help.”

What she wanted was peace. She wanted to have a life as close to normal as possible. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder worrying about who was going to come after her. She needed space to figure what the hell she was going to do if she was pregnant.

She pushed away, decision made. “How soon?”

“I’ll get the car keys.”

14

A
tall, slender man unfurled himself from the couch when Addison walked into the living room of what could only be called a mansion. Not that she cared if the place had turned out to be tent in someone’s backyard, but it wasn’t. The room was huge with plate glass windows that overlooked the bay, and the sleek furniture fit right in.

Harsh and Kynan were with her, but she ignored them. She focused on controlling the need to prove herself. Even before she walked in, she knew who she outranked here, which was just about everyone except possibly Kynan Aijan. There was no question, however, that the man standing in front of the couch outranked them all. Her included.

Like the other demons she’d seen so far, he was a good-looking man. He wore faded jeans and a black tee-shirt with a bold lettered “NO” on the chest. Cowboy boots. That was just odd to her, that a demon warlord would look so at home in cowboy boots.

“Harsh,” he said. “Good to see you.”

Harsh stopped about ten feet from him. She did, too. He pressed three fingers to his bowed forehead. Kynan made the same motion, and he meant it. They both did. “Nikodemus.”

His eyes slid to her, and she just couldn’t make herself bow her head like that. Nikodemus didn’t smile. Part of her thought it was just too damn bad if he was offended. “Jesus, Harsh,” Nikodemus said softly. “You weren’t exaggerating. She’s a kid.”

“Twenty-two,” she said. “Not that it matters.”

“Yeah, it does. It matters the hell a lot. Infante doesn’t get any second chances. Not after what he’s pulled. You got that, Harsh? If he sets even one foot back in my territory, he’s sanctioned.”

“So noted, warlord.”

“Infante’s gone?” she asked.

“Last I heard, he and that fucking Russian were headed to Portland.” Nikodemus said.

“Have you contacted the warlords there?” Harsh asked.

“No time yet.”

“I’ll take care of that. Eureka and Seattle, too, just to be safe.”

“Thanks.”

Silence fell and in the middle of it, Kynan cleared his throat. “Beer?”

“You bet,” Nikodemus said, smiling like he hadn’t just been talking about ordering a man’s death.

Harsh had his phone out already. His earpiece flashed blue. He gave Kynan a grateful look. “Please.”

“Awesome?”

She nodded. Harsh spoke softly into his phone while she watched Kynan walk out. In the silence, guilt nudged her. She could hear her mother lecturing her about good manners. Be nice. Be polite. Be kind. Respect your elders. She drew a breath and managed a smile at Nikodemus. “Sir.” She stuck out her hand. “Addison O’Henry.”