My Darkest Passion (15 page)

He didn’t take her hand, which was just as well, she decided. Power rolled through the room. Her skin prickled head to toe. The energy flowing from Nikodemus was no joking matter. There was no way in hell she could go up against that and think she wouldn’t get squashed flat.

“Thanks for coming,” the warlord said.

She crossed her arms across her chest, realized how defiant that must seem and let her hands hang at her sides. The longer she was in the room, the bigger the warlord’s power felt. Over on the other side of the room, Harsh was making another call, and she didn’t think that was any accident, his being occupied.

“Have a seat.” Nikodemus gestured at the room. There were two couches; the black leather one Nikodemus had been sitting on and another, smaller one at right angles to that. Harsh already had a chair. He was tapping away at his phone while he talked.

Kynan came back with four glasses and a growler of what she assumed was beer. “Sheth went up to Bear Republic.” He lifted the growler. “Good man. I can’t believe he managed to get some of this. They were out when I went up there.” He handed one of the glasses to Nikodemus and filled it from the growler. “Altered Beast.”

“Excellent.”

“Oak aged imperial IPA. Good stuff. Put hair on your balls.” He repeated the process for Harsh, then walked to her. Before he gave her a glass, he leaned in and rubbed his hand over her bald head the way you’d rub a Buddha’s belly for good luck. “Too bad you only have one, but don’t worry. I hear it’ll make all the hair on your snatch fall off.”

In a weird way, his crude banter brought her into the circle. She was going to be one of them, and it was already helping. She held out her glass, and he filled it. “Freak,” she murmured.

“I love bare pussy.”

“I hate hairy balls.”

Kynan didn’t take his eyes off her as he drank straight from the growler. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

She rubbed her head and smirked at him. Kynan dropped his hand to his fly.

“Children.” Nikodemus laughed through the word, but there was a warning there, too. She wasn’t dumb enough not to worry about what that meant, and at least Kynan kept his pants zipped.

Harsh put away his phone and earpiece. Kynan looked around and took a seat on the smaller couch and filled his glass from the growler. He looked at her with his head cocked. She shrugged and stayed standing.

“So. Addison.” Nikodemus sipped his beer. “I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

“Me, too.”

“I knew Bejar. Good fighter. Fair most of the time. And royally fucked over early on.” The warlord lifted a hand, but his eyes were hard on her. “No blame anywhere in this room. Though I’d like to think this goes without saying, it doesn’t. We don’t blame magehelds for what a mage or witch compels them to do.” Kynan went still, and she was convinced beyond anything that Nikodemus was making more than one point with that statement. “Not in the past. Not now. Not ever.”

“I get that.” She clenched a hand into a fist. “It’s the mage who’s responsible.”

“What happened to you…that’s just fucked up, that’s all I can say about it. I don’t condone any part of it. A mage pulls that shit in my territory, there’s a sanction issued—that means I send an assassin. I have several on staff.” He gave her a blindingly joyful smile. “Bodega Bay is mine now, but it wasn’t then.” He inclined his head at her. “I wish it had been.”

“Me, too.”

“Not that we didn’t take action. Because we did.” That blue-gray gaze stayed on her. “Am I going to get an oath from you?”

She stared at her beer and, after one deep breath, she took a long drink and then rubbed the top of her head. “I can feel the hair growing.”

Nikodemus laughed. No hidden warning that she could detect. This time.

No lie, he unsettled her. A lot. He looked friendly and relaxed but underneath that she got a constant prickle of awareness, and every now and then, there was this wave of awareness of others. All the demons sworn to him echoed in him, and the effect was not trivial. Not dozens of them but hundreds, thousands even. She bowed her head because no matter how friendly his smile was, this was not someone you crossed. “Yes. You’re going to get an oath.”

“Good. That’s good. I take it Harsh or Kynan explained everything to you?”

“Harsh did.”

Nikodemus lifted his beer in a silent toast in Harsh’s direction, but he returned his gaze to her. “You sure you want to go back to San Diego? We could find a place for you here.”

Kynan snorted a laugh. “Couple more like me and her, and you control North and South America.”

Nikodemus grinned, and it was the kind of grin that melted panties. Not hers though. She was numb that way, too. “One subcontinent at a time, Kynan.”

She wondered if there was going to be payback for telling Nikodemus she didn’t want to stay here. That she wanted to go home and pretend none of this had happened.

“Doesn’t work that way,” he said, and she’d been around demons long enough now that she knew he’d plucked the thought from her head. Someone like him wouldn’t have had to try very hard, either. “Besides, whatever terms Harsh set down for you, that’s the same as if you’d had that conversation with me.”

“I want to go home.”

“Good to have the words said.”

She nodded.

“Words have power,” he said.

Considering what she was about to do, yeah.

“Well, all right.” He set his beer on the coffee table. After a moment’s hesitation, she did the same. He straightened and grinned at her. “Let’s do this, then.”

The pomp and circumstance she’d expected, despite Harsh’s prosaic description of the process, didn’t happen. She knew generally what to expect and had memorized the words Harsh had told her she would need to say, but nothing she’d imagined or supposed from what Harsh had told her came any where near the reality.

Nikodemus stood in front of her, too close, a large man who was not human and who resonated with a power that made her feel the size of a peanut. Panic lapped at the edges of her mind, and she looked to Harsh for reassurance. He nodded, and that helped.

She didn’t like Nikodemus being so close, but, for pity’s sake, it wasn’t like he was trying to make a pass at her. There was this mental
click
, and a one-way link opened with the warlord, from him to her. He wasn’t blocking any part of his power. Not anymore. Nikodemus could pulverize her with a thought, overpower her will, and she would be helpless. The knowledge sent more panic streaking through her, and she lost focus.

He put a hand on her shoulder, but it was Bejar who flashed through her head. She twitched away from the contact, a reaction both immediate and involuntary. In over her head. Drowning. Nikodemus’s genial smile never faltered. He cocked his head, and when she looked into his eyes, she saw they were black-flecked silver, not the glacier blue Bejar’s had been. But un-human was un-human, and she couldn’t breathe.

“Hey.” He lifted his hands, and that was a profound relief, not having him touch her. The psychic connection was still there. Still open. “Do you need a minute?”

She licked her lips. “No.”

“I need to touch you.” He made a small motion of his hand in the air between them, reminiscent of the Pope blessing something. She hated, absolutely hated that he needed to be so cautious around her. “You’ll need to touch me. That okay?”

She didn’t answer until she was certain she had herself under control. “Yes.”

“Do you need Harsh in on this?”

She opened her mouth to deny that she did, but it was a lie, and Nikodemus knew it. The problem was the gulf between what she needed and what she could do.

The warlord gestured. “Harsh?”

Harsh left his chair and stood beside her. He touched the small of her back and slid into her link with Nikodemus. If she could have, she would have grabbed all that calm and never let go. But she couldn’t, and she was fracturing.

The warlord settled a hand on her shoulder again. Just one. He kept the other at his side. “You’ll need to know how to do this yourself one of these days, so listen up.” He spoke so softly she wasn’t even sure he was speaking out loud and that sent another spurt of panic, thinking that he was doing that to her. “This thing is about our nature. Warlord to kin. It’s better to be in close so you can react if something goes wrong.”

“Like what?” His eyes were black now, backlit with silver, and she was slipping away again.

“One guy passed out on me. If I hadn’t been near him, he’d have hit the floor. So, that’s a good reason to be in close. But hey, touch matters with us. We need it. Crave it.” He studied her. “You must have figured that out by now. If it ever happens that you take on your first sworn demon, don’t deny him that. The physical contact.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Sure. I understand. But humor me.” He gave her a quick grin. “Just in case.”

She couldn’t help a short laugh but it felt brittle. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Knowledge is power, sweetheart. All right, then. You need to let me in your head now. Two way or this is a no go.”

She tried to breathe. Tried to relax. Tried to do this. But the minute Nikodemus was present in her head and all that power was there, and she knew she had no defenses against that, a scream bubbled up from her chest and she was back in that room with Bejar taking control of her, and her scream of denial and rage and terror shredded her throat.

The next thing she knew, Harsh had walked her across the room, and her with no idea how it had happened. “I’m sorry. I just…panicked a little. That’s all.”

Nikodemus had retreated to the couch. “That’s not a little panic.”

She faced him, losing it again, though for a different reason. “I didn’t know what to expect. I know now. I’ll be okay. I promise.”

The warlord shook his head. “You wouldn’t be.”

“Harsh said I can’t go home unless I swear fealty to you.” She took a step forward. “I’ll do whatever it takes. Please.”

Nikodemus picked up his beer and emptied the glass. “I’m not keeping you anywhere you don’t want to be. No oath, Addison. You’re not ready.” He put down the empty glass. “I can show you how to keep yourself safer. How to pass. But I’m not taking your oath today. As soon as you can do that, I’m good.”

It didn’t take long. Maybe an hour of practice, but Nikodemus was an exacting, meticulous teacher, and then Nikodemus said, “You’re a quick study.”

“Motivated.”

“No shit.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Harsh can take you to the airport now.”

15

T
hree months later, Addison stood in front of the door to her San Diego student apartment and took a deep breath. No big deal having visitors. She was expecting Harsh and the lawyer he’d said he was bringing with him. Nevertheless, it was disconcerting that if she hadn’t been, she would still have known it was him. Down to her bones, she knew it. Just like she knew the person with him was magekind.

Whoever was with him, mage or witch, made her antsy. She could pass for human, but whenever she came in contact with one of the magekind—it had only happened a couple of times—her throat closed up and she had trouble breathing.

She stared at the door. She wasn’t a complete basket case anymore, but you’d never know from the way her heart was thudding against her ribs. All this time and she still wasn’t used to the way she could tell who had magic and how much. She remained deeply unsettled that so many people she would once have passed on the street without another thought registered to her as a potential threat, and not because they were all potential rapists or muggers. They were a threat because they were demons, or, worse, humans with a lot of magic. Like Giuseppe Infante.

Lots of issues had cropped up with a life trying to pass for normal. In the weeks since she’d come home, she’d regained her ability to feel pain. She could deal with her changed perceptions of everything. More or less.

The rest? The whole reason Harsh was here? That was a hell of a lot harder.

Her door wasn’t going to answer itself. She waited until she had her heart rate under control before she opened the door. “Hey.”

Harsh nodded. “Addison.”

Her stomach dove about a million feet down and took her breath with her. It hit her in the gut, how beautiful he was. He was wearing a suit and tie, and he looked sharp. Of course he did. The more powerful the demon, the more perfect the human appearance. All the same, she had no control over the giddiness of her racing pulse, which was stupid and didn’t even make sense.

A woman stood beside him. She was short and pretty—beautiful—with dark brown eyes and hair as black as Harsh’s. A witch, and Addison couldn’t help herself. She shuddered. The magekind, whatever flavor, were not her favorite people.

“Come in,” she said. She scrubbed a hand over her barely there hair. No lush head of thick hair for her. At this point, she was losing hope that her hair would ever grow back.

Her apartment was small, but not horrible as off-campus housing went. She’d moved here because everything about her old place reminded her of what had happened. Most of the memories followed her, but it helped to be someplace different.

“Thank you.” Harsh put a hand on the woman’s shoulder and followed her inside her crappy student apartment. The woman wore jeans, but she was totally dressed up in them, with cute leather pumps that probably cost more than a month’s worth of Addison’s share of the rent. Even with three inch heels, she barely came to Harsh’s shoulder. She gestured at the table and remembered the farmhouse with its solid wooden furniture, and Nikodemus’s place. Expensive. Classy, both places. Not hers, though. She was a student. So, what did anyone expect but cheap student fare?

“My roommate went to Cabo for the weekend, so I have the place to myself.” She wiped her hands on her thighs. God, she was a mass of nerves. “Can I get you anything?” Harsh Marit was in her apartment and this wasn’t like before when she was five inches from catalepsy. She was as close to normal as she was ever going to be, and she was reacting to him. Boy, was she ever. “Tea? Water?”

“Nothing for me,” the woman said.