Nightfall (13 page)

In her body, her hand slipped below the water, spreading her folds and stroking her clit. The heat swirled through her, mimicking the power that Santhe was spinning, and she wound both energies together, tighter and tighter. She was wound tight, and the explosion wasn’t far off, but when it came, when it burst and tried to rush out of her, she clamped it down, spinning the energy down, imagining it coiling tightly on a spindle that nestled just behind her belly button. Chi, magic, whatever it could be called—there were as many names for it as there were people.

Santhe passed through her, and the sensation of ultimate communion faded, but the power didn’t. “Be well, beautiful Isabella,” she said, and she gleamed for a moment with a light that no human should have been able to possess. Instead of feeling like she should shade her eyes, Izzy found herself picking up the glow in her own skin, reflecting the light in her own soul.

She dropped back into her own body slowly, comfortably. She still felt sick, incredibly sick, and she could feel the darkness facing her again, but she felt her own self back in her body as well. She hadn’t realized how much the darkness was shutting her off from her own power.

She let the water drain out of the bath, and let the negative energy that the water had drained out of her sluice off of her, dragging itself down the drain as well. She’d clean the tub for Roxie once she was back on her feet. For now, she needed to face this thing down while she was still shining with Santhe’s glimmering light.

The darkness followed her out into the kitchen. It watched as she rooted around in Roxie’s cupboards until she found a canister of salt—she was going to need to make a list of all the shit she owed Roxie, for later, when her head was clear—and it watched as she walked into the living room, only leaning and stumbling a little now, and make a circle on the floor. It didn’t move as she sat down inside the circle, crossing her legs until she felt stable.

And then she looked up, finding the place where its eyes would have been if it were the sort of thing to have eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s dance.”

There was a bare moment where she saw its not-mouth smile and flash sharpened ideas of teeth, and then it was coming at her. The circle slapped into place almost too late; the darkness smashed into it with a flurry of sparks. She flinched away from it, almost touching the edge of the energy that surrounded her now. If she had, the circle would have disappeared in a cascade of glittering energy, and the thing would have her. Without question.

She was full to bursting with the deep jewel tone energy that Santhe had given her, and it changed how she saw things. She saw the apartment in emotional overtones, the places where Roxie tended to sit and relax, and the places where she sat and let her energy drip down between the floorboards. But she could also see the energy of the darkness for what it was. And everything started to make sense.

She saw its snout, its razor-edged teeth, and its hungry eyes. Its sharp and ugly claws clacking against the hardwood floor, leaving trails of red fire like droplets of blood marring the finish of the floor. She saw the wolfishness of it, and she also knew, with her entire being, that it bore as much resemblance to a wolf as a sociopath bore to a human being. This spirit that was trying with all its force to possess her was a man’s idea of a wolf—vicious, ruthless, frightening. It was what happened when wolves were pushed to the brink and forced to find a way to survive in man’s world.

For a moment, she felt sympathy for it, the
curandera
’s desire to knit it back into the world, to help it carve out a space in the community where it could put aside its anger and once again become one with the world at large.

And then its slaver splashed against her shield again, setting up another rush of sparks, and she knew better. It was a rabid dog. There was no helping it now. There was only doing a better job of protecting the community next time.

The monster had been introduced to her spirit by the woman’s bite in Houston. Susan, she’d said her name was. Izzy didn’t know if the woman knew what she was, what she’d done, but her instincts said that she had. That this was intentional, somehow.

The dark spirit paced around her circle, and she watched it move. Its knees bent wrong, and its shoulders didn’t roll properly as it walked. Seeing it shift made her stomach churn. That, combined with the mad, inhuman light in its eyes, meant that she was spending some energy every heartbeat on not panicking. Panicking meant running, running meant breaking the shield, and that meant death. That meant a fate worse than death, as this thing tore out her soul and made its home inside of her.

But at the same time, she had an eerie idea that it could wait her out, no matter how long her strength lasted. That it was not bound to human ideas about time and matter. She could have all the bravado in the world, and it might not matter.

The monster brushed against the shield again and again. It didn’t seem to notice the short jolts of electricity that lit its fur on fire, but it burned through the energy she’d spindled in her body faster than she’d anticipated. She felt the sickness starting to ease back in, first in her head and neck, then in a sense that her body was too tight, over all. Nausea. Dizziness.

“No,” she whimpered. “No. You can’t have me. I’ll kill myself first.”

She felt it laugh, felt the air pressure change as the space around her began to heat up.

“Come for me, then,” she whispered. “Come, and let’s have this out.”

It didn’t leap for her—it leapt
through
her. Her shield didn’t even begin to stop it; it was already inside of her, and it had been since Susan had bitten her. It had been toying with her all along. She tore at her own flesh, trying to push it out of her again, screaming as it bit into her soul in thick, dripping chunks.

* * *

The pain in Roxanne’s knee receded to something that was at least manageable as they drove. Julian turned the car out of Sweetwater, and a not small part of her brain tried to convince her that he was heading for the wilderness, that the dead woman was in the trunk, and that he would somehow kill and leave them both. She knew it wasn’t likely, but her brain wouldn’t stop. As the shock wore off, it was replaced with total exhaustion, and she was too tired to care if he really was planning to murder her and dump her body somewhere. If he was, she’d need her strength to fight him off then. Getting them run off the road wouldn’t do any good.

He drove a ways down a back road, then pulled the car over to the side, shut off the headlines. “We can talk here,” he said, “But if your knee will hold up for it, I’d like to walk a bit into the woods. What do you think?”

She extended her leg, paying attention to it. The grating feeling was gone, and she thought she could walk a bit. Probably should, to keep the muscles from stiffening. “I’ll give it a try. I don’t think I did more than bruise it badly.”

“I can carry you, if that’ll help.”

Roxanne glanced at him, but his eyes were entirely serious. Just how strong was he? “I’ll let you know,” she said.

There was no one else along this deserted road; she doubted if another car would come along here in the next hour. Still, she was careful as she opened up her door and got out, testing her knee as she put weight on it. It held up. No shooting pain, just an ongoing ache. She’d be okay as long as they weren’t walking miles.

“Promise you’re not leading me somewhere just so you can dispose of my body?”

It was pretty funny, seeing a grown man, over six feet tall, with those bright green eyes that almost seemed to glow in the dim light of the moon, rolling his eyes at her like a scrawny teenager. “Promise,” he said. He held his hand out, and she stretched to let her fingers tangle in his.

It felt odd, following him like this, but—what else was there to do? The thing she’d seen, she knew the word for it, even if her mind refused to think it out loud. It wasn’t like she could go home and tell Izzy all about the monster that had attacked her in Julian’s living room. She couldn’t call animal control—though that would be a sight, and made her giggle inwardly for a moment. There was nothing to do but follow him. Because something was happening in her town. Something had put him in her town, naked and torn to bits. And if she was going to keep her town safe, she had to know what was happening. No one else could tell her.

And whatever else had happened, he had protected her. He’d protected her from the monster that came through the window. She truly didn’t believe that she would come to any harm with him, not if he could protect her from it.

He led her through the tree line, and helped her pick her way through the congested trees and underbrush. It was rough going for a hundred yards, and then they stepped through another layer of scrub into a clear meadow that made her heart pound. The pine canopy opened up above them, and moonlight shone down directly on them. She saw Julian shudder, saw him close his eyes and tilt his face up with an expression like ecstasy. His hands tightened around hers, so much that the bones almost ground together.

It stirred the need in her again, the urgent want and the boiling desire. She stepped closer to him, running her hand down his spine, and he let out a snarl, spinning faster than she could see. He wrapped his arm around her waist and yanked her towards him, his other hand dragging down her back in a way that reminded her of the claws he’d had before.

“Don’t tempt me,” he said, his voice on the shaking raged edge of control. “Not here, not where the moon light would shine down on our coupling. I will not be kind to you, Roxanne. I would not be gentle.” He almost spat the last word, as if it left a foul taste in his mouth.

She wrapped her arms around her neck and brought her mouth to his, licking into him as if she could clean his mouth for him. Taking it, taking his worry. Telling him “yes” with her mouth, and her hands, and her hips. He groaned, deep in his throat, and his hands fisted into her shirt. She heard the cloth give at the seams a bit.

“What are you trying to do?” he panted. “Do you want me to push you up against a tree and fuck you here? I will, and I need very little encouragement to do it.”

“What happened to thinking I was too high to give consent?” His neck looked gorgeous, his pale skin soaking the light in. She nipped at his pulse, and he growled.

“At some point,” he said. “I feel I am required to trust your enthusiastic ‘yes.’”

“Do you have a condom?”

He shook his head.

“Luckily, I come prepared.” She reached in the back pocket of her jeans for the little case that Izzy had insisted she tuck there. “Yes.” She ran her tongue up his neck, going up on her tiptoes to catch his ear in her teeth. “Yes.” She dug her nails into her shoulder blades, feeling him tremble and snarl, almost too quietly to hear. “Yes.”

In some part of her, she didn’t know why she was doing this. She still felt horror, thinking of what she’d seen of him in the living room, but there was also a very large sense that there was more to him than that. She didn’t know what had brought him to this life. She had no idea if it had been his choice, or something that was forced upon him, regardless of his own desires. And there was such a pull to him, a sense that there was something here that was meant to be. Was this what love felt like? In the end, she didn’t think so, but for the first time, she thought she might understand how a person could make horrible mistakes in the name of lust. And if this was a horrible mistake— Well, maybe it was time she made a few. 

His fingers were shaking as they came to the snap of her jeans. He popped the button easily, and she shifted her hips to let him push her jeans and underwear down her legs, but instead he pressed his hand down the front of her panties, dipping into her soaked sex. She groaned, and he pulled her closer, his hand on the small of her back. “I won’t last,” he murmured into her ear as he began to slowly and carefully explore her. Her jeans were fitted; there was little room for him to move within the fabric, but he didn’t seem to mind, and the sense that she was confined, grinding into him, just enhanced the sensation of wanton abandon. “I will slide into you, and in moments I’ll be finished, especially if you really want me to take you. I don’t want you to be unsatisfied.”

He eased her backward until she felt a tree behind her, and she could give it the bulk of her weight. He was stroking her now, sliding just barely inside of her for a moment, then sliding up to circle her clit in the confined space. Moving down again to thrust a bare inch inside of her with one lonely finger, then circling again. “Please,” she whimpered. “Please, I want you to fuck me. I don’t care if I come, I don’t care how hard.” She still had the condom case in her hand. She tucked it into his front pocket, and then took the chance to run her fingers over his erection, burning hot inside his much looser denim. “Christ, I want that in me.”