Sacrificed in Shadow (13 page)

He set her on the edge of the tub and grabbed supplies: his long-neglected digital camera, fresh batteries, and a pen. He couldn’t find a ruler, so that would have to do for scaling the wounds.

When he returned to the dark bathroom, Elise had lowered herself into the water, underwear and glove and all, with her arms propped on either side of the tub.

“I have to use flash,” he said, sliding batteries into the camera. “It’s too dark otherwise.”

She nodded, consenting wordlessly.

Elise held the pen beside the bite wound on her bicep as he took pictures from every angle. The blood was quickly washing away, forming billowing clouds in the water, but the wounds looked so much worse in the brief flares of light. She had been shredded. Her skin was like tissue paper. And the blood itself…

“
Is
that blood?” Lincoln asked.

Elise tipped her jaw back and held the pen beside her neck.

“Kind of,” she croaked.

“How can it be
kind of
blood?”

“Long story.”

Lincoln took a photo of the damage at her throat. It was already knitting together, but the tooth punctures were still clear.

He sat back on his heels to go through the pictures. From the first photo to the last, there was noticeable healing.

“You didn’t need my help to survive, did you?” he asked.

“No,” Elise said. “But I needed you to take pictures.”

She wiped at her arm with the sponge. The worst of the bite was already healed. Only the imprint of teeth remained.

Lincoln couldn’t help but watch as she sponged off her legs, lifting them from the water one by one to wash away the kind-of-blood. It didn’t tint the water pink. It slicked the surface, more like amber-colored oil.

“Thank you,” she said, drawing his gaze back to her face. Elise was wiping her partially-healed throat clean. There was still the circle of tooth marks on either side of her neck, but everything else had regrown as soon as she washed the wounds.

Lincoln cleared his throat. “I’ll get you a towel.”

He left fresh linens for her on the counter, then returned to his bedroom, pacing from the window to the door and back again.

Elise Kavanagh’s soul was damned. Her body was sin. The angel was right—Lincoln should have stayed far, far away.

His door creaked open.

Elise stood in the hall, toweling off her hair. It didn’t look wet to him. It was the same as always: a silky black sheet that fell straight to her waist, framing pale shoulders. She was still wearing only her underwear, and there was no hint of self-consciousness in her expression. She was aware of her perfection, and without shame.

Lincoln’s dream swam to the surface.

Let me drink you
, she had said, red lips curved into a smile.

In reality, Elise didn’t say anything nearly so seductive. “I’ll need to borrow a computer. I want to send the photos to my friends in Vegas.”

She may have been the Devil, but she sure was focused. Probably would have been a good cop in another life. “Sure. Spare bedroom,” he said, handing her the camera.

Their fingers brushed. Elise didn’t pull away.

Orpheus owned Lincoln’s soul, as surely as Hell owned Elise’s soul, and he knew that standing with her there, in that moment, was like dancing with fire. He was all but begging to be burned.

His mouth operated independently of his brain.

“I have pie,” Lincoln said.

Elise lifted her eyebrows. “Pie.”

“Yes, ma’am. Picked one up at Poppy’s over the weekend. It’s not as good when it’s not fresh, but…”

“Cherry?” she asked. The word was filthy on her lips.

Lincoln swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

She took the camera from him, stepping back. A smile lingered on her lips. “I would love a bite of your pie, Lincoln.”

Where technology was
concerned, Lincoln didn’t seem to have joined the twenty-first century. A manual typewriter dominated the center of his desk. There was a computer to the left, which looked like it hadn’t been turned on in months—maybe years—and it booted up to a decade-old operating system. Elise had to play around with it for a few minutes to figure out how to connect the camera, since it didn’t wirelessly detect the device.

Once she got it downloading, she opened the email client and drafted a message to McIntyre.

Found the werewolves. There’s an entire pack. No deaths yet. Send money.

Elise attached the photos and sent it.

On impulse, she turned the camera around, snapping another photo of herself. The instant of light was like a jolt of electricity. Then she turned the camera around to look at the picture she had taken.

There was a crucifix on the wall behind her. He had one in every single room. Her gaze tracked from the cross to the imprint of teeth still ringing her neck, unhealed.

Worry crept over her.

“Why aren’t I healing?” she whispered, paging back through the other photos.

The places she had ripped—those were healed. But the direct points of contact between Rylie’s teeth and her skin had not.

Elise had absorbed a lot of damage in her years as a demon. Only one wound had ever scarred, even temporarily. It had been inflicted by the iron chain of a basandere—a Basque spirit—that had taken up residence in the Las Vegas sewers. He had brought several crates of infernal drugs along with him. When Elise attempted to clean him out, he had tried to choke her to death.

The bruises from the chain had lasted for an entire day, which was about twelve hours longer than any injury had lasted before. Elise had assumed that it was some special basandere skill. They were ancient creatures, part of the fabric of the earth, and there was no telling how her infernal body would react to mortal spirits. But here she was again, failing to heal from a wound.

She felt strangely fragile. Like she might rip open at the bite marks and vanish forever.

“I don’t know if you like it heated or cold, so I’ve got one of each,” Lincoln said, entering the room with two individual plates of Poppy’s fine cherry pie.

Elise turned the camera off and set it on the desk.

“Which one do you prefer?” she asked, watching him walk toward her. He had put on a muscle-hugging white tee, which left nothing to the imagination. Lincoln set the plates on the desk. He was sweating enough to dampen the shoulders of his shirt, and it filled the air with the musk of his scent.

“Hot, with ice cream melting on top,” he said, with a husky edge to his voice. He shoved the hot plate toward her. “Try it.”

Elise picked up a fork, weighing it in her fingers, considering the four equal tines. There was silver in the alloy. She thought about driving it through Rylie’s eye socket.

Lincoln watched her expectantly as he dug into his own pie, waiting for her to eat. She had agreed to take a piece, but now that it was sitting in front of her, she couldn’t bring herself to take a bite. She set the fork down and pushed the plate away.

“Nice typewriter,” Elise said, nodding at his desk.

“The power’s not good in Northgate. I’ve still got to get work done during outages. The department’s standard forms don’t fit in a printer anyway.”

“Have you heard of a laptop? They work when the power fails.”

“It’s not nearly as charming,” Lincoln said. “Something wrong with your pie?”

“I still don’t like it,” Elise said.

His mouth slanted with mock disapproval. “Just when I was starting to like you.”

She stood, and they were close—too close. She could feel the heat radiating from his skin. Elise traced her fingers through his short bangs, over the line of hair behind his ear, the stubble on the back of his neck.

“Miss Kavanagh,” he began.

“I have a present for you,” she said. “In the pocket of my pants. Twelve silver bullets. Hopefully, enough for you to kill a couple of werewolves. And, hopefully, you won’t ever need them.”

He looked surprised. “Thank you.”

“No problem. I’ll need to borrow clothing from you until stores open tomorrow. Do you have any female friends or sisters?” Elise lifted an eyebrow. “A girlfriend?”

“No girlfriend.” Lincoln coughed. “Sister’s at college, and I wouldn’t feel right asking Sheriff Dickerson to borrow her jeans. You know? But you can borrow anything I have.”

“I already lost one of your sweaters.”

“I have more,” he said.

Elise took the plate from his hands—he had already eaten the entire slice—and set it aside. She reached into the neck of his shirt, pulling out the crucifix. His skin burned her knuckles.

“Thanks for your help tonight, deputy,” she said. “You’re a good Christian.”

No modesty in his eyes. Only pride. “I try my best, ma’am.”

But when she turned away, Lincoln’s fingers brushed down her spine, and it wasn’t an innocent Christian touch. Elise closed her eyes, savoring the shiver that rippled across her skin.

“What are these?” he asked in a low voice.

It took Elise a moment to realize what he was talking about. She twisted around to look at her lower back in the mirror on his wall.

There were rows of tiny brands tattooed onto her back, all the way down to her thighs. They had been crimson-black when she was first marked, but the ink hadn’t lasted; nothing but ghostly white scars remained.

Elise remembered having those marks tattooed on her with the same unfortunate clarity that she remembered everything else. The needle had been excruciatingly painful. Its sting had aroused her in more ways than one—her adrenaline, her anger, her lust.

Had it been the pain that she had reacted to, or the man doing the tattooing? Was Elise so fucked up that she could only enjoy pleasure when it came with torture?

Everything with James had been torture. She knew that now.

Elise didn’t want to think about him. She didn’t want to feel guilty for yearning for Deputy Marshall’s touch. She didn’t want her future ruined by James.

She turned in Lincoln’s arms, pressed close to his chest.

“I have more scars than you could possibly see, deputy,” Elise said, snaking an arm around the back of his neck, brushing his stubble again.

His hazel eyes—so human, so innocent—were flooded with a very human emotion. He felt the exact same need that crawled over her now. “What made you like this?” Lincoln asked, his hands hot on her waist.

Simple question, with such a complicated answer.

Yatam, father of all demons.

Metaraon, the Voice of God.

Adam, the first man.

Isaac, my father.

James Faulkner, my betrayer.

Lincoln didn’t know about the past that Elise was always trying to escape, and she wasn’t about to tell him. It had nothing to do with shame. She had told McIntyre and Anthony much of the truth, and admitted the rest to Leticia—the kinds of things that a woman could only tell another woman.

No, Elise didn’t trust Lincoln. With her wounds? Yes. But with her past…no. He was responsible for that email with her picture. He had an entire town keeping an eye on her. She didn’t trust that he didn’t have other secrets, too.

“Nothing made me. I was born for sin and damned from the beginning,” she said, pressing her hips to his. He was already aroused, rigid between them.

“I have faith, Miss Kavanagh,” he said. “I believe anyone can be saved. God loves us all.”

“Elise,” she corrected, yet again. “And I used to have faith, too.”

“I’ve still got enough for the both of us.”

He really seemed to think that she could be saved, but that was because he didn’t know what Elise had done. He didn’t know that there was no salvation for anyone, anywhere—not a Godslayer, and not a crooked deputy from small-town Pennsylvania.

Elise wrapped a finger in the chain that held his crucifix.

“Then save me,” she said, pushing Lincoln back, forcing him to sit on the desk.

She stepped close, thighs on either side of his, fitting their bodies together. He was shorter than James, more muscular. He smelled of aftershave and cherry pie. Elise slanted her mouth against his, one hand on his cross and one at the back of his head, and she tasted the mortality on his tongue.

Elise clung to her corporeal form as she explored his mouth. Her every instinct wanted to pour inside of him, possessing Lincoln from the inside out. She settled for grinding her hips against his. They were separated only by two thin layers of clothing, but she made sure that he felt it.

His breaths came choppy and hot on her neck. Aroused, afraid—it was all the same. He was right to fear her.

Elise’s fingers slipped down his abs, finding their way into the waistband of his sweats. And when she circled her bare fingers around him, his gasp was delicious. Caught somewhere between pain and rapture.

Lincoln’s hand cupped the back of her neck. His thumb brushed the bites.

There
was the pain. It made her skin prickle with gooseflesh.

Elise groaned.

He pulled his hands away.

“Do it again, harder,” she whispered into his mouth, stroking him slowly, up and down, enjoying the tension in his body.

But he pulled back to stare at her with heavy-lidded eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Do it,” Elise insisted, grabbing his wrist, pressing his hand to her throat.

But Lincoln only trailed his fingers down her ribs, pulled her tighter against him, pressed his manhood between her legs.

“Not like that,” he said. “I don’t hurt women.”

Frustration rose in her, heady as the arousal. “It’s not that kind of pain.”

“No,” Lincoln said, and he was tugging on her underwear, pushing it down her legs, baring her to the warm Pennsylvania air.

Elise shoved him onto the desk, flattening him beside the ancient computer monitor. She flowed up his body. Flipped her hair so that it hung over her shoulders, a veil of darkness separating them from the world.

“Do you want me to bleed you?” Elise asked, digging a fingernail into his jugular.

Lincoln looked shocked. And then a muscle in his cheek twitched, because her hips were moving again, and she was removing his ability to respond with the friction between their bodies. His hands tightened on her hips, not hard enough to bruise.