Secret Worlds (227 page)

The rest of the apartment is T-shaped, and mostly living room: carpeted floors, L-shaped couch facing a huge entertainment center on one side of the window, with its back to a home office, dotted with red equipment—desk-phone, laptop, and file, pen, and paperclip holders—is along the opposite wall. The couch has red throws and red pillows. I feel like I’m in a cave spattered with blood. My body trembles with delight, while my mind marvels at how he can afford all this on a breakfast diner’s profits. I wonder who he really is inside after seeing the darkness he surrounds himself in outside. I have never felt fear. The darkside feeds me. I am indestructible, a demon’s blunder, as unique as a human’s night fright. But I feel something I’ve not experienced before, and it’s deliciously uncomfortable.

“You coming in or are we eating in the doorway?” He’s wearing a cocky grin and has a plate full of food in each hand hovering over a small, black table with four red chairs outside the kitchen area.

Damn it, I want to bite the quivering lip he’s trying to hold in place. I slam the door shut with my foot and, with two cups of coffee in my hands, try to muster a sexy saunter over to the table.

He puts the food on tidy hemp placemats and heads into the kitchen. For the umpteenth time, I want to know just who this man is that he can captivate me so.

I set the coffee down on the molded, liver-shaped table and slide into a deep red chair that looks like it dripped off the black slab it’s resting under. The seat gives me a good view of Gaire’s ass as he digs eating utensils out of an open kitchen drawer; it also affords me an easy view of the red satin bed.

With a clink of silverware that yanks me right out of my daydream, Gaire sets down a fork and knife by my plate. He acts like he didn’t notice my complete and utter fascination with his bedroom, but his twitching cheek gives him away.

I’m used to being in control—total control—and this silly mortal behavior I’m experiencing is just not working for me. I shake off all the new feelings, whatever the hell they are, grab my fork, and dig in. Not like I enjoy eating. In fact, I abhor it. The functional side of preserving the human body is annoying, not to mention the aftereffects said nourishment has on the body. As I watch Gaire eat mouthfuls of bacon, his eyes sparkle with red dots I hadn’t noticed in the diner. I blink, and they’re back to the shamrock green they were before. There’s a fine sheen of sweat beading on his forehead. He’s avoiding eye contact, almost as though he’s ashamed, like a mutt peeing on the grass.

We both slip into silence as we eat.

How totally disgusting humanity is. Eating, defecating, showering, medical servicing, teeth brushing, hair combing, painting faces and nails, and dressing the rest of the body in an array of ever changing clothing, and for what? To die after maintaining a mere world average lifespan of 67.2 years? I munch a piece of bacon and think it’s no wonder he’s ashamed to look at me as he eats.

However, if I weigh the human race with mine, his life seems a better alternative. Doppelgangers do not eat, drink, sweat, defecate, breathe, get sick, or procreate. To have a child is to mentor a demon-conjured rejection, a mistake. That is the true nature of a doppelganger, and there is no love involved, no feelings at all. The thing I call Mother would simply walk away on some dead human’s legs should the elders deem me a threat and consume my entity. And they will if I bring notice to an otherworld existence.

While I can do without the daily functionalities of the human body, love, hate, passion, arousal, and the camaraderie of humanity draw me like a drug, and certainly are very addictive.

She’s watching me, tempting me with her darkness and fleshy perfume. It’s been years since I’ve desired human flesh, tasted the hunger of lust. Damn my father for his blood, and thank the gods for my mother’s. She’s at least able to somewhat control her urges. Having her blood running through my veins gives me hope.

CeCe is going to force me to follow, watch, smell, and consider her, until I figure out what she is before bedding her. And I will bed her. The gods be damned if she forces me to shift.

I turn to make visual contact, but her eyes roam my lair. The scent that wafts off her fuels and stokes the beast within me. Her dark hair picks up what little light I allow up here as she leans into a fork laden with pancakes. It flickers on the bangs hanging across her forehead and down her cheek as I watch her chew, lips moist with syrup. My mouth salivates, not for the food, but the taste of her.

I’ve long given up on romance. I am my father’s son. I’d killed because of past mistakes. I won’t let it get that far ever again.

“Are you sure I can’t pay you for today?”

She slowly turns, a smile on her lips but caution in her eyes. “What if I come back tomorrow? I did think about a part time job for the summer. Unfortunately, that’s all I did, and time ran out. I only have a few weeks left to spare. But working here would be perfect for me to make a few bucks, and give you time to find someone more permanent … unless you already have someone else in mind?”

I would be an idiot not to lie to her. “Sounds like a plan. I paid my last waitress minimum plus tips and breakfast. That work for you?”

Did I just agree to fight this insanity every damn day for weeks—as in several?

“Yep, I can work until the end of July.”

She’s chasing cold eggs around on her plate, probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it.

“What happens in July?”

“Off to college, Michigan State.”

When she sucks on the end of the fork before laying it on her plate, I almost jump her. It’s taking every bit of control I have not to touch her body. If I do, I won’t be able to stop.

I have to clear my throat to say, “In July?”

“Well, not exactly, but there’s a lot to do before I head out.”

CeCe gets up, walks over to the window, and pulls the curtain aside. “I bet the view from your bed is killer at night.”

If you only knew, I think.

As she saunters toward me I can smell desire. Not human desire. A musky, animalistic desire—essential, dark, and demanding. Her blouse comes off first and she tosses it at my feet, steps out of her cutoffs, and stands before me in a triangle of black lace.

Our eyes lock. My spine prickles as it tries to shift. Mouth salivating, heart hammering, jaw tightening, I bend and pick up her clothes. She’s a breath away, waiting, feet parted, lace riding her fingers as she runs them over her hips. I grit my teeth and place the clothes in between her pink breasts framed in rich tanned skin. When my knuckles connect with soft creamy flesh my body tightens and prickles another warning. It’s all I can do to keep from taking her right there.

I can hear his heartbeat; I feel the heat of his gaze, the strength behind his touch. Crap! My head is spinning—my head, not the human’s I’m wearing. I never do this. I amuse myself and let them do the dreaming, the what-if’s, and get off on that. I don’t contemplate commitment, relationships, love! I just get my high on. I trade them their lives for a quick fix.

Damn it, sex with this guy is not going to be a quick fix. I want...

I realize I’m grabbing for my clothes before they fall to the floor, and he’s stepping back, shaking his head. What the hell?

I was pissed when I left Gaire’s and headed straight for the sewer. I’d ended up here in Purgatory.

The music seems too loud, pulsing lights are too bright, and smells are cloyingly nauseating.

A group of berserkers in a dark corner of the bar burst out in robust shouts and laughter. The damp animal pelts they wear release fetid sewer smells that thicken the air and claw at my throat. Berserkers’ fists pound wooden tables and splinters fly beside large brass cages where creatures fight and bettors wager.

The succubus I’ve been chatting up on the stool next to me sighs. “And?” she, prompts me to finish my rant.

“Yeah, so, like, I told Gaire, ’I don’t want a commitment, just hot sweaty sex, thank you very much’. And not only did he look like I’d just threatened to kill him and grill him, but his attitude was all, ’I don’t just hop into bed with anyone, and it disappoints me you do’. I mean, we’d had a whole day with enough voltage flowing between us to light up New York. What’s up with the standoff all of a sudden?”

I belt down a shot of something green. Doesn’t matter, nothing gets me high but human sex or waiting for that last heartbeat when the body-double separates from the host and allows me to make that life-threatening decision.

“C’mon! All I wanted was sex. I thought human men lived for opportunities like that.” I wave my hand up and down the host’s body I’m wearing, my eyes locked on the succubus. “Look at CeCe. Would you turn her down?”

She doesn’t comment about my dilemma. Instead, she looks complacent, knocks her shot glass against the bar, and signals a púca, who at this moment looks like a gorilla. Fifteen minutes ago, he shifted from a toy poodle to a black bear before serving us.

Howls follow a group shape-shift at a table of werewolves when an ogre is served a plate of raw meat. The ogre turns into a threatening, growling, snarling beast as it covets the flesh, ripping it apart to devour it.

“I thought they’d stopped serving ogres,” the succubus says as the gorilla hobbles our way.

I curl CeCe’s lips back and glare at the bleached-blonde, bulbous-breasted wet-dream holding her glass out for our bartender. Sheese, I thought a demon of seduction would be more sympathetic to my plight. Not like I can talk to the bartender; a púca often gives good advice, but Satan knows their advice always comes with a price.

“Another green steam to abjure the sensual chains that bind, my luv?” The gorilla’s voice is all lusty deep male as he locks eyes with the succubus.

She raises a brow and smiles wickedly at the bartender before turning to me. “If you can’t drink from this Gaire guy’s manly charms, dress yourself in him, imbibe with another, and get over it. I see no issue here, Doppie.”

“Don’t call me Doppie! You know I hate it! How about I start calling you Sucky?” I glare at her and suck in a dramatic breath. She knows I don’t need it; she knows I’m threatening her.

The reaction I get makes me smile. Sucky leans out of the line of my suckage and raises her brow. “You really don’t want to go there, do you?” The dream demon curls long slim legs under the bar and hooks them around the legs of her stool.

Although my actions are just a smartass threat—there is no way I’m shedding CeCe and donning the succubus—I pretend to misunderstand her comprehension. “Yes, I do! I want to roll around on that big red-silk bed of his and writhe in pleasure. And I don’t like being refused!”

Her posture relaxes and she even smiles at me. “You know what humans say ’tomorrow is another day’. So take your black ugly self into that diner in the morning wearing major doppelganger attitude, sweetie. And hey, if you can’t make any headway, I’ll be happy to jump into his dreams tomorrow night and assist, ’kay?”

On the other side of the room, a loud crash steals Sucky’s attention as one of the berserkers bursts from a metal cage and takes down three tables as he rolls across the room, blood spraying, fists flying, and angry growls spraying spittle. The flesh-tearing ogre stands in the open door of the swinging cage, roaring laughter over the encouraging crowd. He grabs the bars on either side of the opening as the berserker gets two feet up under him and bellows a threat riding a wave of acrid, carnage breath over the crowd. Half the clientele respond in testosterone injected frenzy and the rest vary in their levels of amenableness.

I crinkle my nose at the smell without acknowledging the useless action because I feel the hair on the back of CeCe’s neck stand straight out, and it isn’t because of the cage fight action. If I were the real CeCe, I would be hyperventilating right now. I’m still holding onto Sucky’s casually dropped comment about entering Gaire’s dream.

I tap her shoulder a bit too hard and my words are a bit too harsh. “You most certainly will not get anywhere near Gaire! The only way you would ever be entering his dreams is if I’m wearing you. Got it?” I think I just growled.

Both of her brows shoot up. Her lips pucker a frown and her head shakes disgust at me. “Oh my, sweetie, tell me you are not in love—”

“I’m not!” I shout while I mentally scold, Damn it, you are so screwed.

The felled berserker scrambles across the bar and, with an abhorrent war whoop, dives for the cage, slamming it into the wall with his girth. The deep throaty laughter of the ogre dances gleefully with the cheers from the crowd.

Sucky’s head whips from the cages to the entrance of Purgatory. I follow her gaze and a moan escapes CeCe’s peppermint-glossed lips.

“Just what I need.” I glare at my mother for all of two seconds before I turn to watch the púca saunter up, Sucky’s drink clutched in its oversized hand with long fingers and sharp claws.

Two bouncers—a werewolf, who is licking his maw, and a very smelly sewer troll named Stoner—wobble across the room toward the cages and the fight taking place. The sound of fists hitting flesh makes my mouth water. I can only imagine what it’s doing for the werewolf whose main diet is meat.

“I added it to your tab,” the púca’s voice says with a warble. Sharp slimy green teeth click behind loose lips spread in a smile for the succubus.

The bartender, now an impressive, ugly, gray goblin watches my mother take the stool beside me.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” Mother says, pointing at me, “and a large bubbly, please.”

The goblin’s black eyes sparkle. “Another green steam. Add a brew!” the púca shouts at a mixer mid-bar, then points at me. “Unless you’d like another, dearie?” When I nod, he shouts, “Make that two greenies, Kris!”

The mixer—a wiry elf with orange hair and long pointed ears—raises a knotted thumb and then nods. His ears poke out from under a brown, pointed hat, and as he leans in to pour the two shots a green ball on his hat falls over one eye.

Mom is not wearing anyone at the moment. I loathe our natural body shape. She is dark and dense, and rolls like heavy fire-smoke as she moves. Our only facial features—two bright red eyes and a circular hole with long gray teeth—are revolting. Two appendages, with four-fingered hands, hang to the bottom of the cloud of smoke, and we have no feet; we glide.