The Catalyst (8 page)

Cherry was in the process of unbuttoning her top, and
the oppressive, trapped feeling came on stronger, making the room
shrink to half its size. He wanted to crawl out of his skin. He
wanted to shift and… he didn’t know what. He just had to break free
of whatever this was.

“Stop,” he said, to try to calm the chaos in his
mind.

“What? Is something wrong?” Cherry looked at him with
a mixture of concern and apprehension.

“I can’t do this.”

Her eyes flashed. It was time for the anger portion
of the evening. He was batting a thousand tonight. Maybe he could
try to piss off a nun next.

“You know I’ve been sending you signals for months.
You take me up on it, and now you’re rejecting me? Is this some
kind of game to you?”

Z suppressed a growl and pulled his shirt back on.
“No. No game. I just can’t do this. Whatever you think, it’s not
personal.”

“Like hell it’s not personal. You get your fucking
coffee elsewhere from here on. If you come into the Java Junkie
again, I’ll tell my boss you’ve been starting trouble. Half of our
patrons would back me. You give them the willies. There’s something
not right about you.”

Z just shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,
Cherry. It would have just been tonight, anyway.”

“It’s worth shit, is what it’s worth, you son of a
bitch.” Her hands were shaking, part in anger and part due to
embarrassment, as she was probably wondering if there was something
wrong with her and her desirability that had caused his inability
to bring himself to sleep with her. She buttoned the last few
buttons, sent him an evil glare that he wasn’t sure didn’t come
with a curse attached, and slammed the door behind her.

He followed her outside, his shoes abandoned in the
room. “Do you want a ride back? It’s dark out.”

“Screw you!” she shouted over her shoulder,
disappearing down the street and into the night. As angry as she
was, any thug would steer clear.

Z shut the door and flopped back on the bed to fall
into a fitful sleep.

Chapter Four

Jane stood motionless in a white room, her eyes glued
to several video monitors. She jumped and turned at the voice of
her adjustment angel. For a heavenly being, he was short, bald, and
quite surly.

“You should go enjoy heaven, it’s not healthy to stay
in this room,” Rodolfo said. He looked nothing like a Rodolfo.

But it was her room, the room that let her see what
she knew she should let go of and close the door to. There were two
monitors in particular that her eyes had been riveted to for
months. On one, the image rarely changed, and at times she wondered
if it was up-to-date—if it was working.

Cole sat with his head in his hands, a bottle next to
him. She’d watched him lose himself so many times inside that
bottle. The den was littered with dozens of paintings, all of her
bleeding to death. He’d gotten a vision too late, and thought the
pup had died, too. He’d searched for her body, but it had already
been taken by a wild animal.

When he’d returned, he’d painted the vision over and
over, as if it were penance, as if painting it just one more time
would bring her back to him. After that, while he’d been strong
enough to shift into his wolf form, he’d huddled in the bed and
whimpered for days. As he stopped eating enough to shift, he’d
turned to alcohol as his last option to mute the pain.

He was useless to the pack like this. The only
remaining sign of his alpha status was the black tribal tattoo
around his arm. The beta had all but taken over while her mate
mourned. Their baby was still out there, and Jane was the only one
who knew about it.

Her eyes flicked to the other screen: her baby wolf
with the panther therian and now the witch. Jane’s life had been a
strange one: born human with vampire blood, tormented by the
bloodsuckers, rescued by a werewolf, and made into his mate. The
magical blood that had damned her had later set her free in Cole’s
arms. And now here she was, in the land of the dull. Her former
incarnations were something she couldn’t process or think about at
the moment. She was too attached to this most recent lifetime. All
she cared about right now was getting back to the man she loved and
their pup.

“Please, I have to go back. You have to send me
back.” She’d had this conversation with the angel daily, sometimes
multiple times a day.

“I’ve told you a thousand times,” Rodolfo said, “You
can reincarnate, but your memories won’t hold together. It’s a
gamble if you’ll remember anything worth knowing. And the time line
is off. Being reborn now won’t help your pup and your mate.”

Jane’s hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. He
was such a wanker. She wanted nothing more than to punch him in the
mouth, but violence wasn’t allowed here. “Why give us a room like
this?”

“We let people say goodbye in their own time. I
shouldn’t have indulged you so long. Sometimes we just have to take
the room away.”

The idea of losing the window into her old life put
her in a full panic. Jane’s face was tear-stained by the time she
found her voice again. “Please. Please send me back.”

He ignored her plea, instead staring at the monitors,
a thoughtful expression on his face. Such a smug bastard. As her
adjustment angel, he was there to help her get her bearings in
heaven and to act as her tour guide.

Except for the official tour, she’d only spent a
little time outside her mansion. It was what she’d always been told
Christian heaven was like. The reality of it made her shudder.
There were streets of gold and lots of worshiping and prayerful
meditation. Everyone wore glistening white gowns, and the birds
would never shut the hell up with their happy songs. Her
surroundings were perfect, idyllic. But it was so… boring and
empty.

A couple of times when she’d been walking beside the
ridiculously clear river, she’d caught the gaze of someone who she
could have sworn shared her misgivings. But nobody questioned. She
knew why. If heaven was as it had been described down to details
like golden streets, was hell’s description equally accurate? And
what would happen to them if they asked questions? Would they be
sent there?

She’d managed to pry the knowledge out of Rodolfo.
Hell was where she’d been. Jane supposed it was all about
perspective, because heaven was inside the warmth of Cole’s arms.
This was hell.

In heaven, everybody had their own mansion. It was
frivolous and pointless. Husbands and wives lived next door to each
other and waved and said hello on occasion, but the intimacy they’d
shared in their human lifetime was gone. It never got dark. There
was no weather. No one slept. No one had sex. They ate sometimes,
but that was the only genuine pleasure. Still, it felt muted
against the backdrop of too much agonizing perfection.

And some dark part of her longed for the
struggle.

She scrubbed the tears off her face with her arm.
“They need me.”

The angel turned, as if perhaps she’d suffered enough
to satisfy some quota only he was aware of. “There is a way.” His
voice was beguiling, going up a register on the last word.

A devil’s bargain was something struck in a seedy
motel or in some murky corner behind a dumpster. If the devil
didn’t have literal horns, he’d at least be wearing a black coat
and have two days worth of beard growth, and a lit cigarette
hanging out of his mouth. But wasn’t the devil a fallen angel? And
if he could fall, this Rodolfo character couldn’t fare much
better.

Although Jane and the angel were in clean
surroundings—too clean if you asked her—the warning light flashed
in her mind. Even so, she latched onto the lifeline he’d tossed.
She didn’t care what she had to do—accept some awful punishment,
walk across hot coals—if there was the smallest hope of being
reunited with Cole and their child, she’d do it.

“You would never be able to return to heaven, of
course,” he said, laying the trap.

She fought back the sarcastic retort rising in her
throat. No way to return to
this
? Oh, sign her up for the
exit door, please. She’d take an eternity stuck in hell where at
least there were challenges, things to do, something worth fighting
for, instead of the maintenance of the unmarred status quo.

“There is no guarantee he’ll want you,” he
continued.

“Why wouldn’t he want me?”

“You’ll be a demon, a succubus.”

Jane swallowed around the lump forming in her throat.
On the one hand, the idea of being such a powerful being, of never
being able to be killed or be someone else’s victim again, was
heady. But she knew there must be things he wasn’t telling her.
There seemed to be a
nudge-nudge, wink-wink
in there she
wasn’t grasping.

“What’s the catch?”

“You don’t think that’s the catch? My, my Miss
Tanner, how you ever ended up here is a great mystery.”

“Mrs. Riley,” she said, annoyed.

“Last I checked, werewolves don’t get married, so you
are Miss Tanner according to our books and scrolls.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Demon me up. I need
to get back to my mate and child.”

The angel smiled. Not a friendly smile.

***

Cain was in his tent draining the life from a woman
when he felt another of his kind enter the world, fresh and new. He
shoved the girl to the floor and stood, alert, looking around for
his pants.

“Well, you just got a reprieve. I suggest you stop
following strange men home from here on out,” he said, spotting his
pants behind the large cushion he and the girl had been sprawled
on.

The woman’s eyes were still glassy, the lust he’d
induced in her not yet abated. She looked like she was going to
cry, desperate for him to keep touching her.

Oh for God’s sake.
“Enough,” he said. He
hadn’t been hungry. He wasn’t sure why he did this. On the outside
he was a happy hedonistic incubus, but inside, empty. And all the
demon gluttony in the world wouldn’t solve it. But now wasn’t the
time for self-pity. He had a new demon to initiate into his
world.

The anger boiled inside him. Fucking angels. They
turned demons and left them to fend for themselves with no
knowledge of what to do or how to survive—messes for Cain to clean
up.

The memory of his own turning—eight thousand years
old as it was—still burned fresh in his mind. Nobody had been there
to help him. He’d had to figure it all out on his own. The only
thing they’d given him was directions to his newly-created
dimension, intel they chose not to share with any other new demon.
No, that was the burden they’d always make Cain bear, finding them
and bringing them to safety.

He glanced down at the woman on the cushion with
disdain. She crawled toward him, reaching for him.

“Stop it, we’re done,” he said. When she still seemed
hypnotized by his erotic thrall, he reached for a glass of water
and threw it in her face. That brought her back to her senses.

“You asshole!”

“Yeah. That’s right. I’m an asshole. Stop going home
with pretty monsters, you stupid trollop.”

Sure, he’d used the thrall, but not until he’d
already had her by more natural means. If she hadn’t followed him
out of the bar like some lost puppy, he might have left her alone.
Probably not. But maybe. There was that thin hope. She’d still
followed him of her own free will outside into the darkness with no
witnesses. That was stupid, and Cain felt compelled to punish
stupidity.

She reached for the brandy and was about to chuck it
at him in her temper tantrum over the idea that she wasn’t the most
important thing in his world after only an hour in her company. Oh
no she didn’t. That was the good stuff.

“Sleep,” he commanded. She slumped onto the cushion
and the alcohol dropped safely out of her hands and onto the soft,
fluffy fabric.

On his way out of the tent, he scooped her up and
passed her off to another demon, ordering her to be returned to her
town. Beyond that, she was on her own. If some other nasty got her,
well, that’s what happened when you went home with dark and
alluring strangers. Let that be a lesson.

Considering the fact that he’d just pulled her
memories of the night with the order to sleep, she’d be right back
in that bar acting stupid again tomorrow night. Maybe he’d just
kill her. Such a waste of DNA. No one needed her to reproduce. It
would be his gift to humanity. Survival of the fittest was
yesterday’s story. How about survival of the smartest for a
change?

He grabbed a blanket on his way out of the dimension.
He never knew the state the new demon would be in. They could be in
shock or traumatized. It always pissed him off the way they were
brought to him. Could the angels not make the transition more
humane? Were they not supposed to be the good guys?

As evil as demons were purported to be, at least they
took care of their own, which wasn’t any different from humans who
cared little for other species besides themselves. So why did
humans get so many chances?

Cain’s dimensions had multiple portal points allowing
them to enter the human world easily. Portal charms could be used
if necessary to open a portal where one didn’t exist, but Cain
didn’t like to do it too much. He worried that it unsettled the
magic.

The dimension was protected, given that the portal
recognized the essence of demons like computers recognized
thumbprints and only let demons pass. With the exception of
Cole—Cary Town, Washington’s werewolf pack alpha. Cain had given
him a portal charm—several in fact—allowing him and his pack free
access to escape the police state forming in their city.

It wasn’t that Cain was a big humanitarian or…
theriantarian as it were. Cole had helped him once. A witch had
bound him in a glass bottle. It was humiliating. All it took to
break the spell was shattering the bottle, but she’d put it in a
protected place so no matter what he did, he couldn’t shatter it on
his own.