The Darkest Night (13 page)

He drummed his fingers restlessly, as if ticking through the various answers he might give. “I’m trying to do something here, for everyone’s good.” He sounded aggrieved.

Maybe because she was an entity of lesser evil, somehow that was not the response she wanted. She turned off at the next exit, jumping a couple lanes of traffic.

He shifted in his seat. “I thought we were going back to the house.”

“Why would you think that when I’m driving?”

“Because my home is the best place for you to be.”

She contemplated all her potential responses and decided two could play at his game of non-answers. “I can’t see anything in your house. It’s like living in a white bubble.”

He scowled. “In a bubble, nothing can get to you, which I thought was what you wanted.”

“Not
nothing
,” she said. “Just not the tenebrae.”

He waved one hand as if the distinction was of no interest to him. It should be, she thought grimly; without the protection of his abraxas and the sphericanum, he was almost as vulnerable as she was.

She parked the Porsche in the alley behind the Mortal Coil and tossed Fane the keys. Then she gathered her shopping bags and the broken ornament and let herself into the club.

Her heels tapped a slow, boring tempo down the back hall. So empty, so quiet. Sometimes she wished she kept the place hopping during the holidays, as a way to stay busy if nothing else. But she couldn’t risk others when the tenebrae came creeping. She wouldn’t let what happened to Mirabel happen to anyone else. At least not in front of her. Not again.

Despite her dismal thoughts, she found herself listening for the thud of harder footfalls as she rummaged behind the bar for a votive candle holder. But the only sound was the whisper of air through the ducts high overhead and the tinkle of glass as she dumped the broken ornament over the burned-down wax. She stifled her disappointment and turned toward the stairs to her apartment.

And let out an inadvertent shriek as she found herself nose to chest with Fane.

“I thought you were going home,” she said.

“I thought you were going home with me,” he countered. “Where are you going to hang your ornaments?”

“Upstairs. It’s smaller, more defensible.” Plus, she could see the pretty baubles from her bed and maybe sweeten her dreams.

He stepped out of her way. She hesitated a moment, but then with a mental shrug, she went up.

He was silent on the stairs behind her, almost eerily so for such a big man. Why did an angel need to be so sneaky? It had the power of goodness and light on its side.

But she felt the weight of his gaze, like the memory of his hand running down her naked back, and suddenly goodness and light seemed very far away.

She hurried a little faster up the stairs.

In her apartment, she hung her parka on the row of hooks by the door and kicked off her boots before taking the broken ornament to the reliquary. The antique was in the classic French style, like a miniature gilt-copper cathedral with rock crystal windows and a red enameled front door. With her fingernail, she popped the tiny latch and slid the candle into the depths.

“Watch out.” Fane’s hands on her shoulders made her start. “There’s still broken glass on the floor from when you threw your drink.” He guided her to one side then knelt to sweep up the trash.

She bit her lip. “You don’t have to do that.”

“If I cut myself, you can add it to your collection. Unless the blood from an outcast angel is useless.”

“I guess it depends on how you cut yourself. The warden shed his blood to reject us, to repel what he saw as a transgression. That impulse works against the tenebrae.” She ran her finger over the peaked steeples of the reliquary, and the copper spires thrummed an almost musical arpeggio. Did she dare ask if he would shed his blood for her? Or some other bodily fluid?

Her mouth felt swollen where she had nibbled at it, and when he stood up, looming over her, she couldn’t help but lick her lips. As transparent as glass…

He turned and went to the kitchen where he found her trash can under the sink. The ring of plain broken glass in the bottom of the bin sounded like her silly fantasies shattering.

Which incensed her. An imp did not want dreams. An imp did not need fantasies. Her only plan had been to keep herself free of the tenebraeternum another year, but here she was, exposed to an angel-man, half embroiled in a fight against a djinn-man, and on the sphericanum’s watch list, no doubt.

Doing her utmost to ignore Fane, she unwrapped her new sleigh and reindeer team from their tissues and hung them from the curtain rod at the window.

“You won’t be able to pull the drapes,” he warned.

“This time of year, I want all the light I can get.” She fussed with the spacing until they were perfect, then stepped back. The window was only a square of black framing the storm clouds and encroaching night. But the meager light of the streetlight below glinted in the silvered bits of the mercury glass, and she saw not just the reflected glimmer but the time and talent and joy the old man had blown into the molten glass. Drunken curmudgeon he might have been, but his love shone in the ornaments.

She gave the lead red-nosed reindeer a gentle nudge to set him swaying and then reluctantly turned to face her visitor.

He’d taken off his coat and stood with his hip propped against her kitchen counter, looking long, lean and mean with a tumbler of clear liquid in his hand.

She pointed. “That’s a pretty hefty drink for someone who’s about to drive away.”

“Who’s leaving?”

She tapped the accusing finger against her lower lip. “Um, let’s see…”

He drained the tumbler in one long swallow and then stalked across the room toward her.

She’d hung her protections against attack from the outside. Maybe she should have been looking within. She took a short step back.

He didn’t stop until their thighs bumped. “Yes, let us see,” he murmured.

He leaned down to kiss her, a slow kiss that coursed through her like the silver the old man had poured into the blown glass, so she felt as breathless and delicate, with a bright spark inside her. She wanted his hands around her curves, his mouth stoking the flames.

When he finally lifted his head, his smile was as slow and hot as the kiss.

She swallowed hard. “Liar. You had pure water in your glass.”

“Then I must be drunk on something else.”

“Exhaustion, maybe.”

“Are you saying we should go to bed? I’ve been wanting to get a closer look at all those embroidered pillows.”

She choked on nothing.

He took her hand and turned toward the bed, oh so conveniently right there.

She took one step before setting her stocking feet flat on the floor and tugging her hand free. “No.”

“The kitchen counter again? If that’s what you want.”

“Where is this going, Cyril?”

He gestured one direction then the other. “The bed or the counter. Your choice. Unless you have another idea.”

“I don’t…”

He crossed his arms over his chest, tensing his broad shoulders. “Don’t what?”

“I needed a light against the darkness. You wanted to forget for a night.” She matched his crossed arms, hers lower over her belly where the ache of desire and denial centered. “What more is there?”

“Nothing more, not if you push me away.” Against the severe lines of his winter-pale cheekbones, his eyes seemed bluer than ever.

For an instant, her breath caught in her throat. When had she begun to see him so clearly? The blue of his eyes—no matter how blue—should be nothing more than another shade of gray to the imp. Then her heartbeat resumed with a frantic thud.

How had she gotten so far from the isolation and barricades that had saved her? The longest night was here and her tenebrae brethren would be close behind. Mirabel had died, the windows of her soul forever dimmed rather than confront the demons. Bella would never let him face that, see
her
like that. All she would have was a clearer view of the horror and disgust in his heavenly blue eyes.

With a slow shake of her head, she backed away. She had been the death of a hopeless, helpless girl; she would not be the stain on an angel-man’s soul.

From the lies all demons mastered, she dredged up a casual flick of her fingers. “It’s been fun, Fane. But the season is almost over.
This
is definitely over. Thanks for the ornaments. Thanks for showing me…showing me it was wrong to steal.” Wrong to steal the Jesuses. Wrong to steal a night of light from an angel-man. Wrong to steal… No, she might have just
given away
her heart. She tilted her head and let her smile tilt toward sardonic. “You’re obviously too good a man to be with the likes of me.”

He blinked in surprise, and the blue of his eyes winked out for a second; a prelude of what she would lose. “Too good?” He dragged his hands through his hair, frustration in every line of his body. “Maybe you missed the part where I lost my abraxas and joined forces with the lesser of evils.”

“I didn’t miss anything. I took what I needed from you, just like the imp took from the dying girl.”

His arms uncurled to hang slack at his sides. “What is that supposed to mean?”

She steeled herself. “I mean it’s over.”

He jerked once, as if he’d been struck. “You can’t just push me away. There’s something between us—”

“Yeah, the unfathomable abyss between angel and demon.”

He cut her off with a slash of his hand. “This is something more. This is between you and me.”

“There is no
us
, just two sides of an eternal war, where you are the warrior and I’m the enemy. You are a warden, Fane. Ex, maybe, but that light is in you still. I stole some of it, and thanks for that too. But the tenebraeternum would seize it all.”

“Then take it.” He closed the distance between them, towering over her. “It’s yours.”

Oh, how she
wanted
. The furious heat of him beckoned her touch, and the storm of torment in his blue eyes hollowed her out. Not with an imp’s ugly hunger, but a desire purely hers to have him again, to give in to his belief they had a chance.

But the tenebrae couldn’t believe, and no light would ever be enough.

He stared down at her. “Whatever you want. I’m yours.”

She shrank away before her own longing betrayed her. And him. “No. I don’t—” Her throat tightened, as if trying to throttle her rejection. “Don’t want that from you.” Even she didn’t believe the wavering lie.

He reached for her. “You say I’m still a warrior. You could be too. Fight, Bella. Fight for us.”

In the instant before his embrace closed around her, she found the demon’s voice. “I won’t fight. And I don’t want you.”

“Don’t do this,” he warned. “Don’t push me away.”

“I am not some tragic woman you can win back with the power of your kiss. I am not a woman at all. I am tenebrae.”

“I’ve fought my demons already. I can fight one more.”

She let the double octaves rise, tearing past the ache in her throat. “I am not your demon.”

He froze, his blue eyes bright. “Too bad. If you were, maybe I could turn you over to the sphericanum and reclaim my ward. Or I could ransom you to Thorne in return for my sword. I bet he’d love to find out how he could steal dead bodies for his lesser demons.”

She held herself taut, though the taste of blood on the back of her tongue almost made her gag. “Probably not. I’m nothing, more trouble than I’m worth, really. But you of all people have seen that.”

“Yeah. You opened my eyes.” Still he lingered, his very presence burning through her resolve.

She reached down inside herself, seeking the imp’s inherent viciousness and Mirabel’s final rejection. And found nothing. Those shadows she’d hoarded so long were gone. All that remained was his demand that she fight.

Well, she could use that too.

She stood straighter. “This time it’s your turn to walk away, Cyril. Leave me.”

When he shook his head, the disheveled waves of his hair glinted with a touch of gold. “I can’t.”

“Then I’ll go.” She took one step toward the door.

“Stop.”

She did not face him.

He drew a ragged breath. “I won’t make you leave your refuge here. I’ll go. Put an artifact over the door behind me. Nothing will get in.”

Nothing ever again. His retreating footsteps echoed inside her.

Wait
, her heart cried from the place where her shadows had been.
I lied. Stay.
She bit her lips tight until the words died in her chest. The hours were spinning down to darkness, and she would not take him with her.

But as the colors around her faded and the door closed with a terrible click, she sank to the floor. Over the window, the Porsche’s headlights gleamed once in a silver wash and were gone, but tears spattered her cheeks for a long time after, as cold and dark as ice.

Chapter 12

Fane wanted to send the Porsche screaming away from the Mortal Coil. How could she stand there—with the Christmas lights glinting in her red hair, her mouth bright from the bite of her teeth, the rumpled bed
right over there
—and ask him where “this” was going? And then tell him there was nothing between them?

His every muscle clenched with frustrated craving and outrage—
this
was where he was
going
, damn it—but he couldn’t even get up to the speed limit. The sleeting rain left the roads slicked and dangerous as he crept through the industrial distinct. At least there was nothing to hit; the streets were empty.

Empty as the place behind his fury threatening to rise up and swallow him like some heretofore unidentified tenebrae.

The parking lot behind the @1 warehouse, however, was an anthill. An anthill of black-vested, jack-booted, violet-eyed, demon-ridden madmen. And madwomen. They paused as he rolled the Porsche to a stop just outside the cyclone fencing. Ecco leaned in the open gate, his fingers looped through the wire as if he contemplated slamming the gate on the car.

Fane slammed out of the door and stalked toward the big talya bastard. The league males might hate him—mostly on principle; the league’s history of conflict with the sphericanum predated him by centuries—but there wasn’t a man alive, demonically possessed or not, who would harm a Porsche. “I want in.”