Trinity Blue (3 page)

“I’m heading out to do some grocery shopping. I want to make it to the Shop Rite before they close at 9. If you’re done before I get back, leave by the kitchen door. It’ll lock behind you.” Turning away, she positioned her crutches to make her way to the door. “See you.”

 
“Jen.”
His voice, low and rough, stopped her. The way he said her name made her shiver.

She glanced back over her shoulder. He’d hunkered down at the top of the stairs so he wouldn’t lose sight of her. God, he was gorgeous. And he wasn’t for her. No man was for her. Not right now. Not ever. A different future waited for her and it could never include a mortal man.

Like her mother and her grandmother before her, she was destined to guard her heart.

“It’s dark out. Do you...” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Do you want me to take you to town?”

Wow.
Chivalrous.
“Not necessary. I’m a big girl, Daemon. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time. And, hey—” she laughed “—it isn’t as if I need to watch out for monsters.”

She was almost at the door before she heard the creak of the floorboard behind her. The air hummed a second before she felt Daemon’s hands on her, his long fingers closing around her upper arms. She gasped and stumbled. He steadied her, his body hard and hot at her back. Her pulse slammed into red line.

“Careful,” he murmured.

Heart pounding, she stood perfectly still as he stepped around until he faced her, his fingers skimming her upper arms, leaving a tingle of electric awareness in their wake. Her head fell back and she stared into his eyes, saw something there that made her shiver.
Something primal.

“There are all sorts of monsters in this world, Jen,” he said, “and you
do
need to watch for them.”

“I—” She broke off as his gaze dropped to her mouth. Heat kicked her, low in her belly, and her breath came in a jagged gasp. She thought he would kiss her. A part of her wanted him to, wanted to know the feel and taste of him.

He smiled, a feral
baring
of white teeth.
Dangerous.
Sexy.
“You need to watch out for things
inside
your home, too.”

For a second, she thought he meant himself, that he was telling her he was some sort of monster. Then he gestured to the ground and she looked over her shoulder at a dark lump: the rolled up rug that usually ran the length of the hall. In the gloom, she hadn’t noticed it there just waiting to snare her crutches.

 
“I moved the rug so I could get my supplies in and out easier,” he said. “You almost caught your crutches on it.”

That’s why he’d leaped to her rescue and grabbed her.
To save her from a fall.
So she’d been wrong. His actions were both chivalrous and
necessary,
otherwise she’d be on the floor in a pained heap right now.

“Thanks.” She pressed her lips together and willed her pulse to settle.
“My savior.”
She laughed.

He didn’t.

“I’m no one’s savior, Jen.” A heartbeat, two,
then
he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.

She leaned a little closer.

His gaze dipped to her mouth and lingered. Then he dropped his hand and stepped back, leaving her confused and a little embarrassed.

“Drive safe.” His tone was nonchalant, as though he hadn’t just moved faster than he ought to, hadn’t held her close enough that she could smell the scent of his skin, feel the heat of his body.
Hadn’t made her ache for his kiss.

She was glad that the need to reposition her crutches gave her the excuse to look away.

A half hour later, Jen used her hip to bump her cart as she hobbled along the aisle of the Shop Rite on Route 52. Mrs.
Hambly
—an old friend of her grandmother’s—and the high school math teacher, Gail Merchant, blocked the way.

“Terrible tragedy.
Terrible.
Things like that don’t happen here,” Mrs.
Hambly
insisted. She plucked a grape from a bunch, popped it in her mouth, grimaced,
then
helped herself to another from a different bunch.

Jen wondered what tragedy had Mrs.
Hambly
all worked up tonight. Last week it had been the kids lurking outside the variety store, and the week before that it was the lack of personal service at the ATM.

She planted her crutches and added a head of lettuce and a couple of tomatoes to her cart. Ahead of her, Gail absently filled a bag with peaches, her attention on Mrs.
Hambly
as she asked in hushed tones, “Does Sheriff Hale
think
she was killed there, or the body brought from somewhere else?”

Jen froze and stared at the two women in shock. “Killed?” she asked.
“Who?
Where?”
But she knew even before she heard the reply. The dark sense of premonition she’d been feeling…

“Sheriff fished a woman, well, actually, parts of her, out of the stream that runs through the woods between your place and
Lina
Peteri’s
this morning,” Mrs.
Hambly
said bluntly. “Naked.
Dead.
You didn’t know?”

“No.” Jen shook her head, horrified. The forest between her place and
Lina’s
stretched for miles, and somewhere in those miles a woman had died.
Parts of her
.
Which meant that parts were still missing.
She shuddered, her fists tightening on the bars of her crutches.

“He thinks she was in the water for weeks,” Gail added.

Weeks.
Memories drifted like smoke, coalescing into solid recollection of the afternoon that Daemon had first turned up on her doorstep. After he’d left her that day, she’d sensed something in the woods, watching her.
Something dark and frightening.

There are all sorts of monsters in this world, Jen.
His words from earlier tonight reeled through her thoughts. For an instant, she’d been so certain that Daemon was talking about himself.

She shook her head, feeling sick. Had he known about the dead woman? Was that why he’d offered to accompany her to the Shop Rite?
To protect her?
But if he had known, why not tell her? Of course, he might have assumed she had already heard about it.

“You hate tomatoes, Jen
Cassaday
,” Mrs.
Hambly
said sharply, peering into Jen’s cart. “Why are you buying them?”

“They’re...” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “They’re for
Dae
—
For
the handyman. He mentioned he has a fondness for tomatoes on his turkey sandwich.”

“Why doesn’t your handyman bring his own lunch?” Mrs.
Hambly
demanded at the same time that Gail asked, “You have a handyman working for you? Is it wise to have a stranger in the house with... well, with a woman dead and all?”

Jen was startled by the surge of anger she felt at Gail’s perfectly reasonable questions. She shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “He works hard. And he seems to understand old houses.”

“But you hired a stranger! You don’t know anything about him,” Gail exclaimed.

“He had references,” Jen replied softly. For what that was worth. They dated back a few weeks, telling her nothing of who Daemon Alexander had been before he came to Freetown.

Before Sheriff Hale found a dead body in the woods.

The two women pegged her with identical
are-you-crazy
looks. But Jen knew she wasn’t. She’d had this built-in radar detector for trouble all her life. It would uncoil and flare hard and bright if ever she was in danger. It had never failed her, and she was counting on that now, because the only vibe she got off Daemon Alexander was a sizzle of hotter-than-hell chemistry.

And that was a whole other kind of dangerous.

o0o

Daemon moved through the dense woods, silent, quick. Little moonlight filtered through the heavy canopy of branches and leaves. That was fine. He didn’t need light.

He stopped beside the rotting trunk of a fallen oak. He hadn’t wanted to let Jen go. He’d wanted to keep her beside him where he could keep her safe. It was only the certainty that what he sought was here in these woods that had convinced him to stay behind.

The best way to keep her safe was to find the demon before it found another victim.

Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and set the trinity free, shadows in darkness. The three misty shapes rose from his skin, snaked around his limbs and through them, blending, adapting, taking form then dissipating.

“Hunt,” he said, sending them to their task, and they darted away into the night, unseen,
unheard
.
Silent menace.

Free of the trinity for the moment, he summoned his stores of magic, a surge of bright power. He could see in the dark. He could run for miles. He could hear the breath of the smallest creatures in their burrows.

And he could sense dark magic. It was close, dripping malevolence and hate, and it made the
continuum
writhe and twist at the insult.

Something vile laid claim to these woods. It had killed.
Recently.
He could smell human blood and
brimstone,
feel the surge of demon power in the air.

Following instinct, he ran, skirting trees and vaulting logs, his blood pumping through him, the wind clean and cold in his face. He hunted. And he found them.
Hybrids
.
Brutish creatures that had been human once, but when faced with death, they had chosen to allow demon will to overtake their souls. They were human no longer, serving a monstrous master.

There were only two of them.
A scouting party.
Their hands were stained with blood, which meant they had fed earlier. Daemon felt a surge of disgust.
Hybrids
preferred their prey live, bloody, and human.

They scented him, heads jerking up, faces turning toward him. Their eyes were marble black, their expressions bestial. That was perfect. He was feeling a little bestial himself tonight. They were in Jen’s woods, behind Jen’s house. He didn’t want them here, didn’t want them anywhere near her.

The trinity sped to him, black shadows in the night.

“No,” he said, wanting this fight to be his, needing to know he was the one keeping her safe.
Jen.
Something about her reached inside him and fanned the embers of emotions he had thought charred to ash. The way he felt about her was primitive, elemental. He
would
keep her safe.

The
hybrids
came at him, one from each side, claws raking his flesh. He welcomed the pain, welcomed the burn of cold fury that burst from deep inside. With a snarl, he lunged, speed and power. Sweat dripped from him. His skin and clothes grew wet with blood.
His—red.
Theirs—black.

In the end, he stood, breathing heavily as their remains bubbled and hissed and disintegrated into sludge.

At his call, the trinity came to him, sinuous smoke, dark shadow, and for a moment, the night flared bright with cold, blue flames.

The following morning, Jen sat in the kitchen with Sheriff Hale answering a whole mess of questions. Actually, it was more like he asked and she sat silent and frustrated because she didn’t have a shred of information to help him find that poor woman’s killer. What was she supposed to say?
That weeks
ago she’d looked out at the woods and had the ugly sensation that something watched her with inhuman eyes? Yeah, that’d be a good move. Hale would think she’d lost her mind, and it wouldn’t bring him a step closer to the killer.

“So tell me about this handyman you have working for you,” Hale prodded.

“His name’s Daemon Alexander.”

“Where’s he from?”

Jen opened her mouth,
then
closed it. She had no idea.

“I’m from Oregon, originally.”

She jerked, catching the look of surprise on Hale’s face as they both turned. Daemon stood by the kitchen door, leaning one shoulder against the jamb. She hadn’t heard him come in and from Hale’s sour expression she gathered that neither had he.

“What about you, Sheriff Hale?” Daemon
asked,
his tone lazy and smooth. He shrugged out of his scuffed leather jacket and hung it on a peg behind the door. “Where’re you from?”

Hale’s face darkened to a dull red.
“Right here.
Born and bred.”

“How fortunate for you.”
There was a wealth of the unspoken behind those words, an implication that strangers were a convenient scapegoat.

Jen watched Daemon cross the kitchen to the coffee pot and pour himself a cup. His dark hair was still damp from his morning shower and a hint of stubble shaded his jaw. A gray T-shirt stretched tight across his shoulders and chest, hanging loose at the waist. She frowned at the tattoo on his forearm. She could swear that it had been on his bicep last night.