Life Cycle

Page 17

Chapter Ten
By the time they reached the caves, Cain had shifted back into the pretty form. Even with his back to her, she knew which form it was. He was a little bigger and a little more intimidating in this form than his original human look. And just like the demon form gave off a form of dark energy few could withstand, this form gave off a sexual energy, more subtle, but still intoxicating.
“Does it take a lot of work to maintain that form?”
He created a fireball to light the torches, then turned to her, his face smooth of all lines and scars. “Not at my age.”
“Then why do you shed it sometimes, like when you sleep?” She stood just inches from him, trying to avoid the temptation to discard her own clothing; she needed to stay focused on her goal.
He reached out and stroked her cheek. She didn’t breathe, afraid if she did, she’d break this uncommon moment that felt like tenderness and honesty between them. She’d berate herself for her sanity slippage later.
Although they were isolated in the caves, his voice was low, as if he were sharing a secret he didn’t want the walls to hear. “Sometimes it’s good to let everything go.”
“Then why did you put the glamour back up just now?” She’d seen his original human form. They were in the middle of nowhere. There was no one to impress and no food for him to hunt out here. And if he wanted her, they both knew at this point that the form wasn’t a barrier for her. She probably would have slept with him in the demon form out in the desert, a point she didn’t want to dwell on. It would mean she was starting to feel for the person underneath it all, not just the pretty fantasy.
He shrugged. “Force of habit.”
“So let go,” she said.
His face tensed, and for a moment she thought she’d pushed too far, but then he sighed and dropped the glamour. Tam reached out and traced the mark on his forehead. A moment of stillness passed between them. With other people in another situation, it would have been the part where the epic orchestral music played, where the couple looked deeply into each other’s eyes with the devotion of true love and shared a passionate, angst-filled kiss. But they weren’t those people, and the only music Tam could hear was the flickering of the torchlight. Cain pulled away abruptly and went down one of the dark corridors.
He didn’t make an arrogant remark or taunt her like he normally did. He was so eerily quiet, she almost wished he’d say something awful just to break up the discomfort of his silence.
“I can’t see back here,” she said, as she followed him. She assumed they were going to get her stuff, but a part of her thought maybe he just wanted to get away from her.
“You could use one of your energy balls.”
She’d thought about it, but was afraid he’d take it as a threat. And she wasn’t in the mood for another fight right now. “I don’t think it would be bright enough.” Which was also true.
Cain created a fireball to illuminate the corridor and they kept walking. He reached the pod with her stuff in it and placed a hand over the egg-shaped door. It glowed for a moment, then opened with a groan of rock against rock. He slung a few of the bags over his shoulder and gave the rest to Tam.
They were in the main part of the cave when he spoke again. “You said you had to do big magic. What kind of magic?”
He was pretty confident about that ring, if he was just asking now.
“I need to contact Henry.”
“Henry?”
Was that jealousy in his voice? Ridiculous. Cain wasn’t the type. But it seemed like something similar—some emotion too nuanced to put her finger on.
“Henry was a dear friend of mine for a couple of centuries.”
“And why are we contacting him?” There was that weird pseudo-jealousy thing again. She had to be reading things that weren’t there.
“He was a raven therian and my familiar. I lost him a few years ago. He’s on the other side. Since Jack formed a connection with me in the dream, I can’t find him, but maybe Henry can. So to answer your question, I need to do a séance.”
“Don’t you need more than one person for that?”
And now he was being somewhat considerate and helpful. It was almost unnerving. It was as if he’d been possessed by somebody civilized.
“I need someone to ground me.” She was afraid to outright ask him, but he was the only person there. Obviously he was the one she’d have to use.
They exchanged a look, and she dug through her bags for the book she needed, a sage stick, matches, a clay dish, and a large container of salt. She flipped through the book to the spirit summoning spell and re-read it to refresh her memory. She’d done it many times over the years, but it was always wisest to recheck for things like this. A small mispronunciation could have unpredictable results. Right now she needed predictability.
“Could you have done this with your sister? Call her, I mean?” The care of the phrasing and gentleness in his tone startled her and dampened any ire she might have felt at being asked. He thought her sister could have given them information they needed about Jack’s location.
Tam tried to keep the tears at bay. She’d mourned in short bursts, not letting the grief wash over her yet. She couldn’t. And she’d convinced herself it wasn’t necessary. If Cain was going to kill her for real, she’d see Naomi soon enough. But the belief that he would was fading, and along with it, her ability to keep her emotions in check.
“I doubt Jack would be that sloppy. He changed locations after each kill for that reason. It wouldn’t give me anything real to use, and it would be too painful.”
“He could change his location now,” Cain said.
“True, but if Henry can make use of the brief connection he made while it’s still fresh and get a track on him, it won’t matter. He’ll be able to follow him.”
She poured the salt in a circle around Cain and lit the sage stick. When he looked anxious—an odd look on Cain to be sure—she reassured him.
“I need to cleanse the space, first.”
“But I’m a demon.”
“Yes, and that’s why you’re inside the circle.” She waved the stick around the cave, glad it was large enough for so much smoke.
She entered the circle and sat cross-legged on the ground, placing the clay dish in front of her. She laid the sage stick on the dish, allowing it to continue to burn, the thin ribbon of smoke curling upward. Cain sat across from her and took her hands without prompting when she held them out.
Despite what he was, he felt warm and solid. She couldn’t ask for better grounding. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of the sage, letting go, while her anchor held her steady.
***
Cain’s grip on her hands tightened when she began to intone a chant. It was unlikely she was working magic against him, especially knowing about the ring and the danger such an attempt could bring. But old reflexes died hard. It wasn’t easy letting one’s guard down with a witch.
He didn’t want to think about why he’d held her hand on the way to the caves, or why he’d allowed her to snuggle in the pillows and blankets with him before letting her know he was awake, or why holding her hand right now felt more possessive than perfunctory.
Now that he’d let his guard down, feelings rose to the surface that he’d pushed down. She was right. He didn’t need her in a war. It would be nice. It would be helpful. But Cole and the others could cobble together a coven to stay protected if necessary.
Deep down he’d known what all of this was all about. She had enough life experience to relate to him. She was pretty, sure, but pretty women weren’t rare in his world. He could have anybody he wanted, even her—without promises or commitment. He’d proven that already. But he didn’t just want a meal or toy. If he suspected he was covering a confusing collection of feelings, he had no doubt the witch was doing the same. Why would she keep sleeping with him if she really had a death wish, given how many times they’d done it in the preceding weeks, with no sign of her death on the horizon?
Of course, now he’d played up the whole you’ll-beg-me-to-keep-you thing so hard that she’d never trust he wasn’t toying with her. What had that been about? Because he couldn’t risk his own ego? Was it that he needed to know she wanted him before making a fool of himself? Hadn’t he lived long enough by now to survive a little ego bruise? And if she bruised his ego, couldn’t he put the whammy on her and kill her?
It wasn’t that he wanted forever, he just wanted time to figure it out. The idea of Tam in his life felt strangely comforting. Whether they were fighting or fucking didn’t even matter to him, just so long as she was there and he didn’t have to pretend he was the happy-go-lucky hedonist, wearing a mask for the other demons. It wouldn’t do for them to know the man upstairs had finally succeeded in breaking him. He was the symbol of what a demon could be: free. There was no need to be tortured about it or succumb to one’s prey. If he broke down and gave in to the twisted plan to remake him—set in motion long before Tam came on the scene—then it was only a matter of time for the other demons.
He looked back at Tam. She was glowing again. Her voice had taken on an ethereal quality. If he hadn’t been holding her hands, he wouldn’t be sure she was solid at all. She seemed more like a vision or hallucination than anyone who could possibly be real.
The smoke curling off the sage stick grew thicker as it rose between them, and then, out of the smoke, came the shape of a raven. The image of the raven swirled and became distorted, and out of the distortion rose a more human shape, transforming from a smoke-created image into a spirit, someone so real, you could almost touch him.
“Hey, Tam, did you ever look at your cards again?” the apparition asked, by way of introduction, as if they’d recently had a conversation.
How often did she call this guy up? The spirit eyed Cain with a smirk that the demon didn’t particularly care for.
Tam opened her eyes and smiled up at him. “Hey, Henry. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“You mean up here in Stepford Heaven?”
Tam giggled and Cain had the odd urge to kill someone that was already dead. She seemed so relaxed around this Henry guy, and Cain knew that even if it wasn’t like that now, at one point in time, they’d been lovers. He could just tell these things. He growled.
The witch arched a brow.
“Looks like your boyfriend is getting a bit territorial over here,” Henry said.
“I’m not her boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
The indignant rebuttals came out of the two of them simultaneously, but the therian just chuckled. “Young love,” he said with a sigh. Then he laughed. “Or is that an inappropriate description for two people of your advanced ages?”
Cain was ready to let go of Tam’s hands to make the guy disappear. Worse than someone he might have to compete with was someone who could see things a bit too clearly. Not love, just that something was brewing. It was easy for people to confuse sex with love. He saw it all the time. Powerful attraction and love weren’t the same thing. He knew it, and he assumed Tam knew it. Where that left them, he wasn’t sure, but he was ready to break the connection and end the séance before it had really begun if it meant he wouldn’t have to keep thinking about it.
The witch held on tighter and shot him a glare. “No, I haven’t looked at my cards again,” she said, turning her attention back to Henry. “My stuff has been locked up. But we’ve got something more important to talk about. I’m sure you know Jack is on the hunt again. He came to me in a dream a little while ago. I was wondering if you could sense the connection, and if so, if you could help us find him.”
The apparition closed his eyes, seeming to be in deep concentration. When he opened them, he said, “The connection is thinning, but it’s there. I can try to trace it and see what I can find out from there. Do you want to call me back here tomorrow night for the report?”
“Yes, thank you,” Tam said.
Henry looked at Cain in an assessing way that made the demon’s skin crawl, then he looked back at Tam and smiled. “You’ve got your tools back now, right?”
The uncertain way she looked at Cain made him feel guilty for some reason.
“Do I?” she asked.
“Yes,” Cain said, not looking at the spirit.
“Look at your cards again, and really listen to them this time.”
Tam let go of Cain’s hands and Henry disappeared. She put the sage stick out in the clay dish and Cain began to get up.
“Wait,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “I need to take down the protective barrier first.” She closed her eyes again and whispered something, then opened them.
“That’s it?” It was less of a show than Cain expected, which made him leery of the whole situation.
“That’s it,” she said.
He ran a finger through the salt on the ground, smearing the circle. He didn’t feel any push-back.
“What? You don’t trust me?”
“You better hope for your own sake that I can,” he retorted, flashing the ring that protected him. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he was using a small piece of jewelry to protect himself from a girl. It wouldn’t do anything good for his reputation.
She gathered her things, making a convincing show of ignoring him.
“I hope you don’t think you’re leaving now,” he said, moving toward her, glad he hadn’t bothered with clothing. It made it easier to tempt her when her access was so easy. Now to get her out of those jeans. Annoyingly Anna and Luc had done her laundry, and she was back to wearing jeans instead of the clothing from the trunk. He much preferred her in the demon-concubine look. If she were his mate, he’d use her first power against her and make sure she wore what he wanted at all times. She wouldn’t be able to sneak off without his knowledge and change, seeing as it wouldn’t be possible for her to be solid or interact with physical things unless he was there touching her. He’d always liked that perk of the demon mating.