All Hallows Night (Night Series) (26 page)

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I returned to my room, maybe a still-naked Asher. And if I had found that, I would have said “screw morals” and just taken him. Used his body to drive the thoughts away.

What I did not expect was to see Asher sitting on a chair, dressed in the same business attire of the night before, and Luc sitting across from him on a stool, dressed in jeans and a sweater.

Looking over my shoulder briefly, I thinned my lips. “Am I missing something here? What are you doing here, Luc? Last I checked, this was my trailer.”

“No.” He glowered, keeping his predatory gaze on the priest, “This belonged to Kemen, and I want that trash”—he jerked his thumb at Asher—“out of here.”

Having had about enough, I marched up to Luc and kicked him hard in the shin, hard enough that it would leave an ugly bruise.

“What the fuck!” He jumped to his feet, glaring down at me.

Shoving my finger in his face, I growled back. “I’ve had enough of this. The priest is my concern, and right now we have a lot bigger problems on our hands than your petty...” I wiggled my hands. “Whatever it is you’re feeling. So button it up, Luc, because you’re not going to like what I just found out.”

He was breathing less hard now, and his mottled face began to return to his normal, healthy, golden color. “Don’t kick me again.” He sat back down and rubbed his shin.

“Fine. Don’t threaten my guests.”

“Fine.”

Walking over to Ash, I sat on his lap, needing to feel his warmth on me. His fingers instantly brushed up and down my spine in a familiar gesture and I melted into that touch.

Luc scrubbed his jaw, looking at the wall beside him. The confines of our trailers didn’t at all fit with the parameters of normal reality. We’d learned how to manipulate space centuries ago, it was how we could live in such small areas comfortably. We were able to shift inside dimensions of what should have been a tight space into a comfy, roomy environment.

Kemen’s trailer was a silver, bullet-style Airstream, pill-shaped on the outside, not big enough to have more than a tiny kitchenette and hide-a-bed with a bathroom that would only serve to handle the most basic of human needs, but this space was more like living in a comfortable two-story home.

I hadn’t had the heart to take down any of Kemen’s décor. The man had been a bit of a geek, stapling posters all over the room of Einstein with tongue poking out and the periodic table, along with a couple of Dr. Who and TARDIS graphics. There were a couple of Deadhead prints up and one of a broad marijuana leaf with Bob Marley’s face beside it.

It was Kemen and familiar, and I loved it all.

Sighing, I drew on Ash’s quiet strength, just like I had at Grace’s.

“What did she tell you?” Luc finally seemed under control.

“That I’m destined to bring Wrath out of hiding.” My voice trembled just a little, even though I wasn’t willing to accept the predication as reality, it was terrifying to even think it.

Asher’s fingers dug into my thighs. Brushing my hand over his, I glanced at him. “Did you know that?”

“No.” He shook his head, tracing the curve of my cheek. “She hadn’t told me that.”

“How does she know that?” Luc asked.

“Apparently there’s some prophet.” I shook my head and proceeded to repeat verbatim the conversation I’d just had with her.

“It doesn’t make sense.” Luc stood, pacing back and forth and brushing his fingers through his messy blond locks.

He looked like hell today. Normally he was clean-shaven, but there was clearly evidence of two days’ growth of beard on him, and his eyes were bloodshot, like he’d been feasting on absinthe through the night and not between Vyxen’s thighs.

Gah, that sounded totally snotty of me, didn’t it?

“But the Order deciding all this based on some drawing”—he finger quoted—“feels premature at best.”

I shrugged. Far as I was concerned, he was preaching to the choir.

Asher cleared his throat. “Did she tell you anything else? Where the prophecy was located? With whom?”

“Not just whom. It’s with the Triad.”

“The Triad.” Luc growled, looking confused.

Asher’s hands immediately stilled. “Shit,” he muttered.

I frowned. “Am I missing out on something here?”

“Yeah.” Asher stood, hanging on to my hand. “We need to get to the hive now. I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on.”

“Wait!” Luc threw out his hand. “You’re going back to that desert?”

“That’s what Grace told us to do,” I said, frowning because I was still totally confused about Asher’s reaction to my mentioning that name.

“You’re not going alone. I’m coming with you.” Luc said it in such a way that I expected he was waiting for my denial of his offer.

“Good.” Asher nodded. “Because we’ll need you.”

Flinching as if completely confused by Asher’s reply, Luc said, “Give me a second to get Bubba up to speed on my duties for the day.”

The minute Luc traced, I whirled on Ash. “You planning to explain what that was all about when I mentioned the Triad?”

Grabbing my hand, he settled it on his rapidly beating heart.

“Priest, are you nervous?” I whispered, because there was no way my dangerous killer could be. Right? His pupils hadn’t just dilated, and his pulse wasn’t racing, it was all in my head. It had to be.

Cupping my cheek, he shook his head. “I’d be a fool to claim I wasn’t. Pandora, the Triad is no joke. I’m not surprised Grace couldn’t tell you much about them. Everything about that group is highly secretive and only known by a very few.”

“Then how do you know what I obviously don’t? She said they were just the head of the Order.”

He shook his head. “Pandora, since...” His nose curled as his lips pulled up. Sighing, he wrapped a strand of my hair around his finger and then sniffed it.

I grabbed his hand. “Tell me.”

“I can’t.” His jaw clenched. “Pandora, they’re bad. And they’re not human.”

“What? The Order is comprised of—”

“No.”

“But Grace said—”

“Doesn’t have the clearance to go that high. Little demon...” He grabbed my face, looking at me in such a way that I felt as if he were peering at my soul. “They won’t win.”

I swallowed hard.

Sulfur filled the room.

“Let’s go,” Luc drawled.

W
e were lying side by side on the top of a cliff that overlooked a gulch several miles below. Scrub brush and sage dotted the red landscape. The sun was unmerciful this morning, bearing down on my back with the heat of licking flames, breaking me out in a wash of sweat, soaking me through in minutes.

Luc had had the foresight to switch out of his sweatshirt and into an A-shirt. Asher’s boardroom clothes were pretty well ruined.

“Look.” Ash pointed at a dark hole carved into the rock face about a mile above ground. “It’s there.”

“The Order’s getting sloppy,” Luc drawled, swatting at a gnat buzzing around his face. “The trail of body parts leading us here was beyond obvious.”

I curled my lip. “They think I’m stupid.”

“No, they don’t.” Asher’s look was glacial. “They know you’ll recognize this as a trap. Because that isn’t the hive. That’s a decoy.”

Glowering, Luc scooted forward until his head hung over the cliff as if he were trying to get a better look. “You sure, Priest?”

Asher’s dimple poked out and I had to stifle the urge to dip my finger into it.

“Very. Stay here, I’m going to investigate.” He glanced at Luc. “Guard your back.”

“Against the knife you’re about to stab into it?” Luc drawled.

“Let’s get one thing straight here, Neph.” Asher narrowed his eyes. “I refuse to be goaded by you anymore, but not because I’m scared of you. I hate you.”

“Likewise.”

“But,” Asher continued on as though Luc hadn’t spoken. “It’s not about that. It’s about keeping Pandora safe. Whatever I feel for you doesn’t matter. Whatever you think of me doesn’t matter. Only she does.”

Leaning forward, Asher took my lips and I melted into his touch, sighing into his mouth. The kiss didn’t lasted nearly long enough, but my head swirled and buzzed all the same.

Asher’s gaze was heavy as he studied me. “You hear anything, you fight just long enough to get free and then you leave. You hear me? I’ll be fine. You leave, little demon.”

He didn’t give me even a moment to respond. Standing, he gathered darkness to him like iron shavings to a magnet until he was nothing but a tower of shadow amidst the radiance of sunlight. The shadow swirled and moved, disappearing off the edge of the cliff and melting into the darkness beneath.

I smiled, realizing now how close Asher must have always been by my side. Hidden in plain sight.

“Boy scout for real?” Luc scoffed.

I shook my head. “Do you ever stop? Seriously? Has there ever been a moment that it went through your head that maybe enough is enough and you’ll leave it alone? Ever?”

His face was cold. “What do you see in him, Dora?”

“The list is too long for casual conversation, Luc. Can we just focus?”

I studied the entrance of the cave, hoping at some point to witness that funnel of shadow slide into view, but all I saw was a lot of bouncing sagebrush. Obviously this was a decoy; more obvious was that we’d probably be set upon soon. I waited for the Order to make their next move.

“What Vyxen told you,” Luc whispered. “It wasn’t true.”

Glancing at him, I quirked my brow. “Which time?”

“I wouldn’t rat you out, Dora. You and I might have some bad history, but you’re still my priority.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why if I was his priority he’d been screwing around with Vyxen for so long, but then it suddenly dawned on me that it wasn’t the fact that Luc had sought comfort outside my arms that bothered me, it was the fact that his life was one giant blank for me. I’m not sure I’d ever really known him at all.

“Right.” I nodded. “Whatever you say.”

I was turning back to study the cave entrance when he grabbed my arm. “Dora, you have to talk to me. At some point you have to stop shutting me out.”

“That’s rich.” I chuckled. “You want to know the truth? Then here it is in all its unvarnished glory. Do you love me?”

His lips twisted.

I shrugged. “Well, Luc? It’s a really simple question, requiring either a yes or a no. What’s it gonna be?”

This time he was the one to turn around to stare at the entrance of the cave.

I snorted. “You killed us, Luc, not me. You holding on so tight-fistedly to some stupid sense of ‘demons don’t show emotions.’ Demons can’t admit to having feelings, or needing, or wanting.” Rolling a little to my side, I bared my heart-shaped scar. “You might have marked me, but this is all you’ll ever get of my heart. One time, if you’d only said it once, my eyes would never have strayed. I would have accepted you sleeping around, doing whatever you needed to do to feed your demon, confident always in the thought that your heart was mine. But you never shared it with me. You gave me no hope. That’s why it’s Asher. Because he’s not afraid to show me. He’s a complete and total enigma, but he makes me feel treasured.”

The entire time I’d been talking, Luc’s jaw had been grinding side to side. “I could have made you feel all those things,” he snapped.

“Are you really so blind? You think killing a gaggle of innocent children because I disappeared was your way of proving your love? Or letting me walk headlong into danger was a way of showing me, or carving me up when all I asked was for you to reciprocate?”

“You chose him!”

Moved to pity, I framed Luc’s face. “Oh, Luc.”

And I let him hear my pain, my wish that things had turned out differently. “You were the breath of my breath and the heart of my heart for so very long. You can’t just turn those things off overnight. I’ll always love you, and I hope that someday you’ll understand that. I needed more than you could give me and that’s not your fault. But I will always have your back.”

His fingers grasped mine and a sheen of primal, raw anguish shone in his eyes. I averted my own, giving him some semblance of privacy, because I knew he wouldn’t want me to witness it.

It took several minutes before he was able to speak, “You understand that once the family discovers we’re harboring a priest they will turn on you?”

I gasped and turned to him. “Are you threatening me?”

“As tempting as it would be to rid myself of him, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Then they don’t need to ever find out. He doesn’t look like one, nor does he pulse like a monster does. So as far as I’m concerned, they’ll never figure it out unless you tell them.”

Whatever else he might have said was lost at the sudden roaring grunt behind us. Then there were two, then three, and then a whole choir of grunts and groans coming from all directions.

I was jerked away from Luc, pulse hammering, when the rabid eyes of a starving zombie leaned into me. Hands were all over, maggot-infested corpses tackled me to the ground. I was able to writhe and twist enough to keep their mouths off me.

“Luc!” I screamed, glimpsing him through a break in putrid bodies, but he was also surrounded.

Realizing I didn’t have time to worry about him, I twisted, telling Pestilence to wake the hell up. It was game on, and I wasn’t losing this time.