Alphas Unleashed (26 page)

She’d managed to dead drop Telos twice, and that wasn’t easy. He knew she was tired. He knew if he said he wanted to keep working, she would. But she also needed a break now and then. He knew that. Humans needed sleep and down time. She’d burn out at the rate he was pushing her.

Telos gave him a mental adios for the night. He didn’t return the favor. He put his hands on the counter and leaned over and fought—everything. Everything back to the way it was when he just didn’t care.

“Hey.”

“What?” He didn’t look up. He liked women in dresses. Fucking Randi loved to wear dresses. Lots of women did. Wallace looked good in a dress, too, but tonight she was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, and she made them look good. She wasn’t dressy the way he liked. He liked women with long hair, too, and hers was short.

“Telos had to leave.”

“I know.” Like he wouldn’t know when a demon left his house.

She joined him at the counter and reached for the now extra Lagunitas and returned it to the fridge. On her way back to him, she grabbed the bottle opener from the drawer. Look at that. This was his place, and she knew where he kept the bottle opener. Even in casual clothes she was neat and tidy. She always looked nice. Always a little makeup, some jewelry. Nothing flashy, but she could pull off flashy if she wanted to.

She opened the other Lagunitas and pushed it in front of him.

He met her eyes, and that river of quiet that ran through her flipped him upside down, and it occurred to him that they’d come along way in the time they’d been here. Not enough. But some.

She popped the top on her Hop Rod and took a drink. “Telos said some interesting things.”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe I’m trying too hard.”

“Yeah?”

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

He grabbed his beer, too. “Take the rest of the day off then.”

She put down her beer and cocked her head. “Palla?”

He grunted a response, but when he looked up she was ashen, and that amped him up. “What?”

“Oh my God. I think I’ve figured it out.” She put a hand over her lower face.

He took a long slow drink from his beer then set down the bottle. “What do you mean you’ve figured it out? Figured what out?”

“What if it’s not because I can’t? What if it’s because I keep trying the way everyone says to, but it doesn’t work because that’s not how I am.”

He leaned an elbow against the counter behind him. “I don’t get where you’re going with this.”

“Most of the street witches, when their magic comes on, they either cope, go insane, or die.”

“Right.”

“I didn’t.”

He toasted her with his beer. “You’re a survivor.”

“That’s right.” She walked to him and took his face in her hands. She had to stand up straight to do that. He stared at her. Really stared. Round face, but with cheekbones that made her interesting to look at. Big, dark eyes. Pretty eyes. Brown skin smooth as silk where he touched her. In a low voice, she said, “I am not like other the witches.”

“No.” He blinked a couple of times, and everything shifted. Oh, shit. Oh, shit, she was right. “You’re not.”

“I’m like one of those optical illusions where you have to make yourself see the other image. Which way is the lady spinning? Is it two vases or one face? Some people look their whole lives and never see.”

“Show me.” He put down his beer. “Show me what you mean.”

Chapter 10

She’d have moved away except Palla’s fingers tightened on her. He wasn’t hurting her or scaring her, he was just…vivid right now, and Palla, as she’d already knew, was formidable when he decided to pay attention to you. The way he’d decided to pay attention to her now.

“Show me.” Flecks of color swirled across his eyes. She’d seen that effect dozen of times now, but it still took her aback. When his eyes were like that, he was holding power. Ready to use it, and just like always, she could not feel it when any other witch would have. She concentrated on that hollowness in her middle. The place she’d always thought ought to hold her magic and did not. She stopped trying to fill in that place and instead concentrated on where the void was not.

Awareness of Palla blossomed in the center of her chest. A supernova. “There it is. Palla, it’s there..”

“I can feel your magic. What did you do?”

“It’s like it’s inverted, turned inside out or something.” She trembled because she hadn’t thought it was work but it hand and now everything was different. Palla put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “That’s why nobody sees it.”

His gaze burned through her, eyes almost entirely gold now. “Including me.”

“You knew. You knew there was something.”

“Something.”

She gripped his arm, God, she was still shaking. Couldn’t stop shaking. “I need to stop doing it the way everyone’s been telling me. Forget it all.” She could feel the difference, but the key that would unlock how it worked kept slipping away, just out of reach.

“Let me in. Let me in so I can see what you’re doing.” He extended a hand palm up and sliced the side of his nail across the tip of his index finger. The motion was sharp and fast, and because she was watching she saw the transformation of fingernail to talon and back. Red welled from the slice he’d made. He held his hand between them.

She touched the back of her skull. “What is that?”

“We link and see what happens. The blood makes a link easier. We don’t do it with the street witches because it’s more intense.” He offered his hand again. “I’m not talking about an oath. It’s not permanent and it’s not an indwell either. This’ll juice it a little, that’s all.”

“I’ll tell you want happens. I get sick to my stomach.”

“Not this time,” he whispered. “You’re right. Your magic is different. It’s protecting you—you’re protecting yourself from something that could have killed you, and you still managed to hook into it and use it.” A lock of his black hair fell across his forehead the way hers never would unless she used chemical straighteners. It was a look she couldn’t afford on her salary. “Angel, my blood is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, how does any woman resist you?

“You know it.” His voice was rich as melted chocolate.

Their eyes locked, and her stomach did a slow flip, and that did not make any sense. She put that out of her mind because she did not want him thinking she was hot for him. She wasn’t. “What do I do?”

“Nothing you normally do.”

“Big help.”

He shrugged. Palla’s eyes had changed; all the parts that should have been different colors were variations of gold. Pupil, iris, sclera, and through all that were moving flecks of color; yellow and bronze, whirling, appearing, disappearing. Now and then one of the flecks glittered green. He drew her close and held his finger to her lips. “Make it happen, Wallace.”

She took his finger in her mouth, and his blood was warm. A sizzle spread through her, a thousand sparks. Just like those flecks of color in his eyes.

“Angel, I need permission.”

She knew that. The rules were that a demon needed permission to make a psychic link with a human. Maddy had made a big deal out of all the witches understanding what was allowed and not allowed and what it meant to consent to certain acts with a demon. Like Palla.

“I need the word.”

“Yes.”

She abandoned the visualizations Maddy had them run through, and there was that space in her that was shaped, not formed. The emptiness that was there ll the time. A void she could shape, not one that took shape. She concentrated on the container of the void in her middle and—

He was there in her mind, and she wasn’t sick to her stomach because he was wasn’t reaching into her head the way demons did. Instead, she was letting in him through the edges of the void inward, and he followed that path instead of the one he was used to.

Wallace blinked hard, and he put an arm around her waist, steadying her. He was in her head, and Palla was not an ocean, he was that which contained an ocean. There was no hole where her power ought to be. There was only the outside of the container.

“Oh, fuck me, Wallace,” he whispered. He took form in her thoughts, and it was effortless, having him there. Breathtaking. Heartrending. All this time. All this time. Her power had been there all this time, and she had been looking with the wrong eyes.

“Now that I know it’s there,” he said. “I see the shape of your magic.”

Palla was a demon. Not human. That came home to her with a crash.

“Yeah.” He laughed. “And you are a witch.”

The sensation wasn’t unpleasant, not the way it had been all those other times. But it wasn’t comfortable, either, and every so often panic welled up. Palla would draw away, become less vivid.

“You could make a link with me. Two way. Me in your head. You in mine.” It was strange, not being sure whether he’d spoken out loud to her. He arched an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“How?”

“Most witches, I tell them their magic is like a pool, and they can draw from it. It’s just like you said. That’s not right for you. I don’t even know if have the words. Not a reflection, but let’s say that’s how you’re seeing it. When you try the way we’ve been teaching you, it’s like there’s nothing there. But there is.” His arm tightened around her waist, and she leaned into him. “Yes. Yes. It’s fucking insane how strong you could be. You’ve been letting it stay hidden, because that’s how you stayed sane. That’s how strong you are, that you could do that.”

“Like I’ve been using my right hand all this time when really I’m left-handed.”

He put his mouth by her ear, but she knew he was talking directly into her brain, his thoughts appearing there. “You can do this. You make the others look like they’re dabblers.”

She laughed because, didn’t he know how to motivate her?

“Damn right. You’ve been handling yourself for years. You don’t freeze up over things you don’t understand. You’ll be fine. More important—” He cupped the side of her face and smiled at her, smirked really. “I’ve got your back.”

“You are such an asshole.”

“Don’t you know it.”

Her torso was snug up against his, and she closed her eyes to block out everything but that place inside her that she used to pretend wasn’t there.

“Come inside,” he said in a voice that sounded like sex. “Come inside where you belong.”

Around the corner. Into the reflection. Ignore the way she’d been told it worked. There was magic there, and she didn’t have to reach out and touch it, all she had to do was shape the container. She did, and reached for him, and power shivered through her, and there she was. In his head. Linked with him.

“Oh hell yes.”

She blinked a few times to orient herself.

“It takes some practice. Let it settle.”

“Don’t let go of me, I’ll fall.”

“Never.” He brought her closer to him. Until they were in an embrace. How had that happened?

She touched his cheek, and his gaze stayed steady on hers until she blinked again, and she saw herself. She was looking down at herself, her arms around her waist—not her arms, Palla’s arms. She flicked in and out of the state of awareness. Palla’s sensations about her, the lure of her magic, the danger Maddy had warned them all about, that sizzle that drew the magekind to a demon and a demon to a witch, that volatile combination of sex and magic. She traced a finger along the line of his cheek and felt both his skin under hers and his reaction to her touch.

“We could be in different rooms,” she said, “and we’d know what was going on.”

He set her back, and for a few seconds, her head swam. Her surroundings stabilized, and she was almost back to normal. Palla was still there, and there was still this two-way connection between them, and she had always been afraid of him on some level. Now she knew why.

Entelechy. A demon not born to humans. Because that was how the demonkind reproduced now. With humans. Everyone who knew about demons and the magekind understood that. From the few, many, by pairing with humans.

“We used to do this all the time.” He touched his forehead and then hers, but she already knew what he meant. “With the magekind. Centuries ago. Before everything went to hell, and it was nothing but us trying to kill or enslave each other.”

Images flashed through her head, emotions and memories that came with glimpses of people and places she’d never seen, and a sense of a Palla who didn’t have the bitterness of the creature before her now.

“Her name was Avitas.” His blood-twin. In giving voice to that name, his despair and grief became tangible, as if it were hers, too.

Palla allowed her to see the truth. What had happened those centuries ago. Christophe dit Menart, the mage who’d enslaved Palla when he was weakened and disoriented by the murder of half his soul. Jeanne, the witch who’d paired up with dit Menart long enough for them to make the talisman for Jeanne and a mageheld for dit Menart.

She relaxed against him. His memories stayed close to the surface. The things dit Menart had made him do horrified and appalled him still. He grabbed her beer off the counter and took a long drink.