Alphas Unleashed (30 page)

She waited until they were inside. “Now I’m supposed to be something I’m not. Great.” She was too tired and hollow and upset to think straight, and there was blood on her shoe. Palla’s blood. “You didn’t know me. What else would you think is different besides the color of my skin? It’s the first thing anyone notices about me. Sometimes it’s the only thing.”

“How about nothing like Randi? And I don’t mean the blonde hair. How about you’re more like Maddy or Carson or Gray? Human women I admire and who wouldn’t give me the time of day if they were available.”

“So you settled for the black chick?”

He smiled at her. Not angry, and he was doing that on purpose. Controlling himself and keeping her locked out of his psychic state. “I said you’re like them. If you’re like them, then you wouldn’t give me the time of day either. So I wasn’t fucking settling for you.”

“But I did. Give you the time of day.”

“Because you didn’t think of yourself as available, Angel.”

She cradled her purse in her arms. “Wait just a minute—”

“There’s more. How about magic that isn’t like any other witch I’ve ever known? There’s a lot that’s different about you that doesn’t have anything to do with that bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit for me.” Tension knotted the muscles along the tops of her shoulders. “Why don’t you ask Tau how often he gets followed around a store? There’s a lot of baggage, Palla. A lot.”

He rested a palm on the wall beside him. “Sure. There’s none of that for a demon who was mageheld for five-hundred years.”

“Okay. Okay. This is ridiculous.” She took a deep breath. “This is not a contest, and I don’t want to fight.”

“Don’t. Don’t you pull that shit on me. If I want to be pissed off at you, I have that right.”

“Go ahead and be pissed off. Just don’t take it out on me.” She stared past his shoulder. She tried to find her serenity and couldn’t.

“Admit you’re picking a fight because you think I’m going to dump you now that I’ve got what I want.”

“Aren’t you?” The way she said that came out too serious, and all the emotions she’d been pushing away rushed in to make it even worse.

Palla got quiet. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

That was a slam to the heart. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to go home and not have anyone tearing her heart to shreds. “You don’t owe me anything. You really don’t. I said I’d help you, and I did.”

“It’s complicated. You know it’s complicated. It’s always complicated with the magekind.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not sworn to Nikodemus, and I am, and that matters, for one thing. And for another thing, I don’t like witches, and you are a witch.” He sighed. “Look, I don’t even get why we’re having this discussion.”

She kept staring out the window at the Bay. “You started it.”

“I’m pretty sure you did.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not dumping you. I never said that. I am grateful to you for everything you’ve done. You’d never take a mageheld. You’d die to stop that from happening. But if you think I don’t have my own baggage, Wallace, you’re crazy. “

“I should have held out for more money.”

“Money is not going to be an issue.”

“Two million isn’t be enough to retire on at my age. I still need a job.”

“I told you Nikodemus is going to be interested in you. He takes care of his people.”

“You think a demon warlord is going to want me to join his A-Team.”

“After tonight, why would you think he wouldn’t? You saw Jeanne. How many magehelds did she have? Slaves. Everyone one of them. And then there’s all the ones we didn’t see because she killed them so she can look like she’s thirty instead of however many goddamned centuries she’s been alive.”

“I don’t want to fight.”

“We’re not fighting.”

“This is fighting.” She couldn’t close her eyes. Whenever she did, she saw him fighting for his life—her life—because she wouldn’t kill a woman who had murdered God knows how many others.

“I’m explaining.”

“Consider me fully explained.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Can you get out of your oath to me?”

“Why?”

“You don’t need it any more, and you almost died because of it.”

“Angel, I almost die every damn day. I lived today because of you.” He narrowed his eyes at her.

“I can’t go home with you still bound.”

He pushed away. “How about this. If I survive cracking the talisman, I’ll get Nikodemus or Carson to break the oath. Will that work for you?”

Chapter 15

“Yes, that works for me.”

“Glad that’s settled.” His oath to Wallace was quiescent for now. She was safe here. Part of him wanted to her not be here, and the rest of him wanted her to stay. Even more fucked up, he wanted her to want to stay. Even though an oath of fealty to Nikodemus would put a pacifist like her in a hard place. He faced her again. “You know, Wallace, ideas about living in peace are fine until you’re living in the same place as people who want you dead or enslaved.”

“I know that.”

He wasn’t good at reading expressions, but he could read all the signs he needed right now. In all the time they’d been talking, she hadn’t taken off her shoes or her jacket or put away her purse. In fact, she still had her purse clutched in her arms.

“You humans talk things to fucking death.”

“Yeah, we do.”

“I don’t share my feelings.”

“Don’t.”

“This would be easier if I was alone like I usually am.”

She was doing that trick where with him shut down tight, he couldn’t make head or tails of what she was feeling. Everything about her was neutral. She wasn’t the only human sensitive who’d learned to do that. Lots of Maddy’s street witches did that.

She walked away from the door, toward him, still without putting away her things, but digging in her purse. She dumped the fake wallet and the ID and the car fob on the floor and took out the box that held the talisman. “Here.”

His skin vibrated where it came in contact with the surface. One small blue-and-white tile box contained all that was left of Avitas. The color and scent of blood, and the ripping away of half his being were livid scars because he’d been there when it happened, complicit with Jeanne and dit Menart—he was sorry he hadn’t been the one to kill dit Menart and sorry he hadn’t killed Jeanne. “You can let go now.”

She knew he meant her magic because she said, “Okay.” A second later, he felt the shiver and pull of the disintegrating awareness trapped inside. All that was left of Avitas. She rested a hand on his upper arm, a light touch, and there was moment when he looked up and expected to see Avitas. But Wallace wasn’t Avitas. Nothing like. “Do you need to be alone?”

He gave her the brutal truth. “I don’t want anyone here.”

She walked away. Toward her room—the guest room—so that was good. A relief. He could get himself straightened out here, take care of what he needed to and worry about the rest later.

He took the box to the living room, sat on the couch, then stood. The skin across his upper back rippled, and his gut clenched. Now that they weren’t in the same room, it hurt to stay locked away from Wallace. His oath bit at him to be in contact, to confirm she was safe. Well, fuck that.

He put down the box and stripped off his clothes. The madness emanating from the box was less virulent that it had been at Jeanne’s, but it was still there. Whatever happened when he cracked the talisman, he was taking his true form. None of the limitations of a human aspect when he did this. The minute he touched the box the quiver in his fingers started again and spread up his arms. His oath to Wallace flared up, and though he pushed it back, it was there, and he knew she was in her room and that the wards protecting the building and his apartment were intact. He let his head drop back as he changed.

Bigger. Stronger. True. His true self.

So much closer to everything that mattered. Magic was brighter this way. Sharper. Colors more saturated. Power flowed through him, energized him. He and Avitas had once had a hundred thousand demons sworn to them, and until he was in his true form, that fact faded to nothing.

The psychic resonance of the humans in the vicinity came to him sweet and clear. There was a man on the third floor who didn’t know yet what he was. A minor street mage and a dabbler. And Wallace. There was Wallace, and now that he’d learned how to see her, he marveled at her resilience. The magekind acted like street witches didn’t matter, but Wallace wasn’t the only one who’d turned out to have more power than some of the witches who’d been trained up from the age of three.

The box was locked with a nasty trap, but he unwound it without much trouble. Inside lay a marble cylinder that, to his enhanced vision, glowed with the life entombed in it. Unmarked, unpolished, and level at both ends. He brushed the marble with the back of his finger. Cool stone, yet there was an electric buzz at the contact.

He opened himself Avitas. There came a moan of dry wind through his mind; a death rattle that had lasted half a millennium. She was closer, so close, this echo of the missing part of him. The separated inseparable.

He wanted to touch her again. Hear her laughter, be complete again, but all that was left was the cylinder balanced on his palm. At every point of contact there was a spark, a pinprick transfer of heat, and a tiny world in which he and Avitas were one and the same being. When he cracked the talisman, there would be nothing left of her. If all went well, and he survived, he would never have even this echo of them.

Wallace was coming this way. He ignored the growing pain of the contact with the cylinder and moved just his head. She emerged from the hallway in the same clothes as before. She had all her things. Her purse, her jacket, shoes, coat. The battered suitcase she’d brought with her.

Her eyes got big, but not much rattled her. She’d seen other demons in their true forms. Maddy didn’t let the witches go long without that experience, and besides, she’d fought magehelds and fucking Jeanne, and handled them. With her ability, she didn’t have much to worry about.

She put down her things and bent to pick up the items she’d dumped from her purse. “Are you all right?”

Palla lifted the talisman. He focused on her, on Wallace and not the energy rocketing through him. “This is an abomination.”

“It is.”

He closed his fingers around the cylinder, and the heat from the material had nowhere to go but into his skin. “Will you bear witness to me, too?”

“Always.”

He stared at her with eyes that saw colors she could not. If he did not survive, she would hold him and Avitas in her memory and in her heart and bones. Maybe it wasn’t a blood-bound oath, but she given her word and that had power, too. “Thank you.”

“Will you let me call someone later? To see how things are?”

After everything they’d been through, she was acting like nothing between them mattered, and he both wanted her gone and wanted her to stay. Underneath it all his oath to her shimmered. “Whatever you want.”

“What happens to your oath if I leave?”

“If you leave, I cannot protect you.” He gritted his teeth through the pain streaking through him. “I would eventually, be compelled to follow, to be sure you are safe.”

The quiver that had begun in his fingers had now reached his shoulder, and the howl in his head was louder. So loud he could hardly hear. His palm burned where the talisman touched his skin.

“I’ll wait then.”

“You cannot stop me.”

Her face softened. “I would never do that. Never,” she said in a low voice. “You deserve better, and so does she.”

He tried to speak and could not. The words wouldn’t leave his tongue.

“I know what can happen. Maddy told us. You can’t pretend it isn’t dangerous, what you’re doing. And I will not let you die alone. You don’t do that anybody. Especially not to people you love.”

He held the talisman tighter. Fuck the pain.

She put down the rest of her things, just dropped everything on the floor, and sat beside the pile. “I’ll be right here.”

Chapter 16

Palla in his true form was a sleek, virescent black that scattered cat’s-eye gold in the light. From her cross-legged position on the floor, Wallace stared, stunned by his impact on her and memorizing everything. She would not forget this. Whatever happened, she would have the memories she’d promised to him. Honor demanded it.

He stood at least ten inches taller than in his human form, broader across the shoulders and chest. His eyes were gold, flecked with green, a thing of nightmare. Her heart gave a thud. This otherworldly Palla was monstrous, and beautiful and beyond understanding.

What had she been thinking, arguing with him as if he were, at heart, just like her? He wasn’t. He was not safe just because he looked human. He wasn’t. He wasn’t human at all.

The center of her chest vibrated with reaction to him and to the undercurrent of the talisman. He wasn’t suppressing his power. Even without a connection between then, he bowled her over, overcame her, and she accepted that. She absorbed the terror of him so she would have this moment to bring to mind. There were people like her, fellow magekind, human born, who sought to enslave and destroy, and that must be anathema.