The_Demons_Wife_ARC (12 page)

His words sent
a biting chill through Claire. She rolled over onto her side and, propping her
head on the palm of her hand, gazed at him. In the dwindling daylight, his body
looked magnificent. The mere sight of it filled her with desperate, sudden
lust, but she commanded herself to ignore it while, at the same time, she tried
not to feel even a shred of pity for the man who had so threatened and
terrified her.

“What he
deserves,” she repeated softly. “Who was it who said something about if we all
got what we deserved we’d all get a good whipping?”

“Shakespeare,”
Samael said, and he shook his head as though the name evoked a sad,
disappointing memory for him. “Now Marlowe,” he said softly as if to himself.
“He was something else.”

Claire wasn’t
sure what he was talking about, so she let it pass without comment. Besides,
her mind was filled with thoughts about Ron LaPierre. The DA’s assistant had
said he was desperate to speak with her, and today she had seen the abject fear
bordering on terror in his eyes.

The thought
wouldn’t go away.

What if he’s
innocent?

 It unnerved
her more than she could say.

And she had to
ask herself if she could live with the guilt of knowing she had sent the wrong
man…an innocent person to jail and ruined his life by falsely identifying him.

No,
she thought,
gritting her teeth with sudden determination.
It was him! I was right!…I’m
positive!…And he deserves everything bad that’s coming to him for what he
did…or tried to do!

As much as she
tried to convince herself of this, though, she was left with the nagging
thought that maybe…just maybe…there was a slight possibility she was wrong. She
wanted to talk about this with Samael…to see what he thought, but she
acknowledged that she couldn’t believe a word he said. Even if she thought or
said the exact opposite of what he suggested, that, too, might all be part of
his plan to deceive her.

For what?

To get
possession of my soul…Isn’t that what demons do?

“Plots within
plots,” she said softly to herself, and Samael, lying there beside her, didn’t
even bother to ask what she meant by that.

Hell, he
probably already knew…but damned if Claire could tell.

~ * ~

It was night
by the time they roused themselves from bed. At some point, they heard Sally
come home. Claire glanced at the clock radio by her bedside and saw that it was
well past nine o’clock. Sally knocked around in the kitchen for a while,
probably rustling up something to eat, and then she went into her bedroom and
closed and locked the door. Claire couldn’t tell if she had anyone with her,
but she doubted it. She would have heard muffled conversation and—no
doubt—Sally’s giggles. The sad truth was, Sally wasn’t very lucky with men.

“I should be
going,” Samael said, his voice husky in the darkened room.

The mere sound
of his voice made Claire want to tell him no and pin him down on the bed. Tie
him down if she had to, but then—what would that make her? She knew, of course,
especially since he was a demon, that there was no way she could command or
control him. Still…it’d be fun to try.

“You sure?”
She hoped she masked her disappointment.

Samael grunted
as he swung his legs from the bed to the floor. Claire couldn’t help but look
down at the perfectly smooth junction between his legs. She could almost
convince herself that he did have something there, and that it was only the dim
lighting in the room—ambient light from the city outside—that only made it look
like he had no genitals.

Besides, what
did it matter when he could do what he did with his tail? 

She’d been to
bed with enough men who had the usual equipment and had no idea what to do with
it. One thing she could say for Samael—he sure knew how to pleasure a woman.

Claire smiled
to herself, wondering how different her life would have been if she’d adopted
such a forgiving attitude with the other men in her life.

“You have to
work in the morning,” he said, “and I have some unfinished business to take
care of tonight.”

“This late?”

He nodded.

“What kind of
business?” Claire said, imagining all sorts of unspeakable horrors—claiming
souls, corrupting people, sending them screaming to Hell.

Samael smiled,
his eyes sparkling, and his wide, white teeth glowing eerily in the
semidarkness.

“I left the
office to come down to the police station to see you today. There’s still a
mountain of paperwork sitting on my desk.”

Claire
couldn’t help but snicker. A demon, she assumed, had one and only one job, and
that was to collect damned souls. She had trouble imagining him as an
overworked, stressed-out corporate bureaucrat, but in a funny way, it made
sense. Any bureaucracy—even the stupid little one she dealt with five days a
week at Montressor Chemicals—was her definition of Hell.

He started to
stand up to get dressed, but she stopped him with a gentle touch on the arm. He
sat back down on the bed and looked at her with unmitigated tenderness.

“The answer is
no,” he said gently.

“What makes
you so sure you know what I was going to ask?”

Samael’s smile
widened as he said, “Because it’s the question any woman would ask at this
precise moment.”

“Oh? And what
is that?” Claire asked, offended by being lumped in with “any” other woman.

“You were
going to ask if I’m married,” Samael said simply. The toneless quality of his
voice was as irritating as the fact that he was absolutely right—that had been
the question at the tip of her tongue, and she realized at that moment that she
would never get away with it if she tried to lie or deceive him.

Good
, she thought.
A relationship can’t be built on lies.

She took a
breath, held it, and then asked another question that was on her mind.

“Can you read
minds…my mind?”

It just burst
out of her. She wasn’t sure why. She tensed because she knew—and was fairly
certain he already knew—that she wouldn’t trust his answer, anyway…no matter
what it was.

Samael smiled
at her with genuine affection in his eyes.

“I can’t,” he
said. He raised his right hand. “Honest. It’s just that I…I have a vast amount
of experience with humans.”

The way he
said the word humans drove home the point that, other than his form, he wasn’t
the least bit “human.” Never had been…Never would be. Again, Claire thought
that no matter how she felt when she was with him and no matter how he made her
feel in bed, she should end this now.

What if it’s
already too late?
She wondered.

What if I’m
already doomed?

What if I’m
already damned?

A flood of
questions filled her, but she pushed them all aside and tried to revel in the
mere sight of him. She watched silently as he got finished dressing and then
turned to her. Extending his arms for a hug, he approached her. Still naked,
and a bit self-conscious, Claire moved toward him as if in a dream. When they
met and embraced, his body heat and the faint spicy smell of his skin made her
dizzy. She vaguely wondered if this was one of the ways he had of getting to
her and controlling her, but for the moment, she didn’t care.

They separated
enough so they could kiss, which went on so long Claire’s knees began to
weaken, and she literally thought she was going to lose her breath. His
twin-tipped tongue darted playfully across her lips, sliding gently into her
mouth and then out again.

Stop
this!…Right now!
She told herself. Before it’s too late!

And—somehow—she
found strength enough to break off the kiss and embrace, and push him away. She
knew she couldn’t have done that if he had really wanted to keep holding on to
her.

Gotta get me a
little bell and see what that does,
she thought.

Samael looked
at her with an amused grin.

“I guess
you’ve had enough of me, huh?” he said.

Claire was
speechless. All she could do was shake her head no and stare at him. Then, just
like the last time he had been here, he turned suddenly and walked away without
another word.

Well, then…if
I’m damned, I’m damned,
she thought,
so that’s how it’s going to be.

She wasn’t
sure if she should laugh or cry.

~ * ~

This is what
happened that night, but Claire didn’t find out about it right away. Her first
hint came two days later—on Wednesday—when she was preparing breakfast, and the
TV was on. The news reported that a man who had been arraigned recently in a
criminal case and was out on bail had jumped off the balcony of his condo in
the West End. Even before the Channel Six newscaster said the name, Claire knew
what was coming.

After the newscaster
said the name “Ron LaPierre,” she didn’t hear anything else.

She didn’t
need to.

She could put
the pieces together herself, even if the news team or even the cops didn’t have
all the facts.

It turns out
she was dead wrong, but she didn’t find out about that until later, too.

Samael did,
indeed, have some loose ends to tie up when he left her place on Monday night.
He hadn’t lied about that. True to his intentions, he had driven straight to
Ron LaPierre’s condo in the West End, where he lived alone following the death
of his elderly mother three years ago last January. LaPierre had put the condo
up as a guarantee for his bail, which was posted for two –hundred and fifty thousand
dollars.

“You from the
DA’s office?” was the first thing LaPierre said when he opened the door and saw
Samael standing on his doorstep.

With the light
full on his face, Samael looked like he’d just returned from a vacation in the
Caribbean, and that immediately put LaPierre on edge. He didn’t like people who
could afford to take vacations when he had to struggle so hard to make ends
meet. He was lucky the condo was paid off and his expenses were relatively low,
but even so, in this economy, only a handful of people were getting ahead.

Who was
getting ahead?

For LaPierre,
the answer was simple enough: assholes like the guy standing on his front
doorstep.

“You a cop?
You guys work late.”

“I’m not a cop
or from the DA’s office,” Samael said simply with a smile. “But I would like to
have a word with you, if you don’t mind.”

“My lawyer
says not to talk about it to anyone.”

“I’m not just
anyone,” Samael said.

LaPierre considered
for a few heartbeats. He was close to slamming the door in this asshole’s face,
but there was something about him—a smoothness and a certain confidence and—

Admit it
, he told
himself.

—charm that
was…well, interesting.

“If you’re a
reporter or something,” LaPierre said, “you might as well leave right now, too.
I ain’t making any statements to anyone.”

He craned his
neck to see past Samael in the doorway to see if there was a fleet of news
trucks with cameramen and soundmen streaming into the parking lot, swarming
like hornets on the front lawn.

“I’m not a
reporter, either,” Samael said simply.

He cast a
glance over his shoulder to see what LaPierre was looking at, but he saw no one
there—just the quarter moon over his left shoulder. A good omen, he thought as
he turned back to the man.  

“It does,
however, concern your recent legal troubles—”

LaPierre’s
shoulders dropped as if he were bearing the weight of the world. Shaking his
head, he started to close the door in Samael’s face, but Samael placed a foot
in the doorjamb, blocking him. Of course, he had the physical strength to force
his way into the condo and do whatever the Hell he wanted to, but that wasn’t
the way he operated.

This was a
game much more complicated than chess.

The first rule
was: The victim—and, yes, that’s how Samael thought of them all, even Claire,
as victims—had to damn himself or herself by their own word. The first step
toward accomplishing that was that the victim had to invite him into his or her
house. Claire had done that, but for reasons he still wasn’t entirely ready to
admit to, he had delayed her invitation to damnation too long. She was special
to him in ways no other human had ever been.

He still
wasn’t precisely sure why or how.

It certainly
wasn’t—He cringed, just thinking the word—
love
.

LaPierre, on
the other hand, was easy. He could be persuaded to damn himself eternally
within an hour, tops…Hell, in the state he was in right now, it might take no
more than five or ten minutes.