Unearthed (27 page)

Getting too soft, asshole.
Needing to eat more often
.
Buying out half a liquor store.
Because he was hanging out with her, being corporeal, and it was making him sloppy.

He shoved her backwards. “You can’t know where I live. How I live. You can’t. Fuck, hunter, it’s not allowed.”

“Why not? You know where I live.”

“Yeah well, your Master won’t burn down your building and anyone unlucky enough to be inside just because I’ve been to your place.”

Damage control. Think damage control.
His hangover still lingered, blurring his thinking. He needed the toxin gone now, quickly. This was the hunter’s fault, so she would help, whether she wanted to or not. “This may sting a little.” Before she got out a full word, he’d picked her up and pressed her body to his. “You can squirm in my arms now or burn in hell later. What’ll it be?” When he heard her scream, he knew he’d gone too far, expended too much, too quickly. He let her go.

“You bastard.” She backed away slowly, her arms still crossed.

“If I can’t think straight, things will get a whole lot worse.” Now that his head was clear, he relaxed. The building would already be on fire if the Devil knew or had a problem with her being here. So this was actually the safest place for them to be until Davyn could figure out a way to sneak her out.

She was still breathing heavily, glaring, holding her body differently than she usually did, tighter and with less confidence. Shit, how badly had he hurt her? “Listen, I didn’t—”

“You should’ve been there. If you were there…”

It only took him a couple seconds to understand he had no idea what she was talking about.

“If I was where? What happened?” He walked closer and forced her arms apart, then opened her jacket.
What the hell?
Her shirt was covered in blood. Over her breasts, on her belly. “What the fuck happened to you?” He pulled her shirt up, looking for the injury. “Tell me! Where is it? Did it heal?” His hands were frantic as he turned her, yanking her jacket off, looking for where the blood came from. Her black pants didn’t show red, but there was a rip in the denim over one knee, and that knee was nothing but blood. “Damn it, hunter. Tell me where it’s coming from!”

“It isn’t mine.” Her voice was stone, her body unmoving except for the jarring his panic caused, like a doll…or a human who’d lost their soul.

No fucking way
. “What happened to you?” He spun her to face him, holding her arms so tightly she winced. But he didn’t let go. Because she’d winced. And that meant she was still feeling, still
could
feel. Which meant that he could still breathe.

“I swear, hunter, if I could have a heart attack… Whose blood is it?”

“You’re hurting me.” She clawed at his hands. “Let go. It burns.”

He released her quickly, but his agitation wasn’t nearly as simple to let go of. “Tell me who the fuck the blood belongs to. Lamere? You shouldn’t have gone back there without me. Did you get him?”

She shook her head, rubbing her arms where he’d held her. She still didn’t understand that there was no place in this world where someone like her wouldn’t get hurt.

“Lamere wasn’t there,” she said. “Some other vamps were, though. I’ve never fought more than four at once.”

“It’s daytime.” At least it would’ve been while she was there. “Why didn’t you just leave?”

“They were at his place, Davyn. If they were staying at his place, they had to know the girls were being kept there. And they might have known where Lamere went.”

They
might
have. “But they can’t tell us now because they’re all dead, right?”

Her lower lip trembled—the most human emotion he’d seen in her by far. Between that and the amount of blood on her, the fight must have been horrible.

“If you’d been there like you were supposed to”—she sniffled, then straightened, looking embarrassed for having shown any weakness—“we could have captured one of them.”

“So this is
my
fault?” He glanced around the room for a way out, momentarily ignoring the fact that he could leave any time he wanted to. “No way. You didn’t have to go today. And, fuck, once you saw how many there were, why didn’t you walk out the door and call me?”

She was silent, but her expression changed just enough for him to understand her unspoken question—What good would that have done?

Normally? In any other moment of his existence? It wouldn’t have done shit. He probably wouldn’t have picked up the phone or, if he had, he would’ve made a joke about her funeral or what she’d look like once the vamps were done with her and then hung up. And that was if he was feeling kind. But now…?

“Don’t count on me,” he shouted. “Ever. It’s a mistake. Demons aren’t reliable or trustworthy. We don’t care about anyone but ourselves. Understand? If you’d called,
maybe
I would’ve come.” No, he would have. He would’ve been there the second she asked because he
did
care about someone other than himself. He just didn’t
want
to—care, or be relied on, trusted. He’d never imagined she would go without him. They were—

“No,” he said. “You don’t get to risk your fucking life to spite me for not showing up.”

“You don’t understand,” she mumbled.

“You’re fucking right I don’t understand.” The water in his hair sizzled when he put his hand through it. “You’re good, hunter, but not good enough to take out a pack of them. You’re lucky you brought that many stakes.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how did you take them out?” Stupid question. She was here, covered in blood that wasn’t hers, so only one answer fit. He glanced at her knife holster, wondering if she’d cleaned off the blade, knowing she had. That was what hunters did, what warriors did. They took care of the things that kept them alive, things they couldn’t live without. Things and people. “More than four vamps. Shit, that’s impressive.”

“I don’t want to be impressive,” she said quietly. “I want to be normal.”

“Yeah well, I want to put on some pants, but only one of us is gonna get their way.” He understood, though. Not that he’d ever felt the need for normalcy, but he’d seen into enough minds to know how badly most of them wanted to achieve something
 
impossible. Because it didn’t exist.

“You can’t control everything, hunter. Accept it and move on.”

He thought she would leave, slam the door, or at least say something, but none of that happened. When he finished getting dressed, she was standing in exactly the same place in exactly the same position.

“I can’t accept it. I don’t want to.”

“Imagine how little what you want matters. You’re different from who you were and from other humans. Your past sucks shit. It was unfair, and you have a right to be pissed off, scream, and cry. But none of that actually does anything. Only living does, moving.”

He’d spent a hundred and fifty years laughing at human behavior and weakness, using it to do his job and get what he needed. Three tours starting out with one personality and ending with another—night and day. So he understood being different, from who he used to be and from all other beings. Always alone.

“Change happens on its own most of the time,” he said. “Little by little, while we’re not paying attention. But sometimes, something happens that flips everything around in a heartbeat. Denying it exists doesn’t do anything, wishing it wasn’t so doesn’t do anything. Accept that it’s changed you.” He wasn’t sure who he was talking to—her or himself. She’d changed him, not slowly like the last fifty years of living on earth had. Since meeting her, his life had turned on its axis, a complete one-eighty into something he’d never imagined and something that could never be.

The only thing holding him back from taking her, being with her and feeling her in all the ways he ached to, had nothing to do with Level Nine and everything to do with
her
. Even though it was stupid, and ridiculous, and would cause both of them an incredible amount of pain, he felt the truth crush him.

He cared about her. No, it was more than that. It was something demons weren’t capable of. He—

That’s not possible.
His kind never needed that emotion, so they didn’t have it. It created nothing but weakness.

A weakness that would only end in death.

Hers.

“Hey.” She stepped forward hesitantly, confused. “What’s wrong with you?”

Everything. And he couldn’t do shit about it.

He turned away. “You need to leave. It’s getting dark.” The sooner she left, the better for everyone and the less likely the Devil was paying attention. He had great night vision.

Davyn would hire someone to watch out for the hunter while she went after Lamere. Or maybe he’d use all this pent-up frustration and anger to find the bastard himself, tie him up, tell her where he was, and then leave. She could take the vamp out and they wouldn’t be in the same place at the same time.

When she touched his shoulder, it burned. Every time she touched him outside of a punch hurt so much worse.

He shook her hand off and went to the kitchen. “Go away.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Demons aren’t supposed to be like you, are they?”

He didn’t know how to answer that. “Do you know why we fight to be free? Why we try so hard not to fuck things up once we’re topside? Because hell is ugly. There’s no light. No laughter. We fight, and we fuck. That’s it. But even those things aren’t like they are here. The only place worse is heaven because they don’t even have the fighting and the fucking.” He tried to laugh. When you can’t laugh at your own bad jokes, what can you do? You can make sure you don’t fuck up the eternities of you and somebody you care about. Even though caring about them is what got you in trouble to begin with.

He opened and closed every cupboard, eating everything he found. “However bad it gets here, it’s better than where I was. That’s what you need to realize—no matter what you have to do to keep it, this life you’re living right now is so much better than it was. So go live it.” Somewhere else.

She didn’t move. “You go back to that life, right? You feel that pain, and then it stops and you get to start all over. I don’t know how to start over because the pain never ends.”

“Go away, hunter. You’re not safe here.”

“Not safe from you?”

“Yes, from me!” The countertop cracked under his fists. “I’m a demon. You keep forgetting that. Fuck,
I
keep forgetting that.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Her voice was small, fragile. “It’s why you understand me better than anyone else I know. Why I can be honest and know you won’t look at me with pity or disgust. Do you know what I did to those vamps? It wasn’t…it wasn’t human. So whatever this is, this thing between us, whatever happens between you and me…I’m not afraid of it.”

“You should be.”

“After all of that”—she waved her hand dismissively, as if her past was actually behind her—“I’m not afraid of anything.”

He laughed. “Oh, puppet, you’re so terrified of yourself and whatever that bastard put into you that you punish yourself every minute of every day. So no more bullshit. Just do what you want to do, and get the hell over it.”

“I’m trying! I’m going to wipe Lamere off the face of the earth.”

“Sure, it’ll be great fun, and then what? How long are you going to stare at the pile of dust at your feet?” Even after she killed Lamere,
if
she killed Lamere, she would be exactly the same, exactly as angry and confused and afraid. “You’re not chained to his wall anymore, Keira. You’re free. No one’s hurting you but you. You’re breaking yourself.”

“
He
broke me. This is
his
fault. And when he’s nothing but a pile of dust at my feet, I can start being normal.”

“Wrong. You’ll be the woman you are right now.” The one Davyn liked. A lot more than he should. “Remind me to show you a mirror next time I’m bleeding so you can see the look on your face. Because it won’t go away, no matter how much you want it to.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Get to know who you are, learn how to live with her, how to love her. Then you won’t have anything to punish her for.”

“There’s too much of him in me. I can’t.”

“Don’t be afraid of your freedom.” He let out his breath. “Use me.” This was way too much humanness to deal with in one day. Too much to care about in one lifetime. “Use me, so neither of us has to deal with this shit anymore.” The job would be done, she’d disappear, and he’d go to hell. All the misplaced feelings would be gone.
Halle-fucking-lujah, and I’m out of here.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“You think if you accept who you are and what you want, you’ll be like him, right? Psychotic, evil, inhuman. Well, I don’t buy it. So prove me wrong. Let’s see how inhuman you really are.”

“No.” She backed away from him as he came around the counter.

“I thought you weren’t afraid of anything.” He nodded to the knife in her belt. “Prove it. Let’s do this.”

“What? No.” Her breath was faster, more superficial, a mixture of fear and excitement. But the look on her face was pure unadulterated need. She was so damn human, so afraid of what she wanted. So he’d do what he was created for. No tricks or manipulation, just by forcing her to be honest about who she really was. By making her face her greatest fear. Not Lamere or any other supernatural. She didn’t have time for any of that. She was too busy being afraid of herself.

“How long have you wanted this?” He stepped into her way when it looked like she was about to bolt. “To just see it run? Do you want to touch it? Taste it? What are we talking about here, hunter? How horrible a creature are you? Are you a little inhuman or a lot inhuman?”

“Are you trying to make this into a joke?”

“Am I laughing?” He paused. “How long have you hated yourself for wanting it?”

“I don’t want this,” she cried.

“There’s a shitload I’ll never understand about humans, you in particular, but I do understand temptation and denial. The first step is to admit it—you want to see someone bleed, someone hurt. Great. Nobody gives a shit. Not in our world or any other.” He signed.