Lover Unveiled, page 28
And decided… well, maybe the whole acceptance thing wasn’t quite enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Out in the field downtown, Balz walked side by side with Syphon through a bottom-feeder retail neighborhood, the storefronts locked with retractable grates and marked with 70% Off! sale signs that suggested cash flow was a perpetual issue for the grungy establishments. Lot of graffiti. Lot of random trash clustered by the wind, the urban equivalent of sand dunes in the desert. And the uneven concrete under their shitkickers was the kind of thing you had to keep checking—no matter how tight your swagger or how many weapons you strapped or how much leather was zippered onto your body, catching a steel toe on a crack could bring you back down to earth on so many different levels.
“Yeah, and then what happened?” Balz asked as he scanned from left to right.
“Nothing was in the coffin.”
Balz frowned and glanced at his cousin. Syphon was in his typical saunter, his dark hair freshly tinted with stripes of dark green. Given his orthorexic diet, one might assume he was actually turning into a smoothie. But no, he and Zypher had gone ham with the hair color over day.
Zypher had gone with some positively fetching dark purple undertones.
“What do you mean, nothing?” Balz prompted.
“Well, no body. But we’ve got some two-hundred-year-old oats if we want to play Russian roulette with gastroenteritis. And the Gift of Light or whatever it was? Nowhere, either. Rhage told me that they stood around the open coffin all what-the-hell. Tic Tac?”
Balz put his palm out, a shake-shake preceding a two-drop that went right into his mouth. “So now what?”
Idly, he glanced behind them. Ever since the Omega had bit it, these nightly patrols were nothing but strolls, and he missed the fighting.
“I don’t know. Wrath says we gotta find the Book another way—”
Balz stopped dead. “What?”
Syphon went a couple strides farther, halted, and looked back. “The Book. The one I told you about. The one Rehvenge came to the Brotherhood about—why are you looking at me like that?”
As a feeling of light-headedness made Balz think the cement under his feet was undulating, he turned blindly to the stores so he could pretend like something had caught his eye. You know, in a normal way.
“What about this Book,” he said evenly.
“I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
Syphon shrugged his big shoulders. “It’s some kind of book of spells. A female came up to Rehv looking for it, and he was all bad-news on that idea.”
“Just curious, what does the Book look like?”
“I don’t know. Rehv didn’t say. Got the feeling that you know it when you see it.”
Putting an unsteady hand to his eyes, Balz was vaguely aware that his cousin was continuing to talk, but he couldn’t hear the guy. And as he tried to pull himself together, he—
Purple palm print.
Frowning, he blinked a couple of times—and nothing changed about what he was staring at: He was apparently standing in front of a purple palm print the size of his chest. Over it, in blinking, neon cursive, was a flashing sign that read “PSYCHIC.”
Syphon stepped in between him and the window. “Where’d you go, Cousin?”
“I’m right here,” he muttered as he stepped around and tried the purple door.
When it opened, he wasn’t surprised, and not just because it was after dark and PSYCHICs probably didn’t quit at five, even in this kind of zip code: It was as if some kind of doorbell had been rung in reverse, not him seeking someone inside, but rather someone in there seeking him.
“What are you doing, Cousin,” Syphon demanded.
The staircase that was revealed was narrow and steep and painted purple, and Balz surmounted the steps urgently, like his name was being called up on the second floor. Like he had been here before, even though he hadn’t. Like this was the whole point of… everything.
Behind him, Syphon was having a lot to say.
Balz heard none of it.
There was a door on the top landing, marked with another laminated purple-palm symbol. And he was not surprised that before he had a thought about trying the knob, the portal swung open for him.
Fuck, it was dark in there. In fact, the pitch-black interior was so dense, so pervasive, it was like a tear in the fabric of time and space—
Syphon grabbed his arm and yanked. “No!”
“Let me go—”
“Don’t go in there—”
Everything happened so fast. One moment, the two of them were playing tug-o’-war with his arm, the next?
The lights flickered in the stairwell, and then something grabbed Syphon around the chest and peeled him back. But he did not fall. He became suspended in the air over the steep steps.
A shadow, that somehow had strength and substance, was clutching him like he was prey, claiming his fighter’s body. And Syphon was arching back and screaming in agony, his face running pale, his eyes peeling wide.
Save him, Balz told himself. Save—
And yet he glanced back at the door that had opened for him. The pull to proceed inside, to enter and be lost in the darkness, was like a tangible stroke over all of his skin, a beckoning that was food to a starving male, cash to the poor, recovery to the terminal. Something was in there for him that would save him, save him from—
Syphon screamed again, and the sound of the bloody agony snapped Balz out of the thrall. With a gasp, he wrenched around and grabbed for his forty.
That was when the perfume came.
The smell was grape-ish and deep, an old fragrance that he had scented back in the eighties, on females in the species who were above him socially, on women outside of the species who lived in cities and walked the night streets on the arms of men in tuxedos.
Poison by Dior. He’d looked up the name because he’d loved it so much—
Even before he turned his head back to the void, he knew what he was going to see in the darkness.
He was not wrong.
From out of a black hole, the brunette of his dreams appeared, and she was magically beautiful, unreal yet solid.
“It’s you…” he breathed.
As she smiled at him, Syphon screamed again, but it was as if her presence turned down the volume on everything else on the planet—including his cousin.
What was happening over the staircase suddenly seemed like the dream instead of her.
“Miss me?” Her voice was heaven, absolute heaven, in his ears… a symphony mixed with a marching band, seasoned with hip-hop and some jazz. “I missed you. It feels like forever since we were together. Why don’t you come inside, I have a bed we could use—”
Syphon screamed even louder.
“Don’t worry about him.” She licked her red lips like she was anticipating what Balz’s cock would taste like. “He’s got nothing to do with us.”
His woman stepped back into the darkness and beckoned him with her blood red fingernail. “Come with me, Balthazar, and I will show you pleasure you have never known and riches that will make even you stop stealing. No more hollow places to fill with the objects of others, no more itch that cannot be scratched. You will finally be sated. You will finally find the peace that has eluded you. With me, you can rest, Balthazar.”
Tears speared into his eyes. “How do you know me,” he whispered.
“Silly male, I’ve been inside you. Did you think I wasn’t walking your halls and trying out your furniture while I was there? Lonely place, your soul, and I’ve seen a lot of them. But you don’t have to worry about that anymore. I’ll be with you every step of the way from now on. All you have to do is come to me now.”
The decision was made before he was aware of arriving at a conclusion: His body took a step forward. And another.
Balz didn’t look back at his cousin.
He was powerless to deny this female.
Anything.
* * *
As Mae dematerialized, Sahvage rearranged his erection in his pants and went back into the cottage.
Shutting things up, he looked around the heavy hutch through to the back and saw that the cellar door was open. But Tallah wasn’t in the kitchen or moving around upstairs.
Clearly, she was back in the cellar, something forgotten or required in her underground quarters, and he was guessing it had to do with her outfit. The old female certainly stayed true to her glymera roots. Even though she wasn’t living in a mansion, she dressed the part. She’d come out for Monopoly looking like she was going to a formal event—and it was kind of sweet the way she blushed whenever she looked at him.
A little sad, too.
And it was obvious how much she meant to Mae, and vice versa. No wonder that Book was such a topic of discussion. If there were any lives worth preserving with dark magic? Tallah would be on the list.
He glanced over at the dirty dishes that were left.
But God, that stew had been awful.
Determined to be useful and not just decorative, he took over where Mae had left off, picking up her soggy, soapy paper towel wad and going to work on the remaining stuff in the sink. How Tallah had managed to use seven hundred thousand pots and pans was a mystery. There had been all of two root vegetables and a couple handfuls of meat in that liquid-cement broth.
As he washed and rinsed, he thought about Mae standing against that bathroom door, her eyes on his hand job like it was the most amazing thing she had ever seen. Fucking hell, he’d felt like he’d had a palm full of gold as she’d watched him, but when he’d learned that she was…
Of course he still wanted the female. He just didn’t want to take something permanent from her when he was less than temporary in her life.
It wasn’t fair.
With that thought in mind, he got through the mess in the sink. Dried everything off. Put things away in the places Tallah had gotten them out of.
And just as he checked the clock over on the wall, something registered, his inner bell getting rung, even though he wasn’t sure by what.
Although the fact that Mae had been gone almost an hour was not great news.
Palming up the gun he’d tucked, he glanced to the refrigerator barricading the back door. Looked out toward the front door. Checked the cellar stairs. What the hell was it—
As his eyes surfed across the table, they double-backed to what had caught his subconscious attention.
“Shit.”
Shoving the forty back into his waistband, he picked up the nine millimeter he’d gotten for Mae. She’d left it behind in her frazzled rush to leave.
“I’ll be right back,” he called down at the basement.
Dematerializing, he traveled up to the second floor and out of the shutter he’d left cracked since the night before. There was no trouble finding Mae’s ranch, and as he re-formed by the garage, the lights were on inside of it.
The shutter around back was still as they’d left it, so he was able to get in by her car with no problem—and he frowned. The scent of fresh exhaust was obvious, so she’d clearly gone out for some supplies—and the door into the rear of the house was propped open with a stop.
He wished he could have helped bring whatever it was in for her.
Stepping into a short hallway, he saw Mae’s purse and car keys on the washer-dryer. Her jacket, too.
There was a damp trail on the tile that led into a modest kitchen, and as he followed it, he heard a strange rushing sound deeper inside the house. As he went along, he found the single-story ranch small, with furniture that wasn’t new, but everything was clean and he felt comfortable with the lack of fussiness.
Another round of that whoosh sound escorted him even farther into the house, to a hall that he assumed took him to the layout of upper bedrooms. A bathroom door was open halfway down, and he started to smile as Mae’s scent got louder in his nose.
“Can I help you—”
As he came around into the doorway, he—
Stopped short. Because he had no idea what he was looking at.
Mae was on her knees in front of a bathtub, empty ice bags scattered around her, one held up so its load of chips could join the others’. All of that was odd, but not what halted his boots as well as the breath in his lungs.
Inside the tub… there appeared to be a corpse. The head was down by the faucet, the feet up at the other end, the white and waxy toes peeking out of the ice.
With an expression of horror, Mae wrenched around and stretched her arms wide, as if she were protecting that which she was keeping cold. Or maybe trying to hide it.
“What are you doing here!”
“You forgot the gun,” he said slowly as he showed the weapon from the side. “I brought it to you so you’d be safe—what is that.”
Or who, was more the question. Although he had a feeling he knew. That dark blond hair was just like hers.
“Mae…” Sahvage dragged a hand down his face. “No.”
“Get out,” she said in a trembling voice. “Leave us alone—”
“You want to bring him back using the Book. Oh, God… Mae… no.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
There were precipices more dire than life and death. And Balz was on one.
As he trembled on the lip of acquiescence, as every part of him wanted to follow the command of the woman of his dreams, he knew an inevitability that was like a second birth: A choice made for him by someone else that caused him to exist in a world. And so, yes, he would enter the psychic’s domain, and he would follow the beckoning of the brunette before him, and he would live out what had been his destiny all along.
“That’s right,” she said with a smile of those blood red lips. “Come to me—”
From out of nowhere, an image slapped him sure as if it were a dagger palm across his face: He saw his cousin back in the Old Country, in a forest hovel where they were sheltering from the sun. Syphon was smiling while draped in weaponry and the rugged leather of war, a healing slice on his temple the result of a lesser’s blade that had been quicker and more nimble than its target.
A comrade. A friend. A protector.
Family.
His eyes were so blue, his grin so wide, his goodwill inexhaustible even though they had no warm food in their bellies and only raw dirt in a cave for their bed—
Here, take it.
His cousin’s invitation, spoken in the Old Language, was as clear as if it had been spoken to Balz right now, and he could see the fighter leaning forward, his hand outstretched.
And in the palm, the last heel of bread he had.
Are you no hungry, then? Balz had asked.
Nay, it shall be for you, Cousin. Take and feed yourself. I shall find something else.
Syphon had spoken the simple words over the growl of his own stomach and in spite of the reality that there had been no food anywhere in the cave—
Balz’s eyes flashed open, though he had not been aware they’d closed. And the smile that was in front of him, the smile of seduction, the smile of evil knowing that it had captured another soul… was nothing like his cousin’s had been.
Nothing like his cousin’s was.
“You know what you want to do,” the woman said. “You know you’re going to come with me—”
With a battle cry, Balz spun around and lunged off the top landing of the stairs, reaching for his cousin’s dangling legs as the shadow lifted the helpless male higher and higher, as if it was going to break out through the window mounted high above the entrance and take Syphon away.
“You fucking idiot!” the brunette yelled from the abyss. “You fucking asshole!”
Just before the shadow entity busted the glass and disappeared with its prey, Balz caught his cousin’s left shitkicker with a grasping claw—and he backed up that insufficient hold with a rock-hard grab at the ankle.
The shadow let out an unholy screech as the added weight dragged it down, and then something gave way, the entity dropping its load.
Balz’s back broke the fall, his body landing with a crack on the wooden steps and starting on a descent that was sure to put him in traction—and his cousin’s body was a horrible chaser, all that weight banging him even harder into the unforgiving, uncarpeted stairs. As his brain was overcome with pain, there was a moment of stunned paralysis, but the shadow entity’s quick counterattack meant there was no time to whine about the pain—or even check if Syphon was still alive.
Throwing a foot out to stop their jangling, tooth-loosening descent, Balz shoved a hand down to his hip holster and palmed one of his forties. Just as he brought up the muzzle, the shadow shot forward, snake-like tentacles lashing out, striking at his cousin, striking at him. When his forearm was hit, he cursed in pain, but he hit his trigger.
The autoloader did its thing, kicking out bullet after bullet—and thank fuck they worked. The shadow let out another one of those ear-killing screeches, recoiling as if it had been burned. Yet it came back.
So Balz outed a silver dagger. As one of the tentacles got too close, he stabbed it—and was rewarded by that high-pitched holler. But then Syphon, who’d lost consciousness, started slipping down the stairs again, and as Balz tried to grab him, they both ended up bouncing head over heels toward the bottom.
As his body blendered, he did what he could to stab and shoot at the shadow, making sure that neither any of him nor any of his cousin was in the way—
Boom!
They landed in a tangled heap at the base of the steps, their big bodies crammed up against the closed door. With a shove, Balz shifted his cousin to the side so he could keep shooting, but as the last bullet left his weapon, that was a moot point. And he couldn’t reach his backup clip or his other forty—
Syphon’s hand appeared in front of his face with a full magazine.
“Thank God,” Balz muttered. “Can you get me another gun?”
As he got a grunt for a reply, he swapped the clips and kept shooting—and like magic, another Sig Sauer appeared in his face.
Ditching the dagger—where it hopefully wouldn’t Swiss cheese them or be used by this entity—he went Deadpool, kicking out lead slugs from both autoloaders, driving the shadow back, holes appearing in its translucent body—or maybe it was more like the structure that held it together was beginning to fail. Now it was like a school of fish, the whole devolving into coordinated parts and undulating in a pattern that became increasingly erratic.
