Beast of Fire -- a Demon Hunting Sexy Romance (13 page)

Lucan relished destroying that darkness as well, but it was going to take the healer in him, the man who had become a doctor, so many years before, to overcome this challenge. Lucan had to come home to himself. He had to find his humanity – and he had to find it quickly. Because if he did not, Salvador feared many others would lose theirs.

Chapter Ten

Time ticked by in excruciatingly slow motion, the thirty minutes since Lucan’s exit out of her bedroom window passing like hours. Kresley sat with her back against the headboard, eyes fixed on the window, the sword next to her, her hand gripping the hilt. She could feel the danger around them, her senses more keenly alert the past few days than she had thought possible.
 

And she was terrified for Lucan. She wanted him to survive this, wanted that more than ever. Because she could feel the suffering in him, sensed it as she did the danger now, sensed it as if his pain were her own. This connection she had with him reached beyond the natural; profound and deep, it was perhaps a part of her expanding ability to sense things.
 

Her chest tightened as she considered another option, as she considered Adrian’s claim that Lucan and she were mates–could it be true? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. The idea of a bond that was forced brought bitterness, memories of parents who had treated her as a feared obligation. Parents she hadn’t spoken to in years. She’d come here with decisions made. With the intention of removing herself from a world she didn’t belong to, trading herself for Lucan so he could do some good she could not.
 

But seeing Lucan again delivered an odd sense of completeness, and she remembered the feeling of acceptance he’d given her when she’d first met him. In his arms, though, it was not comfort she had felt. It was passion – red-hot, burning passion– unlike anything she’d ever known, as if he were peeling away the years of inhibitions, of fears of hurting the men in her life. That kiss had revealed needs within her she didn’t even know existed. Needs that even now had her pressing her thighs together, the ache of arousal flooding her limbs with warmth.
 

A tiny sound jolted her out of her reverie, sent her rocketing upward. Lucan appeared in the window frame a moment before he pushed it open. Her shoulders slumped slightly, relief at seeing him alive and well rushing through her.
 

 
“Well?” she asked, trying to sound cool and collected despite the thrum of urgency juicing her veins. Her hand reached for the leather grip of her sword, preparing herself for bad news.

A subdued tone etched his words, as if they hid a deeper emotion. “All clear for the moment,” he offered, as he climbed back into the room and resealed the window, quickly locking it, with an urgency that defied the overly casual reply.
   

He turned to face her fully and. . . God, he was big, Kresley thought, her gaze swiping a path up his long, lithe frame. He was broad and tall. Gorgeously male. Her core clenched and she swallowed hard, shaken by the depth of her body’s reaction to Lucan at such a completely inappropriate moment.
 

Agitated at both herself and him–at herself for thinking such nonsense a dangerous time, at him for creating the distraction. She jerked her gaze to the window, looked beyond, searched for shadows. An electric charge of worry danced along her nerve endings. Her fingers curled into the blanket, not quite ready to abandon the easy access to her sword.
 

“'For the moment’ is not comforting," she commented dryly.
 

Lucan leaned on the wall, and she didn’t miss the way he positioned his back away from the window. The irony of people like her and Lucan using locks at all hit her. They both knew no lock would hold back a supernatural being.
 

“We’re safe enough to get some rest,” he assured her. “But we need to move tomorrow. A heavily secured, high-profile hotel will discourage attacks and make me feel a hundred percent better.”
 

Hotel. Alone. With Lucan. She blinked away the sexy images that came to mind. Including the cost when she had no money. But they both knew the supernatural world preferred to operate off the human radar. His plan made sense.
 
“Why are you so sure we’re safe now but not later?"
 

“Because the four wolves who were here watching us are now dead. And before you ask, no, I didn’t get the dubious honor, though after the whipping they gave me back at that bar, it would have been a pleasure.”
 

Kresley swallowed hard, relieved that the wolves were dead, but feeling guilty for being happy about the death of any living creature. What was she becoming? "If you didn’t do it, who did?"

"That would be the question of the hour,” he replied, a perplexed expression on his tension-laden face.
 
“The wolves never knew what hit them. Their attacker orbed in behind them, and one by one, slit their throats. Then, he turned to me, gave me a little bow – almost a salute of sorts– and disappeared."

Kresley scooted to the end of the bed, her hand going to her throat. “Oh God,” she whispered. “I just had a horrible picture of that in my head.” She blinked. “Wait.” Realization beat at her with troubling insistence. “Orbed?! Who was this attacker?”
 

Lucan’s expression turned vacant, as if he were picturing the stranger. “His face was painted. A mask of colors shadowed by the night. But his eyes, his eyes . .. ” He glanced at Kresley, snapping back to the present. “Dark eyes with an otherworldly presence. Not red.” He shook his head. "He wasn’t a Demon.”
 

“Then what?” Kresley asked, frowning.
 

Lucan walked to the side of the bed where the weapons case remained open, and she slid one leg onto the bed to turn in his direction. “The only things for certain are that he dislikes the wolves and he’s a deadly enemy,” he stated grimly.

“But not our enemy?”

“Not tonight,” Lucan agreed, bending down on one knee beside the case, unsheathing one of the short-handled sabers he wore and placing it back in the case, his mood shifting with the action.
 

“A comforting thought I could do without,” she murmured, her words fading as she watching Lucan, his head downturned. The forlorn darkness within the room seemed to expand, to take on a sense of loss. “They’re yours, you know,” she offered gently. “From your personal collection.”
 

He removed the other saber from his hip and replaced it in the case, changing the subject, as if he did not want to discuss the swords – or perhaps his past.
 
“The book the wolf leader possesses. Tell me more about it.”

If only she’d had a few more minutes in that library. “I can’t tell you much. Cullen’s head of security walked in on me snooping around. I quickly made an excuse and got out of there. But it limited what I learned. All I know at this point is Cullen possesses a collection of religious books, and this particular one had the Knights' emblem, and writing I didn’t understand.”

“Hebrew?”

She shook her head. “No. I’ve seen Hebrew writing from the Solomon relics at the ranch. This wasn’t Hebrew. Some strange language. Or maybe some kind of magical markings.” She reached deeper in her mind. “I just don’t know. What are you thinking?”
 

 
“I’m thinking that when Adrian is involved, and the Knights show up on the radar, we have a red flag. Adrian is always looking for ways to destroy the Knights.”

“But this isn’t Adrian,” she argued. “It’s Cullen.”

“He’s a Demon which makes anyone fighting for good his enemy. And Adrian is involved, even if the book is not his.
 
Everything is not as it seems, and we cannot go after that ring until we know the true picture. We can’t risk hurting the wrong people.”
 

“If we contact the Knights – "

He cut her off. “Neither Adrian nor the Guardians would allow that to happen. I tried. For you. I wanted Jag to come take you back home."
 

Kresley was stunned. “You tried to contact Jag for me?”

“Tried and failed.” His jaw clenched. “I’ve learned how to block out the Guardians from certain parts of my mind. I managed to make it to a phone and Adrian intercepted. ”

She’d have been angry at him trying to send her away if not for the risk he’d put himself under, and the ultimate pain she knew he’d endured. She had no doubt Adrian had made him suffer. Kresley squeezed her eyes shut, thinking of finding him in pain on his apartment floor, wondering if that had been his punishment.

She pinned him in a steady stare, new determination to free him in her eyes for him to see. “I knew the risk I took when I came here.”

He pushed to his feet, anger etched in the lines of his face as he stared down at her. “You came here because you felt guilty about me leaving the Knights. But guilt is a form of evil, Kresley. Guilt has kept you from embracing gifts meant to help innocents.”

“That’s not true,” she started to argue but got no further.
 

“It is true. You were not prepared for an ancient evil like Adrian.”

Okay, now she was mad again. She jumped to her feet. “You were just as naive as I. You sold yourself for me.”

“And counted on you staying with the Knights. Adrian counted on your guilt. Thus why I say it’s evil. He used it to capture you again, Kresley.”

“Being here does not make me captured again. I'm going to make this right. I am.”
 

“Well, you better do it fast. You have two weeks, Kresley. Two weeks and then it's all over.”

She blinked, her heart racing for some reason that reached beyond the heat of the moment; it spoke of dread. “What are you talking about?”
 

“They marked you again. A temporary mark that will fade in two weeks, if we give them what they want. Otherwise, you become theirs, just as I am. And so does your firestarting ability.”

“What?” she gasped, stunned into stillness for several seconds before she held her wrists up and searched for the mark of the Guardians that one of her wrists had once born, but finding nothing. “I’m not. I’m not marked.”
 

“The marks will appear if they become permanent.”
 

She shook her head, backed up, and sat down, suddenly unable to support her wobbly knees. “How?”
 

“You touched my bracelets. You touched them, the Guardians. They are devious. They knew I would not help you get the ring to save myself, so they ensured that I had further incentive. They knew I would do whatever it took to save you.”
 

She was shaking, she could feel herself shaking. She told herself not to think about the horrible hallucinations the Guardians had given her, about the snakes. She was strong; she could endure. Adrian’s words slid into her mind. “Because we're mates,” she said, searching Lucan’s face. “That’s why you traded yourself for me.”

Color washed from his face and he went completely, utterly still. His response was slow, a measured avoidance and nothing more. “My time has come and gone. Yours has barely started.”

She hugged herself, chilled to the bone for reasons she couldn’t explain. Feeling alone, so very alone. She barely contained the urge to demand an answer, to yell that demand; her emotions were wild, despite years of practiced containment.
 
And years of her emotions setting fires she couldn’t control. She almost yelled back. Her nails were digging into her arms, her eyes locked to his face, searching for the truth she didn’t want to find, didn’t want to be real.
 

Mates. Obligation. Her parents had felt obligated to care for her. They had blamed her for the financial distress of medical expenses and moving time and time again, even though they’d moved by choice, to hide their fear and embarrassment over her. And though she’d known she’d caused Lucan’s captivity, somehow knowing it was an obligatory sacrifice hurt more than she'd imagined possible. She couldn’t say why. Just that it did.
 

She finally managed a hoarse, strained voice that she barely recognized as her own. “You traded yourself for me because I am your mate.”
 

“Kresley–"

The thin shell of control slipped and she yelled. “Are we mates?”

Defeat flickered across his face, telling her the truth before he spoke. “Yes. We are mates.”
 

She drew a harsh breath. “And neither you, nor the Knights, thought to tell me this little piece of critical information?”
 

“I didn’t know until it was too late,” he admitted softly, “until the Guardians had you under their command.”

“But the Knights knew.”

He nodded. “After I was gone. Not before.”

And Laura, too, she bet. Everyone knew but her. Or maybe
 
on some level she had known Lucan was her mate. Maybe she had felt obligated to save him. Wasn’t that what made the world tick – obligation?
 

“Adrian told me,” she whispered, trying to contain her anger, but it didn’t work. “Adrian! Is that how you all thought I should find out?” She inhaled and let it out again, calming herself the tiniest bit. “Do you know how that makes me feel?”