Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the Moon\Immortal Obsession (15 page)

King shrugged. “Too bad you can't read your own truths. Oz would agree with me, I'm sure.”

Oz did agree with King, and that was the kicker. Why couldn't Rook read Verity's truths? Had she cast a spell, some sort of glamour that hid something so deep and dark she couldn't reveal it to him? If so, it had to have been cast before he'd even met her.

I could read her truth.

That hadn't occurred to him. Should he let Oz read her? He wanted to know Verity. He should trust she would tell him what she wanted to tell him. Yet, he was keeping things from her. Could her secrets be keeping him from his soul?

I have already suspected she is hiding something.
Let me at her. There is little time for dally. My wife will soon give birth. I must be there!

“Rook?”

“Huh?”

“Oz?” King guessed, familiar with Rook's occasional inward distractions.

“Sorry. Oz and I were discussing Verity's truths and why I can't read them.”

“You can't? That sounds dangerous. I'm not going to step back into the role of warning you to be careful again, but—”

“I'll take care of it on my own time. Let's get to work. We each have half a city to cover. Check in with me on the hour.”

“Will do.”

* * *

Verity clipped the lemon thyme and laid the stiff stalks in a low-sided wicker basket with a wide handle that reminded her of the baskets the bunnies toted on the Christian Easter holiday. No chocolate eggs in hers, though, unfortunately.

She'd decided not to wait for moonlight, instead hoping she'd see Rook later. And who could bother with silly old herbs when a gorgeous man might show up to sweep her off her feet and into bed?

Well, she had to. She wanted to try another spell, something that would soften the hunger pangs, make them invisible to her. Tonight she would tell him. Time was running out. She would not fall to her knees again, enraptured by the utter sexiness of him. She must not.

She would not be stupid about this anymore.

When she heard the rustle in the nettle and the angry meow, she laughed. “Thomas, I've told you not to go back there. That's where I grow the thorned and poisonous plants.”

“Merde,”
blasted out from behind the shrubbery. “The things I do for you, witchy chick. Ouch! Those things sting.”

“That's why they call it stinging nettle. What are you doing shifting out in broad daylight? You want me to get your robe?”

“No, I'll make this quick.” A toe popped out from behind the thick foliage. “Besides, I'm bleeding. I don't want you to see me like this.”

“Poor Thomas.”

“Do not condescend to me, Veritas Von Velde.”

The scent of his blood carried to her, and Verity leaned forward, catching her palms on the soil. “You are bleeding.”

“You smell that? Sweetie, do not come any closer.”

“I won't.” But she did want to get a look at the blood. Maybe inhale—
Verity!
She sat back on her heels. “Chill,” she whispered to the annoying hunger.

“I've returned from a visit to your hunter,” Thomas announced from within the greenery. “He was sitting outside the Order's headquarters.”

“You know where that is?”

“I know everything about everyone in this city. That's what I do. I prowl and observe, prowl and observe.”

And when he wasn't doing that, he was shagging human women while in his human form. Such a player.

“And what did you observe about Rook?”

“Something troubling.”

Verity set another clipping of thyme in the basket and turned to the shrub. The solemn tone of Thomas's voice worried her. “And?”

“Tell me why a vampire hunter would so casually welcome a vampire and sit and chat with him on the back stoop of their headquarters, as if they were old friends?”

“A vampire? How do you know that?”

“I can smell a vamp a mile away. They can never erase that minute metallic blood scent. And he was not too pleased to have me near him.”

“That's…” Verity slumped into a thoughtful pose. “…weird. Rook hates vampires. It's his job to slay them.”

“Exactly. I think you need to be cautious around him, Verity. He is not the man your grandmother told you to trust. And by all means, do not tell him about the bite. Not if you value your safety and want to keep his stake out of your heart.”

Verity swallowed and clasped a hand over her chest. She glanced skyward where the moon was already visible in the twilight sky, three-quarters round and quickly growing more tumescent.

She had to stop this transformation from happening. But how to do so if she did not tell Rook?

“He's my only option,” she whispered.

Because she'd been going through the motions of cutting herbs for yet another spell to keep her hopes up, but she knew the spell would not work. The vampire who had bitten her needed to die. Either that, or she must make it beyond the full moon without drinking blood. And that wasn't looking very possible when she nearly stabbed stranger's steaks off their plates.

“Find someone else to help you,” Thomas said. “Or kill the bloody vampire yourself.”

“But if you said he was talking to a vampire, then perhaps…” Would Rook befriend her too if she transformed?

No! She couldn't think like that. The last thing she wanted was to have to drink blood to survive.

“You're confusing me, Thomas. I don't know what to do anymore. I shouldn't have let it go as long as it has. I should have told him immediately. But I had confidence in my magic. And then when I do want to talk to Rook, I can't think straight around him.”

“Be careful around the hunter. He has secrets. I don't trust him with you.”

The nettle rustled. Another crazy meow protested. Verity collected the basket and her pruning cutters and wandered back into the kitchen. If Rook did have a vampire friend, she needed to determine whether he was an ally or a future enemy.

* * *

“Tonight,” Rook whispered as he strode across the bedroom floor.

As planned.

He toweled the sweat from his shoulders and abdomen. A long session of yoga had stretched his muscles nicely.

“You ready for this?”

What if she does not come?

“She will,” he said to Oz. “She has to.”

* * *

After her act, Verity rushed to the dressing room, seeking something to quench her thirst. The bottled water tasted awful, like salt to a dying man. She tossed it aside as Lyric entered.

“Whoa! You almost hit me.” The vampiress brushed water droplets from her arm. “Verity? What's wrong? You're sweating.”

“Uh…it's the fire.”

“Your fire has never made you—you're also clammy.” Lyric pressed her palm over Verity's forehead. “Are you coming down with something? I didn't think witches got sick.”

“Oh, Lyric.” Verity hugged her friend.

She needed to talk to someone, and she wasn't sure when she'd find a chance to tell Rook. She just needed a hug and an understanding ear.

“I have to tell you something.”

Lyric nodded, and Verity confessed about the vampire attack, how it had brought her and Rook together and how she'd thought the spell had worked, until it had not.

“I'll sic Vail on the vampire. Clas is his name? What about the hunter?”

“I'm not sure.”

“You have to tell him everything, Verity.”

“I want to, but I just told you what Thomas learned. Can I trust Rook?”

“You have to. He may be your only hope. Go to him. Tell him the truth.”

Chapter 13

K
nowing that she was welcome to walk into Rook's home without knocking, Verity folded her sweater coat over the back of a kitchen chair, then strolled into the living room. Changing into her usual clothes after the performance, she'd dressed to seduce. It was her style to wear short skirts and silky fabrics. And the thigh-high stockings always made her feel sexy. She needed that confidence to be able to set aside her worries and confess all to her lover.

A man who may love her. A man she knew she could love. A man who may have his own secrets. Only when all their secrets were finally pushed out into the open could she truly surrender to her soul's desire to trust him.

The living room was empty. He must be in the bedroom.

“Rook?”

No answer.

Feeling only a little sneaky, she wandered to the next room. He was home. The door would not have been unlocked otherwise. Entering the bedroom, her eyes took in the exotic blue fabric draped above the bed and—Verity stopped in her tracks. Her fingers clutched the air. Heartbeats speeded.

Standing before the window, shadowed by the hazy evening illumination from streetlights three stories below, was not Rook.

Her senses sorted the visual cues and determined it was demon.

The man—creature? demon?—turned toward her, his sleek black horns cutting the air in arcs and his snow white Mohawk jutting high and prideful as a stallion's tail down his back. Red eyes glowed. “Verity.”

She pressed her back to the door frame as he approached on slow, agile, bare feet. He did not wear a shirt and his abdomen and chest were ripped with muscle, much like Rook's. He wore Rook's leather pants low on his hips. And he was about Rook's height and shape—but he was not Rook.

“Asatrú?” she tried.

“Call me Oz,” he offered in a baritone that almost touched Rook's easy tone but was dipped in something murky and deep. Dangerous. “Do not be frightened.”

“I'm not.”

Maybe. She tried not to cower, pressing back a shoulder, but the stance felt too open and she clasped her arms across her chest. As a witch, she'd avoided conjuring demons simply because they were often malicious and hard to control.

“Okay, I am a little scared.” She hadn't expected a demon to greet her today. “How are you out? I thought Rook said you only—”

“The full moon is my day. Rook hasn't completely untethered me, so I will only be able to stay out a short while.” He stopped two feet in front of her, and she eyed his horns warily. Obsidian scythes cut the air. They were ridged along the spiral twist of their form, and the tips were pin-sharp. “We decided that I should have a talk with you.”

“We? You and Rook? Is Rook in there? In you?”

“I am Rook. He is me.”

The demon stretched back a shoulder, and his muscles flexed. Verity watched the sinuous movement with admiration. And then she adjusted that thought. A demon stood in front of her. And he was also her lover. Maybe? His
human-like face was not at all like Rook's, yet they had the same of angle of jaw and, yes, the high forehead. No scar at his eyebrow. Different hair and eye color. Cleanly shaven. But his mouth…hmm. Perhaps a bit like him.

How interesting that he was completely separate from Rook and…not.

“Rook cannot see your truths for some frustrating reason,” Oz offered, “but I thought that I might be able to. I am a truth demon.”

Verity crossed her arms tighter over the silk dress. “Why is Rook so worried about my truths? Does he think I'm hiding something? Maybe I think he is hiding something. Like, is he friends with a vampire? What do you think about that?”

The demon tilted a straight grin at her but offered no reply.

Verity stepped from foot to foot. She felt exposed. “Is Rook aware of our conversation?”

“He is always aware, as I am when he is in command. But I control this body for the moment. So.”

A tilt of his head averted her attention to the horns that looked as if they belonged on a charging bull. She had never felt the urge to ward herself against demons. Until now.

The demon nodded. “You are part faery.”

“Well, duh.” Verity released her held breath and relaxed at the unsurprising revelation. “When Rook initially asked about my hair color, what part about my answer that it was natural didn't imply faery heritage?”

“Indeed.” The demon grinned genuinely. “Sometimes Rook can be a little slow on the uptake.”

“I have faery blood that traces back five generations,” she explained. “It's dormant in the recent generations, but we still tend toward some physical anomaly associated with the sidhe. My great-grandmother's eyes were violet. And my grandmother is half faery. But that's not a truth Rook needs to worry about.”

“Isn't it?” Oz stepped closer, and she shuffled against the wall, fearing the horns. “I will not hurt you, Verity. If either of us were capable of causing you harm, it would likely be Rook, not me.”

“Rook would never hurt me.”

“Not purposefully. He cares about you. I am impressed at his capability to love.”

“Why?”

“Why not? The man is without a soul.”

“Does lack of soul imply an inability to love?”

“It should. I give him the emotion and caring he requires to exist.”

Interesting. As dangerous as it felt to have him stand so close to her, she was warming to the demon. He was handsome in a weird way because parts of him resembled Rook—she even picked up the tobacco-peach scent of her lover, albeit tangled within a slight sulfurous odor—yet Oz was his own entity.

“So about Rook being friends with a vamp—”

The demon put up an admonishing hand. “I will not play your silly game of twenty questions. If you have something to ask of him, you will do so directly.”

Oz had been there when they'd played strip twenty questions. Verity wanted to hide her face until she recalled that the demon knew many more intimate things about her than how she answered questions.

“Now. There is more within that you hide.”

The demon leaned forward, sniffing at her skin, moving his face so close she worried again about the horns. And when he glided down to sniff at her neck, she felt her nipples grow hard and hated herself for that reaction.

“Watch it, buddy. I'm Rook's girl.”

“Do not flatter yourself, witch.” The demon's eyes glowed red at her. “I am not interested. I am a married man with a baby on the way.”

“You're a—how is that possible?”

“I make good use of my twenty-four hours of freedom a month.”

“That's why Rook wants his soul,” she guessed. “If he gets it back, you get freedom. And what could be more important than you having the freedom to be with your family?”

“Exactly. I must be there for the birth of my child. It is any day now. I will not be denied that joy. Rook and I have been companions for centuries. I have never disputed our connection or tried to force him to seek his soul, until now, when I have a purpose to freedom. You had the soul.”

“It was stolen. But Rook knows that.”

“Ah!” Oz reared from her, his body stiffening and his fingers arching into claws at his thighs. He stood with knees bent, as if ready to charge or perhaps in defense. “Now that was interesting.”

“What?” Verity couldn't imagine what he may have seen in her, but his reaction frightened her.

The demon dodged to the bedside table for the notebook and pen Rook kept there. Oz scribbled a word on the paper and turned it to show her. When she almost spoke it out loud, he put up a finger to stop her.

He didn't want Rook to hear their conversation?

The word he'd written was
vampire
. So he wanted to talk about what he'd admonished her not to discuss—no. He'd seen that
inside
her? Hell.

Verity nodded to confirm his suspicion.

He wrote something else.
The spell did not work?

She shook her head no.

“Four days until the full moon. You had better find that soul, witch, and let Rook take out the vampire who stole it or—” The demon opened his mouth wide to reveal fangs.

Verity stumbled backward, but Oz came at her with his mouth wide, as if a vampire lunging in for her neck. The demon stopped with his mouth only inches from her throat and chuckled out deep and syrupy laughter.

“Get away from me!” She shoved at his chest, but he did not move. Hard and as solid as the statue she had once compared her lover to. “Bring Rook back.”

“I'm not finished with you yet.” He grabbed her wrist and placed his palm against her chest as Rook had done that first night he'd found her huddled by the wall after the attack. “Something is blocking Rook from seeing your truths, and I will find that—” The demon hissed and swore, “Bloody Beneath and all the demons in Daemonia.”

Oz exploded away from her and snarled as if defending himself against an aggressor.

“What?” Verity pleaded. She pressed both her palms to her chest, only feeling her rapid heartbeats. “Tell me!”

Oz stretched back his shoulders, flexing the insane muscles that wrapped his torso. Her lover's torso. Oh, she wanted Rook back!

“You have an old soul,” the demon said.

“Well, yes, but—why does that freak you out? Reincarnated souls are nothing new. I've told Rook about it.”

“But yours is…familiar.”

“How so?”

“Describe it. What do you know about it? Tell me, witch!”

“My—my mother,” Verity hastened out, “she always said I was gifted the soul of a witch who died two deaths. That can't possibly—”

The demon shook his head and lashed out at nothing before him. He growled and beat at his chest, fighting…himself?

“Rook?” Verity called. “Is he trying to return?”

Oz stumbled across the room and slammed his back against the window frame. A horn clacked the window, cracking it. With one last growl, he fell to his knees and bowed his head. Horns receded into his skull. His hair shifted and changed to Rook's brown with gray salting above the ears. His body changed minutely, claws retracting and muscles rippling to encompass the slightly altered body shape.

And then he was simply Rook. A man, panting and huffing, hands to the floor before him.

He looked up at Verity and cried, “Marianne?”

* * *

Coming back from Oz always disoriented him. Rook could never manage to stay on his feet while the demon receded into him, the subtle shifts in the demon's body conforming to Rook's physicality. His mouth went dry. His ears rang. And the horns—it hurt like hell when those things spiraled back and screwed into his brain.

He collapsed against the wall, catching his palms against the ancient flocked paper. Inertia forced him to land in a sprawl. But what he'd heard Verity confess may have been the greatest reason for his inability to stand.

She was the reincarnated soul of a witch who had died twice?

In his lifetime he'd known one witch who had fit that description.

“Rook?” Heels clicking across the parquet, Verity knelt before him. She touched his shoulder gently. He shivered and winced against the last biting twists in his brain. “What is it?”

He clasped her hands, anchoring himself. Staring into her eyes, he hated that he still could not read her and that Oz had achieved such an intimate connection with her.

But he also came to a strange realization: If she were the reincarnation of Marianne, had his former wife somehow protected him from seeing Verity's truths?

“For what reason?” he asked aloud.

“Rook? Are you okay? You said a name.”

He bracketed her face, studying the details of her warm, rosy skin, her narrow, deep violet eyebrows, her perfect nose and open mouth. Scented like sugar and roses. Nothing similar to what he remembered of Marianne. His wife had been fair and seemingly frail but strong, so strong. Her eyes had been pale blue, her lips barely pink. Freckles had dotted her nose and high on her cheeks.

Everything about Verity was bold and lushly tinted with rose and violet. Yet…could she truly be a reincarnation of Marianne?

“Who
are
you?” he pleaded.

“You're scaring me, Rook. I don't know what to say to you.”

“Oz saw your truth.”

“Yes. But I didn't think it was anything remarkable. My hair—I told you it was natural.”

“Yes, part faery. That's not it.”

“The vampire bite.” She looked down, her face still in his hands. “I didn't want to tell you because—”

Yes, he recalled that strange exchange now. Oz had attempted to hide it from him, but he'd seen the demon write on the paper. “You should have told me, Verity. You think you'll transform to vampire?”

“I don't know. I thought everything was fine until it became obvious it was not. The spell didn't work. I'm frightened. I didn't know how to ask for your help. My mother said to never trust any man, and yet my grandmother—oh. That's not important right now. But you are intent on finding the vampire who attacked me, so I have to leave my fate in your hands.” She stroked the hair over his ear, her blue-violet eyes glinting with worry. “That's not what's troubling you, is it?”

He released her and pressed his bare shoulders against the wall, looking aside. If Oz were still out it would have made this easier. Oz spoke the truth always and with such ease. The demon had been right; he was the one who gave Rook his emotion. Oz handled emotion with skill and élan, never angering or blowing his cool, as Rook often did.

“We will discuss you and the bite,” he said.

“Yes, we should.”

“I cannot abide you becoming vampire,” he hissed.

“Of course not.” She bowed her head and studied her fingers, entwined in a nervous twist. “I don't want that either. I'd sooner die.”

Eyeing her sternly, he wished the fact that she had been bitten and feared transformation was the only thing he had to worry about. Hell. If he didn't kill the vamp who had bitten her before the full moon, she could change to vampire. They had, what, three or four days until the full moon? How could she have let it go so long?