Harsh Gods (11 page)

Lailah reached out, and started shaking me.

The lip of stone crumbled. I nearly lost my footing, pebbles raining on the beasts below. I spread my wings to catch myself. She dragged me from the edge.

“Don’t go after it yet,” she said, gently leading me away from the vicious drop. Her voice was velvet strung upon the air.

“I wasn’t going to keep it,” I choked, not sure if I was trying to convince her or myself. The rapid rhythm of my heart lent a tremor to my voice. I swallowed hard against it. As she watched me, I swore I could see whole galaxies swirling in the depths of her black eyes.

Softly, she murmured, “You may not have a choice.”

A steely rush of rebellion routed my fear. “I always have a choice,” I snapped, more heated than I’d intended. The sadness in her features deepened, slim black brows drawing together.

“Do you?” she asked.

The anger boiled over, dozens of retorts bursting from my throat. I was better than that. I wasn’t a monster. I didn’t need that kind of bargain—excuse after excuse. The words shook the air with power, stirring her hair, though she did not flinch. She listened while I ranted, then finally, moving with a languid grace as if she were underwater, she laid a finger against my lips.

“Sssh, Zaquiel.”

I wanted to believe in the soothing, sensual presence behind that touch. Wanted so badly to reconnect.

“I barely remember you,” I murmured against her flesh. It was both apology and excuse.

“I remember you,” she affirmed.

My mind still struggled with her presence in this space. The cacodaimons, the windswept plain—all of it was a dream, and the woman standing before me could be nothing more than a bitter tease conjured by my tortured subconscious.

“You can’t be here. You can’t be real,” I insisted, seeking ways to poke holes in what I was seeing. “The Eye. Sal’s oathed me—I can speak to no one. Yet here I am, speaking with you.”

“You cannot speak with any
living
being,” she reminded me. “Every oath has a loophole. You can speak about it with me.”

“Loopholes,” I scoffed bitterly. “That’s something Sal would say.”

Her voice caressed like silk as she whispered to me. “This is really me. I’m here with you in this moment, Zaquiel. I am the Lady of Shades. Do you think death can stop me?” She reached up and trailed cool fingers along my cheek. I seized her hand, brushing it lightly with my lips. She tasted of spice and sweetness.

“This is just a nightmare,” I protested. “I’ll wake to find you gone.”

“So don’t wake up yet,
majnun
,” she encouraged.

She closed the distance between us. In the feel of her body pressed against mine, all doubts melted. My awareness narrowed to the heat of her flesh. I took her face in my hands and kissed her. Entire worlds were born and blinked from existence in the mystery of that embrace. Wrapping my wings around us, I held her close. I lifted her. She locked her thighs around my waist, and we danced, closer.

Precious, stolen moments in the space between dreaming and death.

Waking, I found my neck angled painfully against the arm of the couch. My thoughts staggered, sleep-thick, through the vestiges of dream. I stretched my legs—only to have the movement arrested by the arm at the other end. I wasn’t exactly sized to fit the thing.

“I thought you’d never wake up.”

I jerked toward the voice in the kitchen, choking. “Lailah?”

Lil scoffed. “Just for that, no coffee for you.”

I dropped back against the cushions with a groan. Sexing up my dead girlfriend in dreams? I’d
definitely
spent too much time alone.

“With the noise you were making, I thought you were having a nightmare,” Lil observed. I could hear the clink of a spoon rhythmically swirling against ceramic. Had she done my dishes? We’d used up the last of the clean mugs the night before. I peeled back an eyelid to see.

If Lil was being domestic, it had to be a trap.

The Lady of Beasts moved through my kitchen like she owned the place. She raised her cup and took a sip.

“When I checked on you, I realized it was an entirely different thing,” she said bemusedly, and she clucked her tongue, lips curling in an ironic grin. Her eyes were fixed on me. I followed the direction of her gaze—and immediately grabbed one of the pillows from the couch. I dropped it over my lap.

“For fuck’s sake, Lil,” I cried. “Privacy? Decency? Are they even in your vocabulary?”

“Zaquiel,” she cooed. “You act like I’ve never seen your little soldier before.” Her grin widened as she craned her neck, pretending to peer beyond the barrier of the pillow. “Well, not-so-little soldier,” she amended. She took a long, luxurious swallow of her coffee, gray eyes dancing with salacious delight.

I launched the pillow at her head. Her hand snapped up. She caught it. She didn’t even spill the contents of her mug.

“Do you ever quit?” I demanded through gritted teeth.

“No,” she said, and laughed. She returned fire with the pillow and bounced it off my chest. I choked back a series of unpleasant words that leapt to my throat. Angling my hips self-consciously, I swung my legs around and sat up on the couch. The fabric of the pajama pants was really thin.

Fuck my life.

“Don’t stand up too fast,” she warned. “You might get dizzy. Not enough blood to go around.”

I snarled at her.

“Why, Zaquiel, I was referring to the blood loss from last night.” She fluttered one hand against her cleavage like some blushing Southern Belle.

“It’s too early for this shit,” I grumbled, dragging my fingers through the tangle of my hair. Half of it was sticking up at right angles to the rest, thanks to the way I’d been lying.

“It’s nearly one in the afternoon,” she replied. “You slept
hard
.”

I smacked my hand into my forehead with a groan. “Come on, Lil. Really?”

She grinned, showing all her white teeth.

“I need a fucking shower.”

“Cold?” she suggested with a smirk.

“Shut. Up,” I snapped, stomping past her to the bathroom. Her maddeningly sexy laugh followed me down the hall. Lil could be such a brat… and I think I’d kind of missed it.

Shoving that thought aside to pick apart later, I got the water going. Cranking the heat as high as I could stand it, I peeled off my T-shirt and pajama pants and dropped everything on the floor in a heap. Little flakes of dried blood drifted onto the tiles.

Yuck.

Steam billowed from the shower, helping to clear my head. I pushed the curtain aside and stepped into the needling spray. One thing I could say about my apartment building, we never hurt for good water pressure.

I lathered up and scrubbed away the dirt and gore. There was a scar above my femoral—white, already fading. I tried to pretend that didn’t bother me. Not that inhuman healing was a bad thing—it was the cost at which I’d accomplished it. Taking a life just to keep myself going? That was a habit I wanted to avoid.

Replays of the fight flickered behind my eyes in wretched, gruesome color—the expression locked upon the woman’s features, the way her skin had blanched as I drained away her life. My brain wasn’t a fan of sparing me in flashbacks. I had a near-photographic memory—one more reason the amnesia was such a kick in the teeth.

I tried focusing on the feel of the water as it sluiced over sore muscles. That helped a little. I bent at the knees so I could tilt my face up to the spray. Some day I would get an apartment with a shower tall enough for me. Some day.

Turning, I wiped water away from my nose. The growth of beard bristled against my palm and I grimaced.
Fuck it.
I grabbed my razor, tired of people staring at me like I was an escapee from a mental hospital anyway. I made two passes over my chin. By the third stroke, the disposable made it clear that it wasn’t up to the task. I tossed it back into the shower caddy.

Once I finished with the shower, I dragged my old electric razor out from under the sink. I had to take a spare towel and wipe at the mirror to see what I was doing. Even so, the glass steamed up again almost immediately. I buzzed away the worst of the whiskers, grabbed the shaving cream, and bicced the rest. Then I examined my handiwork in the streaking mirror.

Aside from a couple of nicks on my jaw, I almost looked human again. Well, like a human-shaped person, at least. My hair was still a haystack, but I’d deal with that when I had time for a barber. Whisper Man came first.

Wrapping a towel around my waist, I grabbed my pile of clothes and slipped down the hall. I hoped there was something clean back in the bedroom—though given how little motivation I’d had lately, there was no guarantee.

Digging around in the “kind-of-clean” and “mostly-clean piles,” I found one black T-shirt with a Ravenclaw logo, and a reasonably fresh pair of jeans. Socks and boxers required some serious excavation, but I found a few pairs tucked away in the furthest reaches of my dresser.

I really needed to get off my ass and clean this shit.

“Zack!”

Lil’s tone was particularly strident.

“What?”

She marched to the head of the hall and stood there, gray eyes flashing.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I blinked stupidly at her. “Getting dressed?”

She brandished something at me. It was about the size and shape of a No. 2 pencil.

Shit!

“A
pen
cup?” Her voice cracked with emotion. “You’re keeping this in a
pen
cup? Have you taken leave of what little sense you have left?” The crisp afternoon light angling through the kitchen window caught the carved and yellowed bone of the Stylus—the icon of the Anakim primus.

“Oh, that,” I said, trying for nonplussed. “Where the fuck else can I keep it?”

She threw her hands up in aggravation. “A bank vault? A lead-lined case, at least? Mother’s Tears, Zaquiel, I’d have never handed it back to you if I thought you’d be this careless. Do you know the kind of trouble this thing can cause?”

“Could we discuss this once I have pants on?” I slammed the bedroom door and locked it before she could argue—because Lil always argued. It was one of her superpowers, right along with the ability to ooze sexy pheromones. I hastily finished throwing on the clean clothes I’d managed to acquire, stepped out into the hall—and stopped dead.

Lil was standing so close to my bedroom door, I almost crashed into her. She looked up at me, one hand on her hip and the Stylus pointed accusingly.

“I swear you need a babysitter,” she huffed.

I plucked the icon from her outstretched hand. She didn’t resist, and she certainly could have. Striding past her, I headed toward my computer desk. Lil trotted after me, working to keep up with my long legs.

Moving the cup back to its carefully chosen place on my desk, with a certain gravitas I slipped the Stylus among the bristling collection of pens, take-out chopsticks, and mechanical pencils. Then I turned to face her wrath.

“How long did it take you to see it?”

Her brows stitched. “I noticed it just now.”

“Don’t you think you should have sensed it the minute you walked through the door?” I persisted. I was actually proud of this work—it was the best fix I’d come up with, given the few tools and memories I had left.

“You warded it,” she said, realization dawning. Lil’s eyes narrowed, flicking across the lines of my desk. “The pen cup. The whole desk.” What she didn’t bother pointing out was the fact that she typically picked up on wards the instant she encountered them.

I’d managed something so subtle, even she hadn’t noticed it without me pointing it out. I counted that a smashing success.

“I haven’t just been sitting around and fucking off,” I told her. I gestured to the laden shelves around my living room. “I’ve got notes and theories scribbled in the margins of practically every book here. I’ve been reading. Learning what I can.”

“Funny,” Lil said. “From the sticky notes on your computer, it looks more like you’ve been playing something called
Assassin’s Creed
.”

“Got to do something to amuse myself,” I responded defensively.

“Normal people go out and have sex,” she quipped.

I glared at her. She glared back. We stood and had a glare-off as the seconds ticked by. To my surprise, Lil broke first. She loosed a sigh of exasperation.

“You’re missing my point, flyboy,” she persisted. “It needs to be locked away.”

“Where, exactly?” I demanded. “I can’t think of any place safe enough. I get a bank vault, and then what? I die. Who gets their hands on it after that? It’s not like I can leave it to myself. I don’t know where I’ll turn up next, or even
if
I will.” I caught my breath as that last part came rushing out. It wasn’t something I’d admitted out loud till just then.

Fear.

The attack outside of Lake View had really driven the point home. I was afraid of dying—of getting lost once this body was dead. Immortality didn’t count for shit if I couldn’t remember how it worked, and I wasn’t certain that I did any more.

Lil blinked up at me, and my face must have held some intimation of my troubled thoughts. Her own expression shifted through so many different emotions, it was difficult to parse. Finally, she huffed a sigh, pushing a thick lock of red hair back from her eyes.

“I see your point, Zaquiel,” she conceded, “but power attracts power. You’ve got two icons in this city now, and they both tie back to you. You need a better strategy than a warded pen cup.” She started saying something else, but then the phone rang. We both comically overreacted to the unexpected noise from my kitchen.

“I bet that’s the padre,” I said, willing myself to relax. Then I remembered that he didn’t have the number for the new landline. The voice on the other end was still familiar. It was Bobby Park of the Cleveland PD.

“Zack?” he said. “You answered.” He sounded startled. “I was going to leave a message.”

“I can hang up and let you call back,” I offered, half-serious.

Bobby laughed, though it seemed more from nerves than appreciation for my rapier wit.

“Nah. This is fine. I called to ask a favor. You free later tonight?”