Made for Sin (25 page)

“Not just scared.” He was sitting straight upright, leaning forward and grabbing her hand so she turned to face him, before he even realized he'd started to move. It just happened, the same way his mouth just opened and his next words just poured out. “Not for me. It—it waits, don't you understand? It waits for a weakness, any moment of weakness, to come out. And it makes me
watch.
It makes me watch what it does, it makes me watch even before it does it. Do you know what it was going to do to you in that theater?”

He looked her in the eyes, trying to see only them instead of the images the beast had shown him, was still showing him. He didn't entirely succeed. “I do. I know, because it showed me. I can still see what it had planned for you. Every detail. I can still hear you screaming from it—and it wanted you to scream for a long time. For hours. Days. You think I want to watch that for real, hear it for real, just because I forgot to fucking steal a drink one night or because I stumbled across something like what Nielsen had in his study, or that sword, or because somebody decides to come after me? Do you think I can—” His head was pounding. The beast, on the other hand, had stopped. It was listening. It was eager to get as much pleasure as it could out of his misery, especially since it knew this misery was its fault. It practically purred, thinking of that.

He ignored it. Once again, he'd pay the price if it meant she might walk out of the room with her feelings a little less hurt. “If something happened to you because of me—if it got out it would go for you first. It would find you. Because it wants you, and because it knows how that would make me feel. And I can't…take that. I really don't think I can.”

He fell back against the pillows, needing to lean on something. It turned out big emotional shit was just as exhausting as the big physical shit; who knew? And as long as he was exhausting himself—embarrassing himself, by saying it all—he might as well finish. “This isn't what I want. But I can't put you in danger like that. I can't. So I—I think you're right, that you shouldn't have to deal with this kind of thing. You shouldn't have to be afraid. I understand.”

The silence went on for so long, he started to think he'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he wasn't the only one thinking that this was a bad idea, and maybe he didn't need to get this out before he changed his mind. Maybe she'd been honestly freaked out and didn't want to be involved with him any further. Maybe she hadn't been interested in being involved with him past the ending of this case anyway.

After all, she'd seen the beast. Not him struggling to lock it in, but the beast, for real. She'd watched it tear grown men apart like a child pulling the legs off a spider, and had seen it laugh as it did. And its face had looked like his while it did that. How many women would be eager to spend time with that guy again?

Maybe what he'd felt had been all him. Maybe she saw him as nothing more than a casual fling, a guy she liked okay but didn't have any real attachment to. And it wasn't like he was in love with her, not after a couple of days. He liked her a lot. He wanted her, still. Wanted her bad enough that it took every bit of willpower he had not to leap out of the bed and kiss her. But it wasn't as if the world was ending because he wouldn't see her again.

So why did he feel so awful, and why did he want to turn away and close his eyes so he wouldn't have to watch her walk out the door?

She was waiting for him to say something. Maybe she was waiting for him to tell her to forget everything he'd just said and get undressed. He wished he could. Instead he said the only thing he felt like he could say. “I'm sorry.”

“Me, too.” She bent down to kiss his forehead; he closed his eyes and tried not to feel her hair tickling his bare chest or the warmth of her skin. Tried, too, to pretend he wouldn't remember it later. He failed at both. For a second, just for one second, he thought about pulling her down onto the bed with him and holding her. About telling her how he felt, and seeing how she felt—really having that conversation.

Then he thought about what would happen the next time he came across some item that gave the beast enough power to break through, and what would happen if she was with him when it did. The thought made his blood run cold enough to quench the burgeoning heat in his gut.

She stood up straight. Studied him for what felt like a very long moment. He couldn't figure out her expression: sadness, or disappointment, or regret, maybe?

Whatever it was, it disappeared. She smiled at him, a soft, quiet kind of smile, and headed for the door, where she paused and turned back. “See you around, Elvis,” she said, and was gone before he could muster up a reply.

Dealing with Laz was easier. They met at the bar at the Spyglass; not his choice, but Laz—wisely—wanted to meet him in a place he owned and controlled, and Speare didn't feel like making the trek out to Laz's house.

He arrived twenty minutes late, a deliberate fuck-you that he knew Laz interpreted correctly. The old man's smile faltered when Speare approached, and faded completely when he ignored the outstretched arms and sat down without saying hello.

“How are you feeling?” Laz's nervousness transmitted itself through the air. The beast growled. It hadn't wanted to come to this meeting any more than Speare had. “You look well.”

Speare didn't look him in the eye. “What do you want, Laz?”

“Why don't we have a drink?” Laz started to turn to motion a waitress. “We can—”

“I'm not staying that long,” Speare said. “What do you want?”

“To talk,” Laz said, his smile still fixed in place. “To decide what your role will be now that we know the truth about you and me. To—”

“My role?” Laz hated being interrupted. Good. “How about, I don't have one?”

“But you're my son. I know I—”

“Your son?” He shook his head. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Lazaro.” Laz looked worried. Yeah, he should. “Lazaro, I didn't know. I didn't know, I swear.”

Fuck. He looked at Laz with eyes that he knew were too dark, eyes that he could feel burned with both the beast's and his own anger. “You did this to me.”

“No! Not on purpose. It wasn't like that. We thought—”

“ ‘We.' ” Saying the word felt like punching himself in the mouth. “You and—and Mickey Coyle. Who else was there? Besides Nielsen. He knew the second I touched him. He knew what was inside my head, and he knew how it got there, and he was scared shitless. Are you? Maybe you should be.”

“You have to understand—”

“I don't have to understand shit.” That was true, too. He'd realized, over the last couple of days while he lay in bed feeling like he'd died in a latrine pit, that it didn't matter. Lazaro, Mickey, Nielsen…probably those other friends of Mickey's, too, the ones Ardeth spoke so fondly of. All of them in on that first private attempt to put a demon into a human body to make themselves a powerful slave. The only thing knowing that did was make it more painful.

Except for one thing. “Did my mother know?”

“Nobody knew,” Laz said. “None of us realized. We were just trying to summon one of the Unholy, just experimenting, trying to make a connection with one to help us defeat Van Itre—it was Van Itre back then who we were at war with, not long after you were born. We just wanted some help taking him out. We thought it didn't work, all these years. All these years I thought I'd failed to bind it to my blood, when it turns out I had….I just didn't know I had, because it hadn't happened the way I intended.”

Speare gave a harsh, humorless laugh. “Just an accident. Nice.”

“Please,” Laz said. “We can help you. Maybe we can remove it. I'll do anything to make it up to you—you're my son. My son, my blood. Let me—”

“Jesus.” He shook his head. “You know, Mom's been saying for thirty-two years that I'm your son, and you've never once openly agreed. Now all of a sudden you act like, of course, everybody knows it's true. How dumb do you think I am?”

“We both know I wasn't the only man in your mother's bed. She refused to have you tested, so what was I supposed to think? Haven't I always treated you like a son?”

Almost. Almost like a son.

Laz seemed to take his silence as an agreement. He smiled. “And this, finally, is proof. That demon couldn't have joined with you unless my blood was in your veins. My blood was used in the ritual. My blood—your blood—brought it here and gave it form. You're my son, and you deserve to take your place—”

“Is that what you think?” He couldn't help it; he leaned forward, genuinely curious. “That some blood in my veins means we're family? That I'm going to forget what you did to me because of that blood? Bullshit.”

“We are family. We've always been—”

Speare glared at him. “Bull. Shit.”

Laz stayed calm. He was a pro at that. “I meant what I said. My son. My seventh son. You know I've always treated you like one of the family. I've always taken care of you and your mother. Who paid your rent, your school bills? I did. And I was happy to do it.”

Laz had a point there, he had to admit. It didn't make a difference, but it was still a point. “Sorry, I'm all out of did-the-bare-fucking-minimum medals right now.”

“You can try to wound me all you want.” Laz did look wounded. Odds were that he actually was. It wasn't exactly fun for Speare, either, and he was the one with reason to be pissed. “It won't make a difference. You're my son. Your place is with me, and it always will be. Whenever you want.”

This had been a mistake. He wasn't ready for this yet. “I tell you what. You go home and get ready for me, and I'll be there when hell hosts the Winter Olympics. Hell is a place I'm intimately familiar with, by the way. I've seen a lot of it. It's one of the ways this thing you put in my head likes to torture me, showing me its memories. Thanks for that.”

“I'm so sorry,” Laz said. It was barely audible. The shame on his face almost—almost—made Speare want to crack. He might have cracked, if it weren't for the new memories overriding the beast's vicious and extensive library of hell experiences: Ardeth on her bed, Ardeth smiling at him, the look she'd given him when she walked out his door for the last time. That was what he'd lost. That, more than the goals and aspirations he'd had to sacrifice all his life or the things he'd been forced to do to keep the beast quiet, was what Laz was paying for. “I didn't know. I would have done anything to help you. I'd do anything now to make it up to you. Please, son—”

“Don't call me that.” He stood up, trying not to remember the last time he'd uttered those words, and grabbed Laz's barely touched glass of Scotch. “Don't call me, period.”

He tossed the drink down his throat, set the glass down, and left, not bothering to look back when Laz said his name. Whatever else the old man was going to say, whatever else he planned to offer him, none of it would be enough. Not then. Maybe one day it would be.

The beast shifted in his head, enjoying his unhappiness. Reminding him that it needed to be fed, too. Stealing a drink like that, from someone who would have given it to him if he'd asked, wasn't enough to keep it happy.

That he could do. That he could do with no trouble at all. After all, the city of Las Vegas spread out before him, all neon lights and superstition, every foot of it drenched in avarice and selfishness and hopeless dreams. It was a hell of a place for a man alone to find a little sin—even a man avoiding sexual sins because he was an idiot could find some trouble to get into. Something to add to the wickedness in the world.

And if there was one thing Speare knew he could do, it was add wickedness to the world. Maybe he could even add enough that he could forget the pain in his chest, the loneliness that echoed inside him. He would sure as fuck try, anyway.

The beast growled at him. Right. Enough self-pity. Enough with the memories. He tucked those into the back of his head, far enough back that he might even be able to stop playing them over and over, and headed out into the pale city night. He still had that. He would always have that.

And that, at least, was something to be grateful for.

Finding Magic

Unholy Ghosts

Wrong Ways Down

Unholy Magic

City of Ghosts

Home

Sacrificial Magic

Chasing Magic

Close to You

Personal Demons

Demon Inside

Demon Possessed

S
TACIA
K
ANE
has been a phone psychic, a customer-service representative, a bartender, and a movie theater usher, and she thinks that writing is more fun than all of those combined. She wears a lot of black, still makes great cocktails, likes to play loud music in the car, and thinks that
Die Hard
is one of the greatest movies ever made. She believes in dragons and the divine right of kings, and is a fervent Ricardian. Kane lives in England with her husband and their two little girls.

staciakane.net

Facebook.com/​stacia.kane

@StaciaKane

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