My Darkest Passion (33 page)

She propped one foot on the dash and said, “I wonder how he does this. I mean, I can pick out parts of what he did, but some of it…Do you think he’d show me how?”

Leonidas snorted incredulously.

“Phone.” Harsh held out a hand to the fiend whose cell he’d borrowed before. When he had it in hand, he texted Maddy that they needed a new car. One that seated seven at minimum.

She texted back
O_o
and Harsh, in no mood, texted he’d fucking buy his own damn car if she wasn’t going to help. Her reply to that was
fine by me
.

Fine by him, too. Once they were in the city, there was money he could get his hands on that couldn’t be traced back to him without a lot of time, effort, and possibly a court order or two.

As they came closer to Nikodemus’s main house in the city the background noise of the wards skittered up and down his skin. The others were similarly affected. They turned onto Clay and now he could now pick out the distinctive psychic signature that was Kynan Aijan, and it was a scary thing to feel that kind of power and feel so disconnected from it.

He knew where Kynan was before he spotted him. Everyone did. Addison peered out her window. Gough was one way here and when the van pulled over, Kynan walked out of the shadows of a hillside park.

Since he was next to the door, he slid it open. Kynan handed over a large leather satchel and a set of keys. Harsh pressed three fingers to his forehead. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Arms propped on either side of the open door, Kynan leaned closer, his upper torso inside the van, scanning the passengers and taking their measure. “Not bad, Awesome, for your first ones.” His attention lingered on Tau. The two stared at each other. Kynan grinned and then glared at Leonidas. “What the hell, mage?”

“Thank you for your concern for my health and safety.”

“Fucking traitor.”

“Not by choice.”

Kynan pointed at the African demon. “You. You better not let anything happen to her.”

Tau pressed his fingers to his forehead. “Of course not, warlord.”

“If you do, I’m coming after you.”

“Understood.”

He pushed away from the door and locked gazes with Harsh. “Same goes for you. Anything happens to her, I’m coming for you first.” The corner of Kynan’s mouth curled. “Text Nikodemus before you go over there.” He cocked his head. “If anything comes up, I’ll send Sheth to you so text him when you’re in place.”

“Will do.”

“Replacement car down the block.” He leaned back and examined the van. He shook his head. “I thought at first you guys were a soccer team. Well, try not to wreck the real car, would you?”

“No guarantees.”

Kynan pushed away and walked to Addison’s door. He opened it for her while Harsh and the others got out of the van and gathered on the sidewalk. Harsh and Tau fetched their bags from van. He did a final check to make sure they weren’t forgetting anything important. Whatever was going on between Addison and Kynan was none of his business, but clearing out the van didn’t take nearly long enough.

“Am I going with you?” Leonidas asked Kynan.

“I have a few errands.” Kynan’s expression stayed blank. “Addison can drop you wherever you need to go.”

“You could always walk,” Harsh said. “Or take a cab.”

“Thank you. I’m sure you’d be happy to drop me somewhere.”

On the sidewalk, Kynan stood inches from Addison, head bowed. They were in public, but this was plainly a private moment between them. Harsh didn’t look away. Kynan cupped the back of her head, and she gazed into his eyes. She had a hand on his chest. He said, almost too softly to hear without Harsh actively eavesdropping, “Awesome, honey, I’ll call you when I can.”

She nodded, and he gave her a quick kiss on the mouth. He tightened his hand on her head and brought her closer. He glanced at Harsh before looking back at Addison. “Take care of him, warlord.”

She smiled at Kynan and nodded, and it struck Harsh that they really, truly had been sexual intimates, that they did care about each other. He didn’t like not knowing whether those feelings might mean they’d try to resolve whatever had broken them apart the first time.

Addison and Kynan were none of his business. None. If those two had a future, so be it. He wasn’t going to let that possibility take the joy out of what he and Addison had now.

Kynan stepped back, and when he looked over, Harsh gave him one more tight nod before he pushed the fob button. Lights flashed on an SUV parked several spaces down Gough Street. A Yukon Hybrid. Nice. And big enough to hold them all without uncomfortable closeness. He and Tau threw their duffles in the back, then Harsh keyed open the car, and everyone piled in. Harsh took the driver’s seat. Full tank of gas and all the amenities you could want in a car. When Addison was in, he handed the satchel to her and familiarized himself with the car’s controls. Someone in the back groaned when he tuned the radio to NPR.

“Too bad,” he said. “I’m driving, I get to pick the station.”

Leonidas said, “Just kill us now.”

“That won’t be a problem. Ouch.” That last was because Addison punched him in the arm.

While they drove north out of the city, he sent a look in Addison’s direction. When he had her attention, he said in as private a voice as possible over the sounds of the news. “Tiburon first, yes?”

“Yes.”

They were in Tiburon in half an hour.

35

H
arsh turned off the ignition, but returned his hands to the steering wheel without taking out the key. No one in the SUV moved. The effect of being this close to Nikodemus was overwhelming. Power flowed around them in an invisible, beautiful, alluring river of threat. From everything he’d deduced or inferred during his travels, there hadn’t been a warlord as strong as Nikodemus in several hundred years. And no warlord in the past two or three centuries had come close to consolidating power the way he had.

“Wow,” Addison said in a low voice. “I don’t remember this from last time. Was I just that clueless?”

“He’s concentrated his power since then.” He kept his eyes fixed on the house. He’d been here as a mageheld and as one of the first of Nikodemus’s sworn kin. Same million dollar view, all of it as familiar to him as his own home. More, considering he’d spent more time here than in any other place since he’d regained his freedom. He recognized one of the Jags in the driveway as well as the beat-up Chevy Pickup that was Iskander’s pride and joy.

How strange to be an outsider at a place that had once been as much his as Nikodemus’s. Stranger yet was knowing his first allegiance was to Addison, not Nikodemus, and that he was savagely glad for that to be so. She was new to this world, yet she’d stepped in and proved herself worthy of respect and loyalty.

Addison popped her seatbelt and turned around, kneeling with her arms propped on the seat back. “Hey, Leonidas. I don’t want to sound like a total asshole, but here goes, okay?”

The mage made a
go on
gesture with one hand. Normally, Harsh would have had at least a low-level connection to Leonidas. But without their common, direct link to Nikodemus, that kind of access without consent was bad form and perilously close to breaking the rules. More disconcerting still, his other magic reacted to Leonidas. Both of them mages.

“I don’t know what your deal with Nikodemus is going to be, but if you need or want my support, you have it. If he needs anyone to confirm what happened to you, we all saw, so ask any of us.”

“I appreciate the offer.”

“If there’s anything you want me to say or not say, let me know. I mean, I won’t lie. I’m just saying, you do what you need to where Nikodemus is concerned. I have your back, all right?”

“Thank you.”

She looked around the interior of the car. “Can you guys give Harsh and me a minute here? Don’t go far. I don’t know this place very well, and I want you close by.”

When the others were waiting on the driveway, Addison faced front again. Outside, Tau arranged the others in defensive positions with respect to the car. The vehicle rocked when one of her sworn kin leapt onto the roof. Tau had his head on straight. Harsh approved. Tau would be a good replacement for him when he was no longer sworn to Addison.

Now, she didn’t touch him, and she was keeping herself locked down. Not vanilla, but there was no link between them. “You okay, Harsh?”

He stared out the front window. “I used to walk in there without anything on my mind but the news I had for him. Or whatever business I had there. I don’t know where I stand with Nikodemus or any of the others. It’s disconcerting.” He squeezed the steering wheel. “I feel I have betrayed Nikodemus.”

“You didn’t. I’ll make sure Nikodemus knows that.”

“And the others. Kynan, Iskander. All of them. They’re the only family I have.”

“We’re going to fix that.”

He stared out the window. “So you are.”

“I promised.”

“I know that. So, why?” he asked, “am I in no hurry to go inside and do the needful?”

She propped her feet on the dashboard. “Because change sucks?”

“I don’t think that’s it.”

“Did for me. The last time I was here, I had no idea what to expect. I got to go home, true, but it wasn’t the same for me. Nothing was the same. Heck, blue hair, right?”

He reached out and took a lock of her hair in his head. “Bald worked for you, but I like you with hair. I even like the blue.”

A smile flashed across her face, and he admired her for that, for being able to smile like that. She looked over at him and let go of the door. “Hey.” She touched his shoulder. “This is just another step in our path, Harsh. I can do for you what nobody could for me; give you back your old life.”

“What if I don’t want that?”

She searched his face. Like him, having grown up among humans, she was skilled at reading expressions. “There’s no reason for you to give up anything. Not Nikodemus, and not me.”

“Breaking my oath to you will change everything. It will change how you feel about me in ways you can’t imagine.”

She went silent for too long. “Maddy said to get you here, and I’ve done that. She said I should take care of you, and I’m not so sure I did enough about that.”

“I have no complaints.”

“I promised, and you agreed, that you’d be bound to me until I could get you here to Nikodemus.”

“And your other promise?”

She lifted a hand in frustration. “We’re here. Nikodemus will fix everything.”

“Not that promise.” He stayed in this present, where his bond with Addison was right and strong, and made him whole, better than whole, in a way he’d not felt since before Iskander and Fen.

She shook her head, confusion etched on her face. “Wait, what one do you mean?”

“About your other piercing.” He brushed his fingertips across the upper swell of her breast.

“Oh.” Her cheeks turned pink. “No. I don’t think so. I’m not reneging, I mean. If that’s something that interests you. But that’s not dependent on anything else between us. Other than us having future sex, obviously. Well, not this hypothetical sex, because, I’ll be honest, no piercings just for sex.”

“How disappointing.”

“I guess I might for really great sex. But it would have to be really, really great.”

“Agreed.”

Again, she frowned, and he watched her come to a decision. His chest tightened. “Harsh. I was hot for you before any oath. I’ll be hot for you after. It’ll be better, even, because you’ll doing your work for Nikodemus, too.”

“It’s difficult,” he said, “to separate what I want from my oath to you. And if you were here—” he tapped his temple “—you would be as uncertain as I am now.”

That got her direct, intense, attention. “That’s the point. The whole point. We can’t tell the difference.”

“Addison—”

”Don’t you Addison me, Harsh Marit.”

“Warlord.”

“I’ll figure out how to release you now, if that’s that you want.”

He pulled the keys from the ignition, then faced her. She was more conscientious about the impact of her actions than a lot of other warlords, and he respected that. “No. Not particularly.”

“Well, I want to.”

The tightness in his chest got worse.

“That’s the point of a promise,” she said. “You keep it even when it’s inconvenient. Otherwise it’s easy, and nobody needed to promise anything.”

“Is it that easy to give this up?”

“No. Besides, what makes you think you’d be giving up us? You can have your life back, Harsh. I can give that back to you.”

He leaned close and curled his hand around the back of her neck. Right before he closed his eyes, he felt and saw Tau’s smirk. He kissed her forehead. This mattered to her, and his heart twisted around in his chest because she wanted the best for him. They ended up with their foreheads pressed together while he said what had been building in him for days. Months. Maybe from the moment he first saw her. “I love you, Addison O’Henry.”

She put a hand around his neck, too. “We’ll make it work, you’ll see.”

When they separated, he drew a deep breath. “We made it this far.”

“Couple of times I wasn’t sure we would.” She gave another brilliant smile. “We can make it fifty feet more.”

“I never doubted you.”

She put her feet down and rested one hand on the door release. “It means a lot to me, you know. You believing—”

Seconds before Tau and the others went on alert, she straightened. His own reaction came on the heels of hers. The front door of the mansion opened and Kynan Aijan walked out. She hopped out of the car, and Harsh did the same, all his protective instincts triggered despite knowing Kynan wouldn’t attack. Once Tau and the others were convinced Kynan wasn’t a threat, the tension levels went down, and so did his.

“Kynan,” Addison said. “Your lead foot is going to get you in trouble one of these days.”

The warlord walked into the center of the driveway and she met him there. They embraced, her arms right around him. Kynan kissed the top of her head. “Got me here in time, didn’t it?”

She stepped away. “I need a favor.”

“Anything for you, honey. You know that.”