My Darkest Passion (9 page)

She looked at Harsh again. He was facing the window, so all she saw was the breadth of his shoulders.

“You don’t want to get on his wrong side. Nikodemus sends me out to do the dirty work, and no lie, you do not want to meet me if I have a kill order.” He looked over his shoulder at Harsh. “He trusts Harsh to decide who I take down.”

Harsh finished his call and put his headset away again. “We have a few redeeming qualities.”

Kynan stared right at her. “She needs to know what she’s dealing with.”

“I’m not an idiot. You’re demons.”

“So are you, honey. So are you. Look, before much longer you’re going to have to decide whether you’re going to swear fealty to Nikodemus, some other warlord, or go out on your own. In the meantime, you need to learn the ropes.”

She let out all the air in her lungs and sat hard on the edge of the bed. She had to work to stay calm. She smoothed a finger over the tee-shirt on the top of her stack of clothes. “I know.”

His smile broadened. “Get your clothes on. I’m starving.”

She took the clothes into the bathroom and cocked the door open. She stood behind it while she dressed. The underwear mostly fit. She wasn’t used to underwire bras or thongs, so maybe the fit was perfect. The jeans were her size but looser than they should be. The shirt was bright pink cotton with the word
princess
picked out in glitter across the front, but too small. She slipped on the orange plastic sandals; those were too big.

When she walked out wearing some other woman’s clothes, she got that ripple of awareness again. Harsh was back to tapping on his phone. She bristled at Kynan for no good reason. He wasn’t even doing anything. At least not until she started them off on the wrong foot again.

His lip curled and he growled at her. “This isn’t going to end well if you don’t learn how to control yourself.”

She licked her lips. “Whatever that means.”

“Don’t go thinking I’m offering to help you out because I’m nice.”

“Stop it, you two.”

“I don’t think that.” She put her hands on her hips. The skin along her forearm pulled and tightened, and she had the unsettling feeling that her injured arm ought to hurt. It didn’t.

“I’m offering to help you so you don’t hurt anyone because you’re clueless and ignorant.”

“Next time I get kidnapped by a mage, I’ll know better.”

Kynan gave her another long look, and she finally got that he was trying as hard as she was not to react. “None of that changes this fact: You have no fucking idea what you are, and until you do, you’re a danger to everyone around you.”

“Including you?”

Kynan moved in, one hand shooting out, but in the blink of an eye, Harsh was close enough to grab Kynan’s wrist.

“Enough, warlord.”

She took a step toward Kynan, hands fisted. The gash on her arm was bleeding, but she didn’t care. She didn’t feel a thing.

Harsh stopped her with a glare. “You’re at most three days past an assimilation with one of the Entelechy that should have killed you. You dropped five of Giuseppe Infante’s magehelds. Of course you’re a danger to him.”

“Bullshit,” Kynan sneered. “Awesome, honey, don’t you doubt for a second I can take care of myself.”

Harsh ignored him. He brushed a finger across her forehead, and she flinched, even though nothing happened except she ended up feeling like Harsh Marit was the only man in the entire world. Just him, he was that intense. “Five magehelds dead, Addison O’Henry.” His voice was gray and gold all wrapped up together. “And you have no idea how you did it. As long as you remain unsworn and in this…fragile state, you’re a danger to all of us.”

She drew in a long, long breath and forced herself to think about what Harsh was saying. He was right. Five magehelds dead because of her. She didn’t have any more idea how that had happened than she did what was wrong with her now. “I need help,” she said.

“See how she did that, Kynan?” He sent a glance in Kynan’s direction. “At least she can be reasoned with. You should try it. It’s not that hard.”

Kynan made a face at him, but he laughed. It wasn’t the mean laugh she’d heard from him before, and it broke the tension. She sat down on the bed, drained. Exhausted. Adrift.

Harsh tipped his head. “You’ll feel better and heal faster if you have something to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You need protein.” He held out his hand, and again, she didn’t take it.

“Suit yourself, Princess.”

Harsh gave Kynan a shove toward the door.

They weren’t even to the top stair before her chest got tight again and her panic welled up. She forced herself to count to a hundred before she followed them.

Downstairs and to her right, a waft of cool air swept in from the open front door. Late afternoon sunlight pooled on the floor, patterned by the closed screen door. She had only the vaguest idea where she was. Most of the drive here was a blank so she had no idea how far they’d gone from where she’d been held. She closed her eyes and assessed the unfamiliar sensation of the breeze moving over her bald head.

She could leave right now. The damn front door was open. She imagined herself walking to the door, through the beam of waning sun. She’d push open the screen door and keep going. Maybe she’d walk until she reached the ocean and the cold, salty water closed over her head. A shudder rolled through her, familiar now; that odd reaction she had to Kynan and Harsh, and all around the edges of that, the incipient panic of being alone. She opened her eyes and discovered her nose was inches from the screen door. Her palm rested against the mesh, pushing it outward. She felt the tug of those—beings? Creatures? Monsters?

If she left the house in search of help or a way to get home, she believed Harsh would send Kynan to track her down and that Kynan would do so efficiently and without remorse. Fact. Their first and maybe only allegiance was to this Nikodemus person. Another fact: she did not want Kynan after her. He didn’t have much sympathy for anyone. Harsh knew it, and he’d send Kynan after her without a qualm.

No. She wasn’t going to underestimate Harsh Marit.

She stared out the front door for a long time, thinking she could have ended up a lot worse off than this. She wasn’t still at Infante’s. She wasn’t dead. Maybe she wasn’t free to leave, but they hadn’t locked her in a shed and left her to die of thirst, had they?

Eventually the aromas coming from the kitchen brought her stomach to life, reminding her that she wasn’t sure when she’d last eaten. She went to the kitchen, but stayed just inside. Harsh stood at the stove with a wooden spoon in one hand and a beer in the other. Kynan leaned against the opposite counter looking smug.

“Awesome.” Kynan took a drink from his beer, and she was immediately on edge. They were two dogs itching for a fight. She had the feeling Harsh was the reason they weren’t at each other’s throats.

“That’s Princess Awesome to you.”

“Princess.” He took another draw on his beer. “Nice to see you here.”

She shrugged. “Wish I could say the same.”

“Stop it. Both of you.” Harsh pointed to the table with his wooden spoon. Muscles shifted and lifted into relief, covered by smooth brown skin that would never pass for anything but a heritage born of people who had evolved in a world of heat and sun. Kynan, too, had that darker tone to his skin, but not like Harsh. Not that shade of brown that didn’t have anything to do with sitting out the sun trying to turn gold. “Sit down, Ms. O’Henry.”

Right hand to the warlord Nikodemus. His most trusted advisor. Kynan was fire, and he burned hot. Get too close and get burned. But Harsh? He was mist rising from a deep, vast lake.

She sat down, slowly, because she remembered just in time that she hurt in places she didn’t want to think about. She didn’t want to do more damage to herself from her waking state of anesthesia. At least the blood on her arm was drying.

The table was set for three but there was a fourth setting on the counter by Kynan. A battered cardboard box with a lid took up one of the chairs. No telling what was inside. She found that ominous, that cardboard box.

Harsh turned to the stove and the smells and sounds of cooking food made her mouth water and her stomach ache. He brought a plate of soft tacos to the table and bowls of the fixings: tortillas, grilled chicken, cheese. Separate rice and beans. Oh God, everything smelled divine, and there was this moment in which her two separate states melded and the wall between herself and her physical state disintegrated.

For half a second, she was integrated between old and new; between her old self and her transformed self. Then, like before, pain roared through her, demanded her attention, and turned her cold and hard. Memories of Bejar scoured her and set her adrift in terror. She fought to regain that separation from the horror and couldn’t. A thousand places on her body screamed at the injuries done her. The places where Bejar’s unhuman body had scraped and scored and bruised. The more recent damage from Infante’s magehelds was colder yet: paralyzing.

Her vision went grey and hurtled toward black, and she lost her sense of where she was physically. No floor, no ceiling, no walls. Only pain and panic because she was in hell. Lost.

Harsh walked to her and pressed a finger to her head.

Flick
.

The pain went away and the otherness of the men once again pressed in on her. Her entire body buzzed with the recognition that they were not human and that Kynan Aijan needed to understand he couldn’t push her around.

Kynan growled. “You, princess, are in some serious need of control.”

Harsh came over with a bowl of chips and salsa along with a fresh beer for her. “Eat. You need the protein.”

“Okay.” She didn’t move. That was twice now she’d lost her sense of here and now. Twice that she’d been sucked back into that nightmare. How could she trust herself if, at any moment, she could end up trapped in her fear like that?

He grabbed one of the prepared tacos and ate it. He dusted off his fingers. “You see? Nothing but chicken, some cheese and salsa. All homemade, except the chicken. I’m not here often enough to have my own chickens. The cheese is from raw milk I get from the dairy over on the other side of the hill.”

“I know you’re not going to poison me.” She used a finger to stir the ingredients of one of the tacos. Hot, juicy chicken. While she did that, Kynan sat across from her. Her skin crawled. He was dangerous, no doubt about that, and she was going to fight and scrap and confront him until he backed down from his ridiculous conviction that she would ever touch her forehead to him.

“Poison’s not my style, honey.” He helped himself to tacos, then he leaned in and said, “If you’re dead, Infante wins, and that’s not what I want. Got it?”

Harsh sat kitty-corner from her but pushed his chair far enough away that he could stretch out his legs. He put his cell phone on the table by his plate. Then he loaded her plate with rice and beans, too. “Eat.”

She picked up one of her tacos and took a bite. At first, she couldn’t taste anything. Then textures filled her mouth, the roughness of the grilled chicken, the softness of the salsa. Flavors came on, and wall between her and place she’d carved out in her head fell away. Hunger washed through her, sharp and desperate. She put down her food because if she didn’t, she’d just shovel the stuff in her face. The monster inside her was hungry, too.

“Addison. Please.” Harsh rested the side of his wrist on the table. “It’s obvious you weren’t fed for several days.”

Kynan stopped with a salsa-loaded chip half way to his mouth. “What he means is we don’t execute people for being sloppy eaters.”

Harsh reached out and slapped the back of Kynan’s head. “Quit being an ass.”

“Yeah,” she said. She actually smiled. “Quit it.”

“Up yours, Harsh.”

“How the hell Emily tolerates you,” Harsh said, “I’ll never know.”

“I’m a good fuck.”

Harsh gave no sign of being offended. “Hardly likely to keep an intelligent woman interested.”

“We do fine.”

Harsh pushed her plate closer. “If you don’t eat, I’ll hook you up to a feeding tube. You won’t like it.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Harsh pointed at her plate. “I enjoy cooking for people. I’ll be insulted if you don’t pretend to like them.”

“Leave her alone. More for me if she starves.”

She picked up a taco and ate it in three bites, and she didn’t even care if bits of chicken and salsa fell onto her plate. She ate a second as fast as the first. Then a third, and then she picked up her fork and ate some of the beans. Next thing she knew, her plate was empty and she had no recollection of being hungry enough to inhale the food like that.

Harsh pushed her beer to her. “Wait a bit before you eat more. Kynan, you want to hand me that box?” One handed, Kynan put the box in front of Harsh. Muscles bulged when he did that. Didn’t do anything for her except remind her that he was strong and no stranger to violence. “Thank you.” Harsh took off the top and peered inside. “Plenty of supplies.”

Fascinating, the way her mind was dealing with her lack of pain, but dangerous, too. She could easily do herself harm without realizing it. “And here I thought torture wasn’t your style.”

“It’s not.” He went to the sink to wash his hands and came back with two clean towels. “Let me see your arm.”

She held up her arm and examined it herself. The gash was deep enough to be painful. Bright red and pink. It ought to hurt, but even when she concentrated, all she felt was a slight throb. It occurred to her that in her present state, she was unlikely to feel whatever they did to her. “Why bother? It doesn’t hurt.”

“Because although you’re likely immune to infection now, we can’t be certain of that. I’m even less certain of how well you’ll recover without treatment.”

“People aren’t immune to infection.”

“They’re not.” Harsh set a hand on the side of the box. “You are no longer entirely human.”

“Right.”

“Considering how slowly you’re healing, I’d rather not chance you getting infected. Or worse.” He pulled medical supplies out of the box and set them on the table. A needle. Surgical thread. Hypodermics and tiny bottles of liquid. He opened a package of plastic gloves and snapped them on like he did that every day.