My Immortal Assassin (6 page)

No one was exempt from suspicion. No one at all.

He had not survived hundreds of years by taking foolish chances.

“It’s no different than having a guard dog in the room. His presence is required for my safety. And yours. You know that. He would only come with us into the bedroom, my treasure.”

His hand delved into the folds of her body, and, well. Erin responded to that as he had known she would. Christophe shivered with the sexual response he shared with Sheth. He dropped her robe to the floor and proceeded to stroke her with both hands. From the corner of his eye, Christophe saw his mageheld stir.

He leaned in and kissed her mouth while he allowed his mageheld to seat himself more fully in his head. As he did this, she opened his jeans and slid a hand over him. Christophe was, after a fashion, addicted to the rush of a mageheld’s lust for a human woman, and Sheth was by now whipped into a frenzy. For Sheth, it was as if she was stroking his cock instead of Christophe’s.

He felt his mageheld’s arousal, touched through his skin, tasting with his mouth, all with a richness of sensation that had vanished from Christophe’s life hundreds of years ago. He shoved away his jeans and underwear to slide into Erin’s body, drawing from her magic, supplementing his own and letting his thoughts slip away. He knew what it felt like to take a human woman when his body was not. More than once he had lived an experience no human man ever knew, a pleasure beyond anything he’d felt on his own.

Though his body was human, he had made contact with the internal fire that kept Erin alive. Even though it wasn’t possible for him to live in another’s head, he had done so through monstrous abilities shared by Sheth and others like him, including Tigran. Sex with Erin through Sheth was like nothing he could experience as a man. Oh, yes. He was addicted to this, but he had long ago come to terms with his weakness.

Christophe adjusted himself and Erin to sink deeper into her body, and she accepted him. She accepted the searing eyes of the mageheld with whom Christophe was sharing his physical experience. She gave back what he needed, which was her complete adoration. He looked into her blue eyes, knowing that his mageheld saw and felt what he did, and said, “I love you.”

He felt the slight diminution in his power that was the result of whatever had gone wrong the night he killed Tigran. He had not understood then what had happened, which was that Anna, or Gray, or whatever she was calling herself now, had managed to damage him when she took Tigran’s magic. The woman now possessed part of his magic. Not much, but any part was too much. That magic might mean the difference between keeping Erin and losing her forever.

For that, Christophe decided, Anna Spencer had to die.

CHAPTER 7

Broadway near Baker Street, San Francisco

T
he first step to treason was easier than he’d expected.

Durian walked to the mini-fridge tucked under the desk. He wondered if he was mad to be doing this. Binding Gray to him with an oath of fealty was not without precedent. Nikodemus himself had bound a witch to him. There was no practical reason why he could not do the same. There were, however, myriad political reasons why he shouldn’t.

He took a bottle of water from the fridge and gave it to Gray. He had himself under tight control. He always did. There was little chance she’d see more than he intended if they did happen to link again, as would be natural, given that she was kin. The kin had long followed strict customs about what degree of psychic contact was acceptable between each other and with humans. Since the first trouble with the magekind, many of those customs now gained the force of law.

Gray twisted off the cap and drained half the bottle without taking a breath. She looked at him so steadily he wondered if she’d guessed after all the enormity of the step he proposed. He wasn’t sure it would matter to her, whether or not she had picked up on that. Certain humans were highly intuitive—or nascently gifted that way. She might be one of those. If her sister had been a witch, perhaps the ability ran in the family.

“I’ll teach you what you need to know.” With that, he leapt off the cliff into free fall. He
was
going to do this. There was no taking back an offer he should have run by Nikodemus first.

“I’m listening.” Her hair, he noted with a shudder, was almost precisely the same color as the couch.

“There is one condition,” he said.

She lifted her chin. Suspicious thing, wasn’t she? “Yeah?”

“It is crucial that you fully understand what I’m asking of you.” She frowned, and he said, “Perhaps more so for you than anyone else I might ask this of, given your history.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Meaning?”

“Your oath of fealty to me will be more binding than any physical tie you can imagine, Gray. Understandably, you have strong feelings about your personal agency, if you will. If you do this, there is no walking away because you decide it’s inconvenient or that you don’t care for the responsibilities imposed on you.”

“What responsibilities?”

“You will be obliged to support me. You cannot act against my interests without consequences you will find most unpleasant.”

“Right.” Her mouth tightened while she thought about what he’d said. “You’ve sworn fealty to Nikodemus?” When he nodded, she continued. “It’s common for the free kin to swear fealty to each other?”

“It is how our society operates.”

“All right then. I’m in.”

This was exactly what he’d feared would happen; agreement without due consideration. “Gray—”

“I get it. Fuck you over and it’s pain and suffering for me.” She laughed to herself but it wasn’t out of amusement. There was a hardness in her that made him sad, despite his disinclination to pathos. “I know all about pain and suffering, trust me.”

He nodded because she did.

She pointed at him. “I get it. Really, I do. You teach me how to deal with what I am now and in return I’m your good little soldier. Am I right?”

“There are obligations on my part as well.”

She cocked her head, water bottle halfway to her mouth. “Like what?”

“So long as you uphold your oath, I can do nothing unjust where you are concerned. I cannot be capricious or malicious in any requests I might make of you. If I were to be so, you would reach a point where you would cease to be bound by the oath.”

“Sounds fair.”

He let her surprise pass unremarked. “You won’t be without protection. None of the kin can harm you without repercussions from me. I assure you, there aren’t many who would care to have me seeking revenge against them.”

She looked at him sideways. “What if I kill Christophe? Hypothetically speaking.”

“I can’t be sure, but if you were to succeed, I believe your oath of fealty would prevent me from killing you.” He straightened his sleeves until they were even. “Which is not to say that Nikodemus would not later decide to punish you.”

“All due respect to your warlord, sir, but if I manage to off Christophe, I don’t care what he does to me.” She sat up and raised a hand, palm out. “I, Anna Grayson Spencer, do solemnly swear to be your loyal minion under penalty of perjury and pain of a gruesome death. So help me God.”

“Sarcasm is neither appreciated nor helpful.”

She shrugged and kept her emotions blocked from him. Gray Spencer was, in some ways, more damaged than he was. “It’s been a long day. I’m low on good manners.”

He let the silence close in on them. “You must be certain. You must freely accept.”

She let her head fall back against the couch. Her fingers curled around the half-empty water bottle. She whispered
Jesus
under her breath and then looked at him. “Define
free
.”

“Don’t be tiresome. You know full well what I mean.”

Still slumped down, she crossed her arms over her head and rolled her eyes, then she cocked her head and looked him up and down. Her shirt rode up, exposing a wide strip of her belly. “I bet you go for the educated girls. Doctors or lawyers. The ones with PhDs. A woman who can talk about science, history, and world politics and give you her opinion on the Impressionists versus the Modernists. Not some punk like me.” She laughed softly, then drained the bottle in one long drink. “You’ll make yourself want me, though. Eventually.”

She was astonishingly accurate in that, by and large, he did prefer the sort of woman she described. “To be clear,” he said, “I am not asking for a sexual relationship with you.”

Her gaze flicked to his. He was struck once again by the intensity of her eyes and the bleakness that lived there. She lifted her water bottle in his direction. “I’m not your type.”

The water bottle collapsed under the force of her fingers around it. She stared at the broken plastic. Durian got another water from the mini-fridge. The bottle was cold and wet against his fingers. He handed it to her.

“Thanks.” She drained that one quickly, too. When she finished, she picked at the label until she had a strip of plastic loosened. She sat with one foot on the couch, her elbow on her upraised knee, the rest of her body relaxed. Durian stood in front of her, feet apart, arms crossed over his chest. He stayed out of her head.

She ripped off the rest of the water bottle label and let it fall to the floor along with the empty, after which she leaned forward with her arms down, hands clasped between her shaking legs. The position made her look submissive, but she was anything but submissive. Nor was she as collected as she appeared. Her magic was all over the place. Burning hot one minute, cold the next. The traceries on her arm moved faster, a reaction to her unsettled state and proof of how desperately she needed to learn to control that magic before ignorance killed her.

Still bent over, she lifted her head and gave him a smile that made him think she was wrong about what kind of woman was his type. “Christophe killed my sister. He took away my life. What I used to be. The life I loved. And then he killed Tigran. And nothing happened to him. He has the same cushy life as ever. Where’s the justice for my sister and Tigran? Or me?” She sat up, back straight. Her gaze had no bottom, and he was, in all honesty, taken aback by such savage intensity in a human. “What matters is that I promised Tigran.”

“Then you accept the risk?”

She met his gaze straight on. Unblinking. She had extraordinary courage and that was always an asset. Her focus stayed on him with such intensity the skin along his arms prickled with heat. “You’re damn right I do.”

“Come here.”

She walked to him with a loose-jointed flow, perfectly aligned and centered. She had an athlete’s body. Slender. Long legged. With the kind of poise that came with knowing how her body worked. He wondered what she’d been before Christophe got his hands on her. Not the academic sort.

Durian pulled enough magic to be prepared for anything that might go wrong. “I’m curious to learn what limitations you have. Aside from your permanent physical ones.”

“You mean because I can’t change?”

“Yes.” He took a steadying breath. She was right about him. His type or not, he could easily persuade himself into sex with her. He touched her cheek with the tip of a finger. She quirked her eyebrows at him and gave him a smile hot enough to boil water.

Her taste in clothes was execrable, and he doubted she knew a Monet from a Manet, but she was still a damn good-looking woman.

Durian opened himself to her until he felt the beat of her heart, the pulse of her blood. The level of magic in the room increased, flowing over his skin and bringing his instincts into focus. Sight, sound, smell. Touch. Taste. Magic. Everything was more intense. More real. More everything.

Her eyes jittered and then went still. Her pupils contracted to pinpoints of black until her eyes were almost nothing but white and the arctic blue of her irises. The traceries on her arm and temple shifted into new whorls and curlicues. Tigran had been a fiend of significant power, and, he suspected, possessed of a magic very similar to Durian’s own.

He pulled hard at the same time he veiled the part of his magic he’d need if things went wrong. He was reasonably certain he would be able to terminate her even without an explicit sanction from Nikodemus since he would likely be acting in self-defense. “Closer, if you please,” he said.

She moved in.

If he lifted a hand he could touch her, but he hesitated. For all her size and permanently human form, she was dangerous because of her lack of control over her magic, not to mention the magic she had taken from Christophe. If he had to terminate her, he wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to save Tigran’s magic from oblivion. That might be lost to the kin forever.

Eyes closed, she lifted her chin. Now that he was looking past the mismatch between her hair and her complexion he could see that before she’d destroyed her appearance, she might have been more than a little attractive.

“Ready?” he said.

She nodded.

He rested the tips of his fingers on the bare skin showing above the collar of her shirt. He leaned forward, closing the space between them, breathing in the scent of her body; stale sweat and fear. A chemical scent rose from her hair, the lingering result of whatever process had altered her natural color. His fingers slid up the side of her neck, more slowly than he should have done, over her tense jaw, upward past her temple and then, at last, to her forehead. Her skin was quite soft.

He let his eyes drift closed as he pressed the pads of his first and second fingers to her forehead. He heard her quick inhale, felt her stiffen as he pulled his magic through him. Beneath his fingertips, her skin warmed his, and a trickle of her magic flowed into him.

Indistinguishable from one of his kind.

He was directly in her head and so close to an indwell he would be hard-pressed to explain to anyone why it wasn’t. He slid his hand up her left arm until his palm cupped her shoulder. He didn’t want to make contact with the traceries on her right arm, not when he was so closely linked with her. Not with the unstable state she was in.

“Gray,” he said. He waited until she opened her eyes. She did so slowly. Languidly. He stared into her eyes, recognizing the faint glow of magic in them. How strange to see the signs of her kinship while feeling, so viscerally, her humanity.

She stepped back, but he didn’t let go of her. He was still in her head and the truth was, he was aroused. She knew it, too. An understandable, perhaps inevitable, reaction. She was cautious now. Afraid of him. Her mouth went white around the edges; she had her teeth clenched so hard he could hear them grinding. He could feel her drawing in on herself. Protecting herself out of habit.

He squeezed her shoulders gently. Enough to get her to look at him. “No. You must be open to me.” He maintained his connection, though drawn down now to a thin and reedy flow between them. “When you’re ready.”

Seconds ticked by while she accepted that he was going to keep his word about not hurting or forcing her. Her head bowed, and he no longer needed the physical contact.

Anticipation made his limbs light and jittery. His body recognized the high and prepared for what this always meant; a sanctioned kill. The magic required was similar to what he was about to do.

He tipped her face to one side so her throat was exposed to him. She ran hot for a human. Arousal, he told himself, was normal under the circumstances. Every creature on earth had a set of instincts that ran so deep not even sentience suppressed the reaction. She was too much kin for him not to feel the desire to touch and connect, and too human for him not to feel the desire to possess. And quite female enough, thank you.

Nothing would come of this except that by the end, he would have a sworn fiend who was not directly bound to Nikodemus, and a promise to her he’d have to keep. He released a trickle of magic, just enough to allow his fingers to change. She sucked in a breath, and beneath his fingertips he felt the ripple of goose pimples along her skin. Her magic was a touch of ice across his nerves.

He nicked her throat. Blood scent rose sharp, hot and sweet. So sweet. He gave Gray the words to say. They weren’t precisely necessary, but they helped. In her case, they probably were required. She’d not otherwise absorb what they were doing. Words spoken in ritual and shaped with magic took on power beyond the surface meaning.

She repeated them in a low, steady voice. He knew she would keep her oath. She’d been loyal to Tigran, after all.

Durian was in command of his connection with her, an excellent thing since she didn’t have good control of her magic and her mental state just now was labile, to say the least. Her magic ebbed and surged. Despite her limitations, the fealty oath took effect. He pushed away his triumph.

Not yet done. Not yet complete. But taking hold in them both.