My Wicked Enemy (6 page)

The air between them seethed, and the buzzing in her head started up again. Underneath the sleeves of her sweater, her skin prickled. She rubbed her forearms. “Well, to be honest, there isn’t much right about my life at the moment.”

Slowly, he lowered himself to the couch, straddling her with one hand on back of the couch. He touched her cheek with the side of his thumb. “I’m sorry about all this, Carson.”

“Me, too.”

He traced a circle on her forehead. “What happens to you if you don’t take your meds?”

“I don’t know.” She swallowed hard. “I’ve never gone this long without. Lately, I have to take them more and more often in order to stop the pain.” His finger started a line from the center of her forehead to the end of her nose. A burst of warmth followed his fingertip as he continued along the space above her mouth and then over her lips. Whatever he was, desert-fiend, liar, psychotic, he’d saved her life today.

“Can you get more?”

“I take several different meds. Mostly prescription. Ergotamines. Triptans. Isometheptene. Feverfew. We rotate them. When one stops working, we use another one. And then go back.” His finger continued down her chin, over and then to the underside and along her throat. She felt like he was drawing a permanent line on her. Marking her. She wasn’t sure what she thought of that, but she had the vague sense that maybe she should mind more than she did.

“You sure that’s what you’ve been taking?”

She pushed him, but he didn’t budge. He started tracing another line, above her eye and down, like a prison bar. For a while she was sure she was going to throw up, but she concentrated on the air around her and the nausea went away. Nikodemus kept drawing his line, and after a bit, she didn’t feel sick at all. Being this close to him made her too aware of his masculinity, of the rock-solid chest underneath his shirt and the hard thighs on either side of her legs.

“I think I’m addicted,” she said. Her fear took over, and the confession tumbled out of her. “Whatever he’s been giving me, I think I’m addicted. I’ve thought so for a while. You know? Like some kind of paranoid looney. I’m not normal, I know. Normal people have friends and go to school, and I’ve never done any of that. I’m practically the only woman in a house full of men, and I almost never have sex.” She laughed, but to her ears the sound was morose.

He started a line down the right side of her face.

“I keep trying not to take the pills, but I can’t.” A sob came up, viciously choked back. “I can’t not take them. But I don’t have my meds with me. I was stupid when I ran away.” She kept talking too fast. She knew it was stupid, but there’d never been anyone to listen before, and Nikodemus seemed to really be listening to her. He honestly wanted to help her. “I’m crazy, because I thought he was poisoning me, and so I left it behind on purpose.”

“He was, Carson. I’m really sorry.”

Her breath stopped when he finishing telling her how Magellan had been using her. And then something in her head just went
click
. How much help would he have to give her if she’d been poisoned? “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

He didn’t answer, and Carson had to fight off a wave of panic. She didn’t do a very good job. “Hey,” he said. “Hey. It’s okay.” He drew another line that went just outside the corner of her eye. “Remember my oath? We’ll find out whether there’s something we can do to keep you alive, okay? I promise.”

“How?” she whispered. Arcane knowledge about fiends stuffed her head from the incidental reading she’d done, all the time thinking how quaint ancient beliefs could be. Magellan had written about fiends’ names, ranks, titles, and powers and the objects that drew them. He’d described the manner in which they could be restrained, the worship they had once enjoyed, the precise nature of the sacrifices made to them. Words, inflections, and phrases that gave to or took power from them. All of it was stuck in her head, only it wasn’t some ancient religion practiced by a class of elites. It was real. Fiends were real. Even the ritual Magellan had been performing the day she ran away was real. Her stomach curdled. “Why would you want to help me?”

His eyes flickered to something besides blue-gray. He didn’t say anything—he just got really quiet. The air between them chilled. “You don’t get it, do you?”

She shook her head.

“I’m not letting Magellan get his hands on you again. Not ever. And you’re not going out on the street without any protection from Kynan or even some other mage. You’re with me now. I’ll protect you. Because you’ll get me close to Magellan.” He held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor, Carson.”

“Are you ever serious?”

“All the time, sweetheart.” His eyes flickered from blue-gray to green and, briefly, to glittering black. He played with the top button to her sweater, not even thinking about what he was doing, she thought, unaware that she was having some inappropriate thoughts about him. All he’d done was trace some lines with his fingertip, but her skin felt hot wherever he’d touched her. Her gaze met his. Could he be any more gorgeous? Apparently, yes. His smile was pure seduction. He unfastened the top button. “What do you think, Carson? The two of us. Should we?”

She blinked. A proposition. He’d just propositioned her.

“Come on, sweetheart. Can’t you feel it? It’ll be good between us. Really good.”

My God, she was actually thinking about it. She really must be crazy. He slid a finger between the halves of her sweater until the second button stopped him. “How do I know you’re not bending my will again? Making me want you when I really don’t?”

“You may be fucked up here”—he tapped the middle of her sternum—“but there’s nothing weak about your mind.” He went back to her sweater, holding the second button between his thumb and forefinger. “You put up a hell of a fight. It wasn’t all that easy getting in. Not until you let me.” He slid the button free. “You’d know if I was bending you now. You’d feel me pushing you.”

She took a breath, and Nikodemus’s finger brushed the swell of her breast. Her breath stopped again, but this time for a different reason.

“So, the thing is, Carson,” he said with a smile that turned her bones liquid, “if you feel like you want me, it’s because you do.” He’d leaned closer to her, and now her head was resting against the back of the sofa, and he was looking into her eyes. And his hand was sliding over her, cupping her breast from the outside. She could hardly breathe, it felt so good. “You’re making me hot,” he whispered. “Hot and bothered.” His hand was inside her sweater now, and more buttons were open. “Let’s do this.”

Why not, she thought. One way or another, she was going to die pretty soon. If not directly from Magellan’s poison, then from the withdrawal, and if that didn’t get her, then Kynan would find her and take care of her. Why not see what sex would be like with Nikodemus?

“I swear I’ll do it right.”

She lifted her hands and drew her fingers through his hair. She sizzled from the contact.

“Carson. Christ. You’re beautiful. You really are.”

For some reason, that made her want to cry. “You’re beautiful yourself,” she said. Why not have a real life before she died?

He smiled again, slow and sweet. “Oh, yeah.”

But then his cell phone went off, and he swore and reached back to snatch it off the coffee table and flip it open.

Even before Nikodemus said, “Talk to me,” she heard what sounded like incoherent screaming over the phone speaker.

Xia was good at waiting. Waiting gave him time to think about how he’d kill his own mage one day, if not the one inside Nikodemus’s house. He put up his feet and took out his knife. Rasmus, the Danish mage who controlled him, didn’t care about the knife, because he knew Xia couldn’t use it against him. Lucky him, Rasmus didn’t see anything wrong with occasionally releasing him from the prohibition against harm to mages long enough to take out some other mage in his way. One of the only perks of his life since the day he was betrayed was getting sent after a mage. Mage killing—his favorite job. Get in some practice with the knife, test its limits, look for flaws in the magic. He spent hours honing the edges to fatal sharpness. There weren’t many flaws left. Maybe tonight would be one of those rare nights when he’d be allowed to off one of the magekind. He let the fantasy run for quite a while.

About an hour after dark, the garage opened and a cherry Mercedes convertible drove out, a male at the wheel. Long hair. All right, so that was a surprise. But then again, he recognized Nikodemus, and no warlord was going down easy. Especially him. The mage he’d been told about was still inside, though. And alive.

Not long after the warlord left, a pizza delivery car pulled into the driveway. Some skinny-ass human loser got out. Xia put away his knife and sat up. He took care of the loser. Nice and quiet. He’d never remember what happened to him. He waited for the car to drive away before he picked up the pizza box and balanced it on one hand. “Showtime,” he whispered.

The mage actually answered the door. A witch, just like Rasmus said, and damned if Rasmus wasn’t right that she was limited. She didn’t have any of the attitude the magekind usually had. She was soft where every other mage he’d met was hardass. She had green eyes. Big green eyes, and she was hot, bodywise. Pretty face, too. Her eyes went wide when she saw him. Well, yeah. Xia knew what she was seeing, and he liked that she was afraid of him. Big guy in motorcycle leathers stands at your door and you’re some tiny chick with an ugly sweater that didn’t hide a primo rack, yeah, you ought to worry. Even a witch was physically vulnerable. “Pizza,” he said.

The witch opened the door to let him in. Was she an idiot? He stepped in. No surprise, the warlord’s house was proofed. The minute he stepped inside, the imps reacted, chittering and objecting to the mage-bond in him. Either she didn’t know what that meant or she wasn’t smart enough to pull her power. Xia got a little sexual spark down low. Was this his lucky day or what? She was just as young and inexperienced as he’d been told. Really young to have so much power leaking out of her. His entire spine sizzled. Oh, yeah. This really
was
his lucky day. The witch didn’t know what to do with her magic.

“It’s paid for, right?” she asked.

Xia improvised when he realized she didn’t know what he was. First, though, he needed to get past the goddamned imps before they ruined everything. “All paid for. Nikodemus called me. He didn’t want you here alone and asked if I’d bring it over instead of having it delivered to you cold.” He lifted the box to his face. “Smells great.”

She stood aside, and Xia gave her another long perusal when she wasn’t looking. Small women weren’t his style, but he could make an exception for a witch with a nice ass to go with her rack. He walked in, past the imps, and found the front room, where the light was on. “Don’t forget to tell Nikodemus I said hi.”

“He won’t be long. You can tell him yourself.”

“Sure.” He put the pizza on the coffee table and flipped open the box. Good pizza smell. Nikodemus went for quality pie. “Have some.” He took a dripping-with-cheese slice and handed it to her.

“Thanks.”

Xia stood there, watching her devour the pizza, and he was totally turned on. Well, he was a fiend, wasn’t he? He just naturally responded to the magekind. Her magic spoke to him, got him worked up whether he wanted to be or not. A woman with an appetite. Well, goddamn. He got it at last, why the witch was hanging around Nikodemus without taking him down. Nikodemus had a link with her. Now that he was close, he could feel the sliver of a connection recently severed. Nikodemus was one fucked-up fiend, making it with a witch and letting her live afterward. If it had been him doing her, she wouldn’t be around to talk about it later.

“Please. You have some, too,” she said, gesturing. “Sit down.”

“Thanks.” He got a slice for himself and sat on the couch. Not too close to her, no sense bugging her out. A fiend and a witch doing the nasty. Well, just goddamn. Nobody ever accused Nikodemus of not having balls or never crossing a line or two or a hundred. He put his feet on the table, unzipped his leather jacket, and slouched down on the sofa. She was done with her pizza already and reaching for more. He wiped his palm on his shirt and stuck out his hand, “Xia, by the way.”

“Carson.” She put her hand in his, and hell if he didn’t get a flash of heat all the way up his arm at the contact. He was improvising already, why not improvise his way under her clothes?

“I’m going to get a beer. You want one?” This particular improvisation required him to act like he knew the house and belonged here. He knew about Nikodemus. There weren’t many fiends who didn’t at least know about him: the only warlord without a clan of fiends surrounding him. Rumor was he was building up and the other warlords were freaking at the idea. But before he did anything with the witch, he needed what he’d come here to get. Get his theft out of the way, and he could improvise a little more. The only problem was, where the hell was it?

“Help yourself.” She shrugged and eyed the pizza.

The television was on, Mortal Kombat frozen on the screen. “You game?” he asked.

“I was trying, but . . .” She sighed. “Mostly nothing happens.”

“Wanna learn? Here, have another slice.” He leaned forward and grabbed a big slice for her. Then he took off his jacket and tossed it onto a chair. He was wearing a blue tank top he knew matched his eyes. She took a big bite. “Hell, did Nikodemus forget to feed you?”

“I wasn’t hungry before.” Yup. There went the green eyes, up and down his arms and the abs you could bounce a quarter off of.

Xia stared at her. “You’re pretty.” A true statement. She was, and he was getting worked up around her. Physically and otherwise. Except her magic was fucked up something serious. Nikodemus’s doing? If she was into kink, he wanted some. Bad.

Carson’s cheeks turned pink. Kind of cute if you cared about that sort of thing in a witch. He didn’t. “Thank you,” she said.

“After I get us a beer, I’ll whoop your ass at Mortal Kombat. How about it?”

She looked at him, all innocent like she’d never
pwn3d
a fiend in her life, and said, “Okay.”

On the way to the kitchen he detoured around the house. But he didn’t get any sense of the talisman he was supposed to steal. The witch was supposed to have stolen it from Magellan, a wily bastard mage if ever there was one. Rasmus was hungry and smart, and he wanted what Magellan had. Strike that. He wanted what Magellan used to have. Rasmus intended to get tight with Magellan, because whoever found and cracked the talisman was going to be one beefed-up mage and Magellan was the only one who knew the ritual. Rasmus’s exact instructions were to steal the talisman from the witch. Instructions that, come to think of it, gave him a lot of leeway. If he got close enough to the talisman, Rasmus said, he’d feel it like an itch under his skin.

The witch had followed him on account of who the hell knew why. Whatever the reason, he didn’t like or trust it. Now she was standing in the archway looking all small and helpless and a total wet dream for him. No question he wanted some of what she had. “The kitchen’s that way,” she said.

“I was just checking something out. I forgot something the last time I was here.” He felt a flicker of power, but it wasn’t coming from the witch. The skin on his arms crawled. Had to be the talisman. Had to be. The witch was looking at him funny now. Fuck. Did she know?

“Are you cold?” she asked.

“A draft, I guess.”

Her pretty green eyes weren’t suspicious at all. He went past her, close so that his torso slid across hers, which got him thinking about something else, all right. He got the beers and came back. She was on the couch again. He sat next to her, closer this time. She gave him a look, a little sideways shift of her gaze. He used his thumb to pry off the cap and handed her one of the Asahi Blacks. Then he did his. The cap flew off and hit the floor five feet away. Ice cold. She picked up the Wiimote, and while she was distracted, Xia let himself soak up the magic he felt coming from her. She didn’t even notice what he was doing. His belly did a little flip-flop. Nice. And this time Rasmus wasn’t around to stop him.

Yeah, a little tension because he hadn’t done what he was supposed to yet, which was find the talisman, but nothing he couldn’t deal with. He was feeling a lot more tension over the witch. No wonder Nikodemus had her here. He let her magic work on him. If it weren’t for the void in his core, he’d have been in some serious bliss.

He took away her Wiimote and put his hands on her shoulders, up close by her neck. Her gaze lost some focus, the way humans’ did when a fiend got in close. His leathers creaked when he bent toward her, and swear to God, he couldn’t decide what to go for first. The mind fuck or the body one. He could hear her heart pounding, feel the anxiety in her. Getting in ought to be easy.

“No,” she said. Her eyes were more alert than he expected.

“Oh, yes,” he whispered back in a voice intended to soothe and seduce. “You’re so pretty, Carson.”
Too fucking bad,
he thought. “I can’t figure out why Nikodemus would leave you here all by yourself.”

“A friend of his is in trouble.” He shifted on the couch. She frowned and scooted away. He looked for another way into her head and didn’t find it. “Cut it out,” she said. She brushed away his hands. “Either you stop, or you leave.”

“My bad,” he said. “It won’t happen again.” Damn, but she had some serious defenses. Rasmus had told him she was limited, but she felt like she had enough magic in her to blow away the Danish mage without trying very hard.

She smiled. “So, how do you know Nikodemus?”

“Are you serious?” He grabbed his beer and took a nice long pull. “Everybody knows Nikodemus.”

“All right, then, what do you do for a living, Xia?”

The witch was being so polite he could gag. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What do I do for a living. What do you think I do?”

Her eyes stopped being soft, and he sat up straight, hands in the air. She sure looked like a mage now. “I don’t know,” she said. Her magic cranked up until he thought his head would explode. “Pizza delivery boy? Model for House of Leather?”

Crap! Did she ever give up? “Don’t you know anything? I work for a friend of Nikodemus’s. They go way back.”

“What do you do for him?” She squinted and rubbed the back of her neck.

“A little of this. Little of that. Whatever the hell he tells me do to.”

“You’re a gofer.”

“Among other things, yes.”

“By any chance, do you deal in artifacts?”

He went still. “Sometimes.”

“I suspected as much.” The witch leaned forward, attention fixed on the knife fastened to the side of his jeans. “Like your knife. The hilt is exquisite. You really shouldn’t be wearing something that valuable. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it. Where on earth did you get it?”

“It’s mine.” His body had a predictable response, and he shifted on the sofa.

“May I see it?” She held out a hand. Just like a mage, always ordering people around. “Please?”

With one hand, he pulled his blade free of its sheath. Her palm closed around the lapis hilt. Her eyes got big again. “Ouch!”

“Watch yourself,” he said. He took back his knife. “It’s dangerous.” She shook out her hand. He had an erection the size of the Empire State Building. In his head he saw himself inside her, inside human heat and wet. He held the blade to the light. “Watch this. I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.” He took one of her hands and extended her arm. He was shaking with anticipation. How long since he’d done this? Knife clenched in his hand, he pushed up her sleeve and stared at the tracery of blue veins in the tender inside skin. The slender blades of his knife intertwined, wound around each other, each edge a thousand times sharper than any human-made steel. How many years of slavery did each of those carved-out edges equal by now?

Her eyes got big again when he put the tip of the blade over her arm. He tightened his fingers around her wrist. He wanted this so badly he was afraid his trembling would make him miss the vein he wanted. Jesus, he was useless. He got himself under control and stretched her arm to the side, against the couch. The anticipation opened him wide. He touched the blade to her skin at the very spot he’d picked out.