Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 (39 page)

“How?” Tentatively he reached out, as if unsure whether to do it or not, before eventually tugging on the edge of the sweater.

I could feel us falling into this push and pull all over again. Knowing you needed to cut something out of your life didn’t make it any easier. I wanted the friendship without the drama. But with Luc it was all or nothing. That’s how it’s always been with him.

“I don’t know, not something I can really pinpoint and say this and that, but she was distracted and just… weird.” I gave a helpless shrug.

“Last time we were crawling in vampires, this time people are disappearing.” He frowned, seeing but not seeing, obviously lost deep in thought. I chewed on my thumbnail, waiting on him to work through it. “That woman’s fears were real. I smelled her panic. But…” He rubbed his hands on his jeans, then stood and began to slowly pace back and forth.

“What’s up?” I asked softly, because it wasn’t often that Luc got this worked up over one of my cases. Generally, unless it involved a Neph, he was totally hands-off. Until recently, anyway.

“I dunno.” He twirled on his heel, pinning me with a hard blue stare. Unless we were gripped by Lust, our eye color wasn’t a glowing lavender but rather a cerulean blue. “I don’t know.” He grimaced. “Just this gut feeling I’ve got, thinking back on it. How do two people just disappear like that?”

“Three.” I lifted my fingers because he wasn’t counting the guy at the taco stand. “But whatever it is, I’ve got this terrible feeling that somehow this might all be intertwined. Call it a hunch, but I believe the Order is screwing with us again.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his jaw. “Let the games begin.” Clapping the doorframe, he made as if to leave, then paused and turned to look at me.

And there was a change in his look. A haunted aching filled his eyes and I swallowed hard.

“That night, when you disappeared. I couldn’t find you, Dora.” His brows twitched. “I couldn’t find you. None of them would have survived anyway; I gave them the only mercy I could.”

I sensed it was as close to the truth of what’d gone down that night as I would ever get from him.

I searched his cold, beautiful face and whispered, “I’m sorry, Luc. For everything.”

And for a second I could have sworn the hard shell cracked and that for an infinite moment in time he was as conflicted and unsure as I was. But it was so fleeting it made me question whether I’d seen it all.

He grinned. “Yeah, I bet. Get some rest.”

Then he was gone and I was alone, just me, Kemen’s sweater, and a head full of memories.

~*~

BY TWO IN the morning, I figured out sleep wasn’t happening. And though I was supposed to be scouting for an elusive zombie hive, there was no way in hell I’d be doing that in the middle of the night.

I might be strong, but I’m not stupid.

So I traced to my trailer, just long enough to grab a vintage bottle of cabernet sauvignon and that ratty old book Billy had told me to read.

Billy.

Just the thought of him made my toes curl and a delicious heat spread through my middle. Where was he right now?

Returning to Kemen’s home, I set the wine down on small end table and walked to the window, pushing aside the curtain as I stared out. The night was pitch-dark. We were a few miles outside the village, which meant we had no city lights to mar the splendor of the rugged, harsh beauty of the Mexican desert at night. Barrel cacti and dry sagebrush dotted the landscape. A full moon took up the center of the sky and a million stars winked back at me. And I felt completely alone and small.

“Billy,” I murmured, leaning my head against the cool pane of glass and allowing myself one moment that was mine alone.

One moment to remember his touch, the way he’d felt on me. How his hands had caressed my face. And yes, there was lust when I was around him.

But when he’d died, I’d felt any semblance of humanity inside me bleed out. And though there’d been so many questions hammering in my skull—whether he’d meant to kill me that night or whether he’d been there to save me—I could never let him go. Out of one toxic relationship and into another, it seemed a curse I was doomed to repeat ad nauseam.

I snorted. “You’re freaking sick, Pandora.”

With a slight shake of my head, I walked back to the bed. Uncorking the bottle, I drank straight from it. I wasn’t even trying to play around tonight. The full-bodied red hit my empty stomach like a sledgehammer, but it felt good. Woke me up, gave me the focus I needed to tackle this coma-inducing medieval read.

Cracking open the book, I greedily inhaled the musty scent of old pages and was just ready to flip to the beginning when a sheet of paper that hadn’t been in there before caught my eye.

Grabbing it, I turned it over and my stomach bottomed out.

This is an allegorical work—read between the lines, Dora.

~B

I blinked. Billy had been in my room. Probably tonight. I wet my lips, refraining from tracing back there just to see if he was still around. The man moved like shadow and more than once he’d given me the slip with me only figuring out he’d been there well after the fact.

Clutching the paper to my heart, I didn’t want to analyze why just seeing that
B
had made the warmth of a thousand flames move through me or why my skin shivered just from my thinking about him.

I’d had these feelings only once before, but never with this type of intensity. Taking a second just to breathe, I started at the beginning.

A
t first it wasn’t easy deciphering the wording. People might assume English was just English, but that so wasn’t the case. In fact, if time travel really did exist and a modern person were plopped into Middle Ages Britain, the language wouldn’t even sound normal. You’d think the person speaking had to be from Mars, or at the very least the Orient, I’d be lucky to get through it without developing a headache.

Not that I hadn’t lived through the period, I had, but trying to remember the rules was annoying, to say the least.

Take for instance
s
was always an
f
, while an
f
was sometimes an
f
. Yes, confusing, and there was more. So much more. But eventually the brain does begin to make sense of the incomprehensible and thus, an hour later, I was able to casually read along.

“
The fields are dry, the dust gray and aged in spots. Bedlam ensues all around. Man is nothing more than the animals we share space with. And yet I thirst, hunger for more. Always more. Wanting and needing that which doth not matter. To taste it, to hold it. My stomach yearns… and this ache only grows. I beseech thee maiden faire, thine fields are fulsome, thine mere’s plentiful. Whither thou goest, so too go I
… blah, blah, blah!” I snarled, finally tossing the book from my lap.

This stuff had to be the most awful bedtime reading material ever. None of it made a fracking bit of sense. So a young boy is hungry, there’s war (possibly) and he’s obsessed with some maiden. Great. I just loved reading a journal written by a Middle Ages teenager.

“Allegorical my ass, Billy,” I growled, realizing that I probably had an hour of sleep time left before I had to head out to the mountains.

I had no clue if Luc planned to go with me or send someone else. Honestly, this was just a recon mission. Which meant it wasn’t dangerous and I really wouldn’t need a babysitter for it. But I didn’t want to be an idiot either—the Order had already proven they were more than up to the task of killing me. For all I knew, there was some nefarious plot about to go down the moment I stepped foot in the mountains.

I’m a loner by nature, but it was that tendency that’d almost gotten me killed before. So I wouldn’t complain. Well, unless he sent Vyxen with me, then I’d probably squawk like a dying chicken about it.

I closed my eyes and with half a bottle of red wine in me, I was just about to slip into the dreaming when an immediate sense of “something” made my internal watchdog go psycho.

Hissing, I jumped from the bed with a long-handled knife gripped in one hand and squatted in a fighter’s stance.

“Who’s there?”

Everything was unnaturally silent in this place. Kemen had been a sloth demon, which meant he hadn’t liked any sounds disturbing his perpetual siestas. There were no metrical ticks of an alarm clock to be found in his trailer. This type of quiet felt immensely loud.

I must have stood like that for a good minute before I realized that whatever it was I sensed is long gone.

I frowned, knowing I’d never be able to sleep now, and walked out of the room and to the front door. Every trailer in this carnival was warded, meaning no one could enter unless I said they could enter.

The only one who’d ever managed it was Billy.

I yanked the front door open, sure I’d find him on the other side of it. But I didn’t—what I did find was a single red mum sitting on the trailer steps. I grabbed it and tossed it onto my kitchen table, locked the door, and returned to bed.

Yeah, needless to say I was lucky to get a ten-minute power nap. I woke up to the sound of a klaxon banging through my head. Tossing my hands out wildly, I tried to slap at the alarm, completely confused as to where I was or what I’d been doing.

Wiping at the thick stream of drool that’d somehow escaped my lips in the scant minutes I’d drifted off, I peered blearily through the dimly lit room.

“Good, you’re awake.”

Hearing that voice was like getting a direct caffeine injection into my veins. I was in instant heat, every nerve ending inside me pinging and bouncing in chaos and excitement.

He shoved his phone back into his pocket and I can only guess the loud song had been courtesy of a ringtone.

“Billy?” Yes, the Marilyn Monroe moan slipped from me; no, I didn’t mean to do it, but I couldn’t help the cheap thrill I got when his sexy-as-sin brown eyes went all melty for a fraction of a second.

He wasn’t wearing the hood today, and I was shocked to note his silver hair was a thing of the past. His hair was the same brown as his eyes and longer than I remembered it. It curled softly along the nape of his neck and made my fingers itch to run through it. I nibbled on the corner of my lip.

“Brown? Since when did you start dying it?”

Death priests had one unique trait among them, the molten silver color of their hair. I knew it was Billy, but he looked different. Not bad, just… different. My heart raced.

His grin was secretive and I knew he wouldn’t answer me. Someday I’m gonna make that man reveal all his secrets.

“Slumming it today I see,” I said, eyeing the scuffed-up jeans and black Guns N’ Roses T-shirt he wore.

Billy usually dressed a little more professor nerdy and less rocker slum, but I liked this look. A lot.

A hot little rumble tore from deep inside me; it was Lust purring to life. Billy was her obsession, her catnip.

He was mine too.

His nostrils flared and his brow quirked. “Hoochie looks good on you.” He smirked, crossing his muscular arms across his impressively carved chest.

My heart totally went pitter-patter because he’d
never
flirted with me before. Maybe I was finally starting to get under the man’s skin.

“Oh, you mean the fact that I sleep naked. In my trailer.” I trailed a hand between the vee of my breasts, thrilled when his hawklike gaze followed the movement. His body was suddenly tense and I got the sense that I was playing with a lit powder keg.

“This is Kemen’s trailer, not yours.” Listening to the gruff rasp of his deep voice first thing in the morning was almost as good as a morning
O
.

Almost.

“Oh yeah, that’s right, you’re following me.” Snorting, I slowly disentangled myself from Kemen’s overstuffed quilts and made a show of yawning and stretching, making sure that each movement showed off my body to his thoroughly hot and appraising eye. “You’re such a stalker.” I grinned, walking into the bathroom and slamming the door on him.

My stomach tingled when suddenly he appeared right behind me and his fingers were digging into my shoulders so hard it bordered on pain. I moaned, leaning my head back against his powerful chest, knowing if he really wanted to he could slip those fingers up my neck and crush me.

But that was part of the appeal of playing with a tiger. The knowledge that you toyed with something wild and dangerous and thoroughly unpredictable that could end you at any moment.

His strong thighs brushed against my ass, and his hands marked a fiery trail across my collarbone and down my biceps before stopping just at the swell of my breasts. His breathing was steady but deep. Each inhalation flexed against my back like a sensual caress and I couldn’t think. If he wanted to throw me against the wall and bang the soul out of me, I wouldn’t fight him.

“Look at me,” he murmured against the shell of my ear.

It was an effort to open my eyes, because all I wanted to do was drown in this sensory overload. My lashes fluttered open and the fire in his eyes stirred the embers of lust already raging inside me.

I gripped the sink. For weeks now Billy and I had been skating around our physical awareness of each other, only ever getting close enough to feel the spark before he then tried to incapacitate me.

And no, I’m not kidding. Wish I was. Billy knew where I stood. I’d never been able to figure out where he did though.

My jaw clenched; my nipples were painful, tight buds. My center was aching. “Billy, what do you want?”

Pleasure and pain. Pain and pleasure. It was what he did, how he interacted with me. He’d given me pleasure, now I braced for the pain.

But it wasn’t coming.

Brown eyes devoured me, memorized me. His hand moved lower, inching slowly, slowly down to my stomach. Anywhere he touched it was like fire. I burned. I ached.

More moans rumbled through my throat. Lust was screaming and clawing, showing more passion than she had in weeks. Nails gouged the porcelain sink. I couldn’t touch Billy. If I did, if I even laid one finger on him, the demon in me would flip. I’d lose my head and nothing would do until I claimed him.