Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 (50 page)

What if—

“Stop.” His deep voice commanded and my pulse fluttered into my throat.

I shook my head when his hands clamped tight to my face.

“Little demon, your thoughts are so close to the surface. Don’t you believe me yet? Have I given you any cause to doubt me?”

Grabbing his thumb, I closed my eyes. “Fool me once, Ash. I want so badly for all this to be true.”

His lips hovered so close, so impossibly close, that it would be nothing, nothing at all, to lean forward and claim them. To meld us together until I could no longer tell where he began and I ended, to make us one. But there were still so many questions, so much that needed to be explained, and until I was absolutely sure, I would wait.

“What happened in Hell that night?” I sighed, because I needed to know. I was tired of guessing, of wondering, of reliving the moment I’d seen him shatter in front of me.

Nuzzling my neck one final time, he moved off but didn’t let me go. He turned me so that now I was spooned against him, against his rigid thickness. I sighed, melting into his touch.

“I can’t tell you why I was there,” he began, “but you should know I was simply a catalyst. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been something else. No matter what, you were going to Hell that night.”

I wrapped his arm tighter around me. Holding Asher was like holding the ultimate blankie. I felt absolutely safe from the monsters, ironic considering I could be harboring
the
enemy.

“Grace manufactured a way to make sure I could follow you into Hell, a way that would guarantee my people would know I’d followed you in. I had no idea just how close you’d come to dying that night, or how powerful Wrath would be against you. We’d hoped that your own demonic nature would help prevent complete enthrallment.”

I shuddered when I thought about the father of all nightmares, the beautiful, naked man chained to the stones of Hell. Not as sexy as it might sound.

“I tried to resist him, but if you hadn’t thrown yourself on me, I doubt I would have made it out of there. I thought you were trying to kill me,” I murmured.

“No, never.” He rubbed my bottom lip. “I was working my way to you when I saw Pestilence hopping your way. You were overrun and I didn’t think I’d get there in time.”

His arms banded almost painfully tightly, as if he too fought the terrors of that night.

“Then I saw my chance to kill myself off.” He emphasized the word
kill
. “If I could have warned you, I would have, but I doubt you would have trusted me then. You didn’t trust much of what I said.”

“And yet I still totally lusted after your ass, so yeah, go figure. Clearly I’m wrong in so many ways.” I giggled and he pressed a quick, almost chaste, kiss to my ear.

“I had to make my people think I’d died that night. It’s why I created the Gray Man.”

I rolled over to face him. “You created him? You weren’t born with him?”

“No. He’s my secret and the only way I could safely get you out of Hell without alerting anyone that it was really me.”

I frowned. “But you’re here now. Wouldn’t it be a simple matter of coming to find you?”

“That’s not how we work. When one of us dies, we’re immediately replaced. Life moves on.”

“Just like that?” I snapped my fingers. “I can’t even imagine that ever happening with my family. They’d scour the earth until they found me.”

He snorted. “I don’t doubt that. Thing of it is, it was in their best interest that I die. Even if they did look for priests’ bodies, they would never have looked for mine.”

“Why?”

Frustration mounted in his eyes, and he gave the tip of my hair a gentle tug.

“Read the book. Everything I can’t tell you—it’s in there. Crack the code.”

“Ash…” I rolled my eyes. “That book doesn’t make any sense, and if you say it’s written partially in cypher, I need the key anyway.”

“Grace wants to have a meeting with you. A real one this time.”

I closed my eyes. “I don’t know, Ash. I believe what you told me, but I can’t just let go of this pain either. It’s like being told the guy the cops claimed killed your brother and is now on death row isn’t actually the real killer. I’ve fixated on her for so long that I don’t know how to just shut this off.”

“I hate to tell you this, but you’re going to have to. I can swear to you that if you don’t meet with her, the Order will keep you running in circles that will only wind up getting us killed.”

“Us? No, you mean me. You’re too smart to—”

“I meant exactly what I said.” His words grew thick. “I told you, I’m here now. Where you go, I go.”

And while that was a totally swoon-worthy response, I hated that he’d do that. I shoved him hard enough to make him glare at me.

“Don’t you dare act stupid.”

“I could say the same to you! Do you have any idea how awful it’s been seeing you nearly killed on my watch? Down in that cave—”

I glared. “Where’d you go that night? When I turned around you were gone and I was running for my life. I thought you had my back.”

I didn’t mean for the hurt to leak out, but I guess I was still sort of salty about him ditching me the way he had.

“I had my eye on you the entire time, and if you’d just done what I’d told you to do and kept your head down, that would have never happened. Do you realize how close I came that night to killing Chaos? I almost had her.” He shook his head, and disgust scrawled a tight line across his forehead.

“I thought you bailed, that you were behind everything.”

His eyes flashed for a split second, and then he was running his fingers though my hair and giving it a couple of hard yanks.

“Hey,” I snapped.

“Demons, you drive me crazy. Did you honestly think I’d help you out as many times as I did only to betray you in the end? That’s not a priest’s way.”

“Nothing about you is common, Ash. Nothing. And let’s not forget the multiple times you hurt me.”

Kissing my knuckles, he nodded. “Touché, but in my defense, it was always to protect you.”

“Which I didn’t know at the time. Why were you at Grace’s so long today?”

He cleared his throat and the playful teasing of just seconds ago was replaced by a serious gleam in his eye.

“After the cave this morning, the positions of the bodies and the way they were found, it disturbed me. It didn’t feel natural.”

“Nothing about their deaths was natural, Priest.”

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously, but even though a priest’s job is primarily to put down you sinfully gorgeous creatures—”

I snorted.

“We do occasionally come across others. Why display them that way, in the middle of a desert, where no one would happen upon them except us?”

“Because that’s how the Order designed it.”

“Bingo.” He snapped his fingers.

“Wait. What?” I crooked a brow, completely confused. “Why is that a shock, we were talking about that at the cave, but now you’re acting like it’s some sort of revelation.”

“Think about it, Pandora. The Order designed it that way. But zombies don’t belong to the Order.”

I gasped, feeling so stupid that I hadn’t made the connection earlier. Excitement bubbled through me. “A zombie takes its cue from its queen.”

“Exactly. Grace and I talked it over and we’re absolutely positive that whatever is out in that desert, it’s not sanctioned by the hive. And I had a second hunch, to go back and check on those graves we’d dug for them earlier. They were empty.”

“Empty? Again? Zombies don’t come back that way.”

His look said that he knew it too.

I scratched my jaw. “So if it’s not hive sanctioned and zombies are reanimating at will now, what in the hell is going on?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“Okay, so fine.” I shrugged. “Why did you go back to her tonight?”

“To get you this.” Rolling onto his side, he reached for his jeans and quickly dug something out of his pocket, then opened his palm in the slice of moonlight so that I could see the vial in his hand. “Those bites on you, they weren’t normal.”

“Normal is so subjective at this point.” I laughed.

His dimple flashed at me and I couldn’t help but rub my finger over it.

“You weren’t healing. There are ways, as you know”—he glanced at my chest—“of making sure that damage inflicted to an immortal lingers. But if you can get the antidote in time, the damage can be reversed.”

He smoothed a hand over my wrist where the worst of the damage had been.

“I can’t believe you were able to heal yourself—those bites were spelled.”

I nodded. “You’re telling me. I had no idea that Pestilence could do half the things he’s done, but maybe since his power is all about death and decay, he was able to counteract the zombie’s poison?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. This is all new territory for me.”

“So what is this thing?” I tapped the vial.

“It’s a brew, cast by a level-ten witch.”

I whistled. Level ten was no joke and not someone you ever wanted to muck around with. Back in the day when humans used to burn the
brides of Satan
at the stake, these were the ladies they thought they were killing. What humans never realized was that all they were burning were other humans. A witch, even the lowliest one, cannot be found if she doesn’t want to be.

“And just how does Grace afford to keep a level ten on payroll?”

“There’s a lot about her you don’t know.”

“Then tell me.”

Grabbing my hand, he pressed a warm kiss to my palm. “They aren’t my stories to tell. But you should talk with her.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

“You’re exhausting,” he said, but I knew he was teasing thanks to his mile-wide grin.

“And you love it.”

“I do.”

My toes curled and I really had no idea what to say after that. I wasn’t sure that was really a declaration of love, but it’d been something.

“So what’d the witch brew?” I asked with a voice gone slightly breathy.

He nodded, instantly recognizing my desire to not dwell on that particular subject.

“One drop will negate the effects of any hex permanently.”

I took the unassuming vial from him and peered at it. Often it was the most benign that was also the most powerful. “You know, Ash, thinking about it now, no one other than myself and Lynx were injured. Luc had scratches and even a few bites, but I saw them heal. I was the only one who couldn’t.”

His brows dipped. “Are you sure about that?”

“Pretty positive.”

“Lynx was butchered, and they were ready to do it to me too and…” My words trailed off as the obvious punched me in the face. “That attack was for me.”

“What?”

“Right before it happened, I was visited by an old woman who screamed at me something like ‘war is coming for you.’”

“And you think she was a zombie, warning you of the attack seconds before it happened? Why would she do that? You don’t warn an enemy of an attack, that’s counterintuitive to the mission.”

Now that he put it that way… I waved my arms in a defeated gesture.

“But you might be right. In fact, I’d wager everything on it. The Order wants you dead.”

“Just like your people did. Why? Why are our paths so entwined?”

“Read the book.”

“Argh!” I punched him on the shoulder, not hard, more of a frustrated love tap, but still. “If you tell me to read that book one more time, I’ll scream. I’ve read it at least thirty times by now.”

“Look, you frustrating woman, I had to do a lot to get Mary to give you that book. Don’t let my sacrifice be in vain.”

“You gave Mary the book? I thought…”

“What?” His full lips twitched. “That the Order, out of the kindness of their hearts, would hand you, on a silver platter, anything that belonged to them?”

“Priest, you’re toeing the line here. I’ve killed for less.”

“Saucy wench,” he growled and then nudged me with his knee right in my ass.

I swatted at him. “I think you like getting me angry.”

“Mmm.” He nodded, tracing the lines of my jaw. “I like everything about you, little demon. Everything.”

He had the cutest habit of repeating things for emphasis. Some people might see it as annoying, but not me. It totally made my heart leap and spin and crave to hear it always.

“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow, or I guess it would be better to say today.” He glanced out the window. It was well past five in the morning; sunrise was less than an hour away at this point.

“
Día de los Muertos
.”

Nodding, he tossed an arm over his eyes. Deciding all I wanted to do now was sleep, I opened up a drawer in the nightstand to tuck the vial into it.

“That spell works only once, so it’s not a perfect solution,” he said, “but now that we know you can use Pestilence to counteract those bites, consider saving it for when you really need it.”

I snorted. “You know the last time I got a gift from Grace, it sent me straight to Hell.”

Shaking his head, he chuckled. “Are you ever going to trust me?”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“And yet you still let me share your bed.”

Snapping the drawer shut, I draped my arms across his chest. “It’s because you’re so darn pretty, but the second you screw me over, I’ll kill you.”

“I don’t doubt that, little demon. Not for a second.” His hand felt nice as it rubbed down my hair.

In my heart I’ve always wondered if my need for love would someday get me killed. Hugging tight to an instrument of death is about as stupid as it gets, and yet I’d never slept better.

T
he village was electric and buzzing when I walked down its streets the next night. Today was the start of the much-anticipated
Día de los Muertos
festival. The air was saturated with the spicy aromas of mole, tamales, and the bread of the dead.

Women and children, even a few men, were busy at work in the many graveyards, decorating and painting tombstones as elaborate shrines to their dead. Mexico was refreshing to me, the way they viewed death, not as something to fear, but as an inevitable fate that came to us all. Rather than be upset by it, they celebrated it, singing frolicking tunes as they strummed their guitars. The songs sounded happy and upbeat, but if you could understand the language, you’d recognize these weren’t love songs, they were death songs.