Temptation, Chronicles of the Fallen, Book 3 (8 page)

“No! Okay? No. But I have to figure this out. My life, my responsibilities might not mean squat to you, but they’re mine. And they mean something to me. I can’t just duck out without a word, without an explanation. My job is important to me. People depend on me.”

Christ on a crutch, the woman was aggravating. He was trying to save her life here, and she was worried about her double damned summer school classes.

“Look,
darlin’
,” he ground out, holding on to his patience like a dying man clutched at his rosary. “I’m not taking you back to Portland. I might as well tie you up with a bow and deliver you straight to Stolas’s doorstep, save him the trouble of sending someone else after you.”

“One more time,” she bit out, “I am not your ‘darlin’’.” Temper sparked as she stood up. Regal and cool as a queen, she demanded, “Show me to a room. I need to think, need to figure this out, and I can’t do that with you nagging at me. But you’d better understand, this is only temporary.” That being said, she stomped over and jerked the door open, then stood there, chin up, back ramrod straight as she waited expectantly for him to get up.

Nagging? Nagging!

He was surprised steam wasn’t rolling from his ears by now, fire spewing from his nostrils.

Gideon had half a mind to just shimmer her there. Partly to just get rid of her, partly just to piss her off. But he didn’t relish the tantrum that was sure to follow. With a growl, he shoved to his feet and strode past her.

“This way, your highness,” he grumbled.

Taking the steps two at a time, all shreds of chivalry stretched to the limit, he didn’t care if she fell behind. At the top of the steps, he turned right and strode to the end of the long hall, placing her as far from his own bedroom as possible.

But at the door, he paused and his conscience started to eat at him. She hadn’t asked for any of this, he reminded himself, hadn’t asked to have Michael as her father. Hadn’t asked to become a pawn in a deadly game of good versus evil.

Drawing a calming breath, he opened the door and stepped inside. Moth-chewed dustcloths covered the old furniture. Cobwebs and grime coated everything. The windows were too filthy to see through, the drapes sagging and riddled with holes. No one had occupied this room in over a hundred years. There wasn’t even a bathroom.

It was then that he truly realized how badly he’d let the house go. When he’d first taken up residence, he’d brought everything back to its original grandeur. But that had been long ago. Years of demon hunting, decades of failed attempts to thwart his curse, had not been kind, to him or to his home. Looking at the place now, through fresh eyes, he could see that years of neglect and disuse to many—most, if he were honest—of the rooms had taken their toll.

For a moment, resentment fluttered in his breast. None of it should matter one bit. The Halfling was the only thing standing between him and his escape into Oblivion.

Just as quickly, he snuffed that resentment out. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t the Halfling’s fault. It was the mission. Not fair to hold her personally responsible, yet that was what he’d been doing. Yes, she was…difficult to deal with. But wouldn’t he be the same in similar circumstances?

He could conjure the room clean, could conjure an adjoining bath, but it would sap his strength, and right now he was on his own there. He didn’t know what kind of threat they were facing, and weakening himself for something so inconsequential seemed like a stupid move. Not when there were other alternatives available.

Oh, hell.

Who was he trying to fool here anyway? He might not be able to hold her in his arms as he wanted, or make love to her like he had all the time in the world and two hundred plus years of lust to burn, but the idea of her sleeping in his bed was erotic as hell.

It would be as close as he would ever come to having her for himself.

What else did he have to look forward to, besides Oblivion?

He strode back down the hallway toward her.

“This way,” he mumbled as he passed her, proud of his controlled tone.

She stopped in her tracks and turned to follow him once again. He was only thankful she hadn’t made some snide comment about getting lost in his own house. If she had, he probably would have left her in the dingy bedroom, wouldn’t even have made the effort to clean it up. As it was, he led her into his own room, kicking himself every step of the way. This was such a bad idea on so many levels.

As soon as he opened the door, he was faced with the shambles of his own bedroom and realized he had no choice. Clean this bedroom or clean the other. Given the vast state of neglect in the guest room, his room would be far less work. At least that was what he tried to convince himself of. That it was more a question of effort and expended energy rather than some sick need to know it was
his
bedroom she would be living in,
his
shower she would be naked in.
His
bed she would sleep in. He quickly conjured the room and adjoining bathroom spotless, replacing the bedding, towels and toiletries while he was at it.

He’d been reduced from feared demon hunter to housekeeper.

Welcome to Hotel Gideon.

“The bathroom’s in there,” he said, pointing to the door on the far wall. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be downstairs in the study if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” she said stiffly, standing in the middle of the room, looking forlorn. Unable to offer her the kind of comfort he wanted to, he stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

Gideon stood there for a long moment, his head tilted back and shoulders pressed against the door. He recalled how she looked, standing there in the middle of his bedroom. The rightness of it—of having her there, surrounded by his things—staggered him. That damned word,
his
, kept whispering through his mind. Need coiled tight in his gut, longing nearly crushed his chest.

But he couldn’t have her.

Lust turned to resentment, resentment to anger.

Rage began to swell. His hands shook with it. His palms stung with the urge to form plasma balls and burn the place down. His skin stretched taut. His muscles began to burn and ache as the beast inside clawed for freedom. She would never be his.

And then he heard it. A muffled sob. Gideon turned and tipped his forehead to the door, pressed his palm to the cold hard wood and closed his eyes once more. His entire body tightened with a different kind of need. A need he’d had precious little experience with. The need to comfort. The beast inside settled back on its haunches with a bewildered growl. No longer did it want to come out, no longer did it thirst for blood.

Instead, it trembled with…worry? Uncertainty? He could hardly fathom it.

He heard the bed give the slightest squeak as it accepted her meager weight. Her cries were a little louder now, but still muffled, as though smothered in a pillow. But he could hear them through the feathers and through the wood. He felt them in the black hole where his soul used to be. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Couldn’t hold her as he wanted, couldn’t soothe her with the touch of his hand, or the press of his lips. The sound of those muffled cries undid him.

Unable to take another second of those soft, heartbreaking sounds, he shimmered himself to the sanctuary of his den once more.

Chapter Six

One minute Maggie was sitting on the edge of the big bed, clutching a pillow as she bawled her heart out, her world falling apart around her ears. Damn Michael. The next instant, she was standing in the middle of Gideon’s den, feeling as if she’d just been dropped without warning from a cliff. Gasping, lightheaded, fighting down a wave of nausea, she staggered back a step.

Gideon stood a few steps away. He whirled to face her, shock registering on his handsome features. Before she realized she was still clutching the pillow, before she realized what was happening, she threw the pillow at his head with all her might.

“Stop doing that!” Maggie yelled.

The pillow caught him square in the face, and then fell to the floor. He didn’t even make any effort to catch it. She watched him glance down at his wrist, at a cuff identical to the one he’d tricked her into putting on before telling her there was no way to remove it. He looked back up at her with a distinctive look of alarm. But that alarm swiftly shifted. Determination and concentration etched his face.

Without warning, the room swirled and dissolved, and her stomach dropped once more. Another room wavered into focus. Maggie screamed and reached out for a high backed kitchen chair as her knees threatened to give way. She caught a fleeting glimpse of what looked like a kitchen, but before she could find purchase on the hardwood floor, before her fingers could grasp something solid for support, that vision wavered and was gone, replaced once again by Gideon’s den.

“No more,” she begged hoarsely. Gasping, arms wrapped tight around her middle, head bowed, Maggie fell to her knees as a merciless wave of dizziness swept through her. “Please, no more.”

Silence met her request, but they stayed in the same room, so she could only hope he’d heard her and decided to comply. When she finally risked glancing up, the sight of Gideon took her by surprise. He stood immobile, his arms stretched out to her, as if to pick her up, yet he didn’t touch her. Instead, he stared down at her as if she were some foreign creature he didn’t know how to handle. Utter anguish lined his expression.

Seeming to recall himself, he drew his arms back. Only then did something click into place with sudden clarity. In the entire time she’d been with him—granted not all that long in the grander scheme of things—he’d never, not one single time, ever touched her. When he’d given her the bracelet, he’d deliberately held it in a way so their fingers wouldn’t risk brushing. Even when he’d tied her to the chair, he’d not touched her skin with his. Not once.

Why not?

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice wooden, distracted.

“No, I’m not all right,” Maggie snapped as she pushed shakily to her feet. The room around her swayed. Quick as a flash, Gideon picked up the chair by the desk and dropped it beside her. She fell onto the chair, dead weight. She frowned. Most anyone else would have taken her by the arm and led her to the chair. Yet he’d avoided contact once more.

“You’re white as a sheet. You’re not gonna pass out, are you?”

“Well, if I did, it’d certainly serve you right.”

“Put your head between your knees or something,” he suggested.

If looks could kill, she’d be digging a hole in the backyard large enough to accommodate his six-foot-plus frame. And she was angry enough that she didn’t think she’d even need help dragging his dead body.

“I don’t need to put my head between my knees. What I need is for you to stop…zapping me from one place to another without warning.”

“Shimmering.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s called shimmering.”

“I don’t care what it’s called. If you do it to me again without warning me first, I swear I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

Gideon sat on the corner of his desk and crossed his arms, his expression pensive. “I’m sorry about that. Honestly. I didn’t know…didn’t realize…” He fell silent. His brow puckered. She didn’t have the strength right now to play twenty questions, so she was grateful when he offered explanation without prompting. “The cuff I gave you”—he held his own up, lamplight glinting off the hammered silver on his wrist—“is bonded to the one I wear. I didn’t realize that you’d shimmer
every
time I do. Even if I don’t want you to,” he added reluctantly. “So I guess from now on where I go, you go.”

But his expression hadn’t calmed by a long shot. A look of such dread crossed his face, fleeting but there all the same, that it made her decidedly nervous.

What wasn’t he telling her?

She’d been accused more than once of being too suspicious. Well, her suspicious nature had served her well all these years, particularly once Michael had so beneficently bestowed his “gifts” upon her. And right now, her little suspicion detector was rattling like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl.

She thrust her wrist out to him. “Then take it off,” she demanded.

He shook his head, his sensuous lips set in a mulish line. “I’m sorry, darlin’. I can’t do that.”

“Okay. First. My name is Maggie. Not darlin’.” Addressing her by some random endearment wouldn’t soften her. Especially not when he used such a snide, patronizing tone. And so help him if he dared call her
baby
. She wouldn’t be responsible. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her own arms. “And second, why can’t you take the bracelet off?”

“Would you willingly put it back on when I told you to?”

“Not on your life,” she answered without thinking. As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to kick herself. She should have lied right through her damned teeth.

He dipped his head, as if she’d just proven some point for him. “I may need to remove you from a potentially dangerous situation. I won’t always have time to stop and discuss the options with you or get your permission first.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he quickly cut her off. “You’re just going to have to trust me on that. The subject is closed.”

She glared at him. “Then take off the one on your wrist.”

He seemed to weigh that option for a moment. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “No. I won’t do that either. First, I’m not going to take it off and just leave it lying around for you to pick up and run off with.” She gritted her teeth, for that was exactly what she’d been hoping would happen. “Second, there’s no saying it won’t work the same if it’s in my pocket rather than on my wrist anyway. And just in case it doesn’t, I won’t always have time to stop and put it on in the middle of fight. So both cuffs stay as they are.”

“Then you can’t shimmer anymore.”

He shook his head. “Not an option.”

Damn frustrating man/demon. “Do you know what it feels like, as a human, to shimmer?”

He hesitated. A guilty expression flickered across his handsome face. “I heard Carly tell Niklas once that it felt like a roller coaster drop.”

“Who’s Carly?”

“Niklas’s wife.”

She frowned, angling her head. “I thought you said Niklas was a demon. The Seer, isn’t he?”

“He is.”

“And yet…” She paused, her gaze dropping to the floor as she tried to reason it all out. She frowned as she looked back up at him. “He has a human wife?”

Gideon looked decidedly uncomfortable. “It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet.” She eyed him, rolling all this information around in her head. She studied the bracelet on her wrist a moment, as a new idea began to form. They looked identical. Didn’t it stand to reason that they might then have the same power? Granted, she couldn’t shimmer him anywhere. But if she didn’t want to be shimmered, could she prevent him from shimmering? “Well, she’s right. It feels like falling off a cliff without any warning.”

“Some people like that sensation.”

“Yeah? Well, not me.”

Gideon scrubbed a long-fingered hand over his jaw and mouth.

“Does Niklas shimmer his wife very often?”

He frowned at her. “Yes. Quite often, in fact. And Xander shimmers Ky as well. Though she doesn’t ever complain about it,” he added pointedly.

“And who is Ky?”

A strange look passed over his face. He’d obviously opened up a can of worms he didn’t want to have to explain. “Kyanna. She’s Xander’s wife.”

“Another demon/human pairing?”

Gideon nodded, looking like he’d rather be sitting in a dentist’s chair about to have every last one of his teeth pulled.

“Let me guess,” she said, sarcasm dripping from every word. “It’s complicated.”

With a wry twist of his lips, Gideon shrugged.

“So they all have these bracelets then. Don’t they ever take theirs off? Maybe if you asked one of them, they might know how to get around the…”

Now he looked really uncomfortable.

She wasn’t about to let him off the hook this time. “What?”

“They don’t have bracelets…cuffs,” he corrected with a shake of his head. Oh, yeah. Definitely uncomfortable. “They don’t need them.”

“Why not?”

His face turned to stone. “This discussion is over.”

“Like hell it is.”

“Over,” he reiterated. “Now, unless you want me to shimmer you to my—your room, I suggest you get there on your own two feet.”

Touchy, touchy.

Then she realized what he’s said.
My.
As in
my room
. She’d thought she’d detected the faint scent of him—masculine spice and citrus and sandalwood—in the bedroom, on the pillow. But then the scent of him tantalized her here as well, and she’d just chalked it up to his house—his scent.

So, he’d given her his room.

Why?

Questions to mull over later. Right now she had a theory she wanted to test out.

“Shimmer me there.”

“I thought you said you didn’t like shimmering.” Now look who was drowning with suspicion.

“I don’t. But I want to know if it’s any easier if I’m expecting it.”

He looked irritated enough to chew nails. And not the kind on the tips of his fingers.

“Are you ready now?” he asked with exaggerated patience.

Taking a deep breath, concentrating very hard on staying glued to the chair she was currently sitting in, Maggie nodded. She felt a quick tug, but resisted with all her will, clenching both hands on the edge on the seat. A slight frown flickered over Gideon’s features, but then the room fell away as before. She experienced the same dropping sensation, though, admittedly, it wasn’t nearly as bad as before. Either she was getting used to it, or being mentally prepared for it actually did help.

When the falling sensation stopped, and Gideon’s bedroom came into focus, Maggie grinned. Gideon looked perplexed.

She was still sitting in the chair.

“Master,” the Charocté called quietly from the corner, head bowed, fists pressed to shoulders. “The Animagi is here to see you.”

“Admit him,” Stolas barked. Dimiezlo had fast become one of his most loyal and trusted subjects, earning him perhaps a bit more leeway when interrupting Stolas’s time.

The demon walked through the massive archway into the great hall, his gait wobbling awkwardly as his cloven hooves came down on the gleaming black marble. Dimiezlo’s forked tongue slithered from his mouth. His furry arms crossed over his equally furry chest, fists pressed to his shoulders as he bowed his bald, horned head. His goatlike legs prevented him from kneeling, but he remained respectfully silent until Stolas gave him leave to speak.

“Master, we have word of a first generation Halfling,” Dimiezlo said once Stolas bade him speak. “But she is already with the Fallen. Temptation has her.”

Stolas sat up straight in his seat. Dimiezlo had learned to spit the bad out with the good right away. It tended not to ignite Stolas’s temper quite so quickly or so fiercely when he wasn’t given false hope only to have it crushed later. Though still angry, he was much more reasonable when the facts were all laid out quickly.

The Halfling in the cell below had begun hemorrhaging not half an hour past. The news of a first generation Halfling was just what he needed to brighten his day, regardless of who currently had possession of her. There was still hope. Besides, he had something in the works now, an alliance that might well render the Fallen irrelevant.

“First generation, confirmed.”

“Yes, master.” Dimiezlo’s forked tongue slithered around the words. “My sources report the Slayer’s mate’s mother was a Keeper. She’d made contact prior to her death.”

A Keeper of Secrets? Well now, that was interesting. He’d thought they were only myth. Of course, the mere existence of Halflings attested to the fact that angels did indeed have secrets to be kept. Why then shouldn’t there be Keepers?

“Do we know the Halfling’s line?”

At last Dimiezlo lifted his head, his black eyes gleaming like the floor beneath his feet. “Michael.”

Any action Stolas might have taken over the lapse in respect was negated by the staggering revelation. He leaned back in his chair as the wind left his lungs in a whoosh.

Michael.
An Archangel! By all that’s unholy!

The power that Halfling possessed would be staggering.

He’d wager all he possessed—and the very success of his plot to overthrow his grandfather—that she’d breed without complication. And not only would she breed well, but the Halfling could be employed as a valuable weapon, herself.

“You will do whatever it takes to obtain her. Promise whatever you have to, pay any fee, but keep it quiet. Utilize any and all resources available. You will obtain her, am I understood?”

Bowing his head, thwapping fists to shoulders, Dimiezlo vanished.

A first generation Halfling…of Michael’s line.

Stolas would be invincible.