Born To Be Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 3 (25 page)

Viktor had promised to get the djinn out of their enforced purgatory, and I’d been his tool to do it.

My legs felt suddenly too heavy, but as we cleared the front doors of the chapel, I shrugged off Dixie and Brody, forcing myself to stand. The limo was there, idling at the curb, but I didn’t head for it either. I headed across the parking lot, toward Darkworks Ink. I was fifteen paces away when I noticed that the lights were no longer flickering in the windows, and the OPEN sign was shut off.

I blinked, too shocked to believe it. There would be no solace in that place. Not this day.

I almost hit the pavement before strong arms stopped my fall.

The ride to the Prime Luxe was a blur of smoke. I didn’t understand my body’s reaction to returning through the veil this time. There’d been no attack of Watchers, no fight, no spike of adrenaline. I’d blasted back much more easily, slipping and sliding along the Möbius strip that Blue had etched into me before falling back through to this dimension.

But I hadn’t brought weapons this time. I’d brought creatures of fire and death.

That couldn’t…be possible.

I sensed myself being transferred from the car, but nothing else made sense to me. Nothing else could.

“You would do well to rest, Miss Wilde.” Armaeus’s words were soothing—too soothing. The kind of tone used in hospices, not hospitals.

I flickered my eyes open. The clicking noise they made was also unnerving. “Where’s Viktor?” I rasped.

“He is back in his domain, presumably. He knew immediately what you had done, when you had done it.” There was no censure in his tone, nothing more really than a quiet curiosity.

“He…lied.”

“He did.” A light hand touched my face, impossibly cool. I turned into it, trying not to whimper. Why was I so hot? I felt like I had been boiled from the inside.

“The djinn were forged in fire, Miss Wilde. The Atlantean blade you held in this plane kept you from incinerating, but only just. The moment you let go of it, the fire of their passage began to cook you from the inside.”

I coughed, and smoke seemed to burn through my mouth. “You have a way with words.”

“And you are very strong. I did not foresee the djinn using you in this manner. They are creatures of an ancient magic, but like all demons, they need hosts to exist on this earth. You provided them their host…” He shook his head. “It should not have been possible.” He tilted his head, regarding me. “And now they must find others.”

I grimaced, and slitted my eyes open to focus on him. “In English this time?”

“You set six powerful djinn free into the world, all on your own. To stay here, they must possess six separate souls.”

I winced. “Maybe we should try another language.”

He gestured dismissively. “Demonic possession has been a mortal plague since the dawn of time, a staple of every known religion. There are those who may summon the dark ones forth from their home for brief discourse—mages like Nostradamus, for example—but never for very long. Since their banishment, to remain in this world, a djinn must either have a host or sacrifice their great strength and abilities to become mortal. As you can imagine, most have no interest in becoming mortal.”

Something about his words nagged at me. “What happens if they don’t have a host?”

“Unless their domain is destroyed, they are returned to it, usually within twenty-four hours. But they can get very creative about staying in the mortal plane. The stories of demonic possession have at their core an essential truth.”

“Then how could I have brought all of them back?”

“I suspect that Viktor’s expectation was that they would return within the bodies of the young men and women he captured. If they had done so, we were prepared. The ley lines have been fortified to contain the possessed.”

“That was you!” I stared at him. “You didn’t tell Danae.”

“For a witch, she has a tiresome need for details. But had the children come back carrying the djinn, it would have been enough. We were not prepared for
you
bringing them all back, however.”

I tried to lift a hand, but it was held beneath heavy covers. “They’re dead,” I croaked. “The children. All of them, from when they were—”

“No, Miss Wilde. Those were illusions. The six missing children remain trapped in their elaborate cage until the demons are returned. Viktor had to wait for them to reach maturity before they could sustain the demonic possession, but instead he now has the demons without the children—and he doesn’t have control over the demons.” Armaeus looked particularly intrigued. “This was unplanned.”

“But where did they go when we came through?” A new thought occurred to me. “They’re not in me anymore, right? I’d know that.”

“You’d know it. They seek out others.”

My eyes rounded as I stared at him. “Oh my God. Nikki—they took Nikki.”

Armaeus nodded. “Dixie and Brody were passed over, perhaps because of their fledgling bond, perhaps in the confusion of the release. But Nikki—we have no sign of her. She’s missing.”

I half rose from the bed, fell back. “I have to find her.”

“Detective Rooks has already issued the alert throughout the LVMPD, and Dixie is tapping her vast network within the city. They will find her. You, on the other hand, must heal.”

“I can’t!” Real alarm shattered through me. “I did this, Armaeus, I did this to Nikki. I can’t let her—” I closed my eyes, jolting with pain as a tear slid down my cheek, scalding hot. “This will happen to her, won’t it?” I whispered. “I did this.”

“Miss Wilde.” Armaeus was at my side again, leaning down. “You can do nothing for Nikki until you recover.”

“Then heal me, dammit,” I breathed.

“You are too weak,” he rumbled. “Your body is barely a husk. The weight of six demons effectively incinerated you from the inside. The Atlantean blade served to protect you somewhat, but you will need time to return to normal.”

“Oh my God, Nikki.”

“She will, at most, serve as host to one demon. Not six. It will not affect her the same way.” Armaeus shrugged. “And the demons can assume any form they choose for the first twenty-four hours of their time on earth. They may elect to possess no one at all for that time period.”

“We can’t take that risk! Please, Armaeus, I beg of you. Heal me. I will do whatever you want, be whoever you want. I can’t let Nikki die because of me.” My eyes flared. “And those children. If they’re alive, I have to go back, to get them. Without the djinn there guarding them, the way will be clearer, right?”

“We have no way of knowing that.”

“Death will know,” I spat. “She probably knew all along.”

He didn’t respond, which was all the answer I needed.

“What
is it
with you people?” I snarled. “Are you just that damned bored? You’ll let mortals go and do
everything
you can’t do because you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human?” Unaccountably, the tears welled up inside me again. I didn’t want to feel them, didn’t want to feel anything. My insides were cooked, despite the healing mist Armaeus had woven around me. Every breath in was a blessing, but it became superheated in my guts, and by the time it released, it was like exhaling acid. “I didn’t think I could hurt this badly.”

And what was that about, anyway? I’d known Armaeus for a long time, long enough to know the man pounced on me every time I so much as had a hangnail, all in the interest of me being at my best. Had I become too broken for him to save? Was he no longer interested in trying?

I hated that I cared, but I did. I couldn’t help it.

Everything was falling apart. I hadn’t saved the children. I’d lost Brody. I’d lost Nikki. I’d lost people I’d barely found, or re-found, and I might never get them back. And now, Armaeus himself was distant from me, his hands on my wrists clinical, not carnal. Not even caring.

What had happened?

The obvious answer bubbled up without me realizing how close it was to the surface, breaking through before I could stop it. “Am I dying?”

“No.” The word was sharp, almost a slap. Armaeus leaned toward me, his gaze searching my face.

I hadn’t looked in a mirror since I’d come back, but the coolness radiating off him was a balm to my abraded skin. I must look like five miles of bad road.

“No,” he murmured again, more softly this time, his tone decisive, almost resigned. “Do not close your eyes, Miss Wilde. Maintain every connection with me you can.”

“You usually just kiss and make it—ah…” Ignoring his directive, I winced as the blood rushed to my face, the embarrassment I felt at the ridiculous statement rewarded immediately by a surge of pain. “My God, I feel like crap.”

“God has very little to do with your condition, but your extreme condition is why I cannot kiss you, embrace you…or pound you into the back of the bed. Miss Wilde.”

I clicked my eyes open again. Yep. He had my attention. “Um…”

“And believe me, I want to.” Armaeus was close enough that I wasn’t merely inhaling the pungent healing mist he had surrounding me, but the cinnamon fire of him, the scent of deep spices and sensual heat…a heat completely different from the crumbling embers inside me.

He moved his face, his lips not touching mine, but his cool breath played over my skin, and my body couldn’t help but react. A thrill chased along my nerve endings.

“I have wanted to stretch you out beneath me and fill you to the brink since the first moment I saw you. I’ve wanted to make you cry out in passion and exhaustion, to hear my name on your lips as you begged me to take you to places you’ve never glimpsed before. I have wanted it. Yearned for it.”

“Ahh…” I couldn’t help it, I squirmed beneath his non-touch, wanting more than anything for him to rip the blanket away and do everything he was telling me. “Really?”

“Open your mind to me, only a little. You will see.”

Never had my mental barriers dropped so quickly. The hollow husk of my brain, blackened and crispy at the edges, was suddenly filled to the brim with images so intense and real it was impossible for me to tell what was happening and what was mere illusion.

Okay, scratch that. I remained under the covers, and Armaeus was not. But in my mind’s eye I saw him naked and glorious, bending me back onto his enormous bed and climbing up on top of me, every inch of him rock hard and trained solely on me. In my ears, I heard the rush of a language I’d never known, a language that triggered my nervous system to hyperawareness, from the balls of my feet to the crown of my head, each of my chakra points lighting up like signal flares. And though Armaeus wasn’t touching me, not really, my senses believed wholeheartedly that his lips were on my neck, my collarbone, my breasts. His hands skimming down my body and between my legs, touching, exploring, learning me like a master sailor knows every inch of his instruments, his ship, and lavishing me with the same single-minded care that a man who made his life at sea poured out over the one thing that would either be his salvation or his ruin. I arched in the bed beneath the covers, desperate to feel the taste of his mouth, but Armaeus kept me just out of reach.

At least in real life.

My mind, however, was filled with what had never happened next between us, what should have happened next between us so many months ago when we’d been drawn together like twin flames and then burst apart so shockingly, and my mind had collapsed under a surge of panic because it couldn’t—it wouldn’t—

None of that panic filled me now. There was only Armaeus, his arms powerful and sure, his hands at my breasts, my waist, my thighs, sliding around the curve of my backside to lift me up to his questing mouth. All I wanted was this, more of this. All I wanted was him inside me. I breathed out a long, ragged sigh, a distant part of me realizing that even that didn’t hurt anymore. There was no fear. “How…?”

“It’s a dream within a dream. Your mind knows the difference.”

His answer made perfect sense, yet something within me rejected it. That something was shunted off to the side as his mouth came down on the most intimate part of my body, and illusion or not, I fairly jackknifed in the bed as he licked and kissed and held me braced in his powerful grasp, riding my building reaction. Muted pleas fell from my lips, but there remained no fear, no pain, nothing but the glory and wonder and a rapidly building tide of need, of want, and of the incredible rightness of this moment.

“Please!” I begged, though I had no sense of what I wanted beyond this power, beyond this fulfillment.

Armaeus did.

The mental image of him lifted above me, sliding up my body in a long sinuous movement. When his shaft nudged against the vee between my legs, I gasped, lights exploding in my head, but there was still no fear. He raised his head and saw me—truly saw me—and smiled. A glorious, triumphant, almost primal smile.

And then he leaned down and kissed me on the forehead.

In real life.

The forehead.

I sank down into the covers as he levered himself away from me, not even a button undone from the crisp perfection of his suit.

“That,” he said, with pure male satisfaction, “worked better than I would have imagined.”

I gaped at him, but he continued. “Your body is regenerating at an extraordinary rate now. The healing process should be complete in approximately twenty minutes.” He studied me, apparently not impressed by the confusion and latent desire I was trying to stuff down. What had just
happened
?

My mind latched on to his next words.

“When you are ready to find Miss Dawes, I can assist you with that.” His lips twitched. “Since you are reclining anyway, you will not have far to fall.”

I gaped at him. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“I assure you, having gone through what you have, travel in this plane will not affect you nearly as much.”

I suspected he was probably right. Worse, my mind was already losing the insane perfection of the images he had poured into me, already returning to earth. An earth where I had a job to do, and people to find.

An earth I’d just seriously screwed up.

I let out a long sigh and braced myself for the crazy again.