Brimstone Seduction (6 page)

“They were on my sister's bed. Left on her pillow,” Kat said. “I thought I should return them. She must have accidentally carried them away. I assume they belong to this box.”

Below, dancers practiced for the ballet often omitted from performances of
Faust
by other opera companies. At l'Opéra Severne, the ballet was a favorite of fans. It represented the temptation of Faust by the greatest and most beautiful women in history that had been offered to him by Mephistopheles.

So far, from what Katherine had seen of rehearsals, this version was suggestively choreographed while still seeming subtly playful in its eroticism.

“This box is like the other boxes in the house. Elite patrons own them all. Some families have kept them for generations. Politicians, celebrities and foreign aristocracy all float in and out in relative anonymity. To be honest, I thought this one was abandoned. Many seats are kept by the elderly and passed down to heirs who prefer sports arenas or video games,” Severne said. “I'm here only temporarily. Captivated by the view.”

So she'd found the stoic yet sensual master of the opera house looking down on his lithe dancers? Her cheeks warmed. “They are captivating,” she agreed.

The dancers practiced with an old stage piano more suited for vaudeville than opera, but they were talented. Once their moves were paired with costumes, lighting and the full orchestra accompaniment, the ballet would be sublime.

“I'm proud of every aspect of the show, but I do enjoy this dance—the temptation, the resistance, the surrender,” Severne said. It was almost a confession. He was a daemon professing his fascination with the dance of damnation.

He leaned toward her and her breath caught, but he was only reaching for the opera glasses. She released them from her fingers at the same time as she released a—she hoped—unnoticeable sigh. He didn't turn back to the dancers. He held the glasses and continued to look down at her.

“These levels are closed until performances. Performers don't enter the boxes or wander around. I'm not sure why your sister had these,” he said.

“You don't know who owns this box?” she asked.

“There are records you could search, but they haven't been computerized. I'm afraid our offices are Victorian by today's standards,” Severne said. “Decades of papers and dusty files are an immortal's prerogative.”

Behind him, several stories below, the dancers writhed and undulated for Faust's pleasure as Mephistopheles pretended to hold their strings like they were marionettes. Kat felt a little bit like her strings were being tugged by a fate that would have her dance for John Severne.

How would she ever find her sister in the purposefully ambiguous atmosphere of l'Opéra Severne? The owner of the box might have nothing to do with her sister's disappearance. In spite of what Severne had said, the boxes were curtained, not locked. Anyone might have slipped in and out of them unseen.

Severne had stepped lightly to the side. He was offering her a seat. Because she didn't want to seem intimidated or afraid, she took it, and he sank down beside her. Thankfully, the dancers were now separately working on individual elements of the ballet so the overall suggestive effect of the piece was lost. Unfortunately, the only suggestion left was the full force of her affinity for Severne, closed in the curtained-off box where her seat and Severne's were so close that his arm brushed hers.

He moved to place the opera glasses back in their slot. He had to lean across her body to do so. She couldn't will the affinity away. This close, it was impossible to ignore. Even if she could, his natural magnetism would have called to her with or without Brimstone in his blood.

It was the end of the day. Whatever he did in his Victorian offices, he'd literally rolled up his sleeves. The hair on his arm brushed hers. The tattoos she'd seen before peeked from beneath his white sleeve. This was his leisure—overseeing rehearsals, pondering damnation and torturing her.

He sat back from returning the opera glasses to her chair, but the scent of smoky sandalwood still teased her nose. She wouldn't meet his penetrating gaze. He hadn't looked back at the dancers since she'd arrived. While she avoided his eyes, she noticed the longish black waves of his hair were slightly damp and curled against the open collar of his shirt.

She was familiar with temptation and resistance. Surrender was a new possibility. She was afraid if she spent too long in John Severne's company, her limits might be tested. He was a daemon, but he had taken the guise of a very attractive man. She was drawn to the burn beneath his control. She was drawn to what he might hide beneath the hardness he cultivated for the world. His penchant for sugary kisses and his reaction to her cello music gave her a glimpse at what vulnerabilities he might hide.

He wasn't a forthright man, but a daemon. His every move screamed those truths to her even though his words and demeanor were enigmatic.

“Your music will make this dance impossible to resist. The audience will be captivated,” he said.

And yet he also made raw confessions at every turn.

She lifted her gaze from the dancers below to Severne's eyes. The shadows were too deep to see any green, but he tilted toward her as if to accommodate her search, and a shaft of stage light fell over his eyes. The rest of his face was still shadowed, but his eyes were fully illuminated and as green as she'd seen them before.

His eyes and his shadowed mouth drew her.

But she quickly rose before she fell further under his daemon spell. Or his masculine spell. Or both.

She wasn't here to be seduced. Surrender wasn't an option.

“I enjoy the music. I appreciate the dance. I don't want to captivate. I just want to find my sister,” she said.

She mumbled to excuse herself as she tried to navigate gracefully past his long, lean legs. He stood, but he didn't try to stop her. She pushed through the heavy curtains behind their seats, but as she did she heard him reply.

“As do I, Katherine. As do I.”

He said he wanted to help her find her sister, but she wasn't certain what he wanted most. He was a bottomless pit of wants and needs she couldn't quite ascertain.

Chapter 6

T
he sun was only a pink hint at the edges of the city's dark silhouette against the sky as he ran the Thames path away from Central London. One of the benefits of damnation and a hellhound for a constant companion was that he wasn't limited to mortal means of transportation. He rarely had to use more than a word or a glance before he materialized where he wished to be with Grim's help.

He'd always run in the dark even before it was a common sight, nothing to note, a man with a drive to beat the cheeseburger and beer he'd consumed last Sunday. It was nothing now to pass other runners in the fog and shadows, them with reflective strips on their shoes or blinking LED bands around their elbows.

He had only Grim, a great, hulking shadow among shadows loping on silent paws that hardly touched the ground.

He seemed to be using this means of escape more and more often since Katherine had come to l'Opéra Severne.

Severne's own feet pounded pavement, then dirt; real enough, a solid, mortal man with a life extended by Brimstone blood rather than the exercise that was his absolution, his penance and his salvation. He ran farther and harder this edge-of-day. Every time his heel hit the ground, he tasted sweet cream and musky woman. She'd been frightened, but exhilarated. Her heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his own chest.

Sybil had called her strong. Katherine's strength caused her to be enticingly bold.

Sweat poured from him. Everything that could burn did—calories, fat, energy—until he was left with nothing but lean, honed muscle and memories.

Then he ran some more. Toward Hammersmith.

Grim didn't whine or complain.

He was silent.

He'd been a constant companion for as long as John could remember. Which was far longer than most men could recall.

The longer run was as much an apology to Grim as a punishment for himself. His conflicts and mixed emotions over Katherine D'Arcy had confused the daemon dog, so in tune with his master that he usually knew instantly whether someone was friend or foe.

With Katherine, it was...complicated.

But Grim had held himself in check.

Good dog.

Good, good dog.

Bad master.

He'd exercised way less control.

She was all soft, sensual emotion in his arms. Desire, need, fear, sadness and a poignant hope he could almost feel like a veil of gossamer illusion against his skin. If shadows clung to Grim, hope clung to Katherine, an invisible aura that drew him too close. So close his Brimstone threatened to sear it away.

When he tasted her, the hope tried to envelop him, too, in spite of all he'd done and seen. His whole body felt the thrill of coming alive to it until he wrenched back before he scorched it
and her
to ashes.

No wonder Grim was confused.

He had need to stand the dog down with clear mental orders to guard and protect, but not harm the very obvious threat in their midst. No. That was his job. To harm. To hurt.

He turned his thoughts from the lovely, enticing bloodhound of a woman to focus on one foot in front of the other. His path inexorable. Burned into being decades ago.

He'd told Katherine that Grim was a portent of ancient pathways. It wasn't a myth. It was true. Grim was the key he used to traverse the globe on his deadly mission to eradicate the names on the daemon scroll. The hellhound had been a gift to the Severne family when his grandfather had signed a deal in Severne blood with the Council that had overthrown Lucifer.

He followed Grim easily through the shadows in between this location and that on pathways through the world no one else could see. He'd often come here to run, far from home. This time he realized he'd come too often. Two figures detached themselves from park trails flanking his on either side to veer toward him. Their move was sudden and aggressive and far too coordinated. They were together even though they ran apart. His path would put him between them. Their legs pumped with purpose and a sudden burst of speed unlikely to indicate a casual change of direction.

They meant to intercept.

Grim was ahead of him, somewhere in the mist evaporating off the black river. It rolled wetly across the park, thick and hazy, providing enough cover that no one would see what happened when the two approaching runners converged with him.

He didn't slow his stride. He didn't speed up. If he'd wanted to outrun them, he could have. Even drained from a long workout, his Brimstone blood would give him an edge unless... Closer now, he could see their speed was inhuman. Just this side of a blur. He noted that the dark clothes he'd assumed were sweat pants and hoodies were actually combat trousers and hooded snoods he'd seen before, a glint of familiar metal at their necks. They would have crisscrossed daggers at their backs in hidden sheaths close to their bodies.

Lucifer's Army.

Assassins sent to stop him from fulfilling a centuries-old deal with lower-caste daemons that had ripped the greatest of the fallen from his throne. A Council now ruled in Lucifer's stead. His mighty shorn wings were encased in bronze as a gruesome symbol of fraternity. The Council sought to eradicate all his loyal followers. Severne had stood before them once as a child. He'd never forgotten the burn. It didn't matter that it had been Severne's grandfather who had chosen a side in a hellish revolution.

Now John Severne had to fight.

When Brimstone-tainted blood met the same, it bubbled and sizzled as if the individual cells fought to occupy the same place. The sound hissed in the air as blood was let on all three sides. John felt the slicing burn of a blade across his shoulder, but the other three blades met daemon flesh as he deflected them back on the creatures that brandished them with well placed blows to their lower arms. One sank deep enough into the sternum of the left daemon that he cried out as all the Brimstone his body contained flared out and up in a column of fire. He was consumed completely until nothing but dissipating smoke remained.

“Good talk,” Severne grunted as he grappled with the remaining assassin.

Grim was more than a key, more than an omen of crossroads and pathways. He was a guardian. He was death. As John held the wrists of the daemon that struggled to bring two wicked blades with serrated edges down to impale him through the vulnerable flesh at the points of his collarbones, Grim leaped from the mist.

His great gaping maw closed on the daemon's throat. The hellhound wasn't fazed by the inferno of released Brimstone. It barely singed his charcoal fur. John was left with daemon blades and an ancient brooch at his feet. Forged of a metal like iron with a bold, stylized
L
in its center, the brooch had been what had gleamed at the assassin's throat. Another lay a few feet away, where his partner had vanished in a flash burn.

John gathered the brooches and the swords while Grim watched with a curl of stinking smoke rising from his muzzle, joining the morning mist rising to the brightening sky.

“Nice entrance, big guy. Worthy of Rin Tin Tin,” Severne said.

It was always the same after the frenzy of kill-or-be-killed: the need his body had to shake, his mortality evidenced by his reaction. He refused to allow the shudders. He threw the daggers in the Thames. The water bubbled and boiled and then settled to gentle ripples as the blades sank to the murky bottom and cooled, forgotten. He kept the brooches. It seemed more honorable than throwing them away.

He'd been forced onto a side of this ancient fight, but he felt no allegiance to the daemons that held his soul and his father's soul ransom. He fought for a father who no longer knew him. The Brimstone in his blood couldn't negate the coldness of that. He was only surviving so that one day his father might live out his remaining days and die in peace.

The silent daemon dog turned and led the way back to Baton Rouge.

* * *

The offices of l'Opéra Severne were housed in an octagon-shaped room behind the main box office. Kat hadn't expected the room to stretch up to as many floors as the balcony levels of the main hall, or for the only way to reach the levels to be wrought iron ladders on wheels like you'd expect to find in a Victorian library.

Severne had told her she was welcome to search out the paperwork involved with the ownership of the private balcony box where the opera glasses had been returned. He'd also warned her the search would be more easily offered than done.

The next day, when she made her way to the offices after rehearsals, she didn't know where to begin. Although the walls were lined with wooden drawers, the rows of drawers extended all the way up, floor after floor to the ceiling, which lofted in a frescoed peak high above her head.

As she paused to decide where to begin, the chirruping of birds could be heard in the rafters and from perches and nests in the nooks and crannies of the half dozen four-story-tall ladders, which had landing platforms at each floor.

“I warned you,” Severne said. He came from behind a stack of loose files taller than her head. Taller than his head, come to think of it. He had nothing in his hands. She couldn't imagine him doing paperwork as part of his job. He was master, not assistant. He was a king, not a clerk.

“There are several employees who tackle the books from time to time. But they mostly click their tongues and despair,” he said.

Kat looked at the daemon she knew to be wealthy and successful. He looked more capable of waging war than accounting.

“You're free to wade through as much of this as you'd like, but I'll warn you that it's more a sentimental collection than a useful resource. My father was an optimistic hoarder. He always thought he'd have time to organize,” Severne said.

“Was?” Katherine asked. It was an intrusive question. Her curiosity made them both pause as if they'd been caught in a sudden, actual conversation against their will.

“He still lives, but he's not himself. He doesn't remember his time at l'Opéra Severne. All of his keepsakes would be strange to him now,” Severne said.

He'd tensed, and the whole room all the way to the rafters seemed to note the change in atmosphere. He nudged the ladder nearest to him, and a small flock of brown sparrows rose up, startled and protesting.

“So this cluttered office was his domain. That makes sense; I couldn't imagine it as yours,” Kat said.

The restless man across from her suddenly quieted and focused on her. His entire attention fell on her face.

“Do you spend much time imagining things about me?” he asked.

She'd blundered into a trap, and her unwitting confession had given him an excuse to change the subject from the warm clutter of the room and his father.

Kat traced pictures in the dust of a nearby desk. She drew a feather with a long sweeping quill.

“I was only comparing this office to your personal office and your gym,” she said.

She felt it when he began to move toward her. It might have been her affinity that made her hyperaware of his placement in a room in comparison to hers. It also might have been pure physical awareness as if he was only an attractive and charismatic man.

She and Victoria had both been on the run for a long time. Victoria wasn't the only one fascinated with the subject of star-crossed lovers. She'd done her share of dreaming and wondering. And she'd recently found the subject more fascinating than before.

He stopped beside her and looked down at her dust drawing.

“Dreaming of feathers means you long for freedom and happiness,” he said.

“I was only thinking of the birds,” she said, looking up beyond his handsome, hard face to the sparrows that still swooped in the rafters.

“We've tried to net and release them, but they always get back in somehow,” Severne said.

“L'Opéra Severne is a hard place to escape. I've thought of it often although I haven't been here since I was a child,” Kat confessed.

“It's a part of me,” Severne said.

She lowered her gaze from the swooping of the birds just enough to meet his dark eyes. In this dusty place, they were even harder and more alive with shadows. She wouldn't tell him how her feelings for the opera house had merged with her feelings for its master, leaving her more confused than comforted in spite of her nostalgia for the old theater.

“I can call in the clerks and have them search for the information you seek, Katherine. You don't need to bury yourself in the dust of this place,” he said.

He brought his hand near hers and wiped the dust from the desk, erasing her feather drawing at the same time. The birds above their heads had settled. Either they didn't believe in freedom and happiness or they had found their share in a small world sheltered from all the predators outside.

Katherine's hand was still on the desk, separated from Severne's by mere millimeters. His fingers lingered in the dusty place he'd wiped as if he waited for her next move. She breathed lightly and easily. Dust motes floated in the air between them. They sparkled with possibility, but then they fell, settling back down to earth before either of them moved.

“Thank you. Please tell them I appreciate their help,” she said.

She took her hand from the desk, and only then did he remove his, as well.

The birds had gone silent, with only an occasional rustle to indicate that the roosting creatures had the potential for flight.

* * *

He'd meant to keep her busy digging through the paper detritus of the past century, but when he'd found her in the office, he couldn't bear the thought of his beautiful, musical Katherine trapped with the birds and the dust. It would accomplish the same thing if he had his employees comb through the disorganized records. Let her feel that the human owner of the box had something to do with her sister's disappearance, when all the while she would be inadvertently leading him to the daemon he needed to find.

His.

He had no doubt that the daemon he sought had spent time at l'Opéra Severne. He'd been drawn to the opera house because of its proximity to the hell dimension. He'd been drawn to Victoria D'Arcy as all daemons were. Severne had been away hunting other daemons, and Michael had made himself at home, coming and going through the private boxes of the balconies and the private rooms of a woman who should have been under Severne's protection.