Captive Soul (16 page)

Her smile came back, and this time her aquamarine eyes seemed to tease him. “How about you trust me to take care of that and you just watch your own ass? Not that you can’t look at mine now and then, if you want to.”

Oh, I’ll do a lot more than look at that ass, and soon, beautiful
.

John grabbed a pillow and pulled it across his lap. He felt like his mental age had just dropped from seventeen to fourteen. Damnit, he had more control over the demon in his head than over his body parts. Something about that was jacked.

Camille raised the packet of papers she’d been holding on to, then laid it on a chair near the door. “Present from Dio—which, by the way, I wouldn’t take lightly. She doesn’t waste time, so if she’s making you lists of demons and paranormal practitioners the New York City fighting groups have encountered, she thinks you’re reasonably okay and worth teaching. Air Sibyls are big on their lists and packets and archival info.”

John felt a flicker of surprise that Dio would leave him anything that didn’t have wires and tick as it counted down to zero. “I learned some about all the different demons when I was in Duncan’s head, but I’ll memorize that packet in a big hurry.”

“Good.” Camille backed toward the door gracefully, obviously intending to leave—but not in any way that suggested fleeing.

He didn’t want her to go.

He wanted her to stay so much his common sense tried to desert him and let him start begging.

Let me look at you for five more minutes
.…

“These sheets are girly,” he said instead, just to have something to say.

Camille’s gaze moved across the pillow, then up again, seeming to take in every muscle on his chest. “They look good on you.”

She hesitated for a second, then added, “I’ll try not to run if you don’t. But you might want to get up soon. Duncan’s home and I think he’s coming down here to kick your ass.”

And then she just left him, sitting there wrapped in silk sheets with a lily-scented pillow covering his unbelievably painful erection and a Demon Identification 101 packet sitting on the chair waiting for his attention.

John watched the door close and listened to her pad down the hall. He heard the swish and click of the lab door opening, then closing, and he spent some time staring at the painted ceiling over his head … which looked kind of feminine, too. This place was a million miles away from military barracks and tents, and a big change from the dives and hotels and apartments he’d blown through during his black ops years, or even the flat he’d taken in Harlem after his rebirth in this body.

Welcome to your new life
.

Who knew it would be so frilly?

He had to admit, though, if he ended up with the girl actually in the girly room with him, that wouldn’t be so bad. It would be good. Better than good. He was sure of that.

Duncan …

The thought nudged into his brain.

Duncan’s home
.…

John got out of the girly bed in one huge hurry then. Christ! Where was his head? He probably didn’t have much time. He put his jeans on too fast, hopping into the legs, almost fell over, got his act together, and pulled his shirt over his head.

The door banged open, and two people walked into the bedroom at a pretty good clip. One was Bela, wearing a pair of brown slacks and a cream-colored shirt that highlighted her dark, exotic good looks and her very worried expression.

As for the other—

“Duncan,” John said as he finished pulling down his shirt, grateful in spite of the circumstances to see his one and only lifelong friend healthy and presumably happy with his beautiful new wife at his side.

Duncan Sharp looked much as John remembered from their younger days—big but a little scrawny, close-cut brown hair, and spooky blue eyes. He had on his usual, jeans and an army-green T-shirt, so typical and familiar that John couldn’t help smiling.

Duncan wasn’t smiling.

He stopped next to the dark-haired beauty he’d married, staring at John, no doubt trying to take in the whole Strada-body thing. He must have been warned or he’d already be shooting. As it was, John glanced at Duncan’s shirt and then his ankles, checking for holster bulges as he carefully came around the bed to say hello to his friend.

Duncan didn’t wait for any greetings. He strode toward John with a fierce tension John recognized from their service days—but not in time to duck the punch Duncan threw.

Duncan’s knuckles connected with John’s jaw hard enough to stagger him and make him see a burst of blinking white stars. His ass thumped into the bathroom door, and he used the wood paneling and doorknob to hold himself upright. A few knickknacks toppled off a dresser, clattering as they bounced against the drawers and floor.

Bela didn’t try to get in the way, and Camille didn’t scream and come running down the hall from the lab to break up the fight. John sort of liked that. Camille knew what was probably happening, and she was more than capable of interfering if she decided to, but she knew some things had to work themselves out.

John rubbed his jaw reflexively, wondering if any teeth were loose. Okay, okay, he sort of wished Camille would scream and coming running down the hall, but that was sexist macho asshole thinking, and a pathetic, weak-minded excuse to get to put his arms around her again.

Don’t be a dick, John
.

“You piece of shit,” Duncan snarled, advancing as John skirted the bed, keeping the frilly sheets between them. “I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead and I thought it was
my
fault.”

John pointed a finger in Duncan’s face. “It wasn’t like I could jog up and say howdy. You would have shot me—and watch your mouth in front of the lady.”

“Screw you. Bela and her quad know how to swear better than both of us.” Duncan really wanted to throw a few more right hooks, John could tell, but he kept moving around the bed, jumping across it to the other side so Duncan couldn’t reach him easily. He really didn’t want to have to hit back. “You could have called. You could have dropped me a note.”

“Ah, honey, it’s so sweet you missed me.” John blew a kiss at Duncan and thought he heard Bela snicker.

Duncan tried to scramble over the bed after him, but Bela grabbed him by the belt loops and hauled him back to the floor on the opposite side from John.

“All right, boys,” she said. “No more breaking shit in Camille’s bedroom. If you really need to slug it out, we’ll go to the alley behind the house.”

Duncan was still glaring across the bed at John, but Bela’s touch obviously stilled the beast inside him, literally and figuratively. A patch of golden-orange fur with black stripes had rippled up on Duncan’s face and neck, but as he stood next to his wife, the fur gradually receded. John winced, but otherwise kept his reaction to himself.

I should have done better protecting him. I shouldn’t have let the Rakshasa get to him
.

He thought about Camille, about possibly failing her like that, and it choked him up. What the hell was happening to him? It wasn’t enough he’d turned part demon and started sleeping on frilly sheets—now he was getting misty because his best friend wanted to punch his teeth down his throat?

All because of a woman. Not just a woman. A Sibyl, though John was beginning to think she was a witch, too. Whatever kind of man he had been when he wore his first body, that man truly was dead—but the change had nothing to do with taking over a demon’s skin. John knew it had everything to do with his soul touching Camille’s, with meeting her again and speaking to her. He just couldn’t be that cold, distant nothing-but-a-soldier thing anymore, not with her in the same house. Not knowing she was even on the same planet.

So what was he now?

Who the hell knew? He sure didn’t.

I’m hers. I hope to God she’ll decide she’s mine after we both figure out who I am
.

“I’m sorry,” he told Duncan around the big irritating, embarrassing lump in his throat. “About the demons attacking you. About sucking you into all this last year.”

Duncan’s expression hardened again. “What about for leaving me in the desert before that? Just walking away after that temple disaster without so much as a ‘Kiss my ass, buddy’?”

“What happened in the Valley of the Gods was classified. I couldn’t say anything.” John held Duncan’s angry gaze, then felt himself relenting, holding up both hands in surrender. The room around them smelled like lilies and women and here and now and today, not then. No need to keep
then
so alive. “Yeah, yeah. I could have called. I could have dropped you a note to let you know everything was okay. I was wrong not to do that.”

Duncan’s mouth twitched at one corner. Not a smile, but not another windup for a tell-off, either. “Better.”

John’s gaze shifted to Bela and he lowered his hands. “I’m glad you’re in his life. He deserves somebody like you.”

Bela acknowledged this with a nod.

“And back when I was in Duncan’s head, I never—you know.” John coughed to give himself a second to pick the next words. “Got any cheap thrills, or anything.”

Bela flushed, but she laughed.

“No,” Duncan said, red highlights hitting both cheeks as he spoke. “No way. Just because you make nice with my wife doesn’t mean we’re finished with this.”

John raised his hands again, palms out. “Whatever you say.”

“Don’t do that.” Duncan jammed his fingers through his hair and looked twice as pissed.

John had to work not to grin, but he pulled it off by counting the pictures on Camille’s walls. “Do what?”

“That whole whatever-you-say crap.” Duncan’s frown was severe, but more normal now. Irritated instead of furious. “You always won fights like that when we were growing up.”

John shrugged. “Maybe I just didn’t want to fight with you. Maybe I don’t want to fight with you now.”

Now Duncan’s frown got a little more serious, and sad, too. “This is past fistfights in the fields, John.” He looked away. “This isn’t some little-kid bullshit.”

The sadness showing on Duncan’s face crept over to John, but really, he already felt it. The time for teasing and yelling and blustering was over, finished. “I know.”

Duncan took a few seconds to compose himself, and he glanced at Bela more than once while he pulled his thoughts together. At last, when he was ready, he faced John straight on again, and his voice was steady and quiet when he spoke. “If you run out on me again, no matter what the reason, we’re done.”

John felt each word like a different kind of punch in the jaw. The kind that got his attention, made a permanent impression. He and Duncan had swapped a lot of licks and insults, but neither one had ever threatened the other with the end of their friendship.

Which meant this was no threat.

What was that old gospel song they’d been swapping back and forth when he was in Duncan’s head?

Can’t hide, sinner …

Yeah, that was it.

And John knew it was true.

“Got it,” he said, because he did understand, and after everything he had put Duncan through, there wasn’t really anything else he could say.

The two of them stayed quiet for a minute or so, and John felt all the anger seep out of Camille’s bedroom. The space went back to its soothing tones and silky bedsheets, its neatly arranged art and furniture. Definitely nothing John or Duncan would ever put together, much less choose as the stage to play out what might prove to be the most important—and final—act of their friendship.

Bela seemed to judge it safe to give them a moment or two, because she picked up the stuff that had fallen off the dressers, put it back in place, and stepped out of the bedroom. John noticed she didn’t go upstairs, though. Staying close, just in case. Poor woman was obviously used to refereeing.

“Why are you here?” Duncan asked as soon as Bela closed the door behind her. “I mean, right here, in this brownstone, right now.”

John’s response came reflexively. “I’m here to kill Rakshasa.”

“And?”

John let out a breath.

Duncan was still his best friend. No matter how much time passed, no matter how much distance grew, nothing would ever change that. If he couldn’t tell this man the truth, then there was no hope for him.

“A year ago, I would have said that was it. That I’m here to eradicate demons.” John touched his temple. “Including the one in my brain, when he’s the only one left.”

Duncan worked that out faster than John would have liked, judging by the frown and wary expression. “And now?”

“Now—” John glanced at the door, imagining the hall, the door to the lab, and Camille hard at work over whatever was in that room. “Now I’ve got other things on my mind.”

Duncan glanced around the bedroom as if he might just now be taking in the details, the nuances that had changed since Camille claimed and renovated the room. She was everywhere down here, like a tangible presence drifting through the air between them. More than anything, Duncan seemed to be processing John’s willingness to stay in the brownstone, in the bedroom, when community living really wasn’t his style. Duncan might also be remembering John’s time as a ghost in his head, when John thought Camille was a special kind of hot.

“Why are you here, John?” Duncan asked again, this time more slowly, staring at John with the spooky blue eyes John had known since he first remembered anything about life.

“I think I came here to marry Camille.” He couldn’t quite believe he’d said that, but he didn’t back away from it. “I don’t know what else to say. She feels like my future. She feels like … everything. If she decides she likes me. And if I don’t turn out to be a psychotic killer demon. And if none of you have to behead me.”

There. That was it. Pretty much in a package, tied up with a bow. If it wasn’t enough for Duncan, John didn’t know what else he could offer.

“Okay.” Duncan rubbed his hand across his short brown hair again, not too fast or hard this time. More like the habit John remembered.

“Just okay?” John gave Duncan a sideways look, because he knew there had to be more.

“I have faith in Camille.” Duncan’s grin came on slow and sly, not open or relaxed yet, but John would take whatever he could get. “She’ll kick your balls up through your ribs if that’s what you need.”