Authors: Lori Handeland
Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #paranormal, #Urban, #Fiction
I hadn’t been, either, until he’d died for us.
But I was never going to convince Jimmy that Sawyer was anything other than an enigma, so I wasn’t going to try.
“What do you know about sosyes?” I asked.
“Haitian wizards,” Jimmy said. “They command night demons, which are—”
“Creepy shadow birds that fly right through you and peck your insides raw.”
“You’ve met.”
“Oh, yeah. How the hell do we kill them?”
“Mait dies, they do.”
“Otherwise?”
“They don’t.”
“Of course not,” I muttered. “Go on.”
“A sosye is part witch and part loa, a voodoo god.”
“If he’s Nephilim he’s part
demon,
” I pointed out.
“In the old days, people had to have a word they used to refer to those beings with supernatural powers. Sometimes they called them gods. In Mait’s case, his father was Kalfu, ruler of the night spirits.”
“Otherwise known as night demons.”
“Yep,” Jimmy said. “According to legend, Kalfu is the grand master of charms and sorceries. He’s the origin of darkness. He upsets the natural order, thwarts fate. Basically he is chaos. He protects the gate between this world and the next.”
“And his son?”
“Controls the malevolent spirits of the night as well as the displaced souls of the next world.”
“He can raise ghosts,” I clarified.
“And thanks to his mother he can perform magic.”
“Which is how he threw up the protection spell around the old church. Unlike his father, he’s protecting a book instead of a gate.”
“For all we know,” Jimmy said, “the book
is
the gate.”
“There are things I need to get for tonight.” Jimmy stood.
“You want me to come?” I asked, but he was already shutting the door.
Since I was so tired I ached with it, I decided to “rest my eyes” until Sanducci got back. No sooner had I closed them than I was out. Where I went it was dark, and I was alone.
But not for long. Something was coming. Friend or foe?
Sawyer?
I whispered into the darkness.
A chill wind brushed my face—bark and ice, heat and hay. The air smelled like him, but then again, it didn’t.
Are you close?
Fur brushed my knee. I reached out, but my hand found nothing. Nearby a growl, but it didn’t sound like Sawyer.
I sat up with a gasp. Jimmy stood at the small table to the left of the terrace. Orange, pewter, fuchsia, and slate fought for control of the horizon. Dusk was on its way.
I swung my feet to the floor. “What time is it?”
“Eight.”
I was dopey with sleep. I felt like I’d only closed my eyes and then opened them again. In truth I’d been unconscious for hours.
The scent of food made my stomach growl. “What did you bring?”
Jimmy drew wrapped parcels from the bag on the table. “Po’ boys.”
I bit my lip to keep from making
yummy
noises. A po’ boy was a shrimp, oyster, beef, or whatever sandwich wrapped inside the best baguette in the country. Sanducci had good taste. Although it was almost as hard to find bad food in New Orleans as it had been to find the
Book of Samyaza
at all.
A second bag sat on the dresser. I lifted my chin in its direction. “You found your sun-dried pig’s nostrils?”
“I found everything I needed. Here, it isn’t much of a problem.”
“Voodoo Wal-Mart?” I guessed.
“Right.” He took a bite of his roast beef po’ boy. The scent of hot mustard wafted my way, and I dug in to my own shrimp version.
When the food was gone along with the soft drinks we’d used to wash everything down, I asked, “What exactly
did
you need?”
Jimmy shoved the empty wrappings into the bag. “A priestess to provide the materials for the gris-gris.”
“You found a bona fide voodoo priestess?”
“This is New Orleans. You can’t swing a cat and not hit a voodoo priestess.”
I opened my mouth then shut it again. I’d just take his word for it. “What’s a gris-gris?”
“Combination of both black and white magic. The most powerful charm there is.”
“Isn’t a priestess a practitioner of white magic? A bokor practices black?”
“Technically. But a voodoo priestess or priest studies both sides. They believe the only way to thwart evil is to understand it.”
Had to agree with that. “This gris-gris will prevent Mait’s magic from harming us?”
“Yes.”
I guess it made sense to use a voodoo charm of protection against the son of a voodoo god that protected things. If sense could be made of any of this.
“How did Mait come to exist?” I asked. It never hurt to know the history of a Nephilim. Sometimes the past was the only thing we had to keep us alive in the present.
“Legend says his mother—a mambo, or priestess who became a bokor—summoned Kalfu with black magic, then compelled him to give her a child.”
I shivered despite the steaming heat that still poured in through the open balcony doors. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to do that. The idea of allowing a demon to not only touch you but impregnate you—
I shivered again. I
could
imagine it, but I really wished I’d stop.
“Where’s Kalfu now?”
“The lowest level of hell with all the other fiends.” Oh, yeah. To make a Nephilim like Mait required a Grigori and a human. Kalfu, being a Grigori, was confined. At the moment.
“What about the voodoo witch mom?” She might be the human part of the equation, but in this story she’d behaved as badly as any demon.
“Dead,” Jimmy said.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” Jimmy tossed the trash into the wastebasket in the corner.
“You killed her.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“Lizzy,” Jimmy murmured, and when I glanced at him he gestured to the window.
The moon was coming up.
“Could you do one thing?” he asked.
“I’m sure I’ll have to do more than one.”
His exhale was short, sharp, and annoyed. I couldn’t blame him. “Can you take that off?”
He pointed to the turquoise that still lay between my breasts. It had always driven Jimmy insane. I guess I couldn’t blame him. The stone was a constant reminder of the bond between Sawyer and me.
Without another word, I lifted the necklace over my head and set it aside.
Jimmy and I had never had a problem having sex. The problem had always been trying
not
to have it. Of course things had changed since the last time we’d had anything but vampire sex. I wondered if Jimmy would be able to perform. He not only didn’t love me anymore, lately he didn’t even seem to like me.
Jimmy opened the brown paper bag on the dresser and began to remove items. Candles, incense, and two tiny burlap sacks, which he set away from the rest. The gris-gris, I assumed.
“Candles and incense,” I said. “How . . . seventies.”
Jimmy’s cough sounded like smothered laughter, but when his dark eyes met mine in the mirror on the wall not a hint of amusement remained. “Both the candles and incense contain dragon’s blood.”
“There be dragons?” I quipped.
Jimmy gave me a look. We both knew there were dragons. We’d killed quite a few, and I was certain there were more where they’d come from.
“Dragon’s blood is an herb,” he said. “In the candles it ensures that whatever we put in, we get out.” He held up a hand to stall my questions. “I’ll explain later. In the incense it cleanses negative entities or influences.”
Jimmy picked up a green candle and set it on the table. “Green for changes and renewal.” He set a red candle on one side of the bed and a pink on the other.
“And those?”
“Sex stuff,” he answered, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I didn’t push it. I couldn’t.
Next came the incense—small cones that Jimmy set on equally small dishes next to the candles, lighting one before he moved on to the next. “Tea tree for cures. Spearmint for freedom, power, and peace. Bay for protection and exorcism.”
Listening to Sanducci recite the magical powers of scents and colors was a little like hearing a professional wrestler share his favorite recipe for canapés.
“You learned all this from Summer?” I asked. “She doesn’t seem like an incense-and-candle gal.”
Jimmy went to the window and stared at the sky, neatly avoiding my eyes again. He didn’t want to talk about Summer. Hell, neither did I.
The candles glowed softly golden, at odds with the cool silver spray of the moon. The incense mixed with the scent of the night, and I felt a little floaty.
“During the spell,” Jimmy said, “we’ll order our demons beneath the full moon, banish them from our souls, ask for protection and peace.”
“What we put in, we get out,” I murmured. “When do we do this?”
“I’ll—” He cleared his throat. “I’ll let you know.”
Silence settled over us. Jimmy continued to peer upward. I continued to stand several feet away, breathing in candle wax and incense.
“Should we . . . ?” I began, then paused, uncertain what to say.
“We probably shouldn’t,” Jimmy muttered. “But that never stopped us before.”
I found myself smiling. That had been the perfect thing to say.
I crossed the room and slipped my arms around him, laying my head against his back. I half expected him to tense, but he’d been waiting for me.
Jimmy was taller than me, so my cheek pressed to his shoulder blade, my breasts at his rib cage, my hips just below his. I spread my palms against a firm, flat stomach. His heat pulsed through the soft, worn material of his T-shirt.
We’d embraced like this dozens of times. It brought back so many memories, as did the faint scent of cinnamon that wafted from his skin. If I closed my eyes, I could convince myself we were kids again, before we’d hurt each other, before we’d killed. Or at least before I had.
I’d never loved anyone the way I’d loved Jimmy Sanducci. I doubted I ever could. I’d trusted him utterly, believed in him completely, wanted him with that crazed burn of bursting teenage hormones. When he’d broken my heart, he’d broken it forever. I would never be able to trust, or believe, or love quite like that again.
Even with him.
“Jimmy,” I began.
He spun and kissed me. There was nothing gentle about that kiss, nothing of our childhood except the flavor. Jimmy tasted like danger—always had.
His tongue plunged, mine met it halfway, and they tangled. My hands swooped under his T-shirt. His skin seemed to scald mine, and I only wanted more.
I traced my palms over the ridges in his stomach, moaning when the muscles clenched. I wanted to lick them as they rippled, feel the movement with my tongue.
My thumb circled his navel then traced lower, slipping below his belt and caressing the smooth hot head of him.
He arched and his hips advanced and retreated, advanced and retreated, rubbing my thumb over and back, over and back. Memory flashed, illuminating a path we’d blazed many times before.
I used my fingernail on his tip, nothing more than a tickle, but he gasped, capturing my breath into his mouth. Once we’d lain for hours, nose-to-nose, staring into each other’s eyes, breathing each other’s breath.
I wish we could stay like this forever,
I’d whispered.
Even then, Jimmy had kissed me and said nothing at all.
His long-fingered, clever hands rode my hips then swept across my stomach. I was hot, but he was hotter. When his skin touched mine I half expected steam to rise.
I tore off my shirt, tossing it aside and drawing his dark head nearer. He filled his palms with my breasts and despite the admirable size of his hands they over-flowed his grasp.
Though my skin was as dark as his, in the moonlight I seemed carved of marble, his fingers like onyx. He stared at my chest, his hands, tilting his head, watching the candles flicker gold across the stark white globes and tendrils of black.
I knew that expression. He was wondering where he’d left his camera.
“Later,” I muttered, and cupped my palms over his knuckles, showing him what he already knew.
Together our thumbs slid right and then left, right and then left across my nipples. My head fell back, and he feasted.
My hands clenched in his hair then slid to his shoulders and held on. As he suckled, my knees weakened. Without support I would fall.
Memories flickered through his mind before he cut them off. Jimmy had become almost as adept at keeping me out as I’d become at not seeing in. Right now I had no desire to see his secrets or the past. The only desire I had was for him.
His erection pressed against my belly, pulsing and alive. I wanted to climb up high, hook my ankles behind his back, and welcome him home. I’d lifted myself onto my tiptoes, begun to slide my leg up his. Only then did I realize he still wore all his clothes, and I still wore half of mine.
“Off.” I tugged at his zipper.
He lifted his head, mouth glistening, eyes glazed. An instant later, he began to return to what he was doing, and I scraped his stomach with my nails.
His breath drew in on a hiss. “Sheesh, Lizzy,” he said, but he focused.
I stepped back, and my fingers went to my own zipper. “Race you.” I yanked it down as he reached for the hem of his shirt.
I beat him. I usually did, even when I wasn’t ahead by a T-shirt.
He kicked away his jeans, and I held up my hand to keep him from tackling me. I wanted to look at him for just a minute. Who knew if I’d ever get to look at him this way again.
Sanducci had a beautiful face. His body, long and lean, a runner’s body, glistened like copper beneath the moon. Because he was a breed and could heal most everything, there wasn’t a single scar to mar his perfect flesh.
Soft, dark curls dusted his legs; an equally dark trail led from the matt of hair between his thighs to his navel. I let my gaze wander higher, across his toned chest and biceps. His shoulders were broader than his hips, but not by much, his muscles taut not bulky.