Demon's Kiss (11 page)

“Much obliged.” Terry accepted a Styrofoam cup of hot soup that Clea poured. She blew on it, took a careful sip, and selected a sandwich from the huge tray that sat perched on top of the toolbox in the open trunk of the car. Ciarran’s generosity. Thermoses and preprepared hot soup to fill them, trays of sandwiches and fruit and cookies. When Clea had protested the cost, saying that it was much less expensive to buy the ingredients and prepare the food themselves, he’d laughed, a low, sexy sound that set her every nerve tingling.

“I’m not inclined to head back to your kitchen right now,” he’d said.

Thinking of the
hybrids,
she hadn’t been so inclined, either.

He’d insisted on buying triple the amount of food that Clea usually prepared, saying that he figured the people at Box Town wouldn’t mind the leftovers.

She’d felt strange, buying the meal rather than making it with her own hands, but she hadn’t been able to argue with his logic, especially when they’d gotten to the register and he’d pulled out a wad of cash thicker than a paperback novel.

Now, Clea’s gaze slid to Ciarran, where he stood not three yards away, distributing blankets. Just looking at him kicked her pulse up a notch. His dark jeans hugged his muscled legs, and his shirt was rolled up at the sleeves despite the chill of the October wind, revealing forearms thick with muscle. Lean and powerful, he was so comfortable in his skin, perfectly balanced, cloaked in danger. A warrior. Even here where she could imagine no possible threat, he was alert, watchful, expecting an attack.

“How’s Pickles?” she asked, forcing her attention back to Terry.

“Pickles is doing just fine. She’s a good girl, aren’t you, Pickles? Aren’t you?”

The tiny Chihuahua poked her head out of the pocket of her mistress’s baggy black overcoat and gave a single, sharp yap. A smile tugging at her lips, Clea tore a crust from the edge of a sandwich and, leaning forward, offered it to the dog.

“Fine weather we’re having today, but I smell winter. Won’t be long before it snows,” Terry said, glancing at the clear blue saucer of sky; then her expression shifted, growing distant and wary as she focused on something over Clea’s shoulder.

Slowly, Clea straightened, frowning as a ripple of awareness stroked her skin, making the hair at her nape prickle and rise.

Glancing over her shoulder, Clea found that Ciarran had stepped up behind her. She had known it, sensed him drawing near. She shivered at the realization. Connected. They were connected, and it was growing stronger every minute.

He was studying the little dog, his expression intent; then he held out his hand for the animal to sniff. Pickles licked him, yipping ecstatically, and Ciarran smiled as he extended his free hand toward Terry, the handles of a large plastic bag held in his fist.

“Dog food,” he said. “And biscuits.”

Terry just looked at him, startled, soup cup poised halfway to her lips, then blinked rapidly, her eyes filling with tears. Carefully, she lowered the cup, her expression pensive, as though she was trying to decide if he was for real. She reached out, looping the plastic handles of the bag over her forearm while she balanced her plastic plate and soup.

“Thank you.” Her voice was thick, and she looked as though someone had just gifted her with a lottery win.

“You are most welcome.” Ciarran inclined his head. His gaze slid to Clea, wandering over her in a slow caress, lingering in turn. She blinked, sucked in a sharp breath, feeling as though he’d actually touched her. A masculine smile curved his lips, sexy, knowing, and with just that look, he made her think of his mouth on hers. Slow, sucking kisses. Rough kisses and frantic need. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other as he turned away.

She watched him walk, loose-limbed and elegant, back to the box of blankets he’d been distributing a few moments past, and she thought that he was definitely a sorcerer, in more ways than one. With a glance, he worked some kind of crazy enchantment on her. And she liked it. Liked the feeling of her blood rushing hot and thick through her veins, liked the feeling of her breath catching in her throat as she looked at him and he looked at her and she thought of him touching her, taking her.

Whoo
. Control. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Turning back to Terry, who was hugging the plastic bag close against her chest, Clea felt her heart warm at Ciarran’s kind gesture. She’d mentioned Pickles while they were buying the sandwiches, and Ciarran had insisted on picking up a bag of dog food.

“You doing okay, Clea?” Terry asked. “We’re all missing your grandmother something fierce. I can only imagine you must be missing her worst of all. I’m real sorry, you know. We all are.”

“Thanks, Terry. I know you are.”

“That man of yours . . .” Terry glanced at Ciarran, where he stood by the open box he’d hauled out of the trunk. He was holding out an assortment of blankets in three different shades for an older woman to choose from, his expression inscrutable.

His broad shoulders were set at just such an angle, his lean hips cocked in a way that claimed the world. Acts of kindness aside, Ciarran D’Arbois was a dangerous man. Remote. In control.

Clea swallowed. He was also savagely beautiful. Unbelievably sexy. And she ought to be running as fast and as hard as she could, in any direction other than the one he was in. If she was smart. Which she’d always thought she was.

Smart, sensible Clea.

Only suddenly, she wasn’t so sure exactly what sensible meant.

A long, lazy hiss of air escaped her. She just didn’t know what to make of him. Or herself.

“He’s okay, you know,” Terry said. “Your man. He’s okay.”

Pressing her lips together, Clea poured another cup of soup and handed it to the next woman in line. Ciarran wasn’t exactly her man. And he wasn’t exactly okay. He was—

She handed out more soup, stared at him a little longer. He turned to look at her, his gaze hot, and she shivered.

“Where’s Louise?” Clea asked, dragging her attention back to Terry. Louise never missed the third Saturday of the month. She had a sweet tooth, and Clea always brought dessert.

At her question, Brian shuffled forward, leaning heavily on his cane. He’d been a construction worker. Successful. Owned his own home. Had a wife who loved him. Then the scaffold he’d been working on had failed, and he’d ended up with a crushed leg. He’d lost his house to medical costs. Lost his wife to the drinking that he’d started to try to numb the pain. Lost his only son a year later to a hit-and-run driver. And slowly, bit by bit, he’d lost his grasp on reality. He still had his lucid days, but they were few and far between.

“Louise ain’t coming back. Not unless she comes as an angel,” he muttered, filling a plate with sandwiches.

He turned to go, but Clea stopped him, his words settling inside her like sludge at the bottom of a dirty lake. “Brian, has something happened to Louise?”

“She’s dead,” he said bluntly. “Dead. Died there. At St. John’s.”

His words dripped down on her like a cold rain.

“Tssss.” Terry shook her head. “She went to St. John’s for her arm. You know the one. The infected arm you warned her about last time you were here. She listened to you, took it serious, went over to the ER. And she never came back. It’s not like her to wander off. . . .”

Clea felt Ciarran come up behind her, and he rested his hand on her shoulder, solid, strong. She had the crazy thought that he was offering support, that he knew something terrible had happened to Louise, a woman he’d never even met. Just like Clea knew, with a dreadful certainty. Nausea churned inside her, poisoning her stomach, crawling up her throat. Brian was right. She sensed it, felt it.

Louise was dead.

“Maybe she came and went. Maybe you missed her.” Clea wrapped her arms around herself, hugging close the jacket Ciarran had picked up for her when they went into the Wal-Mart.

Swallowing a mouthful of soup, Terry shook her head. “Nope. Brian went looking for her. He asked at the desk over at St. John’s, and they told him she wasn’t there, that she never was admitted, that she left from the ER. He didn’t believe them. He thinks she never left, ’cause she woulda come back here. He thinks she died.” A shudder wracked her solid frame. “He thinks she was killed.”

Cold fingers of dread chased along Clea’s spine.

Brian leaned closer and lowered his voice. “They’re covering it up. It’s a conspiracy.”

“Who’s covering it up, Brian?”

“The government, that’s who. Never trusted the damned government. Never,” he said as he turned and shuffled away.

“He’s upset.” Terry made a sound of sympathy. “Louise gone and disappeared. And only two weeks ago, Nala gone, too.”

Clea jerked in surprise. “What? Nala?”

“Yep. She got bumped by a car crossing Main Street. Said she was fine, but right then I saw she was already bruising something terrible. I took her over to St. John’s myself, but they wouldn’t let me go in with her on account of Pickles. So I sent her in by herself, and we haven’t seen her since.”

“Nala’s wandered off before,” Clea pointed out. “Last year she took off for a month.”

Terry shook her head, her overlong bangs flopping down over her eyes. “I’ll tell you something. I get hurt, no way am I going there. I don’t care that the other hospitals don’t like us homeless folk. I’ll go to one of them for certain.” Her mouth tightened. “Call my daughter if I have to. But no way am I stepping foot in St. John’s. Something bad going on there. Something real bad.”

“Where did Louise live?” Ciarran asked, his gaze moving intently over the rows of cardboard boxes that served as makeshift homes. He stilled, focusing on one sagging box tucked right up under the bridge. “There,” he said.

Terry shot him a startled look. “Yeah. How’d you know that? What you got? ESP, or something?”

His mouth curved in a tiny, dark smile. “Or something.”

He had no way to be certain, not yet, but if Louise had disappeared from St. John’s Hospital, it was a good bet that it had something to do with her blighted seed and an even better bet that a demon was responsible.

Too many coincidences. Too many demon sightings and
hybrid
attacks. The bar that Darqun favored, Slinger’s, was a mere two blocks from here and another three blocks from St. John’s Hospital, in the opposite direction. Asag had been at that bar, and Ciarran had a strong suspicion that he’d been at St. John’s.

Turning, he looked at Clea. He could feel the low hum of contact between them, the draw as she pulled magic from him. Even from this distance, the connection did not fade. She was stronger than he had thought possible. More dangerous than he could have imagined, draining him with a slow, steady draw that she didn’t even realize she was exerting.

As though she sensed his thoughts, he felt Clea tug hard on his magic, dragging it from him, into her.

He wanted to put more than magic into her.

He wanted to push inside of her, into the warm wet heat of her.
Christe
. He remembered what it was to want a woman, to feel the hard, sharp kick of desire, to want to touch her and kiss her and bury himself inside her. He’d had such thoughts, vague, impersonal imaginings that gnawed at him despite the relief he sought in the pleasure of his own fist.

Twenty years of solitary release. Twenty years to regret what he had allowed to happen, the loss of his hand. The loss of a piece of his soul.

Twenty years. A mere moment in his ancient existence. An eternity to his lonely heart.

But whatever yearning he had thought dogged him with sharp and bitter barbs was nothing compared to the thought of losing her. Clea. He wanted her with a dark and erotic need, and, yes, with a gentle care.

She was his poison.

She was his cure.

Which left him between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If he stayed with her, she threatened all he was. She could drain him to the point of weakness, to the point that he might no longer be able to hold the darkness at bay. What value would he have then as guardian, as High Sorcerer?

But the alternative did not bear consideration. To leave her alone, unprotected, untutored in the use of her own magic . . . he could not even think of it.

Asag would find her. He would use her. He would—

Emotion churned inside him, alien and strange.

If Asag sank his talons into her, he would warp her power until she threatened the whole damned world.