Demon's Kiss (19 page)

No. Not true. She’d done a lot more than that. She’d sucked Ciarran’s power, creating a vortex inside herself. Now all she needed to do was figure out how to get within ten miles of him without feeding on him, weakening him.

God. What she really needed to do was leave him.

Looking around the room, she realized that everyone was silent, watching her. She figured they might have been doing that for a while.

“So, uh, any luck tracking down Asag?” Javier asked, sounding a bit forced. She glanced up to find his blue eyes fixed on her.

“Yeah,” Ciarran replied, his tone cold. “I had him in the frigging audience last night while I sparred with a handful of
hybrids
.”

Something about his comment caught Clea’s attention, but she couldn’t think what it was. She’d seen no audience, and she couldn’t imagine he would have welcomed one. Though he had made no mention of any need for secrecy, Clea had the definite impression that the existence of the Compact of Sorcerers was not knowledge that should be shared with the general mortal population.

“You appear unscathed,” Darqun said.

Clea turned and studied Ciarran. He was dressed in a pair of black jeans and a black T-shirt, the short sleeves baring his arm where he’d been slashed open the previous night. Now there was no cut, no scar, just healthy skin. A sigh of relief slipped from between her parted lips.

He had healed.

Whatever her proximity had cost him, it was obviously less than she had imagined, and her relief was a sweet river flowing through her.

“Did you see his mortal guise?” Javier asked, drawing Clea’s attention.

“Asag?” Ciarran shook his head. “No. I sensed him. Felt his putrid touch in the
continuum
.” He paused, as though deciding whether or not he should say more. “He didn’t fight.”

“What?” Javier raked his fingers through his dark hair, and the strands instantly settled back into perfect symmetry. The mark of an uberexpensive haircut, Clea thought wryly.

“I had the feeling he was there with a purpose, with the intention of observing my interaction with the
hybrids,
” Ciarran said.

“And did he see anything of note?” Darqun glanced at Clea, then strolled over to the wall to reclaim the sword her magic had sent flying from his hand.

Her
magic.
Hers
. The power she had known she possessed since she was eight years old but had been unable, unwilling, to acknowledge. Now she faced it, claimed it.

Hers
.

“He saw me kill
hybrids
.” Ciarran shrugged. “Nothing of great interest there.”

Blowing out a slow breath, Clea held her silence. He wasn’t exactly lying, but he wasn’t exactly telling the truth. Yes, he had killed
hybrids,
and she had to assume he had done that before. But the
way
he had done it
was
of great interest.

He’d talked about light magic, and she had a feeling that he was used to using it as his weapon, just as he had the night at the Blue Bay Motel against that minor demon. He was used to cool control and calculated limitation of his power. She had seen that the night he faced the demon.

The unharnessed power of the killing blades and the darkness she had seen last night . . . something told her that they were new and that Darqun and Javier would be most interested in hearing about them. She could feel Ciarran beside her, close but not touching. His tension shimmering just beneath the surface, though he gave away nothing, his true thoughts hidden behind a casual pose.

She figured he didn’t want to share the story of his unusual weapons with his friends.

Well, they wouldn’t hear about them from her.

Ciarran reached over and looped his arm casually across her shoulder. She felt the sharp tingle of their connection, energy and magic, and a subtle whisper of something else, a warning. Sending him a quick glance, she caught him looking at her, his incandescent eyes shadowed and dark, bidding her to hold her silence.

To keep his secrets.

He had never asked the sorcerer why he betrayed his own, why he betrayed the ideal of centuries. What he did know was that it had started as a ruse. The sorcerer had come with the intent to ferret information, to strengthen his kind, to protect the human realm. Where was the boundary between subterfuge for noble intent and betrayal, however unplanned? Perhaps the sorcerer had known the answer once.

Asa could muster only mild interest. He was certain the immortal had his reasons, and they were of little consequence. Perhaps he would ask before he killed him. The knowledge might serve him well in the future, should he ever need to seek out a sorcerer ally again.

“I would not call us bedfellows.” The sorcerer sounded bored, his tone offending Asa in the most basic sense.

“No?” Asa laughed coldly. “What, then?”

“Merely two who have set enmity aside and chosen a similar path for the greater good.” The sorcerer’s gaze roamed the faces of those near him, studying them with casual interest. “I am of temporary use to you, and you to me. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Riddles. The man spoke in riddles. Asa fought the urge to roll his eyes. A fool, this sorcerer, to believe they had set hatred aside, to think they were true allies when in fact he was merely a source of information. How very surprised the traitor would be when Asa turned on
him
.

Bored, Asa glanced about. A woman cried softly at the adjacent table, tears sliding along her cheeks. She sipped on a cold juice, mourning the changes in her aged father as he died a slow death in a room upstairs. Asa let her misery surge into him, cherishing it, relishing it. Human suffering was wonderful, a marvelous treat.

“You sacrificed three of your own,” the sorcerer observed.

Asa gave an elegant shrug. “A necessary expense. I needed to ascertain D’Arbois’ power and the strength of the demon seed within. The results were shocking. I expected the evidence of inner turmoil and the arrogance inherent to the sorcerer breed. But the weapons that D’Arbois called . . . the blades . . . the cloud of killing mist . . .”

There. His recitation brought out a tiny crack in his companion’s composure. Asa raised a brow and continued. “I had thought it was not possible for any sorcerer to channel more than one perfect skill. But D’Arbois did, and the weapons he called were a strange, exotic mix, part light magic, part demonic darkness—”

Asa broke off, turning his head and smiling as he sensed the approach of another doctor. All bluff amiability, he offered his hand in greeting.

“Gavin. Good to see you. How was the conference?”

Gavin flashed him a toothy grin and clapped him on the shoulder. Rage slithered through Asa at such an affront, a mortal daring to defile his person, but he kept his smile in place, his thoughts hidden behind a mask of congenial normalcy.

“Great. Great. My only regret is that Abby couldn’t join me.” Gavin waggled his eyebrows. “We might have made it into a second honeymoon. The weather was great.”

Asa smiled and nodded, until with a last little bit of tedious chatter, Gavin moved off, completely unaware that Asa had a companion. The sorcerer had a penchant for illusion, and at Gavin’s approach, he had taken the guise of an empty chair.

“Let us discuss the girl,” Asa prodded.

The sorcerer steepled his fingers. “D’Arbois is enamored of her.”

A slow curl of rage sifted through Asa, like a pungent, choking cloud of smoke. Clea Masters was
his
. Her magic was his. It infuriated him to think D’Arbois might mate with her, might claim her. She was to have been
his
.

“You gave her to me once before. Sacrifice her again,” he breathed, the thought sending a sharp coil of pleasure through him.

Months ago, using the information provided by the sorcerer, Asa had found Clea doing observation time here at this very hospital. He had seen to it that her grandmother did not respond to treatment. Such an easy matter for him, he who had once been Asag, the demon of plague. Human cancer was a simple demise. Let the cells grow uncontrolled, and they would kill the host. Yet, even buffeted by her heartbreak and loss, Clea had not turned to him as he had expected. She had chosen instead to stand alone and strong, facing her grief with an almost heroic composure.

Dealing with it, she said, because such was the way of life.

He hated her for that. For her strength when he so longed to prey upon her weakness and desperation and fear.

“Give me the information I need,” Asa hissed.

The immortal shrugged, toyed with the untouched bottle of water that sat on the table before him. “I told you where to find her, and find her you did. The failures that occurred from that point on are solely your own. What reward do I gain by offering her up a second time?”

Asa could barely maintain the façade of composure, and his body vibrated with anticipated pleasure as he contemplated the sorcerer’s demise. He would take his limbs, his blood, his magic, his life, for though the creature was immortal, there were ways and means to see a sorcerer’s end, and they were unpleasant. Truly, deliciously unpleasant. Just contemplating the possibilities made him quiver in expectation.

His collaborator would become his prey, cornered, desperate, squirming and wriggling like a skewered worm. The thought sent little pulses of delight coursing through him. It was all he could do to control his expression, betray none of his thoughts.

“Your reward will come with the arrival of the Solitary,” he said, leaning across the table and lowering his voice, attempting to betray none of the frustration he was feeling. “I need to know where she is
now.
”

He had searched for Clea and failed to find her, losing her trail when he had returned to her apartment building late last night and tried to track her from there. D’Arbois had hidden her away somewhere, and Asa knew he had none to blame but himself. He’d missed his opportunity. Instead of merely playing the watcher as D’Arbois battled the
hybrids,
he should have joined the fray and taken her. Snatched her from the arms of her protector. A lovely twist that would have been.

“Give me Clea Masters,” Asa said, returning his attention to the sorcerer. “I must have her. She is the conduit, the key.”

“I would prefer that she not be harmed.”

Asa blinked. Laughed. A dull flush of anticipation suffused him as he pictured Clea naked beneath his teeth, beneath his talons, flayed and skinned slowly for his pleasure, her screams an opus, her magic sucked into the black vortex of his appetite.

With D’Arbois there to watch.

“And I would prefer harming her.” He waited a moment, long enough for the silence to be noticeable; then he offered a compromise. A lie. “Her life is forfeit, but I shall grant you a boon to assuage your conscience. I will see to her quick and painless demise.”

Clasping his hands tight around the water bottle, the sorcerer met his gaze for a long moment, and then nodded. “You will not be able to breach the wards set by D’Arbois. She is well protected, cloaked in his magic. You will have only one chance at her, and to waste your chance on attacking the fortified bastions of his home is foolishness.”

Rage flushing his body with a bitter heat, Asa clenched his fists.
Foolishness
. This worthless magician dared speak to him so.

“Better to draw the girl out and take her from the street,” the sorcerer continued.

“And you believe he will leave her unprotected long enough for her to follow the scent of the bait to the trap?” Unable to contain his incredulity, Asa laughed.

“Yes.” The sorcerer slid a photograph across the table, the
shush
of paper on plastic barely audible in the noisy cafeteria. “You will find these two in Box Town, under the Bathurst Street Bridge. The woman’s name is Terry, and the dog is Pickles. If she calls, Clea Masters will answer, and she will open the door.”

“And you know this how?” Asa asked in a silky whisper.

The sorcerer met his gaze. “Subtle questions to a colleague, a friend, a coworker. Just enough to glean information without raising suspicion. A simple matter to follow the path of a girl with such a predictable life. Work. School. The occasional social outing.” Pulling a small digital camera from his pocket, the sorcerer offered it for inspection. “The photograph was an easy thing to obtain. Amazing, the advances in human technology.”

Asa studied his collaborator, watching for signs of treachery: a flickering gaze, a subtle tension about the lips. But there were none. Only the open and honest gaze of a creature about to betray his own kind. An interesting paradox. “And D’Arbois will let her go unprotected because . . . ?”

“I will see to it that he is summoned,” the sorcerer said, his mouth twisting in an ugly, mocking smile. “His
honor
will ensure that he turns up.”