You are mine, Muse.
His words chewed up inside a growl, and he spat them out.
Wrenched from the vision and back into real-time, I fell back onto my arms. Ragged gasps came hard and fast. My heart drummed against my ribs. Tremors wracked me, memories of agony and shame manifesting in my muscles. A scream clawed up my throat in a bid for freedom. I couldn’t control any of it. If I’d had access to my demon, she’d have come barreling forward, but she was gone. I was alone with the horror. Ryder reached for me, but I batted his hand away. If he touched me, I didn’t trust myself not to lash out at him.
Before he could ask me what was wrong, I was on my feet and running. I shoved though the doorway and past Coleman, ignoring his shouts of alarm. My boots hammered on the stairs as I stumbled down them. I staggered down the last few steps, barged between some uniformed officers, and burst through the front doors into the courtyard.
Rain pattered gently against my face. The cool night air nipped at my flushed cheeks. The chill grounded my thoughts back where they belonged, in the here and now. I stumbled a few more steps and reached for the wall. My stomach dry-heaved as my body tried to rid itself of the ghastly sensations. Coughing, spluttering, I waited for the violent urge to vomit to pass.
It wasn’t long before I noticed Coleman loitering in my peripheral vision. He glanced over at the gate where the press hounded any passing cop. I kept my head low and focused on subduing my tremors. The physical effects of terror would eventually subside. The same couldn’t be said for the images or the memories.
“What did you see?” He moved closer. I winced at the sound of his shoes crunching on gravel. It all seemed too loud, too abrasive, too acute.
Ryder jogged into sight. “Hey.” He jerked his chin at Coleman. “Back off.”
Coleman swept an arm at me. “She obviously saw what happened. We need answers. The Institute is sitting on this, Ryder. I need answers before the demon who’s doing this starts targeting the public.”
“I know that. Charlie’ll give you answers. Just give her a second.” Ryder stepped into Coleman’s personal space, deliberately squaring up to him. They were matched in height, but that was where the similarity ended. If it came to blows, Ryder would fight dirty, and Coleman wouldn’t see it coming.
A camera flash blanched the front of the apartment complex, capturing the three of us in the midst of our heated discussion. Coleman finally backed down. He turned away from Ryder and approached the entrance. “May I remind you leeches we’re in the middle of an investigation here and do not need—” The press came alive like hungry chicks squabbling in a nest.
“Is it true this is the third Enforcer killed in the last three weeks?”
“What’s the victim’s name?”
“Is it linked to last week’s attacks?”
My labored breathing drowned out the cacophony of squawking reporters. I bowed my head. My stomach and throat worked to undermine my efforts at suppressing my gag reflex. Rainwater streamed through my hair and down my face, masking my tears. If I let them, the memories would chew me up and spit me out a shivering muttering mess. I couldn’t allow them purchase. The feeling would pass, the horror would fade, and I could go back to pretending I was perfectly fine.
I sniffed and dabbed at my nose. When my hand came away, a smear of blood stood out in stark contrast against my pale skin. I quickly wiped it away and checked that Ryder hadn’t seen. He hadn’t. He was still scowling after Coleman. If he suspected I was unfit to continue my training, I’d soon find myself locked away like a lab rat. Again.
Ryder noticed me watching him and gave me a nod. I bobbed my head in response. He never had been one for personal chats, preferring actions to words, but he cared, and in what remained of my world, he was the only one who did.
A
t the Stone’s
Throw bar, the TV chatted to itself in the corner. The jukebox hadn’t worked for months, and the owner, Ben Stone, had been promising to fix the pool table just as long. Besides me and a lone guy nursing a Bud at one of the tables, the Stone’s Throw was empty. The warm beer and cold atmosphere probably had something to do with the lack of customers.
“... the body of a twenty eight year old woman found on Lancer Drive this evening has been identified as Karen Jackson. Boston PD has released a statement that they are following a number of leads and do not believe the general public is in any immediate danger...”
I peered through narrowed eyes at the TV. The report flashed up an image of Coleman with his hand out as though directing traffic with the silhouettes of Ryder and myself in the background. Thankfully, we were too poorly lit to be identified. An Enforcer’s biggest asset was his or her anonymity. Demons aren’t stupid. They’re ignorant to begin with, but if they’re smart enough to cross the veil and settle here, they’re intelligent enough to cover their tracks. They know the Enforcers are looking for them.
One such demon played on my mind.
You are mine, Muse.
It couldn’t be him. It wasn’t possible.
Ryder joined me at the bar. He hailed the bartender with a wave. “Two beers. She’s buying.” He jerked a thumb at me.
I gave the bartender a nod. Last one on the scene buys the beers. It had been that way since Ryder had been assigned as my mentor.
Ryder eased himself onto the stool next to me. He got comfortable, toyed with a coaster, rustled in his pockets for some gum, cursed when he couldn’t find any, and then finally met my gaze. “So, lil’ firecracker, you gonna tell me what the hell went down back there?”
My brief smile died. “I lost it.” That was the truth—not all of it, but enough.
The bartender planted our beers in front of us. I took a drink from the bottle and wished Ryder had ordered something stronger. From experience, I knew drinking myself into a stupor wouldn’t lessen the horrors, but old habits die hard. “It’s not easy. The images are real. The smells, the sensations... I’m right there in the middle of it. I watched her die.” He didn’t need to know it went even deeper than seeing her murder. The unfiltered thrill had rippled through the demon and slithered through me. Her death had aroused him. I’d touched on glee, on physical excitement, on his unwavering sense of power and control. He wasn’t concerned about being caught and hadn’t cared for the woman he’d killed. She meant nothing to him, not even in death. It wasn’t about her; it had been all about him. He had all the hallmarks of a sociopath—most demons do—but he’d taken it to a whole new level. At least, that’s what I
knew
about him. I pushed my beer away and leaned on the bar.
Ryder took a swig of his beer and glared at the bottle as though it had all the answers. “You’ve seen some shit, Muse. I know you have. The Institute, they just tell me what I need to know, which is a damn sight more than you’ve ever said, but I ain’t blind.”
Ryder was the Institute’s spy, my handler, put in place to report back on every word, every wrong move, every utterance I made. It was an uncomfortable fact that Ryder worked for my enemy, but then so did I. It had been so long since they’d captured me that I’d almost become accustomed to it all. Almost.
“I served. Ten years ago. Before the Institute,” he said. “I’ve seen the same look in your eyes that I’ve seen in guys fresh from the killing fields.”
I slid my gaze toward him. I hadn’t known he was ex-military. He didn’t seem the sort. Weren’t they all steely-eyed hardasses? But then I’d not really been paying attention, much too caught up in my own crap to notice. Ryder could do steely-eyed, and he was definitely a badass if you happened to be of the demonic persuasion.
He met my stare, unblinking.
“I freaked,” I said again, adding a shrug. I wanted to tell him. We could prop up the bar, and I’d spill my guts until dawn. When it was over, he’d look at me differently. He’d pity me, and I couldn’t stomach that, not from him, or anyone. I didn’t want pity. I wanted to forget.
He nodded, but the smallest twitch of an eyebrow told me he didn’t believe me. We often pretended everything was fine for the sake of the necessary reports, but we both knew it was a lie. It was the same whenever Stefan’s name came up—my one-time fling who’d simultaneously tried to kill me and save me. He was dead, or so the Institute wanted me to believe, and that’s what Ryder reported. Also a lie. I was so sick of lies, and I couldn’t seem to escape them.
“Did you get a look at the demon?” Ryder fell back on facts before things got too bleary eyed and emotional.
I teased the edges of the beer label with my nail. “Yeah, a little. He’s male. Long hair, dark, almost black... His face was thin, too thin...” I tried to recall the image but it skipped just out of reach, the details frustratingly elusive. In the memory, I’d seen fragments of the demon’s human vessel and also his true demon appearance. I suspected he’d arrived at the victim’s apartment looking every part the mortal man. “He must have tricked her somehow. There’s no way he could have entered that apartment without an invite.”
“So he’s a higher demon?”
I nodded. Higher demons cannot physically enter a home without an invite. Something about the chaos energies they wield blocks them. However, once they’re over the threshold, the game changes. The inexperienced Enforcer made a mistake, one which had cost her her life. She should have known better. Her training would have prepared her, taught her how to weed out the demons in their human-suits. Maybe she hadn’t expected one to come knocking on her door. Nobody does.
“Did you get a sense of his element?”
I shook my head. “No, it was too quick.”
“The body was burned… Have we got a fire elemental here?”
I shook my head and added a shrug for good measure. He’d burned the body as a message to me. A reminder of my sins.
“Did he say or do anything that might help track him?”
I pursed my lips then looked down at my beer. “No. Nothing. I only get the moment the metal comes into contact with the victim, and talking wasn’t on his mind...”
You are mine, Muse.
Ryder considered my answers for a few seconds before he turned to face me and tried to hook me with his gaze. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—meet his eyes.
“Because this demon... he’s killing Enforcers,” he said. “Butchering them. If you know anything, you’d tell me... Right?”
I wanted to. I should. I knew that. A better woman probably would have told him everything. I’d never been a good woman. I didn’t have it in me. All I could do was try to keep panic from spilling into my mind. I wanted to run. I wanted to run so damn fast and hide in the darkest corner where nobody would find me. I may not have been a good woman, but I wasn’t a coward. I wouldn’t run.
You are mine, Muse.
Ryder sat very still and waited for me to tell him the truth. This was my chance to come clean and admit I knew the demon who’d killed that woman.
Right now. Say it. Just say the words, and it will all be out in the open.
But the truth lodged somewhere in my mind and didn’t reach my vocal cords. If I told Ryder who the demon was, he’d have no choice but to report it to the Institute, and I’d be taken off the job ‘for my own safety.’ I couldn’t afford another stint behind bars. I needed my demon back if I was going to go after Stefan, and to get her back, I had to play the Enforcer game without fault. I didn’t want to delve into my past. I couldn’t face it all again. Not now. Not ever. I’d locked it all away in my head for a reason.
“I’m calling it a night.” I tossed some cash on the bar and slid from the stool, avoiding Ryder’s glare.
“You’re gonna have to tell them sooner or later,” he called after me. I zipped up my jacket as I shoved through the door. It swung shut behind me, cutting off Ryder’s muffled curse.
L
iving
at the Institute was like living at a minimal security prison. Sure, I could come and go as I pleased, but everything I did was logged. Everything I ate, every book I read from the on-site library, every conversation—all of it meticulously recorded. It’s why I tried to avoid checking-in unless I had to. At least the weekly medical exams had been reduced to monthly. Psych evaluations remained a weekly necessity. I had yet to convince the powers-that-be that I was mentally stable. I knew something they didn’t; I hadn’t ever been mentally stable, and it was unlikely I ever would be. I grew up a half-human, half-demon female on the wrong side of the veil where the strong ate the weak. I had control issues, enough emotional baggage to excite a team of psychiatrists, and—thanks to my demon half—a penchant for snap decisions driven by instinct. And that was when my demon was subdued. When she came to the party, I was as stable as a nuclear reactor on meltdown. She wasn’t coming back any time soon though. Six months before, the Institute had subdued my demon. It felt like a lifetime.
My demon was half my soul. When the Institute incarcerated me, they’d locked her away by pumping me full of the drug PC34. If administered to lesser demons, those without conscious thought, it knocked them out, but if given to a half blood, like me, it overwhelmed the demon, chasing it away as though it never existed. The Institute used PC34 to control me and ensure I did exactly as they asked. It worked.
I’d considered bailing many times, but if I had any hope of getting my demon back and rescuing Stefan from the netherworld, I would need my demon. They—or more specifically Adam—had me dancing to his tune like a wind-up musical monkey.
My carbon-copy apartment at the Institute didn’t have any windows. The entire Boston operation was housed in a vast warehouse complex, and few rooms had the benefit of natural light. At first, I’d hated its generic furnishing and landscape pictures, but hate and I had come to an understanding of late. Better to move on than harbor hate. Once I’d realized that, life wasn’t so bad. I still had room in my heart to hate one man.
Adam Harper, Head of Operations, had been trying to reach me on my cell phone since I’d left the bar. Now that I was back at HQ, he would send one of his minions to collect me, but I liked to keep him waiting. I showered, washed the blood from my hands, and dressed in jeans and short-sleeved black tee. Scrunching my hair in front of the bathroom mirror, I noticed a dribble of blood running down my top lip. I wiped it away and dabbed at my nose. My hand came away bloody as it had at the crime scene. Okay, this wasn’t normal. Snatching a few tissues, I bunched them against my nose until the bleeding stopped.
Probably stress
.
The phone rang, startling me. It would be Adam’s summons. He wasn’t going to stop hounding me until I’d answered his questions.
A
dam Harper was
like your best friend’s father, all smiles and fake greetings, but you never really knew him. He was as cold as a slab of concrete and just as stubborn. He didn’t look up when I entered his office. With his glasses pinched in his right hand, he didn’t even lift his gaze to acknowledge me. I sat myself at his claw-footed desk and listened to the tick-tock of the wall clock. His office smelled of old books and leather, the sort of nostalgic scents you’d associate with libraries. It should have been comforting, but I’d always felt slightly uneasy at his desk, and it wasn’t just the man. Perhaps it was the muffled quiet; I’d never liked the quiet. The netherworld was quiet, until it wasn’t.
Adam continued to read the report spread in front of him. He rubbed a thumb across his lips but otherwise didn’t move. Finally, he flipped the file closed and looked up.
“Muse.”
“Adam.” I shifted position in the large leather seat.
“Detective Coleman requires your written report on his desk within the hour.”
Does he now? I drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Detective Coleman can do his own police work.” I chose my words carefully; the ones in my head hadn’t been nearly as polite.
“He is. A murder has been committed. The perpetrator is, in all likelihood, demon. Therefore, it is the assigned Enforcer’s responsibility to assist the police department by all means available to him or her. Would you like me to remind you of your obligations? Again?”
“Sure, I’ve got all night. Hit me with ‘em one more time.”
He glared at me. “You will be a capable Enforcer, Muse—you just have to swallow your attitude.”
I didn’t want to be an Enforcer. I wanted my demon back. I wanted Stefan back. I wanted my damn life back. But we’d had that discussion so many times I no longer needed to say the words.
It was the middle of the night, and I’d already been hauled in front of Adam earlier in the evening before visiting the crime scene. I’d never been known for my patience, and what little I had was wearing thin. I tapped my fingers on the arm of the chair. “When were you going to tell me three Enforcers were dead?”
“When you needed to know.” Adam’s straight face made his answer seem perfectly reasonable. Perhaps to him, it was. At least I knew exactly where I stood with Adam: right under the sole of his shoe.
“Ryder knew.”
Adam finally straightened. He slipped his glasses back on, took a few moments to consider his reply, and leaned back in his chair. “Ryder tells me you’re withholding information. So I have to ask myself why that would be. You’ve been reasonably compliant until now. Something about this case has struck a nerve, and given Ryder’s report—” He tapped the file in front of him. “I suspect it’s something to do with what you read in that chain.”
I looked away and admired his collection of books without really focusing on them. Ryder had told him everything. I shouldn’t have been surprised or bothered by it, but I was. I made a mental note to lie more convincingly to Ryder in future. Sometimes, when you sleep with the enemy, waking up is the hardest part. It was all too easy to forget why I was there.
Play their game. Get my demon back.
Facing Adam, I swallowed the unexpected knot of anger working its way up my throat. “I saw a demon kill a woman. He strangled her with a chain before... tearing into her.”
Adam held my gaze, his soft brown eyes deceptively beguiling. He had no right to look so accommodating when I knew the sort of man he really was; the sort who sacrificed his own son in the name of science, the sort who used his daughter to entrap a Prince of Hell. I’d known demons more human than Adam Harper.
“So the demon is male. Would you like to tell me anything else about him?”
I ground my teeth. I could tell Adam exactly what I’d seen and more. If the demon turned out to be who I suspected, I knew him in the most intimate ways possible. He’d beaten me to within an inch of my life on a regular basis. You don’t get much more intimate than that. I knew how he stole pleasure from the suffering of others. Pain excited him. He reveled in destroying defiance and dominating those he thought below him. If I let myself think about it, I could recall how he’d raped and beaten me until I’d fled my own conscious thoughts and withdrawn to the darkest parts of my subconscious. If I let myself remember.
My stomach tightened. I swallowed back the acrid taste of bile.
You are mine, Muse.
“Three of my Enforcers in three weeks.” Adam paused to let those words hang in the quiet around us, a quiet punctuated only by the ticking clock. “This isn’t an accident. He has a source inside the Institute. I’ve done what I can and locked down the necessary files, but your name could well be on his list.”
My real demon name wouldn’t be, otherwise he’d have already found me. “I’ll tell you,” I said, flicking my head up, “if you give my demon back.”
Adam’s lips twitched. “You’re not ready.”
“Bullshit. I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me.”
“Muse, you’re too dangerous. I can’t sanction the return of your demon until I’m convinced you won’t tear this place down around me. You know that.”
“You’re an asshole.” Eloquent, that’s me.
My insult barely scratched him. He’d heard worse from me. “You’re looking at another six months before I can even consider restoring you—”
I jerked out of the seat and slammed my hands down on the desk. “Give me my demon back, and I’ll tell you what you need to know. Until then, I’m not telling you a damn thing.”
He looked up at me. “People are dying, Muse.”
“And I’ll be one of them if you don’t restore me.”