InsistentHunger (37 page)

A frown flickered across Brady’s face. “Not as much. Gavril
says we don’t want to remember. Actually, he’s surprised I remember as much as
I do about how bright and uncomfortable and crowded it all was.” The joy
drained from his face, but after a second, Brady shook his head as though
trying to shake free of the memory. “But if biology class was right, we can’t
be that different from humans. Demons and humans have been having kids
forever.”

“
Strigoi
,” Paige said. She still couldn’t wrap her
head around the idea she had a demon somewhere up her family tree.

“That’s one kind of hybrid. When the lower-level vamps have
kids, it’s a lot rarer.”

“They do seem the kind more to eat a human than fall in
love.” Paige wrinkled her nose at the thought of vamps having sex. As far as
those really low-level Cody-vamp ones went, she didn’t know if they could
figure out how to have sex.

“Yeah, seems like,” Brady agreed. “But when they do have
kids, the children get some nice upgrades. They have the power to recognize
demons on sight and they live longer and have better health than most humans,
but they can’t have kids of their own.”

“Like a mule.” Paige thought about that. A mule had parents
from different species, and that’s why it came out sterile. “So, vamps and
humans have hybrid children? But Gavril made it sound like
strigoi
could
have kids.”

“They can,” Brady agreed. “
Strigoi
, like you, don’t
get the superpowers. Or you only get one—you don’t die from having a demon feed
on you…not unless a whole lot of demons try to do it at once.”

Paige thought about the Cody-vamp who had reached for her.
“So I’d be safe around those zombie-like vamps?”

Immediately, Brady shook his head. “They hunt in packs,
Paige. They’d overwhelm you. You’d last longer than a human and have a better
chance to either fight back or get away. But you have to stay away from them.”
He stared at her, red starting to color the edges of his eyes. He was worried.

Paige smiled at the evidence that he still felt so strongly.
“Trust me, I’m not interested in any more demon hunting. I’m leaving that to
Jim Hunter. So, I don’t get to, I don’t know, levitate a spaceship out of a
swamp?” she teased.

“You…what?” Brady seemed caught off guard. He was cute when
he had trouble following the conversation.

“‘Use the force, Luke’,” she intoned as she quoted
Star
Wars
. She had trouble not laughing at the unvarnished horror on Brady’s
face. “No big magical powers of levitation or mind control or something?”

“Luke did not use magic. That was the force.” He poked his
finger in her direction.

“How is it different from magic?”

Brady looked flummoxed for a second. His mouth came open, he
closed it, and then it came open again before he found an answer. “I don’t
know, but it is. The force is the force. That is not magic. Do not make fun of
the force.” He wagged his finger.

“Mea culpa, mea culpa,” Paige laughed, repeating one of her
grandmother’s favorite phrases.

Brady snorted. “Well, Luke Skywalker you are not. Being a
strigoi
means you have a little more luck, you might live a few years longer. That’s
it.”

Taking a second to study Brady—the long line of his leg, the
curve of his shoulder and his strong chest—she pointed something else out. “And
I can stay near you. As superpowers go, that isn’t half bad,” she pointed out.
Brady slowly turned a pale shade of pink. “But seriously…nothing about picking
winning lottery numbers or dreaming the Kentucky Derby winner?”

Brady cleared his throat. “No. In fact, you know all those
stories about how horrible witch hunters were because they’d accuse a woman of
being a witch because she could cross a muddy street by picking her way across
the dry spots?”

Paige nodded, she remembered something about that from
history. The woman had been hanged for having a clean dress. Paige had been
eleven or twelve when she’d heard the story and she’d tried convincing her
teacher that she wouldn’t wear clean clothes because of that story. In reality,
her father’s alcoholism had gotten bad enough that he didn’t do much housework
and she didn’t want to wash clothes. She’d been a pretty average kid and that
meant avoiding housework when possible.

“It turns out that’s about the only way you can spot a
strigoi
.
Their magic comes down to being a tiny bit luckier than most. Nothing more.” He
flinched. “Well, mostly.”

“Mostly?” Paige’s cop instincts twanged at her. Whatever he
was hiding, it was big.

“They’re…you’re bright. Not bright like smart…” He stopped,
his blush growing deeper. “Obviously you are smart-bright,” he hurried to add,
“but I mean your life force is bright. When you die, if there’s an open portal
near you or even if I’m near you, the ones on the other side will be able to
find you. They’ll be drawn to you as soon as soul ‘you’ moves out of body
‘you’.”

Paige blew out a breath. She felt like someone had kicked
her in the stomach as she thought about that. “So there’s a better than average
chance I’m going to turn into a demon?”

Brady looked down at his white sock and the cuff of his
jeans as he nodded. “Part of you,” Brady agreed.

Paige wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Yes, she liked
demon Brady. He had an ethical core to him that just did not match the word “demon”.
However, talking about her own death was hitting pretty high on the creepy
scale. “Can we skip this conversation?” Maybe she could handle this later, but
right now she had as much as she could handle on her psychological plate.

Brady looked as uncomfortable as she was. “Deal. I just
didn’t want you to think I hid that from you.”

“I wouldn’t think that. In case you haven’t noticed, I
happen to think you’re a good man.”

His gaze came back up to her face. “I won my bet with Gavril
because of that,” he said shyly.

“What?”

“Gavril.” Brady gave a sly smile. “He bet me that as soon as
you had time to stop and think that you were going to freak out and run like
hell. He figured you’d make it all the way to Timbuktu before you stopped.”
From the way his grin grew, he’d enjoyed rubbing it in Gavril’s face that Paige
had continued to call and had finally decided to track Brady down.

“He did, huh?” Paige narrowed her eyes. She was having some
very unfriendly thoughts about Gavril.

“Paige,” Brady warned. “He’s old and powerful, so don’t go
poking the demon.”

“I never said I was going to poke him.”

“Yeah, well, you’re thinking it loud enough.”

She crossed her arms. “He thought I was some sort of
coward.”

“No, he thought you were going to avoid me. Not the same
thing. Besides, you can’t tell me that you didn’t consider avoidance,” Brady
said firmly. “Some mornings I wish I could run away from all this shit and go
back to being human, so I know you considered it.”

“I considered,” Paige admitted unwillingly. She’d never
wanted Brady to know that, but he didn’t look particularly shocked or hurt.
“But I’ve never been good at walking away from a partner,” she added.

“Is that what I am?” Brady tilted his head and studied her
as if he couldn’t quite decide if she was telling the truth. His amber eyes
watched her and his body was angled oddly. His elbow was a little too far from
his body and his back was unnaturally arched. This was the Brady she knew from
those very strange days as they chased Monagas. This wasn’t the young recruit
who had flirted with Veronica.

“Yes,” she answered.

He flashed her a brilliant smile, but it faded quickly. “I
can’t go back.”

A snort of laughter slipped out of Paige as she imagined
people’s faces if he even tried to show up in town. “I don’t expect you to. In
fact, I’d prefer if you didn’t because the town would need way more than just
the two psychiatrists. Way more.” Paige shivered as she considered just how
ugly things could get.

“You know, I’ve heard of long-distance relationships, but
this might be a little too much. What, are you going to visit once a month?”
Brady sounded defensive, but Paige took that as one more piece of evidence that
he cared. This bothered him. A lot.

“Was actually thinking of moving here,” she commented
nonchalantly.

Brady stared at her, his mouth actually hanging open at
that. “But the job,” he finally blurted.

“The ex-job.”

“You can’t quit.”

“Actually, I didn’t. I retired.” Paige kept expecting some
pang of regret to hit her when she said that, but it hadn’t happened yet. She’d
been a damn effective officer, but the time had come.

Brady was still staring at her with undisguised shock. “You…
But… Aren’t you a little young to retire?”

“Aren’t you a little young to be dead?”

Brady look changed to disgust.

“Brady.” Paige sighed. He might be some ancient
blajini
from another dimension, but sometimes he acted like a twenty-five-year-old
rookie straight out of the academy. “Oxbow is a small enough town that they’ve
had exactly two officers die while still officially on the job. The first one
was my training officer. The second one—I was training him. I think they
expected me to retire. Either that or they were going to have to bring in a
third psychiatrist to deal with me because the other two were too booked up to
squeeze my issues into their busy schedules.”

Shock turned to confusion. “But you love that job.”

“I did,” Paige agreed. “But there a lot of jobs that I could
love. I actually have an interview in town. There’s a tech firm looking for an
investigator for their personnel office. I would be doing investigations and I
would have the added bonus that no one would get drunk and shoot at me,” Paige
added. As bonuses went, it wasn’t half bad. “Not that anyone really honestly
tried to hit me, but some of those good old boys did like taking a few shots.”

“Investigations?” Brady sounded charmingly confused.

“Yep. Actually the employment agency said there were a
number of options. They asked about wanting to be a court bailiff, but I can’t
see myself doing that. At least in Oxbow the locals knew me well enough to know
that I would kick their asses if they acted up. If I were a court bailiff here,
I’d constantly be trying to prove myself to some idiot defendant who thought I
was small enough to knock over.” Paige didn’t have the patience for that. “Or
worse, it could be boring.”

“Boring?”

Paige looked at Brady. The inhuman angles had fallen away,
but he couldn’t seem to get more than one word at a time out now. “Okay, Brady,
you are starting to freak me out a little bit. Have you suffered some brain
damage I don’t know about?”

Brady leaned back and put both feet on the ground. “Who are
you and where did you put Paige Silver?”

“Excuse me?”

“She’s a short woman. She comes up to about here.” Brady
held his hand up to the middle of his chest, and sadly that was where her head
came up to when she stood too near him. “She’s obsessed with work. She’s a
great officer, the training officer down in Oxbow, in fact. If you listen to
the rumors, they say she’s a little obsessed with her job. Great at it,” he
added, “but obsessed. Have you seen her anywhere?”

Paige glared as Brady had his fun. “Screw you. I’m not
obsessed with my job.” Paige stopped and thought about that for a moment. “I
just, I just didn’t have anything other than my job,” she explained a little
defensively. “Well, other than the tiling in my bathroom.”

“I saw the tile job. Trust me, you didn’t have a tiling job.
You had a mess,” Brady said. Paige might have taken offense, only he was right.
“You were obsessed with that job. How can you just walk away from it?” Tiny red
veins appeared in the whites of his eyes. Those were handy as a barometer of
his mood.

“Because I’m not obsessed with it anymore, Brady. I thought
I had things figured out. I thought I understood the way the world worked and
how I could help people,” Paige struggled to explain why she suddenly didn’t
care as much as she had. “And then someone came along and ripped all my
illusions away.”

From the red in his eyes, Brady was still upset. “So you’re
giving up everything?”

“Oh hell no,” Paige hurried to correct him. “I have my
retirement. I’m getting a job. I still have my old life, I’m just hoping that
maybe—” She stopped. Brady had this blank expression on his face, even though
earlier she would have sworn that he still felt the attraction between them.
However, now that she had put out an offer to move here, his face had gone
utterly blank.

She shouldn’t have come. Back in Oxbow, Brady had clung to
her because he was lost and afraid, but now he had Gavril and he had answers.
“Look, I’m glad you’re doing well. I’ve got to go.” Paige stood up. “I need to
go shopping because I don’t have a whole lot of clothes that scream that I’m a
professional investigator. I guess I’m going to have to get used to wearing
suits, huh?” Paige backed her way toward the door. Her chest was tight, but it
wasn’t like this was the first ugly breakup she’d had. Hell, this wasn’t even
ugly. She’d had one breakup that included three broken windows, an entire set
of dishes smashed against the floor and a trip to the ER when the neighbor who
had come over to investigate slipped in Jell-O and fell on the broken plates.
That had been an ugly breakup. This didn’t even rise to the level of a mildly
unattractive breakup. “I’ll let you know if I’m going to stay in town,” Paige
offered.

“Paige, wait.” Brady scrambled off the bed and reached for
her.

“I really do have to go.” Spinning around, she tried to
reach the door, but he caught her arm and spun her around again.

“Just wait a minute.”

She stopped and looked at him. Later she was going to cry. A
lot. But it’d been a lot of years since she’d cried in front of anyone. Her
eyes prickled, but they stayed dry as she looked up into Brady’s amber gaze. He
was still so handsome. With a good pair of dark brown contact lenses, she
wouldn’t even tell the difference between this Brady and human Brady. Not right
now anyway. His body language had the human curves that made him look so young
as he studied her with open concern.