Playing with Darkness: Book 3.5 (Sensor Series)
Read Playing with Darkness: Book 3.5 (Sensor Series) Online
Authors: Susan Illene
Tags: #Urban Fantasy
Playing
with Darkness
By Susan Illene
Playing with Darkness
Copyright © 2014 by Susan Illene
All right reserved.
This book, whole or in part, may not be copied, scanned, or reproduced by electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying or the implementation of any type of storage or retrieval system) without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. Please do not participate or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials. Purchase only authorized editions.
Images obtained for the creation of this book’s cover were licensed for use from shutterstock.com, depositphotos.com, and Teresa Yeh photography. Design by Phat Puppy Art.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events portrayed within its pages are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not meant to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, undead, or mostly dead is purely coincidental.
Dedication
This one is just for the fans. Thanks for reading!
Sensor Series Reading Order:
Darkness Haunts
Darkness Taunts
Chained by Darkness (novella)
Darkness Divides
Playing with Darkness (novella)
Darkness Clashes (coming late summer 2014)
Chapter One
“Gentler. Don’t beat at it so hard,” I urged. He was going to leave splatters everywhere.
His hand paused.
“Like this?” His motions became smoother.
“Yeah, like that.”
“Is it truly necessary for me to learn how to do this?” Kerbasi asked, scrunching his face up in disgust.
He was stirring in the sugar, butter, cocoa, and milk for the latest batch of no bake cookies. The guardian might complain about preparing them, but he had no problem consuming them by the mouthful once they were ready. As part of his humanity lessons, I’d made him start eating something other than the bread and water he preferred when he first arrived from Purgatory.
A man couldn’t understand the ramifications of pain until he’d experienced pleasure.
“Yes, it is necessary,” I said, pointing to the sauce pan. “Now once it starts to boil you let it go for sixty seconds before taking it away from the heat and mixing it with the rest of the ingredients. Don’t mess up the timing.”
Hopefully, he would do a better job than me. More than half the batches we’d made today were in the trash because I lost track of time or forgot to add an ingredient. Why I managed to screw up so much of what I cooked I’d never understand.
Emily came down the stairs and stared at the garbage can.
“It’s like the blind leading the deaf in here.” She shook her head. “I could teach him, you know.”
The teenager gazed at me with deep blue eyes. She was a much better cook, but I couldn’t risk it. The guardian had spent thousands of years torturing prisoners. No way was I letting her near him even if he was forbidden from hurting her.
I moved to block her view of Kerbasi. “You know the rules. When he’s in here, you stay in your room.”
I reached into the fridge and grabbed a couple of cookies from among the ones that had survived my cooking process. Emily took the one I handed her and tested it cautiously. Once satisfied it wasn’t going to kill her, she chewed it down. I nibbled on mine while keeping an eye on Kerbasi. He hadn’t tampered with our food yet, but I wouldn’t put it past him.
Emily and I looked up at the same time when a familiar werewolf popped up on our sensor radar. He was coming up the road to our house. Emily made a dash for the door. I tossed the remainder of my cookie on the counter and leaped down the hallway to grab her. She’d almost had her hand on the knob.
“Oh, no you don’t. It’s a full moon tonight and you’re not seeing him.” I kept a grip on her arms.
“But Mel, it’s not even dark yet,” she whined, struggling against me.
It was almost June. It wouldn’t be dark until nearly midnight, but that wasn’t the point.
“It will be in a couple hours. No arguments.”
I guided her past the door and up to the first step of the stairs. Hunter was pulling his car into the driveway. I didn’t know why he’d come at all since I’d already warned him there would be no visits around full moons.
Emily let out a martyred sigh and allowed me to guide her up a couple more steps. “This is stupid. He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“He doesn’t want to hurt you—true—but he’s still young and inexperienced. One wrong move and you could set off his werewolf instincts. I’m not letting that happen.”
The werewolf had gotten out of the car and walked up to our porch. He was hovering there—probably hearing every word we said.
“If he wants to live to see another day,” I raised my voice. “He’ll leave now.”
“I just brought Emily a gift.” He spoke loudly enough for his words to filter past the heavy door.
“It better not be another dead rabbit,” I warned.
While amusing, that had gotten old quick.
“It’s not,” came his faint reply. Hunter was already moving back toward his car.
I didn’t need to use my senses to know Emily was angry with me. The sparks that were practically flying from her eyes said it all.
“I hate you,” she spat out.
At least she didn’t make the argument that I wasn’t her mother like she’d done the last time we’d fought a couple days before. It wasn’t easy playing adoptive parent when you were only eleven years older than the girl you were caring for and had no previous experience with teenagers. I ran a hand through my auburn hair and found a chunk of cookie. Great. Just great. The day couldn’t get any worse.
As soon as Hunter drove off, Emily brushed past me and rushed outside to watch him go. After he was out of sight she picked up a bouquet of flowers off the cement porch. They were a mixture of blue hydrangea, crème roses, and white lilies, along with a few other blooms I couldn’t identify.
She pressed them to her nose and inhaled deeply. A dreamy look came over her face and a smile twitched at her lips. They were already in a large glass vase so at least we wouldn’t have to find one for them, which was good since we didn’t have any. No one had given me flowers in years—not even Lucas, my lover. I couldn’t help envying her for that.
Emily barely noticed me as she came back inside and moved up the stairs. I might have thought she’d let her anger go if not for her slamming the bedroom door. It wouldn’t last long. The one good thing about her quick temper was that she let it all out at once and got over it quickly.
A crunching noise drew my attention to the floor. Sable, my shape-shifter kitty, was chewing on something. I bent down and saw she had a cookie in her mouth. Crumbs trailed from the kitchen to the stairs, making me think she’d nabbed more than one and worked her way over to me. The cat had no shame.
In her current lynx form she could have hopped onto the counter and snagged them while I was busy with Emily. It wasn’t like Kerbasi would have stopped her—she’d bitten him the one time he’d gotten too close. He’d smacked her for it and I’d ended up putting a few bullet holes through his head. After that he’d decided to keep his distance. The wounds still hurt him even if he could heal remarkably fast.
“Dammit, Sable.” I swept up the last of the crumbs before she could get to them. The cat would eat anything if I let her. “We’ve talked about this. No eating food from the counter.”
Unlike regular cats, I knew for a fact she could understand every word I said.
Kerbasi’s bare feet appeared within my line of vision. “I do not understand this strange custom. Why would a girl be pleased over some plant cuttings?”
It was going to take me years to explain the ways of mortals to him. He might be more than four and a half millennia old, but living in Purgatory his entire life as a guardian and torturer had left him rather ignorant. After seeing the horrific damage he’d done to his prisoners, it was hard to be civil with him. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a choice.
I got up and gave the dark-haired man a disgruntled look.
“Because they look nice and smell good. Didn’t you notice men bringing women flowers in any of the movies you watched?” I asked, dumping the crumbs in the trash.
I’d certainly made him watch enough of them in the last two weeks since he’d come to live with me in Fairbanks—including romance.
“It still does not make any sense to me.” He frowned.
My nose twitched. Was something burning?
I rushed into the kitchen to find a dish towel half-draped over the stove burner—which Kerbasi had failed to turn off when he removed the sauce pan. Bright orange flames were eating up the fabric. After taking a quick look around, I grabbed a large cup and started filling it with water from the sink. The fire hadn’t spread to anything else yet, but smoke was filling up the kitchen. Loud ringing from the smoke alarm pierced my sensitive ears and forced me to ratchet my hearing down a notch.
“Kerbasi, you can’t just leave a fire unattended like that!”
He lifted his brows. “I simply wanted to see your reaction.”
With a snap of his fingers, the fire went out.
He’d stood there the whole time watching me panic and didn’t do anything until I’d yelled at him. I hadn’t even known he could put flames out like that. Upon closer inspection, I saw there was nothing else nearby that could burn easily. I gritted my teeth. The bastard. He’d moved everything away in anticipation of this little prank.
The water spilled over the edges of my cup and I tossed it at his face. Two could play at that game.
He rubbed at his eyes and shook his head at me. “Some of those movies you make me watch have people doing silly things as a joke. I thought to try something myself, but now you’ve become angry. I admit to some confusion. Am I to put your humanity lessons into practice or not?”
It appeared I was going to have to stop showing him comedy movies until he got a better grasp at how human humor worked. Of all the lessons Kerbasi could have picked up, why couldn’t he have tried something harmless?
“We’re going to have a long talk later about what you can imitate from movies and what you can’t.” I tossed the burned remains of the cloth in the trash.
He gave me a blank look, but I wasn’t fooled. The man might have a long way to go in understanding human behavior, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d known exactly what he was doing when he set that fire.
I brushed past him into the hallway and almost tripped over Sable. She was stumbling around and her belly was unusually distended. I could hear her heart beating irregularly, too. I kneeled down and rubbed my hand gently over her orange and black fur. She made a mewling sound and moved away from my touch.
What had happened to her? She’d never gotten sick and I couldn’t find any injuries. Just a few minutes ago she’d seemed fine. I narrowed my eyes at Kerbasi, who was watching me from the kitchen doorway.
“Did you do something to her?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It would violate the terms of our contract.” My senses told me he spoke the truth.
I’d ordered Sable not to mess with Kerbasi after that first incident, just to be safe. As long as she didn’t attack him he couldn’t hurt her without bringing down the wrath of the archangels. I was really glad they’d added that stipulation into the contract when they’d bound him to me. Otherwise the powerful guardian would have been causing all kinds of problems for my supernatural friends.
“I don’t suppose you could do anything to help her, could you?”
“Absolutely not,” he scoffed. His answer didn’t surprise me. He’d let her die even if he had the ability to heal—which he probably did considering his origin.