Reaper's Dark Kiss (3 page)

As she watched, two sets of fangs, slender and graceful, grew from his top and bottom gums, over his teeth.

“Hello?” Julian was saying.

Sky was shaking, but she kept her voice steady. “This is Sky,” she said. “We met in the park last night.”

“Yeah,” Julian said, and she could hear his smile through the phone. “Got your tablet ready?”

The man who’d flashed fang had vanished into the night. Sky sat back and ducked her head, studiously not looking outside. “Got some answers for me?”

“Where are you?”

“Aunt Millie’s. It’s a diner near—”

“I know where it is.” Julian’s voice took on an edge. “How did you get there?”

“My chauffeur dropped me off in my convertible Benz,” Sky said. “It’s a tough two-block walk. How long till you get here?”

“Not long,” he said. “Wait for me inside.”

Any other time, Sky would have balked at Julian ordering her to stay inside. But all she said was, “I’ll be in the back.”

While he’d been talking, there’d been sounds on Julian’s end, clothes sliding on, shoes thudding to the floor. Now, there was smooth silence. “You all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” Sky said, thinking of fangs in a mouth crowded with too many teeth. “I was nervous about calling. Thought I’d wake you up.”

Sounding completely unconvinced, Julian said, “A few minutes and I’ll be there.”

Then the connection broke, and Sky couldn’t take her eyes off the street. She forced herself to admit it. What she wanted more than anything right now was to see Julian emerge from the night, leather duster flowing out behind him, cool eyes alert, ready for trouble.

Thinking back to the phone call, she realized how comforted she’d felt at the sound of his voice and his promise to be there. It reminded her of the voice in her dream. She got out her notebook and wrote on the first blank page…
Fangs? Shadow?

When Julian said a few minutes, he wasn’t kidding. Just as she was putting away her notebook, he came in. From her booth at the far end of the long diner, Sky watched him. He strode to the counter and ordered coffee, taking in the place with the covert glance of a soldier scanning for danger.

The harsh fluorescents emphasized the angles in his face and how they contrasted with the full, sensual curve of his lips. Tonight, his hair was loose, hanging past his bulky shoulders, thick and wild. His brown eyes were dark, almost black.

A coffee cup in each hand, he came down the narrow aisle between booths. The way he moved, with a rough grace, made Sky think of a fighter who’d spent years honing his body for combat. She checked. Julian was throwing a shadow. But this wasn’t moonlight.

Setting one of the cups in front of her, he said, “You look like the two-sugars, one-cream type.”

Sky was about to say something when she saw a silhouette move through a pool of yellow streetlight outside. The walls of the diner seemed to close in on her. She suddenly wanted to be away from all this light that made her think she saw things like fangs in a grinning face.

Taking the coffee in one hand and shouldering her backpack, Sky said, “I’m ready. Same spot as last night.”

“No.” Julian said it too fast and too hard. It was an order. In a much quieter voice, he said, “I’ll show you somewhere in the park I like.”

Sky’s hackles went up. “You said we’d go back.”

“But I didn’t say we’d go to the same place.”

“Where, then?”

A slow smile surfaced on Julian’s face. “That would be question number one. Sure you want me to answer?”

Chapter Four

“You don’t have to answer.” Sky slid her gaze past Julian to the window. “But this question counts, and I’m good with that. Are you licensed to carry?”

Julian had felt something last night he’d never felt before. He’d come to the diner tonight wanting that same feeling again with Sky. Now, as she asked him if he was able to protect her, a sensual scent came from her. It was desire, shot through with sweetly innocent fear, the girl inside the woman, in search of a protector who would love her forever.

The mixture galvanized Julian, blasted his senses at a million gigavolts per second. His bonding instinct, imprisoned by the fall, suddenly broke free. Shades called it the haeze. All he thought, all he felt, all he believed was forever fused into a single furious urge to protect his intended mate. It was exhilarating, like flying against midnight clouds through moonlight.

The pink blush rising to Sky’s cheeks told Julian his haeze was stirring her feelings. That happened only once in a Shade’s lifetime, when they’d found their Forever Mate. That meant Sky was the only woman in this world who could have Julian’s children.

The beast in Julian rose in a roaring demand.

Protect her.

Make her mine.

Sky was a Sun Worlder. She was as fragile as a flower in the face of his blazing heat for her. But his beast raged on.

Mark her.

Make her mine.

He struggled to restrain his beast. If Sky knew that from this moment on, instinct would drive Julian to have her or die trying, she might be frightened away. And once a Shadow Worlder lost their Forever Mate, there was no other for them. Without Sky, Julian would be condemned to wander the face of this world alone the rest of his eternity. But now that he’d found her, it was time for the courting and wooing to begin.

“Was I not supposed to ask you that?” Sky said. “You quit talking and went quiet like a cat prowling Mouse Alley.”

Pushing back thoughts of Sky naked in his bed after a long day of making love, Julian made himself focus on her question. He was licensed to carry death. “Why would I have to be armed?” He’d felt Sky’s jitter of nerves over the phone. “What happened before you called?”

Sky shifted, uneasy. “Can we just go? The fangs are getting on my nerves.”

Julian ran his tongue over his teeth for a fast check. Nothing. “The
what’s
getting on your nerves?”

It felt like Sky looked right through him. “The walls,” she said. “Feels like they’re closing in.”

* * * *

Julian would have gone anywhere with Sky if it meant keeping her with him the rest of the night. On the way out, he got a carrier and put the coffees in it.

Outside, the August night was cool and calm. He noted that Sky was so distracted, she didn’t ask any questions. He led them into the park and chose a bench that was nearly hidden under the spreading leaves of an oak tree. Sky sat with her feet on the bench, her knees pulled up close, her back against the stone arm. Julian swung his legs over the opposite end, took the black coffee, and gave Sky the one with cream and sugar. She sipped in thoughtful silence.

“You ready to tell me what happened before you called?” he asked.

“No.” Sky put her cup on the bench, took out her tablet, and started typing.

It was a quiet night. The news that Julian had been sent after the drainer had spread, and from what he could see, Shadow Worlders were staying off the streets. No one wanted to fall under a reaper’s suspicion for draining.

Rustling leaves were the background as Sky’s fingers chattered against the screen. Her soft lips were pursed into the perfect pout for a kiss. Her mouth would be a start, and then Julian wanted to kiss her everywhere, kiss her throat, her breasts, her smooth belly. He’d take Sky slowly, ease into her silken softness before he—

“You owe me an answer,” Sky said, typing steadily. “I hope you’re thinking about it.”

That rocked Julian out of his thoughts. He said, “I found some of your articles online. You really interviewed a guy on death row?”

Sky’s face lit up. She set her tablet down, picked up her coffee. “That was a tough one. Took me months to get the interview. Thought he’d be dead before they let me in.” She gave Julian a curious look. “You checked up on me?”

He’d checked everything he could find, which wasn’t much. Her online bio talked sparingly about her parents, her brother, and her college degree. “Just wondering what you do that makes you sit around Central Park in the middle of the night,” he said.

“White slavers who pay for foreign women to go to school and learn English, dope dealers who smuggle medicine to sick people who can’t afford it—bad guys with a conscience.”

Reading Sky’s stories was one thing. But now he was courting her. He couldn’t just let her talk to dangerous people who would probably only meet her at gods only knew what hours of the night. His beast clawed at him, demanding that he protect Sky.

“Can I see your phone?” he said.

“Why?” Sky dug it out of her pocket and handed it over. “Adding superspy gear so you can find me?”

Taking the phone, Julian said, “Putting in my numbers. Notebooks get lost.” He showed Sky the phone. “Use this one first. Leave voice mail anytime. If it can’t wait, use the second one. I’ll get back to you as fast as I can.”

“You just met me, and you’re putting both your numbers in my phone?”

With a grin, Julian said, “I didn’t think you’d say yes to me moving in.” He gave her phone back. “How come those people talk to you? They sound like the kind who like their secrets.”

“I listen.” She tilted her coffee cup gently side to side. “Everyone wants to tell their story. It’s how we are.”

“What about you?” he asked her. “What’s your story?”

Sky shut down like a walled city under siege. That confirmed what Julian thought. After what happened to her parents, she kept people at a distance, as if she knew everything had an end, and the only way to avoid endings was to avoid beginnings.

“I didn’t mean to pry,” he said, resisting the urge to take her into his arms, to tell her that he wasn’t going anywhere. Not tonight. Not ever.

She focused on the tablet’s screen, doodling freehand. Two curved lines emerged, ending in sharp points. “Can’t concentrate,” she said and swiped the screen into empty black. “Question two, what do you do, and who do you do it for?”

“Bodyguard,” Julian said, itching at the lie he used in the Sun World. “Can’t say who for. My clients like their privacy.”

“You know what’s funny about you?” Sky’s silvery-gray eyes scrutinized Julian in a way he wasn’t used to. “Everything you say sounds like a cover story. There’s almost enough to make sense, but not quite.”

Buying time with a few slow sips of coffee, Julian said, “What do you think I’m covering up?”

“You know how those people are dying.” She spoke calmly, measuring her words as if she were ticking off points on a list. “You think you can stop the Fang Killer. You don’t know where to find him. You act like you and he are in the same club, maybe a club that does weird things, but this guy got a little too weird, and you got sent to rein him in.”

With nearly nothing to go on, Sky had gotten too close for Julian to risk lying. He said nothing.

“Who is he?” Sky asked.

Vandar’s scent was all over the bodies. He was addicted to draining the same way a mortal could be addicted to heroin. All Julian needed to get the council to issue a death scroll was to witness Vandar doing it one time. That was the law. But something wasn’t right. The bodies didn’t fit. Vandar was too smart to dump drained mortals in plain sight in the Sun World. It was like advertising for a signed death scroll. Julian told Sky the truth. “I don’t know all of it.”

Sky put her feet down and gazed out into the trees. Julian recognized the haunted look on her face. He’d seen it in the condemned when he’d found them hiding, trying to outlive their sentence. Whatever was eating Sky didn’t have anything to do with dead mortals in the park. It was personal.

“What happened?” Julian asked quietly.

“I saw something really weird,” Sky said. “And it’s making me feel a little crazy.”

“And it scared you,” Julian said.

“Yeah,” she said in a bare whisper.

“Then let’s do something not scary,” Julian said, trying to think of what would keep Sky with him until dawn. “Where do you like to go?”

“I like dinosaurs. I’ve been going to see the same fossils since I was a little girl.” Her voice became slow, considering. “They’re always there. They don’t go anywhere.”

“I think I know someplace you’d like,” Julian said, getting up and offering Sky a hand. “Not every museum’s behind walls.”

Chapter Five

“How far do these go?” Sky asked.

“All over the city,” Julian said. “Paris has catacombs. New York has old train tunnels.”

After they left the park, Julian had led Sky to the far edge of the network Shadow Worlders used to travel the day. This part had been abandoned decades ago when mortals built too close for safety. Fugitive light seeped in through the roof’s stonework.

“There it is again,” Sky said. “Cover story. These aren’t tunnels for the trains anymore. Someone added on.” She turned to Julian. “You don’t know who might have done that, do you?”

“Someone with too much money and not enough friends to tell him not to?”

He brushed his hand against hers, and she slipped her fingers through his. Julian took her through narrow winding byways until they came to the Old Circle. It used to be a meeting place, safely underground from the sun. The domed roof was a mosaic that told the story of how the Shadow World came to be. Stone benches rose in concentric circles around a small stage. Smoky moonlight drifted through pinprick holes where tiles had fallen away from the mosaic. Julian helped Sky up crumbling steps to the stage. They sat on the edge, side by side, legs hanging down.

“Let me guess,” Sky said. “This is an old station nobody knows about except bodyguards with secret clients.”

Julian leaned back on his elbows. “You guess pretty good.”

“This is crazy,” Sky said, and suddenly all her fear was back. “An abandoned subway station in Manhattan in the middle of the night.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I barely know you.”

“I’ll e-mail my diary.” Julian only got a hint of the smile he’d hoped for. He added, “But you have to promise you’ll keep it off the record.”

Sky turned to him, deadly serious for a long moment, and Julian thought he’d gone too far. But all she said was, “It feels safe here with you.”

He scented the fear behind her words. His beast growled. “You’ll always be safe with me,” he said before he could stop himself.