The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (10 page)

Santo had tried to protect her then. He’d stood between her and danger. He’d tried to pull her out of the fray. And after she’d been shot, he’d gotten her away instead of leaving her for dead. Even if she couldn’t believe what he said, she couldn’t deny his actions. He would protect her if—
when
—they came again.

“They will come,” he repeated in a tone as dark as midnight. “And if they catch you, they’ll make you wish you
could
die.”

His words echoed in a cavernous place inside her, too terrifying to take in all at once. Her lips felt numb as she whispered, “Why . . .”

Why did they want her?

Why did
he
care?

He cupped her face in his palms, his hands blissfully warm against her cold cheeks. They felt like an anchor in an unpredictable storm—a storm he himself had brought when he’d walked through her door. She didn’t understand her own reactions when it came to Santo. A few seconds ago she wanted to hit him and now she . . .

“Trust me a little longer,
angelita,
” he murmured.

“Don’t call me that. And I haven’t trusted you yet.”

“Now who’s the liar?”

She didn’t dispute it. He was right. Again. She didn’t know what she believed or what she wanted. The moment had turned without her knowledge, and her fury had faltered in the shifting winds. Mixed within her confusion, something stronger than rage smoldered red-hot. Something that sparked when his mouth touched her throat. She felt drugged by his nearness.

He felt it, too. His arms encircled her, his fingertips tracing up her spine to her nape, where they began a slow, lazy courtship with her knotted muscles. His hips rolled gently against hers as he kissed her neck, her chin, her ear. Her breasts felt tight and sensitive and she arched against his chest. She couldn’t help it.

From the first instant she’d seen Santo Castillo, she’d been aware of him, of the subtle thrumming signal he seemed to emit just for her. She didn’t know if this was a moment out of time or a moment that would seed the future. At that moment, it didn’t seem to matter.

He refused to let her look away as he leaned closer, sweetening the tension of waiting for his lips to find hers. It made her ache to close the distance, to taste and touch . . . to feel all that his nearness promised. But she understood his message. Here was her chance to say no. Here was her chance to refuse him.

She believed him when he said they would come
for her. Perhaps in some deep subconscious well, she’d expected it. She believed he would help her. He would protect her. For all the unpredictable darkness he exuded, she felt safe with him.

And she wanted the kiss he held just out of reach. She wanted it very badly. She slid her fingers through his hair and met him halfway.

His mouth was hot and open and his tongue found hers in a seduction that made her knees wobble. In two steps he backed her to the wall, holding her hips to his and rocking the hard length of him against her belly. His body surrounded her as her hands explored his stomach and chest. She slid her fingers beneath his shirt so she could feel him without barriers. In an instant, he’d shucked it and yanked hers up and over her head, too. He gathered her to him, and she nearly swooned from the feel of all that skin and muscle up against her own soft curves.

Who was this man who could break her trust and then bend her to his will in the next moment?

He lifted his head and gave her a somber look.

“Quit thinking.”

Then his hands cupped her breasts as his mouth moved over them with hot, lingering kisses she had no will to resist.

She quit thinking.

He pushed at the stretchy waist of her borrowed sweatpants and slid them over her hips before swiping
his notebook and papers off the table and sitting her down on it. The action spoke of a desperate need that blew through her like a storm. The table’s hard surface felt cold, but Santo was a raging furnace that kept her burning.

She braced herself and tried not to buck when his mouth moved to her nipple, but the feel of it consumed her. His scent had drawn her from the start. Now she lost herself in it, lost herself in
him
.

His hands roved on their own, from breasts to belly, down to the heat of her, the place where every nerve, every sense had gathered to wait for his touch.

“Fuck, Roxanne,” he breathed against her skin when he discovered her wet and wanting.

His tongue was hot on her flesh. Tasting, savoring while his fingers made a rough and wonderful friction against the most sensitive part of her. The world narrowed down to the feel of his touch, the heat of his kiss. He pressed his nose to her throat, breathing her in, the burst of his breath hot, his nearness electric.

“What are you doing to me?” he muttered.

Roxanne should have been asking
him
the same question, but she couldn’t quite form words when her body was drawn so tight.

His kiss demanded a response she had to give. His tongue was like velvet, his taste like an exotic, addicting wine. He took his time. Deep. Slow. So completely entrancing as he explored her mouth. She’d never been
kissed like that before, as if nothing were more important than the way she tasted. The way she felt. She didn’t think she’d be able to breathe if he stopped.

“I’m sorry,” he said against her mouth. “I shouldn’t have lied. But I swear I did it to keep you safe.”

From somewhere in the distance, an eerie sound rose up and banked against the window, piercing the sexual haze that drove her. A cross between a bay and a shout, it howled like a northern wind, shredding the quiet and leaving behind a gritty foreboding. Immediately, Santo stiffened and eased back. His eyes narrowed as he listened.

It came again, that shrill and oily wail, racing across the miles, unlike anything Roxanne had ever heard. He caught her hands and stilled them as goose bumps broke out on her skin and a dance of shivers tangoed down her spine.

“What is that?” she asked.

Santo closed his eyes and his shoulders slumped. “You better get dressed.”

He pulled away from her with obvious reluctance, taking her inside-out shirt from her fumbling hands, righting it, and pulling it over her head. His fingertips traced her breast before he jerked the soft fabric down to cover them. When he looked up, she saw the depth of his yearning and regret.

The howling came again, still distant but moving fast.

Santo went to the window and peered out. His back to her, he said, “Come look.”

Frowning, Roxanne crossed to his side and peeked out of the small gap he’d made between the panels of the ugly drapes. He shifted so that she was in front of him, his body hot and hard where his chest pressed against her back as he leaned in. “Look there,” he said in her ear, his arm reaching over her shoulder to direct her.

Three stories down, the parking lot stretched to a frontal road. A scattering of cars took up about half the spaces. The coffee shop that had provided their meal perched at the corner, and in the distance she could hear the roar of traffic from Highway 101. Bright lights still lit it up, and shadows loomed long and dark as she scanned the lot.

“What am I looking for?”

The words had barely left her lips when she saw it. A flash of white lurching between two cars. An instant later, she saw a second one. He paused in his dart across the lot and unfolded from his crouch to stand erect. He wore all black, from stocking cap to gloves, but his face gleamed like polished pewter, so white that the fat October moon sliding from the sky gilded it with a silver sheen.

Unbidden came the memories of the masked, icy-eyed man. His eyes had been the coldest, lightest blue she’d ever seen. Though she couldn’t tell from this
distance, she knew the man below would have the same lifeless glow in his. Did all demons have eyes like that?

And what about the creatures that had followed the demon last night? Their eyes had been white. No iris—just terrifying white orbs surrounding the black dot of their pupil.

It had been so terrible that even now she couldn’t quite bring the memory into focus. They’d looked like something out of a mad scientist’s wet dream. A conglomeration of human and beast that defied labels and descriptors.

The man in the parking lot turned slowly, as if feeling her watching. She couldn’t see his eyes from the window, but she felt them tracking. Santo pulled her back before that disturbing gaze came to rest on her. He jerked the curtain closed.

“Who are they?” she asked.

“Is that really the question you want answered, Roxanne?” he replied as he moved through the room, grabbing the notebook and papers he’d knocked to the floor and shoving them into a bag.

“You mean
what
are they, don’t you? Even with that smart, sane,
normal
mind of yours, you can’t pretend they’re human.”

“Okay. What are they? More demons?”

“The ones you see now, they’re scavenger demons. I call them scavengers.”

“Scavengers,” she repeated, grimacing.

“They are reviled even in the Beyond.”

“And what about the others? There were others in the kitchen last night.”

He paused and gave her a serious look. “I’ve been trying to figure that out since I first saw them.”

“You don’t know what they are?”

“I didn’t. Not until just now. Not until I heard them.”

Roxanne gave an uneasy glance at the window, thinking of the sound that had crawled into this room and ripped Santo from her arms.

“Are you going to tell me or make me guess?” she asked.

“Hellhounds. I think they’re hellhounds.”

She stood there like a moron, unable to even conjure a
no way
or
bullshit.

Santo went on. “I didn’t even think they existed until now. In five thousand years, not one has been seen in the Beyond.”

“Beyond. You’ve said that before. What is it? Like . . . hell?”

“Heaven, hell, and everything in between.”

What could be in between?
she wondered but didn’t ask. This was already too much to take in.

“And that’s where they’re all from? The scavenger demons? The hellhounds?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

“But?”

“Condemned creatures come from Abaddon. It is . . .” He seemed to search for the word. “It is a part of the Beyond, but it’s more than that. It’s both a place and a state of being. And it is controlled by the father of all hells.”

Fabulous.

“Abaddon is the King of the Abyss.” He looked away. “The Angel of Death. The Destroyer.”

Wasn’t that just what the party needed. “I’ve never even heard of him.”

“I’d introduce you,
angelita,
but you wouldn’t thank me for it.”

She smiled grimly, her own disbelief adding a layer of surreal to the moment. She should be terrified, but without a recognizable framework for her fear, it felt strangely removed.

Santo went into the bathroom, gathered up his things, and dropped them in his duffel.

“But they’re all considered demons, one way or another,” Roxanne said.

He nodded, watching her take it in, seeming to wait for her to make a connection she couldn’t see. She swallowed, hearing his voice.
Ask better questions
.

“Why are they here now?”

“That a girl,” he said, zipping up his bag. He grabbed her hand and led her to the door. “Why do you think?”

She didn’t want to think. She wanted to go back to the hours before the robbery. She wanted to listen
to Reece and close Love’s early and go home before anything bad happened. But she’d asked the question. Now she had to answer it.

“It has something to do with me and Reece, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The blunt response made her flinch. And suddenly other questions took shape in her head. Questions she liked even less than that one. Questions she was afraid to have answered.

And they all began with
why. . . .

“Why are you here to protect me, Santo? Why do you even know who I am? Why do you know so much about this
Beyond
?”

He stared at her, and she watched as he battled a conflict within. Filtering facts yet again, balancing truth against lies, scripting his response. He let out a deep breath that spoke of resignation. He looked down at his feet and shook his head. A small, broken laugh came from his lips, and she knew in that instant that he’d decided on the truth.

Roxanne steadied herself, but she couldn’t have known what was coming.

“I know because
I’m
from the Beyond,
angelita
. That’s why.”

R
eece Love hesitated outside the door with the words
Gary Knolls, Chancellor
spelled out across it in precise, hand-painted letters. He’d only known Gary for a couple of months, yet he’d begun to believe him a friend.