The Mephisto Mark: The Redemption of Phoenix (13 page)

“You just said that intent is everything. I intended to let him die, so whether or not he was still breathing isn’t relevant.”

“Okay, let’s assume you played a part in his death. It’s not murder. If it was, there’d be intent to kill, and because you’re Anabo, you’re incapable of the intent. If by some odd twist in the cosmos you were able to intentionally kill him, you’d lose Anabo immediately. Your birthmark would disappear. Your glow would go away.”

“So because I have a
n unusual birthmark and Sasha thinks I have good skin tone, I get a pass? God forgives me for letting a man die? That’s awesome. Maybe I should parlay this amazing gift into financial gain. I could rob a bank and still go to the front of the line at the pearly gates.”

“You think you’re damned to Hell.”

“Of course I am.” She dropped the poker back in the fireplace tool stand and walked around the room. “You have to swear never to tell Viorica about Emilian, about what I did.”

“Whatever we talk about is between us and no one else, Mariah.”

She sat at the end of the bed, stared at the floor for a moment, then stood and walked around some more. She stopped at the desk, picked up a bottle of Tylenol, shook it, turned it within her palms, tossed it from hand to hand. She wanted to say something, was searching for the right words.

“You can trust me, Mariah.”

Wrong thing to say. She set the bottle down and frowned at me. “You’re a son of Hell, a guy who made a snap judgment call and insulted me, and as soon as you figured out I’m not who you thought, that I can be your ticket to Heaven, here you are playing Mr. Understanding. Am I supposed to fall at your feet and trust you and love you? Suppose I was stupid enough to do that. How long before I’d wind up like the other girl?”

I took a deep breath. “Her name was Jane.”

“My name is Mariah, and I’m alive right now because I learned early in life not to trust anybody.”

“What about your sister? Do you trust her? Because she’s the reason you
’re blown. Taking you to Bucharest was worse than foolish. It was a disaster.”

“She’s a victim. I don’t blame her for what happened.”

I noticed she didn’t argue that she
did
trust Jordan.

She went to her chair, moved the King book, and sat down. “Thank you for telling me everything.”

“Will you think about staying?”

F
or the first time since I’d arrived in her room, I saw something besides a false smile. She was bitter. “What’s to think about? If I lose Anabo, if you ask Lucifer to take away whatever’s left of the light in my soul, I’m for sure going to Hell. If I keep my birthmark, there’s a chance this isn’t all a grand joke and maybe I can redeem myself by staying here on Hell Mountain and killing more people. I can also be with my sister, something I’d assumed was impossible.”

“You understand if you stay, you can’t remain human. You have to become a Lumina. And incidentally, they never kill people. They help us find the lost souls, and
take care of records and false identities when we need them, and provide other kinds of assistance, but they almost never go with us on takedowns. It’s traumatizing and takes weeks for them to recover. And they don’t take the lost to the gates of Hell on Earth. Only the Mephisto do that.”

“
I’ve worked since I was six. So I’ll be a Lumina and work here. Same difference.”

So bitter, so angry, and so alone. I reminded myself of
what I’d just spent all day reading. Somewhere in all that mistrust and anger was a little girl who smiled joyfully when her parents took her picture, who loved unconditionally and trusted God and humanity, who was lost in a spiral of cruelty. She was still in there, and maybe it’d take the next century to coax her out, but I wouldn’t give up. I wouldn’t allow her to hide behind sarcasm. “What did you plan to do with your life, Mariah?”

“I was going to become a pop star and live in Hollywood.”

Her life had just done a one-eighty. She wasn’t a crier, or one to bemoan cruel fate. Mariah wouldn’t do anything that might reveal what she was really feeling. Paradoxically, the rage she’d never been allowed to feel was the reason she couldn’t admit out loud how badly this hurt. All she could do was be flippant and sarcastic. “What were you really going to do?”

Her gaze dropped to Olga. “Be a pediatrician.
When I was younger, there was a doctor. She tried to help me.”

“You wanted to help other kids.”

She looked up and lost her sad eyes. “No, I wanted to make a lot of money.”

More sarcasm.
“It’s like you’re spoiling for a fight.”

“Maybe I am.”

I stood, and Olga ran under the bed. “I’m game. Give me your best shot.”

She
sprang to her feet and stood two feet away, all pretense gone. She was furious. “I saw that look on your face. You tried to hide it before I saw, but you were too late.”

I knew
, but said anyway, “What look?”

“Pity! You feel
sorry
for me! I
hate
that, and I hate you for feeling it. I’m poor and an orphan and the man who was supposed to take care of me was pure evil, but I’m not some pathetic loser who deserves your pity, you arrogant, self-satisfied goat. Hand it to somebody who feeds and thrives on being a victim. Don’t
ever
come in here again and look at me like I’m a sad case.”

“Am I supposed to ignore your past? Because you sure as shit didn’t ignore mine.”

“Oh, sad puppy because I pointed out that it was your fault the other girl died. I see what’s up with you, Phoenix. You’re carrying a suitcase full of guilt around your neck so everyone can see it, so they’ll all know how sorry you are that she died and it was all your fault, and oh, woe to you because you have to live with losing your Anabo.”

“You’ve gotta be joking. If I have a suitcase full of guilt, you’re hauling around a metric ton of it. You’re so guilty, you’re sure Lucifer is getting your room ready. What difference does it make if he is or he isn’t? You’re either sorry you didn’t save the
evil son of a bitch, or you’re not. Own it, Mariah.”

Somehow, there was now less than a foot of distance between us. The scent of heather was incredible. And I could see her glow. Slightly. Or maybe she was just so pissed off, her body was generating heat.

“I already said I’m not sorry.”

“I already heard you
, but maybe I don’t believe you.”

“Why do I smell oranges? Oh, my God, it’s driving me crazy.”

“The same reason I smell heather.”

She glared up at me. “It is
never
happening.”

“I never asked.”

“You don’t have to. I can see it in your eyes.”

We were
closer, and
she
was the one moving. Two more inches and we’d be touching, and she didn’t like being touched. If she touched me, it would be huge. An hour ago, she’d been afraid of me. That she was this close now was extreme progress. “Well, what do you expect? I’m eternally an eighteen year old guy and I haven’t touched a girl in over a hundred years. You land on my doorstep with your dark hair and pretty face and sexy body. If I didn’t want you, I’d be dead. But wanting something and having it are two very different things.”

“You love that you’re a paragon of self-control, don’t you? I bet Denys and the others go out all the time and you stay here and congratulate yourself for your superior morality.”
Contact. She moved so close, her breasts were against my chest. I wondered if she was even aware. “But there’s a side to you that’s far removed from all the guilt and martyrdom.”

“There’s no such side. What you see is what there is.” She was blowing my mind. I wanted to tell her to stop talking. I’d die if she stopped talking.

“Oh, there’s a side, and it’s wild and scary and if you let it loose, you don’t really know if you can control it.”

“And you would know this, how?”

“I saw it at dinner last night. That’s who you are. I get it now, why you were so upset when I arrived, why you were so mad about how I earn a living, what you imagined and how it made you feel. You went with it, which isn’t something you do, ever.”

I hadn’t felt this alive in a century. Maybe ever.
I wanted to slip my fingers into her long hair and kiss her until she couldn’t breathe. Her lips parted and she looked anxious and anticipatory. “I won’t,” I whispered.

“
I haven’t ever,” she replied, now staring at my mouth. “I never wanted to.”

“Until now?”

“Until now.” She frowned and shook her head. “No, not now. I’m not interested at all.”

“If I ever kiss you—”

“I’ll begin turning to Mephisto. You said that already.”

“Then maybe it’d be better if you didn’t stand this close. I might get the wrong idea.”

She didn’t budge.

“Are you testing me, Mariah?”

“No, I just happen to like standing here next to you. Must be the oranges.”

“Are we done fighting?”

“For now.”

“Who won?”

Her smoky blue eyes met mine. “Draw.”

I swallowed and didn’t trust myself to move an inch.
I breathed in the scent of her shampoo, all mixed up with the heather. She was so small and wounded, and I was overwhelmed with hardcore, down-and-dirty brute protectiveness. I wanted to hold her near and keep anything from hurting her ever again. I wanted to buy her beautiful things and take her all over the world and feed her delicious food and ask her a million questions. I wanted to kiss her on her mouth, and all over her soft body. I wanted to make love to her and show her it wasn’t painful and horrible and wrong.

All these things I wanted
, and could never have because I could never love her. More than anything in the universe, Mariah needed love. She deserved a guy who was capable of giving her that. And that guy wasn’t me.

She stepped back before she blinked up at me. “You’re very sad now. Why?”

Her intuition was more precise than a laser. I reached out to stroke her hair. “I just wish . . .”

“What do you wish?”

“For you to have a happy life.”

She pushed my hand away from her head.
“Oh, please. You wish
you
had a happy life. You wish things hadn’t gone so wrong with the other girl. Maybe you even wish, if it had to happen, that it hadn’t been your fault. And right now you wish I were something different. Something better.”

“Careful, Mariah. That chip on your shoulder is showing.”

“Don’t deny it.”

“I’m not even going to give it enough credence to deny it. Haven’t you been listening? You’re it, my one and only, and for me, it’s got nothing to with a ticket to Heaven. It’s about a thousand years of fucking loneliness. Jane was in my life less than three months and yeah, I’m guilty and angry at myself, but that is nothing to do with you or how I feel about you.”

“If I’m all you’ve got, why aren’t you trying? Obviously, it’s because you’d rather have no one than me.”

Damn.
Hadn’t seen that coming. God, why were girls like this? Why did they have to needle into things that were simple and turn them into a complicated minefield? “Let’s not forget what I am. All my instincts want me to take you right off this rug, carry you away somewhere, and keep you all to myself until they make me come back. I’m selfish enough to do that, and egotistical enough to think you’d be okay with it. But as much as I have those instincts, I’m smart enough to know it’d never last. You’d resent me. You’ve spent your whole life answering to someone else, and I want you to be in control of what happens to you.”

“Ah, I see. So you’re making this great sacrifice for my sake. I think I’ll talk to Kyros about giving you a medal.”

“I have no idea why we’re talking about it. You don’t want me.”

“True, but it’s not you in particular. I don’t want anybody.”

“Someday, you might. It just can’t be me.”

“Yes, we covered that. You’d rather be alone than with me.”

Frustrated and angry, I held her face in my hands and said, “I’d rather be alone than fuck up your life.”

She blinked. “Too late.”

Her hair was silky soft on my fingertips and her skin was warm and inviting. I stared down into her wide eyes and almost kissed her. I wanted it
so
much. “I can’t love you. Even if a miracle happened and you loved me, I couldn’t love you back. You deserve love, Mariah. Hold out for it and never settle.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re harsh.”

“You’re such a guy. In a whole houseful of guys. So you had this horrible terrible thing happen over a hundred years ago, and in all that time you’ve never talked to anyone about it.
”

She didn’t understand, and I wanted her to.
“Jane was perfect. Beautiful, graceful, compassionate, smart, and she loved me. But I—”

“Didn’t love her, so now you think that if you couldn’t love Miss Perfect, you must be too damaged, too screwed up to be capable of love. Is that it?”