Wicked And Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 4 (26 page)

“The what?” Viktor stared at Armaeus, so clearly at a loss that even I found him convincing. “Defiled Connecteds—the entire thrice-damned lot of them are defiled in this hellhole. Why you insist upon remaining here when there is better magic, purer magic ready and waiting to host the Council—”

“Enough!” Armaeus thrust his hand up, and Viktor didn’t just disappear, he was swept out of the penthouse like yesterday’s garbage. Armaeus turned back to me then, his smile dark with entirely too much satisfaction.

“What the hell was that?” I spluttered.

“That,” Armaeus said smugly, “was a demonstration for the Emperor’s benefit. More to the point, however, while Viktor was blathering, I read his innermost truth. He did not do this. What is happening at Shiver tonight is not a construct of the Council, but of its human operators.”

“And you don’t know what they’re doing?”

“There is usually no need to monitor them so closely as that. Better that it has been brought to our attention organically, so that we can intervene to protect Council interests if and as necessary.”

I sat up straighter. “Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s necessary. Intervene. If what’s going on there tonight is a slave auction—”

“Then it bears further watching, Miss Wilde. Good that you will be there. Contact me when you learn something of more use, and I can direct you accordingly.”

“Yeah, well, I might be busy once we get there,” I retorted. “Why not simply crawl around in my head if you want to talk to me?”

Armaeus spread his hands, his manner changing with quicksilver fluidity. He looked almost…abashed. I blinked at him as he smiled with disarming humility.

“If you want me to speak in your mind, Miss Wilde, you must grant me permission. You’ve grown stronger.”

“Oh.” I nodded, surprised. I hadn’t realized I was still barricading myself from Armaeus. Since Hell, it’d become a knee-jerk reaction, apparently. “Well, fine.” I slipped the bounds of my mind and felt the rush of the Magician’s touch—his touch, and something more.

“Fortunately, Miss Wilde, I’ve grown stronger too.”

Fury lashed through me, quick and hot—not my anger, but Armaeus’s as he poured acid into my mind and pounded spikes through my mental barriers before I could yank them up again. The seething, roiling rage he spilled into me was reminiscent of the nerve-shattering violence he’d pummeled Sariah with in Hell—and, to a lesser extent, me.

“Stop it!” I gritted out. “You
knew
what I was doing the whole time with Mirabel. You could have stopped me without pain.”

“I could have.” His words screamed through my brain, faster and far more brutal than I’d ever experienced him before. “But where would have been the vindication in that? You had no right to touch Mirabel. No. Right.”

“She died nearly a thousand years ago! You had no right to keep her lingering in that pit, waiting for you to return.”

“I didn’t know!” The agony in Armaeus’s voice transcended his anger for a moment. “You think if I had the opportunity to
see
her, to
be
with her, that I would not have breached the bounds of Hell long before now? If there’d been
any
chance—”

His voice caught, and every perfect, precious moment—every beautiful memory I’d made with Armaeus—shriveled and died within me. He wasn’t merely proclaiming his love for Mirabel, he was discounting everything between us, all the illusions I was clinging to so fiercely—still clinging to, even though I knew they were false, knew they were baseless. Even though I alone suffered for those lost illusions, my heart shot through with so many holes it could no longer hold so much as an ounce of hope, of love, ever again.

“You’re the Magician,” I shot back. “If you didn’t know, you should have. If you did know but didn’t want to make a decision, instead getting caught up with the wonder and the possibility of it, then good for you. Hopefully you let her go this time, at last.”

He paused long enough for me to know he hadn’t. “Unbelievable,” I snapped, and reinforced my barriers against the pain that clanged in my soul. “You suck worse than I thought.”

“Fortunately, we have all the time we need to discuss what is and is not appropriate pushing of boundaries, Miss Wilde. I assure you it is a lesson I look forward to both giving and receiving from you.” Armaeus’s words slid through me with equal parts threat and promise, leaving me angry and filled with need at once.

“Starting now.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I swallowed, my mind spinning too fast now, trying to keep up. Armaeus continued, not giving me a chance to breathe. “You are a knotted skein that will need to be unraveled. What you learned in Hell, intentionally or otherwise, will be useful to the Council.”

”Great,” I managed. “I’ll send you a report.”

His smile deepened, and he lifted a hand. “I could simply touch—”

“No! No,” I gritted out. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to do anything remotely close to touching me. That would be very bad, I think. Seriously bad. Terrible.” I couldn’t seem to stop talking as my hands spasmed around my glass.

“You’re uneasy around me.” Armaeus sounded amused. “More so than before.”

“I have every reason to be.” I stared out the enormous plateglass windows of the suite. Once again the casinos of the Council members loomed large in my vision—including the farthest one, recently come to life as a shimmering white obelisk. “Is Michael taking up residence in the White Tower?”

“Not quite yet,” Armaeus said, his voice silky with threat. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you are trying to change the subject, Miss Wilde. Why would you do that?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” I shifted back in my chair a little farther as I realized that Armaeus was seated on the couch again and leaning forward, crowding close to me. “I need to speak to the Hierophant. If he’s here, I could use him.”

“You wish to understand what you saw in Hell. I wish to understand that too.” He edged nearer. “You were split in two, Miss Wilde. I hadn’t expected that. It quite made everything more confusing when you attacked Mirabel, but I suppose that was your intention.”

”You know, I didn’t intend most of what happened there, and that’s the honest truth. But I wasn’t—I don’t know who that was, Armaeus. It was me, but not me. It was the me who did things I wouldn’t do. She damages. I don’t damage.”

“Don’t you?” he murmured, and I gripped my glass more tightly. At this point, it would be the second shattered tumbler of the day if I wasn’t careful, but I couldn’t ease off.

“No, I don’t. I knew you had to get out of there, and I knew what to do to make that happen. But I didn’t know how. I hadn’t given it much thought. But I wouldn’t have picked that approach, for certain.”

“The approach this alternate form of you chose. She made many choices for you, it would seem, there in the depths of Hell.”

I stopped clutching the scotch to drain a little more of it. The tang of the liquor helped drive the chill from my chest. “I told you I was sorry.”

“Sorry.” Armaeus’s words were a taunt. “Yet I am not sorry. Which makes me wonder exactly how much of this act of your alternate self was truly your intention after all.”

Fully lost now, I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“As you made several realizations in Hell, I did as well. And one of those revelations was that I have not utilized the fullest extent of my abilities, both in my actions on the Council and in my preservation of the position on magic. I am better able to do so now.”

“Because you’re immortal again.”

“Not merely that.” His voice shaded over to threat, and I forced myself to look at him. And blinked.

“Tell me, Miss Wilde,” the Magician said, the words a silken tide that flowed into my ears and through my mind and over my skin all at once. “What do you see? What do you feel?”

“Your eyes,” I whispered, staring. “There’s something wrong with your eyes.”

“In what way?” He edged nearer, and though my heart began to beat rapidly, I couldn’t fall back, wouldn’t fall back. I craved Armaeus in a way that I didn’t understand, but it was definitely not anything I’d experienced before. Before, when he’d been immortal, I’d been attracted to him, yes. I’d wanted him. But the panic had been enough to make sure I never gave into that desire. This was different though. Now, once again I felt all the fear, the danger. But instead of fleeing from it…

“What is it you feel, Miss Wilde?”

“I want you,” I snapped, compelled to honesty despite my anger and disgust at my own weakness. I didn’t resist as he plucked the glass out of my fingers, setting it aside. I also didn’t flinch back as he lifted his hands to my face, hesitating but a moment before he seared my jaw with the sensual heat of his palms, holding me steady though my entire body shook in fury and need. And I didn’t breathe a word of refusal as he moved forward to drift his lips over mine. I knew this path led to death and destruction, but I didn’t refuse it anymore. I wanted it more than anything I’d ever craved in my life. As much as I hated admitting it, I wanted him. I wanted us. I wanted this.

Death, destruction, chaos.

Bring it.

Armaeus leaned in, deepening the kiss, and his hand slipped around the back of my neck, the other dropping down to cup my breast. The sensual assault enraged the twin monsters of panic and need within me, and I gasped with sudden pain against his lips, the ache that welled up inside me too big, too full. I felt I would burst with it, and Armaeus chuckled against my mouth, his right hand dropping to grasp my left hand and hold it fast in his grip.

“You are many things, Miss Wilde, that I do not understand.”

“Get away from me,” I hissed, even as I swayed toward him, my body betraying my mind at the most basic level. Armaeus dropped his head to my neck and nuzzled the hollow of my collarbone, the sensitized skin torn between sensations as he stoked an internal fire and froze me in place at once. His grip on my hand intensified, and I felt the bones of my ring finger practically compress, pain riding an enormous wave of pleasure that would drown me. It had to drown me. I could not withstand it much longer.

“You cannot keep me from what I wish to know,” he continued, and a tiny shred of sanity broke through the haze of need. I pulled back, trying to see his face. He let me go, but his eyes watched me with a predator’s glare and his hand stayed locked on mine. His eyes were fully black. “You cannot keep me from what I want either. And I do want you, Miss Wilde. Quite definitively.”

“What’s happened to you?” I whispered, and he twisted his lips.

“As Magician, I am balance, but I am not neutral in the way you have believed. The light and the dark both live within me. For centuries, I have embraced the light. And discovered that, for all my virtue, for all my lip service to balance and strength and good judgment, I had left behind a soul to rot in agony for the love of me. A soul that my own love kept tethered to a world that was neither dark nor light, death nor life. I am not worthy of the belief Mirabel had in me.” He grimaced. “And you gave me the perfect means to escape it.”

I stared, warier of him than I’d ever been, but not understanding why. “I did?”

“Yes.” A jolt of pain that centered on my left hand’s ring finger riveted me, and I tried to pull my hand free, but Armaeus held tight. He spoke into my ear, his breath sending whorls of sensation along every one of my nerve endings, even the ones that didn’t know they had endings. “And now I do not have to play by the rules that have governed me so carefully for these centuries past. Now the game can change completely.”

He moved back around to face me, his deeply wrong eyes boring into mine. “You’ve given that to me, Miss Wilde. And I will do whatever you ask in return.”

He lowered his mouth, brushing his lips over mine.

“Except to let you go.”

The sudden, agonizing pain in my left hand wrenched a scream from my lips in response to his kiss.

“Get off me!” I gasped, pushing Armaeus away with my noncrippled right hand and straightening in my chair. I flapped my left hand, and a glint of gold caught my eye. “What is this?” I tried to pull the ring off, and razor-sharp teeth bit into my skin. “Ouch!” I scowled at him. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what this looks like, you asshat. I need a wedding band from you like a hole in the head.”

“It’s the most expedient form for tracking, since, though you may not realize it yet, your abilities can now hide you from my sight.” Armaeus settled back on the couch. “I have come back from Hell altered in ways I have not fully taken the time to understand. You have as well. Until I have an opportunity to completely understand these changes in you, you remain at greater risk for abduction, torture, and death.”

“What are you talking about?” I was no longer flailing. The moment I stopped messing with the ring, it stopped hurting me. As long as I kept it on, it twirled normally around my finger. It was only when I attempted to slide it past my middle knuckle that it sank into my skin. But I’d been around Armaeus long enough to know when he was joking, and this wasn’t one of those times. “I didn’t give you permission to put this thing on me.”

“You didn’t need to give me permission. You can remove the ring at any time, by either severing your finger or invoking greater magic.” He shrugged. “Free will remains yours, the sacrifice not so great that you could not take it should you choose to do so. In the meantime, I ensure you do not fall into the hands of your enemies, and that you do not die.”

“How can knowing where I am guarantee that?”

He smirked. “Fair enough. I can ensure that you do not fall into the hands of your enemies without me knowing of it. And, to the extent that I can intervene before your head is severed from your body, I shall have greater opportunity to do so.”

“I don’t trust you,” I grumbled as my phone buzzed in my pocket.

He smiled. “I would hope not, Miss Wilde. You should, however, know and understand that I do what I do for the balance of magic in the mortal plane. There are many paths to ensuring that balance, and now new ones are open to me. As you are open to me.”