Private Demon

"Tortosa? Castle Pilgrim…" Jema shook her head, completely confused now. "Those were Templar castles. What are you talking about?"

"Tortosa was abandoned first, and then ten days later the order came. We were to retreat to Ruad, where ships were waiting to take us home." He looked around him. "Someone had to stay behind until the last man left. I volunteered to stand watch against the Saracens."

"There aren't any Saracens here." She nodded toward the door. "The only person out there is a milkmaid. I think you could probably take her."

"Angelica." His mouth thinned. "She betrayed me. She sold me and our son and my family to the devil."

"I didn't know you were involved."

"You don't know anything about me. I was a Templar. I became a monster." He opened his mouth, and two long, sharp-looking white fangs appeared. "I have walked the earth for more than seven hundred years. I feed on the blood of the living."

She had to say something. "Have you read The Purpose-Driven Life?"

"Do not jest about this. I am a demon, Jema, simply not the one you've imagined. And I will never leave this place." He turned away from her, and his voice changed. "I can't. I've been here too long."

"That is such crap." Jema picked up something wet and dripping and threw it at his back, smacking him in between the shoulder blades. Anger became horror as he looked at her. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

He strode to the table, grabbed her by the calves, and yanked them, laying her out flat on her back.

Under him.

Not where Jema wanted to be. Not on a rock bed awash with cow tartare. Not when she had a pretty good idea of what he was going to do with those fangs.

She rolled, but not in time to avoid being pinned between his thighs. He brought his full weight down and flattened her against the stone. Things squished under her front and she fought to keep her face out of the gore. Behind her, his hands manacled her wrists and stretched out her arms so she couldn't use either elbow. His heavy legs were locked on the outsides of hers.

So, this wasn't good, Jema thought. At all.

His badly tailored pants were on the thin side, and her nightgown had ridden up, exposing her legs. She could feel just about every inch of what he had shoved against the curve of her butt. He wasn't having a problem with the ambience of the setting.

The problem was, neither was she. She was buried in gore, but she was smothering in the scent of gardenias. Everything below her collarbone wanted her to flip over and spread her legs and shove him into her. The heat and ache were so bad she nearly screamed for him to do it.

Not that he was going to do anything of the sort. Jema couldn't wriggle or breathe or make a sound, and he wasn't lifting up to let her. Darkness grew obese in front of her eyes, so she let herself go gradually limp and didn't move.

He fell for it and rose up.

Jema jerked her head back, driving it into his face, stunning him enough to wrench one arm free. She grabbed the edge of the table and used the wet surface to slide out from under him. His hands snatched at her back, but the gore had left her slippery. She was over the edge of the table and had her feet on the floor again before he scrambled off.

She was closer to his sword than he was, and she could have grabbed it, but something made her hesitate. As if putting one hand on it would be worse than rolling around with him in all the blood and guts.

"What do you want from me?" she shouted.

"I want to save you." He looked at his bloodstained hands. "I cannot, Jema. I cannot even save myself."

"I'm not a damsel in distress." She stepped around a carcass, feeling behind her with her hands so she could keep her eyes on him. "I don't need saving."

"I could kill you." Not a threat, but a fact, presented with fangs and eyes that were cat-slitted and glowing.

"Really. You couldn't even keep me on the slaughtering table." Finally she felt a doorknob, and although it was as fun as peeling off her own skin with a dull butter knife, she turned, pulled it open, and ran through it.

No, Jema. No.

A huge hand yanked her back and into the dark, and for a moment she floated, a rag doll suspended from that hand, until her feet found solid ground.

Jema was standing on a silver-wooded pier that led to an old-looking boat tied to the end of it. The ocean around it was dark blue, the sky was a slate gray, and the salty air felt ice cold against her face.

She whirled around, but the farm and the slaughterhouse were gone, and only her demon stood behind her, his white tunic back in place and looking as pristine as if the wrestling match in the slaughterhouse had never happened. Her nightgown was clean, too.

"I like this better," she thought she should mention, "and I'll really like this if it's tonight's wrap-up."

He stared past her at the boat. "It will not end. Not for me." He looked into her eyes, and for a second she saw something too awful for words. Not tears, not fear, not anger. Despair. The bottomless, abandon-hope-all-ye-who-enter-here variety. "I would trade my life for yours."

"I don't like where you work, and my mother can be a handful." She was going to wake up soon, and she didn't want the slaughterhouse to be the only thing she remembered. They had so little time together as it was. "What's your name?"

When he started to answer, she shook her head. "Your real name, not the ones you make up for me."

"I am nothing, no one. Everything I had is gone." He seized her by the arms and shook her. "I am Death."

"You evidently have issues I don't know about," she said, trying to sound reasonable, "but I'd still like to know your name."

All the anger seemed to evaporate out of him. "Thierry. My name is Thierry."

"Thierry." She liked it, and smiled. "Was that so terrible?"

He let her go. He wasn't looking at her anymore, either; he was staring past her at the boat. "It is too late for me, little cat."

She turned to see what had his attention. The sky had turned black, and the sea a choppy, angry yellow-green. The boat had changed into a silvery, unearthly clipper ship with sails so crisp and white they seemed cut out of paper. Eerie blue light streamed through square holes in the railing around the deck. Planks exploded into the air as the boat's metallic hull slammed into the pier; then the snowy sails fluttered, and it swung away into the swelling waves.

A woman, dressed in a black robe and standing on the upper deck lifted a black-gloved hand. It wasn't a wave, but it was definitely a gesture of good-bye. Then the wind caught her hood and flung it back, exposing a beautiful face.

"Ex-girlfriend?" Jema guessed.

"My wife." In a toneless voice he began telling her about the woman, whose name was Angelica.

Jema could hardly stand to listen, for the story of what his wife had done to him was far worse than anything in the slaughterhouse. When he was finished telling it, they stood side by side and watched the boat sail off into the storm. The wind howled around them, and sleet and rain hurled down from the sky, but it didn't touch either of them.

When the ship finally disappeared, Thierry put his arm around her, and turned her to face him. It was almost a hug, only without the nice body-to-body-pressing part.

When she looked into his eyes she knew they weren't going to kiss, or pet, or do anything as before There was death in his eyes, the pupils two vertical slivers of obsidian, the golden irises paling out until they matched the whites, and then they glittered with death, a flat, frozen void beyond white that was filled with bleached bones, drained flesh, and grinning skulls.

Jema could see her reflection in his eyes. Her eyes were so dark they looked black, and they glowed with heat. If there was such a thing as black fire, it burned in them.

Thierry lifted his free hand up and held it palm out. She folded her fingers through his, and felt something gentle and terrifying wrap around her heart.

He didn't say anything, and she didn't expect him to. The silence between them was a minefield. If they had been anywhere else, Jema would have expected to hear a minister say, "If anyone knows of a reason why these two people should not be joined in holy matrimony…"

Warm wetness distracted Jema from his eyes. Blood welled from between the intersections of their fingers to trickle down the backs of their hands. Nothing hurt, but it didn't stop. She didn't feel alarmed, but watched the two of them bleed together as if that, too, was meant to be.

They were joined now, in some way she couldn't fathom.

Thierry seemed to be waiting for her to say something. "What happens now?"

He leaned forward, not to kiss or hug, but to whisper against her ear, "You will not go into the dark alone. When it is time, I will take you. I will go with you."

"No." She twisted against him. "I won't let you." The night constricted around them, blanking out everything but his touch. "You don't die for me or with me. You stay alive. You go on without me."

He was trying to kill her now, taking the air from her lungs and changing it into gardenias.

"We'll go together," he promised, just before he kissed her. "Tonight."

His mouth touched hers, and she went with him.

Chapter 15

Jema? Something thudded.

Jema.

Another, harder series of thumps. "Jema."

It was the jangle of keys that tore Thierry out of the dream and back to reality. He was kneeling in the center of Jema's bed, her limp body in his arms. Her mouth and his were bloodied. L'attrait permeated the air in her room, made icy by the balcony window he'd left open.

How had he come in here? What had he done to her?

Thierry had been in thrall more than once and recognized the deep, aching pull of the blood dreams to which he had nearly succumbed. He felt for a pulse at her throat and nearly collapsed in relief when he found one. She was still alive, and not in rapture.

The keys. Someone was opening the door. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">