Blood of Life: Cora's Choice 1-3 Bundle Page 24

  Then his gaze slid past mine, and his eyes burned yellow, just for just an instant.

  I recoiled so hard that I jerked back into Dorian’s chest. The last creature I’d met with yellow eyes had tried to kill me.

  Another djinn.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” the djinn was shouting. “Easy, there! Easy!”

  Chapter Ten

  “I was just hired to watch, I swear,” the djinn wailed. “Look in my pocket. Go ahead. Look!”

  Disdainfully, Clarissa reached into the bulging pocket of his jacket—and came up with a compact camera body with a small zoom lens.

  “See? I was watching, that’s all!”

  “What does your employer want?” Dorian demanded.

  “Oh, the usual things,” the djinn said. “What she looks like. When she comes, when she goes. Who her friends are. There’s nothing wrong with that, right?”

  The ring of agnates shifted slightly, but no one spoke.

  The little man—the djinn—held up his bound hands imploringly. “Come on, Dalton. You’ve hired me before yourself. You can vouch for me.”

  One of the vampires, a tall man with silver-shot hair and crow’s feet that looked like they were being worn for effect, nodded reluctantly.

  “It’s Finnegan Cage. I know him.”

  “Tell them what kind of work I do,” he urged.

  “Strictly shadow-work,” Dalton said. “I’ve never heard a rumor otherwise.”

  “See? See?” Finnegan was getting so worked up that he was all but caroming from vampire to vampire. “No wet work here! Not me! Now get these damned salt-bonds off me so I can go about my business.”

  “Who hired you?” Dorian didn’t look impressed.

  “Oh, you know I can’t tell you that,” Finnegan said plaintively. “What kind of shadow would I be if I went around blabbing everyone’s business?”

  “You just blabbed Dalton’s,” Clarissa pointed out.

  “Oh, no,” Finnegan said. “You can’t say that. That was a really long time ago. Decades. And I didn’t tell you what it was, did I? And anyhow, I don’t know. Some little wisp came up to me at The Plant, an intermediary, and I wasn’t going to say no, was I? It was good work. Fair work. Clean work.” He emphasized the last point.

  Looking irritated, Dorian let out a puff of air. “Let the imp go.”

  Clarissa made a disappointed face, but she gave the cord a tug, and it fell from Finnegan’s hands.

  And then the man...shifted. Just a moment before, he had looked small and unimportant and certainly unthreatening, a stark contrast to the agnates who encircled him. But now I could see that the thickness at his center wasn’t fat but corded muscle, and his disarrayed hair had a dangerous edge instead of a foolish one. He grew wider, taller as he stepped back, the heavy lines of his face rearranging themselves into a more sinister mask.

  Finnegan backed away slowly, still keeping an eye on the agnates. They were all on edge, I saw, shifting slightly in response to his movements.

  As foolish as he’d just seemed, I realized that the djinn—little man no longer—would be a dangerous opponent if he chose.

  “You and your damned tech toys,” Finnegan spat. “You weren’t always on top, you know. And you won’t be forever. Put those away, and you’d never see me coming—until it was far too late.”

  Then he simply blinked out of existence.

  Clarissa looked at her screen device for several seconds, and I saw others in the group pull their own out.

  “All right, then,” she said finally. “He’s really gone.”

  “You really believe him?” Dorian asked Dalton.

  Dalton shrugged. “I’ve known him for a very long time. He doesn’t like to stir up trouble. I don’t think he’d take anything but shadow-work. He never has done before that I know about.”

  “It’s a good thing, Dorian,” said Clarissa. “If there’s shadow-work about, no one will want to get caught doing more. Too many eyes.”

  “I don’t trust djinn,” Dorian muttered, his hand tightening fractionally around my upper arm.

  “That’s because you’re a xenophobe,” Clarissa said succinctly. “Come on, now. If you’re going to let your cognate get some things from her apartment—let her! She really is safe now.”

  Dorian nodded reluctantly. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  “I’ll be waiting in the car,” Clarissa said.

  Dorian hesitated. Behind the impassivity of his expression, I knew he was torn. Finally, he nodded.

  “Fine,” he said again.

  “Can I walk this time?” I said as Clarissa loped easily away. I knew I sounded petulant, but I didn’t care. “If it isn’t too inconvenient or anything.”

  That teased a small chuckle out of him, and he looked down at me, seeming to really see me for the first time since he’d set me down. “Why not?”

  He held out an elbow, and I blinked at it for a moment before I realized that I was supposed to take it.

  Right, then.

  I hooked my arm over his, and he walked us—slowly—back to the apartment entrance. Compared to the djinn, his presence was almost reassuring, the spike of attraction that ran through me every time we touched familiar and, if not manageable, at least not an ugly surprise.

  And that was an indication of just how crazy my life had gotten, I thought. Worth had put my keys into the purse she had given me, and I fished them out and slid my keycard in the door. It unlocked, and Dorian reached past me to pull the door open.

  “So, do you care to explain all that?” I asked as we crossed to the lobby elevator and I punched the button to go up.

  “What part did you miss?” he returned.

  “Clarissa’s device let her see the invisible djinn,” I said. “And then she went half-invisible, and she made him visible. And none of that makes any sense at all.”

  The elevator arrived, and I stepped in and hit the button for the fourth floor.

  “Djinn can move between dimensions,” Dorian said, following me. “‘Invisible’ is close enough. The cords were soaked in salt. Salts—all salts, not just table salt—disrupt their ability to shift between dimensions. They disrupt most of their abilities, actually. Many salts work better than the usual sodium chloride, but table salt is plentiful, relatively cheap, and easy to handle. That’s why humans used to think that salt brought good luck. Most of their superstitions didn’t do anything, of course, but a circle of salt around a building was—and is—an excellent precaution.”

  “And that’s not magic,” I said.

  “Not at all,” he said, oblivious to my sarcasm. “It’s the strongly ionic bonds—there has to be a certain level of slip to allow the djinn to use their interdimensional skills, and the charge of the ions interferes. It drops them right out of phase.”

  “Of course it does.” I gave up. “But I saw the other djinn coming—the one who attacked me.”

  His expression was hard. “Djinn are known for their...interesting sense of humor. It’s their most common failing. She must have been playing with you. It cost her dearly.”

  The elevator doors opened on the fourth floor, and Dorian led the way out. At my door, he held out his hand. More paranoia, I hoped, but I gave my keys over. If there were interdimensional assassins around, I’d prefer to err on the side of caution, too.

  He unlocked the door, pushing it open and moving quickly through the apartment. I waited at the door.

  “It’s clear,” he said.

  “I’ll only be a moment.” I entered, peeling off my coat and shoving my sunglasses in the pocket before hanging it on one of the hooks behind the door. Then I paused, frowning.

  The room smelled wrong, the scent of a piney cleaner in the air. My roommates and I had split up the shopping list at the beginning of the year. Lisette had bought the broom, dustpan, sponges, and rags; Chelsea had bought the dishwashing soap and paper towels; Christina had stocked up on toilet paper; and I had bought the cleaning supplies—lemon-scented, like what my Gramma had al
ways used.

  Someone else had been here. The carpet was freshly vacuumed, and even from the other side of the peninsula, I could see that the stove and microwave had been scrubbed until they gleamed. I stepped into my room, which was in a perpetual state of clutter from the boxes from my Gramma’s house I had stashed there, lacking any other place to put them. The pile of laundry that had overflowed the hamper before finals was gone, and even the boxes had been dusted. I opened the top drawer of my dresser and found my clothes neatly washed and folded inside.

  I glared at a pair of socks. I could accept the attack that had nearly taken my life. I could—almost—wrap my mind around the bond that Dorian claimed tied me to him, at least as an alternative to death. I could even be grateful that he had fixed my car since it was ultimately his fault that it had been damaged.

  But this was a step too far.

  I stepped back into the main living area. Dorian was peering between two slats of the mini blinds, the light glinting off his sunglasses. He looked out of place in my apartment, elegantly attired in his oxford cloth shirt and designer shoes, standing next to the university-issued couch and the one from my Gramma’s house that I’d squeezed in at a right angle. An unmistakable vampire.

  He didn’t belong here. My apartment couldn’t be farther from his world. Somehow, I could accept a djinn on the sidewalk more easily than Dorian in the middle of my living room.

  “I told you that I was going to clean my apartment,” I said.

  He turned around, letting the blinds snap closed and slipping his sunglasses into the pocket of his coat he’d folded over the back of the nearest chair with the shoulder holster that he’d been wearing.

  “I didn’t want you to worry about it.”

  “I wasn’t worrying. I was planning.” I struggled to find words that didn’t make me sound stupid or childish. “Look, I had a life before you came around. It was a nice life.”

  His eyes narrowed. “It was going to be a short one.”

  I snapped. “It was the life I wanted to save! That was the life that I wanted. It was going to school, hanging out with my friends—cleaning toilets. Yeah, that was part of it, too. Maybe that part wasn’t fun, maybe it wasn’t something to look forward to, but it was part of my life, and you had no business sending someone to come in here and—and—fix it. Going through my things. Changing everything around.”

  Dorian went very still during my tirade, his gaze fixed upon me. I didn’t know if I’d just made him angry. I wished I didn’t care. I stood in the doorway, my entire body poised, though I didn’t know for what.

  Something between a shrug and a shudder went through him. He closed the distance between us, threading trough the jumble of furniture to stop a scant foot away from me. My body ached with his nearness, longing for his touch, but I didn’t move, setting my jaw and meeting his pale eyes steadily.

  “I meant it as a gift, Cora,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I know. That makes it worse.”

  “It doesn’t have to. You must have some idea of the life that I offer you.”

  I could only imagine. The finest of everything: houses, cars, clothes, food. I would live practically forever, always young, always strong—as long as one of his enemies didn’t get to me. I’d never have to work another day in my life. My sole job would be to...be his.

  And all I had to give up was myself. Everything I’d ever wanted would be irrelevant. Everything I’d ever been.

  I was to be a placeholder. He’d told me as much the night before. I was a body to fulfill a role, no longer Cora Shaw but Dorian Thorne’s cognate.

  “I don’t want that life, Dorian. I want mine.”

  “It will be yours. Whatever you imagine—it can all be yours,” he said.

  I sighed. He didn’t understand. He probably couldn’t understand. “But I’ll never be free.”

  “Do you really want to be?”

  He was so close now. I couldn’t think with him looking at me like that. I closed my eyes. “Free” meant that he would never—could never touch me again, like he had. It meant that I would never again feel the way he made me feel because there was no way, without the things he did to my mind, for a human body to feel like that.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  My eyes flew open as his hand cupped my chin, his thumb feather-light across my lips. He bent down and kissed me softly, his mouth moving slowly over mine as he gathered me into his arms.

  I came to him, hungry for him, as I always was. Warmth rippled out from my center, making my head boozy and my limbs heavy. I hooked my arms around his neck, pulling his head down to meet mine, inviting him to kiss me deeper.

  He did, taking my mouth, pulling my body against his, his hands sliding across my butt and up under the edge of my shirt against my skin.

  He pulled back, still holding me to him, and rested his forehead against mine. I could feel the tension thrumming through his body and into mine.

  I said, “None of this should be real. That’s the problem. You shouldn’t be here.”

  It was probably one of the dumbest things I’d ever said, but I meant it. Nothing that had happened since I first stepped foot in Dorian’s house should have been a part of my well-ordered world. I should have walked in, gotten a cure, and walked out, unaltered except for the cancer.

  Instead, I’d been thrust into another life and my own had been stolen away.

  “The world hasn’t changed, Cora. It’s just much bigger and much more complicated than you ever imagined it to be.”

  There was a quote that teased at the edge of my mind, something that I’d read in high school English class. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.... That wasn’t it, but it was close.

  Of course, Hamlet went crazy in the end, or pretended he was crazy until there really was no difference. Reassuring thought.

  Impulsively, I threaded my fingers through Dorian’s short hair. “I don’t want complicated. I want...happy.”

  “You don’t imagine that I can make you happy?”

  Oh, God, he was beautiful, beautiful and alien, and he wanted me. And all I wanted was for him to kiss me again and never stop.

  But I said, “Is it happiness when you don’t have a choice? I don’t love you. I know I don’t, because it’s just not possible. But without you, I’m afraid I might die.”

  “You won’t ever be without me,” he said, and the world seemed to slide sideways as he kissed me again.

  He moved toward my bedroom, but I didn’t want him there. I turned us back toward the living room.

  “We’d better make it fast,” I managed. “Or someone might come up to investigate.” I didn’t care, and I didn’t want it or anything to be fast, but I felt like I had an obligation to remind him, since I didn’t know what kind of personal or political fallout there would be if he left the others cooling their heels for too long.

  “Not too fast,” he said with a smile that could only be described as feral.

  And then his mouth met my neck, and nothing else mattered. I stopped thinking, let it all go, gave myself over to him. My skin came alive at his touch, demanding that there be nothing between us. His lips sent sharp, liquid heat driving down between my legs, craving him, needing him.

  My hands collided with his as we worked at our clothes—shirts, shoes, pants and underwear, and finally my bra, which ended up hooked over the sink faucet after my too-enthusiastic toss. The heat in my center was wound tight, as if I would break, pulling every nerve until it hummed with the tension. He urged me onto the institutional sofa, and I half-sat, half-tumbled onto it.

  I lay back against the cushions and burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. It was all too strange and confusing and far too real, more real than anything I had ever felt before. The upholstery rasped my over-sensitive skin, the smell of pine cleaner burning in my nostrils. Even the light in the room seemed brighter, everything picked out in harsh highlights and shadows. I was pre
sent, in this moment, as I’d never been present before, and it was bewildering.

  How I wanted him—my bones hurt with it, my brain burned, my skin longed for the feeling of his body against mine. I was helpless against it, but a part of me could recognize how absurd it all was. Dorian was something out of legend, and here I was, just...me. And he wanted me—the ageless vampire, the deathless demigod.

  But the ridiculousness of it didn’t change a thing.

  I looked up at Dorian, standing over me, and my laughter died in my throat. His gaze was so keen I thought it could cut me, every contour of his perfect body picked out by the light that filtered in through the blinds. I could feel him pulsing with power, slow, steady beats like his heart.

  My gaze was drawn irresistibly to the evidence of his arousal, then snapped back up again to his face as I realized that I was staring. I remembered how he had been the night before, at the limit of his control, rough and demanding and just a hairbreadth from stepping over the edge and taking me with him, down into his darkness....

  He said, “I am patience itself, Cora. I do not rush in. I wait decades, centuries, until the time is right. But you—you make me forget myself. Yet I won’t hurt you today, Cora. Don’t be afraid.”

  Forget myself. I swallowed. What a perfect phrase for what I was afraid was happening to me. I was forgetting myself, so that I would wake up one morning and be someone completely different.

  He put one hand on the couch on either side of my head and bent to take my lips. I thrilled at the touch, soft and hard at once, coaxing and demanding. With a quiet noise, I tilted my head up to meet his kiss, my hands reaching out to skim down across the hard planes of his chest to tighten on his hips, pulling him toward me. He came, and he eased down with me onto the sofa, his mouth moving across my body, teasing the curve of my neck and tracing the line of my collarbone.