Bound by Light (10 page)

"I sense the same thing, yes." Merilee pushed herself up using the table for support. She was still way too cold, and her heart kept thumping away like it wanted to break through her rib cage. "For now, we’ll have to take this one step at a time, and the first step is getting you out of New York. Come on. Other Sibyls should be here by now. We’ll arrange for them to see to your transport, and put the word out about these . . . dreams."

Amy gave her a grateful, almost hopeful look.

Merilee escorted Amy out of the kitchen toward the worn-out-looking group of ranger Sibyls who had come to the scene, and she handed over the drawings for the fire Sibyl to send to the Motherhouses.

As Merilee explained what she needed the rangers to do with the drawings and Amy, she couldn’t help noticing Jake yet again.

His intense, worried stare was hard to miss.

(6)

Dawn broke slowly over Central Park, leaving the ground, trees, and rocks coated with fresh-smelling dew. Merilee calculated the time at five forty-two A.M. , give or take nine or ten seconds.

She kept pace beside Jake and took another slow breath, trying to clear her mind from the darkness and pungent absinthe of Charlotte’s house. They had both decided to walk back to the townhouse, Merilee because exercise settled her spirits, and Jake because moving kept him focused, or so he said.

Even after plowing through the chaos of OCU officers, crime scene technicians, morgue personnel, and crime tape, Merilee still couldn’t believe Charlotte was dead and lost to her, to that coven, to the world. Or that Merilee’s own nightmares might be tied into what had happened to the priestess.

I knew they were bad, the visions I’ve been having—but bad enough to kill myself over?

She hugged herself as she walked, and shivered for the millionth time.

Yet if the Stone Man did come for her the way he threatened, what would she do?

Slay the bastard without any fucking mercy at all
. Definitely. That’d be her first plan. Fill him full of elementally locked arrows, then slit his throat with the sharpened tip of her olivewood bow.

If he was alive, then he could be dead, right? Anything truly living and of this plane of existence could be killed, and Merilee had a deep feeling the Stone Man did belong to this world, to this earthly plane. She just had to figure out what he was, and then how to take him out.

"Are you cold?" Jake asked, and Merilee realized he had stopped walking.

She hesitated on the paved path, then turned to where he stood only a few feet away from her. A deserted grassy field stretched out behind him, and if it weren’t for the fog-shrouded high-rise buildings against the skyline, they might have been standing in the middle of some tree-lined country lane.

"Yeah, I’m a little chilly," she admitted, fighting off a new round of shivers.

Jake frowned and glanced at the sleeves of his over-shirt. "I’m sorry I don’t have a jacket. I can’t take this off because of the holster."

Jeez. He honestly seems distressed because he can’t give me a coat
. "Uh, thanks." She couldn’t hold back a smile, but she managed not to laugh outright. "I don’t think a jacket would help that much. It’s not that kind of cold."

He took a quick look in the direction of Charlotte’s house, then at Merilee. "The drawings we had those Sibyls send to the Motherhouse upset you. Was it the black winged creatures—the Keres? I learned about the death spirits during my time at Motherhouse Greece. They’re natural enemies to Sibyls. To every living thing."

Merilee raised her fingers to her scar. "I saw them once when I was just a kid. At least, I think I did." She traced the small, faint line on her jaw. "I wasn’t joking before, when I said I jumped off a roof. It was to get away from them—or a vision of them."

Jake’s gorgeous eyes blazed into hers as if committing every word to memory, writing it on some tablet in his head. "That must have been a painful experience—in a lot of ways."

She took her hand off the scar. "Yeah, well, I needed it. I was born to the Motherhouse, and I guess I was kind of spoiled, like all of us were—those of us bred for our power and raised by the whole community of Sibyls. I goofed off in lessons, but after that night, I knew I had to take being a warrior a lot more seriously. All business from then on—learning and training, and preparing for my duties as a broom."

Jake frowned. "You were only six."

"Right." She put her hands on her hips. "And how old were you when you learned life would kick the shit out of you if you didn’t get tough in a hurry?"

Jake’s face darkened, and he looked away from her.

"Point taken," he said in a thin, rough voice that kicked her right in the gut. "I guess neither of us had much of a childhood."

She cursed herself for being thoughtless about his past again, and she was about to apologize when Jake checked over his shoulder one more time, as if to be certain nothing was trailing them from the direction of Charlotte’s house.

"The dark figure that kept shifting on the page," he said, sounding more normal, looking more normal when he faced her again, "I assume that was the Stone Man on the list you made at evening meeting?"

Merilee’s mouth came open from shock before she remembered Jake was too damned smart for his own good, and that he had translated her notes in the conference room before they left to find Charlotte. She had written that phrase—
Stone Man
—in coded Greek, to remind herself to ask if Charlotte knew anything about him.

Artemis and arrows, but that seemed like two hundred years ago.

I miss my triad. I wish they were here beside me so I’d feel safe
.

The cold permeating her body gave way to a bone-destroying fatigue that made her want to sit right down on the black pavement.

Jake moved toward her, and before she could react, he took hold of her arms and ran his hands from her elbows to her wrists and back to her elbows. His firm, warm grip sent pleasant thrills all over her, heating up the elemental air stored in every cell and crevice.

Merilee gazed up at him, into those dangerous gray-blue eyes, and didn’t know what to say. A light breeze danced around them, stirring up the dew and tickling her face. "I’ve dreamed him, too. That figure. He . . . scares me as badly as the Keres. Maybe worse."

"Will this creature try to come after you like he came after Charlotte Heart?" Jake asked, his voice now so low it reverberated through her whole body.

"I think so." Merilee closed her eyes, then forced herself to open them again. "And soon."

Jake’s expression turned so serious and severe that if he hadn’t been holding her arms, Merilee would have stepped back. His essence seemed to flicker, grow taller, like she could see the outline of his demonic form against the brightening sky.

"The Stone Man will
never
lay a hand on you," he said, and each word sounded like a solemn vow.

She believed him, believed him so completely that she found herself sharing every ridiculous detail about what she saw at Motherhouse Greece when she was six. Air hitched in her lungs, and her heart started to beat hard and fast as her face flushed red-hot.

"Now in my dreams, they come for me, the Keres." She choked for a moment, then forced out the rest as he stroked her arms. "They drag me to Káto Ólimbos, even though I don’t want to go—and he catches me there, the Stone Man, and . . . and eats me." Her breath caught as Jake pulled her against his firm, sculpted chest and held her, hands pressed against the small of her back. He was so warm, and he seemed oddly bright, like a light was shimmering from inside him to wrap her up and keep her safe from everything that terrified her.

She slipped her arms around his waist and held on, trying not to feel six years old all over again. "It’s stupid," she whispered. "I know. I shouldn’t be such a coward."

"It’s never stupid to be afraid of shit that can kill you." Jake pressed his hands into her back, and that warm light coursed all over her. Her breath came easier, or maybe that was her imagination. "Didn’t they teach you that in Motherhouse school?"

Merilee laughed despite her swirling emotions, the sound muffled against his T-shirt and part of his over-shirt. Damn, he smelled good. And it felt good, him holding her. Comforting her.

"I don’t know what the Keres want from me, Jake, or if I’m really seeing them, and not some version of them the Stone Man wants me to see. Maybe they’ve joined him." She let herself push her face into the cotton of his shirt and take a deep breath of his fascinating, spicy scent. It eased her, like his warmth. "Maybe they’re looking forward to all the devastation he’ll bring. Keres like blood and battles, and supposedly, they really love it when somebody sticks it to a Sibyl."

Jake held her and listened, obviously without judging her. Just cataloging. When he pulled back and rubbed her arms again, she could tell from the look on his face that he was planning to research the details like the Mothers did, to see what he could find out about the Stone Man and the Keres, too.

"We’ll work together to search the archives," he said. "There must be extensive information on these creatures, all of them. If we look every day, we’ll come up with some bit or piece that’ll help us understand the connections."

His tone was so certain it gave her hope—but she was incredibly tired and sad and confused. Maybe she just wanted to believe Jake could help her slay her old terrors, and her new ones, too. Probably just a fantasy. There was so much she didn’t know about him, so much she needed to know before she could trust him.

In the pale dawn, her sharp Sibyl vision still registered every sculpted detail of his face, the thick muscle of his neck and shoulders, the way his nostrils flared as if he might be breathing in her scent and committing it to memory.

Did he have to be so handsome?

"If I could fly," she murmured, holding his gaze even though her stomach was churning like an F4 tornado, "I’d soar so far above New York and all the trouble and danger I’d never come down. Why don’t you like to fly, Jake?"

He didn’t let go of her arms or look away from her even though his eyes darkened to that stormy color that made her nervous and excited all at the same time. For a few sad moments, she thought he’d refuse to answer her, or give her some lame reason that would make it that much harder to understand him, to grasp who he was.

He sucked air through his teeth, seemed to consider his response, then said, "Flying makes me remember I’m not human." His grip on her arms lessened, and his voice got impossibly lower. "Flying makes it hard to come back to Earth. As long as I stay human, it’s easy to
be
human. When I start shifting, control gets . . . more difficult."

He turned his head and closed his eyes. "I went to the Motherhouses to try—ah, hell. I asked the Mothers to make me human again."

Merilee drew a slow, slow breath, feeling the weight of Jake’s words like weights settling on her own shoulders.

He let go of her arms and flicked the chain and ring hanging around his neck. "I asked them to free me from this damned thing, too."

Merilee almost reached for the talisman, but lowered her hand at the last second. "And they couldn’t grant either request?"

Jake shook his head. "All the Mothers at all three houses tried, especially Mother Anemone and your people, but it was no good. I’m a demon. I’m just a fucking demon, and I’ll never be anything else."

He stood with his arms at his sides, his head down, the talisman necklace and ring she now knew he despised glinting in the rising sun.

Merilee’s heart ached for him.

If she hadn’t been afraid she’d start sobbing and keep sobbing until the next day, she would have cried for him, and held him the way he had held her.

As it was, she reached out and rubbed his arms the way he had rubbed hers, then let her hands rest on his wrists. "I’m so sorry the Mothers couldn’t give you what you wanted—but I think you’re way more than you’re giving yourself credit for."

He lifted his head and met her gaze again and consumed her with those gorgeous, unusual eyes. New ripples of hot wind crisscrossed her back and shoulders.

At that moment, Merilee wanted to kiss Jake so badly she could already taste his lips on hers, feel his tongue delving into the depths of her mouth. She wanted to drive away all the darkness and grief and fear of this night by running her palms over his muscled chest. She wanted to press herself against the steel of his hard flesh again, feel the air rising off his powerful body, breathe it into her, and never let it go. Her nipples got tight so fast they actually ached, and that response traveled the length of her being—that wanting, needing ache. Hecate’s torch, she wanted him to touch her. Her fingers dug into his arms, and she knew her desire had to be obvious.

Jake moved like he just might lean down and grant her wish—but he held himself back, with some clear physical effort. His ardent expression faded to one of discomfort and uncertainty.

"We should get back to the townhouse," he muttered. "You need to get some sleep."

Merilee didn’t know why he was resisting, but her instincts told her not to push. Not yet, anyway. She took her hands off his wrists, and it struck her that Jake wasn’t at all the casual-sex type.