A Siren's Song (Ride of the Darkyrie 2) (9 page)

             
Something black and dark burned in his eyes—they were like pools of oil that had been set aflame.

             
“What are you doing in my house?”

             
“Leaving you a gift. Obviously, I didn’t expect you’d be home.” His gaze raked over my nakedness and my body responded, nipples tightening and a rush of heat between my thighs. Then his eyes narrowed and I realized he recognized my lust. “I’m going to fix this reaction in you,” he promised. As if my desire for him were some kind of sickness.

             
And maybe it was.

             
But if I was infected, so was he. I could see the hard ridge of his want in his black fatigues.

             
“Fix yourself while you’re at it, handsome.”

             
His scarred face twisted into a sneer, and I expected him to lay hands on me as he had before, but instead of touching me, he sang. A note so clear and pure it hurt my ears to hear it.

             
The letter from my father that had been on my bed flitted through the air—a happy butterfly on an unseen current. I knew what he meant to do and the bloody clothes, Sickert, the Capri, everything else was forgotten in that moment but my letter.

             
“Put it back where you found it, assassin.” I’d managed not to let any fear creep into my voice, but it was there inside of me. Panic because it had been so easy for this enemy to root out the only thing that would hurt me and the sure knowledge that no matter what I did, I wouldn’t be able to stop him.

             
“Why?” Half of his mouth twisted into a malicious grin. The letter came to rest in his scarred hand and I had no answer to give him. Not even a lie.

             
“Poor little Helreggin is lost without her daddy,” he mocked.

             
The worst part of what he said was that it was true. I was lost without him—his guidance, his knowledge, his protection. For the first time since I’d lost Thora, I felt weak. Vulnerable. Afraid. These feelings were unacceptable and my father would have known how to root them out like the cancerous blights they’d become.

             
Where was the warrior woman who led the armies of the damned? I was nothing but a lost little girl barely treading water in the deepest end of the ocean.

             
So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I pushed. “Why do you always want to talk about my father, Cross? You think it pushes my buttons?” I stepped closer to him, using my nakedness like a weapon rather than letting him use it to make me feel more vulnerable. “My father chose his death. He wasn’t taken from me. No one has ever taken anything from me I didn’t give them. Whereas you…” I laughed and took another step, and he moved back. He didn’t want me to touch him. I was close enough that I could. I could press my breasts into his broad chest, claw my nails into his back, I could even brush my lips across his. Vaulting up on my tiptoes, I leaned in close enough to do just that. I wanted him to taste my words on my breath and drown in the bitter bile inside of himself. “You had everything ripped from you and this beast you are now? That wasn’t wrought with your own hands. You were forged by powers greater than you. By
me
.” I waited for my words to sink in, for the barbs to find their marks.

             
“A good show, to be sure. There’s even truth in what you say.” He made it a point to rake his eyes over my body again, to look his fill. I knew he wanted to show me that he was unaffected or that his mind was the one calling the shots. Not his cock. “But you forget that you are not Helreggin. Not yet. This by your own admission.”

             
He stepped back from me again, but it wasn’t because he was trying to get away from me. The Cross wanted me to have the best view for the show. His twisted mouth opened and a pure, beautiful sound like crystal wind chimes echoed through my loft. But those few notes had more force behind them than his fist ever could.

             
My letter disintegrated into ash, the last of my father’s words, his thoughts, the last of everything that he was drifted out of this animal’s palm to scatter on the floor like they meant nothing. It was as if his voice had shattered a mountain, everything that held me up crumbled to dust with those ashes.

             
I’d been mummified in barbed wire, or so that’s how it felt. Wrapped in blades that sliced deeper and deeper into already raw wounds.

             
And that bastard, that wretched fuck assassin just stood there with a smile on his grotesquely beautiful face. His voice still like whiskey and sin as he spoke. “Looks like someone took something from you after all, little Darkyrie.”

             
Yet, my flesh still responded as if he hadn’t just broken me. Hadn’t taken away the only thing left in my life that I allowed myself to care about. I collapsed at his feet, clawing blindly at the dust on the floor, as if my will could meld it all back together. I wasn’t crying, I don’t cry, but there was some sound torn from my throat. Some wounded, dying primal despair.

             
He laughed again and I hated how beautiful his voice was.

             
“Ah, Brynn. I quite like this incarnation. Your pain is exquisite. You still feel. Something Helreggin could never do. Maybe you don’t understand why I’m punishing you, but this almost enough. I’m going to play with you awhile.”

             
The Cross stepped over me, but I grabbed the leg of his fatigues, my strength ineffectual against his, but he humored me and bent down to my face.

             
“You better kill me now,” I growled.

             
“Or what?” He was genuinely amused.

             
I wanted to tell him I’d kill him, but it would be so much more than that. My mouth started moving and the words coming out were not mine. They had not been formed in my brain, but came from somewhere else.
Something
else.  “I’ll burn you again and I’ll make you beg for death.”

             
He laughed again as he stood, the sound like a jagged edge of glass. “I already have and no one listened.”

             
The Cross left me there on the floor, crumpled in the ash of memory with the bitter taste of vengeance on my tongue, and I lay there shaking and broken.

             
Everything had come unraveled and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop feeling and it ached, hurt like those scissors in my gut should have. I knew I deserved it for my failure. I’d been given one simple task and I failed. My one purpose had been to protect and…

             
I’d never be Helreggin. I couldn’t even handle mortal problems. The Capri killer was still at large, Anderson was dead, my father was well and truly gone, I had no idea where to find a stupid bridle for a mythical horse, and the Cross—another sound was torn from me as the sharp nail of hopelessness was hammered home.

             
It sounded like grief. 

             
Grief I was never supposed to have to feel again. Yet here it was, gnawing on my rancid insides—maggots on rotten meat. That’s what I was, rotten. Things that fail don’t grow and thrive, they just rot and decay because they have no further use.

             
My brain reached for all of my father’s patiently and carefully taught lessons, but it was all static in my head. I couldn’t tune in. I wasn’t treading water anymore. I was drowning and all I could do was go under.

             
After what seemed like a century, I heard a voice. “Brynn?”

             
My voice was hoarse and cracked from my wails and I couldn’t manage above a whisper. “Grimes?”

             
The door swung open and I dragged my gaze up to meet his. The look on his face smeared from concern into a rage I’d never seen from him. That fey golden image that hovered in a nimbus behind him became real, solid. Gold gauntlets seemed to erupt from his skin like dragon scales—part of him. As was the golden chain mail that suddenly covered his broad chest. A long blue cloak hung down his back and he looked every inch an angry god.

             
“Who did this to you?” His voice reverberated in cracks of thunder.

             
Me. I’d done it to myself. Jason had been right when he said I wasn’t Helreggin. I never would be.

             
“It was the Cross, wasn’t it? I’m going to fucking kill him.” The gold light around him was now as bright as the sun and it burned with his rage, seared into my retinas and skin.

             
Before I could stop myself, I reached my hand out to him. The words that came out of my mouth turned my stomach. They were so fucking weak. “Don’t leave me.”

             
The bright light and the god were gone, leaving only Jason. My partner. The man by which I measured the worth of humanity. Yet he wasn’t human, I knew that. I still had him dressed up in those ideals in my head. Maybe because his rage faded as quickly as it had erupted, leaving only his concern for me. I could see it plainly on his face that he hurt because I hurt. How had I never noticed that before? I’d seen it on others, crime scenes and the aftermath. But never for me.

             
He sank to his knees beside me in the scattered ash and pulled me into his arms. He was so strong, his warmth branded my skin. Jason held me tenderly, like I was some holy thing dug out of a tomb that would disintegrate with the first breathes of the air above.

             
I inhaled the scent of him, pure and familiar.

             
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Brynn. I should have been. I am your protector. And I failed you.”

             
“No, I’m the one who failed. I’m never going to be what any of you expected.” I inhaled another shaky breath. “Or wanted.”

             
“I just want you, Brynn. I thought that was clear.”

             
“You want Helreggin.”

             
“
You
are Helreggin,” he said stubbornly, his arms locked more tightly around me.

             
I didn’t struggle away from him, I didn’t want to. I just wanted to stay like this.

             
“Tell me what happened.”

             
I closed my eyes, but that didn’t block out what I’d seen. What I’d done. Or what was left of Tommy Anderson.

             
Jason took my hand and seeing the blood caked under my nails hauled me up and carried me into the bathroom, but instead of running the shower, he began filling the garden tub.

             
“Start talking, Brynn, or I’m going to go find that fucker right now and I’ll find a way to kill him. Even if I have to invoke the wrath of all the gods to do it.”

             
I believed that he would, but that wasn’t what made me start speaking. It was the contrast of the tightly leashed fury in his voice to the gentleness of his hands. So I told him everything. I told him about Sickert, Anderson, and my father’s last letter.

             
“The Cross didn’t touch you?”

             
Not with his hands, no. “Only with his voice.”

             
The water had filled up to my shoulders when he turned it off, the heat leaching the tension from my muscles. Jason tilted my head back and wet my hair, slowly massaging my grapeseed shampoo into my scalp.

             
It occurred to me then how intimate this was. While there was nothing that indicated he was trying to seduce me as he had at the Riot Room, this was more devastating than his kiss. My adrenaline had already been high and whether I wanted to admit it or not, I was vulnerable. He was everything that was strong and good. Everything I needed to feel safe.

             
Blood rushed hot and molten through my veins, my skin hyperaware of his nearness, even the simple act of his fingers tunneling through my hair cranked my need higher. It was as if my own flesh didn’t belong to me, but some wanton thing used to rolling in the muck of humanity with mindless, throbbing need.

             
After he rinsed my hair, he brushed it out over the side of the tub and braided it, taking every care with me like he would a child. But my feelings, my needs weren’t childish. And I’d thought his weren’t either, but maybe my failure had changed something in him too.

             
These little intimacies had never been something I craved from anyone, but now, all I could think about was the next touch. I didn’t even feel guilt for having wanted the Cross the same way I now wanted Jason. In all my existence, I’d never felt this want. Never even knew it with Thora’s father. So if I wanted both, I’d let myself have both. I wasn’t in the business of denying myself anything.