Demon of Desire (2 page)
Gower slipped past her and peered into the room. She
followed far enough behind to make a quick escape, if need be. “This place
really gives me the creeps,” she admitted.
He bent down and lifted the eyelet bed skirt. “Then why’d
you move in?”
Her eyes landed on the sliver of skin revealed above his
jeans when he crouched down. He’d taken off his jacket and now only his
long-sleeved t-shirt kept her from seeing his muscular torso. When he turned
and caught her staring, her cheeks heated.
It suddenly struck her she’d become a different person after
the mess her boyfriend Tim had left her in. Walled herself into a tiny,
emotional safe room with only a peephole through which she watched the world
pass by. She needed to break loose. What was the harm in flirting a little?
“Sorry. Nice ass. Now, what were you saying?”
The expression on his face, one brow barely lifted, eyes
darkened, nostrils flared, made her stomach flip-flop.
That’s why you don’t
flirt. You can’t handle the reaction
.
He rose, still glancing around the room. “I asked why you
moved in if you didn’t like the place.”
She turned away, picking up one of the porcelain figurines
on the dark wood bookshelf. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. Actually,
it was kind of inevitable.”
With any luck he wouldn’t ask what she meant. Most people
didn’t understand the feeling she got sometimes when making a decision. She had
no emotional attachment to the choice, but she knew in her gut what she was
supposed to do. Like moving into this house. Not fate, but definitely
predestined. She just couldn’t explain the difference between the two.
Sin tried to focus on what had caused the shadow she’d seen.
Light coming through the curtains could cause the appearance of movement, but
not on a gray day like today. She switched on the lone lamp in the small
bedroom. As if the falling snow were a solid blanket smothering the house,
daylight was quickly fading.
The sound of his slight movements reminded her Gower stood
nearby. She turned and smiled apologetically. “Excuse me, but I need to get
back to moving my aunt's stuff so I can unpack.”
Moving past him toward the bedroom across the hall, she
tried to ignore the strangely erotic smell of clean cotton and wind clinging to
him. Hadn’t he worked up a sweat dealing with the boiler? He should smell like
old socks or a locker room. Why was it the harder she worked at not noticing
the man, the deeper he encroached on her senses?
As if he heard her thoughts, he was suddenly in her way. She
stopped just shy of plowing into him and looked up, tilting her head. His nostrils
flared. Could he smell her arousal? God, how embarrassing! “Is there, uh,
something you wanted?”
Please let him say my body.
The corner of his mouth lifted. The tip of his tongue wiped
slowly across his full lower lip. Unable to help herself, Sin parted her lips
and inhaled. She wavered on her feet, leaning slightly closer. Just a taste,
that’s all she wanted. A quick kiss.
What was she doing? She snapped her mouth closed and tore
her gaze from his lips. She was
not
going to kiss a stranger.
Chapter Two
But he had other ideas. He grasped her chin, lifting her
face to his. Leaned in and hovered over her lips. The heat of his breath warmed
her even before he touched her mouth.
The kiss wasn’t quick, if she judged by the butterflies
squirming in her stomach, the dampness between her thighs. She began to pant as
she wound her arms around his neck and pulled him still closer. What little
control she retained kept her from wrapping her leg around his hips and rolling
him onto the bed.
Gower slowly pulled back after planting a kiss on her nose.
His eyes burned with passion, battling with her resolve not to seduce him.
Touching her fingertips to her throbbing lips, she turned away. The desire he
wakened in her almost washed away the awareness she kissed a man she didn’t
know, which could put her in situations she had no escape from. She needed to
be sure to make it clear it wouldn’t happen again.
Voices twittered from the vents in the floor. The men
downstairs sounded like a couple of schoolgirls. She was losing her mind. In
her efforts to block the male species from her radar, her mind was emasculating
them. Who’d have thought her subconscious would work that hard to keep her from
getting involved again?
Gathering another armload of housedresses, she climbed the
stairs to the attic and pushed open the door. A chill breeze cut through her
sweater, sending goose bumps scattering. There had to be a crack in a
windowpane, allowing in the storm. She mentioned it to Gower when he entered
carrying more old clothes and he promised to check.
More whispers followed her back to the bedroom, seeming to
move from vent to vent, growing hushed when she stepped in the closet. She
looked up to grab the next bundle and stopped at what she saw. The pole was
full of clothes again. Was Gower bringing them back down? A laugh escaped her.
She wanted a reason not to be attracted. Undoing her work would take care of
it.
Shaking off her suspicions, she reached up and once again
she was awash in the scent of lily of the valley. “Aunt Absinthe, I’m sure
you’re here, but you have to know you’ve moved on. This is my room now and I
need to put away my clothes.”
She questioned Gower as she passed him again. “You didn’t
take those clothes back into my room did you?”
He parked his fists on his hips and glared down at her. “Why
would I do that, when you were taking them to the attic?”
“Hmm,” was all she could come up with in response. Up in the
attic, she set the dresses on a pile of boxes.
The next trip out of the closet was almost literally a trip as
her foot again caught on something solid. She twisted to see around the
garments she held. Tucked beside the doorjamb was a carved teakwood trunk,
slightly larger than a jewelry box. She nudged it aside, then returned to it
after taking the last of the clothes upstairs.
She didn’t know how she had missed kicking it so many times,
jutting out into the doorway the way it did. Come to think of it, she must have
knocked it there, or the door wouldn’t have opened. Curious, she grabbed the
gold handles on either side and carried it out into the light.
Setting it on the bed, Sin sat down and blew the dust off
the lid before opening it. There was a hasp closure, but no lock. It creaked as
she lifted the tongue and the hinges groaned of time passage. She was uncertain
what she expected to find inside, but the reality was light years away from
anything she could have imagined.
Tucked in the back was a small packet of letters tied with a
red ribbon. A small blue satin prayer book lay across something wrapped in a
white embroidered handkerchief. A locket of hair filled a translucent vellum
envelope. She set aside the prayer book and letters and lifted out the small
bundle.
A newspaper article at the bottom of the box caught her eye.
With gentle fingers, she held it up to the lamp to read. The obituary spoke of
a man who had died more than sixty years ago. His name didn’t ring a bell, but
as she scanned the text she got the answer to several of her questions. Adam
Policek, the decedent, had been engaged to her great-aunt Absinthe.
The letters all had his return address. She wondered if the
hair was his, and a shiver coursed over her skin at the thought. She couldn’t
imagine running her fingers over the hair of a long-dead boyfriend.
Sin picked up the bundle and warily turned it over in her
hands. Part of her was certain she would find a shriveled toe or some other
gruesome memento, like those filling the attic in her childhood. Yet her
curiosity was stronger than her dread. She peeled back the handkerchief.
Cotton wadding surrounded something firm. Rolling the item
over, she found the opening and pulled it back. A carved piece of stone nested
inside.
She turned the stone into her hand, studying it. An electric
shock stabbed up her arm. She shrieked and dropped the object on the
featherbed. In the center of her palm a round, red burn grew darker as she
watched. “What the…?”
Using the wadding as a hot pad, she turned the stone this
way and that. It was oblong, rounder in the middle, with what looked like thick
legs carved on one end. Flipping it, she jerked back at what she saw.
The carving was female, with full breasts and rounded belly.
A fertility icon of some sort.
Something shuffled across the floor above her head. She
hoped it was Gower, not a rodent. Just as she thought of him, he looked in the
room.
“What do you have there?”
If Gower was there, who was in the attic? As she finished
the thought, a heavy dark mist crept into her peripheral vision and when she
held up her hand to show him the burn, the room went black.
Gower reached her just before she planted her face on the
wood floorboards. Yanking her arm, he stopped her fall then gathered her up and
laid her on the bed. What could have caused her to pass out? Low blood sugar?
Was she ill? He noticed the small carving lying next to some mementos on the
bed and reached for it. Sandstone, by the look of it. When he picked it up he
recognized it from something he’d read long ago. An icon to the demon Suthu. An
evil version of the succubus.
Why would Sin, or any woman, own something like that? At one
time, Gower had transported dangerous fetishes for an archeologist, and as far
as he knew, none of the ancient artifacts from the Mediterranean island of Ueru
had been brought to the United States. The legends surrounding Suthu described
the demon as a black widow of sorts. It was one of the most bloodthirsty—and
sex-hungry—demons.
He tossed the icon into the wooden box along with the other
items and set them on the dresser. Then he stretched Sin’s legs out and drew
the quilt over her. As he held a hand to the back of her neck, checking her
temperature, he recalled a situation a few centuries back where some Ueruan
icons had appeared in the lustier districts of London. Several whores had been
possessed by the demons who’d been cast into the icons in a time before Christ.
Two members of the aristocracy had been among their victims, their bodies
ripped apart in a fashion that made Jack the Ripper look tame.
He should call Marrett and see what he knew about the icons.
And why one would have ended up in Whispering Valley. The man knew more about
the occult than anyone in the valley, and possibly in the country. And what he
didn’t know, he was quick to find out. Marrett had also been a friend of George
Crawford, Sin’s great-grandfather, who collected artifacts from around the
world dealing with death and dying. Hopfully, he’d have the answer they needed.
Sin didn’t move on the bed, her breathing steady but
otherwise not showing any sign of life. What had happened to her? He tapped her
cheeks. “Sin. Wake up.”
No reaction.
Growing increasingly concerned, Gower ran downstairs. He
found his brothers in the kitchen. “Something’s wrong with Sin. She passed
out.”
Baen’s head snapped up. “You didn’t feed on her, did you?”
“Fuck, no. She cried out and when I checked on her, she
fainted.”
“What could have happened?” Enos pushed through the door to
the living room and hit the stairs ahead of his brothers. Taking them two at a
time, he cleared the landing, crossed the large bedroom and went to Sin’s side,
reaching for her wrist. Gower followed close behind with Baen trailing after.
After a moment, Enos spoke. “Her pulse is steady. Color is
good.”
Gower lifted her other arm. Her lax hand was palm up, and in
the center was a huge blister. “What the fuck…?”
Baen stepped closer and took her hand. “What did she burn
herself on?”
Gower glanced at the nightstand and dresser but there was
nothing heat conductive. The closet door stood open, beckoning. He walked over
and peered around the door.
The pole was packed with dresses, the same pastel, flowery
ones she’d taken up to the attic. No wonder she asked if he’d brought them back
down. A heavy, sweet perfume drifted beneath his nose. It smelled nothing like
Sin. He’d never paid attention to how the aunt had smelled but could imagine
her perfume lingered on her clothes. As often as he and his brothers had been
in the house to help Absinthe, he couldn’t recall anything unusual happening.
Yet the bedroom felt alive, filled with a vibrant energy of
its own. He’d swear it was sexual tension, many times more powerful than what
he’d felt when they’d kissed. Closing his eyes, he opened his mind to the
energy. By focusing on the room through his third eye, he saw a brilliant green
mist trailing from Sin’s open palm to the wooden box on the dresser.
Blinking, he studied the box, the mist now gone. In two
steps he was at the dresser, sorting through the envelopes and oddities.
Beneath it all, he found the carved icon wrapped in a handkerchief and gingerly
lifted it in his hand. “What do you guys know about Suthu?”
Baen looked down at the woman on the bed. “Suthu,” he
echoed.
“Shit,” said Enos.
“Yeah, Suthu, shit,” Gower agreed.
“You think it got her?”
“You think we can beat it? Without getting her killed?”
“Her?” Enos argued. “What about us?”
Gower put the icon down and turned around, leaning his butt
against the low dresser. “Anyone who’s not up for this can leave now and try to
beat the blizzard home.”
“As if that’s a choice.” Enos paced near the foot of the
bed. “Freeze my ass off or burn my dick off. Let’s see, which do I prefer?”
“Shit,” Baen agreed, “it could end up being both.”
“Yeah, it could. Or we can all walk away now. It’s not our
problem.” Gower watched his brothers as if expecting an argument.
“You know that’s not gonna happen. Not when it’s Sin. We
just found her after more than a century of waiting.” Enos combed his fingers
through his hair. “What do we have to do? How do we cast out the demon?”
