Night Falls on the Wicked (15 page)

He didn’t disagree. Or agree. His lips twisted in a nasty smile. “My mother should have perhaps had more care with her words.”

A sinking sensation filled her stomach, but she waited, dreading, knowing there was more … worse to come.

“She asked for my soul … but she didn’t ask that I return to the way I was before.” He chuckled humorlessly. “Damn demons. They’re clever fuckers. Never can trust them.”

A fist tightened around her heart. She was almost afraid to ask, but she couldn’t
not
know.

“What happened to you?” Because whatever happened to him was evidently what shaped him into what he
was
now. Who was this man standing before her? It would be a good idea to know who she was dealing with, especially considering she’d just teamed up with him for the next month.

His gaze drilled into her, as relentless as steel. It didn’t occur to her that she should possibly not trust him. He’d done nothing but come to her aid
from the start … despite the danger that seemed to drip off him.

“I’m a lycan.”

This pronouncement dropped like a stone through the air—falling with a heavy
thunk
in her knotted-up stomach. She resisted the urge to take an instinctive step back.

Then it occurred to her that this wasn’t possible. She’d seen him on multiple nights when the moon was full. He was no monstrous furred beast.

She laughed then, the sound nervous and tinny, still unconvinced. “No, you’re not.”

“It’s true. I’m a lycan, just one with a soul.” He uttered this admission quietly, evenly and without feeling. Which had to be an act. How could you be a lycan and not have any emotion over that fact?

Her breath expelled in a rush. “How is that possible? What does that even mean? A lycan with a soul?” She shook her head, pressing her fingertips to her suddenly aching temples. It dawned on her that she hadn’t slept—not really, not peacefully, in over twenty-four hours.

“It means I have free will. I possess a soul, so I possess the choice to do right or wrong … like every other human. I don’t have to shift.”

“But you can.”

He hesitated, as if he wanted to deny it. “Yes.”

She nodded. Okay. A lycan with free will. With
a soul. That didn’t sound so bad. “Except you’re not a human.”

“Yeah. That’s the catch.”

“You sound a lot like a hybrid.”

“A dovenatu?” He looked at her sharply. “You know about them?”

She nodded. “I was friends with one.” Two, she guessed, thinking about Sorcha, Jonah’s wife.

“There’s not that much difference between us, I guess. We both possess free will. Except that I seem to be aging at a normal rate, like a human. And I don’t know how it was for your friend, but it’s a real struggle every full moon to resist the shift.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Hell, I don’t know. I guess I’m more lycan than human.”

She stepped closer, touching his arm lightly. “You’re not like them. Not at all. You’re …”
You’re good
. She swallowed, an surge of emotion welling up inside her. “You saved us. You helped me the other night.” She motioned a hand to her window. “For God’s sake, you fixed my window.”

He laughed that low rumble again that did things to her insides. “Yeah, well, sometimes it’s hard to believe that I’m anything but a monster when every moonrise my body burns to shift into one of them.”

“And have you? Have you ever broken down and done that?”

“Not in years. In the beginning, I couldn’t fight it. I’ve mastered control over it since then. I won’t ever transition again.”

“When you did … those years ago when you lost it …” She had to hear him say he didn’t hurt someone, that he didn’t do what
they
did. She had to know she and Aimee would be safe around him.

His eyes fastened on her. “I held on to myself, if that’s what you’re asking. I never deliberately harmed anyone. Apparently when the demon granted my mother’s wish for me to keep my soul, he took away the lycan’s hunger for flesh.”

She released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “That’s how you track Cyprian then. Using your lycan instincts?”

“We’re connected.” He nodded. “That’s how we’ll find him. The end is finally near. There’s only him now. He doesn’t have anyone left to hide behind.”

They stood silent for a long moment, each studying the other with all walls removed, barriers knocked down. He knew what she was and now she knew the full story about him.

As different as they were, she realized they were alike. Two people—or whatever they were—isolated by their very nature. Darby could relate to him.

The air suddenly altered, became something thick, tension swirling around them so dense she could swim in it. Her throat constricted and she fought to swallow. In that moment, if she had wanted to speak she couldn’t have.

His gaze dropped to her hand on his arm, still resting there. Everything flooded back to her then. Everything. Their kiss, long and deep and smoldering. His heat, his taste. Her need and hunger for more of him. For all of him.

She’d thought he’d growled during that kiss, and now she guessed that he probably had. And still that didn’t bother her. A tremor of excitement raced up her spine.

His gaze slid up from her hand on his arm then. She fell into his gaze. That twisting flame of light was back in his indigo eyes. “You might not want to do that,” he rasped.

“What?”

“Touch me.”

“Oh.” Her hand slipped from his arm. She rubbed her fingertips together at her sides. They felt bereft, cold on the air.

“I didn’t open up to you and tell you about myself because I wanted your pity or soft looks. I especially wasn’t trying to get you to pet me like I’m some sort of puppy—”

“I wasn’t doing that,” she said hotly, scanning
his six-feet-plus hard body. The last thing he reminded her of was a puppy.

“I told you the truth about me, about my mother, because you deserve to know. If we’re in this together for the next month, then you should know all the factors.”

His eyes were so cold, fathomless deep and impossible to read. The light inside them had vanished.

He spoke with such practicality. Like they were entering into some kind of business arrangement. There was nothing sentimental or friendly about his words. As much as she’d held herself from the world, something told her Niklas was an even harder case.

Not too comforting to consider, when she and Aimee would be in close quarters with him for the next month.

But they wouldn’t
be
with him, she reminded herself. Not really. This was strictly a mission with no emotion involved. He wasn’t invested like she was in saving Aimee’s life. A fact she should remember so she didn’t make any more overtures of friendship and embarrass herself by touching him again—by wanting and
craving
to touch him again. Another motive drove him and it had nothing to do with her. This was about his mother. About him.

“I appreciate you telling me everything.” She nodded, trying to look unaffected, as cool and remote as he was. “You’re right. We’re in this together.”

She still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it all. She wondered about his mother. Thoughts of her must plague him, haunt him every day. She shivered at the thought of what he must endure, the agony of living with the knowledge that his mother sacrificed her life—her very soul—for him.

As much as the memory of her mother’s death haunted her, Darby at least knew she was dead. He didn’t have that peace. Was his mother even still a demon witch? Or was she dead now? Her soul forever lost for consorting with a demon?

Once a white witch entered into contract with a demon, she gained immortality. She lived forever at the mercy of her demon’s whims.

Had his mother’s demon somehow managed to bring about her death? Because that’s what they did—tricky bastards. There was only one way a demon witch could be killed. Decapitation. Take the head and the demon was free to roam the earth in corporeal form. What every demon wanted. That was their ultimate goal.

He still watched her with his cold gaze, and she guessed he had good reason to be so cool and aloof. What happened to him could break anyone.

A small, mewling sound carried from the other room.

Niklas nodded in that direction. “The child. She’s begun the transition.”

“Her name is Aimee,” she said. He could at least call her something besides
the child
.

He stared right through her like she hadn’t said anything. “You may want to go to her. She’ll be very uncomfortable. At least until it ends and she wakes.”

Darby looked over her shoulder, peering into her dimly lit room. “What can I do to help her through it?”

“The fever will rage—no stopping that. Try to get her to drink. There’s not much else you can do for her. It is what it is. Her human DNA is dying, turning over. She’ll sleep for the next few days.”

“A few days?” She blinked. “That’s unnatural.”

“She’s an unnatural creature now.” He cocked his head and gave her a look that reminded her that she was unnatural, too. Just as he was.

“We should cover as much ground as we can during the time she sleeps,” he said brusquely. “It’s going to be hard enough to track him, but when she wakes, she’ll slow us down. I’ll be back soon. Until then, try to get some rest yourself.”

Rest. She doubted she could ever close her eyes again.

He opened the door and the muted light of daybreak spilled through the door, a milky violet that promised sunlight to come later.

How she’d longed for the sight of that—every breath from this hellish night, she had prayed to make it to this moment, to see daylight one more time.

“There’s something I have to know.”

He cocked his head, waiting for her to elaborate.

“If you’re not afflicted with a lycan’s desire to feed, why not shift then? I mean … could it help? Could you track Cyprian quicker?”

He shut the door and faced her, crossing his arms over his chest and looking at her
that
way again. That intense and unnerving way that made her want to hide from his gaze.

She resisted stepping back and held her ground. She continued, babbling, “If you have free will, why won’t you turn? It could give you an advantage, it could help—”

“It makes me too much like them.”

She blinked once and stared at him hard. “But you’re not. At least in the way that matters.” But if he could be like them in other ways—tracking, speed, strength—he might be able to find them faster. “If it could help us …”

Her voice faded. His eyes gleamed down at her,
the light there bright and dangerous. He seemed untouchable. As beautiful as a fatal serpent. “All you need to know is that we do this my way.”

Indignation flared hotly in her chest. It was her turn to cross her arms. “As far as explanations go, that’s not good enough. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

His expression darkened, and she felt certain he’d had enough of
her
.

Bracing herself, she waited for what he would do next.

N
IKLAS INHALED DEEPLY, NOT
sure why he should explain anything to her at all. He didn’t owe her anything.

Then why are you here? Why are you doing any of this at all?

Ignoring the nagging voice in his head that warned him he was getting too involved, he moved into her small apartment and lowered himself to the couch. After a moment, she moved to sit beside him.

“I finally pulled myself together about a year after I was turned,” he began. “That’s when I started hunting Cyprian’s pack. I wasn’t very good at first—the scent of any lycan would distract me and confuse me as to what trail I needed to follow. I was basically hunting them all. One night I came
across a pair of lycans attacking a woman, a girl really.” He winced. “Not much older than me.”

His shoulders tensed, tightening as he saw the scene all over again in his head.

“What happened?”

“I engaged the lycans.” His voice became clipped, emotionless, like he was reading off a piece of paper and not relating anything significant, but he would never forget the ugliness he had stumbled upon … what they were doing to that girl. “I tried to stop them, but they were strong.” His jaw clenched. He told himself to relax, to not let the past affect him anymore. Easier said than done, he was discovering. He’d never told this story to another soul.
You never had anyone to tell it to before.

He drew a deep breath through his nose, pushing that thought away. Being alone had never bothered him before. Meeting her shouldn’t change that; it shouldn’t bother him now. “As I said, I was new to it all. Inexperienced.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I couldn’t handle them on my own, in human form. I thought I needed an advantage. So I shifted.”

“Did you beat them?” She winced at the question, clearly realizing he must have or he wouldn’t be sitting in front of her.

He nodded. “I did. And the girl …” He stopped,
seeing the wide, haunted eyes, the blood soaking blond hair, staining it a deep brown.

Darby leaned forward anxiously. “Was she okay?”

He nodded again. “She was still alive, by some miracle.” Then his words came quickly. “I approached her to try and help her and she just … screamed. And kept on screaming.” Even now, he could hear the awful sound ringing in his ears, ripping through him.

Darby shook her head, a heaviness settling in her chest. “After you’d just saved her life?”

“I tried to talk to her, calm her down, but she wouldn’t stop screaming. She took off running. She left the park and ran right out into the street.” He paused, taking a breath. “A truck hit her. She died instantly.”

Darby blinked. “You can’t blame yourself for that. She was hysterical, traumatized from what they did to her.”

“She ran into that street because of me.” Because of the monster he was. “I should have left her alone.” He shook his head. “No—I should never have shifted.”

She placed her hand on his knee. Sensation zipped through him at the touch of her hand. He tensed beneath her fingers. She must have felt his tension, for she looked down to where she
touched him. With a small gasp, barely audible, she snatched her hand away and buried it in her lap. Color flooded her cheeks, almost the same red as her hair, and he marveled at that. Women actually still blushed these days? Modesty and reticence had long since been absent from his life.