Playing with Fire (4 page)

Hours of online research finally netted results. I kicked myself mentally for not thinking of this in the first place. And where did I find the spell to unlock the Retriever? Inside the Council's archives, nestled deep within a collection of grimoires that had been scanned but never sorted, obviously, for the scatter of unordered information I'd had to sift through.

Parish handed me the colored jpeg we'd printed from the archives. It was blurry but the handwritten text was remarkably neat so I could read the Latin words with ease. But I didn't read them out loud because this was an action spell that required specific movements of my fingers around the cube. The right sequence would unlock it.

"Let's do this." I grabbed Parish's hand and marched her out into the foyer, but paused, unsure about charging into her father's room and taking control. "You lead."

She kissed me, and I realized I couldn't get enough of her kisses, and was happy we'd decided to continue this following what we were about to do. But I wasn't stupid. I didn't think it would last. The angel I'd once been did not compel me to have sex with her to create a monster, yet I had been compelled, there was no doubt about that. Yet when in demon form, well, I had wings of fire, which were not at all like my former angelic wings. So I had to hope all that was in the past.

Parish led me by the hand to stand beside her father's death bed. I could smell impending death, and knew it was so near we'd best hurry. Signaling to her that I would stand on one side of the bed and work the device, she nodded and walked around to the head of the bed and stroked her father's hair.

The old man roused and murmured his daughter's name. I ignored the touching scene and began to read the instructions, placing my fingers as instructed on the disk. The first sequence lit up the runes.

"I love you, Papa," Parish said, and I paused.

The disk went dark.
Concentrate. If you care about her, then get this right, even if you want the soul for yourself
. Because with a soul I could fall in love.

But with a soul I'd surely become mortal.

It would be worth it to have Parish's love. Hell, I wanted to know what love felt like!

She caught my eye and the wondering innocence I saw there redirected me back to the task.

Forget the soul, be happy with the consolation prize, demon. It's more than you've ever had. It's more than you deserve.

"I'm ready," Lanzo Marazetti rasped, "to move on."

"To heaven," Parish whispered and kissed her father's forehead.

I moved my index finger across the disk. The device suddenly hummed and the top portion turned a quarter turn, flashing out a bright beam of blue light. A gasp caught in my throat. I'd unlocked it.

Quickly I placed the Retriever on Lanzo's chest and stepped back in preparation to be awed by what I expected would happen.

Parish, too stepped back, yet still held her father's hand. "Go in peace, Father," she said.

And the blue light spread out in a circle, glancing through the entire room, and moving through Parish and me. It hit me directly in the heart, and toppled me from my feet, and suddenly I was flying through the air. My back hit the plaster wall and I dropped. I cried out, I think, but I didn't hear my voice.

Something had gone wrong.

The blue light hit me with an intense feeling of love. Bathed within the cool sensation I stretched out my arms and took it all in. In that moment I knew my father's soul had reunited with his body, and in the next moment, I knew he had drawn his last breath. And that knowing filled me with peace.

The blue light lingered for seconds, as if a rippling water pool suspended midair, and it was then I noticed Cinder sitting against the wall, as if tossed there. His head hung forward and above his crown of dark hair floated a small blue circlet.

I made a small cry. It looked like a halo. But it couldn't be. Well, it could be. He had once been an angel. I wasn't sure how angels worked, and what their haloes meant beyond that the halo held their earthbound soul.

"Oh my," I whispered. "His soul?"

I glanced to Papa. His face was peaceful; his mouth had fallen open in death. I knew he had gotten his soul as I knew I must drink blood for survival.

But what had happened to Cinder?

I rushed to his side, and as I did, the blue halo dissipated and the entire room went dark. A gleam of twilight shone across the tiled floor, highlighting the demon's downturned face.

"Cinder? What happened?"

I smelled sulfur, a sure demonic odor, yet I had never scented it on him before. And in the next instant he lifted his head, slapped a palm to his chest and looked around. "I got it," he said on a hush. "A soul."

"You did? But...?" Had it granted souls to both Cinder and my father? Perhaps the device sensed anyone who had not one and retrieved both? "You know it?"

He nodded and clasped my hand to press over his heart. I felt it beat, proud and strong, but that was nothing new. "Your father, too?" he asked.

I nodded.

And then Cinder cried out and his body lunged forward. The sweep of what sounded like a thousand crow wings crushed the silence. Dark wings tore away his shirt and swept out behind him, growing from his back. They were not of feather, but rather a mix of roman and modern numerals tightly fit together in what seemed a hologram but I couldn't determine the substance.

Was he returning to angel form?

Cinder cried out in myriad tongues, ancient and revered, yet indefinable by modern ears. It hurt my skull, but it only lasted a few seconds before dead silence muted the air. And he collapsed forward, his wings sweeping the air. They swept my face and it felt as if I'd been touched by something so soft and liquid I would never define it in my lifetime.

The wings of glowing numerals folded over his body and then...dissipated to a fine crystal ash over and around his prone form.

I lunged forward and plunged my fingers into the cool ash. His wings. Gone. Destroyed. Because he had so boldly received his soul? He would not have asked to have the divine taken from him if he'd known he still possessed it, but this was proof he'd carried it with him. Always.

The fallen one had indeed found his muse.

Another cry alerted me he was still in pain. Wanting to touch him, to help him in some manner, I could but hold my hands over his back as I watched the thick black devil's mark glow bright red and appear to curve into his body as if to clutch his lungs. Cinder shouted, his fingers digging into the wood floor. And then the mark flashed out to nothing, leaving behind burned flesh in the shape of the cruel symbol that had once marked him as Himself's slave.

Truly his soul must have returned to him.

"Cinder, I'm so sorry," I said, but I wasn't sure if I really was.

His hand slapped the floor, through the angel wing ash, and he lifted his torso and shot me the sexy smolder that had initially won my heart.

"Don't be sorry. I'm mortal now." He dropped his head to the floor. "Like it or not."

He did not want mortality. Cinder had sacrificed immortality to give my father the same. Everlasting life beyond the mortal coil.

A disturbance of light caught my attention and I swung a look to my father's bed. A man clad in black stood before the bed, his arms outstretched and face tilted back to accept the glittering light that popped out from Papa's chest.

"The soul bringer," Cinder commented quietly. "Come to ferry your father's soul..."

At Cinder's pause I looked to him, only to catch him hiding a wince. Was he in pain? I switched my gaze to the soul bringer. The two had exchanged a silent conversation.

"What was that about?" I asked. "Where is he taking my father's soul? Cinder?" I clutched him by the shirt lapels, but his eyelids fluttered and he passed out, falling forward into my arms. "Papa?"

The soul bringer had gone. My father's body lay in repose beneath the smooth white sheet. My happiness wilted.

A week later...

I waited outside as Parish made a last walk through her father's palazzo. She hadn't plans to sell it because she preferred to live in Venice, but we intended to spend a few months together traveling. The funeral had been a few days ago. I had been forced to concoct a lie of silence in response to Parish's question about her father's soul by giving her a nod and a kiss to her forehead.

Easier that way, than to explain what I'd seen in Reichardt, the soul bringer's, eyes. He had collected a dark soul stained with much sin. It mattered little that Lanzo Marazetti had gotten his soul restored. Once blackened, there's no going back.

I knew Parish suspected the same, but we would not discuss it. It was better that way because neither of us can know anything for certain. Look at me: my origin was angel, I'd been changed to demon, and I was now pitifully mortal.

Never expected any of that. Destiny was a crock.

And yet, destiny had somehow lured us together, and for that, I would be forever grateful.

When my tiny vixen appeared and locked the front door, she turned a bright smile to me, and my heart expanded. I know now that I had felt love toward Parish when in demon form. Because my heart felt the same way now, but even more, greater, brighter, if that was possible. This was love.

Opening my arms, I tucked her close and led us down the street to the hotel where she'd wanted to stay away from the memories of her father. It was close to midnight and streetlights reflected across the white bedsheets. I pressed a kiss behind her ear where she smelled like roses, and whispered, as sweetly as I could manage, "Nothing."

"You think so, demon?" she said, but it was hardly a protest. Nor was her next move, as she pushed up my shirt and tugged it over my head. Her fingers burned into my skin, but it was never as hot as when I'd the power to produce actual fire.

"No longer demon," I muttered as she flicked open the fly of my jeans.

"And not entirely pleased about that." She moved up to bracket my face and I'll be damned if those soft gray eyes weren't the very stars that I sought every night. "We haven't said much about you getting your soul back. But I can sense you'd rather be anything but mortal."

Curling an arm around her back, I pulled her closer. Not about to get into anything hot and heavy until we'd had a conversation. The vixen had a manner of always getting her way, and I was good with that.

"I will die and you will live on. That sounds like the worst possible situation to me. I love you, Parish."

"You do?"

"Yes, and I even know what that means now. I loved you before I got my soul. I know it."

"Oh, Cinder. I love you, too. We were meant for one another."

"In a roundabout way, yes. So I hope you'll understand when I make this next request. I want something from you. Something that will give us forever."

"Anything. I'd give you my heart if I could."

"I already have that, as you have mine." I pressed a palm over her heart and I think our pulses synched. But if she would grant me my request, then I knew they would synch, ever after. "Bite me," I said. "And transform me to vampire."

He was asking for something that I'd initially thought a curse. That was, until I'd been taken in by tribe Lilith and taught to hunt and exist as a vampire. It wasn't a bad gig. And for a man who feared mortality, it could be good.

For the two of us, it could prove even better. I wanted to bond with Cinder as only two vampires could, in blood and soul. So I dipped my head to his neck without a second thought, and punctured his skin with my teeth.

No dark demon blood this time, just plain red mortal blood. But it still possessed the caramel sweetness of the man with whom I was falling in love. So decadently dark, too. If this is what my future held, bonding to Cinder in blood, then I was so glad he caught me outside the warehouse.

His magnificent body arched against mine as I sucked his blood, taking communion from his new soul. It was tinted with shades of the divine and darkness, and all colors in between, and I felt the power of his former being surge through me and brighten my body.

I drank until I could drink no more, and my lover's hand gripped my hips, rocking his groin against mine as the swoon overtook him, and blood orgasm overwhelmed us both. I did not lick the wound to seal it. The only way he could transform would be to now drink mortal blood and the vampiric taint would do the rest.

Together, our souls would bond and he would take a part of mine into his soul, as I would take a part of his into me. We would not become soul mates, but something so much more, fire and blood, forged in love.

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