Save My Soul (10 page)

“Anna, what did I just say?” Wrapped in his tone was a reprimand.

“Please let me go. I’ll come back, I just have to get out of here for awhile.” Away from you hung on the air unspoken.

Watching Luc peer at her from behind the lacy curtains, Anna knew he’d never let her go. Not even if she burned down the house. Mingling their blood had clearly crossed some primal demon line for him.

The scar on her hand twinged as she moved to where the exorcism kit lay strewn over the grass.

The bond was starting to get pissed off when she wasn’t with him. She ran a finger over the red, raised mark, and her palm started to tingle. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation, but it made her think of Luc in a warm, fuzzy way. And that scared her.

She bent to put the spilled items back in the box Father Jeffries had abandoned. She didn’t need a bunch of Catholic ritual items littering her front yard. And the neighbors didn’t need more gossip material. Once the box was packed, she loaded it into her car.

She wondered if she could just leave town and never come back. Could Cain really find her? Maybe the scar was like some sort of homing beacon. If she ran and Luc sent Cain after her . . . what then? She wanted to be alone with Cain even less than she wanted to be alone with Luc. With Luc, there was something almost human there. Most of the time. Cain’s eyes didn’t have that. They were just empty. A monster with a pretty face.

Anna stopped off at the hospital on the way to church, needing a captive outlet to unload some of her anger and fear, as well as a target that deserved it. The receptionist at the information booth gave her directions to Marshal’s room.

She didn’t bother knocking, just barged right in. After all, he had barged in. It seemed only fair. He’d been moved from ICU to a regular room, but he still looked like shit.

Under the fluorescent lighting she could see the entire right side of his face was purple and puffy. One eye was swollen shut, and a neck brace kept him from being able to lie back on his pillows. One of his arms was in a cast. A couple of people had already been by and written on it in bright pink and green magic markers.

He turned from his television program, his good eye going wide when he saw her. He looked like he might be sick.

“Hello, Marsh. I just wanted to drop by personally and thank you again for the lovely date. You left so soon last night. I was having such a wonderful time. You know what with you trying to rape me and all.”

“I . . . I didn’t mean to . . . ”

Luc had damaged Marshal’s throat enough that speech was a struggle. She wondered how he’d ever gotten the story out about the wild dogs, or if it was all just so much Bitsy and Mimi gossip.

“Sure ya didn’t, Marsh. It was all just innocent. I wanted it, right? Had it coming? If I hadn’t been wearing that alluring dress like some slut that wanted it . . . ”

“No . . . that’s not . . . ” His eyes were wild and panicked.

“No? So I must have hearing problems. You didn’t comment on how you were scaring me? Your face didn’t light up while you were doing it? You didn’t try to force yourself on me?” She was greeted with silence as the protests died on his lips. “If he hadn’t stopped you, you would have raped me. Assuming I wasn’t able to knock you unconscious first. I still think I could have managed it.”

She had his full attention now.

“Who . . . what . . . ”

“It’s none of your business who or what he is. Just know if you ever come near me again, he’ll kill you, slowly and painfully.” Anna said it to scare him, to take back some of what he’d tried to take from her. But as she spoke the words she knew they were true.

Luc would torture the life slowly from him and enjoy the whole sordid affair, if his freak-out with Father Jeffries was any indication. Luc would protect her from anyone. But who would protect her from Luc?

She rubbed her palm against her jeans in an attempt to get the bond to settle down.

Marshal struggled to nod. “I won’t bother you again.”

“Good. I heard you said you were attacked by wild dogs. I can’t believe anyone bought that.”

Marshal used his good hand to rip the hospital gown away from his chest. Savage claw and bite marks covered his flesh. Anna tried to think back to the night before. All she’d been able to process at the time was that her date was getting his ass kicked. It wasn’t like she’d been shooting a documentary of the event.

Still, the injuries came as a shock. Luc looked human, and humans didn’t have claws or teeth like that. She schooled her features into the hard line they’d been set in before.

“I think it would be very wise if you stuck by that story. If I were you, I wouldn’t tell anyone what really happened.” She started for the door and paused, turning back. “Oh, and Marsh? If you ever see me again, I don’t care where you are or what you’re doing. You turn and walk the other direction. ’Kay?”

He nodded as well as he could, and Anna closed the door softly behind her.

***

Luc stood in the library, poring over books Cain had brought him years before from the demon dimension. There had to be something to explain what the hell was going on. He was still shaken by his behavior. He’d never felt this mindlessly possessive of another person before.

He’d scared the shit out of her, and with the curse in place, he had no power to make her stay with him where she’d be safe.

“Yeah. Safe,” he muttered, taking another drink. He’d love to be drunk right now. It was possible, but a demon needed a whole lot of hard liquor. All Luc had at his disposal was a wine cellar. Not nearly good enough.

Maybe it would be best for both of them if she didn’t come back. He’d only heard about bonds like this. He’d never actually done one.

After Cain had gotten near her, the only thought on his mind was doing something to protect her. His instincts had kicked in and taken it from there. He hadn’t thought there would be consequences. Or side effects.

It took searching through three different books before he finally found one that offered any information on the bond.

“Fuck me.” He slammed the book shut and put his head in his hands. He still hadn’t found the details he needed, only one book with a brief mention in a footnote of the type of blood mingling he’d performed. It could be used as a first step to a mating. No wonder he was feeling so possessive and sappy about her.

Luc tamped down the voice in his head that said he’d been fixated on her for weeks. That it wasn’t the bond. He wondered if the ritual was having an effect on her as well.

He thought back to how he’d begged Beatrice to give him her soul and wondered if something like this would have let him keep her forever. When he’d originally researched mating, he’d missed it because it was a strategy that had been lost in the lore of their people, buried in unrelated books for centuries. He’d been looking in the wrong place. He should have dug deeper. If he had, he might not have ended up trapped in the house in the first place.

***

There was no evening service at St. Francis, but the door was kept unlocked for those who wanted to come pray or have a quiet, peaceful place away from the world to escape to. Anna carried the box in and put it down by the altar, then lit a candle in one of the red votive holders at the front. Gregorian chants emanated from a speaker in the balcony.

She curled up on a pew and allowed herself to relax as the music washed over her. Surely Cain couldn’t come inside a church. It seemed the church was one of the few truly safe places for her. Seeing Marshal had provided some closure, but it also made the threat of returning home seem too great to seriously consider yet.

But you will go back , a voice in her mind whispered. She wanted to deny that thought, but recognized the truth of it. As insane as it was. The mark held some sort of power over her now.

Luc had been threatened when the priest sensed the bond. That was enough to let her know Father Jeffries wasn’t just some random boob with a shiny prayer book. Whether it came from a god somewhere or just an inner sense, he had a gift. Maybe untapped and underdeveloped, but it was there. If she allowed him to help her, what then?

Hours passed in the stillness of the church while Anna tried to think through her options and tried not to have naughty, wrong thoughts about Luc. That was definitely a bad idea.

It was almost sunset when her hand started to burn. Was the demon doing something with the bond? Using it like a magical leash to reel her back to him?

In the sanctuary, she’d slipped into an almost trance-like state, floating somewhere inside the soft, comforting candlelight and chanting. Faced with the prospect of spending the night in the house with Luc, she had the urge to find the priest and do whatever she had to do to rid herself of the demon’s influence once and for all. But the danger from Cain loomed over her, somehow worse than Luc. She wasn’t convinced Father Jeffries could protect her from the greater evil.

The front porch light was on when Anna returned, still arguing with herself for allowing the burning from the bond to drag her back.

She had a death grip on her house key when the door swung open. Luc had to start with the special effects. He couldn’t stay out of her way and let her come inside on her own. Instead of going in, she sat in one of the rocking chairs, pulled a book from her purse, and pretended to read while the door stood open and ignored.

At least her hand wasn’t burning now. Maybe she could sleep on the porch. Best of both worlds.

Fifteen minutes passed before she steeled herself enough to look up. Luc scowled at her through the window. She turned back to the book, willing her heartbeat to steady, breathing slowly in and out.

Moments later, he was looming in the doorway. If not for the barrier, he could have reached out and pulled her inside. She had to keep up a running stream of commentary in her head to reassure herself that was the case. That she was safe out here. When he finally spoke, she jumped anyway.

“Anna, get your ass in the house right now!”

She pretended to focus on her book. She’d managed to read one paragraph. About four hundred times.

“Stop bullying me,” she said between clenched teeth, her eyes still on the page.

“I am quickly losing patience,” he snarled.

“Yes, and what are you going to do about it?” She dropped the book and came to stand mere inches from the threshold. She didn’t know what it was about him that made her throw her self-preservation instincts out the window, but he pissed her the hell off. After going to see Marshal and getting some of her fire back, she wasn’t coming home to take shit from another bully. Her heart was in her throat as she watched his face darken.

“I told you I could have you brought to me.” His voice was calm.

The calm scared her more than the snarling. “Cain said he wasn’t coming back for awhile. For all we know, he’s never coming back.” She knew even as she said it, that it wasn’t true.

“Get in the house. Now.”

Anna was tempted to taunt him with a make me but his comment earlier about her being a child still stung. Not that he acted that much more mature for his age. The several hundred years age difference wasn’t all that noticeable if you asked her.

“Not until you calm down. Luc, please, you’re scaring me. I saw Marshal, and I can’t come into the house if I think you might . . . ”

“I wouldn’t.” The angry mask was gone as quickly as it had surfaced. “I don’t beat on women. That bastard had that coming.”

She bit her lip and looked away. “I know.”

His voice softened, and he moved away from the door. “Please come inside.”

She waited a few more minutes until she finally gained the nerve to step over the threshold. He wasn’t in the entryway or living room, unless he was pulling the disappearing act. But she didn’t think he was doing that either because she couldn’t feel him. Ever since the bond, she could sense his presence when he was near. It was something she’d put in a file folder of things she wasn’t thinking about.

She weaved her way through the house until she found him in the library with a book in his hand. He tensed when she walked in and sat in the chair opposite from him.

“You read?”

He snorted. “Of course I read. What else is there to do besides watch television and feed?”

She didn’t know how it happened. One moment they were both sitting awkwardly in opposite chairs, the next he’d taken her hand in his, turning her palm up to inspect it. He stared for a moment as if he couldn’t quite believe his mark was still there, then he released her and sank back into his chair in obvious relief.

“You are threatened by that priest. You know he can free me from you.”

“I just wanted to make sure I didn’t need to redo it. I was worried when you were gone so long. Cain has no conscience. The creepy blood ritual , as you call it, is the only thing protecting you from him when I’m not with you. I don’t know if that priest of yours could undo it. He shouldn’t have even been able to sense it.”

They sat in silence awhile longer, then Luc spoke again. “I have to feed.” The timbre of his voice sent goosebumps running down Anna’s arm.

A small part of her thrilled at the idea of him feeding from her, but another part still recoiled in anxiety. Her breathing was shallow when he pulled her into his lap.