The Taken (27 page)

Anne leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Now I know why a rainbow is a gift. Oh, and the glorious dimension of everyday objects. I spent this entire morning studying a single rose.” She raised her head, and the blue depths of her eyes were wide with the memory of her first rose. “Did you know that life thrums through the veins of every petal? It’s so alive that humans try to wear its secrets.”

Grif lowered himself to the lounger across from Anne, and shook his head. He hadn’t known any of that.

“But the touch is gone. Textures mean nothing to me anymore.” She stared wonderingly at her palm, then said as if to herself, “And somehow . . . they mean more than before.”

“Because you can’t unknow your life’s experiences,” Grif said. This was
his
area of expertise.

She looked at Grif. “I must go home.”

Sighing, Grif leaned back in his lounger, then held up his glass. Staring at Anne through the dark cranberry stain, he said, “Do you know why people drink this? I mean, wine instead of beer or scotch or vodka? Or anything else?”

“I do not know why one would drink at all.”

Nodding once, he continued, “It’s because wine tells a story. If a bottle is properly stored, and this one was, you will taste a juice that is changed only in age. The rest remains the same as when it was bottled. All the choices the winemaker made in picking the grapes, and blending them, and storing them are in the bottle. You taste the fruit, but you also taste the wood of the cask as if it were a living thing—and, of course, it once was. You taste the storm that hit right before the grapes were picked, and whether it cooled them too quickly. You taste the earth . . . the way it was fed, when it was watered, and if it was healthy.

“All these things come together in a simple bottle, and when you drink it, a climate and a man you never knew, and a bit of mud you never actually stepped foot on, reveal themselves to you. It’s the personal history of the world recorded in a bottle. This one is the record of the year Tony was born.” He jerked his head. “Taste it.”

It was fascinating, watching a Pure experience sensation for the first time. She tried to hide the foreign emotions, but there was no controlling her surprise when the first drop of wine hit her lips. As her eyes fluttered shut and her throat hummed, Grif could almost follow its path as it rolled down her tongue, igniting the sweet and sour taste buds, before sliding into her throat, disappearing in a mysterious heat of knowledge in her belly’s core.

“Now that’s a story,” he said, lifting his glass in a toast when her eyes finally refocused.

For a moment, Anne didn’t move at all. Then, just as he spied more blue tears filling her eyes with liquid stardust, she opened her mouth and screamed. A raven’s rabid screech ripped the air, accompanied by bared teeth and bulging eyes. The cry blew through the room, elongating until there should have been a hesitation. Yet the moment when any man would have to draw breath passed, and the weight behind the spine-scraping pitch only increased. Lifting, the tonsil-ripping howl reached another crescendo, then snapped like a band into a numbing silence. Feeling a pressure grow above him, Grif looked up.

Lightning cracked through the ceiling to arrow between him and Anne. For an eye’s blink, Grif caught the origins of the unnatural fire bolt. Through the rooftop, past ozone and sky, a grainy membrane lay ripped like skin. A tangle of color rested behind that—the rainbow God unfurled onto the Surface, bunched up like ribbon in a box. Anne’s cry ripped the seams of God’s promise, allowing an even briefer view of what lay on its other side.

Paradise
.

Grif’s cry joined Anne’s at the sight, and he reached up toward the wonder, both everything and an abyss. Every element of the universe was mashed together in undulating effervescence; flame burning behind frost, velvety clouds roiling over gold sheets of evaporating water, peaceful pockets of darkness, inflamed and full, like bulging black hearts. Grif listed toward it like a sailor toward the siren’s call. Yearning rose in his chest like a wave, followed by an ache that crashed in to lay him flat.

All of his losses—his life, Evelyn’s, the unknown future of their doomed past—they all reached from inside to choke him. Yet the beauty above spoke to him, as if
only
to him, and his mouth opened to form a reply from his heart. Across from him, Anne was speaking in tongues. Even with tortured minds and broken spirits, even bound to the Surface, they ached for God’s presence. It would be like being drawn back into the womb. It would be rest. It was the only real redemption there was.

It took Grif longer to recover from the sight of Paradise than it did from the attack. But it left Anne even worse off than before. After she’d stopped screaming—mending the rainbow, sealing the membrane, stitching the sky, raising the roof—the beautiful chaos disappeared, and the world was normal once more. But Anne was curled around herself and looking about blankly, wide-eyed at the room, as if she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there.

Then, azure eyes blazing mad, she said, “Kill her.”

“No.”

A bolt shot into Grif so quickly he was smoldering before he realized her fiery wings had flared. Now he was the one forced into the fetal position, but she didn’t allow him to remain there, curled around his burning belly. A long arm forced his gaze up and the dusty scent that had stalked Paul, as well as tonight’s attacker, blew into his lungs as Anne hissed.

“Then I leave you both to your fates.”

And she hit him so hard his mortal senses fractured, and darkness spun to claim him, and the blue-eyed Pure was instantly gone.

Chapter Twenty

Y
our love should have saved me.”

“I know.”

It was that old dream, Evie and Grif in the ’fifty-six, racing through the bleak Mojave, except that this time they weren’t. Evie wasn’t there, the car was missing, and there wasn’t even a sense of space, much less the expansive desert around him. Grif was alone, and the surrounding darkness was matched only by the nothingness in his heart.

“You weren’t strong enough to save me.” The sweet voice turned into a hiss.

He answered as he always did, his words reverberating into the void. “I don’t have to be strong. I’m dead.”

“Not anymore,” Evie’s not-voice returned, altering the script. “Better wise up, tough guy, or you’ll have to feel it all over again. I told you to keep your head down, but no. Look where it got you, wearing skin again. And look where it got me.”

Grif squinted, searching for her. “Where, Evie? Where did it get you?”

“Same place as you, Griffin,” she shot back, tone as glittering and hard as a gem. “In the dark. Alone. In this cold place where no one comes, no one sees me. No one cares.”

“Evie, I’m trying to get to you. I want to help. But I need to know where you are.”

“That’s rich, Griffin.” A bitter chuckle rose up to choke him. “Because you don’t even know where you are.”

And Grif tumbled out of the darkness, rearing into wakefulness in time to see a woman’s approaching shadow. His first thought was,
Evie,
but he knew her body like his own, and this wasn’t it.
Anne,
he realized, as a room began to take shape around the approaching form. He could label the objects—couch, table, light—but the names were devoid of meaning, attached to shapes his spinning thoughts couldn’t hold. Fear reared as the woman reached his side, and he fell back, trying to escape.

“Grif.” Kit touched his arm. The room flipped, and suddenly he knew which way was up. His greedy gasp for air was what told him he’d forgotten to breathe, and he tried to make up for the lack by sucking in great gulps of air. Meanwhile Kit perched next to him, palms cool on his face and neck.

“It was another nightmare, sweetie,” she said, treating him more gently than he had any right to be treated. Swinging his feet to the floor, he braced them there like that would anchor him firmly in this time and place, but the movement had Kit’s hands sliding away, and the darkness threatened the edges of his vision again.

Growling, Grif punched the couch. “Damn it! Why can’t I locate myself on this rock?”

“Shh,” Kit soothed, and reached for him again. Her palm against his forehead had the room stilling. The other lay supportively at his back. “You bumped your head. You’re not making sense.”

But despite the bump and the fading dream, everything suddenly made perfect sense. Schmidt knew where he and Kit were staying. Anne, crazed with the need to return to the Everlast, had attacked. People were still dying.

And it was all his fault.

“Where’s Tony?” he asked, just before he noticed the glass wall was once again erect, as thick and indestructible as before. A sidelong sweep of the foyer told him that was cleaned of blood splatter and wreckage, too. The red eye of the alarm showed it was engaged. No wonder Kit was so relaxed. Anne had cleaned up before she left.

How thoughtful of her.

“Haven’t seen him,” Kit said, handing Grif a glass of water. He accepted it with a murmur of thanks.

“Yeah, he has a reputation for disappearing when things get rough,” he said, sipping.

“So, what happened?” Kit asked, propping herself on the coffee table in front of him. He wished she was closer, then immediately wished that thought away. “One of his old cronies come by and try to shake you down?”

He almost told her. She’d met Anne, so she might believe him. Then again, she might not, and he didn’t want her open expression to close to him. And it would, the moment he said the word “angel.”

“How are
you
?” he asked instead.

“Oh . . .” She deflated a bit, like lifting his spirits was the only thing keeping her up. Circles rode undercurrent beneath her eyes, and her shoulders sagged as she nodded. “I’ve been better. Paul’s parents were kind, though. I think they were too shocked to blame me for his death, though I don’t doubt that’s coming. His mother blamed me for a lot of things.”

“The divorce?”

“The marriage,” she answered wryly, then shrugged. “For now she needed a shoulder to lean on.”

And Kit had given it, Grif saw, even knowing it would take something from her.

And because of that, Grif reached out slowly and took her chin in a light grip, fingertips sliding over her jawline. Kit froze, caught by the intensity of his stare. Then she finally shuddered. “Grif—”

But he took her mouth, and her, by surprise. What surprised him was how gentle the kiss was, and that he suddenly wanted it so much. Yet if her touch had grounded him before, it unraveled him now. All the senses he’d tried to bury flared like fireworks. She was so warm, so soft. So alive.

But Kit pulled away. “Didn’t we try this one before?”

“Not exactly this,” he replied, pulling her atop him.

“I’m not sure we should.” But she wanted to. He could feel it in the press of her thighs. He could even scent her, female and musky, warm like the earth.

“But you want me.” For the first time in fifty years, someone had a need for him. He ran his finger along her bottom lip, and Kit swallowed hard. “I want you, too. And do you know why?”

She shivered as his calloused hands roamed lower, then shook her head.

“Because the taste of you sits round and ripe on my tongue. It’s like a promise.” He tasted again, eliciting a moan.

“Your touch,” he said, lifting his hips. “It ripples through me. Makes me realize how long I’ve been still.”

His eyes moved to her cleavage, down the length of her, gaze caressing her curves.

“And just the sight of you—”

“I’m a mess.”

“Shh . . .” He placed a hand over her mouth, hard enough to hush her but loose enough to play. When he felt her protest drain from her, he slid his hand to the back of her neck. “I swear, this face is carved in marble somewhere. In Italy or Greece or somewhere goddesses once roamed.”

“Jesus, Grif . . .”

“But none of that’s why I really want you.” He stilled, and she did, too. “All this rockabilly stuff . . . you wear it like armor. I get that. It protects you. But you’re strong in your own way, and you don’t need any of it. Fact, I think I’d prefer you in nothing at all.”

And he let go of his fear, his need for control, the distance he was trying to keep between him and his humanity and, pulling her into his embrace, finally allowed his full angelic sense to flood him again.

He saw her with his Centurion gaze, a white halo circling her body, with lavender hooks spearing in as she looked at him. “Your soul is magnificent,” he gasped.

Kit rose, specter-light above him, and pulled him to his feet. Then he lifted her from hers and crossed the room with her in his arms. No way was he going to let go of her now. “Someplace without windows or light. I want to disappear in you.”

He carried her back to her bedroom, the one he’d once studied from the golf course with the flaming eyes of a Pure boring into his back. But Anas was gone, and it was
his
blood and his flesh that were currently heated—not a burden, but a gift now that he was alone with Kit.

Kit freed him of his jacket, and tugged impatiently at his shirt. Her blood was up, too, evidenced by her swollen lips and heavy lids and all those human signals he hadn’t even known he’d been missing in the Everlast. Fifty years since a woman had looked at him this way. It felt like forever.

More important, the haunted look that’d been in Kit’s face just moments earlier was gone. Now she looked aggressive and demanding and strong. He’d given her that with his need, he knew, and was doing it still. Grif slid the straps of her dress from her shoulders, blindly working the zipper from her back, wanting to do it some more.

Bare skin found his, and simultaneously their hands grew rough. Grif’s mouth dropped lower, lips tugging so that this time Kit arched back of her own accord. A low moan moved from her body into his, and his legs quivered. One of them dragged the other to the bed, Grif wasn’t sure who, and it didn’t matter. They found it blindly and there they fused.

Nothing like it in the Universe, Grif thought. Those born into the Everlast had no idea what they were missing. If they knew, he thought, as her hands raced over his body. If they knew . . . they’d bow down before
us
.

A hard nip from Kit had him grunting, then reversing their positions, though their limbs immediately tangled again. Wild suddenly, needing her female heat and taste and scent everywhere, Grif pinned her arms to her sides hard enough to bruise, then went lower. She cried out, she struggled, but it wasn’t in pain. It made him ravenous, and he hadn’t even known he’d been starving.

Minutes later, she took someone’s name in vain. He finally looked up and found her chest heaving, head turned up to the ceiling, eyes unfocused. Grif wiped his mouth over her belly, then felt her jolt as he again caught a nipple.

“God.” Her hands braced his shoulders. “Wait . . .”

“No.” And he slid his hands beneath, cupped her, and pulled her onto his lap, entering the wetness that was already his. Her release was almost immediate, but Grif held her steady, wanting more. Though his own breath was ragged, though his vision threatened to blur, he kept his gaze hard on her face. He’d been in the Everlast, he knew what it was to be akin to air. Now that he had every sense at his disposal again, he would damn well use them. Levering back, he thrust forward even more.

Her cry, he thought, would outshine the angelic choir.

And her voice—that insistent, cheerful, nonstop voice—was how he found her rhythm. He waited, giving her a series of slow glides on which she could catch her breath, then rose above her, still holding her thighs, and sent her cresting again. He felt wild now, like some sort of animal driven by desperation and an instinctive need to shatter inside of her. The quake moved from her body into his and back again, and she bucked for and with him, also an animal, wholly his.

He waited, quaking and moving and building and thrusting, until the cry was in his sightline, until it pulled back like a cocked arrow in a bending bow. Then he braced himself over her, her thighs still lifted over his hips, and plundered. Heads close, cheeks pressing, breaths strong in each other’s ears, they rode each other in tandem, and let need turn to greed. Kit pushed him to climax even as she fought to get there first. Then the arrow flew and Grif was free, emptying into her as she disappeared in him, and both cries found their targets before spiraling off into the raw, violent night.