When Temptation Burns: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 6) (29 page)

“I know someone. Someone from your world, I mean. I didn’t realize it until last night after I dropped you off at Orlando’s. He stepped out of a car, and I recognized his face. He has a scar, and he’s an imposing guy. Hard to miss. I’ve seen him before at the Teen Center.”

For a moment, he had no idea what she was talking about. Then he thought of Luke and the girl who’d recently become his ward. “CeeCee? You know CeeCee from the Teen Center?”

“Until I saw Luke, I just assumed CeeCee was your typical teen trying to fit in.”

“And now?”

“Now I think exactly the same thing.” She met his eyes and he saw nothing but honesty there.

His heart twisted, and he reached for her hand. “Andy.”

“I did more, too. I went back to Orlando’s.” She told him all that she’d learned about soul lore. How she knew her soul would recover after letting him feed—and how it might even blossom if there was a connection between them.

“Is there a connection?” she asked him. “Is there, or did I destroy anything we might have started by being so damn scared and running away?”

“Scared?” The word hung false on his lips. “Is that how you see yourself? Andy, scared is the last thing you are. Look at you. Right here. Right now. You could have chosen to believe every horrible story you’ve ever been
told. You could have turned your back and told your grandchildren stories about the time you brushed up against evil.”

“No, I—”

“But you didn’t,” he said firmly. “You were scared—of course you were. Who wouldn’t be? But you asked questions. Hell, you walked straight into the abyss. A human just walking into Orlando’s and demanding to see Lissa? Andy, my God, you’re the bravest person I know.”

He meant every word he said, and he could tell she knew it from the small smile that touched her lips.

“She was very nice, actually.”

“Lissa? She’s awesome. But all you knew was that you were going deep into a place where your soul just might be ripped from you. Tell me you weren’t afraid.”

She shook her head. “I can’t tell you that. I was terrified.”

“And yet you went anyway.” The words hung in the air, their full import finally hitting him. She’d gone in because of him. Partly because she was a reporter, sure, but at the end of the day, this was about him. “No one’s ever done that before,” he said. He was speaking more to himself than to her, but she answered anyway.

“Done what?”

“Believed in me. No,” he corrected. “That’s not what I mean. No one’s ever cared enough to try to figure me out.”

The tiny smile bloomed. “I haven’t got you completely figured out,” she said. “Not you or the world you live in. But I know you’re not evil. And neither is Lissa or CeeCee or Tucker.” She sat up a little straighter. “There’s a whole other world out there that I know hardly anything about.”

“There is.”

“It’s not evil,” she said. “It’s not vile or wretched or a slice of hell the way that Paul wants to make it out to be.”

“No, it’s not.”

“But there’s evil in it,” she said. “Those werewolves who killed Stu, for example. But there’s evil in my world, too.”

“Kyle Creevey,” he said.

“And a whole lot more like him.”

“You’ve been thinking a lot,” he said.

“I have. And I want to know more. Will you tell me?”

“Of course. Whatever you want to know.”

“Let’s start with you. CeeCee said you’re a paradaemon, but I don’t really know what that means.”

He hesitated, not quite able to believe that they were having this conversation. That she’d seen the daemon inside of him. And yet she wasn’t afraid of him. It was a miracle, and it humbled him, filling him with an emotion he hadn’t felt in a very long time—hope.

“Go on,” she urged.

“I should probably tell you that I’m a lot older than you,” he began.

“You look like you’re in your late thirties.”

“Close,” he said. “I’m two hundred and eighty-two.”

“Of course you are.” She frowned at her tea. “I have bourbon. Maybe we should have bourbon.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe we should.”

“Keep going,” she said as she got up and headed to the cabinet beside the refrigerator. “You told me about your mom. Was that true?”

He frowned. “You’re starting with the hard questions,”
he said. “The truth is I exaggerated a bit. But, yes, what I told you was true. I just left some things out.”

“I’m listening.”

“I told you she was raped—she was. By a horrible creature. A daemon.”

“And that’s like what my dad preaches about?” She brought the bourbon and two glasses back to the table. “Evil spirits?”

“Evil, yes. But flesh and blood, although essentially immortal. And while we believe that daemons come from another dimension, I don’t think it’s the same as what you’d think of as hell. And the truth is it doesn’t matter. They’ve walked this earth for a very long time. It’s fair to say they’re natives now.”

She nodded, but he wasn’t sure she completely understood. “But the bottom line is that he raped your mom, and that got your mom started on her quest. She wanted to eradicate him and the others like him, right?”

“Not exactly. The part I left out of the story was that she got pregnant.” He focused his attention on her face. “She got pregnant with me.”

Andy didn’t like what he was saying, but she realized that she should have expected it. CeeCee had told her what he was after all.
Paradaemon
.

“But you’re not—I mean, you’re nothing like your father.”

“My mother thought I would be. She used to try to beat the evil out of me.”

“The bitch.”

“Mmm,” he said. “I happen to agree with you, but she wasn’t entirely wrong. Except that you can’t beat it out. Not really.”

Andy swallowed. “What do you mean.”

“It
is
there. Inside me. Something dark. It lives in you. It writhes and fights and tries so hard to come out to play.” His smile was thin. “You’ve never seen my temper. Not really.”

“A temper isn’t evil.”

“No, it’s not. You’ve never seen the daemon, either.”

“I saw something. It was scary, I’ll grant you that, but—” She cut herself off.

“But what?”

She thought of what she’d learned from both CeeCee and Lissa. And she thought of what she knew in her heart. “But it’s not fire and brimstones. It didn’t come from hell.”

“Do you think that matters?” he asked softly. “Evil is
evil. There’s darkness in Creevey, but he didn’t sprout from Lucifer’s head, either. So you tell me. How are we different?”

For a moment she couldn’t speak—the idea that he would compare himself with that human filth was appalling. He had to be exaggerating to make a point, but when she looked at his face, she saw that he wasn’t.

“You fight it,” she said. “Creevey embraces it.”

He nodded, but the gesture seemed tired. “I fight it because I have to. But believe me when I say that it would be easy to give in. As easy as going home.”

She stared at his face, at the haunted look in his eyes, and for a moment she didn’t see the man but the little boy. An innocent child who didn’t understand what he was and had no one around to help him. “Your mother was the evil one.” She spoke softly, more to herself than to him. But it was true, and the words gave her strength. “She was a first-class bitch,” she said, more strongly. “I don’t know what she did to you, but I’m certain she wasn’t a real mother to you.”

“No,” he said. “You’re probably right. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn from her. I kept the daemon down, all right, if only to save my own skin.”

She heard it then, an unmistakable tinge of fear. No, not fear—self-loathing. “You think that without her, you would have just let go. You think you owe your humanity to that horrible woman.”

It was a statement, and he didn’t bother answering. It didn’t matter. She was certain she was right.

“After you learned to keep the daemon down, did she leave you alone?”

“She did. For a while.”

“But something happened?”

“I turned twelve.”

She waited for him to speak—the pain on his face was palpable, and she desperately wished there was something she could do to soothe him.

“I turned twelve,” he repeated, “and the hunger hit me.”

“For souls,” she said. And even though she understood more now, she couldn’t help but shiver.

Doyle noticed, and he looked away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you did. By its very nature it sounds vile. That’s why I don’t feed on humans. Not if I can help it.”

“Orlando’s,” she said. “Lissa told me about the machines. And about the girls.” During the tour, Lissa had explained how most of the shadowers who lived off of souls chose to take them directly from one of the succubi on Lissa’s staff. It had been a strange conversation, but what had been stranger was the way it had made Andy feel. “Doyle?”

He looked at her, and she couldn’t believe what she was about to say, but he needed to know. “When Lissa explained to me how it worked—about the girls, I mean—I wasn’t scared. Well,” she corrected, “maybe a little. Mostly, I was jealous.”

His brow furrowed with an unspoken question.

“What I felt—what we shared—it was amazing. Sensual and sweet, and the thought of you sharing that with another woman …” She trailed off with a shrug. “I didn’t like it. I was glad when Lissa told me you prefer to use the machines.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. “Andy.” That simple word held a wealth of emotion.

She wanted to move into his arms. Wanted him to hold
her and comfort her—and she wanted to do the same for him.

But she also wanted to know the rest. No, she
needed
to know. Needed to understand. And so she stayed at the table, her fingers held tight in his. “What happened when your mother learned about the hunger?”

“She lost it,” he said. “Remember, this was in the early 1700s. The Church was our life, and she was as devout as any woman alive. More, probably, since she’d been schooled in a convent and would have taken vows had she not been raped by my father.”

Andy realized that she’d released his hand and that her fingers were now clutching her cross. Doyle’s voice was level, matter-of-fact, and she got the impression that he had to tell the story that way. That to let himself really feel it would be too painful—or too dangerous.

“It’s still not an excuse,” she said. “You were her child.”

“The world was different then,” he said. “I’m not excusing her, but everything she knew came from the Church. And do you really think it would be so different today? Would a woman raped by such a vicious creature keep her child? Or would she think it was vile and either end the pregnancy or abandon her baby?”

“You would have been better off if she had abandoned you.”

“Maybe. But she didn’t. And when the hunger first hit me—you have to understand that I didn’t know what was going on. I was weak. Lost. Literally dying. And a schoolgirl came upon me. A little girl I knew from the village. She bent over to help me and I—” He cut himself off, then waved the words away.

“She survived. And I know now that she was only scarred—her soul did grow back, but because she hadn’t
consented, she always bore a mark. But at the time I believed I’d utterly destroyed that little girl. My mother came upon us at the end, and she screamed that I was the devil. That I’d brought desolation upon the earth. She hit me over and over and over again.” Andy cringed, watching the way Doyle’s expression tightened as he pantomimed his mother’s lashes.

“And that’s when I lost it.”

She was certain she didn’t want to know, and yet she asked anyway. “What happened?”

“I fought back. With my mind.” He drew in a noisy breath. “I didn’t know until that moment that I had the power, but with a single, brutal thought I set fire to our barn.”

“You can control fire?”

“Wind, fire, water. I’m most adept with fire.”

“So you can call lightning bolts down from the sky? Should I call you Zeus?”

“No, lightning is not in my repertoire. Electricity and I don’t get along. At all.”

“Good to know,” she said. “I won’t ask you to rewire my floor lamps.”

He smiled at her, and she smiled back, and for a moment, despite the insanity of the story he was telling, they were just a guy and a girl.

Then he continued, and the illusion of normalcy faded.

“I couldn’t control it, though. The fire. Not back then. I was so young. So weak.” He closed his eyes, and she watched as the memories caught up to him. “The entire town burned, and there was nothing we could do. Fifty-seven people died. My mother wailed and cried and said that she’d given birth to the devil himself. And
then she took a flintlock pistol and put a bullet through her brain.”

“Doyle, my God, Doyle.” She moved around the table and knelt on the floor beside him, taking his hand in hers. “You’re not. You know that, right? Because I’ve seen the devil, and you are not him.”

“I thought I was. And I hated myself. Hated my father, my mother. And so I gave in. I quit fighting. And all that darkness rose up and spilled out.” His laugh was raw, grating, and he looked hard at her. “You say I’m not like Creevey because I fight it? I didn’t fight it then. I let it suck me under. Let it? No, I wanted it to happen. I wanted to drown in it.”