Chapter 9

 

 

THE MAN in the black polo shirt looked human, handsome even, until Jory took in his golden skin and dark, catlike eyes. Jory had seen him slice through Louise’s shoulder with retractable claws that looked like they belonged on a prehistoric predator, flinging her aside like she weighed nothing. He stared between her prone body and Jory for a moment and grinned. “Who would care enough about one little human to issue him his own guard dog?” he asked. He chuckled and surged forward.

Jory wasn’t fast enough to dodge. He grabbed him, wrapping his fingers around Jory’s throat and hoisting him off the ground.

He’d expected its claws to cut through his flesh, just like he’d done to Louise, but instead the touch burned. The golden man pulled him close, sniffing his cheek and ghosting his tongue over the surface of Jory’s skin.

Jory tried to pry the man’s fingers off his neck, tried to get away, but he might as well have been trying to break granite by hand.

“Not human, then,” he said, his tone strangely curious. “Something else entirely….”

The way the man’s voice seemed to echo around the street, coming from everywhere all at once and making his head throb. With his vision going dark around the edges, Jory kicked at the man’s legs and clawed at his fingers, finally wrapping both of his hands around the man’s wrist. This man, this thing, felt like a pure blue flame, burning hotter than anything Jory had ever seen. Instead of zeroing in on an injury via the millions of little sparks that always led him to an infection, he widened his focus, taking in the man as a whole.

Not a man. Not even close to a man. Jory could feel Mal’s hellhound forms, each canine shape superimposed over his humanish soul, but they were all something that he could perceive on the same scale. This was so massive, Jory wished that he could step backward just to see his entire shape. He towered over them, stretching nearly three stories at his highest point, with long wings, claws, and teeth.

“You’re… a….” He was being strangled by a dragon.

Ignoring the way the energy seared his blood, he focused on the whole form and let some of that fire flow into him.

“You arrogant whelp,” the dragon growled, his voice distinctly less human. “You know that you can’t even contain a fraction of my power, don’t you? The only thing you can gain from challenging me is death.”

Jory tried to block out his sneer. Mal swore he was an incubus, that he should be capable of draining the life from someone else, but he’d never dared to try. Even draining a bit of damaged energy from a child hurt, but it was that or suffocate. The dragon growled, but as the fire filled his entire body, it drowned out everything else. The power roared through him, threatening to tear him apart from the inside.

For a moment, when the world went dark, Jory figured he was done. But an endless sea of gray shadows swallowed him, and lights appeared around him. A thousand little dots of gold like fireflies twinkling in the dark, calling out to him. It was the simplest thing to call back. The moment he reached for the flecks of light, the energy pouring into him shifted, flowing through him instead of burning him alive.

This didn’t fit his admittedly foggy understanding of what an incubus’s powers were supposed to include, but in a few horrible moments, he could breathe again. Breathe, but not move. The dragon’s grip had loosened—from sheer surprise, if the expression on his human face was any clue—but he didn’t release him. Jory drew a long, desperate lungful of air and pulled in more of the dragon’s energy with it. He poured every bit of the fire out as quickly as he sucked it in, making each spark around him glow white-hot, and farther-off flashes sprang to life in the gray nothingness.

As the flaming shape of the dragon spirit within its human shell began to dim, his grip went limp, and Jory landed on the ground hard. He didn’t dare let go of the dragon’s wrist, watching him slump over in his mind. A long braid of energy cut through his gut, trailing off into nothingness. Jory knew that the cord continued somewhere. “Is that where all this power comes from?” Jory asked.

Despite the fact that he was panting, that his spirit was so weak it was flickering in and out of existence, the dragon laughed. “Death by mongrel… I doubt Lord Samael ever imagined he would lose one of his knights to a cretin that isn’t fit to be a pawn.”

Jory stood up as the dragon crumpled to the ground. He let go, but the way his spirit went dark was unmistakable. The burning cord shattered, becoming thousands of sparks that floated through the darkness until they fizzled out completely.

He shook his head, suddenly feeling sick. He’d ministered to the dying at New Life. He’d recited Psalms as family and friends wept and watched their loved ones fade away. He’d never tried to heal them, but he’d never hurt them either. Being able to actually help people had always been something that defined him, as much as baking or being a brunet. He might lie to people, he might rob them blind—but he wasn’t a killer.

And he wouldn’t become one now.

He knelt beside the unconscious form and touched his neck, letting the flood of excess energy still burning inside of him flow back to its rightful place. The dragon shuddered and gasped, bolting upright.

For all that, Jory had forgotten about the zombie lurking behind him. As a cold, bloody hand closed around his arm, he screamed and scrambled back. Behind the ghoul, Mal was running, shedding his clothing before he rammed into the creature. Mal sent him spinning, tackling him and pinning him. Mal wrapped his massive jaws around the ghoul’s rotting neck and bit down so hard that Jory heard the crunch of bone fracturing.

Behind them, Louise whimpered. Jory shoved himself to his feet and rushed toward her, trusting Mal to keep the other two away for a few minutes. He set his hands on her, glaring at her when she snarled at him. Four long lacerations ran over her shoulder and down her back, cutting almost to the bone. Two puncture wounds were bleeding near her hip, but they weren’t nearly as deep as the longer gashes.

He’d been healing people for so long, this part was easy compared to sucking in an inferno of burning dragon. He focused on the gaping wounds and pulled, hissing as the flesh on his back split apart. Despite the pain, he noticed the way the energy inside of Louise circulated through him, his own energy flowing into her in turn. For a moment everything stilled, and Jory focused on the flow of power.

He opened his eyes, light-headed but relieved. Louise wasn’t about to bleed to death. He wouldn’t make any bets about his own chances, but he didn’t have time to second-guess things. His sweater felt wet as the fresh blood seeped into the fabric.

“Mal….” Jory couldn’t quite force the words out.

For a moment Mal’s burning eyes seemed to stare through him.

A woman walking down the street stared at Mal in horror, screaming and fumbling a cell phone out of her purse. Mal didn’t even seem to notice. He kept his jaws locked around the ghoul, growling.

Louise nipped at Jory’s hand, tugging him down the sidewalk.

“But Mal….”

She growled, and just like the noise Mal managed, it cut straight through his thoughts to a primal part of his brain that secretly knew he was more prey than predator. When she finally stopped, she pawed at what was left of Mal’s clothes, somehow fitting it all in her jaws, and cocked her head to the side.

“What about Mal?” Jory asked, turning to look back at the chaos. Mal had one of the ghoul’s arms in his mouth, flipping his head back and forth to rip the rotten flesh and pop the bone out of its socket. He was suddenly very glad that Mal had shifted into a dog in the hotel rather than the nightmare that was splattering bits of pallid skin around the street.

Jory looked for the dragon, but there was no sign of golden skin among the horrified people gawking at Mal’s carnage.

Louise barked at him.

“But he’s…. The cops are going to kill him!”

She barked again, this time from farther down the street.

“Shit.” He took off after her.

She moved along the street as quickly as she could, making a beeline for the alley behind the café. No matter how much adrenaline was coursing through him, running away was difficult when every step hurt. He hadn’t quite made it to the door when Mal’s Mustang roared down the alley and screeched to a halt beside him.

Apparently oblivious to the fact that he was naked and covered in blood, Mal leapt out and grabbed Jory by his upper arms. “What happened? Where did it hurt you?”

“It didn’t,” he said, surprised when he heard the rasp in his own voice. “It tried to strangle me. Mal, that was a dragon. A real-life, wings-the-size-of-buildings dragon. And it almost cut Louise in half.”

“But you’re the one who’s bleeding.”

“You helped me, so I helped her,” he said simply. “Selma keeps a first aid kit. I just need some bandages.”

“You mean the older demon you work with?” Mal asked.

Jory resumed his limping trek to the door. “I’m not going to pretend I know what you’re talking about.”

“Jory, your boss is—”

“Look, you might be totally okay with this whole werewolves, demons, and magic stuff, but I’m not. I don’t care what kind of label you want to throw on her, she’s my boss and my friend. We can argue about species later.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Mal said.

Jory didn’t say a word as he tried to move again. Now that the rush of terror had started to fade, he hurt enough that all he could do was clench his teeth to keep from screaming.

“Damn it, how badly did you get hurt healing her?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t,” Mal said, touching the neckline of Jory’s black sweater. His fingers came away crimson and wet. “What were you thinking?”

“That a few scars seemed like a fair trade to me. This morning I took a deep breath without pain for the first time in half a year. I just got psychically electrocuted channeling a fucking dragon into magic little fireflies, so healing from this will probably be the least crazy thing about my day.”

“Fireflies?”

“Yes, fireflies. It’s….” He clenched his eyes shut as the world began to spin around him.

“You can explain later, okay? Right now the back of your sweater is soaked with blood. It just looks wet because it’s black, but it’s a lot of blood.” His gaze darted from one end of the alley to the other, as if he were no more capable of sitting still than Louise.

“I’ll be fine once the bleeding stops.”

“Assuming it stops.” Mal’s gaze finally settled and he looked up, staring intently at Jory. “If you can draw injuries from her, you can draw enough energy from me to heal yourself, right? That’s what knocked the dragon on its ass?”

He didn’t knock it down. He never wanted to feel a spirit fade under his touch again. “I didn’t take its energy, I kind of… threw it away. All of it.”

Mal gaped at him.

“What?”

“Okay, let’s not worry about the dragon,” Mal insisted. “You need to siphon some of my power, just enough to stop the bleeding if you’re uncomfortable with it, but you need to do it now.”

“I don’t think I work that way,” he said honestly. How easy would it be to lose control of himself again, to scatter Mal’s soul among the thousands of blinking lights floating around the abyss surrounding them?

Mal gently took his arm. “You did it automatically last night. You need to do it again.”

Jory tried to shake his head, but that was one movement his body wasn’t up for.

“Look, I’m not a dragon, obviously. Even so, my clan are anything but weak. I was young when I left. I’m pretty sure I’d have crushed my brothers in terms of strength if I’d stayed. You won’t hurt me.”

“Modest much?” Jory managed.

“My point is that unless you set out to kill me, I doubt you’re going to do more than leave me a little worn-out. Nothing a cup of coffee and a breakfast burrito can’t cure.”

“You don’t know that. Besides, I don’t know how to do it,” he insisted.

“Your body does, even if you don’t. Maybe start out like you’re trying to heal me, and go from there?”

Jory closed his eyes, remembering the feeling that warmed him through as his night nurse bathed him—when he’d gone from waiting to die to believing he could survive. He might not have been awake for whatever happened with Mal, and he wasn’t going to repeat that dragon trick anytime soon, but he remembered the sensation from the hospital.

“Are you sure?”

“If you’re not willing, I’ll drag you to the ER if I have to.”

“You’re not wearing anything. Again,” Jory pointed out.

“You think that’s going to stop me? Shifting shreds clothes. I promise you, I’ve had to do a lot of interesting things naked. If anything, we’ll be stopped by the cops. I’ll take them as hellhounds and then I’ll have help dragging you to the hospital. What’ll it be?”

Jory sighed, hesitated for a moment, then grabbed Mal’s wrist. The same warm feeling he’d enjoyed that morning shot through his veins, flooded every part of him, and produced a glowing map of Mal’s body in his mind. Channels of energy, each bright and clear, made a dozen complicated layers of Mal’s spirit visible, stacked upon one another. Every now and then, something that wasn’t quite right echoed through each layer, as if his spirit and his body had been pieced together, cutting out some bits from one form and placing them into others. “Huh… I think you do get hurt.”

“Of course I get hurt. But my body can repair itself by shifting. I might have to shift a couple of times, but I can do it.”

Jory closed his eyes, trying to sense each layer clearly. Some layers were like a mirror image of Louise, not just physically but spiritually too. And some were so tattered that Jory doubted Mal even knew they’d once existed. They were inaccessible, fading scraps of hellhound forms that had been sacrificed to keep Mal whole. No matter how much Mal liked to brag, his power wasn’t infinite. “What happens if you lose one of your hellhound forms?” he asked urgently.

“What are you talking about?”

“There are layers that aren’t whole anymore,” Jory said, at a loss for how to explain. He gestured to Mal’s human body. “Each shape is different, something else you can shift into. And some of them are scraps that I can’t even see. You seem to think you’re invincible, but you’ve got seven forms I can’t actually make out and at least five that are… almost gone. You have plenty of others, but they can all be damaged.”

“Seven?” Mal arched an eyebrow at him. “I suppose we all lose some of our power when we get older, and I honestly only bother with a few useful skins. We all settle into the forms we’re comfortable with as we grow up. Maybe the other possibilities fade away after a few years.”

Jory swallowed hard and dropped his gaze. “I didn’t map your spirit as thoroughly as I should have when we slept together. I saw the first ones, but…. What if helping me last night is the reason that those forms are dying?”

Mal’s earnest expression faltered for a moment. “I made my choice,” he said at last. “I won’t let you die. I can’t. If that means I have to give up being a terrier, so be it.”

Jory had to make him understand. “You can’t turn into a terrier anyway. Not a single one of these shapes is small enough to be a terrier. But this could hurt you, even if you don’t notice it immediately.”

“Jory, if you can heal little kids, you have enough control to do this. If I get tired or it feels like too much, I’ll stop you. But we need to do this now and then get off the street.”

“This once.” Jory nodded. “Never again.”

“No promises,” Mal said, smirking. He clasped his right hand over Jory’s fingers, where Jory still held his left wrist.

Jory closed his eyes and focused, feeling out the lines of energy again. Mal felt so warm, so welcoming, that Jory relaxed and just let Mal’s strength flow into him. After a moment of feeling the steady flow of energy ripple through Mal and up Jory’s arm, Mal gasped. Jory opened his eyes in an instant and tried to let go. Mal kept his hand locked over Jory’s, keeping him still.

His eyes were closed and his mouth wide.

“Mal?”

“I’m fine.”

Trying to ignore Mal’s expression and panting, Jory focused on the tattered remains of one of Mal’s older hellhound forms, pulling at the last threads of power with frighteningly little resistance. The sharp pain in his shoulder eased, and when the first form was gone, Jory focused on the next, and then the next.

“Fucking hell, I see why incubi are considered sex demons,” Mal muttered, blushing furiously and not opening his eyes.

Jory glanced down at Mal’s groin, where his cock had grown long and hard.

Jory couldn’t help himself. He pushed a little of his own energy into Mal, pulled a little more back, and watched Mal double over, gasping again. His expression was caught somewhere between ecstasy and awe, and Jory grinned, thrilled that he had managed to put that look on Mal’s face.

“Maybe we should go upstairs?” Mal suggested, struggling with each word.

“I don’t know,” Jory said, smirking. “You were the one who said you didn’t have any qualms about being naked in public.”

Mal dropped his hand, his entire body going stiff. Jory let go fast, watching him push back what could have been one of the most interesting orgasms Jory’d ever witnessed.

“Are you okay?” Mal asked, breathing heavy.

He’d rather go back to bleeding all over Mal than admit that he felt incredibly good and horribly bad all at the same time. The pain in his back and shoulder was still there, but now the gashes felt more like a bad sunburn. But the damage he’d done to Mal was something he could never heal—and Mal had enjoyed it.

“I think my back is better,” Jory said eventually. “It’ll still need a couple of gauze pads, but I’ll be okay.”

“We need to get off the street. Let me get some clothes and we’ll figure something out.” Mal popped the trunk of his car and quickly began to rummage through things. In a matter of minutes, he was dressed and smelling of peppermint. He tossed an empty bottle of Listerine into a nearby dumpster, then dusted his hands off. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Does this really seem like the time to worry about your breath?” Jory asked, annoyed. “And we can’t leave your car here, it’s blocking half the alley.”

Mal carefully maneuvered Jory toward the back door of the café, leaning too damn far into his personal space. When he spoke, his voice was low and conveyed more emotion than Jory expected. “A few minutes ago I broke a dead man’s spine with my teeth to protect you. This might make me sound like an asshole, but until you’ve done the same, you don’t get to venture an opinion about the value of mouthwash. For now, just be grateful I resisted the urge to lick you. The car doesn’t matter. You’re alive and I want you to stay that way, so I’m getting you inside. I’ll move it after you’re safe, and if it gets towed in the meantime… it’s just a car.”

“I have a feeling that at the moment, I’d taste worse than the guy you killed,” Jory said, glancing at his grime- and blood-covered shoulder.

Mal smirked and leaned toward him, licking a tiny spot of skin just below Jory’s ear, nearly making him squeal despite the lingering pain and doubt. He watched Mal lick his lips, apparently considering the flavor. “Pain doesn’t taste good on you. There’s blood, which is gross, fear, which isn’t much better. But under all that, you taste like your cookies.”

Jory took a deep breath, reminding himself that he was reading too much into a reaction Mal didn’t seem capable of controlling. “I think I’ll be okay with Selma.”

“Please let me stay and help you out.”

Jory’s gaze settled on the dark bloodstains on the pavement where Mal had saved him last night.

“I’m sorry,” Mal said, his entire expression softening. “That was messy.”

“Even over the blood, you can smell when I’m nervous, can’t you?”

Mal chuckled. “Yes. Is it me staying you’re nervous about, or whoever sent that ghoul?”

Jory gave him a look. “Seriously?” he asked, even though he wasn’t sure of the answer.

“Just checking,” Mal said with a shrug. “Come on, I can help get that shirt off you and wrap you up like a mummy, then we’ll figure out food.”

“I don’t have bandages. I don’t have much of anything,” he explained, leading Mal inside the back door of the café. Each step nudged his sticky sweater off his skin, making him cringe.

The kitchen smelled wonderful, like chocolate chip cookies and cheesecake, but since it was the beginning of the lunch rush, it was empty. “Selma? Hana?” he called, leaning out the door and peeking into the café.

Selma was there, pacing in the kitchen while Carly managed the front counter. Selma frowned when she saw him, hurrying to check on him. “Jory, where have you been? Hana’s spent the morning looking everywhere for you and we’ve been—” She stopped cold when she saw Mal.

“I’m so sorry about this morning,” Jory managed.

“—worried,” she finished. “What happened out there? For a minute, it felt like we lost you.”

He opened his mouth to answer but hesitated. Even if he actually believed everything Mal told him, everything he’d seen with his own eyes, he’d assumed Selma would think he was insane. But he needed to know if Mal had been telling the truth, if there were more people like him right under his nose. If she could feel him suffocating, Mal might be right. “Uh… this is nuts, but are you a demon?”

“Jory, it’s really a bit rude to ask someone something like that,” she said, not fazed at all.

“That’s a yes, isn’t it?”

She seemed frustrated but not upset. “Obviously, yes. Just a hybrid. My great-grandfather is a demon, but telling people that just tends to make them think I’m senile, and I’m too young for any of that nonsense.”

Mal looked confused. “You don’t smell like a succubus up close….”

Selma grinned and cocked her head to the side. “If I smell like anything but smoke and spices, I’d be surprised. But I suppose if you work with an incubus long enough, something of them wears off.”

“You mean me?” Jory asked, knowing it was true.

She grinned and nodded. “Of course, none of that charm business will work on anyone with demonic blood, but you’re kind of overwhelming. I don’t have too many demonic traits myself, but my grandfather is an ifrit.”

“A what?” Jory asked.

She reached into the oven, grabbed a pan of cupcakes, and set it down on the table. With her bare hands. “A fire demon. Although I promise it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds. Since the only set of oven mitts in this kitchen is the one I bought for you after you burned two aprons pulling sheet pans out of the oven, can you really say you’re surprised?”

“I guess that explains Hana’s obsession with blowing things up,” he admitted thoughtfully.

Selma rolled her eyes. “Don’t give her an excuse. We’re not slaves to our powers, and even if we were, nothing in our nature compels her to squeal when she shoots action figures out of an air cannon or makes a fireball the size of a house. And you didn’t answer my question. What happened? We’ve all been worried sick about you, especially after hearing that warning yesterday and trying to ignore whatever is wreaking havoc outside.”

“I think,” Jory said carefully, “that might have been me. Something weird was outside of Finnegan’s when Mal and I went out to dinner. After my shift yesterday, it was waiting in the alley,” Jory explained, somehow managing to keep his voice calm. “It tried to attack me, but Mal… helped.”

“Technically your friend Neal helped too,” Mal grumbled.

She crossed her arms. “I saw the mess when the police woke me up at two in the morning.”

“I am so sorry about that. Did you get any sleep?”

“It’s not your fault, and there’s always espresso. Did it target you? Or your new friend?”

“Me. It came after me. When it attacked us again this afternoon….” He bit his lower lip. “There was a dragon with it this time. It looked like a guy with golden skin and black eyes, but it was a three-story-tall dragon. I don’t…. It’s weird. It tried to strangle me, but I managed to get away.”

“It what?” Selma cut Jory off, rushing to his side. She tilted his chin up and examined his neck carefully. She nudged aside the neckline of his sweater and hissed. “You need to go to a hospital.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Mal helped me out.”

She folded her arms and turned toward Mal, her expression filled with suspicion. Even though she was only five feet tall, she seemed to occupy every inch of the kitchen. “What was the thing outside last night?”

“A ghoul,” Mal said, his tone uncomfortable. “I haven’t actually seen one on earth before, and it was hard to kill. I don’t even know how to describe its scent.” He paused for a moment, his eyes becoming unfocused. “Aside from coppery.”

“You know what Mal is?” Jory asked, pointing at Mal.

“Jory, hon, he’s the psychic equivalent of a walking brick wall. Nothing like you, but he’s still difficult to miss.”

Mal seemed to relax a little, preening despite the circumstances.

“You are such a giant puppy,” Jory muttered.

“Figuring out why it was after you will have to wait. Thank you for bringing Jory home, but I think I should take him to the ER, just in case.”

“No. It’s still out there, and I really am all right.”

“Jory, I can handle myself. Right now, it doesn’t seem like you can,” she said.

Louise had gotten hurt protecting him. Mal had killed people while protecting him, and he’d essentially given Jory a sixth of his soul to heal him. Jory couldn’t do more to fix things than he already had, but he’d be damned if he made things worse again. He wasn’t about to risk Selma’s life by dragging her out into the open with him. He’d accept Mal’s offer of a ride out of town because walking to the bus depot would take a little over an hour, and he didn’t want to face whatever demon found him next.

“If you get hurt, there’s a chance I won’t be able to fix it,” Jory said immediately. “His dog, Louise, almost got sliced to pieces by the dragon, and I can’t see that happen to someone else. Not to you.”

Jory leaned against the counter, still weak despite the power he’d taken from Mal. He met Selma’s insistent gaze, trying to gauge what might convince her that he was better off dealing with this on his own. Where Mal felt fierce and enticing, like some beautiful animal that was as impressive as it was dangerous, Selma had always felt warm and comforting. But he was pretty sure if he pissed her off, that warmth would turn into an inferno in an instant.

“You’re leaving, then?”

“I don’t know what else I can do.”

“You can stay and rest,” she said simply. “Your mutt might have a standing invitation, but I’ll be damned if I’d invite a ghoul or dragon into my place. You’re safe here.”

He knew he had to leave, but the chance to rest and feel safe for a few hours was too tempting to ignore.

“I won’t leave him alone,” Mal promised. “I’ll keep him safe.”

Selma gave them a curt nod. “He needs rest, and you both need to eat. Give me a second, I’ll throw some things in a to-go box.”