* * *
It wasn’t Erik.It was Jake, and when she opened her burning eyes he was looming over her, blue gaze oddly empty and the ivory plastic bedside phone clamped to his ear.He dropped the receiver into the cradle as she inhaled, scrambling away—her neck ached, her back was a solid bar of pain, and both her legs felt like wet noodles.
Whiplash was a bitch, and she was in yet another hotel room.
Her shoulders hit the headboard of a cheap motel bed.He was right after her, his knees sinking into pillows on either side of her hips, and his big, warm, callused hand clapped over her mouth.
“Don’tscream,” he said, pleasant and low.“Please.It’s… distracting.”
OhGod, ohChrist someone, anyone, please…She stared at him, her shoulders pressed against the headboard—who knows what had been wiped off thin, pale-pink vinyl?
This room wasn’t quite seedy but it wasn’t entirely nice either, and the mirror on the far wall showed Jake’s shoulders, his wild snow-frosted hair, but not his bruised face or the bloody grime on his hands.He looked, quite frankly, like he’d been put through the wringer.
“Good,” he said, still in that deceptively quiet, mild tone.It clashed uneasily with the glittering rage in blue eyes and the flush in what few parts of his face remained uninjured.“That’s better.Now, I’m gonna take my hand away and you’re gonna play nice, or I will gag you.Clear?”
Her chin dropped, rose again; her eyes were welling with smoke-induced tears.They both reeked of gasoline and the terrible, stomach-churning miasma of monsters.A scorching drop tracked hot down her cheek, touched his fingers.
Jake peeled his palm away from her mouth, ready to clamp down again at any moment.“I’m gonna clean the ichor off both of us.Can you hold still while I do that?”
Liv swallowed, hard.Nodded again.
“Good girl.”The soft edge of approval was terrifying, a thin veneer over a deep well of fury.It was very much like being locked in a cage with a hungry tiger—not that she ever had been, but Liv could goddamn well extrapolate.“After that, I suggest a change of clothes.We’re gonna move when the sun’s high enough.All right?”
Move where?It was a silly question, she decided.She pushed her shoulders back into the headboard.“Okay.”Her voice shook, but she managed to produce an almost normal tone.
“Verygood girl.”Jake’s right hand dropped to her shoulder, cupping gently.He exhaled, eyes narrowing, and the sensation was odd—tiny bubbles sliding over her skin, steam-ribbons of monster blood lifting and shredding into nonexistence.A powerful, almost musky smell folded over both of them.
Who knew magic had a scent?Liv certainly hadn’t until now.As Lou often intoned while telling stories about his husband’s antics, you did indeed learn something new every day on this blessed earth.
“You hurt anywhere?”Jake studied her face.“Bruises, cuts?You’ve got to tell me.Even a papercut, Livvie.Anywhere at all?”
How the hell should I know?“Whiplash,” she managed between dry cracked lips.“My neck, my back.Other than that, I think I’m?—”
“Got it.Hold still.”His hand tensed against her torn, smoke-stained jacket.A flood of warmth slid down her back, reaching insubstantial fingers to stroke her nape.Liv’s muscles went liquid and she sagged, gasping.“Be easier if you were sealed up, but?—”
“When will you tell me what that is?”she rasped.
“I suppose I should.”He retreated inch by inch, but the warmth remained, bathing her from top to toes.It even combed through her hair, and she could have sworn she felt every individual strand trying to twitch and grow some more.“But not if it’s going to freak you out.”
“Honestly, how much more could… no, wait.”A nervous toss of her head, her shoulders sliding against pink vinyl.“Don’t answer that.”
“Smart lady.”He retreated further, again very slowly, slithering off the bed.The way he moved, catlike and supple, was both comforting and deeply disturbing.“Go on into the bathroom and change.There’s a backpack in there.”
“Let me get this straight.”If she could just find some sort of handle on the situation,anyhandle, she’d feel a lot better.“You pulled me out of a burning car with monsters attacking and somehow stopped to get a change of clothes?”
“For you.”He slithered off the end of the bed and rose to his full height, dried blood and monster-goo cracking on his skin and clothing.“It’s the training, cupcake.Every single thing living on this rock owes theliraieverything.Debt’s never paid, and gets deeper all the time.So we make it easy on you.But there’s something you can give us, when we’ve been very good boys.”
Since there aren’t any daughters, only Sons.Ignatius had explainedthat, at least—liraiwere any gender, but the Sons were all male.The mark wouldn’t stay on a woman; it just burned through the skin and kept eating.The end result apparently wasn’t pretty in any way, shape, or form.
Looked like their mad god didnotbelieve in equal-opportunity hiring.Which fucking figured.
“What’s that?”Her eyes still smarted, yes, but the terrible burning was gone, and the deep smoky pain in her lungs had receded.All things considered, she felt all right.
Except for the shaking.Not to mention the urge to howl and bolt for the door, just run flat-out until her heart burst and she saved all the monsters the trouble of killing her.
“You can stop the whispers.”He spread his hands and shuddered.
Liv watched, fascinated, as the monster blood slid off him in little steam-threads.The fresh crop of bruising on his face went back to yellow-green, looking weeks instead of bare hours old, and a fluid feline shiver went through him again.He rolled his big shoulders, muscle settling almost audibly, and when his eyes snapped open again she was almost surprised to find them still blue, and very human.No funny sparks or diseased glow, just… normal.
