Page 109 of Dead Beat

Her body was slight beneath his, burning like coals, the warm slip of her skin making him dizzy with hunger as she tried to press closer to him, her legs hooking over his.

But when he entered her, he felt her longing bank, the tide of hunger receding just as it had at Wolf’s Head. The thread of hellfire that bound them was a vibrating chord and now the note turned sour.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m okay,” she said.

“You’re not.”

“It’s always like this with me.” She shrugged, the smallest movement. In the faint moonlight from the window her eyes glittered black.

“Like what?”

“I can’t…” Again her narrow shoulders lifted. “It always feels like giving something up.”

He hesitated, feeling her fear, and his own fear of failing, of disappointing. He knew what it was to be powerless.

“Use the leash,” he whispered.

Her eyes met his. Slowly, she lifted her hand and hellfire curled around her fingers, a rope of blue flame. It leapt at his neck as if hungry for it. Some part of him rebelled at this, the loss of control. But he could give it to her.

She gave the barest tug, bringing his mouth to hers.

“Don’t be gentle,” she said. “I’m not good with gentle.”

Through the fire that bound them he felt desire return and he knew he could oblige. “I will serve you ’til the end of days,” he vowed.

She laughed. “And love me too?”

And love you too, he thought as the wind rose and the world outside grew colder.

39

Alex woke to screams. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. She often stumbled out of sleep sure that she was back at the apartment in Van Nuys, that Yale and Lethe and Il Bastone had all been a dream. There was always a sense of confusion, misery tinged with relief, because Hellie was still alive, but they were both trapped at the bottom of a well. Then reality returned: the sound of Mercy’s snores if she was in her dorm room, Dawes banging around in the kitchen below if she was in the Dante bedroom.

Not tonight. The room was quiet. Darlington slept beside her, entirely human now, his hair tousled, his body sprawled across the bed. Outside, someone shrieked.

Alex wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and made herself rise and walk to the narrow window. Snow lay heavy over the Black Elm grounds and the sky had cleared to reveal a faint smatter of stars. The bare branches of the trees were full of owls, all of them screeching and clicking, flapping their wings.

“I don’t think they approve,” Darlington mumbled.

“Good.”

Yesterday she’d felt a deep mourning. But now, thinking of her father, of his very special bloodline, his precious order of priests, she felt a kind of mad rage overtake her. A secret society operating within the secret societies, one more door locked, one more path barred. So she wasn’t a hidden princess, and no matter what Turner said about callings, she had no glorious destiny before her. Mishap, mistake, abomination. Fine. Plenty of good things happened by accident. Penicillin and … She’d think of something else eventually.

She cracked open the window. “Hey!” she yelled at the owls. “Go fuck yourselves!” They paused their shrieking, then started right back up again. She wedged the window closed against the din. “Worth a try.”

“I’m sure the neighbors agree.”

“Are we going to talk about … the glow?”

“I’d prefer we didn’t.”

“Does it only happen when you’re—”

“Yes.”

“And what if—”