Touch of Evil Page 5

  “I-I’m fine,” he said hastily, forcing his eyes away from her scantily clad curves.

  “Oh, but I don’t believe you, sir. You look plumb tuckered out. Come sit over here and we’ll have ourselves a nice chat while you rest up a bit.”

  He swallowed loudly, his Adams apple bobbing nervously. The idea of her so casually inviting him to sit with her while she was just short of naked had his thought processes stalling to a stop. Everything he had ever been taught told him that this was wrong. A decent woman would have run for cover the second she saw him. But this woman was in no way running from him. In fact, she seemed to be offering him something, something he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to turn down. His emotions were already stretched to the point of breaking. He didn’t think it would take very much for him to completely fall apart.

  He managed to emphatically shake his head when he realized that his voice had given out on him. She smiled again, the action looking both innocent and calculated at the same time.

  “It’s all right to be afraid. Fear is healthy, keeps us from doing things that would most likely get us killed. All those bodies, all that blood. Why, a pretty thing like you wouldn’t know how to handle that sort of thing.”

  Ash couldn’t tell if she was mocking him, since the inflection of her voice never changed. But a shiver ran up his spine the way her lips had lingered over the word “blood,” like it was a rare delicacy. He suddenly felt the need to get far away from this woman, and quickly. He pulled away from her and took a step back, shaking his head once again.

  “No. I have to be getting back. They’ll miss me.” For some reason, he didn’t turn and run like he had from the battlefield. Instead, he watched as she moved towards him again, her body swaying with each step.

  “You are a good man, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t know how to answer the question. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to, since she seemed to be talking to herself now. So, he stayed silent, willing himself to move and get out of there. Unfortunately, his body wouldn’t obey.

  “The closest thing to pure I’ve come across in a long time. Why, I bet you’re still a virgin.”

  Ash’s face flamed with indignation that she would ponder such a thing flared in his chest. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, ma’am. Maybe you ought to be getting on home.”

  “But, cher, I am home. The night is my home.”

  She was on him now, pressing her body tightly against his as she stared up into his eyes. He held desperately onto his control, fighting the feelings her closeness had awakened in him. Dark, seductive feelings that made him want to accept whatever it was she offered.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me, mon petit. I can make it all better. Make you strong and powerful. Give you what you need to be a man. Show you things…” her lips were a whisper away from his now, her breath tickling his mouth and hardening his body, “—you’ve never seen. Just say yes, cher, and the night can be your home, too. I’ve been waiting for someone like you for eternity.”

  A thousand things spun through Ash’s mind in that second and none of them had anything to do with the battle he had just run from or the God he had promised his life to. All of them centered around this woman. Things he had never allowed himself to think burst free in a gleeful spray of color. He saw the promise in her eyes, saw that she could make her words come true. He felt himself nod, and the breath hissed through his teeth when she raised a hand to his face, her cool touch soothing his heated skin.

  “I’ll make you feel good, cher,” she whispered, before her mouth brushed across his.

  His lips parted on instinct and a shudder wracked through him when her tongue eagerly snaked between them. He gasped into her mouth when her free hand brazenly pushed inside his pants to grasp his length.

  She moaned, long and low, her hand steadily pumping his shaft with rough strokes. “Touch me, cher,” she demanded, nipping his lips with her sharp teeth. He vaguely tasted blood before she was kissing him senseless again, her hand on his cock, stroking him, driving him half insane. A flash of pain had him crying out as her grip tightened. “Touch me.”

  Afraid to admit he didn’t know what to do, Ash raised his hands and filled them with the heavy orbs of her breasts. “Yes,” she sighed, arching into him, exposing the slim column of her throat.

  Instinct pushed him forward to nip at the skin there, to taste the honey of her flesh. “So warm,” she murmured. “It’s been so long since I’ve felt warm.”

  He had no idea what her words meant, lost all care of their meaning as her hand moved faster over his length. “I … can’t…” he gasped, thrusting into her grip. He wanted … no, he needed something. He tried to pull away, tried to figure out what that something could be, but she held him firm.

  “I know, cher. I know.”

  The breath whooshed out of Ash’s mouth as he found himself suddenly on the ground, the coldness of it seeping through his uniform. With fast, sure hands, she dragged his pants down his legs and placed her tongue on the newly exposed flesh of his thighs. A strangled moan ripped from his throat when her lips closed around his shaft for a few hot, wet kisses.

  His head thrashed from side to side as sensation tore him, his hips moving of their own volition, his hands dipping into the midnight of her hair to hold her in place.

  She pulled easily away, her laugh ringing through the night to torment him. She rose above him, her now naked skin gloriously luminescent against the dark of the night. “Take me in.”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  Her mouth spread into a wide smile and her eyes flashed an eerie red as she lowered on him and took his solid cock into her body. A moan of pure pleasure burst from both of them. Never in all of Ash’s life had he felt anything so wonderful, so exquisite as the feel of her body sliding over his. She was so tight, so slick and cool on his hot flesh. He thought he could die quite happy in that second. Her breasts jostled with her movements, her face slack with bliss. Long nails bit painfully into his chest, but he didn’t care. She could cause him all the pain there was in the world, as long as she kept doing what she was doing. All thoughts of the war, his family … even God were pushed away with the feel of her body around him.

  “You’re mine now, cher,” she gasped as her body let loose with shudders.

  Ash cried out as her channel clenched around him, making him explode with pleasure just this side of pain. The last thing he remembered before the world went black was the sharp, exquisite agony as her teeth bit into his jugular and the dark arousal that emanated from the bite to spread like liquid fire throughout his blood.

  With a deep sigh, Ash pushed all thought of that fateful night away and the lingering feelings of lust that always seemed to come with it. He didn’t like to dwell on the past, choosing instead to look to the future. The lives of the people he could save and the creatures that he could kill were more important to him than tearing himself apart over things that couldn’t be changed. He supposed that he should feel guilty for killing his own kind. But he had left most of his guilt back in that clearing, over a hundred years ago.

  When he had rediscovered it again, it was too late to do anything about what had been done. So he chose instead, to fight against those of his kind that were drunk on their own power. He wasn’t looking for redemption, or trying to earn any kind of favor from a God he wasn’t sure he believed in anymore. He just wanted to do what he thought was right.

  His perception of vampires and werewolves and other creatures of the like wasn’t as black and white as Mark’s. He’d lived a long time, and knew that these creatures—as well as humans—didn’t fit into the molds that most wanted them to fit in. He’d spent the last twelve years trying to show Mark that not all vampires were like the monster that had killed his parents. And, if he didn’t love the boy so damn much—not to mention his respect for Cyrus—the bite he had given to prove a point would have put the boy in the ground.

  Ash had once thought that night in
the clearing had pretty much closed the door on any family he would ever have. He had never returned to his own, and vampires couldn’t have children. At least, not outside of fairytales. So when he had met Cyrus, on the very night his wife had been killed, he’d figured that he would give the old man a hand from time to time. For some reason, the two men gravitated toward each other, becoming friends quickly. Then he had met Wanda, who was a bright eyed, smart five-year old at the time. He had realized, as he looked into the black eyes of the little girl, that he hadn’t really known what love was before then. She had worshiped him in turn, despite what he was.

  The day that Cyrus handed him the note Wanda had left for him—not her father, not Flora, but him—had to have been the blackest day in his long life. When he had gone to see her and her new husband, hoping to fix what had been broken, she had ripped his heart in half by telling him that she would always love him and she appreciated what he was trying to do, but she didn’t want either him or her father in her life anymore.

  That hadn’t kept him from gladly keeping an eye on her at Cyrus’ request. He would have done it even if the old man hadn’t asked. It just gave him an excuse. Sometimes, when he was around, she would stare in his direction and smile, as if saying, “busted”. But she never confronted him and she would quickly go back to whatever she was doing. He thought that maybe she’d liked knowing that she had her own personal, silent bodyguard.

  He hadn’t been there, however, on the night she had needed him most. And he would have to live with that until the day he finally turned to dust.

  “You’re never going to get to sleep this way,” Ash mumbled to himself, turning on his side and trying to clear his mind.

  A smile curved his mouth when a picture of Eve flashed across his consciousness. He spent the next few moments remembering the way she moved, the way she talked. If it had been under any other circumstances, he might have considered going after her. But the fact that he was doing a job for her, coupled with her obvious opinion of vampires, pretty much ruled out any type of liaison . A brief flash of regret shot through him, but he easily pushed it away. He wasn’t one for denying himself when it came to women. Usually, he would share a few, wonderful months with a woman, before letting her go to have a full life with a nice, human man. One that could give her children and grow old with her as opposed to staying perpetually young while she aged. He always kept it light, letting them know from the get go that they weren’t permanent. Most were fine with that. He was proud to say that he had only broken a couple of hearts in the last seventy-five years.

  He supposed it was selfish, since he did realize that he was really only saving himself the heartbreak of watching another person he loved die. It was extremely difficult, knowing that he would some day lose both Cyrus and Mark, and he had already lived through his sire’s death. That was enough for him.

  Giving up on getting to sleep on the couch, Ash sat up and turned off the TV. Leaving the cup sitting on the coffee table, he went to his bedroom, stripping as he walked. He slid into his bed and sighed in pleasure. It only took a few minutes before he relaxed enough to drift to sleep, his dreams immediately tormented by Eve.

  Chapter Four

  “Flora!” Mark’s voice reverberated throughout the store, overpowering the tinkling of the bell on the door. The smell of herbs and aged books assailed him, bringing one word to mind. Home.

  He had spent the majority of his youth here, when he wasn’t training or patrolling. He’d poured over the books, finding out quickly that most of his prior knowledge of other worldly creatures had been mostly crap, as his grandfather would say. The first time he had realized that there were inter-dimensional gates spread throughout the world where demons could get into this dimension and wreak havoc, he had felt fear like nothing he’d ever before experienced.

  The sight of those same old books, stacked on shelves, tables and the floor, now made him smile. Crystals hung in a row in front of the large window, the sun reflecting their inner rainbows on the walls. Sage and jasmine and a multitude of other aromatics combined to make a perfume so unique, Mark forever associated it with Flora.

  “I know that’s not Mark coming into my store screaming like that, especially after he’s been such a bad boy, not coming to see me.” Flora’s words drifted out from a room that was partitioned off from the rest of the store by a long, beaded curtain. Mark grinned at the reproach in her voice and leaned against the counter to wait for her.

  The chinking of the beads hitting each other announced her entrance an instant after the smell of her perfume hit his nostrils. Sweet and flowery, it amazingly didn’t clash with the other aromas permeating the old bookstore. Just as amazingly, neither did she. The antique look of the store in no way returned itself on the woman walking towards him. She was tall and round, with bright, brassy blonde hair and big, purple shaded brown eyes. She wore a long, flowing caftan splashed with every color imaginable and a pair of simple sandals. A rather significant cross made out of clear quartz rested against her ample bosom and several rings flashed from her fingers. Her personality was as big as her hair and her heart as pure as the crystals she sold.

  Mark smiled broadly as he watched her walk over, the stern, reproachful look doing nothing to diminish his joy at seeing her.

  “Hello gorgeous,” he purred, leaning down to brush a kiss across her heavily powdered cheek. She arched a brow and pursed her lips in annoyance, but tilted her head to accept his kiss.

  “Don’t try to sweet talk me, boy. I’m wise to your ways.” She sent him a glare that threatened to have him shuffling his feet like a chastised schoolboy. He managed to stay still, but only barely. Flora pinned him with eyes that saw everything, looking him over the way she did one of her books. He stood and took it, waiting for her to decide that he looked okay.

  She took in the unshaved jaw, the sleek hair around his shoulders, and the ever-present hard edge in his opaque eyes. He looked none the worse for the wear, and she nodded with approval.

  “So, you gonna forgive me?” he asked, amusement coating his words.

  “Humph.” Flora snorted, before turning towards the counter piled high with books and papers and lifting a heavy stack. “Don’t know why I should. Spend twelve years trying to make sure a boy comes up right and what does he do? Ignores you. I could have died in this store and you’d be none the wiser.” She turned back to face him, her eyes glittering with mischief.

  Mark let out a chuckle. He took the books from her, and plucked one of her hands up to give it an exaggerated kiss. “Please, m’lady. I shall lie down on this floor and die if you do not say that you will forgive me.”

  They both struggled to keep straight faces. It was Flora that broke first. She let out a giggle and slapped him gently on the shoulder before pulling her hand free. “Pshh. I never should have told you all those King Arthur stories. You use them against me every time.” She pulled her hand free and crossed her arms over her chest.

  He grinned down at her for a second, before his gaze turned serious. “I’m sorry,” he said, all joking gone from his voice.

  She felt the sting of tears behind her eyes and blinked to keep them back. “Don’t let it happen again,” she replied, fighting the emotional scene that would make Mark uncomfortable. “Forgiven?”

  “Forgiven.” Mark grinned at her again, a smile so huge and real it stole Flora’s breath. She inhaled deeply when he looked down at the stack of papers he was holding, to fight the urge to grab him and hug him until his bones cracked. The Lord hadn’t seen fit to bless her with children of her own, and he was all that she had.

  “So, what’s all this?” he asked.

  “Everything I could find about Sirens. Cyrus called,” she explained when his gaze shot up to hers.

  Mark rolled his eyes and gave his head a shake. He counted the books and thick stacks of paper in his hands. “Jesus. All this? Any of it fact?”

  Flora bit the inside of her cheek and reached for something on the top of the pile.
Her hand came back with a slim stack of papers, no more than three pages thick.

  Mark’s eyes widened. “Just that?”

  “Yep. Most of those other texts are literary references and Greek legend. The most popular are Odysseus and Jason and the Argonauts.”

  “Wait, it says here they have the wings of a bird, torso of a woman and the tail of a fish. I somehow doubt we have a winged, fish-tailed woman walking around North Port.” Mark snorted, looking down at the top paper in his hands.

  “I highly doubt it, too. And you of all people should know that legend doesn’t equal truth. I doubt she feasts on human flesh, either.”

  Mark’s eyes sharpened at that as she went around the counter to look for something. If Brianne Murphy did indeed eat human flesh, she was no better than the vampire she was with. Another notch was struck against the girl in Mark’s opinion.

  “Here,” Flora said, handing Mark a computer-generated photograph. “I forgot to put this in the pile. I found a college yearbook picture of our resident Siren.”

  Mark took the printout and glanced down at it. Whatever reaction he expected to have, it certainly wasn’t the instant, rock hardening of his body. He struggled to push the feeling away as he traced the delicate lines of the girl’s face. The grainy, color printout did nothing to diminish her beauty. Her face was oval with high cheekbones, a lush mouth and an almost petite nose. Like her sister, her hair was auburn, but that was where the resemblance stopped. Brianne’s hair hung in silky waves around her bare shoulders, accenting the slim column of her throat. Her complexion was as clear and pristine as a porcelain doll. But what really caught his attention were her eyes.