“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I’ve brought some food for us.”
Tam’s head whipped around, trying to figure out if he was kidding, but he seemed sincere. For the moment, his fantasies of world domination and ultimate power must have taken a backseat to his fantasies of riding off into the sunset. Lucky her.
“I’ll just go get it,” he said.
Jack disappeared down a dark path that she knew led to the entrance of the cavern. No sense in trying to escape, yet. He’d gone toward the only exit.
As she paced, she tried to think of how to play it. Could she stomach seducing him after what he’d done to her sister?
Probably not. But if she could... wouldn’t it buy her an opportunity to get away? He might drop his guard if he was thinking about their future together, instead of eating her internal organs. Such a fine line with him.
Then what? She was back to running, stuck in this form. But she could get back to Cain. It was odd that should be her thought. Shouldn’t she want free of him? She put her hand against the mark he’d left on her throat with his fangs. It tingled when she touched it.
She wanted to believe it was just their blood connection that made her feel this way, but she’d felt it before their blood had exchanged, and she still felt like she had a choice—even now. Being with Cain wasn’t some magical foregone conclusion, and she was sure it was the same from his end. They weren’t drone-like slaves. The mark hadn’t been in effect long enough. And anyway, he’d initiated it.
She wondered if she’d start getting the dreams Anna had gotten with Luc. Seeing into Cain’s past was a prospect that both intrigued and terrified her, but the bond was still so new, and it hadn’t been done like Anna’s had. Perhaps she wouldn’t dream at all.
With regards to the demon, she was torn. At times, Cain seemed oddly normal, but then, she knew how that worked, how one hid their age and tried to pick up on the current trends of the times to blend in. If they both dropped the affectations they’d picked up over the centuries, they’d be like a couple of old fossils. Nobody else would understand them. And wasn’t that what she liked about him? That they were like the last two members of a secret club that had found each other long enough to do the secret handshake?
She was still angry with him for trying to lock her up in the caves. For her protection or not, it was a shitty thing to do. She thought about the tarot spread again. Maybe she was meant for Cain and he for her. It didn’t matter now. It was too late. And no matter what she wanted to be true, she couldn’t decide if he was toying with her or not. As long as he’d been around and resisted settling down, he must have figured out all possible permutations of mind games.
What he said and what he meant could be opposite things. Even what he did and the intention behind it could be that way. Her experience with Jack had killed her optimism for men. She just didn’t want to be some stupid girl waiting for Cain to ride up full of self-righteous vengeance to sweep her away like a fairy tale. It wasn’t like they had the big epic love. Ninety percent of their time together had been a grudge f**k—or a power struggle, using sex as the weapon they had both learned to wield.
“What are you thinking about?”
Tam jumped, too lost inside her head to hear Jack’s return. His voice came out soft and needy, like he was still planning a white picket fence and evil babies. Even the idea of seducing him—even if it would take her back to Cain, and even if Cain wanted her back—made her skin crawl like little ants.
“Nothing,” she replied. My demon lover seemed like the kind of answer that would get her spleen ripped out in short order. Because no matter how sane and puppy-like he seemed this second, things could shift at any time.
“No, it’s something.” He moved toward her and put a hand on her arm, closing his eyes.
She tried to pull away, not sure what he was doing, but then she remembered one of the coven’s witches had seen visions when they touched things or people. But it was too late for Tam to stop her thought train or get away from him.
His expression was closed and cold when he opened his eyes. “I see.” The jealousy over no doubt seeing her in the demon’s arms was only barely concealed beneath the surface. “Well, I guess you’ve made your choice. You’ve ripped out my heart, Tam. Do you know that? So I think I’ll eat yours when the moon is right.”
“It meant nothing,” Tam said, taking an instinctive step back. The moment she said it, she knew how deep the lie ran. And so did Jack.
“Save it, you little whore. I knew you’d been with others, but this... a demon? And you think to judge me? At least I’m still human.”
Jack hadn’t been human for a long time.
She wanted to throw an energy ball at him so badly she could barely contain it, but escalating to that kind of violence with a sorcerer much stronger was too foolish even for her short temper. Instead, she used words.
“Please tell me you’re kidding. You’ve violently murdered all our friends, the only people who understood who and what we are because they were the same, and you think I’m the bad one for having a little sex, no matter who the partner was?”
Even if she’d thought to play the role of seductress to get out of this mess, and even if Jack wouldn’t be onto her game, she’d lost her stomach for it.
She didn’t know why she defended her actions. He was treating her like she’d betrayed him, like she’d cheated on him. Apparently her leaving him hadn’t been a strong enough indicator that they’d broken up.
“You know we’re not a couple,” she said.
“Not now, we aren’t. Until about three minutes ago, I still thought it could work.”
“Then you’re delusional. You killed my sister! You killed nearly all my friends. You thought I was going to roll over and cuddle with you after that?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Your lover is a killer, too. He’s killed more women than you could count.” There was still the note of jealousy in his voice, like he wanted to play some martyr role. Like he was the victim in all this and somehow the good guy.
“You chose power over me, Jack. You think I don’t know Cain has killed? You think I’m stupid enough to whitewash it? I know what he is, but I also know he’s not human. It’s what he has to do to avoid suffering.” The demon couldn’t really die, after all, just starve and suffer indefinitely if he went on a hunger strike. “You had a choice. Besides, Cain hasn’t killed anybody I love.”
She didn’t feel like getting into the grayness of the Anna situation. Since Anna had come back as Luc’s mate, and Tam hadn’t really lost her, and Cain hadn’t had completely evil motivations, she tried to just skirt right around that issue. Either way, it wasn’t like what Jack had done to her sister, or the rest of their coven for that matter.
Part of her wished Jack would just go ahead and kill her to spare her and get it over with so they wouldn’t have this stupid argument like an old married couple for the next two days. That might be even more painful and annoying than the ritual.
***
Cain stepped out of the caves, wiping Hadrian’s blood off his hands. The vampire had lasted longer than he’d expected, nearly a human day. He hadn’t killed him, even though Hadrian had finally given up the information he needed. He wanted to leave him to suffer more. And if Tam didn’t survive, he wanted to start on him again. He tried to shut out that possibility.
The others were waiting impatiently when he got back into town. Greta had fallen asleep curled up next to Dayne, and a few of the others seemed like they were about to drop as well. About a hundred of his demons were gathered, waiting for word. Among them were Daria and Jackson, several of the demons who had guarded Tam, and some who apparently didn’t think she was all that bad. Either that, or they understood the value of stopping Jack before the world slipped into complete chaos.
Cain cleared his throat, and a few of those who had been snoozing sat up. “I’m going to need everybody to rest or feed. Whatever you need to do to replenish. The vampire finally gave up Jack’s location as well as other information. I was very persuasive. We’re going in tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night? Why not now?” Anna demanded. “Luc, are you going to let him...”
Luc shook his head at her in warning, and Cain continued, used to the woman’s histrionics by now. “We can’t fight him before tomorrow night. He has to start the ritual. It’ll be his one weak moment when he’s absorbing her power. He’ll be unable to defend himself, and that’s when we’ll all strike.”
He worked to keep his face indifferent. It had become exhausting wearing this mask. Jack might not kill her before the full moon, but he could be doing anything to her in the meantime. It wasn’t hard to imagine what The Cycler might like to do with his former lover. And Cain couldn’t stop him from hurting her. He’d lose the battle and the war if he did. Still, the demon wanted nothing more than to blaze in and rip the bastard’s head off.
“If he’ll be so weak, why does it take us all?” Anthony snarked, not happy with having to play the minion role.
“Do you want to take any chances? We’re going to go in and annihilate him. I don’t do losing. We have plenty of firepower to bring him down, but it’ll take a lot to kill him. There are only two ways they die for real, by the hand of one of their own, or by a very strong and old preternatural being, using their power. I can throw a bunch of fire at him, but I can’t actually do him in. Do any of you girl demons want to f**k him?”
They all made faces. It was just as well. As strong as The Cycler had become, odds were bad any of his succubi could successfully do it, anyway.
“So that means I’m going to need demons to throw distractions at him, vampires to drain him, and magic users to block him. He’ll be weaker during the ritual, but he won’t be dead. I don’t want to make the mistake of underestimating him. This whole time he’s led us around on a leash, not worrying we’d catch or stop him. I’m tired of games.”