In the Company of Witches(5)

“Easy.” She cuddled him close once more. As she eased his head to a resting spot on her breast, she wound her arms around his narrow back to rub. “Easy, now, child. You’ve had a rough time of it, haven’t you? Always running, never trusting, always hungry. You won’t be hungry here. I promise you that. You won’t have to kill. Maybe once you figure that out, you’ll tell me the whole truth.”

Tipping up his chin, she met his eyes, letting him see that implacable firmness. “If you want any chance at all, it will be from doing that. But tonight, a bath, some nourishment, and a chance to feel safe.”

She shifted her gaze then, met Mikhael’s. Her black slip of a brow was lifted in question, waiting for his confirmation. Hers wasn’t his preferred method, but Isaac’s fear and desperation were real. Even if Mikhael plundered his mind, the information could fragment under the pressure of the incubus’s terror. If pieces were all he could get, fine, but a few hours and giving the baby a nap and a bottle might produce more, so he could allow that. There was some urgency involved in what was taken, but as he’d told Raina, whoever took it wasn’t going to be using it immediately, unless they were a fool willing to make his job much easier. The Underworld was on full-scale alert, tuned to any sign of it.

So he gave her the answer she wanted. He lifted a shoulder with casual indifference. He could always yank Isaac’s ass out of a comfy bed and go back to Plan A. In the meantime, he could hang around, pursue other puzzles. Far more pleasurable ones.

She pushed Isaac back into his own space, not unkindly, and picked up a bell. When a quiet domestic in dark dress and apron appeared, Mikhael knew right off she was a succubus, but in a deliberately understated way, unless one looked closely and saw that mesmerizing tinge of hunger in the eyes, as well as in the sharp teeth the young female hadn’t quite learned to hide.

When she saw Mikhael, she underscored her youth by blanching. Raina cleared her throat. “It’s okay, Gina. Yes, he’s a Dark Guardian, but he means no harm to you.”

When Raina’s gaze returned to Isaac, it held the warning that the same reassurance didn’t necessarily apply to him. “You’ll share a room with two of the incubi who work here, Li and Saul. You will behave. Do you understand?” Catching his chin, she dug her nails in enough to make his eyes swivel toward her warily. “You try anything, you won’t have to worry about Mikhael. I will gut you like a farm pig. You have my protection, but so do they, and their tenure trumps yours, a hundred times over. Go to bed. That’s all you do tonight. Tomorrow we’ll talk some more.”

Mikhael watched, fascinated, as Isaac rose obediently to his feet. He took a couple steps, then turned, studied her as if she were the most unexpected thing he’d ever seen. Kneeling, he bent and kissed the charred hem of Raina’s skirt, keeping his head down until she touched it in obvious benediction.

“Don’t mess this up,” she said. “You’ve gotten the luckiest break of your life, even if you don’t realize it yet.”

The male turned to go but was brought up short as Mikhael shifted. “Hold on a moment.”

In a blink, Isaac looked ready to bolt, trampling Gina in the process, but Raina caught his hand. “He gave his word. No harm to you within my home.”

Not entirely true, but they were surrounded by swampland. It would be a very short trip to drag Isaac out into it for a more agonizing interrogation method. He sure as hell wouldn’t be stroking the incubus’s hair or cuddling him against ample breasts. The young man knew it, showed it in his death grip on Raina’s hand. Yeah, it was true fear, but calculation as well, playing on her maternal instincts. Except Mikhael could see Raina’s maternal instincts were honed with razor-sharp intuition. She managed a houseful of sex demons, after all. That required a pretty iron hand. This kid would need to be set back on his heels a hundred times before he figured that out.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to live that long.

Isaac let out a frightened yelp. Gina gasped and Raina came to her feet, but by then it was done. The dagger had flashed out, cutting the male’s wrist; then Mikhael flipped the weapon and thrust it back into the scabbard hidden beneath his coat. Holding a vial against the cut, he grasped Isaac’s forearm in a lock hold. The blood was drawn into the container by its vacuum pressure, saving Raina’s rug.

When he had about a tablespoon, he capped it. Gina, efficient sort that she was, had recovered enough to bring a napkin from the wet bar for Isaac’s arm. Smart girl, too, because she waited for Raina to motion her forward, her young, uncertain gaze fastened on Mikhael.

Mikhael held the vial up in front of Isaac’s deer-in-the-headlights expression as Gina blotted his wound. “Blood calls to itself. Now I don’t have to expend the energy hunting you.” He met the incubus’s resentful gaze. “You step one foot off her property, all bets are off, demon. Your ass is mine. And all your detachable parts, which is pretty much everything.”

“I bet you’re the first Lucifer calls when it’s time to tell bedtime stories to the kids.” Throwing an acid look at him, Raina pushed Isaac toward Gina. “Bed. Sleep. We regroup tomorrow. No dismembering tonight. Saul usually leaves the TV on, but he’ll be dead to the world, so find something warm and fuzzy to watch. Gina will show you the shower.” She glanced at the succubus, her lips quirking at Gina’s frank assessment of their guest. “And scrub you thoroughly. Just keep it down. It’s our only day of rest, and we have a busy week ahead.”

A completely bemused Isaac let himself be led from the room, but Mikhael noted the way he looked back at both of them. There was cunning in that gaze. Hatred. Fear. None of it boded well.

“He’s lying, you know.” They’d departed before he said it, but it didn’t matter if Isaac heard. He and Raina had both made it clear they didn’t trust the blond scavenger any farther than they could throw him. He indulged a vision of heaving Isaac with a moderate level of force against one

of Raina’s ancient oaks and hearing the satisfying crack of bone.

“About portions of it. He did take it for someone; that’s indisputable. Someone who scares him shitless. But he’s leaving key things out.” She sat back down on the couch, resuming her reclined position, her head propped on her forearm on the sofa back. Her hair cascaded down her shoulder, fanned out over her hip, a stray tendril over her breast. She looked like a Waterhouse painting, all soft on the edges, sensual, dreamlike. But her expression was pensive, shrewd. “The gatekeeper. What happened to her?”

“A gatekeeper’s killed by decapitation and immolation. She was headless, dumped in the fire pits. The salamanders that play there found her.”

The witch nodded. Her gaze drifted to the oil painting over the mantel. A woman, naked and collared, on her knees before a well-dressed man. A man who had kindness as well as command in his touch. There was a fire blazing in the picture, and it seemed Mikhael saw the fire flicker in his peripheral vision when he turned to look at her again.

“How do you make concentrated soul energy?”

The shadow in her face was fleeting, but it left him an unexpectedly strong impression of anguish. “With human children,” she said tonelessly. “Under the age of five. It’s the purest form. Our kind can live off it for quite a while, but we can’t cultivate it ourselves, because harvesting requires sexual arousal, completion. Which is possible with children even at that age, but even our ‘despicable’ kind has limits. Usually.”

He sat down on the sofa in front of her. He laid a hand on her thigh, just above her knee, fingers sliding over the gathered fabric of the skirt. It drew her attention, for certain, but his intent wasn’t seduction. He just had the desire to touch, and so he did. “Despicable is your word, Raina. Not mine. A Dark Guardian has no prejudices.”

“An equal-opportunity executioner. How liberated. Do you believe he killed the gatekeeper?”

“Do you?”

She shook her head. “He’s capable of killing, but not that kind. Not unless his own life is at stake.”

“Agreed. Whoever sent him to steal the item followed behind to clean up. I think Isaac got a glimpse of Tara, realized he was as good as dead. He ran, hid it, and then ran again. I tracked him to where it was hidden. What took it was old, and strong. A demon for certain, though not enough traces left to determine race. And so here we are.”

“She’ll track him to tie up loose ends.” Those shrewd eyes met his. “Will you protect him?”

“Protection requires trust, Raina. In order to guard someone’s back, you have to be able to turn your back on them.”

“So you’ll let her have him.”

“She’ll soon have bigger problems than Isaac.” Turning his knuckles over, he ran them a few inches down her leg, over her knee, in the folds of the skirt. Her eyes followed the motion. He sensed the heating of her skin, the interested stir of her body, but it was as she’d said. In her profession, the reaction of the body was of no more consequence than the growling of a stomach or dryness of a throat. Just because she felt hunger didn’t mean she’d permit herself a full meal.