How to Capture a Demon's Heart Page 7

  “Don’t,” she whispered. “Just let him burn himself out. He’ll leave in a minute, go finish getting drunk somewhere else.”

  “So, this isn’t the first time?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I feel too good right now to let him ruin it. Come back to the bedroom. Let’s finish what you started.”

  I felt the rage and selfishness wash over me like a boiling ocean of hate. Just as she predicted, there was one last bang to the door and it began to move away. “I think I need to follow him, just to make sure he isn’t going to come back tonight.”

  She reached up and pulled me down for a kiss. “I hate that I knew you were going to say that. I want to give you pleasure too, you know.”

  “Oh you already do, every time we’re together.”

  “Not what I meant, DeVries,” she scoffed, smacking me softly on the chest.

  “I know what you meant, and I’m not leaving for good. Do you want me to come back tonight?” I asked, wondering at the insecurity in my own voice. Are you really worried she’ll say now? With lust flowing off her, as heady as good wine?

  She sighed and laid her head against my chest. “I don’t want you to set foot outside that door. Of course I want you to come back, as quickly as you can.” She tilted her head back for a kiss and I obliged her, running my lips across her soft mouth and down her jaw to the pulse in her throat.

  “I’ll be right back, and I’ll bring Chinese with me.”

  She unlocked the deadbolt and put her hand on the door handle just as another tortured wave of a splintered soul washed over me. “Don’t.”

  But Freeman hit the door and forced his way through it, barreling into me as I shoved her out of his way. I knew you were here, Demon. I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to make her repent of letting an unclean thing touch her.”

  I shoved him off me, wiping spittle off my chin and neck. “Get out. The police will be interested to hear why you’re showing up here uninvited. How do you think they’ll react to a half-crazed stalker calling the new boyfriend a demon?”

  He whirled away from me, trying to get to Darcy, to get further from the door. He grabbed the shelving unit in the hall as I tried to push him back out, and the bottle shook and almost toppled. I saw his eyes light up and he lunged, making a grab for it, but I slid between him and the bookshelf and threw him back on his ass.

  “Oh, you think you can save your new boyfriend with a trapped soul? You’re as disgusting as he is.”

  Darcy didn’t seem to catch what he was saying, but I couldn’t help but look back at the swirling, shimmering substance that quivered in the phial. No wonder he’s gotten so violent and angry. The psychic tears are from cannibalizing human souls.

  “Time for you to go, Marshal. I think you’ve helped Ms. O’Shay with her legal case against you enough for one day.” I picked him up by his shirt and threw him out the open door. “Don’t come back, Marshal, it won’t end well for you.”

  I slammed the door and stared into Darcy’s pale face. “He was going to make me repent? How the hell did he plan to do that?” she stammered. “What was he going to do to me?”

  I’d seen the hunters’ handiwork before in the hospitals I frequently collected from. Humans in traction, mummified in gauze and attached to tubes that dripped nutrition into their veins, their bodies too broken to even eat.

  “I won’t let him force you to do anything, Darcy. I promise. But I might not be able to stop him without using force. I don’t want you to hate me if he gets hurt.”

  She scoffed and threw her arm out at the door. “If he gets hurt? Right now, I don’t care if he gets hit by a train. I’m all out of compassion and patience. If he comes back, I’ll do anything I must to stop him.”

  I placed my hand against the door, searching for any sense of him, but the sun had returned to the world outside. “He will not be back to bother you here, one way or another.”

  “Wait. You won’t, um. I don’t want you to do anything that makes you bad, just because he is.”

  “I’m already bad, Darcy. But I won’t murder him. that’s not what I am.” I opened the door carefully, all to aware that my new-found feelings had been muddling my senses too much of late. The way was clear and I slipped out, shutting and locking the door behind me with a wave of my hand. There, Darcy. Now you know what I’m capable of, if you believe me.

  But I wasn’t sure she could. Every fiber of my being had gelled into a single purpose. To prevent Shawn Freeman from ever showing his face around her again. I’d marked her, I’d felt her soul call to me. She was mine, and no tweaked out, soul-addicted marshal was going to get in my way.

  Chapter 13

  Darcy

  “Why don’t you call the police?”

  “He has more authority than the police. You saw what happened when we kicked him out of the bar. What did they say? Oh well, so sorry, can’t do anything unless he kills you. What am I supposed to do?”

  We’d been going round in circles for ten minutes, and Ranger was as frustrated as I was. “Why did you change your mind? I told you I’d take care of it.”

  “I don’t like what it means for you. You said it yourself. You’re not a violent person.”

  He sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. “He’s messed up, Darcy. He’s not going to last long without his drug of choice.”

  “You think he’s like, snorting human souls?”

  He pointed to the bottle on my desk. “I don’t know what that is. But he seems to think it’s a soul, and he wanted it. I could feel the need pouring off him. If I’d wanted to, I could’ve harvested his soul right then and there. He’s so separated from himself, he’s almost a demon anyway.”

  “He thinks you’ll…ingest it, the way he does?”

  “Probably. But that’s not quite how it works for us.” He paced like a caged lion, his dark eyes glowing like molten gold as he worried.

  About me, I thought, and went to his side. “Hey, DeVries, it’ll be okay. If he comes here, the police will come. They might not care about an individual woman, but the mayor wouldn’t like to hear that the city’s losing taxes because of a rogue marshal.”

  He let me hug him and kissed my hair. “You are something else, Ms. O’Shay. Usually I’m in and out of a town in a day, but I can’t seem to think of a single reason to leave this time.”

  “Then don’t. Stay, and pick up your ripened souls or whatever. You aren’t stealing, right?” I scoffed and shrugged. “If you aren’t stealing, then why would I care what you do? I want you, DeVries. Don’t I deserve to have what I want, after everything I’ve been through?”

  I reached up around his neck and pulled him in for a better kiss. His tongue slowly, steadily explored my mouth, driving my pulse higher and making things low in me tight and hot.

  “You deserve everything you want, Beautiful,” he sighed. “After you’re safe. But that won’t happen until I take care of a little business with my boss. I don’t want him to come looking for you.” He brushed my hair off my face and kissed my forehead. “Give me a couple of hours, and we’ll figure something out to get the marshal the help he needs.”

  “He’ll stop being violent?”

  He shook his head. “No, he’s only going to get more violent with time, whether he feeds his addiction or not. But he’ll do a whole lot less harm from inside a maximum-security Psych ward, and that’s where I’m planning to send him.”

  I breathed, and half the stress seemed to leave my body in the exhale. “He’s gone crazy. Not as in hyperbole, not being mean. He is really crazy and you’re going to put him where he can’t hurt me, and I won’t be eaten alive by guilt.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “I don’t know who said you’re not a good guy, DeVries, but if you hear it again, you send them to me. I’ll set them straight.” I hugged him as hard as I could, then shoved him back. “Now, get off me. I’ve got to get to work. Sheesh.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “I don�
��t know why I think you’re hot. You’re such a pain in the ass.”

  I winked and he caught my wrist as I sashayed away, jerking me against him and kissing me one more time. The kiss turned into two, and he picked me up again, resting my back against the wall as I scrabbled at his clothes, searching for his smooth, cool flesh.

  “Uh uh,” he reminded me, setting me down, his breath coming in pants. “You’ve got to work, and I’ve got to get clear of my work. I’ll see you in a little while.”

  He disappeared down the dim hallway as I straightened my clothes. As I followed, I caught sight of myself in my dingy office mirror, my eyes bright, face flushed with happiness. Who knew a rebound guy could make my life so much better? But the little voice contradicted me as always, reminding me that I couldn’t lie to myself, and my feelings for Ranger were more than I was ready to face, and too deep for me to let him go, no matter who, or what he really was.

  Chapter 14

  Ranger

  I found Boras at the hospital, his white lab coat hung over his arm with his stethoscope as he headed to a Hummer in the parking lot. “You’ve got my soul, then?”

  “No, Boras, I don’t. What I have is a question that might affect the takedown.”

  He grumbled and unlocked the car with a button on his key fob. “You try my patience beyond the level of personal health, you know that?”

  “I do, and I appreciate your patience with my due diligence. I just don’t like to walk into a situation uninformed.”

  Boras paused for real, folding his arms around the white coat and frowning. “You’re serious? You have a legitimate question?”

  “The marshal saw a bottle on the girl’s bookshelf. He insisted it was a soul and tried to take it. I’ve never heard of a human capturing a soul. But the bottle wasn’t Brimstone or Veilstone, it was glass.”

  “You’ve seen it?” He straightened to his full height, eyes shifting as if spies were watching us. “You’ve seen an angel-soul?”

  “Angel’s soul? Wait. I didn’t feel anything from it.”

  He snorted and shook his head. “Almost a thousand years old and you know nothing. You wouldn’t sense an angel soul, or we’d have collected all of them centuries ago and feasted. They are blind to us, we are blind to them. That’s why so many of them were able to infiltrate Hel at the end of the last war.”

  “Fine. Now I know. Thank you.”

  “Hand it over, Ranger. You can’t make me believe you didn’t take it. It would’ve practically begged you to take it.”

  It had, but I had more control than most demons, partially because I never took part in the practice of defiling souls. Like a human dealer who doesn’t do drugs, I’d avoided the pitfall of my addictive cargo by never starting.

  “I left it, because I know better than to touch something I don’t recognize, especially if it wants me to.”

  He snarled and raised a hand to strike me. “You’re a fool. You will never be more than you are, because you don’t think like a high demon.” I stood my ground and he backed down, dismissing me with a wave. “I want my souls, and the bottle, tonight.

  I waited until he’d pulled away and headed back to Darcy’s place, hoping to find Shawn and grab the bottle before Boras decided to skip the middle man. The apartment was quiet when I got there, but the bright yellow hummer parked on the street outside told me I wasn’t wrong to worry about the archbishop.

  “Gods. They have everything, and it’s never enough.” Boras could hold his human shape for hours at a time, but he needed souls to keep his energy up to play surgeon, or politician, or a member of whatever institution he was trying to corrupt. Angel souls had more strength, more stamina, than human souls. Just one supposedly generated enough power to never have to depend on a human soul ever again.

  I watched Boras from the cover of the carport, peering out from behind a column as he stormed down the stairs and slammed the door of his flashy SUV before taking off with a screech of his tires. The apartment door was still ajar when I climbed the steps, but inside was dark and quiet.

  The door seemed to stick when I pushed it open. I shoved harder, and heard things slide across the floor. The apartment had been ransacked, the bookshelf turned over, kitchen cupboards emptied onto the floor leaving shards of dishes everywhere.

  Shit. If the bottle hadn’t been in its place on the shelf, there was only one other place for Boras to look. With a curse, I called 911 on my burner cell and reported the break in, leaving the phone on the counter as I raced down the stairs and called my own transportation, the wind of the wild hunt. As it rushed me down the hill toward the industrial complex, I prayed, that if there was a God, some divine being on the other side who could protect her, that He would, at least until I could be at her side.

  I threw the double doors open, only to come face to face with a gaping Darcy behind the counter, and several pairs of eyes staring at me in mild shock from the tables. With a jerk of my head I motioned for her to join me in the office, my eyes flitting from face to face as I tried to pick one of Boras’ disguises out of the crowd.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” She grabbed my arm and forced my eyes away from the door to meet her gaze.

  “I went to your apartment. It’s been trashed. Someone was looking for that bottle. I’m sure of it.”

  “Oh, God. I need to go back. My things.”

  I took her arm. “Shhhh. I called the police. Let them come her to visit you, it implicates him more. I know it’s hard. Can you call a neighbor, tell them your ex has been stalking you?”

  She did as asked, then sagged at her desk as she hung up the phone. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  “I know. For now, I must find that bottle, if I can get to it before he uses the contents.”

  She patted her tote bag. “I thought he might try something, he was so…fixated on it. Besides, I like having it with me,” she confessed. “I don’t know why, I just do. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “No. Not at all. So far, we’ve been told it contains a human soul, and an angel soul. Somewhere in the middle of the folklore is the truth. We need to make sure the marshal doesn’t get his hands on it.”

  “But if it’s an angel soul, what does that mean?”

  “According to the legends of Hel, Ms. O’Shay, it would mean I’d never have to hunt souls, ever again.”

  Chapter 15

  Darcy

  I slipped the bottle into the pocket of my apron and left Ranger to gather himself in the privacy of the office. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he was feeling or thinking, knowing he could be free of his bonds with the pop of a cork.

  Free to go wherever he wants, and no reason to stay. The little voice in my head reminded me. “Shut up,” I muttered under my breath. Stay or go, he won’t leave without saying goodbye.

  It only took a few minutes before Ranger joined us up front, taking a seat at the bar. He reached over and poured himself a beer from the tap as I mixed a couple of Manhattans and winked at Sara, my barback, who was gaping at him.

  “Don’t worry, I’m friends with the owner.”

  She glanced at me and I shook my head. “Maybe you should ask Orson. I’ve never seen him before.” Sara took off to ask Orson if she could kick him out, and I stuck out my tongue at him. “Don’t be a bad example. I don’t want all my regulars to start hanging over the bar to get themselves drinks.

  He saluted me and sipped his beer. “Is it weird that I feel better knowing I have to fight the guy?” He looked down at his pint. “I mean, I want to hurt him, but that’s not why I’m glad. I just want it over.”

  I laughed mirthlessly. “Tell me about it. You might call yourself a demon, but to me, you’re a godsend.” I handed off the tray of drinks and joined him. “I don’t want you to hurt him, but I do want you to be able to spend the night without worrying someone’s going to start kicking my door, screaming that I’m a whore while we cuddle.”

  Sara cleared her throat and I backed away from Ranger. “I guess he’s
okay, Sara, I just didn’t recognize him at first.”

  She made a rude noise at me and slid a plate onto the bar in front of Ranger. “Orson says these aren’t as hot as earlier. He wants your opinion.”

  Ranger eyed the wings so cautiously he sent me into a fit of giggling. “Oh, you big baby. What happened to all that bravado from earlier?”

  “Earlier, I was mid hot-wing when the hottest woman I’ve ever met walked in. I had to take it like a man.”

  His answer, along with the side-eye he gave the platter of wings, sent me into another round of uncontrollable laughter. “Stop. I have work to do. Enjoy your food.”

  “Remember when I offered Chinese?”

  I winked at him and poured another pitcher for the guys in the corner watching the game. It was hard to keep my mind off my apartment, but I’d texted Paris and asked her to lock up for me if it was safe to do so, and to come straight to the bar after. If Shawn had lost it that bad, I didn’t want her bumping into him alone.

  But Ranger was right, too. Shawn’s spiraling had given me a light at the end of the tunnel. He could no longer be ignored, and soon, I could get him behind bars, or as Ranger had suggested, into a padded room. It didn’t matter. I ached to go home and see what I’d lost but managed to stay behind the counter by telling myself it didn’t matter. Any material possessions I lost were a small price to pay to be rid of him.

  Before long, the natural rhythm of the bar swept me up. I filled pitchers, wiped counters, and teased Sara, who spent half the evening mooning over Ranger. Every time he tried to leave, I reminded him that he needed to stay with me and the bottle tucked away in my pocket. He wanted to hunt Shawn. But if he found him. what then? If the police could get to him first and get him behind bars, even better.

  Even Orson sat at the bar on his break, drinking with Ranger as they talked. Every time I got close to them, they’d fall into silence, the kind that very pointedly tells an outsider they’re not wanted. I took the hint and left them alone, stifling the grin that crept onto my face every time I thought about Ranger having a connection that would make him want to stay.