Life Cycle (Preternaturals Book 4) Read online

  “Is this kind of memory loss normal?” Cain asked.

  Dayne stroked his chin. “Sometimes. It depends on a lot of factors. I think she was a little anxious when she shifted, but she was human enough in there to engage with me and understand what I was saying, so her memories should be intact. There’s no logical reason for this.”

  “Could she be under a spell of some sort? Something that would affect her as a human but not as a cat?” Cain had paid close attention to the various ways magic could be used to fuck with someone.

  “It’s possible, but if someone else cast a spell on her, I wouldn’t be able to undo it.”

  “True, but at least you would know. Besides, what if you did it?”

  Dayne looked offended. “Why would I do it?”

  Cain shrugged. “I don’t know. To protect her from something? Isn’t that what men in love do?”

  The sorcerer seemed doubtful. “Something I don’t remember either?”

  “Good point. Nevermind, then.”

  “Even if I’d done it, I can’t even undo my own spell if I don’t know which spell I used. As you can see, I have hundreds of books down here. Memory-related spells are a dime a dozen.” He made a sweeping motion to the shelves behind him with all the books.

  “Well... you can work on this Nancy Drew mystery after you’ve fixed my ring.” Cain needed Dayne to stay focused and not get off track on something that didn’t involve or affect him.

  The sorcerer shot him an annoyed look. “In a minute. Greta?”

  The therian bit her lip, her anxiety rising. “Yeah?”

  “Will you shift back? Maybe you can help me in cat form.”

  She seemed upset at the idea of doing something she wouldn’t remember doing later, but she closed her eyes and shifted anyway, her height dropping several feet in seconds. The black cat wrestled her way out of her clothes.

  “Greta?”

  “Mrawrr?”

  “Do you remember what happened over there?” Dayne pointed. “Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

  Two blinks.

  “But something happened?”

  She tilted her head to the side, looking from the area of the room he’d indicated and back to Dayne. One blink.

  “Do you remember any spells being done?”

  A pause and a look of concentration, then one blink.

  “Did someone else take your memory?”

  Two.

  “Did I do it?”

  One.

  Cain stood back and watched the kitty charades, less than amused. Why this drama had to interfere with him getting his ring, he didn’t know.

  “Can you remember which book I used?”

  Greta went to the shelves with the books and jumped up onto one, threading her way around the dusty volumes of magic until she got to an old, red leather volume on the middle of the second shelf. Dayne took it and thumbed through.

  “This is nothing but forgetting spells. It’ll take me forever to figure out which one it is. Thanks, baby. You can go change back now.” The cat rubbed against his hand, then hopped off the shelf.

  “As enlightening as that was, I need that protection spell.”

  Greta hissed at the demon and dragged her clothes into the hallway. By the time she returned, Dayne had set up a circle of salt and put together a potion in a small iron cauldron, adding the personal object of Tam’s with a glare aimed in the demon’s direction. What other personal object but panties was an incubus going to have from a woman he’d been sleeping with?

  “Remember anything that happened?” the sorcerer asked when Greta reached his side.

  She shook her head. “Just shifting, after that it’s a blank until I took my clothes to go shift again. And I think I hissed at Cain.”

  “I expected as much.” Dayne took her hand. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out.”

  Cain cleared his throat.

  The sorcerer kissed Greta, ignoring the throat clearing. “Let me do this spell so we can get the demon out of our hair, then we’ll work on it.”

  “I’m standing right here,” Cain said.

  Greta rolled her eyes in the demon’s direction and went upstairs. Dayne finished dropping herbs into the cauldron. He took a book, the cauldron, and the ring into the center of the circle, dropped the ring in, raised his arms, and began to chant. Whether or not it was the spell Cain had asked for, something was happening. A green, shimmering wall came up around the cauldron, then the ring rose out of the potion, spinning as Dayne incanted.

  When he finished, the green wall dropped first, then Dayne slid his hand underneath the ring and the piece of pewter dropped into it.

  “Done,” he said, handing it to the demon.

  “You’re sure this thing will work?”

  “Have a little faith.”

  Faith was something Cain had discarded long ago, but he put the ring on.

  Chapter Nine

  “Tamar,” It was a whisper, like a hiss that floated through the still air of the demon dimension. The place was deserted except for her sleeping guards. Something about that scenario tickled at the back of her mind, but she was too panicked to think it through.

  “Cain!” she shouted. But he wasn’t there either—probably out feeding on some random guileless woman who didn’t know it was going to be her last orgasm.

  The whisper got closer. “Tamar.”

  As she ran down the cobblestone streets, the tents and marketplace collapsed in a flutter of fabric and knocked over support poles. In their place, old stone and brick buildings rose so high they seemed to go forever into the sky, sealing her into a labyrinth she’d never find her way out of. The cobblestones beneath her feet chipped and crumbled, aging before her eyes, and suddenly she was in an alleyway she recognized.

  She froze at the sound. It was like fingernails on a chalkboard—or like a sharp knife scraping over stone, dragging closer and closer. She cringed.

  “Tamar.” His voice was snakelike. It seemed to wrap around her, constricting the life out. And then that horrible knife scraping, raspy as his voice when he kept saying her name.

  “Cain!” She tried to scream it again, unsure why he was the one she called out for. Why not Luc or Anna? Why not the wolf pack she’d met when they’d fought Anthony? Why not anybody but the other monster in her life?

  There was a deep chuckle behind her. She spun toward it, but the alley was dark and empty. Still, she heard Jack when he finally whispered something besides her name.

  “Sweet, Tamar. Don’t you know he’s busy with his own whores? Let’s not bother him right now. You’re not that special.”

  If that were so, why was Jack so obsessed? It had been centuries, and he couldn’t seem to let go. Had he taunted the others this way before coming for them? Her guess was no. It was a special torment he’d saved for the one who’d left his bed.

  The endless alley opened onto a street with carriages and horses and properly dressed Victorian ladies all going about with parasols to protect them from the harsh sun—even though it was dark and cool. Maybe it was to protect them from something else. When they’d passed, Tam saw the carnage. Everyone he’d killed, laid out like dolls.

  He’d dressed them all in white like a macabre angel massacre. Some had fewer organs and less blood than others. Some were more rushed and hurried. Some of them more methodical. She averted her eyes from her sister, the one image she’d tried not to see or know too much about. The others were hard to look at, but not like Naomi. They’d all been friends, companions as they traveled through the changing world together, until Jack had gone mad and put an end to all that.

  Not everyone could handle immortality.

  Tam cringed when the flat of a blade dragged across the back of her neck. She closed her eyes at the sensation of his hot breath in her ear.

  “Soon, my sweet Tamar. Soon, I’m coming for you.”

  She turned, surprised when he wasn’t hiding again in the shadows. He stood dressed in white like the others, like
a cult leader who’d chickened out of drinking the Kool-Aid at the last minute. Tam looked down to find she, too, was dressed in white.

  “Is there a ball I don’t know about?” She couldn’t help it. She knew it was a dream, and there was only so much he could do to her here. There was no sense in letting him know how much he scared her, even in a place where the danger was minimal.

  He smiled. She wished the things he’d done could have made him just as ugly on the outside as the bloody death he’d wrought, but his outward appearance refused to reflect the evil within. Like Cain, he was an enticing, pretty spider, waiting for a woman to fall into his web. Tam had been there, done that.

  “You still want me,” he remarked.

  “Like hell I do.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right. You’ve got a new monster to scratch that dark itch for you now. You’re just as bad as I am, Tam. You think a good girl would do the things you’ve done with a demon, knowing what he is? No, you’re my lovely dark girl. I’ll see you soon. I’ve missed you.”

  She couldn’t run or scream when he moved toward her, his warm lips brushing against hers. He wrapped his arms around her, and for the smallest second she remembered them before all the carnage, before he’d lost his mind—back when she’d loved him, and she wished they could go back there.

  His voice fell over her like a blanket while she pretended he was pre-crazy Jack. “Why didn’t you take my offer? I would have spared you.”

  His embrace turned into a vice, and then he transformed into a giant snake, wrapped around her, constricting until she couldn’t get air.

  Tam sat up from the bed of fluffy pillows on the ground in her tent, her heart palpitating wildly. It would be nice to believe it was just a dream—her confused fears and past feelings all mixing together in a tapestry of nocturnal images that meant nothing. But she knew better.

  As much as she didn’t want to admit it, that had been Jack. Not an apparition of him or an imagining or fear of him. Him. She knew the difference. He’d visited her in dreams before when they’d been close enough for him to form a connection. The blood that bound them all together in the spell, that had made them what they were, made such connections difficult, but not impossible, especially for someone of his power.

  He’d grown too strong for her to initiate connection with him by herself, his magical wards high and always in place. Otherwise she might have been able to lead Cain and the others to him. But there was a slim chance she could, now that he’d opened a connection.

  She threw some clothes on, and after a brief argument with her guards, made her way to Cain’s tent. He was sleeping. Officially, demons didn’t need sleep, feeding alone replenished them, but it wasn’t hard to see how someone as old as Cain would choose to sleep anyway. It was the one place he could escape and forget himself. Tam understood that need more than most. Even though she required sleep, still tied to normal human needs, she’d used the night and the dream world for the same reason. To forget. Not that she ever wanted to sleep again right now.

  For a moment, she watched him. In sleep, there was none of the arrogant asshole bravado to taint things. His face was peaceful and not as perfect, since he’d shed the glamour. She wanted to trace her finger over the scar a god had marked him with, but was afraid he’d wake up. She thought about waking him anyway, but if she did, it would be back to the disturbing dynamic they had. All she wanted right now was to feel safe, not banter.

  She slid underneath the blankets next to him and was surprised when his arms came around her in his sleep, pulling her close. She waited for the constricting evil feeling from her dream, but it didn’t happen.

  A few minutes passed like this, and she finally relaxed.

  “Tam, nobody walks into my tent without me waking up,” he rumbled.

  So he hadn’t been asleep. But he’d still held her like he cared. No. She wasn’t going there. All she was doing was trying to transfer some residual feeling for Jack onto the lesser evil because it felt less traumatic. But was Cain the lesser evil? Of course not. He was the worse evil. He didn’t kill my sister. But he tried to kill Anna. And hadn’t Anna been the next closest thing to a sister?

  As far as she knew, Jack had killed ten people. Gruesomely, yes, but it didn’t compare to the vast number of women Cain had killed. It hardly mattered how they died. By numbers alone, Cain was the bigger monster. Transferring anything onto him was foolish. Feeling anything for either one of them at any point in time was shameful. Jack was right, she wasn’t an innocent. Why couldn’t she have loved Henry? He was good. Kind. Decent. Nice. He’d always had her back through everything for two centuries.

  Maybe the more important question was, why couldn’t Henry love her like that? Had he been too kind to tell her what he’d thought of her? He’d had a soul mate waiting for him on the other side, but had he known that? Was it from his most recent life or a previous one?

  Even though Cain had revealed he was awake, he hadn’t let go of her.

  “Your heart was beating too fast when you got here. Was it wild lust for me or something else?”

  It was easy to forget how evil he was. Sometimes he seemed so damned normal. An asshole, yeah, but normal.

  “Jack came to me in my dream.”

  He gripped her tighter, but even so, it didn’t feel stifling like it was supposed to. “It was just a dream,” he said. He stroked her back, and she tried not to read too much into the gesture.

  “No. It was real. Jack was there.” She couldn’t help the tears. The last thing she wanted was for Cain to see her cry. Showing that much weakness to a demon was stupid, but she was so tired. Of everything. “Why do you all have to be so evil?”

  “You’re old enough to know it isn’t like that, Tam.”

  “Isn’t it? How many people have you killed?”

  He pushed her away and sat up, his eyes glowing red and angry in the dark. “Is that how it is now? I knew you’d start falling for me, but you don’t get to make demands. I said you’d beg me to keep you. Looks like I’m right. And if you think that’s a way to get your life spared, trotting out all my crimes and trying to domesticate me like a puppy, boy do you have the wrong demon.”

  “Then fucking kill me! I never asked to be spared. Put me out of my misery like I’ve asked you to a hundred times. I told you I’d never beg you to keep me, and I never will, Cain. Let go of the dream. This is getting serious. You don’t want to keep me. I’ll never ask you to. I can’t cope with what you are, what Jack is. I want to be free. Just end it. You don’t need me to fight a war with Anthony! You don’t need me at all.” She was tempted to throw an energy ball right at his pretty monster face.

  He gripped her shoulders. “You aren’t going to control me. When have I ever claimed to be a good guy? You don’t get to shout out orders and get whatever you want. I do need you for a war with Anthony. You’re strong. But if you really want me to kill you, beg me to keep you and mean it. Tell me you love me, Tam, and maybe I’ll take your request into consideration.”

  If he was that gung ho about keeping her to use her in a war, he wouldn’t kill her even if she begged him. He was just sadistic and bored. He could play that game with someone else. “I know you’re used to stupid women who were born yesterday. I’m not one of them.”

  He pulled her to him, his lips pressing against hers. It was like Jack in the dream, but different. He slid a dark image of something she’d never trust him enough to do for real—bondage. Whips. Of course, Cain would go for the freaky stuff. He was eight thousand. Nobody that old just did it missionary. Not that they’d just done missionary. In the time she’d been in his care, they’d made it through the entire Kama Sutra. In spite of herself, she melted against him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  The demon pulled away while she was still dazed with the images, half of her wanting to act them out. She was a bad witch. She couldn’t even remember to keep her shields up. Was that how Jack had gotten into her dream? Had he been trying before and failed?r />
  Cain’s face was serious now. “Jack kills his kind, for power, and ultimately to control everything in the human dimension if we can’t destroy him. I kill my dinner. Being at the top of the food chain doesn’t make me evil. And you know that. You’re two thousand, Tam. So get over this self-loathing. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “What about Anna? She wasn’t dinner,” Tam said, not willing to concede the point just yet, even though she knew he was right. Two thousand or not, she was still moderately human, and right now Cain and Jack looked like two flavors of the same guy.

  “My brother had been imprisoned for half a century, and your friend stubbornly refused to do the only thing to free him. So yes, I took matters into my own hands. She put herself between me and Luc. I’m also not claiming to be good. I’m saying, I’m not Jack.”

  “But you’re still playing with me. You don’t want a relationship. You want to toy with me until you’re bored. So you’re still an asshole.” Where had that come from? She didn’t want a relationship with a demon so what difference did it make if he did? Weren’t they both using each other?

  He smirked. “Now that I’ll admit to.” He started to pull the shirt over her head, but she stopped him.

  “I can’t.” She didn’t want to think about the fact that she still wanted to. Obnoxious or not, there was something about him beneath the surface. Maybe it wasn’t real and it was the same bullshit lies women had told themselves about the wrong kind of guy for ages, but she desperately wanted to believe there was something more to him than what he was showing her.

  “Because you might beg me or because you’ll hate yourself tomorrow?”

  She rolled her eyes at his ego. “Neither. I need to do some big magic, and if you drain my energy it won’t be possible. Jack is closing in. We don’t have time for whatever this thing is we’re doing. I need my books and tools.”

  “Okay, let’s go get them.”

  “What? That’s it? You’re not going to fight me on the books and tools thing?”