Life Cycle (Preternaturals Book 4) Read online

  “I know. Been there, done that.”

  The retort caught him off guard, and for some reason the images it produced bothered him.

  Tam braced herself, ready to disarm him, but the fireball hadn’t been meant for her; he just couldn’t resist the opportunity to screw with her head over the assumption. He stepped to the side and lit a torch on the cave wall. “Relax, this isn’t for you. Remember, I planned on seducing you first for the fun of watching you beg me to keep you. I continue to find that plan amusing.”

  She held the purple glowing ball steady in her hand, clearly not trusting his word. He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t all that trustworthy when it came to things he told humans. He moved through the main part of the cave, lighting torches on the wall, then he let the fire fizzle out of his hand. For a moment he assessed the space, worried about the ventilation with a human, but the cave was large. It should be fine.

  He laid the bag with the scroll on the ground and peeled his shirt off.

  Tam took a step back, the idea of being his toy on demand not yet having settled in her mind—if her reaction to him was any indication.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I don’t think. I know. You and me. Now.”

  “Here?” she squeaked.

  He chuckled. “You’re the one who wandered out here. Nobody dragged you. And as you said, we won’t be interrupted.”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  The chuckle turned into a full-bodied laugh. “I’m an incubus, sweetheart. I know that’s not true. You’re always in the mood when I’m around.”

  Her cheeks turned an endearing shade of pink, visible even in the weak torchlight, but she quickly recovered. “What’s the point? You aren’t going to kill me anyway. You’re just amusing yourself with me.”

  “Drop the shields, Tam.”

  “No. Work for it.” A smirk lit her face as she let the ball of energy burn out in her hand. “Seduce me. No tricks.”

  He pushed her against the wall, using his larger size in an intimidation attempt, but she remained unconcerned. He tried not to think about how much he loved that about her. He almost pulled back in surprise when Tam kissed a trail from the side of his neck up to his ear.

  “I will never beg you to keep me,” she whispered. “I’m not one of these bubble-headed bimbos you take home every night. I have much more experience, enough to know the difference between sex and love. I don’t have sparkly romance fantasies.”

  She did want him; he could smell it; he could feel it. Her energy pulsed with it. She may as well have been under his thrall, but her words still shook him because inside them, he felt the kernel of truth. It was the kind of truth that could be spoken because there was no danger in anyone believing it. But he believed it. God, she was just as jaded as he was.

  He wanted to dampen her desire and end her game. “Okay. No tricks, then.” He couldn’t feed if she didn’t want him, but who said he had to feed? He had her alone out here in the caves in his dimension. He could do whatever he wanted with her, assuming he could stop her from hitting him with an energy ball or chanting him into a jar. Those were big assumptions, but right now all he wanted was to wipe out her upper hand.

  He dropped his glamour, smoothing away all the perfection to leave someone who looked like a real man. A little less muscled, a few more lines, a scar across his forehead that marked him forever as a betrayer.

  “You must be a mind reader. Rugged is just my type,” she said, the coy taunt still in her voice.

  Fucking witch. She was right. He really wasn’t playing with his usual dimwitted bubble-heads.

  She didn’t resist when he pulled off her top. She fumbled with the buttons on his pants while he dealt with hers. They ended up in a tangle of limbs and clothes on the cave floor. Cain laughed. Laughed.

  He didn’t laugh when he was with a woman. They were food for fuck’s sake, not friends or companions.

  The two of them struggled out of their pants.

  His eyes narrowed as he looked her over in the dim light. “What’s your angle?”

  She shrugged innocently. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Cut the crap. Why so eager? No matter what your body wants, you’ve made it clear you find me repulsive. I’m not naïve enough to think my plan to seduce you is already working. I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

  “About that plan... if you keep bringing it up, it’s hard to trick me,” Tam said.

  “I’m serious.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It won’t hurt to tell you, I guess. I think I can get you to lose control and kill me far before you make me beg for anything—least of all you keeping me.”

  Cain scowled and scooted away from her. His eyes caught the scroll in the bag. If he slept with her so soon after the last time, it would deplete her energy, and she might actually get what she wanted. He put his pants on. “Get dressed.”

  “You are such a baby. And a bad loser.”

  He tried not to ogle her as she stretched out her long limbs like a lazy cat—no doubt for his benefit, trying to bring him back to her plan.

  “I wasn’t hunting for you to sleep with you. I need you to do a spell.” I just got momentarily distracted.

  He went down a small corridor to the large rock he’d hidden her things behind. He hadn’t anticipated her coming out to the caves. No one came here as a volunteer, and surely she could sense the anger and pain of the place. After this, he would put her stuff in a pod, something only he could open. He should have taken the extra precaution to begin with. She could probably curse him without tools as long as she had that mouth on her. But he had other uses for that mouth, so cutting out her tongue seemed extreme.

  He returned a few minutes later with her bags of magical supplies, not sure what she’d need to do what he asked. When he tossed them to her, she just stared.

  “You’re serious. You really want me to do magic? After you’ve spazzed out about it like you have?”

  The demon glared and tossed her the bag with the scroll in it.

  “What’s this?” She unzipped it and pulled out the parchment. When she saw what was on it, she dropped it like it was a bag of live snakes, hissing and waiting to strike.

  She looked up, real fear in her eyes this time. It was a reaction he couldn’t seem to inspire. Yeah, it wounded his evil pride a bit. What was so bad about this other guy that Cain couldn’t match?

  “Please, you have to kill me. If he’s back to these games, he knows where the other one is. He may even know where I am. I know him.”

  Cain shook his head. “He can’t know where you are. And even if he did, he can’t get here. He has no access.”

  She still hadn’t put on her clothes. Now that he knew, he could never forget how old she was. It hadn’t occurred to her to be embarrassed, even after being rebuffed. She stood and moved toward him, determination in her eyes. Her arms went around his neck, her lips crashing against his mouth.

  This was new and intriguing. It was rare for a woman to be this aggressive with him without demon thrall involved. And he wasn’t even in his super-pretty form. The fact that she knew what he was and was still throwing herself at him, even with a death wish, was almost too novel to cope with.

  As offended as he was that she didn’t seem scared of him, another part didn’t want to kill her. It was hard to kill an equal you were growing to respect. If he succeeded and she begged him to keep her, would he? Of course not. She was a new flavor of candy. She’d be stale within a week, just like the others.

  Tam slid her hand down his pants while her mouth tangled with his. She pulled away, her eyes glittering with dark promise. “Come on, I’m so tired from all the magic I’ve done. I’m not fully recharged yet. It wouldn’t take that much work to kill me.”

  At least one part of him was listening to her, standing at attention, ready to make good on the promise of death. But he pushed her away, his hands gripping her shoulders to keep her at arm’s length. “Put some
clothes on.”

  She pouted. “But why? Is this much naked flesh upsetting you? Why should you deny yourself? I mean nothing to you. Forget your stupid plan. I won’t ever beg you to keep me. Let’s get this over with.”

  He wanted to shake the life out of her, but then he’d be left with a much younger Tam in her place, a prospect that was less than appealing. “Look at the parchment again.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Look at it!” he growled. Even as he gripped her, he was shifting into his demon form. With every form but his true form shed, he gave off every negative emotion in existence. Tam shrank back from the force of it, and he smiled.

  “I’ve never successfully fed in this form, so it’s pointless for you to taunt me—not that you would. I’m sure you don’t want to sleep with this.”

  She met his gaze, getting her bravery back as she got used to the new energy around him. “Eh. I’ve seen worse.”

  He released her shoulders and took a step back. If she kept surprising him, he might make it his mission in life to keep her alive forever.

  She glanced down and giggled. It wasn’t the response a man was ever looking for, but when she spoke, he realized why.

  “You must have seven hundred pairs of pants.”

  In the shift, he’d ripped them. Again. Like some fledgling demon who didn’t yet understand the size disparity between man and monster. She unnerved him too much to be concerned with wardrobe malfunctions.

  “I need you to look at the bigger picture,” he said. “Things are going to get ugly with Anthony after this. He’ll use this to push his control further—in the name of safety. I’ve seen humans do it a thousand times, and vampires are no different when it comes to this. I might need you in a war. You promised you’d fight with me. If you do this spell, it might help us find The Cycler. If we destroy him, there’s no reason for you to die.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. The moment of vulnerability took him aback, and he had to fight the urge to comfort her. Where in the hell had that urge come from?

  “It’s not just that. I’m TIRED, Cain. I’m so tired, I can’t think straight. I can’t stand this eternal cycle. It’s so lonely. Every time I cycle, I have to hide and go somewhere different, uproot my whole life, meet new people. Everyone I meet, I know I’m going to lose. I can’t live like this anymore. I just want to be normal again. I just want to be happily oblivious to the truth. The only way out is Jack or you. Forgive me if I prefer your methods. I don’t want him to win, you’re right. But I don’t want me to win, either. I need out of this. I thought if I could get away from him, that I could do it. I thought if Anna became immortal I could do it, but it’s not enough. I just want out.”

  Given her suicidal kick, if Cain managed to get her to beg him to keep her, to even want her life back, it would be a miracle. And then what was he going to do? Kill her anyway? He should. Even if she’d be beneficial in a war, the temptation to get her out of her death wish and only then deliver it was the kind of temptation he was rarely successful at fighting. There was a reason he was who and what he was, after all.

  He punched the cave wall, causing a mini-avalanche of little rocks in the space where he’d cracked it. “I’ve had the same form for eight thousand years. You think I don’t get how hard it is? But I don’t get an exit ramp. Why should I give you one?”

  “Forget it. If you’re not going to do something useful, just leave me alone.”

  Cain picked up the scroll and held it out to her. “No. I need you to do this spell.”

  “What spell?” she said, her voice rising in irritation.

  “Look at the scroll again.”

  ***

  Reluctantly, she took the parchment from his hands and unrolled it, looking down the list of names she’d tried not to look at before. Blood. In the little hearts beside her name. A lump formed in her throat at the most recent name that had been crossed out. Naomi. Her sister. She still remembered standing beside her in the cavern, agreeing about not adding their own blood to the potion. It had been a smart gut instinct. Why hadn’t she listened?

  She’d gripped Naomi’s hand in the moonlight that had shone down, not realizing what they were about to do or the events they would set in motion, all over the naïve belief that immortality in this place—in this human form—was a good thing.

  Tears streamed down Tam’s face. She couldn’t hold them back anymore. She’d pushed her sister away so many times, trying to protect her from a brutal death at Jack’s hands, but it had still happened anyway. All that time lost.

  “Tam?”

  Her eyes met Cain’s. The fear and dread and hate and anger and all the scary emotions that swirled around his demon form had felt oppressive at first, but now she could get lost in them. She could pretend none of those feelings were her own. They were all the demon’s fault. There was a look in his eyes that she wasn’t sure how to classify. She didn’t trust that it was true concern, but he was making an admirable fake.

  “That last name he just killed? It was my sister. I know what you need me to do, but I just can’t do it.” Jack had used her sister’s blood to make the little hearts around her name. Cain must have suspected the same thing.

  Was Jack punishing her for leaving him? Would he have spared Naomi if she’d stayed? But at what cost? Her soul? Blood was the most powerful magic activator there was, especially the blood of a magical being, and Tam and all the other cyclers definitely qualified.

  She could use the blood, even dried, to scry into the past and see everything her sister had seen in her last moments. She could see the moments even right after her sister’s death, because blood had its own life. What blood saw was sometimes more than what we saw.

  “I need you to do the spell,” he said.

  “No! I’m not going to look at that. I can’t look at it. It won’t help. I can tell you what he did. He overpowered her and killed her and cut her open and took out organs and probably fucking ate one because isn’t ingesting a part of your enemy the way to becoming a god? That’s what he wants. He thinks he can be a god if he kills us all like this. If you think I’m going to trance out and look into Jack’s eyes while he kills my sister, you’re insane. I won’t do it, and you can’t make me do it.”

  She shook with rage over the idea. Maybe she could see something helpful, something that could let her know if he had any accomplices, something that could give them a location, but if the price was living her sister’s death vicariously and feeling all that pain and fear, she was just too selfish to go there.

  “Okay. Okay. Calm down,” Cain said.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she’d moved into the demon’s arms and laid her head against his chest. She didn’t care that he was in the demon form. At least he didn’t pretend he wasn’t what he was. At least he wasn’t ripping people up with knives. At least it was food, not sport or simply for power.

  A moment later, his large hands stroked through her hair, his claws barely skimming her head. It was more comforting than it should have been. The scary feelings around him started to fade—either that or she was becoming more acclimated. What was it with her and monsters? At least this time she didn’t love one, and she knew going in what he was. But did that make any difference? She’d still slept with him and was prepared to do it again and again, no matter how many times was necessary to get from him what she needed: her freedom.

  “Why did he put hearts beside your name?” Cain’s voice rumbled over her.

  “Don’t be stupid. You know why.”

  He sighed. “You were lovers. No wonder he’s saving you for last. It’s how I would do it.”

  Tam cringed at that, but if the demon noticed, he didn’t say anything.

  “I need to go to the meeting,” he said after a few minutes of standing like that. “I don’t know if Dayne can do the same magic, but I’ll take the scroll and we’ll find out. We might still be able to get what we need without your involvement.”

  He gathered the magi
cal bags and placed his hand over a spot on the cave wall that jutted out in the shape of an egg. It opened and he tossed her things in. “I’m sorry, but if you’re going to be in my caves, I have to up the security on your supplies.”

  “You really think I’d go against you like that?”

  “I don’t trust you. You don’t trust me. It’s what we have in common.” Even as he said it, Tam knew it wasn’t all they had in common. Besides Jack and the other cycler that was about to be history, Cain was one of the very few beings in existence who could really understand.

  Chapter Five

  Father Hadrian sat at the table, his expression blank of emotion. Anthony had started the meeting, and the demon leader was late again. Bringing Anthony down was the right thing to do. The vampire king’s increasing control was worse than the sacrifice of the humans finding out. The humans had known hundreds of years ago, and the world had survived. It would survive again, and the vampires with it. Anthony had to be stopped, or Hadrian’s race would end up slaves to their king.

  “Father Hadrian?”

  He looked up, not betraying his thoughts. “Yes?”

  An impatient expression painted the king’s face. “What did you get from the old woman Luc brought in? Anything?”

  Hadrian shook his head. “She remembered seeing a delivery man. It may have been The Cycler, but the details were too fuzzy. You know how fickle the memories of the elderly are. I erased her memory and sent her home.”

  It was a lie. She’d seen Jack clearly. The rest, about erasing her memory and sending her home was true.

  He would have had the old woman for dinner except she hadn’t done anything wrong. As a rule, he only fed from the guilty and then only killed the unrepentant. Everyone was repentant when their life was at stake, but Hadrian could see inside to their true feelings. He knew which ones to save and which to damn.