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“Okay, mama, but I’m watching you.” The characteristic hand wave ended with an accusatory finger pointed at her.
A gust of hot air blew up from the floor behind her. It seemed to come from nowhere. Jade inhaled as the fragrance of dark sandalwood and a dirty masculinity wafted into her nostrils. Her eyes closed and as she breathed in, her mind was abruptly flooded with the image of all the sex she wasn’t having.
Matt’s lowered voice invaded the darkness of her shut eyelids. “Oh, my Lord, no, I am not looking at you, not anymore, now I’m watching that!” She opened her eyes and saw the look in Matt’s eyes glaze over slightly as he motioned to something, or someone, behind her that had now consumed his attentions.
“Do not turn around quickly, but girl, turn the hell around. Slowly, I said, do not startle it and make it run away,” Matt hissed as he placed a hand on her shoulder.
“What are you talking about now? Is there some kind of animal in my shop?” Jade turned and not twenty feet away, he stood.
Legs crossed, a gorgeous man leaned against a bookshelf, his cocked head resting against it in a lazy pose. A long stream of dark, almost black, hair fell below his extremely well-built shoulders, contrasting with the lighter red of the cherry wood. This man was making no attempt to hide the fact he was staring right at her, assessing her. She felt some disdain for his audacity, but honestly his stare caused her to catch her breath, and then consciously begin breathing again. Rather than turn away, she stole another peek. Jade’s eyes met his and they seemed to grab and pull her in. His eyes contained darkness, but she saw that they were actually an intense gold laced by black lashes. As she trailed down his body, large muscled arms exploded out of the sleeves of his black t-shirt.
His emotion came upon her unbidden and she felt a sudden wave of lust crash over her. She unintentionally released a breathy sigh and clenched her teeth as the pure animal nature of him surrounded her in an all-encompassing cloud of arousal. Between this force and her body stood only a flimsy white tank and it apparently was going to provide her no protection. Her breasts and nipples tightened and became overly sensitive to even the slightest movements she made. The lower regions of her body went moist and warm and she crossed her legs; the clenching, however, made the feeling even stronger.
“Holy cow,” fell softly out of her mouth.
And Matt concurred, “Yes, ho-oly cow, girl.” Her mouth had apparently remained open because, keeping his gaze stuck on the tall hunk of man before them, Matt put his hand under her chin and popped it closed.
Trying to shake off the lusty arousal, she turned and tried to take on the look of the professional establishment owner she was, and took a tentative step in his direction.
Of course, that didn’t work out; instead she tripped on the edge of the Turkish rug beneath her, twisting her foot and breaking the heel off her favorite Jimmy Choo knee-high boots.
“Damn it,” she said under her breath, “I saved for months to buy those.” As she bent down to pick up the broken heel, she tried to take a step backward and stabilize her still sexually stunned body against the wooden counter.
Naturally, being that she was Jade, her hand landed at the base of a stack of returned books, sending them and herself tumbling to the floor. She was now red-cheeked, with hair strewn across her face and in her mouth, on her hands and knees. She lifted her head to wait for the typical Matt-like wisecrack, which surprisingly never came.
The mysterious man flashed a condescending grin the Cheshire cat himself would have been proud of and slowly turned and sauntered toward her front doors. Then he seemed to disappear. But that couldn’t be right, could it? He must have simply walked out the door and she had missed it.
“What the fuck was that?” Jade gaped at the space the dark-haired man had occupied, as she sat back onto her heels and shook her head to clear it.
Matt only raised his brows and looked down to her. His mind was obviously still more focused on the gorgeous stranger than his boss. As her clumsiness was pretty much constant, he looked at her with only a slight smirk. “That, my dear, was sex; pure, walking, fabulous sex. And not the weak-ass, watered-down kind. That man was fully loaded,” he chuckled, “and I would love some.” Matt furrowed his brow and bent down to help her.
“Okay, Jade, tell me right now,” Matt demanded, tapping his fingers on the patterned rug beside her sore knees. “What was that hot slice of man feeling? I have to know.”
Jade looked at Matt, past his crisp blue jeans and perfect orange polo shirt, the look in his eyes full of anticipation. He was one of the only people she trusted with the knowledge of what she could do. Well, actually, the only one, because she was reasonably sure he was the only one who didn’t ever want something from her. “I hate my curse, you know that. When I make a conscious decision to take advantage of the annoying thing, I am ashamed of myself. Please don’t make me go there.”
Unfortunately, most of the time her ability crept in without her inviting it. Even now, all around them she could sense the crowd’s slow change back to their previous mix of emotions. Curious, she thought, that man appears as a sudden shift in emotion consumes the store and knocks me on my ass and, blam, he walks out, and it all goes back to normal?
“Come on, Jade, you’re not going to tell me anything?” He gave her his sweetest puppy-dog eyes.
“Sorry, dude, but I didn’t even try,” she lied; this was the easiest way out of the conversation. Jade hated using her blasted mental capabilities to read emotions, almost as much as she detested her ability to change those feelings, and she had absolutely no intention of discussing them or the sexual barrage that strange man had given her. The memory made her body release a shiver from head to toe, which unfortunately came to rest in a warm, aching pool deep down in the lower regions of her stomach.
Why did this have to happen to me? Jade asked herself for the millionth time.
A swirl of wind formed in the discarded trash and debris on the dirty sidewalk, out from under Nias’s black combat boots as he transcended outside to the not-so-fresh air of New York City streets.
He usually didn’t take such a risk. Humans seeing a tall, dark stranger appear from out of nowhere tended to become alarmed. He had simply wanted to remove himself from within the vicinity of the human female immediately.
When Nias first saw the backside of the statuesque redhead twirling a single curl and lounging on her forearms at the book counter his body began to boil. He knew right away he was staring at trouble. She was stunning. Watching the girl in plain, low-rise jeans and a white tank top … there was definitely something different about her. He could tell immediately that there was a force within her, the power they needed. But there was something else as well, something insisting his gaze remain on her, and not stray.
When she turned around with her friend to look at him he could feel her immediate pull on him. All he had wanted to do was remove the space between them. Slip a hand around the curve of her hip to the small of her back and pull her body flush against him, for a long, slow kiss.
The few moments after he had seen her were bad enough, but when she turned to look in his direction, the effect he had on her became abundantly clear. He began to mentally undress the beauty and, in detail, strip her down and find ways to make her react to him. His loins began to swell as his brain began to get more descriptive. It was only when she tumbled and their eyes broke contact that he was able to snap out of the apparent spell she had put him under. He had no other recourse for the moment but to get out of there before he walked up, took her by the hand, and transcended her straight back to his bedroom.
He silently cursed Jibreel and the other Goddesses for asking him to locate Jade Shear. Oh yeah, that girl would definitely be trouble.
A slight queasy ache swelled from the pits of his stomach. He straightened his bearing back to that of the warrior he was, returning to his now-comfortable state of numbness.
Nias turned to survey the street. Humans, with their matching white paper coffee cups, sat a little nervously now, lounging and taking in the sun. An ordinary blond couple opened the wooden and glass door and moved into Jade’s establishment. Resting his hands in the front pockets of his faded jeans, he found peace in his old habit of surveillance, and slowly the feelings began to subside.
None of the scattered few had noticed him appear. No wide, stricken eyes or signs of panic were visible. Only the common human reaction of shifting as an anxious tension swept through them. But it always did when a strong high-caste Daemon was near.
His memory shifted to the last image he had of her as he exited the store. She was kneeling on the ground, a disheveled mass of books surrounding her, on her hands and knees in the middle of it. She was a beautiful disaster.
This was the female that was supposed to help him traverse Sheol and rescue his brother?
“Unbelievable,” he grumbled.
He had spent ages, millennia even, in Sheol. He didn’t need assistance. Arousing or not, that clumsy human was going to get them both killed. She couldn’t even manage to stand on her legs; how the hell was he supposed to traverse Sheol with her? Much less kill multiple caste-leveled Shaitan in blazing underworld heat. And he was there to seek her help? The woman on her hands and knees, knocking things over and tumbling to the ground – she was supposed to be able to protect him from the Shaitan? He realized his teeth were grinding.
Nias had a flash, a sudden, intense desire to leave her, to never see this female again. This is a really stupid plan. People are going to die; this girl is going to die.
Now he had to return to Jibreel and her sisters and tell them he had found her. This day just kept getting better and better.
“I am fucked,” he said to himself and transcended out.
Chapter 2 (#u21e64af6-08f4-5054-8355-c57aee29da28)
Nias opened the immense white door and stepped through for the second time in a scant few hours, taking long strides over the cloudlike path toward the Goddesses. Bathed in a bright light, the area consumed him in a powdery whiteness. He kept his head down, raising a hand to his brow and using the front sheet of his hair like a shield against its radiance.
Djinn were rarely asked to meet with the Goddesses, and almost never here, at the Temple. And so, when he received the summons that morning, curiosity got the better of him, and he transcended immediately to the place of worship. Now he returned with a pit in his stomach to tell them the “good” news.
Three of the High Goddesses stood facing him, the edges of their figures wavering against the light that Daemon could barely gaze upon. “Eternally beautiful, eternally dark, it has always been curious how he made your kind. If he were capable of love, or even remote affection, I would say it was used during your creation.” The center Goddess tilted her head of glimmering white hair to the side, using her hands to trace his outline when she spoke to him.
“Thank you, Goddess, your compliments honor me, as always.” Nias, although playing the subservient to their vanity, couldn’t help but curl the side of his mouth in a flirty smirk, his golden eyes flashing with a hint of mischief. He continued walking, moving close to her and leaning in toward her ear when he spoke next. Lowering his tone to something just north of a whisper, “Jibreel, thank you for inviting me back into your home.” He couldn’t help but tease them. They were without true male companionship in Arcadia.
She sighed and then noticed the other two Goddesses looking at him as well and stood up straight to regain an authoritative posture. “Our creatures in the Unseen tell us Joss is being held by the Empusa; this is good news for you. It gives you plenty of time to train the girl and prepare her for your journey into Sheol.”
“Train the girl for our journey into Sheol? You have to realize what you’re saying is absurd.”
The ethereal blonde to his left immediately became more animated. “Djinn! You will not speak this way to Jibreel! With a wave of my hand I could end your life. It would, in fact, be a pleasure. I do not share Jibreel’s affection for creatures like you. Whether above ground or below, I would end you all. I see how dangerous you all are. And you, specifically, Nias.”
I dare you to try, he thought, but made sure not to show his feelings about her threats openly. He spoke to them with a deep, composed voice. “You know as well as I, no living human belongs in Sheol.” He inwardly shuddered at the memories of his time there … of what he was tasked to do. “I can certainly handle anything they can throw at me. What possible good can come from me training her?”
“You are the most capable warrior available. You know why Phaeton cannot go; he needs to retain his position as Sovereign of the Djinn Sentry. To leave the humans unguarded would bring chaos. We require your help, and your brother needs you.”
The Goddess Eeia had intentionally used Phaeton’s new title to gauge Nias’s reaction, he knew, and was sure she was not disappointed as he bristled at the sound of it. “Unquestionably I will go for Joss, but the woman, I don’t need her. I won’t take her.” Do not order me to take her, come on, girls, do not make me take the beautiful trouble, Nias silently pleaded.
“If she has retained the Gifts she will ease your passage. For your brother, for the balance, you will take her. Are her powers legitimate? Could you feel her?” Oh yeah, he was feeling her all right, way too much, in fact.
“Yes, yes, she has powers.” He knew then he had lost this argument. For his brother he would take the girl. “She is stronger than I have ever felt from a human. The empathic Gifts granted to Jade are definitely potent.” Speaking of the girl brought on a reaction in him he didn’t know what to do with. He found himself shifting from one cloud-covered combat boot to the other. I do not shift uncomfortably, he thought. He corrected himself once again, retaking his typical firm, masculine stance. Gritting his teeth, Nias lowered his head slightly and exhaled, resigned to the course the Goddesses had set him on.
Damn.
Jade figured she must have blacked out, because one moment she was walking home from the bookstore after staying, despite Matt’s protests, and the next she was inside what looked to be a large amazing loft space. She was inside someone’s home. She dropped to her knees, hitting a cold, hard floor, and then she fell into a kind of shock.
She started muttering to herself, “Okay, this is too weird. I was just outside, and the sky was dark. Now I’m in somebody’s loft, where I can plainly see out that window,” she pointed a dizzy finger toward the floor-to-ceiling casement, “the sun isn’t even down; it is clearly twilight out there.” She was talking to herself out loud, to hear her own voice more than anything. She turned her body to figure out exactly where she was, and her chin ran smack into the denim-covered legs and steel-toed combat boots of the man who was responsible. And she screamed as loud as she could.
Nias fell to his knees and put his hand over her mouth.
“Woman, you are obviously upset, and at this point I can understand that, but if you would stop with the screeching and remain calm, I can explain everything.”
That was good because she wanted some answers. “Where am I? How did I get here? Did I pass out? Did you give me drugs? Are you some kind of kidnapper? If you are, I will let you know now you definitely have the wrong girl. I haven’t a dime in the world, so you might as well just save yourself the trouble and let me go!” Her words came out rapid-fire, a battering tempest of chatter that she could see nearly overwhelmed him.
In response to her questioning this large dark-haired man merely began to laugh out loud.
“I’m sorry, did I amuse you?” She squinted up at him.
“No, hellion, I just find your way of communication different, that’s all, and no I am not a kidnapper, I have not given you drugs, you did not pass out, and you are in California; San Francisco to be precise. As for the way you got here, I transcended us.”
“You what?”
“I transcended us – a process Daemons use to move around.”
“Daemons?” She looked up to take a real, solid look at this maniac…and ran smack into the eyes of the gorgeous man from the physical disturbance this morning in her bookstore. Criminy, I have been abducted by the hottest lunatic ever. Jade looked around her, trying to assess the likelihood that she could escape and outrun him. She saw an open window and on the opposite side of what seemed to be a living room, the front door. Door is further, but I probably won’t break a leg if I go for the door. Door it is. She shoved him away and was up and running!
Before she took three steps, he was in front of her, a giant wall of muscle. She turned on the tips of her replacement stilettos and bolted for the window. This time he gave her five steps. He was in front of her again. Mr. Tall, Dark, and Broody gently picked her up with one of his arms behind her back, swung her legs up and over his other arm and carried her to the divan, where he smoothly sat her down and smiled.
“Can I continue? Or would you like to take another turn about the room? If it’s exercise you’re looking for I can think of much better ways to expend your energy.” He folded his arms, as if daring her to make another run for it. His golden eyes flickered with unmistakable amusement.
“Oh, for crying out loud, fine. I will listen to what you have to say. Only because you outweigh me by at least a hundred pounds, are way quicker than I am, and clearly you are willing to use force to have your way.” She was waving her index finger in the air, much like Matt did when he got excited. “But stop grinning at me; I am a hostage, not a plaything.”
“Pity.” His eyes did a swift head-to-toe assessment of her body. “I can assure you I wish this could be done any other way. Unfortunately the circumstances at hand have forced me into your life.”
“That I can see,” she hissed.
“Jade, I’m afraid our time together has just begun,” he said, squinting his eyes a bit. “I, or rather my family and I, require your assistance, and your gifts. We know you have the ability to sense emotion; we also know you can, in various degrees, affect emotions around you. Also your ability to tell if beings are lying may come in handy as well.”
“How in the world could you know that? Or my name? Who the hell are you?” If it were possible, this conversation was starting to freak her out even more than what had already happened.
“My name is Nias, and let’s just say I have it on the best authority.”
“Well, then, Nias, do you know where this curse came from? Can you tell me?” She wasn’t sure why it had come out as a question and not a demand; maybe it was fear at finally having an answer. What she did know was even discussing its origin made her recall all the pain and sadness it had brought into her life. If there were a way to find out where it came from, possibly there would be a way to get rid of it. She would do almost anything to accomplish that.
“That, I cannot do. I am not at liberty to inform you of any more than you have to know in order to help us.”
“Why am I even having this conversation, then? For all I know, you found out somehow, got Matt drunk, maybe, I don’t know.”
Then it hit her. The strangest thing about this situation was she could tell he wasn’t lying. She always got a feeling when someone lied to her. Almost like a sharpness at the back of her neck and behind her eyes, like a fierce headache was coming on, and she wasn’t getting it from him. So there were only two possible conclusions; one, he believed what he was saying so strongly that it didn’t come out at her as a lie, which meant her half-sarcastic comment was correct and he was insane. Or two, he was being truthful. Surprisingly to her, it wasn’t the possibility of the former, complete insanity, worrying her the most; it was the possibility of the latter, that his story could reflect the truth, causing the bubble of nervousness and trepidation to rise up from her gut.
“Well, can you get rid of it? I want to get it out of me; it is awful, to tell you the truth. You are looking at this thing as a gift, but it isn’t. This thing has made me a freak. My own parents couldn’t handle it. Or I guess it was me who found it hard to tolerate their loathing of my oddity. It wasn’t just them; try making friends when you know their every feeling and lie. It crashes into my head, and did I mention it hurts? Can you, they, who, whatever, make it go away?”
Nias was not completely surprised to see the look of pain in her eyes, but it had an effect on him he did not expect. He had an overwhelming need to make that look, the causes of that look, go away, but he knew it was impossible. He needed the part of her causing that pain.
“No, I can’t. I was asked to find you, explain the situation, and obtain your help. And to be honest, I doubt they would be willing to take away something they find useful.” He couldn’t help but place his hand on her forearm, to touch her, to soothe her. And then, as quickly as he had placed it, and felt the warmth of her skin, her eyes flickered straight towards his own, and he yanked his hand away.
He would not do this. This human would not affect him. He pulled himself together and got back to the business at hand.
“My brother has been kidnapped by some very bad individuals.”
“I feel his pain, as I seem to be in the same situation.” He appreciated her sharp wit and snappy comeback, and smirked despite himself.
“Trust me, Jade, you are not in the same situation. I will not hurt you. If you try to run, I will bring you back. But I will not ever hurt you.” And he suddenly realized he meant every word of it.
Again Jade could feel he wasn’t lying. He meant what he said, and strangely she didn’t feel like she was in any immediate danger.
“I need to get to him, and I need you to use the abilities you possess to help me do it. The place I have to take you is evil beyond your reasoning; it will be like nothing you have ever seen or imagined,” he continued to explain.
Jade shuddered at the sincerity and seriousness in his voice. “Where is this place and who are these people?”
“I cannot give you any more information right now, but we need to start with your training immediately, if I ever expect to see my brother alive again.”
“Why in the world would I get involved with this? It sounds extremely dangerous, and I’m sorry to be harsh, but it just isn’t my problem.” Even as she spoke the words, she thought of the one and only thing that could possibly make her do something so crazy; to actually have a normal life, to be rid of this blasted curse. This man might not know where the curse came from, but even if there was an infinitesimal chance she could find its origin and maybe, just maybe, find out a way to make it stop, she wanted to try.
“Unfortunately, Jade, the moment you came into contact with me you started being watched and it became your problem. The Shaitan have eyes everywhere. They have, no doubt, seen you by now, so you are involved already. You’re just not safe without me or one of the Djinn beside you anymore.” Nias looked into her eyes and she thought she saw a tiny glimmer of regret. Then she experienced a flash of anger that he had put her in this position. If what he said was true, he had already endangered her life.
All thoughts of agreeing to this madness had flown out of her mind. She clenched her teeth as she responded.
“I appreciate you want to retrieve your brother, but I don’t know anything about these … these Shaitan, or Djinn, or Daemons, or whatever they are called. I have a business to run, I have a life!” A sad and pathetic life; one where I cannot keep a relationship intact, prevent my head from erupting into spontaneous bursts of pain or even manage to stay out of dreamland long enough to cope with the madness. But right now she didn’t care, she needed some air to breathe not full of super-hot “I’m a Daemon” guy. She needed to get away and think, time to sort through this mess.
She continued her tirade getting up and taking a step toward him. The tension in the room was palpable. “I am going to go, please do not stop me, do not contact me, do not drug me or drag me across the country anymore!”
She paused for a time, looking at him, and when he made no move to stop her, she stormed past him and out the door. To her surprise, he let her go.
As Jade walked out of the flat, she wondered what kind of fiendishness was truly involved in getting her there. She had been to San Francisco before, and as she looked around she realized quickly he was telling the truth on that count. Did he take her across the country, unconscious on a plane? Surely not a public one. How long was she out? She had not felt herself go under or come out of a blackout. What she did know was she needed to find a way home.
Luckily she was a credit-card-in-the-pocket, and not a purse kind of a girl, because she was going to need a cab ride and a plane ticket before that hot but vexatious man came looking for her. She was not sure why he had let her walk out, and right now she did not give two shits about the why’s, she just wanted as far away from here as she could get.
Unfortunately, as far away as she could get was two blocks, when something metal slammed into her stomach and then hit her over the head, and this time everything did go black.
Chapter 3 (#u21e64af6-08f4-5054-8355-c57aee29da28)
When she came to, it wasn’t in a lovely flat with a gorgeous alpha male. Instead, she was in some kind of an abandoned warehouse-looking place. It was so dark she could only see by the thin cracks of light coming through what she assumed were doors, which extended from the floor to incredibly high ceilings. Her head was pounding and a foul odor smacked her in the face. She had no idea what it was, but it was a smell one could only imagine in a nightmare. A stewed thickness wafted of feces and other body fluids. She had never smelled decaying flesh, but she could imagine it smelled exactly like this.
She tried to move and realized she was chained to a beam, which connected to the ceiling. Terrified, she struggled, but the chains did not merely shackle her wrists and ankles; she felt them wrapped around her body, rendering her practically paralyzed. She began screaming from the depths of her soul, fear producing a sound she never imagined could come out of her. As she cried out she swung her head around, violently at first, but that made her pounding headache turn into an explosion of agony. She continued screaming and crying until snot and tears mingled and dripped from her face. No one responded, and she couldn’t see anyone else there. She finally passed out, most likely from the combination of fear and pain.
Next thing she knew, someone slapped her across the face so hard it split her lip and flung the other side of her face into the beam. She would have registered immense pain, except what was in front of her stole every bit of her attention. She sensed the emotions coming off of the person joining her in the cavernous space. If pure evil were a feeling, this would be it; hatred, jealousy, rage, loathing, greed, mistrust hit her all at once, and then she tried to shut them out. She pushed against it with her mind, despite the throbbing in her head. She had minimal success, making it slightly less overwhelming. She could make out a shadow of someone hunchbacked. From what little she could make out, it looked like he, or she, had been born with some hideous deformities. It seemed lopsided. One arm appeared to be longer than the other. Its breath smelled like putrid sewage … no that wasn’t it; it smelled of death. She could also hear the voices of several others behind her, but they weren’t speaking a language she understood.
Then a high, whiny voice spoke in English. “How is it you know Nias, what business does he have with you, human?”
