A breeze stirred the air, cooling the early-morning heat but doing little to ease the furnace-like intensity of the man who walked close behind me. Part of me wished I could ignore him, that we could just go back to the time when the attraction was muted and he was more antagonistic. More distant. But there was no way on earth to put that particular genie back in the bottle.
After a moment, I asked, “What did you mean before, when you said I had no idea of the risk we were running?”
“Just that. This attraction breaks all the rules—”
“Your rules, not mine.”
“Yes.” He paused. “I thought we had agreed that we should—”
“No,” I snapped back. “You decided we should attempt to ignore this. I had no choice.”
“Because of the danger—”
“To whom?” I swung around and stabbed a finger into his chest. It felt like I was hitting steel. “Not to me, buddy boy, and don’t pretend otherwise. You’re protecting your ass here, not mine.”
“True.” His expression was as enigmatic as ever, and yet there was an undercurrent in the air that was both frustration and anger. At himself, at me, at the situation. “But you have no idea of the dangers I face.”
“No, because you won’t fucking explain them to me.” I glared at him for a moment, then shook my head and walked on. “You know what? Forget it. It’s not important.”
“If it wasn’t important, you would not be this angry.”
I snorted softly and just kept moving. He was silent until we got to the SUV, then appeared in the passenger seat.
“As I said before,” he commented, as I pulled out into the traffic, “the longer I remain in flesh form, the more I take on certain human characteristics.”
“So? It’s not like a little human emotion is going to destroy you or anything, is it?”
“That,” he said, his voice holding an edge that suggested he was barely holding on to his patience, “is where you are very wrong.”
I glanced at him sharply. “How the fuck is that even possible? I mean, emotion isn’t a physical force. Being emotional can’t destroy you.” I paused, then remembered Jak, the man I’d thought I would marry one day, and all the heartbreak he’d caused me. “Although sometimes it does feel like it can.”
“While gaining the emotions that come with flesh form is, of itself, not dangerous to us, the fact that you and I are connected at a chi level makes it so.”
I slowed down as the lights ahead went to red, then said, “Why?”
He hesitated. “A chi connection is a connection of life forces—”
“I’m well aware what a chi connection is,” I snapped. “Just tell me why you believe it’s so damn dangerous.”
He released a breath that was more a hiss. “It’s dangerous because it can lead to assimilation.”
I blinked. “Assimilation?”
“It happens when a reaper becomes so attuned to a particular human that their life forces merge, and they become as one.”
“No—”
“Yes,” he spat back. His expression was as grim as I’d ever seen it. “If that happens, my reaper powers will become muted, and I will never again be able to function as a soul bearer.”
“But you can still be a Mijai?”
“Yes. But this is not a position I wish to retain for eternity.” He glanced at me. “And I suspect you would not wish the connection between us to strengthen any further, or become permanent.”
“God, no.” I liked Azriel—a lot—but he wasn’t Mr. Long Term. And neither was my Aedh lover, Lucian. I wanted someone who was flesh and blood real, someone who could give me a family and a life on this plane.
The lights changed again, so I pressed the accelerator and continued. “Does that mean the attraction between us is a sign that we’re on the cusp of assimilation?”
“Possibly.” He looked away for a moment, studying the road ahead. “But it is never wise to play with fire.”
“We knew it wasn’t wise when we made love,” I commented. “It didn’t stop either of us.”
“No.” The ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “And as much as I cannot regret that moment, to continue down that path is to risk the link strengthening into assimilation.”
“Then you’re going to have to be the strong one, because I’m damn sure I won’t be.” I tried to envision being around him and not being able to touch him. It just wasn’t possible.
“If I was capable of such strength,” he said quietly, “there would not have been a first time.”
My gaze briefly met his. Deep in his differently colored blue eyes desire burned. He might be keeping it in check better than I was, but he definitely wasn’t as immune to my nearness as his actions sometimes led me to believe.
I swung onto Spencer Street and headed toward Southern Cross Station. “You do realize this decision of yours means that you can’t object to me being with Lucian. I may not be driven by the moon’s heat as most werewolves are, but I do have an above-average sex drive.”
I didn’t need to see his expression to know that his anger had just ratcheted up several notches. The force of it singed my skin and senses. “You know I do not trust the Aedh.”
Yeah, I did. Just like I knew that his distrust—hell, I’d even call it hatred—left him unable to even say Lucian’s name. It would have been amusing if it wasn’t so damn frustrating.
“And we both know,” I snapped back, “that your distrust stems more from the fact that I’m with him than from anything he’s actually done.”
For once, he didn’t dispute it. “I am not jealous, if that is what you are implying.”
“Then why do you have a problem with me being with him?”
“He is using you.”
“We’re using each other.”
“Yes, but his reasons are not what he states. He lies, Risa. I can taste it.”
“If he’s lying, then he’s doing it so well my internal radar isn’t picking it up.”
“He has been earthbound for many, many centuries. Have no doubt that he is well practiced in more than the art of sex.”
That, at least, was something we both agreed on. But it still didn’t mean Lucian was lying to me—or rather, I hoped it didn’t. I swung into the parking lot under the Flinders Street bridge and squeezed into a spot between one of the bridge stanchions and a large four-wheel drive.
I turned off the engine, then faced him. “You can’t have it both ways. Either you and I run the risk of assimilation, or you accept the fact that I will be with others. No more shitty aloofness.”
“The first is not an option, and the second will not be easy.”
“I didn’t think it would be.”
When he didn’t say anything else, I climbed out of the car and headed for the Southern Cross railway station. The building’s undulating roofline gleamed crisply in the bright sunshine and, as ever, reminded me of snow mounds—albeit snow mounds covered in pigeons and pigeon poop. A constant rush of people flowed in and out of the station, and the vast area under the unusual roof was filled with the sounds of chatter, footsteps, whistles, and trains.
I made my way through the interior to the main locker area, my footsteps slowing as I neared the doorway. I flared my nostrils, dragging in the air, and I couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary. But I hadn’t the last time I was here, either, and that time two Razan—the human slaves of the Aedh—had been waiting for me.
“Anything?” I asked softly.
Azriel shook his head. “There is no human or non-human life within.”
“Which doesn’t mean there isn’t a trap waiting inside.”
“No.” He paused. “There is no sense of magic, however.”
“That’s something, I guess.”
I considered the doorway for a few seconds longer, then took a deep breath to fortify my nerves and headed in. The locker room was large and the air cool. There were two rows of cream-colored lockers in the center of the room, while more lockers lined the walls. The one I wanted sat about midway along the central locker row. I dug the little key out of my pocket and walked toward them. Trepidation crawled across my skin. Nothing, no one, was here, and yet every sense I had tingled.
My fingers shook as I opened the door. It was a stupid and illogical response given everything I’d survived over the last couple of weeks, but I just couldn’t help it. I feared my father. Feared him more than the Raziq themselves, even though he’d done little more than threaten me and my friends if I didn’t comply with his wishes.
And his threats were nothing compared to what the Raziq had actually done—they’d torn me apart, placed a tracker in the fabric of my heart, and then rebuilt me.
Perhaps that was the problem. I knew what the Raziq were capable of, and I knew what they wanted. Hell, I knew what Azriel, the Mijai, and even the vampire council wanted from me. But my father’s motives were little more than murk. All I could be sure of was that what he said he wanted and what he actually planned were two entirely different things.
It was the not knowing that scared the shit out of me. That, and the intuition that he could be far more dangerous than the Raziq as a whole ever could be.
The locker door swung open, revealing a totally empty interior. No letter, nothing to indicate what he wanted or what I was supposed to do next. It didn’t make sense. Why send me here if he didn’t intend to leave instructions?
“What the fuck is going—”
The rest of the sentence died in my throat, because it suddenly felt like someone had a hand around my heart and was threatening to squeeze the life out of me.
And hot on the heels of that came the awareness of an approaching presence. Only it wasn’t body heat I sensed, wasn’t humanity, but rather the heat of a being that was all energy, all power.
