My Soul to Keep (4 page)

“Oh, I would love that. Tell you what, find Tresa. Destroy her. Then you and I can finish this. And I'll show the Master that no pathetic mongrel has the power to kill me.”

Sorcha lurched from her chair, sending it clattering to the floor, forgetting at that moment that the demon wasn't really there. She grabbed the witch by the shoulder, her fingers digging, eager to hurt, hungry for vengeance … until Maree cried out sharply. Sorcha pulled her hand back as if stung and stared hard at the witch's face.

The black liquid pools of her eyes blurred, shrank and faded away. The startling blue flashed back into place. The witch sagged in her chair, blinking in confusion.

And Sorcha knew. The demon was gone.

Glancing wildly around the room, convinced the demon could still hear her even if he no longer possessed Maree, Sorcha shouted, “I'll find Tresa! I'll destroy her and then we'll finish this!”

For Gervaise. For the misery Tresa's curse had caused across ages.
I'll finish it.

Nothing would stop her.

Jonah woke to a heavy pounding on his door, wrenched from his usual nightmares. He sat up in bed, sheets tangled around his legs, his heart sinking back down into his throat.

The nightmares were always the same. Even all these years later. Always fire. Fire clawing up his body, eating at him, melting his flesh until it fell away in liquid sheets, until his bones burst into char and ash. Always he fought the flames, plunging into the mawing heat, screaming for Sorcha, desperate to save the only thing innocent and good in his life.

Useless.

With a curse and a shake of his head, he slid from the bed, the nightmare slipping away like smoke until its later return. As the scalding burn faded from his nose, he fought off the thought that always followed his dreams, plaguing him still, all these years later.
I should have been there. If I had only been there, Sorcha would be alive.

The pounding at his door grew more savage and he snatched his sword from where it rested beside the bed. Before he even reached the door, he heard Darby's shouts from the other side.

“Jonah! Jonah, let me in!”

As soon as he flung the door open, the witch barreled past him into his condo. She slammed the door shut behind her and drove the bolt home. Her body shuddered with angry breaths, her red hair a flaming halo around her head.

Both her hands pressed against the door as if she expected something to burst through, as if her slight frame might prevent that from happening. He almost smiled. For all that she was a witch, she was small. A brisk wind could knock her over … which might have been what had drawn him toward her that first night so many years ago.

Her vulnerability had reminded him of Sorcha. Still did. Darby possessed a wide-eyed innocence that prompted him to protect her, to step forward and rescue her time and time again. He'd only ever acted the role of hero before with Sorcha.

“A demon—following me,” she panted.

“Ah, hell, Darby.” He lurched forward to stare through the peephole, his every nerve swinging into alert. “You led him here?” Seeing nothing, he stalked toward where several weapons hung above his couch.

Darby glared over her shoulder at him as he tossed aside his sword and removed a scimitar from its hooks.

“Sorry,” she bit out. “I was on my way to your place anyway when it—”

“You should have called me. I would have come to you.” He didn't need a demon knowing where he lived. Now he had no choice but to destroy the bastard—or leave his condo behind and relocate.

Almost on cue, his nape started burning, heat rising up from beneath his skin. He didn't have to look in a mirror to know that the mysterious markings on the back of his neck would be glowing. He rubbed a hand on the irritated flesh. The markings had appeared years ago, the same night he'd met his first demon. The night he'd first saved Darby.

The white witch's eyes followed the motion of his hand. “You feel him? He's coming?”

“Yeah,” he ground out, jerking his head toward the bedroom. “Get in there, and—”

The rest of his words were lost. A great gust of air rushed through the room. The dark shadow passed through the door, swirled into a cyclone that touched down and materialized before him.

Darby ran for cover with a sharp oath. Jonah didn't blame her. The demon was after her, and a white witch had little defense against a demon bent on possessing her. The only thing she could do was
avoid using her powers and stay under the radar. An impossibility for Darby with her particular gift. Her visions came to her unsolicited, and demons constantly tormented her because of it. If not for Jonah, she would probably have given up the fight years ago, relented and signed away her soul.

With the back of his neck scorching, he squared off in front of the demon. His lips curled at the gruesome sight of it. Great knotted horns jutted out from its head and a long, barbed tail whipped about its purple-black body, hissing on the air.

Fortunately for humans, they never saw this. Humans saw only shadows, blurry winds. Only witches and slayers could see demons as they truly were. For some reason that Jonah had ceased to understand, he was a slayer. Darby insisted he was chosen by God—like all slayers. With his past, his many sins and failures, he thought that unlikely.

The demon filled the doorway, feverishly muttering in its strange tongue. The words rolled over Jonah, weaving throughout him, almost spell-like, transforming inside him, unfolding, whispering in his head … becoming a language he could understand.

“Stand aside, slayer. I want the witch.”

“You can't have her.” Swinging his sword, Jonah whirled and swiped the scimitar across the demon's gut.

The demon roared, more annoyed than harmed. The long, slashing wound sealed itself almost the instant the purple dark flesh parted.

Crouched low in striking pose, Jonah searched for the mark of the fall that signified the demon's descent from grace—God's abandonment. It was a demon's Achilles' heel, the only spot he could strike to kill the creature.

Darby cried out as the demon swung a great clawed fist at Jonah's head. He ducked and spun around, air hissing in his ears at his speed. And that's when he saw it. The mark of the fall glowed brightly, beckoning.

With a roar of his own, he drove his sword into the demon's back. With a screech that could have broken glass, the demon crumpled, blurring into a twisting plume of smoky air as it dropped to the floor. Gradually the air cleared, leaving nothing. No sign of the demon that had once stood before him.

His breath fell hard, fast with the rush of adrenaline. Turning, he faced Darby. She stepped from his bedroom, her eyes bright with relief. “That wasn't so bad,” she murmured with a shaky smile.

Jonah tossed his weapons to the floor and wiped an arm across his brow. “Have you thought of relocating, Darby? Someplace isolated where the temperature doesn't get higher than twenty
degrees?” Demons were accustomed to the fires of hell and could not tolerate cold climates. Even demon witches were known to reside in cold locations where they could at least wrest some control from their possessors.

“I thought it smarter to stick close to you. It's not every witch who has a dovenatu slayer at her back.”

“And what if I'm not there to cover your back? What if you didn't get here in time?” Shaking his head, he moved into his kitchen. It had happened before. When he'd failed Sorcha. When he lost her.

Sucking in a shuddering breath, he turned on the faucet and scooped up a handful of icy water, splashing it on the nape of his neck, where the flesh still throbbed and burned from his proximity to a demon. Would he never be free of the memory? Never take a breath when he didn't think of Sorcha? When she wasn't there to torment him?

“What were you doing out this late anyway?” he growled.

“I had to see you. I had another vision and it involved—”

“Damnit, Darby,” he snapped. “Why not wear a sign around your neck? The last thing you should have done is traipse around town in the aftermath of a vision. They can smell the magic on you.”

“I thought you needed to be warned.”

“You could have called—”

“You hardly ever pick up.”

Turning off the faucet with a jerk, he inhaled deeply, reminding himself that Darby hadn't asked to be what she was. Just as he hadn't asked to become a demon slayer. It wasn't her fault she was a demon target. She hadn't asked him to save her that long-ago night in the park where he'd first spotted her, cornered by a demon.

At first he thought he had snapped and finally gone mad. Or walked onto a movie set. What else could explain the grotesque creature? He had helped Darby then, and countless times since. He was kidding himself to think he would stop now—that he even could.

With a suffering sigh, he asked, “What did you see, Darby?”

“Tresa … someone's going to kill her.” She winced. “Or try at least.”

Running a wet hand down his face, he stared hard at her. “Tresa … the witch who started the lycan curse. Shit. That
can't
happen.”

She nodded. “Her demon can't be set free, Jonah.”

He exhaled. Darby's visions were rarely wrong.

“You have to stop her, Jonah.”

“Her?”

“The woman who's after Tresa.”

“Is she after Tresa or Tresa's demon?”

“There's a difference? If she kills Tresa, then her demon gains corporeal form. It will materialize on earth, hidden no longer. It will destroy all in its path. It could be the apocalypse.”

Jonah lifted an eyebrow.

Her cheeks colored. “Don't look at me that way. I'm not being dramatic. I've seen the demon witch with a sword at her throat … we have to stop whoever it is from killing her.”

Gazing at Darby's flushed, earnest face, he saw her as he had all those years ago, a teenager being brutally attacked by a demon. She'd reminded him so much of Sorcha. If he were honest, it was
this
—her needing him, admiring him—that mimicked, albeit poorly, the way he'd felt when Sorcha gazed up at him with her doe eyes.

“Why not?” He stalked from the sink into his bedroom, craving space, distance. “I don't have anything else to do,” he called. There'd been nothing since Istanbul. Since he'd failed Sorcha. Lost her. Darby was the closest thing he had to a friend. Family, he guessed. She never left him alone, constantly inviting him to dinner with her aunts, even after his many refusals.

He'd had a family before. A pack. As fucked up as Ivo was, Jonah knew what it felt like to belong to a group, to something larger than himself. And
there had been Sorcha. She had been everything good. She had looked to him, and he let her down. Failed her. Losing her had killed his soul, wrecked what little heart he possessed. He'd never let himself care that much again. Not even for Darby or the witches in her coven.

He jerked a shirt over his head and stalked back into the living room of his condo. He hadn't bothered to close the blinds, and the lights of the bay winked at him like multicolored stars.

Darby turned from the window, her arms folded in front of her, a serious look on her face. “There's more. It affects you directly.”

He motioned for her to elaborate.

Darby uncrossed her arms and then crossed them again, clearly agitated.

Sinking onto his sofa, he murmured, “I'm listening.”

“This woman has found out Tresa's location and she's determined to take her head.” She said this last with heavy emphasis. Decapitation was the only way to kill a demon witch. Not that he ever had. A witch under the influence of a demon was bad enough … why would he want to free her demon?

Darby's eyes glassed over, appeared faraway as she recounted her vision. “I've seen her. She's strong. She won't quit until she sees Tresa dead.
I've discussed it with my aunts. As ugly as it sounds, we can't let her live.”

He nodded grimly. If there was one thing Jonah knew how to do, it was kill. He'd ended lives for years at the behest of Ivo. Killing for a good reason would not give him a moment's pause. “Fine. Tell me where she is.”

“There's more you have to know.” Darby swallowed. He watched the cords of her neck visibly work. “I almost debated coming to you because of it, but if you don't stop her, the risk is too great for all of us. This woman … I saw her kill you.” She blurted out the words as if they were too much, unbearable to keep bottled inside. “She was standing over you with a knife. I saw her pull it from your body …”

He stilled, imagining the scene. He'd lived for so long that death had become something elusive to him. There had been moments when he wished he had died with Sorcha and the others, that in living he had somehow cheated what was meant to be.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked.

He nodded once, slowly. “What of Tresa? Does she live? Did you see her alive?”

“Yes. You help her escape.”

And thereby keep her demon leashed. It was enough. All that mattered.

“I had to tell you,” Darby said, eyeing him anxiously. “I couldn't just send you into this without knowing—”

“That I'm going to die?” He almost smiled at the stricken look on Darby's face.

She shook her head. “Of course it doesn't have to be. This is your fate as of now, but you have the power to change your fate's course. If you do the unexpected, something contrary to your nature, then maybe it can be averted.”

Maybe. She was banking on a maybe.

“Jonah.” Darby grabbed his hand. “I'll understand if you decide not to go.”

His lips pulled tight in a semblance of a smile. “I'll go, Darby. What do I have to lose?” He'd lost everything already. There wasn't anything left for him to fear.

She grimaced, and he knew she was thinking his life was something worthwhile. Only he knew it wasn't. His life did not amount to much except a stretch of empty years. “Where is she?”