One Handsome Devil (23 page)

"Guess you'll never know,” Katra responded.

He took a step toward them but stopped when his radio sounded.

Katra and Sara ran past him, heading for Sara's car. To Sara, Jack felt lighter every moment they waited.

Ten minutes later, Sara turned off of Martin Luther King Blvd and onto I-35 heading west toward home. Katra had uncharacteristically remained silent, crunched with Jack on her lap.

"How
did
you find me?” Katra asked, finally breaking the silence.

"Jack sensed that you were in trouble,” Sara explained. “Trust me, I had other things on my mind."

"I appreciate the sacrifice. I don't think the Reverend Bob was going to be rescuing me tonight."

Sara didn't think so either. “Still, he doesn't seem like a bad guy."

"Oh, hell,” Katra sighed, “I never demanded a hero type like Jack to take care of me. All I've ever asked for was a decent guy with a regular job."

"Who maybe thinks you're the sexiest babe in the Universe,” Sara added.

Katra fluffed her red hair. “Well yeah, why not?"

"It looked like Bob did. Why do you think he told the story about a lovers’ tiff?"

Katra shook her head. “I guess he thought it was better than getting us shot at."

"Since they don't know who we are, at least you won't lose any credibility when you report Derrick."

Katra's short laugh didn't sound amused. “Report what? Reverend Bob is my only witness and you know his story."

Jack's head lolled against Sara and she almost sideswiped an eighteen wheeler.

"Check on him, would you?"

Katra nodded, then pressed her finger to the side of Jack's throat.

Silence.

"What?"

"I don't feel a pulse."

Katra pressed her lips to Jack's and exhaled while Sara beat on his chest. They'd set him on Sara's bed and had been working on him ever since they'd gotten him home. Nothing seemed to make any difference.

"Hit him harder,” Katra gasped.

"I'm hitting him as hard as I can. And I'm not sure that's what you're supposed to do when somebody gets shot in the chest."

"You're supposed to take them to the hospital,” Katra reminded her friend. “I don't think Jack would be welcome there. They'd probably ship him off to wherever they have those aliens."

Sara shook her head and pounded on Jack's chest again.

Katra waited until Sara had finished beating the poor guy and breathed into his mouth again.

Nothing.

Tears were running down Sara's cheeks. Katra swiped suspiciously at her own eyes. Sure enough, they were about to overflow.

"Oh, God, what are we going to do?” Sara sounded like she was about to lose it.

Jack winced. He remembered warm lips breathing energy into him but little else. Had someone said that word?

"He's alive.” Awe was intermixed with the feminine words.

"Demons don't live.” Even to him, his voice sounded weak.

"Hush, darling."

More than anything else could have, Sara's words brought back the memories of the past days. “What happened?"

"Derrick shot you."

"We thought you were dead,” Katra added.

He struggled to open his eyes. “Being shot shouldn't hurt me.” Except something had.

"Guns hurt all right,” Katra answered practically.

"My physical body is completely under my control. A couple of holes shouldn't make any difference."

"Be quiet and let us work,” Sara said. “One of the bullets is still inside you and I've got to get it out. Can you hold still or do we need to get you something for the pain?"

He laughed—a very bad idea. The sudden contraction of his chest multiplied the agony. “There's still a bullet inside of me. You've got to get it out."

He could feel the bullet now, as cold now as it had been hot when it ripped into his created flesh. The steel-clad projectile pulsated with destructive purpose.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. It's making me sick."

"Right. Wait right there.” Sara rushed into her kitchen, returning a few moments later with a steaming bowl of water, a sharp paring knife that still glowed from where she'd heated it on her stove burner, and a thin pair of tongs.

"Hold down his hands,” Sara ordered Katra. “This is going to hurt him a lot."

Jack felt his arms being grasped. “You owe me one big time,” Katra told him.

"Yeah. I'll—"

The cold torture of iron piercing his body grew stronger as Sara probed. He caught his breath. “Uh, a little to the right,” he advised.

"I'm following the path of the bullet."

"Well then it moved. It's a little to the right of where you're digging."

Sara followed his directions and her probe ticked on the bullet. “That's it all right."

"How'd you know where it was?” Katra demanded, suspicion running strong in her voice. “There's no way you could see that."

"Are you suggesting I'd do something as crazy as getting shot just to trick you?"

Katra folded her arms across her substantial chest letting go of his hands as she did. “You said it, not me."

Jack shook his head. “Remember, I'm not human. I created this body, know everything about it. I can feel where the shot is lodged as easily as you could tell where a chilled cup lay on your body."

"Got it,” Sara announced. She held up the tongs, the bullet still grasped in the teeth, then dumped it into a bowl. “Let's get you sewed up."

"Ha, I kept you distracted,” Katra told him.

He gave her a pained glare. “It isn't fair picking on the wounded guy."

Sara stuck a needle in his chest and Jack winced involuntarily. “That isn't necessary."

"I don't know.” Sara brushed her hand against his chest lightly tracing the craters Derrick's gun had created. “If you're supposed to be healing all by yourself, you're not doing a very good job."

He focused his energies on mending the tears the shells had left behind. The response was pathetically small. It was almost as if something held back his usually perfect control over every gram of his flesh.

"Odd. I guess I was weaker than I'd thought from our run-in with the church."

"At least you're not still bleeding,” Katra commented. “Or smoking or whatever you'd call it."

"I don't have matter to waste,” Jack told her. He paused a moment trying to remember what had happened when he and Sara had arrived at that Deep Ellum night club. “That must have been the Reverend Bob's gun that shot me. I seem to have a thing for churches lately."

Katra nodded. “Derrick grabbed it from Bob's glove compartment."

"If those two started working together, we'd be in real trouble,” Jack said. The combination of Derrick's deadliness and Reverend Bob's holy weaponry was dangerous enough when it was an accident. This was exactly how so many demons got killed by humans.

"Not much chance of that,” Katra answered.

"I'll have to lay low for a while to let myself heal,” Jack admitted. “Between the church and Reverend Bob's bullets, I am one hurting demon."

Three days later, Sara was more nervous than ever. Someone as sick as Derrick had to have a record, some police force somewhere must be just waiting for a chance to arrest him and send him up the river. Yet Bob had been unable to find any ongoing investigation tracking him. Worse, Jack insisted that Derrick had vanished from his demonically enhanced senses.

With Katra and Jack both sharing her one bedroom apartment, Sara's life was in shambles and she was fast running out of money.

Thinking of money made her think of the mail. Unfortunately, the news was every bit as bad as she'd suspected. A whole stack of new bills stared at her when she unlocked her mailbox. She flipped through them quickly, then carried them inside. She had made minimum payments before and could do it again if she had to. But why was the bank sending her anything?

She threw the bills on the kitchen table and opened the letter from the bank.

It was worse than she'd imagined. The firm where she used to work had reversed its last payment and she was bouncing checks all over the place.

"Let me do something,” Jack urged. He was still weak, but at least he was getting up now.

"Like what? Counterfeit some money?"

"I could write a book."

Sara laughed. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to get money from a publisher? Besides, I'm not sure the world is ready to hear about one day in the live of a demon."

"I'm open to suggestions."

Sara was too. Her firm's retraction of their payment could be the last straw. Jack might not be human but he ate like a man, only more so as he tried to regain what he'd lost when Derrick had shot him. Here he'd been reluctant to eat a hamburger that first day.

The good news was, all that food seemed to be helping him. He had started feeling more solid. By the time they went to New York, he'd be looking super-human again.

Fortunately, Jack claimed he liked everything Sara cooked. Unfortunately, he was the only one who did. Katra was an even worse cook. Sara decided that now that Jack was back on his feet, he could at least take over the cooking duties. Of the three of them, he was the only one who could make toast without turning it into charcoal briquettes.

Until then, she bought take-out a lot, which cost even more.

Grocery bills, air conditioning bills—she'd needed a lot more air conditioning since Jack had joined her in the bedroom—gas bills for her job hunting, they had all but wiped out her savings.

"Maybe we should play that trivia contest after all. A million dollars in prizes would solve a lot of problems,” Jack said.

She looked up from the kitchen table. “They'd take one look at your horns and boot us off, if they didn't call the police first."

"I'd wear a hat."

She sighed. “I want to earn my money, not have it handed to me. Can't you understand that. That's probably why I didn't take wishes when Katra got hers."

Jack looked perplexed. “If we know the answers, we do earn it. If we don't, we lose."

She mashed her pen into one of the bills. “I knew you wouldn't understand. Besides, I have plenty of money. This isn't a problem."

Jack lurched to his feet, swaying slightly as he walked toward her. Even injured, his movement seemed more graceful than she would have thought possible. His beautiful face twisted into a lopsided grin that barely showed a hint of the pain that never left him. For an irrational moment she wondered if living in the human plane might be lessening the torment.

"Even if I didn't have demon senses, I would know that was a lie. You haven't done anything but move bills from one pile to another.” He paused, raising one eyebrow. “That and biting through your pen. Here."

He brushed his hand against her mouth.

She shivered. Jack's touch affected her like no man ever had, whether they were in bed or just hanging around. Wiping a bit of ink off her face was hardly erotic, yet the surge of desire that washed over he was real and practically irresistible.

Jack held his hand in front of her, his fingers covered with sticky blue ink. Great. She'd been thinking sexy thoughts about him and he was probably grossed out.

"I'll wash my face."

"I got it all.” He made a gesture and the ink flamed up into nothingness.

It was impossible that he could have wiped every molecule of ink from her, yet she had no doubt that he had done so. “Thank you. I must have looked disgusting."

"You looked worried but beautiful."

Enough of that mushy stuff. She couldn't spend all day every day making love with him. “You don't look so bad yourself. What have you been up to while I was in here moving bills between piles?"

"I fixed your car."

She froze, an surprising, unwelcome sense of claustrophobia surged over her. Her car was her pride and joy. Back when she'd still been working full time, she'd once gotten a big bonus and piled the entire bonus, along with most of her savings, into buying the Miata. It was her baby. Jack should have asked before he'd messed with it.

"You looked busy.” As always, Jack could read her thoughts before she voiced them.

Jack's words gave her the pause she needed to catch her breath. “I'm not busy any more. I'm mad. You had no right to mess with my car without asking me."

"So this team thing only goes so far. Is that what you're saying?"

"We're business partners. That's got nothing to do with anything."

Jack's face clouded and his bat-wings stood out rigidly from his broad shoulders. “Business. But I thought” he paused and something alive left his eyes. “Never mind what I thought. A business relationship is something any demon can understand."

Definitely time to backtrack. “I didn't mean for it to come out like that,” Sara said. “I only meant that it's polite to ask permission before you go messing with someone's things."

"Of course. I understand perfectly."

He didn't understand at all. Sara looked at the stack of unpaid bills, at her demon-lover's impassive face, and burst into tears.

Jack watched her for a moment unable to move. Should he comfort her? His rash assumptions had caused this problem. In fact, if he thought about it honestly, he was the cause of all of her problems. Without him, her friend Katra wouldn't be in trouble. Without him, Sara would still have a job. He'd put her at risk from both imps and humans and now he had made her cry. It didn't paint a pretty picture.

"Perhaps I should go,” he offered not even sure how he wanted her to respond.

Sara grabbed a tissue, blew her nose, and nodded. “Maybe you should."

"I can undo the repairs I did to your car.” A feeble attempt to make things right and he knew it when he said it.

"I thought you said you were going."

He went.

Low overcast clouds obscured the normally bright colors of the human plane as Jack flew over the southern side of Dallas. Below him, humans went about their business unconcerned with anything beyond their daily urges. Suffering, greed, love, all of the human emotions flew to him and he absorbed them, gaining strength as he went. A few surges of pure energy mixed with the normal muted pulses of humanity. Angels mostly, along with a few humans who transcended their lot through good or, more often, evil.