“But why's the devil here? She's after me, right?”
“Well, yes,” Adam said. “It's in her best interests, and the gate's, to get to you. The gate was built for you, and so it's connected to you. The concern is that if she manages to . . . to kill you, or if you die by some other means, like an accident, then the gate will never be able to be destroyed. And since a gate to Hell is not
ideal
for the mortal world, it's necessary that it be destroyed immediately.”
Which was what Khan was doing. A gate to Hell? He was the man for the job. He could destroy it. Okay. Fine. She could wait until night.
What time was it?
Talia squeezed her hand again. “The good news is that this devil has no chance against Khan. None whatsoever. We just have to hold out until he gets here, until he finds her.”
“What about the babies?” Tears finally spilled. If Talia or the babies or even Adam were hurt . . .
“Segue has excellent security,” Adam said. “None of my alarms on the interior grounds has been tripped. You set off a dozen on your first visit to Segue. I think the devil backed off for the moment and is reconsidering her approach. She's not very subtle.”
“She's a devil! She doesn't have to be.”
This time Talia answered. “A devil is just a bad person who died and was sent to Hell. Nothing more than that, though, like Custo, she very likely has some extraordinary abilities.”
“Security cameras got footage of the assault,” Adam added. “I've sent a screen shot to the FBI already. If she died recently, they should be able to identify her.”
“She's just a bad person,” Layla repeated.
“No horns,” Talia confirmed. “But very bad.”
And Khan could destroy her as soon as he was done with the gate.
kat-a-kat-a-kat:
The gate tittered at her, like a metallic giggle.
Layla drew back from Talia. Let go of her hand while Hell laughed, at home in Layla's head.
kat-a-kat-a-kat: Best to give yourself up now.
No.
kat-a-kat-a-kat: You don't belong with them. You belong to me.
No.
kat-a-kat-a-kat: He can't destroy me.
He will. He can do anything.
“Layla?” Talia's face loomed before her.
“I think I'm going to head back to my room.” Layla forced a smile. “Take a shower. It will probably be a long night.”
“How 'bout I walk you there?” Talia said, glancing over her shoulder at Adam.
Layla felt her lack afresh. She braced herself against the hollow feeling. A little time and Khan would be back. She looked at the painting of Twilight over the mantelpiece. “I need to be alone, but, um, could you have someone bring that painting up?”
Khan's appearance in the window last night was too unsettling and she needed to talk to him. Bad.
The rattle in her mind receded as she fled to her room, but she knew with sick certainty that the gate still stood.
Chapter 12
Khan raised his arm to strike the black flower. Smoke filled his nose and choked his throat. Sweat coursed down his bared shoulders and streaked through the soot across his tensed chest and abdomen. Every fiber of muscle and sinew screamed with the terrible labor of his task.
He'd been at it for hours, until he could sense the shift of the sky from pale blue to the tangerine of sunset. His power grew deeper in the world of darkness, his senses more acute. Yet the flower, heated for the hundredth time in the forge and now dimming from white-yellow to rose red, could not be broken.
kat-a-kat-a-kat: You made me too well.
“And I'll unmake you, too.” Khan brought the hammer down on the most delicate, glowing turn of a petal.
Not one atom of the metal moved.
He lifted the hammer again, forced his strength and concentration into his grip so that his fist was black and smoking with Shadow, and struck the flower.
The bloom merely turned on its side with a soft clink, unharmed.
Why wasn't this working? His cause was just as desperate as it had been before. More so, since Layla was so close. Why could he not damage the flower? Why could he not hold her once again? Why could Shadow not overcome, just this once, in all eternity?
A sense of unease filtered into his concentration. Khan turned to Custo, who still crouched, watchful, some way from the forge.
The unease grew to alarm, though Custo showed no outward sign of emotion.
“What has happened?” Khan asked. The boy had better not lie.
A pause, then Custo shrugged in resignation.
“An attack,” he said, “a few hours ago. Layla is safe, but others were killed. The devil,
a woman
, was not able to breach the compound, but she disappeared into the woods. Adam's soldiers are tracking her.”
As a rule, the world pulled at Khan with myriad death tugs as souls readied for their passing. With a simple inner extension, he could divide himself into infinity to see to each. But he'd been ignoring them now for a while, refusing to meet the call of his duty, the cry of his scythe. An awful thought crept into his mind: What if one of those soul lights was Layla, and he ignored her death, and she crossed without him, to be lost and fed upon in Shadow?
Khan dropped the hammer on the anvil with a flick of his wrist. “I will see Layla now.”
Custo stood, glancing toward the opening, beyond which the other angels waited in expectation. “You've made no progress.”
“Some things take time.”
“You may be impervious to the voice of the gate, but humankind isn't.” Custo scrubbed his scalp as if to affect his own brain. “We angels aren't either. I can hear it in my head, and it's saying all the right things. The gate demands to be opened. It will be if it's not destroyed soon.”
“Then I suggest you watch over the gate carefully and resist as best you can. I'll be back in the morning.”
Khan permitted no argument as his exhausted body evaporated into Shadow. He had to see Layla, had to make absolutely certain that she was well. Custo and his angels would have to wait.
Custo's gaze followed him up to the dark stretch along the cavern ceiling. He called out bitterly, “I don't want to hurt her!”
Custo wouldn't. He couldn't. He might have agreed to the task, might be searching for the resolve required to take an innocent life, but as of yet, he hadn't found it. Right now the poor dog would guard the gate to Hell from harm even if he was struck down by his own kind.
Layla was waiting for Khan, anxiety riddling the air around her. Her hair waved freely, a little wet, to her shoulders, so she must have bathed. She had one of Kathleen's larger paintings propped against a wall. She paced before it, biting a nail, then stopped to search the canvas. She reached her fingertips to touch the shifting trees of Twilight.
“Have a care,” Khan said, emerging from the darkest Shadow beneath the boughs. “One good push, and you may cross.”
“Oh, thank God you're here. Why don't I cross then, and we can talk like normal people?” Her tone was strong, words coming rapidly. Whatever had happened, she had resolved her fear and was ready to fight. “There's a lot we have to talk about.”
He had to quash the stinging
Yes!
that rose in him. In Twilight he could appear however he wanted. Draw her close. Stroke that skin. But . . . “If you physically cross, bring your mind and body across the divide, you will soon go mad. We'll have to speak like this.”
He would not compromise her mind, risk her spirit.
“I'm already going mad. Besides, you've brought me through a couple of times already.”
“Yes, but I brought you right out again as well. Without me, you would be trapped here. The fae will prey on you.” Moira would keep her under her skirts just like that other mortal woman. “Stay where you are. Visit me in dreams.”
It would have to be enough.
Her face flushed, and she turned her head to the side, hiding her expression. If at all possible, he'd have reached through the veil and touched her like a man. She seemed so solitary, standing alone in her room, waiting with thoughts crowding her head and no one to share them with. In that way, she was his mirror image.
“Please, do not look away. I would do anything to be with you.” She was his beacon in the dark. Something bright to look on in the pitch of his existence. No one shone like her. Nothing illuminated like her soulfire. Yes, he'd do anything. He had already.
She turned back, eyes flashing. Anger flared. “Yeah, speaking of which . . .
you made a gate to Hell ?
Who does that? And why would you think Kathleen would be there in the first place? What did I do to deserve that?”
“You laid down with me.” She'd accepted him, embraced him, in every way. The tide of that union still moved his Shadow.
“Oh, God.” She ran a hand through her hair, gathering it on the top of her head, and gripped her hand in the mass.
“Do you regret it?” That one touch. Human. Carnal. Ecstatic.
“Who
are
you?”
“I am a beast, Layla. The worst imaginable. Can we not leave it at that?”
“Hell no. Not when last night . . . when we . . . I . . . Just no.”
“Do you regret it?” he asked again. Her emotions were in turmoil, and yes, regret was one of them, overtaking the others. But regret for what?
“Well, apparently I am going to die.” She dropped her hand and her hair fell wildly around her shoulders. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that bit of news? I can't believe it, and yet, I've had too many close calls to deny the possibility.”
“We will defy Fate”â
and everyone else
â“for as long as we can.”
“Fate. Bullshit. I've almost died a million times now.”
“Laylaâ”
She turned and jabbed a finger toward the canvas. Her voice lowered with menace. “There was a spider.”
Khan wished he had the angels' gift to read minds; hers moved so fast.
“And the devil bitch,” Layla continued. “
I
let her out of Hell, and she's killed half a dozen people.”
Twice that at least. “I built the gate. You were merely under its power. The responsibility isn't yours.”
And he had no trouble bearing it. Death was his specialty. “Besides, this life is a second chance for her, too. She could have lived among you humans, tried for peace, respected life, but she chose otherwise.”
Layla made an impatient gesture. “Oh, just save it. I swear, around here if it's not one thing, it's another. All of it bad.” Her jaw clenched. “The question is: Why's it happening now?”
Her tone suggested she knew the answer, but Khan replied anyway. “Fate.”
“No, buddy boyâ” Layla sent a glare across the veil. “It all started when I met you.”
He shook his head. “But our meeting was predestined. I saw Fate herself on the road in front of the warehouse where you found me.” Moira had flashed her scissors. “Fate brought us together.”
“Whoa.” She held up a hand to stop him. “Fate's a person?”
“A fae. Moira.”
Layla made a face. “And who said she gets to decide everything?”
“She doesn't decide.” Just like Death didn't decide when someone had to pass. “She does her duty. There is no life without magic, without Shadow. She is necessary to the ebb and flow of existence. Her role is prescribed.” It was the same with all fae, in one way or another, trapped by their purpose.
“Well, what about the first time?”
Khan was silenced. To which “first time” did she refer?
“When you and Kathleen made whoopee, was that in the cards?” Her tone was aggressive, the emotion coming off her now distinctly wild.
“No, I broke a law to be with her.” The fae were constrained by their natures, their duties, not by destiny. What was she after?
“Give Kathleen a little credit. If you broke a law, she broke it with you. And if she could do it, so can I.”
Careful, now. Layla was racing toward a decision. “I don't understand.”
“I know,” Layla answered, a glint in her eye. “How could you? You're not human.”
Her statement opened up a painful yawn of space between them. Fae. Human. They were worlds apart. Only a creature of Shadow would attempt such madness as to love a mortal.
“But because I kind of like you,” she said, “I'll let you in on a little secret.”
“You âkind of like me'?” And just that fast, warmth spread through the chill of his Shadow. He could listen to her talk like this always. The spark of her mind combined with the snap of her temperâno wonder her soul was a living conflagration.
“It's called free will.”
Oh, that. “Moira is necessarily cunning. Eventually the imperative of death will find you.” He knew the imperative intimately. All mortals died. While there was occasional elasticity regarding the moment of their passing, there were never any exceptions.
Did Layla think she could do Kathleen one better? Did she think she could change her fate altogether? Only a soul as bright as hers would dare it. She had no idea whom she was up against.
“Of course everyone has to die. That's not what free will is about. Free will, my fine faery friend, is about taking chances, making the most of each moment.”
The heat in her gaze and the swell of building intent told him that she didn't think she'd done enough of it.
“Case in point: Kathleen did whatever the hell she wanted. She lived under a death sentence all her life. And look what she had!” Layla gestured to the painting. “Her art, you, Talia. Don't tell me all that was fated.”
Kathleen had pushed the limits of her destiny as far as they could go. She'd held on with spit and drive until the moment she delivered Talia. Yes, Kathleen had lived well.
“And what do you want, Layla?” Was it anything he could hope to give her?
“I want to live. And if I've only got five minutes or fifty years, they're going to be good.”
Her claim made him a little afraid. What could she be thinking with that spark in her eye?
“So step back, 'cause I'm coming through.”
“Laylaâ!”
But she was already rushing into the canvas. She couldn't know that he wasn't in the painting itself or that Twilight was as vast as the human consciousness or as varied as imagination. So many souls crossed at the same time, butâ
there!
âfor Layla the veil went up in violent flames. The denizens of Faery lifted their heads, scented her, pricked their ears to hear her. Trained their dark eyes through Shadow toward her bright light. A mortal had crossed; fair game.
Heedless, she ran into the trees to find him. He, the monster who wanted her most of all.
She had no idea. Twilight was not the place for this. There was no tenderness here.
Khan rolled out of the darkness and caught her in his arms. Arms of a man, like she expected. The arms of the Khan she knew. It took one of her breaths for the rest of him to form and modern clothing to slide over his body. Black, like his Shadow.
“You must go. Your mind will wander here.” As he spoke, whispers rose around them. There were watchers in the woods, but the fae would hang back from he who was darkest of all.
She was determined in her arousal. It rolled off her in great, crashing waves, battering his reserves.
“Then we'd better be quick.” Her eyebrows danced in suggestion. “You have a devil to find anyway.”
She wrapped her arms around him and filled him with her exhilaration. The beat of her heart in his head, the pump of life was too much to bear.