All That Bleeds (26 page)

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “I just want to be alone.”

He continued to stare at her, waiting. She finally walked to her dressing table and took off her jewelry. She set the pieces in their cases and pushed them aside.

“I saw Theo Tobin at Handyrock’s. I assumed he’d been beaten by the Jacobis.”

Ah.
Tobin had cried on her shoulder. A parting gift to Merrick on his way out of town?

Alissa looked over her shoulder at him. “Do you have anything to say about that?”

He shook his head.

“He says you were the one who hurt him. Confirm or deny?” she asked.

She rested a hand on the back of her neck, rubbing her fingers over her spine. He would have liked to have done that for her, and the fact that Tobin had ruined their night was something Merrick would remember if he ever saw the little weasel again.

“I don’t know what I was thinking getting involved with
you,” she said when he didn’t answer. “Tobin was forced to take some incriminating pictures, but he destroyed them. He seems to have done the best he could to help me.”

“He didn’t erase the pictures. He kept them.”

“He said they were gone.”

“They are.”

“You?”

“That’s how his face ended up looking like it does. He would’ve kept them, but I didn’t give him the choice.”

Several silent moments passed. Finally, she said, “I believe you. Even when I was young, he tried to get inappropriately provocative pictures of me. If he took some graphic ones the other night, he’d never have given them up without a fight. Though the fight seems to have been pretty one-sided, from the look of things.” She unfolded her arms and let them drop, lacing her fingers together. “The pictures, what were they like?”

Merrick shook his head.

“Bad?”

Yes,
he thought, but he only shrugged.

“You won’t tell me?”

He shook his head again.

“Why not? The more outraged I get, the more I’ll think he got what he deserved.”

“He did deserve it,” Merrick said evenly.

“So why not tell me? I have a right to know.” Her voice had a cool, distant quality, as though she hadn’t been a victim, but was instead asking about something that had happened to someone else. Despite that, he saw the pulse pounding in her neck and a flush rise in her cheeks.

“I don’t want you to hear the details. I think it would upset you, just like seeing Tobin’s face did. I worked to erase that night because I don’t want anything to hurt you.”

Her eyes shone bright, and she looked away. “It was hard to see Tobin’s face and feel somewhat responsible. I don’t know if I can be okay with what you do, even when it’s for a good reason.”

He strode to her and put his arms around her from behind, drawing her against him. “You know why they chose you?”
He paused. “It was because they thought they could get away with it. I’m the reason they weren’t right.”

“Everything is so hard,” she said with a catch in her voice that made his heart clench.

“I know.”

“Sometimes I think maybe my mother killed herself so she could rest,” she whispered.

He picked her up and walked to the couch. He sat with her on his lap. Her head turned toward his shoulder, and he felt her body shake as she silently cried. He held her tighter, relieved that the wall of ice between them had melted again.

During the few minutes when she’d gone quietly to pieces and put herself back together, she was grateful for Merrick’s silence. His even breathing and the slow, steady thump of his heart had been the comfort she needed. She didn’t usually allow herself the luxury of breaking down. She’d always been afraid that if she ever started crying she wouldn’t be able to plug the dam.

“I think I’ll wash my face,” she said, getting up. “Would you like a drink?”

“Where’s the liquor cabinet? I’ll bring up a tray,” he said, tossing his tuxedo jacket on the arm of the couch.

“You don’t need to do that. I’ll go down for it.”

He shrugged. “Bartending was the first job I ever had. Now I own a nightclub. If nothing else, you can always trust me to make you a decent drink.”

“Just don’t make me too many. I shudder to think how inappropriate I’d become, considering how free I’ve been with my emotions tonight. I’m sorry about that, by the way. I’m normally stronger.”

“Even the strong have weak moments, and you’ve had to be stronger than most.”

“Is that so? Everyone has weak moments? When was the last time you wept?”

He smiled. “It’s been a while, but if I thought you’d be the one comforting me, I might try to remember how it’s done.”

“Sure you would,” she said with a soft laugh, going into the bathroom. Honestly, she wouldn’t have wanted that. With the exception of seeing the evidence of it on Tobin, Alissa liked Merrick’s strength. “The wet bar’s in the living room. I’ll have one of whatever you made me in your apartment,” she called.

“A Maiden’s Prayer,” he said, and she heard the door open and close.

She washed her face and took the pins from her hair. Running a brush through the curls didn’t quite tame them, but the loose waves suited the night. The sleek, razor-sharp angles of her normal hairstyle belonged to Official Alissa, Professional Muse Alissa. Not to the soft Alissa who let herself cry on someone’s shoulder or had drinks with a ventala in the sitting area of her bedroom.

She curled her lashes and ran a tinted lip balm over her lips, but otherwise left her face bare of makeup.
Symbolic,
she thought. She’d let him in and wanted to keep letting him in, despite Tobin’s battered appearance and all its dark implications.

She glanced down at the beautiful dress and considered changing, but she wouldn’t go that far. They were having an old-fashioned nightcap; a quiet, calm end to the roller-coaster day. Wearing lingerie would take away her options.

She reentered the bedroom and found Merrick setting down a silver tray that held a whiskey decanter, a dish of sliced limes, a pitcher of Maiden’s Prayers, a pair of crystal highball glasses, and a small ice bucket.

“That was fast,” she said.

He dropped an ice cube into her glass and poured her drink. Then he unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and removed the medallion, tossing it aside. She took a sip, watching his own image return. Len Mills had nice enough looks, but Merrick’s were better. It was a shallow thought, but she didn’t condemn herself for it. She’d fallen for Merrick over months and years, for his steady pursuit of her and for the way he paid attention to every detail of her life as though what she really wanted and needed mattered to him. It couldn’t be wrong to enjoy the looks of a man who cared that much.

He made himself a drink and sat back on the couch where
they’d been. She started to sit next to him, but he shook his head.

“No?” she asked.

His left arm, drink in hand, rested on the armrest. His right extended to her. “Come back,” he said. It was so like that moment in his apartment when he’d held out his hand to her and asked her to stay. She couldn’t then, but now…

“Sit here, and I’ll tell you about the road trip I took with Lysander to Nebraska.”

“You and Lysander went to Nebraska?” she asked.

He nodded.

“You drove there?”

Again a nod, the continued outstretched hand a tantalizing flame to her moth.

“Why?” she asked, taking a sip of her drink.

“If you sit here,” he said, “I’ll tell you.”

She looked at him through her lashes and smiled. “Will I ever get a story out of you without a bribe?”

“Probably one day. But not tonight.”

She lowered herself onto his lap. He leaned back, and her body followed, so she was curled against his chest. His arm snaked around her legs and moved them so they rested on the couch. It was dangerously cozy.

“So the road trip,” she said, taking another slow swallow.

“I was sixteen. Lysander was the age of mankind, give or take a century, though he never acted it. His emotional growth’s stunted. I think the concussion he got when he fell from grace must have been a direct blow to the frontal lobe,” Merrick said with a roll of his eyes.

“He got a car, gave me the keys, and said, ‘Drive us to Omaha.’ To which I said, ‘Why the hell would I want to go to Omaha with you?’ And he said, ‘Because I left some money in Omaha, and I need to retrieve it before I forget where I hid it. I’ll pay you to drive.’ ”

“How much?” she asked.

“How much money did he leave in Omaha? Or how much was he offering me to drive him?”

“Both, of course. That’s why I left the question open-ended.”

“He didn’t know how much. The ‘money’ was in the form of gold coins—Spanish doubloons, to be exact—and a handful of Peruvian emeralds.”

“No.”

“Yeah. He’d been the only survivor of a shipwreck. He didn’t think the fish would have much use for gold coins, but he knew he might.”

She laughed.

“That’s how he lives. He’d never steal someone’s wallet or their car, but if he works in a diamond mine, some diamonds go into his pocket. He says, ‘Minerals come from the Earth, and no piece of the Earth really belongs to any one man. Men only rent space here.’ ”

“I bet his bosses, the landowners, feel differently.”

Merrick shrugged. “You can’t argue with an archangel.”

“Why? Would he get violent?”

“No, he’d just get bored and fly away.”

She laughed again. “So how much did he offer you and how did the trip go?”

“He offered me a sack. Of course, after living on the street and barely being able to pay my rent while bartending, I said, ‘How big a sack? What will it be worth?’ He sighed and said, ‘How many gold coins and emeralds do you have now?’ ‘None.’ ‘So then what difference does it make? This will be more.’ ” Merrick smiled.

“I continued to harass him about it, trying to figure out if I’d be able to afford an Armani suit and an MP3 player, so he finally said, ‘You can have as much as you can carry, and it’ll be worth whatever people who want gold coins and emeralds will pay. Certainly enough to buy bread and clothes. Now drive before I decide to go with the wind instead of you.’ ”

She smiled. “To go with the wind? Meaning he’d fly?”

Merrick nodded. “I should’ve let him. Lysander’s a musician, and sometimes he gets on a kick where he decides to be monogamous to one instrument and one composer. For five hundred miles, he played the same Vivaldi song on the violin.”

She laughed out loud. “I love Vivaldi.”

“That’s because you’ve never listened to it for eight hours
straight. I tried to get the violin away from him, but you can’t fight with an archangel in a moving car. Or in a car that isn’t moving. Lysander said, ‘You can choose the music on the drive home. If you survive.’ I thought he was joking, meaning that if he didn’t kill me before the trip was over. That’s not what he meant.”

“Oh, no. What then?” she asked, draining her glass.

“We drove around Omaha and the outskirts until he found the farm he was looking for, and he sent me into a barn, saying, ‘Remember what I taught you, and you’ll make it out.’ ”

She stared at him. “What was in the barn?”

“A demon with—I kid you not—a pitchfork.”

“What was it doing? Baling hay?”

Merrick laughed. “Feeding on livestock. And humans.”

“And Lysander sent you in to face it at sixteen?”

He nodded. “It was a lesser demon, and my training had to end sometime, but it was a bloody mess. I’m fast, but demons are faster and stronger.”

“You were so young. You managed to kill it by yourself?”

He nodded.

“Was he proud of you?”

“Hard to say. He was sitting on top of the car, eating an orange. When I came out, he tossed me a towel to hold to my side where my kidney was sliced in half. All he said at first was, ‘Good.’ My knees buckled, there was blood pouring from the wound, and he put me in the car, adding, ‘You’ve defeated a demon, Merrick. Something few men will ever do. It would be a shame to die in your moment of triumph, so don’t.’ ”

“Good grief.”

Merrick grinned. “I sweated through my clothes on the drive to the hospital while the car lurched over every bump in the road. And in a haze of pain and impending death, I heard him say, ‘I dislike driving, Merrick. We’ll stay in Nebraska until you’re well enough to drive yourself back.’ ”

She shook her head incredulously. “No bags of gold or emeralds. Tricked into facing a demon that almost killed you. How are you still his friend?”

“Oh, there was gold, and he let me wait until I was
recovered to see how many sacks I could carry. Turns out I could carry a lot. And he was true to his word about letting me choose the music on the drive home.”

She exhaled in exasperation. “How generous of him.”

Merrick shrugged with a smile. “He also taught me to kill demons, which is a skill that’s served me well. It’s how I met you, remember?”

Alissa had fallen asleep in Merrick’s arms and woke in them. They were in the guest room that adjoined hers. She climbed carefully from the bed so she didn’t wake him.

She had breakfast and worked all morning, but by one o’clock in the afternoon she knew they couldn’t afford to leave much later, so she slipped into the room to rouse him.

Dragging him from sleep was more difficult than she expected, but when his eyes opened to slits and saw her, he pulled her head down to his for a kiss, then a slow smile formed.

“If I’m still dreaming, don’t wake me.” His fingers stroked through her hair to reach the back of her neck.

She kissed him once more, lightly, but resisted being pulled on top of him. “It’s a long drive to the retreat center, and I need to arrive by five.”

He rubbed his eyes.

“Think you can make it?” she teased, touching her fingertip to his forehead and pulling it away, then repeating the gesture a few times until he opened his eyes and cocked a brow.

“Unless you’d like to be teased in a much more interesting way, I suggest you cut that out.”

With an expression of mock fear, she took a step back. “Come downstairs when you’ve showered and turned yourself into Len Mills.”