Devil's Bargain (3 page)

Scrape.

That had definitely been a noise. And it had come from the basement.

Shit.

Probably the cat, he told himself. The ancient and portly tabby, who had lived with Uncle Alistair for as long as Aaron could remember, didn't get around with much grace anymore. Last night while Aaron had been relaxing in the living room and watching a movie, it had attempted the jump from the coffee table to the sofa, and landed on his shoe with an indignant yowl. He hadn't noticed it downstairs when he'd been working earlier, but it did tend to trail around
wherever he was, as if it missed human company. Most likely it had tried to climb the stairs and tripped over its own belly.

Setting the coffee aside, Aaron began to ease back toward the basement door. The noise had almost certainly been the cat, but it never hurt to make sure.

He really hoped it wouldn't hurt.

A burglar would have to be insane to break into this house, he told himself. The only thing that kept it from looking like it had been condemned back in the fifties were the lights he turned on to keep from tripping over the threadbare rugs as he walked from room to room. The lot around it was overgrown; the house's paint was peeling, its shutters falling, its porch steps rotting. And the battered pickup truck outside that he'd used to haul away the armoire Alistair had left to his sister shouldn't have raised any hopes. Anyone who thought there was something worth stealing in this dump would have been sadly mistaken.

It had to be the cat.

Aaron eased down the stairs, sticking close to the edges where the joists still held strong and were less likely to creak. At first, the walls at the top of the stairs blocked his view of the space below, and he could see little but the pool of golden light cast by the lamp above the desk that he'd left burning when he went upstairs. Then, as he reached the seventh step, the room opened up to his right and he could see what had made the noise.

He blinked, froze, blinked again, and felt the breath in his lungs seize up like setting cement. In front of the floor-to-ceiling bookcase that lined the back wall of the cellar stood a woman, dressed all in black, with long hair so thick and black he took it at first for some sort of hood worn as part of a disguise. More than the hair told him she was a woman. The position she was in helped, especially where her otherwise loose trousers stretched taut and cozy over a
round, heart-shaped ass that should never have been allowed on a burglar. Her indented waist and the sleek curve of her side gave him another clue beneath the snug, long-sleeved knit top she wore. All in all, the picture she presented made him wonder if she wore that body as the chief tool, or weapon, in her arsenal, because if so, he imagined she had to be the most successful criminal since the invention of crime.

Oblivious to his presence, she scanned the shelves with silent efficiency and the focused air of someone looking for something particular. When she got to the lower shelves, she shifted into a crouch, which simultaneously stretched her trousers even tighter across that mouth-watering bottom and caused the curtain of her hair to shift and the strands to part, revealing to him the curve of her jaw and the sleek, pale shell of her ear. The delicate lines seemed suddenly almost as erotic as her ass, and Aaron realized that if he didn't draw breath again soon, he'd announce his presence to her by passing out from lack of oxygen and tumbling into a blue-tinged pile of stupid on the floor at her feet.

The air he sucked in nearly choked him when she stood and turned toward his desk, giving him his first look at her face. Not to mention the front of her body, which sported sweetly rounded breasts accentuated by a gleaming pendant that dangled between them on a thin silver chain. He figured he might have been more distracted by that body if he hadn't immediately noticed that it was decorated with pockets and straps of leather that seemed to contain a whole host of weapons even more lethal than her figure, including a gun, a compact nightstick, three small throwing daggers, and a pair of knives that appeared at least as long as his forearms.

She also had a pair of wide, thickly lashed eyes the disconcerting copper color of flame.

Even as he watched, something must have alerted her to
his presence, because she stiffened almost imperceptibly a moment before the gaze from those unsettling eyes fixed on him and went as clear and hard as amber.

“Well, shit,” he thought he heard her mutter, but then it got very hard to concentrate due to the matte black and lethally sharp dagger she sent hurtling toward his chest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lilli cursed her luck, Samael, devil's bargains, medieval manuscripts, and interfering homeowners all at once, and all without opening her mouth. She should have known it couldn't possibly be as easy as it had sounded. Even with the hourglass she wore cheerfully marking the time, it had taken her barely more than a day and a half to determine who had Samael's missing book and where it was likely being kept, almost as if the thief hadn't even bothered to cover his tracks. Another twelve hours and she'd been able to find out enough about the guy to decide that, even with the ridiculous timeline Samael had given her, she would be able to pull off this job in her sleep. Then, if that hadn't tipped her off, her sources had told her the thief had died almost a month ago, just days after he must have taken the book to begin with. It played like some sort of cosmic coincidence.

She didn't believe in coincidence.

She also didn't believe in walking into any situation blind, which was why she'd lived to the ripe old age of twenty-eight still breathing and still in possession of all her limbs. Lilli had done her research on Alistair Carruthers. The man had been born into a very old magical family, but one whose family tree had stopped sprouting much new growth. He
had only one sibling, a significantly younger sister, and his father and grandfather had both been only children. As far as Lilli had been able to tell, he had no aunts, uncles, cousins, or other relatives to speak of. He didn't even have any children, having never married and apparently having been so devoted to his work and hobbies that she hadn't even been able to find much in the way of a dating history. He'd lived alone and apparently died alone, and judging by the appearance of the house he'd died in, Lilli had assumed no one had very much cared.

She'd been expecting to find an empty house that no one would mind her breaking into, much less making off with one small book and none of the family silver (okay, a big book, but she wasn't even going to look for the electronics). She hadn't expected a tall, lean, rumpled-looking man wearing faded jeans that were worn at the seams, a Ramones t-shirt, a battered flannel button-down, and black-rimmed eyeglasses that made him look like a nerd and a face from a
GQ
cover at the same time.

She also hadn't expected him to try to sneak up on her from the main floor of the house. That was why she threw the knife at him, she guessed. It was reflex. Most of the time, the things sneaking up on her didn't have her best interests at heart, so she could be forgiven for trying to stop theirs.

The man on the stairs, though, he didn't look very forgiving. He looked intent, then startled, then angry as he raised his own hand just as her fingers released their grip on the knife. With the flat of his palm, he slapped at the air in front of him, and her knife screeched to a halt, quivering as if it had impacted on wood and buried itself to the hilt. Only it hadn't hit anything. It hovered in mid-air for a second, then dropped to the floor with a clatter. Clearly, Alistair Carruthers hadn't been the only sorcerer to live in this house. Instinctively, she reached for a second blade, and the
man on the stairs threw himself toward her with a growl completely at odds with his computer geek appearance.

The impact didn't feel very geeky, either. It felt solid and heavy and knocked her ass-over-elbows onto the very hard and dusty concrete floor. Who would have guessed that all that solid muscle lurked under such worn and rumpled cloth?

Lilli didn't pause to ponder the incongruity. Instead, she let the momentum of the impact and the fall send her into a roll that should have let her reverse their positions and put the sorcerer on the bottom with her knees planted on his elbows. Somehow, it didn't happen that way.

The man reacted faster than a light switch, leaning into the roll until it became a sort of crocodilian death spin that sent them all the way across the floor until the immovable object known as the cellar wall brought them to an abrupt stop. Lilli squirmed to keep herself from being pinned between the man and the concrete. She sent an elbow toward his face, swearing when he jerked back so that the blow that should have shattered his cheekbone bounced off the edge of his jaw instead.

He countered with hands that moved faster than they had any right to. They reached for her wrists, and she took advantage of the distance his recoil from her attack had put between their torsos, twisting her upper body and planting her hands flat on the floor.

Lilli braced herself and executed a straining push-up against the weight of his body pinning her legs. She couldn't get her hips more than a couple of inches off the ground, but that was all she needed. Grunting with strain, she lowered her head and pushed her hips back into his chest, using the leverage to drag her legs free. As soon as she felt the cool air on her calves, she swung her lower body around and flipped herself to her feet, wincing when the pendant swung
and smacked her between the eyes. Her movement shoved the man off balance, and he lurched backward with a curse to land on his butt a few feet away.

Adrenaline propelled her forward. She had her misericorde drawn and the edged blade pressed to his throat before she stopped to think, but not before he spoke a hoarse, curt word. A second later her hand seemed to slip involuntarily, sending the long knife clattering to the floor.

Jerking back, Lilli balanced herself on her haunches and cast a wary glance from her adversary to the knife and back again. Her blade had been warded, so for him to disarm her would have taken some serious mojo. It also would have required that he cast his defensive spell not on her weapon, but on the hand that held it. She'd remember that trick in the future, and she'd sure as hell be buying herself a pair of warded gloves just as soon as she got out of here. In the meantime, she needed to keep from getting her ass kicked.

Quickness counted in this kind of situation, and it looked like Lilli had that advantage over her opponent. She executed a quick pirouette on one heel, sweeping the other leg out in front of her and knocking the man's legs out from under him just as he tried to scramble to his feet. He hit the concrete with a grunt. Shifting forward, Lilli planted her palms on the floor and vaulted herself back onto her feet. She intended to throw herself right back into the fray, but something stopped her.

Across the space that separated them, Lilli met the man's grim, hazel gaze, then watched it shift to his left. She followed his sightline and felt a surge of excitement when she saw what he was looking at. On top of the disordered desk across from the bottom of the stairs lay a huge leather-bound manuscript of certain antiquity. Lilli recognized it instantly from the images Samael had shown her. She'd been right; the
Praedicti
codex was in this house and almost in her
grasp. She could practically taste her freedom. Between her breasts, the pendant seemed to pulse with anticipation.

Renewed determination flowed into Lilli. Jerking her attention back to the last obstacle in her path, she launched herself into an attack. Two lunging steps built her momentum so that when the man in front of her finally gained his feet, one of hers instantly whipped around and plowed straight into his stomach.

That was the idea, anyway. To her surprise, he reacted with unexpected speed, sweeping his arm down to knock her ankle up and away from its target. A quick balance adjustment allowed her to keep her feet, but it cost her a couple of steps backward. Raising her hands into a defensive posture, she danced forward until she came within arm's length of him and punched the heel of her hand up toward his nose.

Again, he moved quickly. He slid to the side and turned his head in time with her blow so that the impact softened and glanced off his cheekbone instead of sending shards of bone and cartilage up into his sinus cavities. Before Lilli could follow through with the other hand, the man in front of her stepped back and began to mutter something under his breath.

ShitshitshitSHIT!

Again with the magic. Lilli did not intend to stand around and let someone cast spells on her, no matter what job she was here to do and no matter how much his glasses made her contemplate what it would be like to try to fog over the lenses. Quickly, she looked from the magician to the manuscript and calculated a few angles in her head.

Here goes nothing
, she thought as she lowered her head and took a deep breath.

Several things happened in the next moment: the sorcerer in front of her raised his right hand and aimed his open palm at Lilli's chest; Lilli bent her knees, gathered her strength, and threw herself into a flying somersault in the
direction of the desk; and the open manuscript of the
Praedicti Arcanum
seemed to rustle its pages with a restless air of discontent.

“What the hell?” she heard the man—now behind her—roar as she landed hard where a wheeled desk chair had been sitting, sending the seat spinning and the entire chair rolling crazily into the far wall.

Not bothering to look around, Lilli made a grab for the book and gave a breathless cry of frustration when a body slammed into her back and pinned her to the surface of the short filing cabinet beside the desk. She tried to scramble forward, her fingers stretching toward the book, but a large, masculine hand attached to an arm with much greater reach shot past hers and shoved the manuscript off the other side of the desk. She cursed as she heard it thud to the ground.