Immortal Coil (14 page)

Gee, I wonder why.
His welcome home hadn’t been overly welcoming, to say the least.

“I’ll go and make arrangements for... you know... after the rebirthing ceremony.”

“Which will be when?” She didn’t want to think about how Grey would go about finding a new body for Hunter. The image of bulging body bags being tossed into the back of a black van flashed into her head and she shoved it back. Nope, she really didn’t want to know.

“Dawn.”

She nodded and he scrambled up the stairs and out of sight. If her situation wasn’t so bizarre she’d have found it amusing. Instead, she just climbed after him, her pace slow and steady as she tried not to jar the hole in her. It should have felt worse. She should probably be bleeding to death. But she accepted she wasn’t as part of the insanity that had the presence of a strange man... spirit—or rather drake?—trapped in her head.

God, she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about any of it. Just a flicker of thought on that topic made her heart race and her skin clammy with fear. Instead, she embraced the numbness seeping over her, making her limbs weak and filling her head with a strange buzzing.

She made her way to Hunter’s suite, thankfully without meeting anyone. Hunter didn’t say a word as she’d shuffled along the strange halls. Perhaps he felt it. She didn’t know why he wouldn’t. How was she going to go to some public event and calmly eat? She had just killed a man... a drake...

No. Stop. She couldn’t think that... couldn’t... She’d killed another per— thing.
Burned him to a crisp after being doused in his blood.
All that blood. Her hands had taken a life.

It didn’t matter that the man had tried to take hers and Hunter’s lives. It didn’t matter that the situation was beyond bizarre... No, she couldn’t start thinking about that again, either. She couldn’t stop thinking about anything no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t stop coming back to... oh, God.

She stumbled into Hunter’s suite, closed the door, and pressed her back against it, as if that would keep everyone and everything out. Her eyes burned with tears and her throat tightened. This was all just a bad dream. That was it.
Just a bad dream.
It had to be. Please, let it be a dream.

She began to shake and her knees buckled and she fell to an all-too-real floor. A sob escaped before she could stop it. She was stronger than this. She had to be. But she couldn’t make herself stop. Her body was wracked with tears and she fought to muffle them against her arm for fear someone was listening to her.

All she wanted was to scream and yell and cry. How had her life rocketed out of control? Of course, she didn’t really have a life. In a few months none of this would matter. She just never thought she’d die with someone else’s blood on her hands. But she hadn’t, no. This was a fantasy, a psychological meltdown, a hallucination, a... a...

She squeezed her eyes shut as if by blocking out her vision she could block out her thoughts as well.

Hunter remained silent. His presence hummed at the back of her head but he didn’t say anything, as if he knew the reminder of him would be too much for her to take.

* * *

Grey strode down the hall to his suite. This was a disaster.
A complete and utter disaster.
Hunter was body-sharing with some human and it looked like she had a stronger will than him. Human consciousnesses were supposed to be weak, easily contained, and always susceptible to soul sickness. Even after a dragon’s presence awakened whatever soul and earth
magics
the human possessed, that stress induced insanity.

It was even worse that the human had already established a connection to her body’s earth magic. Such a fast awakening of both
magics
had the possibility of creating a true human sorcerer.

This was really, really bad. Hunter had killed more than enough mages and even a few sorcerers in the early days to know better than to body-share. He certainly knew what he was doing was punishable by rebirth. Everyone did.

Now he had to attend dinner.
And not just any dinner, one of the feasts of the
pahar
.
Every doyen from every coterie and their seconds, possibly their thirds as well, would be in attendance. Sure, no one really knew Hunter as well as Grey did, but someone was going to notice he was acting weird and ask questions.

If only Hunter had control of the body and not the human. Although Grey had to admit, she’d handled herself well in the
wasu
tahazu
as well as when she faced Regis. It was sort of a pity they’d have to kill her. They certainly couldn’t allow her to live. Even if Hunter hadn’t told her anything about dragon-kind, it was too great a risk. He wondered if Hunter had known that, or if he’d lied when he’d said he didn’t have magic. Regardless, it was a serious crime to body-share and
create
a human with earth magic, even if in the end she only fit
Regis’s
definition of sorcerer and not the real kind that endangered them all.

Mother of All, what was going to happen when Hunter went to the Handmaiden? She was certain to see the double souls crammed into that emaciated body. He needed a replacement before dawn. It was the only answer.

But if Hunter showed up at the rebirthing ceremony in a different body he’d be charged with body-hopping and that was a sentence of rebirth, too.

Shit.

Grey dragged his hands through his hair and glanced up. He’d walked right past the door to his suite.

Double shit.

Now he was acting the fool that human woman had warned him against. How could she keep her head when both hers and Hunter’s lives were on the line? He needed to keep it together. Besides, the human was probably in shock from killing Welkin. Humans were fragile like that. But once the shock wore off, she’d be a mess he’d have to deal with.

The hall darkened and pain raced across his neck. Crap, a flashback. The metallic tang of blood filled his mouth and every little detail of that terrible night from sixty-four years ago flooded his senses.

He fought to breathe. This wasn’t real, just his Mother-cursed memory making him relive it. But logic couldn’t combat the emotion.

“Hey, Grey.”

The darkness wavered.

The voice was female and without menace. It was so familiar, her name hung on the tip of his tongue.

“You okay?” This voice was male, young, a reedy tenor.

He knew that voice, too.

He blinked. The hall materialized out of the darkness.
Capri
stood a few feet away, petite, defiant, and beautiful. Her strawberry blond hair was tied back as
usual,
accentuating the fine lines of her cheeks and straight nose, and did little to age her youthful appearance. Although her perpetual shadow, Gig, looked even more like a teenager with his shaggy mop of black hair, even though his human body was at least twenty-five.

“Visiting the Handmaiden before dinner?” she asked, meeting his gaze and staying there. Her tone was neutral, but her blue eyes had narrowed. She knew something was wrong.

“Well, he’s not going to his suite,” Gig said.

Grey glanced back at his door.
“Yeah.”

Capri
’s perfect, pale eyebrows drew together ever so slightly.

Damn. He should have said something witty. But he couldn’t flirt with
Capri
like he did with everyone else. She mattered. The others were just a way of coping. Hope still sprung eternal, although after a couple hundred years he was pretty sure she didn’t feel the same way.

“Seeing if the Handmaiden needs anything.”
Now he just looked like a loser. “Can I get you anything?”

Please say yes.

Maybe after so much time her feelings had changed. It happened all the time in the movies.

A smile pulled at her lips. It was only a hint of its full self, but his memory could fill the rest of it in.
Every detail.
Her dimple.
How her eyes shone. The way sunlight would kiss her skin.
Her impossibly long lashes.

“Did you see Hunter fight?” Gig said suddenly, looking every bit the part of the little cartoon dog bouncing excitedly around the big dog.
“Amazing.
And in an unfamiliar body, too.”

“I’m pretty sure he saw Hunter fight.”
Capri
’s smile deepened just a little bit more. Not with sexual overtones, but that didn’t matter. It still made Grey want to rush out and get her things. She hoarded the most amazing flowers, so definitely some of those.
And definitely things that sparkled in the sunlight.

He struggled to remind himself that she wasn’t interested. Who would be? He’d sworn himself into the service of the Handmaiden and she didn’t even want him.

“Will I see you at dinner?” he asked, grinding his teeth against his self-pity.

 
“I doubt it, and you can blame Hunter for that. He hasn’t left such a mess since the 40s. I suspect when I check in with Tobias, Hunter will have left more than just the abandoned car and the bodies in that small-town hospital.”

No, Hunter hadn’t left a mess, not since he’d hunted down those drakes
who’d
attacked Grey. He’d ripped off their limbs and claimed their souls for rebirth. That had been messy and Hunter hadn’t cared. And Grey could never repay the debt.

Grey’s throat ached. “I don’t know what went wrong, but it had to be big. He’s not a messy guy.”

“Yeah, give the dude a break. He’s now a
dudette
,” Gig said.

Grey barked a quick laugh before swallowing it.
Capri
slid her gaze to Gig, her lips twitching. What Grey wouldn’t give to hear her
laugh.
Even if it was Gig’s joke and not his.

Now Grey’s chest hurt as well.

“Well, catch you later,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even.

Capri
nodded and sauntered past with Gig close behind. The hall darkened around him and he blinked it back. Not yet. If he concentrated, he could keep his memories at bay for a while yet, at least until he got Hunter through this disaster. Mother of All, just let them get through dinner.

After a forever that didn’t last nearly long enough,
Anaea
sat up from her fetal ball against Hunter’s door. She wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand and took in a shaky breath. She still had a report, a dinner, and some ceremony to get through before she could be free.

And yet, a part of her didn’t want to be free of Hunter.

Even when he was silent, hiding in the back of her mind, making
himself
as small as possible, she was comfortable with him. Certainly, more comfortable with him than she’d ever been with her husband or even her college sweetheart, Mark, as if she could be herself without fear of rejection.

If only she’d met him while he had a body.
One that wasn’t hers.
Even if it was a single last fling with a sexy, mysterious stranger—and she
was
not going to think the d-word, referring to a mythological serpent. She’d focus on the man, or rather his vessel, the one from the bridge and her dreams. She’d only seen him briefly, but she imagined he was as handsome as his voice and presence seemed. The thought sent shivers over her that she was sure he noticed.

Her face burned. There was no reason to feel embarrassed about being attracted to someone. Maybe, if they had a spare moment, she could get him to read the phone book.

She stood and went to the bathroom. What a horrible, terrible mess, and as much as she knew a shower wouldn’t solve her problems, she was at least looking forward to something.

She turned on the taps to let the water heat up and struggled out of her armor, leaving the pieces on the floor where they fell, then grabbed the bottom of her T-shirt. Blood crusted the material to her skin. She eased it up over her head, letting the shirt drop to the floor, too. She didn’t want to think about the hole in her gut, or rather the hole that should have been there but wasn’t any more. There was nothing ordinary about her situation so she shouldn’t expect the usual effects of getting run through.

When she’d woken in the hotel room with foggy dreams of being shot she hadn’t had holes in her then, either. And now she was sure she had been shot. Okay, so the blood on the hospital shirt and the matching holes had been a giveaway, but she’d been whole, healthy, more or less, and alive. It made her wonder what had happened to her cancer. With Hunter in her head, she could heal gunshot wounds.

A part of her wanted to ask if, when he left her body—which he was certain to do—would the cancer finally kill her, but another part of her hesitated. Perhaps she didn’t really want to know. Not yet, anyway. Besides, it felt good to be alone for the first time since all this insanity had started. She could always ask him those questions later.

The mirror was foggy, which meant her shower had been ready a while ago and she’d spent too much time thinking. She unhooked her bra and slid out of her underwear, keeping her gaze away from her impossibly-healing wounds. Then she stepped under the spray and let the water sluice over her. It ran red down the drain until all of the blood was sloughed from her skin. The heat seeped into her aching muscles and she savored the luxury of hot water on clean flesh. She picked up the bar of soap on the ledge in the corner and scrubbed at her skin, rubbing a thick lather around and around on her belly.