“Talia, listen to me. In another world, another time, we could have been something to each other. But it’s impossible now—I know you understand that. I should’ve never allowed it to go as far as it has. I’m so sorry…”
Her head snapped up, eyes flashing. “I’m not. I’m the child of Death, and this war is probably going to kill us both. I’m not sorry for one minute of it that I choose to live. I know what I am now, and I’ve got a general idea of what I am supposed to do. I could’ve, should’ve, been living all along.”
He stroked his thumbs across her palms—she was silky soft, warm. It would be so easy to run his hands up her smooth arm, to gather her onto his lap and follow the softness of her skin to warmer places on her body. To use sex to forget everything. If Custo weren’t going to be here any minute, he just might have.
He forced himself to cease stroking her. “We’ve got a tough road ahead of us, and I don’t want to confuse the situation.”
She pulled her hands free. “Don’t patronize me. I’m not confused. It’s not so very difficult what I have to do.”
Talia stood and walked to the windows overlooking the sharp lights of the city.
“I didn’t mean it that way.” He followed her, gaze meeting hers in the night-darkened glass. And just like that they were back to where they started an hour before. His body remembered and stirred against his will.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll do what needs to be done. I’ve been searching my whole life for a reason I’m so different. Now I have it. Ending the wraith war is the reason I was born.” In the reflection, her face was composed. Too composed. Stony.
Adam dropped his gaze to the floor. If he continued to look at her, he was going to do something that messed with their heads even more.
But she was right. She had something to do. Jacob was still out there. He and his maker had to die.
Adam raised his head. “Custo’s going to be here soon. I’ve got to get some things together, inventory the supplies we have here.”
Talia watched Adam retreat into a back room, presumably to check supplies, but more likely to get away from her. The distance between them was both a relief and a disappointment. If the conversation had gone another way, and it could have if she’d let it, there would be no distance between them right now at all. None whatsoever. Her core contracted at his absence, fisting with an ache in her abdomen that echoed in her heart.
This could have all been different.
Another world, another time, he’d said. That was just the problem. Even if they managed to live through the next twenty-four hours, they were literally from different worlds. The hard truth was that death and life were incongruous. Those who attempted to meld the two either ended up wraiths—everlasting life, or ghosts—everlasting death. She was the daughter of Death. Adam was bursting with life. Incongruous. Incompatible.
Maybe Aunt Maggie had fed her one too many fairy stories as a kid. Tales of magic and kisses and wishes. Of happily-ever-afters and obstacles surmounted by love. Aunt Maggie had been a die-hard romantic, but maybe the emphasis had been because she knew something about how Talia was conceived. What must her mother have told Aunt Maggs about her father? Talia had asked, many times, but had never received a straight answer. In the light of her newfound knowledge, Aunt Maggie’s fairy tales did not seem so misplaced.
The book Jim had given her had suggested something else, something that she couldn’t yet voice to Adam. The faery were a breed apart—they were old, diminished spirits of the earth, shut out from heaven, and consigned for eternity to the Otherworld except for occasional trespasses into mortality. Her instincts told her that there would be no world but this one that Adam and she could share, and no time but now in which to share it.
At least she could give him her scream and with it, she hoped, peace.
The washer buzzed the end of its cycle and Talia tore her eyes away from the city to throw the clothes into the dryer.
She turned toward the corridor, spied the book on the sofa, and thought to tuck it away in case Adam decided to investigate further. The last thing she needed now was—
A crash behind her had her bringing her arms up to protect her head.
After her initial cringe, she whirled back toward the window to find a hole the size of an apple radiating white cracks up the glass. Beyond the hole, the fresh black of New York City night. An odd metallic burning smell hit her senses. Before she could identify the source, another impact sent something whizzing by her side to lodge in the sofa. Shards scattered the floor.
Her heart beat wildly, breath coming in shuddering draws as she turned to run down to the hallway. Smoke rose in her path, smelling sharply chemical and rankly…wrong. Wrong to a degree that superseded the normal world. She knew it with every freakish cell in her body.
She attempted to breathe through clenched teeth. The stench made her mouth taste sour. Her eyes teared profusely. She swiped at them with her palms and wrists.
A third crash brought her to her knees, huddling in the middle of a rising cloud. Her body screamed for air. She chanced a breath and choked on the fire that seared her nose and charred her lungs.
She covered her mouth and nose with the hem of her T-shirt and tried a breath. Her throat burned.
“Talia!” Adam’s voice was a thick roar.
“Here!” The word was a rasp. Stars floated in the periphery of her vision. More air! her body cried. Reflex took over and she drew in a shallow gasp. Pain.
An arm came around her, dragged her up. Adam. She knew the hard lines of his body, the curve of his arm, the warmth his body exuded. Together they moved through space, though in which direction, she had no idea until Adam kicked open a door and blinded her with light.
A storage room. Boxes open. Guns. His supposed inventory work.
She tried a little air in a series of thin pants to move oxygen into her blood and to clear her vision. Her throat and lungs felt raw.
Adam slammed the door shut and powered through the room to the other end. He tapped a keypad. The concealed door slid open to reveal a tight room, smaller than a closet, just big enough for two.
“Can you stand?” Adam’s voice was low, gruff, angry, a perfect match to the feelings she sensed in him.
She nodded, though she really didn’t know the answer. Her breathing became long, broken wheezes that left her light-headed. She put a hand to her chest, but it neither helped her move air nor stopped the pain.
He took her hand and pulled her in, hitting the second of two unmarked buttons. The urgency that poured through his touch spurred hers. Get away. Get away fast.
Talia’s stomach hit her throat at the sudden drop. An elevator. A bullet to the bottom.
“Are you okay?” Adam gripped her chin and turned her head to face to his. His expression was controlled, but his emotions a mix of concern and horror. What she felt from him kept her on her feet; she wouldn’t add to his worry if she could help it. With his free hand he lifted each of her lids in turn to look at her eyeballs, and then moved a raised finger in an arc before her eyes to track the response of her eyes.
“Yes.” Her answer exhaled in a harsh burr, several octaves below her normal tone. And it hurt.
“Damn it.” Adam’s face was flushed, though white around the mouth with tension. “You look like hell. Had to be some kind of chemical weapon in aerosol form. Poison gas, maybe.”
And mixed with something worse. Otherworldly worse. But Talia didn’t voice it.
“…okay.” She meant to say I’m okay, but the first word was lost on uncooperative vocal cords. It was a lie, and Adam had to know it was a lie. What she meant was that she would keep going until she fell over. He’d find her medical attention. Immediate medical attention, preferably.