Ilona Andrews - Dark and Stormy Knights

Shaking her head, she cried, “But you can’t emerge if I do.”

He smiled wistfully. “To remain in exile is my freedom, Anna. A freedom you’ve given me.”

“I’ll paint you again. I’ll find another way—”

“You won’t remember. When you burn the last piece, you will dream all of this away. Including this kiss.”

He captured her mouth much more roughly than before, deepening the kiss for long moments. The kiss seemed to span as a bridge between eternity and their two hearts; it lasted that long, became that powerful.

Finally he pulled back, stroking her cheek. “I’d rather you remembered that.”

“I will remember, because I’m going to find a way to let you live in the real world. Freely.”

“Claude turned me into a killer; my soul for that gold, those were our terms. Living here, in the in-between, is the only way to keep my murdering lust at bay. You must burn the pieces to set me free eternally. If you care for me truly, you will complete this one last task.”

She opened her mouth, ready to fight and scream and claw for his everlasting salvation, but the dream was yanked away.

Lifting her head, she stared down at the worked pieces, and her tears began to flow in earnest. Because he asked, she would oblige—as she had from the very first time he’d appeared in her dreams. But the pain knifing inside her gut was almost more than she could bear, to know that she was going to make him a captive for eternity, rob him of his one whisper of freedom. In the end, he’d wanted not to be released from captivity, she understood now, but rather to perform one last heroic task: rid the world of Claude and his evil.

She turned the piece in her palm, staring at Sebastian’s blond hair, the metallic weight of his armor; she could practically feel his arms closing about her again. Holding her, steadying her.

He’d performed his final act of bravery, she resolved, and so could she.

Standing wearily, she swiped the tears from her cheeks. She moved to light the burner, several jigsaw bits already in her hand.

Staring down, feeding those pieces into the fire, she suddenly wondered what they even were. And why her soft cheek felt chafed, as if by a man’s beard, her lips swollen as if kissed.

She turned one last puzzle piece in her grasp, catching the dull hue of a knight’s armor. Odd, she thought, it seemed to be missing a color, a vibrant hue. What was it? she thought, staring down—and realized it was absent something golden .

With a shrug, she tossed that final fragment into the flames and thought she heard the most absurd, irrational sound as she did so. A lion’s roar.

Deidre Knight began her writing career at age nine and has been writing in one form or another ever since. After nearly a decade of working with Knight Agency clients, she made her own literary debut with Parallel Attraction . Her Gods of Midnight series opened with Red Fire, followed by Red Kiss, with more titles on the way! Check out all her works at www.deidreknight.com .

Skamar left her so-called Mediterranean-style apartment as she always did: after first sniffing the air to make sure there were no mortals about. She knew who her neighbors were, had watched them coming and going through the small peephole of the front door, and had even observed the older, professional woman upstairs leave a coffee cake on her doorstep. Perplexed, Skamar had mentioned the strange deed to her creator, Zoe, and was told it was a way to welcome her to the neighborhood. So Skamar had eaten the cake in one sitting—God knew her brand-new physical body needed the nourishment—and returned the cake plate to the woman’s doorstep before sneaking away.

The only person Skamar hadn’t been able to avoid was the man in 117B. He wasn’t always there, but he was annoying enough—and, she knew, interested enough—that it seemed that way.

“Morning, sunshine,” the man said again today, pointedly regarding her copper red hair. His ubiquitous coffee cup steamed fragrantly, his feet were propped on the patio railing, and his otherwise handsome face was marred by a shit-eating grin.

She’d have snarled that Skamar was Tibetan for star, not sun, but she never furnished her proper name to anyone. That was like giving permission to use her personal power, and she’d worked too hard to allow that.

“Vaughn,” she said stiffly, because he’d given his name freely, insisting she use his first. Vaughn Rhett. His obvious attraction crept over her amplified senses and was a heady combination attached to that slim build and open face. It made her skin crawl.

“Join me for a cup of coffee?” he asked, as always.

“No.” She only acknowledged him at all because she wanted to keep a low profile. It was the same reason she walked from the complex rather than soared. A redheaded woman circling like an eagle overhead would certainly attract attention. And the Tulpa, she thought, glancing at the crucifixion wounds in her wrists, would easily pinpoint her then.

“Just one?” Vaughn gave her that killer smile again, and his warm, dry scent pulsed over her to pool in her gut. “It’s French pressed.”

Skamar clenched her teeth and sped up. What the hell were you supposed to feel when someone so clearly wanted to stick his tongue down your throat? It would be so much better, she thought, if the man merely meant to stick a knife in her gut. She’d know exactly what to feel, and do, about that .

“You’re going to join me for coffee one day, sunshine,” he called after her, voice filled with such teasing laughter that it actually did remind her of the sun. “I promise you that.”

But by the time she exited the parking lot and hit the wide stretch of Flamingo Road, thoughts of Vaughn, the scent of his coffee and interest, and his meaningless promises dropped away. She stood taller, awareness expanding. Her body temperature was already marrying with the biting December air, a skill not unlike a chameleon’s ability to change color . . . and one specific to tulpas. As she walked, Skamar turned her mind to Zoe Archer and why her creator would summon Skamar in daylight hours, and to such a public place.

Yet an uncomfortable tingle, similar to what Skamar had felt under Vaughn’s clear gaze, rode the nape of her neck. Her first instinct was renewed annoyance at a fleeting wish for a cup of joe.

Her second was to duck.

The Tulpa’s frustrated cry arched banner red above her as she kissed pavement, and he halted in the next second, redirected midair, and sprinted back while she still sprawled. His flesh was molded into a thin, wiry, unassuming form today, but that was for mortal benefit. Snarling, she countered the steel-spined demon that lurked beneath.

He’d caught her fresh. Maybe he didn’t yet know that her biorhythms had taken on mortal flow once she’d achieved permanence in this world. How would he? He was still unnamed, only a half-realized entity, forced to describe who he was—the Tulpa—by what he was—a tulpa. Sure, his followers had to call him something, but it would never afford him the formidable kick of power she enjoyed with a given name.

So their next collision had Skamar’s fist blasting through his false visage, surprise spreading over a face that distended so far it should have cracked. Impermanence made the fucker hard to fight, but he still grunted and fell back. Before his features could rearrange themselves into the correct places, her fist plowed through his chest, penetrating all but the last thin membrane.

His scream was a mourner’s wail, though to Skamar it was a lover’s sigh. Unsurprisingly, he reverted to what had become his standard MO—ambush and retreat—and the wind cut in sharp whistles around their bodies. Panicked, the Tulpa glanced up at the empty expanse of baby blue sky, but Skamar knew he wouldn’t risk the small sonic boom triggered whenever they set to flight. Not in the middle of town. Those in Vegas’s underworld would converge in minutes, and neither of them wanted to face off against each other and their respective troops.