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I knew I should leave. I was weak and he was powerful, and I had been lucky enough to catch him off guard. I shouldn’t press it.
But the psychic scream would leave him unconscious for a few minutes at least, and I wanted to know…
Why he looked like her.
His light hadn’t dimmed. It was spangling the weather-beaten walls and splashing the ugly floor with a pure white luminescence. He had landed on his side, huge wings spread out behind him, and I had been wrong. I had thought they were made of light, some projection of his aura, but they were real. Soft but strong under my hands, like the shoulder I finally grasped, and the face I revealed when I tugged him over.
A face with wide-open eyes, and dark irises reflecting my own startled face.
“That was a good trick,” he told me softly. “Want to see another?”
And he slid into my mind, smooth as glass.
Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and I sat bolt upright, sucking a harsh gulp of air into screaming lungs. I felt the bolt all the way through my head, a flash of agony across my temples, pain exploding behind my eyes. I didn’t know where I was and it was pitch-dark and something was moving off to the side.
I screamed as it brushed my face, a whisper-soft caress that was somehow more ominous than a blow. And then I grabbed it, far slower than my usual speed, but quick enough to—
Capture the delicate sheer from over a window.
I couldn’t see the window, couldn’t see anything, but the silky fabric was cool with the night breeze, and smelled faintly of a soft drizzle falling somewhere outside. It was safe, it was nothing to worry about. It was just a stupid piece of fabric.
So let go of it, Dory, I told myself, as my clutching fingers stayed stubbornly shut.
I finally pried my fist loose and let the curtain fall back into place. My eyes had adjusted, and I could see a tall rectangle of dark gray with what might have been tree branches outside, whipping in the breeze. I decided to go with that thought, because I didn’t think my heart could take another jolt. It was already threatening to slam its way through my ribs as it was.
Where the hell was I? I’d just been at Central with Ray and Radu. Hadn’t I? And something had gone wrong, something about vampires and necromancers and…
God, my head hurt.
I lowered it into my shaking hands and closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. Pieces of reality and the tattered fragments of a dream tumbled around in my mind like trash in a whirlwind, impossible to sort out. Particularly when I was in pain.
A lot of it, I realized, as my thudding pulse sent heated beams flashing back and forth between my ankle and my head, kindly stopping along the way to light up a dozen other hot spots around my body. Like a commuter train of pain. Or like a giant had grabbed me and twisted, trying to pull me apart—and damned near succeeded.
Everything hurt, from the wounds I could remember getting, like the throbbing ache in my calf from the piece of metal I’d fallen onto in the elevator, to the ones I couldn’t, like the slick skin on my hands and arms, new and too smooth, like freshly healed burns. Or the pain in my jaw, as if it had been dislocated at some point and then shoved back into place. Or the bullet wound in—
I decided to stop counting.
But maybe that was why I felt so strung out, so unraveled. My cheeks were hot, and when I put a hand up, it came away wet. I rubbed the moisture between my fingers, confused. The pain wasn’t that bad. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. I couldn’t remember.…
“Dory?”
My head jerked up, my heart in my throat, but I still couldn’t see much. Just velvety darkness, seamless and unbroken, except for a wedge of misty gray seeping in through an opening door. It looked like maybe there was a treeless window in the next room and diffuse beams of moonlight were spilling over.
Just enough to limn the shape of a man.
I couldn’t make out features, but I didn’t need to. Didn’t need the breadth of shoulder or the glimmer of liquid eyes that were all the faint light would show. He stepped beside the bed and the scent was enough, rich, sweet, and completely addictive—
“Butterscotch,” I murmured, and reached for him.
“What?”
I didn’t answer; I just kept tugging at him with all the strength of an anorexic puppy. But he came anyway, sliding a knee onto the smooth cotton sheets and then lying down next to me. He had on a robe, some silky thing. I pulled it off. I needed warmth and skin and—
Yes.
“You’re not supposed to be awake,” he told me softly. And then he tried to gather me up. But that wasn’t what I wanted.
“No.” I pushed at him, ineffectually.
