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She was losing her ever loving mind. That was the only explanation. Talking to Shade was verbal circumlocution. She gave up trying to follow the conversational thread and wailed, “I don’t understand.”
“None of us do.” Shade wrapped his long fingers around hers. “Wrath should not be trying to kill me, because if he kills me the entire construct collapses, so in essence, killing me is tantamount to killing himself at the same time.” He held up his other hand. “And Wrath is many things, but a suicidal fool is not one of them. So”—he nodded as if satisfied with the world around him—“we need to find him and ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing.”
Rolling up on a hell prince and demanding he tell them what the fuck he was doing didn’t strike Eddie as a great idea, but she trudged on beside Shade. What were her alternatives? She would need someone to show her back to the portal. The hounds, Shade, and Yesterday were her only options, and Yesterday was MIA.
So, yes, she was walking into a showdown with an omnipotent, immortal being with a pissy attitude. Awesome.
“So, Eddie.” Shade glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “I want to speak with you about something you said.”
She’d said a great many things to him, so she waited for specifics.
“About my ability.” Shade developed a keen interest in the foliage around them.
Eddie cast her mind back. “Which one?”
Shade laughed, and it was an unfairly attractive sound. It made her want to make him do it more often. Rather than looking at his stupidly beautiful face, she indulged in a botanical study. The plants vaguely resembled earth plants but with disorienting subtle differences, like the green was too intense or the glossy leaves gleamed too brightly.
“I only have the one clear ability.” Shade sounded sincere, but the humility left her floundering.
“I don’t know about that.” Eddie could think of a few nifty tricks he could pull. “There’s the super strength.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Super speed, the flying.” And honesty compelled her to admit, “That’s very cool. I’d love to be able to fly.” As there didn’t seem to be a plethora of advantages to being Nephilim, wings should come with the gig.
Shade waved a dismissive hand. “All immortals have the speed and the strength. No.” He cleared his throat. “I was talking about my…er…unique ability.”
“Your—” And then she got it. And she was suddenly not so sure she wanted to have this conversation. “You mean the lust thing?”
“You had a strong reaction to it,” Shade said.
Heat seared Eddie’s cheeks. She’d been all over him, just about dry humping him in an effort to get relief. “Not by choice.”
“What…” He stopped and gaped at her and then smirked. “Not that.” His smirk widened into a grin. “I was speaking of your objection on moral and ethical grounds to me incurring lust in people who are unaware.”
“Right.” Her face might explode if she got any more embarrassed. “Of course you were.” Eddie kept right on walking.
Shade didn’t move. “You are ashamed of your reaction to me?”
“Is there a point to this?” Eddie slapped a hanging vine out of her face.
“Eddie?”
Just when she started to think of him as less of a prick, he managed to set her straight.
“Eddie?”
“What?” She refused to look at him.
“You’re going to wrong way.” Shade chuckled. “And I don’t wish to embarrass you. I wanted to say you were right.”
That and the wrong way thing stopped her dead, so she turned and stared at him. “Are you apologizing?”
Shade flinched. “I wouldn’t call it apologizing per se.” He scuffed the ground. “More of an acknowledgement that you were right.”
Eddie wasn’t about to let him slide by that easily, and she folded her arms and stared him down. “Tell me how I was right.”
“Well.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “First you must understand that beings, such as myself, have very little contact with humans. We are much more…accustomed…comfortable, you might say, to dealing with other immortals.” He made a vague hand gesture. “Demons and such.”
“Uh-huh.” Eddie added some foot tapping to let him know she was running out of patience with him.
“The rules of hell are not the same as the rules in the human realm.” He studied the toe of his boot. “There is more flexibility when dealing with demons.” He held up a hand to stop her from speaking. “Demons are not like humans. If given an opportunity to act in one way or another, a demon will nearly always take the violent path.”
