Life Cycle
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Anna looked hurt. “Have you guys bonded now because you’re both ancient? I know I’ve been away a lot, but I’ve seen you since becoming Luc’s mate. I’m a part of this world now, so you could have told me.” She hadn’t sat down because an attempt would be pointless. She’d sink right through the couch. She just sort of hovered.
Tam sighed. “I know you think this is personal, but it isn’t. I was trying to forget, myself. This new cycle has been the most normal I’ve had in a long time. I usually hid and stayed in the shadows when a new cycle started. This time I got adopted. I kind of regressed. I wanted to forget everything and pretend I had a normal life, even with the witch stuff. You let me remember what childhood was like. And it was great. Sometimes I actually felt like I was your age and not just pretending.” She paused to catch a breath and gather her thoughts to make sure she was saying it right. “As we grew up, I just wanted to keep the illusion alive. And since you seemed freaked out by basic witch stuff, it was another excuse. I know I could have told you, but until Jack started hunting me again, I wanted to keep my fantasy life. If I told you, then it was really real for me, and I wasn’t just a regular witch that lived a long time.”
Anna stayed quiet for several minutes, processing. Finally she said, “Damnit, Tam. Why do you have to make it all sound so reasonable? I can’t even be mad at you. At least I don’t have to worry about you dying. It was something that bothered me a lot, that you’d age and leave me behind.”
It was like a knife stabbing her in the gut. She couldn’t look at Anna, not while plotting her own demise. “You know... something could happen. I could still die. I mean... Jack is hunting, and he seems intense about it if he’s starting the letter charade again.”
Her friend shook her head. “No, you’re safe here. Cain promised to protect you. No one can get into this dimension without permission from Cain or without being a demon himself. Even if The Cycler knew where to find you, he can’t get in.”
Tam very much doubted that was true. Anna hadn’t been around in their world long enough. She didn’t yet understand that there was no such thing as total safety in a world with so much magical chaos. The only way she would be safe was if Cain killed her like he’d promised. She wondered what Anna would think if she knew he was playing both sides, giving out two contradictory promises. It was anybody’s guess which, if either, promise he’d choose to keep in the end.
“Tam?”
“Hmmm?”
“What was it like when you died? I mean, that period of time before you came back again? Did you go to heaven?”
The question made Tam’s skin crawl. “No. Nothing happens. It’s just a void. I die, and then I wake up—like a dreamless sleep, except when I wake, for a second I can’t catch my breath and feel like I’m dying again. It’s creepy. Sometimes I’m afraid something will go wrong and I won’t wake up. I’ll just stop existing.” She didn’t want to become nothingness, she just wanted to break the spell and get out of the endless loop she was on.
“Oh.”
Yeah. Oh.
“There’s something I should tell you,” Tam said.
The brunette looked expectant. After a long pause, she said, “Well?”
“Okay, don’t hate me but... I pushed you into the mating with Luc.”
“That’s not true! You offered to help me get Luc’s mark removed before I completed the final ritual.”
Tam peeled the second peach Daria had given her. It was something to focus on so she didn’t have to look at her friend. “That was only after I saw how distressed it was making you. For a while I was intent on you becoming his mate for my own selfish reasons.”
Anna looked like she wanted to hug her. It was the exact opposite reaction Tam had expected. She’d been prepared for screaming and was thankful things couldn’t be thrown at her.
“I’m still sorry. I wasn’t thinking about you when I acted like I did.”
Anna nodded. “It’s okay.”
“Do you remember Henry?”
“That bird you had?”
Tam got up to stretch her legs. “Yeah, only he wasn’t exactly a bird. He was a therian.”
“Oh my god! Seriously? I changed clothes in that room when we were teenagers.”
Tam chuckled. “Yeah, he thought you were hot.”
“You better be glad I can’t be solid right now. I’d throw stuff at your head.”
Tam grinned. Of all the things for her to get angry about. It wasn’t being lured into mating with an immortal demon, it was that a raven therian had seen her in her underwear. Anna was always obsessed with the wrong things.
“Wait... how long do they live? How long was he with you?”
“Centuries. From the late 1700s on. I’d dispersed from the rest of the coven and was lonely. The bird came to me. We were really close.”
A lightbulb seemed to come on over Anna’s head. “That’s why you wouldn’t come out of your house for three weeks after he died. I thought it was a bit much mourning over a bird, but I didn’t say anything.”
“Well, now you know. I still see him occasionally in dreams, but it’s not the same. He was my best friend besides you.”
Now she was about to do the same thing to Anna that Henry had done when he’d died: rip up one of her anchors. But she had to. Anna would understand in time, and she wasn’t alone. She was surrounded by others like her, and she had Luc. It was different.
Keep telling yourself that.
***
Cain and Luc moved through the human dimension just outside the crime scene, invisible and noncorporeal. As demons, they could sense each other even if they couldn’t see each other.
“It’s better to kill Tam,” Cain said. He couldn’t see his brother for a reaction, but he could guess at the disappointed and disgusted look he’d find if he could. Luc was so predictably good that way—hardly a demon anymore. He hadn’t been the same since Anna. It was too much humanity for Cain’s taste.
Cain bristled at that. He’d been loyal to Luc when he’d been trapped in a house by a curse, bringing him his meals. And he protected his own. It was a low blow for Luc to act as if he couldn’t be anything more than a Judas. He was still miffed about that. Hadn’t Cain been the first true betrayer in their history? And Judas got all the glory.
“She asked me to kill her. She wants out. She thinks it’s safer, and I agree.” Cain felt Luc stop moving, so he did, too. He knew he could get his brother on his side if Luc knew it was the witch’s request.
“So why isn’t she dead yet? You’ve had plenty of time alone with her. You didn’t take the opportunity to take her?”
“I did.” Yet again he was glad for the invisibility that cloaked them. He couldn’t tell anybody this if they could see his face.
“And she’s not dead because....” Luc seemed to be taking Cain’s decision to kill her well, especially since she was Anna’s best friend. In the end, Luc could be a pragmatist if need be, and he was always interested in the greater good. And they were brothers. Despite their differences, there were some issues they were one on.
Cain fought with himself over whether to share the next bit, but the need to tell somebody won over the inner voice that urged him to keep quiet. “Lucien, she’s two thousand.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Nevermind.”
They both materialized, hidden behind a copse of trees a few blocks from the small town Montana crime scene.
“No, tell me what this is about,” his brother said.
Cain looked off into the distance. “She’s just unique, all right? And she’s strong. Did you know she can resist my thrall even with her shields down? Not a lot, but enough to make snarky commentary.”
Luc laughed, the pieces coming together. “You want to keep her.”
“No! I do not want to keep her. She’s the enemy. I’m not you. I don’t fall for my food. I don’t get involved with witches. I’m just... not bored with her yet. She can’t come in and demand I release her from what she is. I don’t get that option. Why should she? Why should she get to do some magic of her own free will that makes her immortal and not have to deal with those consequences? I should torture the hell out of her for even asking.”
Luc snorted. “Please. She’d drop your ass with that energy ball magic she does. You can’t take her if she doesn’t want to be taken, and you like that. I know you. You like a challenge.”
“Can we please stop psychoanalyzing me now? I shouldn’t have said anything.” He couldn’t imagine spilling his guts to one of the other demons, not even Daria or Jackson. Daria would just blab. That succubus could be such a gossip.
Luc clapped a hand on Cain’s back. “No, I’m glad you confided in me. It makes it feel more like old times between us—before I was trapped in the house, I mean. Not old times when we were human.”
The demon leader laughed, the memory of their human days fuzzy by now. “I don’t know why I cared so much what the man upstairs thought about me. You know if it was down to him and you again, I’d pick you.”
“I know.”
Luc’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to give me an official order. I won’t say anything.”
With that off his chest, Cain went invisible again. Luc followed suit, and they made their way through the trees to the house with the police tape around it. A group of reporters had gathered and were furiously taking notes, their cameras recording.
Cain moved around the perimeter far from the mechanical eyes. Sometimes human cameras caught things—not a full demon, but moving streaks or balls of light, or what humans who were into ghost hunting liked to called orbs. Who knew why a demon should show up as light on a human camera? One would think it would be puffs of dark smoke or something else sinister, but if this thing was going where the TV reports he’d seen so far suggested, they didn’t need more clues to fuel the fire.
The two of them passed through the wall into the house from the back, and made their way to the room where the body had been. The investigators were in the hallway.
“Great, the body’s already at the morgue,” Luc said, not at all happy about it.
“Probably not much of interest on the body, anyway. Let’s just search here. We might find something to give Anthony at the meeting tonight.” He hated working with a half-breed. Hated it. But the winds were changing. It felt as if something dramatically bad was about to happen. As much as he loathed the idea, he couldn’t afford to be too good to work with a vampire.
The investigators in the hallway talked for a few more minutes, then went outside to face the reporters, locking the doors behind them. When they were gone, the demons materialized.
“I’ll check this room,” Cain said. “You check the rest of the house.”
Luc gave a curt nod and went into the hallway. Cain was glad for the peace. Maybe telling his brother had been a mistake. Of course, Luc was going to see it differently from how he meant it. He didn’t even know how he meant it. If he’d waited, in a week Tam would be dead. Nobody would have had to know about any of it. But it was lonely keeping everything to himself. Luc was the one demon he could confide in without feeling weak.
Cain went through doors and closets, shuffled through some papers on the dresser, and took in the room in general. A Victorian-style lamp had been knocked over. Blood coated the bed. He moved closer. Something was off.
“Luc!”
The other demon yelled from down the hallway, “Yeah?”
“She wasn’t killed here. It was somewhere else, then she was transported.” In this neighborhood, how would he have accomplished it? It wasn’t as if the house were isolated. Some type of cloaking spell or glamour maybe? “I’m going to talk to the neighbor next door. You keep looking here.”
Cain dematerialized and went back through the wall where he’d come in. The investigators didn’t seem to realize the body had been moved. The difference in how the scene would appear was subtle, but he’d seen thousands of years of human barbarism. Given the ritualistic nature of the killing, the blood patterns would have been different. It was a good misdirect, though. It would fool a human.
The killer had brought her in, arranged her, then messed up the room to make it look like the struggle had happened here. Given how convincing the scene was, who would assume a second location? The more locations, the more chances of getting caught.
Depending on time of death, anything that had happened more recently at the house might not have been considered important—assuming the police had worked their way through canvassing the neighborhood. Since they’d just finished with the house, interviews may not have started yet.
He slipped over to the house next door, noting the investigators dealing with the media out front. Cain rang the doorbell.
An older woman, maybe mid-seventies, answered and looked past him, confused by her empty front porch. “H-hello?”