High Voltage Read online

  As a teen I used to say I didn’t want to live long enough to get old and wrinkly and fall apart, but I had two sudden horrid images: me living until I was old and wrinkly and falling apart, hanging out with my ageless, immortal friends who were going to go on forever having epic adventures and saving the world, and me dying tomorrow and leaving Shazam alone.

  He’d be lost without me. He’d go off the deep end. Who would take care of him? Who would be able to handle him? Who would love him like I did? Who would understand his quicksilver moods, his consuming depressions, his bombastic nature, his kaleidoscopic emotions?

  Dancer, with his fragile heart, had refused the Queen of the Fae’s Elixir of Life that would have healed his compromised organ and bestowed immortality at the eventual price of his soul. He died once, when he was eight, had seen something, believed in something, and hadn’t been willing to sacrifice his immortal soul.

  The existence of my immortal soul was debatable as far as I was concerned. Furthermore, if I lost my soul, I’d adapt. I always do. Adaptation is my specialty. I practically invented the word.

  I removed Shazam’s paws from his ears, ignoring the explosion of wails and hisses. “Shazzy,” I said firmly, “I will not die on you. I promise.”

  He snarled around hiccupping sobs, “Can’t make that promise!”

  “You know Mac, right?”

  “Thinks I’m fat and hates Hel-Cats,” he spat.

  “She does not. She’ll give me the elixir of immortality. I’ll ask her for it.” And if for some unfathomable reason, she wouldn’t or couldn’t, there was always Ryodan. Or Lor, or whichever of the Nine I had to coax, bully, or keep killing until they did for me what they did for Dageus. “I will not die,” I said sternly.

  He squirmed in my lap and peered up at me with teary violet eyes, sniffing. “Promise?”

  “Promise. I won’t leave you alone. Not ever. Pinky swear.”

  “Pinky swear is everything,” he said, awed, blinking back tears.

  I’d taught him well. “It is. And I’m pinky swearing right now. Show me one of those adorable toes.”

  He raised a paw and spread fat, velvety, black-padded appendages. I hooked the pinky of my right hand around his toe—

  “Not that one. Other,” he said impatiently.

  “It’s black. It blows people up.”

  “Not me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I’m me,” he said smugly. “Better, smarter, more.”

  Oh, yes, we belonged together, ego to ego, emotion to emotion, God, I loved this little beast! Laughing, I hooked finger to toe and said, “Shazam O’Malley, I do hereby solemnly swear I am going to love you for all of forever.”

  “Then nine million more days?” he demanded.

  Smiling, I finished the vow we’d taken long ago, Silverside. “Uh-huh. Because not even all of forever will be enough time to love you.”

  “I die,” he gushed, and fell over on his back, paws in the air, lolling happily.

  “Never leaving you, best friend. You can count on that.”

  Eyes gleaming, rumbling with contentment, he followed me into the bathroom and sank back to his haunches on the counter to watch with keen interest as I did something I rarely did.

  Put on makeup.

  Tonight I was wearing armor. The right dress, the right hair, smoky eyes, and crimson crushed-velvet lips. Since I didn’t dare show up naked to battle with Ryodan, I was going the opposite route: as the stunning, powerful, sexy woman I can be if I feel like it.

  Sighing, I thumbed on my flat-iron thinking, what a bloody waste of time but my mood seems to mimic my hair. When it’s a wild cloud, so am I, and tonight I wanted to be sleek and polished. It takes an unusual, thick tree sap I found Silverside to straighten my hair. I brought a leather pouch of the stuff back with me but I’m almost out. I have no idea what I’ll do then.

  As I began my makeup, a faint rustling sound in the shower drew my attention. In the mirror, I watched the antenna and head of a cockroach pop up from the drain. You never know if a roach is a simple Earth-born insect or part of the nefarious Papa Roach that used to hang out at Chester’s, preying on the waitresses who’d permitted his vile segments to burrow beneath their skin and eat their fat away—the AWC version of liposuction. Ergo, I treat them all as the enemy.

  I pretended I hadn’t seen it until it cleared the grate, then grabbed a can of hair spray, whirled in freeze-frame and blasted it with a noxious burst, snarling, “Not on my turf, you little shit.”

  The cockroach hissed at me and gave a whole-body, violent bristle, choking and sputtering as it vanished back down the drain.

  * * *

  π

  Not all redheads wear red well. It has to be the right shade to go with our coloring. My hair is copper flame, my skin snowy, and my dress tonight was bloodred.

  My still-black arm and collarbone proved a challenge. I had to keep it covered, although, frankly, blowing Ryodan’s ass up rather appealed to me at the moment and, hey, he always came back.

  Still, I’d been unpredictably violent once today and I try to limit myself to once in a given twenty-four-hour period.

  Ergo, my dress had three-quarter sleeves, hugged my body like a second skin, and was cut so low in the back that the tramp stamp at the base of my spine Ryodan tattooed on me years ago was beautifully framed, drawing the eye to that sensual hollow.

  I’m not vain. I’ll never be girly. But I do like being a woman every now and then and I’m grateful for five feet ten inches of strong flesh and bones that has an appealingly lean yet feminine shape. My ass and legs are my best feature, powerfully muscled from endless motion. After taping my neck with Gorilla Tape because black went better than silver with my ensemble, I slid black and rhinestone stilettos on my bare feet, smudged my smoky eyes one last time, swept my hair up into a sleek, high Lara Croft ponytail, blotted crimson lips, and nodded to myself in the mirror. I debated leaving my hair down to cover the tape, but in a fight—and I was certainly hoping for one or ten—my hair unrestrained is a royal pain in my ass. I added the final piece: a three-inch-wide choker of glittering diamonds and bloodstones that concealed a garrote. Although I hated that it felt like a collar, it covered the tape, held a weapon, and was easily removed.

  “He doesn’t stand a chance,” Shazam rumbled.

  “He, who?”

  “The one I smelled on our mattress. He’s back. I smelled him on you before. He makes you smell different when he’s around.”

  Okay, that was disturbing. “Different how?”

  “Like Pallas cat makes me smell.”

  Okay THAT was disturbing. “I don’t think so,” I growled.

  He shrugged. “We deny at our own peril…”

  “What? What do we deny at our own peril?”

  “The cry of the flesh for the Dionysiac experience.”

  Eyes narrowed, I peered suspiciously at him. “Where did you even hear that? Is that from some documentary you watched on theatre or history or something?”

  He shrugged again. “It’s why I eat. My flesh cries a lot.”

  “As in Dionysus. The God of Bacchae. Wine and orgy,” I said stiffly.

  “I chose one of your gods, not mine, better not to bofflescate you.”

  Good grief. “Do Hel-Cats have gods?”

  “Most things do. Look suspiciously like themselves.”

  I wanted to have this conversation. Shazam was in an unusually lucid mood. Gods were a hot topic on my plate. And it was 8:01.

  I did not want Ryodan in my flat. He’d have more time to look around, copy something else. “Please be here when I get back,” I told Shazam. “I miss our cuddles.”

  His smile was instant, enormous, and swallowed his head, all fangs and thin black lips, and there was that elusive, nagging reminder of something I couldn’
t place again. Shazam smiling made me think of something else, something I’d once seen but apparently hadn’t considered important enough to file away with a neat label. “Me, too.” He bounded off the counter, stalked to the mattress, turned around three brisk times, and plopped heavily to the bed. “Can we put the mattress back up high soon? I like it there.”

  “Soon as I get back. I see you, Shaz-ma-taz.”

  “I see you, too, Yi-yi.”

  I tugged on opera-length black silk gloves studded with diamonds, which ended where my sleeves began, grabbed my sword, slid it across my back, tucked three blades in a thigh sheath, and stalked out the door.

  You drive me crazy like no one else

  I WENT SLOWLY DOWN FOUR flights of stairs, not because of my heels but because I was abruptly off-kilter the moment I closed the door of Sanctuary and locked it behind me.

  Ryodan was picking me up. I was wearing a dress. I had no bloody idea where we were going or what we were doing.

  Out of control on all counts.

  For two long years I’d been mistress of the empty Mega-pod, dominatrix of every detail. There’d been no surprises. I’d not once lost hold on my emotions. Not even when I killed Bridget. I hadn’t slumped into a puddle of grief and self-abasement—and I’d wanted to. That’d been one of my tougher things to box. I’d killed yet another innocent. But, no matter what happened, I went on, steady and committed, doing what needed to be done, being what people needed me to be, and I dealt with however it fractured me. I was proud of myself for that. I considered it a sign of my maturity.

  Yet a few thoughts about him on the way to his club had whipped me into a frenzy of uncontrolled emotion and I’d become a tornado, whirling dizzyingly about, dizzying even to me.

  I stopped, centered myself with a breathing kata, and only when I was composed did I resume descending. I wasn’t about to repeat my earlier volatility. If he brought up the kiss, I’d shrug it off as PMS. Men use it against us all the time. If that didn’t shut him up, I’d employ the “hangry” excuse. He knows how often I need to eat to function at peak performance, has seen me shaky and feverish.

  I rounded the final stairwell, expecting to find him parked outside in the Hummer.

  He was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the newel post, looking up. Looking incredible. Tall, dark, and the precise flavor of the danger I find so addictive. Standing there like we were going on a date or something. I was instantly assaulted by conflicting emotions.

  I’d dreamed of seeing him standing there, somewhere, anywhere in my world again. And I was so damned angry, I couldn’t process the complexity of it. I’m smart enough to know I can also be as emotionally myopic as Mr. Magoo is nearsighted. The more something matters to me, the less I understand how I feel about it. Mac used to help me with that. For the hundredth time I wished she were here to talk to. I missed her so much. “You could have waited in the car,” I said tonelessly.

  “I bloody well know what I can and can’t do, and don’t pull Jada-voice on me. I came to see Dani tonight.”

  Ryodan is beautiful. Not like Barrons, who’s beautiful in a perfectly imperfect way, far more animalistic than man. You see the beast first in Barrons. You have to hunt for it in Ryodan, who pours a flawlessly human skin over his animal form, meticulously aware of precisely where each atom of his being is in relation to the world around him. He has a heightened, absolute awareness I covet and emulate. He’s liquid grace when he moves. I’m damned close to it. I’ve admired him since the day I met him. Used to study him when he wasn’t watching me. I once spent eight infernal hours trapped in his office, watching his dark head bent over paperwork, absorbing every detail of his profile, trying to figure out some way to shatter that infernal calm and grace, make that controlled face explode into uncontrolled emotion. Make him act like I always felt around him.

  It hadn’t eluded me that the first man to draw my gaze after Dancer died—at six feet four inches and 240 pounds, with short dark hair—resembled Ryodan. There are two types of men I’m attracted to and they’re rare as hell: brilliant, sexy, full of wonder, pure as a wide-open sky and easy to be around; or brilliant, sexy, inhumanly strong, carved by ruthless experience and difficult to handle. I like extremes.

  Ryodan was dark and elegant, his powerful body poured into a charcoal Versace suit, a subtly embossed white shirt, a silver and black tie that matched his eyes, wide cuff glinting at his wrist, the tips of intricate tattoos peeking above his crisp white collar, dark Italian shoes. He was as dichotomous as his club, sophistication on the surface, primal beast beneath. His jaw was dusted with dark stubble, and—I inhaled lightly—he smelled good. I didn’t remember him smelling so good. The wan light of the single bulb illuminating the foyer behind him shadowed the regal bone structure of his face. Primordial, polished, pain-in-the-ass man that never fails to rattle me. Or make me feel painfully alive. I want him. He drives me batshit crazy.

  He held my gaze a long moment. Beautiful by any standards, in any century, on any world, woman, his eyes said.

  I willed my eyes blank. Emerald shallows lapping gently at a shore. Not a tsunami out of control.

  As I began to descend the last flight, he said, “What did you miss the most about me, Dani?”

  Aside from that dark-velvet, exotically accented voice, his clear, unfiltered way of seeing me; his ability to kick my brain up into a higher gear; his endless challenges; and how he always seemed to understand what I was feeling, even when I didn’t? “Clever,” I said coolly. “ ‘Most’ implies that I missed many things. I didn’t think about you at all.”

  “You need to stop boxing the things that disturb you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “How I organize my brain is none of your business.”

  “It is when I’m the recipient of the resultant chaos.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “When you refuse to think about an issue, it remains unchanged, in precisely the same state as you tucked it away.”

  “Precisely the point of boxing it. The issue dies. Can no longer affect you. It’s a damned effective tactic.”

  “Short-term, yes. Long-term, a recipe for disaster. When you next encounter whatever you boxed your feelings about, you’re ambushed by repressed, unresolved emotion.”

  “Your point eludes me,” I said stiffly. It didn’t. I just didn’t like it. No one ever called me on my shit. I’d gotten used to that. I’d missed that about him. Even as I resented his logic for being so bloody logical.

  “If you’d thought about me while I was away, you wouldn’t have been a perfect storm of oppositional desires at Chester’s this morning.”

  Truth. Wasn’t about to admit it. “It had nothing to do with you. I was PMS and hungry.”

  He smiled faintly. “I see. So, that’s how we’re going to play it. Commando or thong?”

  My face screwed into an instant scowl. “What?”

  He laughed. “Ah, Dani, that’s one of the many things I missed about you. When your eyes flash, your skin flushes, and you’re even more fucking beautiful. I used to picture your face while I was gone, when you were on one of your rants, stalking, fierce, and high-tempered. I missed it. Tell me something you missed about me. I must have slipped out of your box every now and then.”

  I gave him a stony look. He’d pictured my face while he was gone? Then why hadn’t he called? I wasn’t a woman to be softened with a few nice words after two bloody endless years of silence. Two years in which he’d showed me precisely how little I meant to him.

  As I neared the bottom of the staircase, he said, “We need a few rules.”

  “I don’t do rules.” Not true. I had an elaborate set of my own. “And certainly not yours.”

  “Ours,” he corrected. “Mutually agreed upon. Rule number six—”

  “What are rules one through five? Do I get
to make those up?” I had a list ready.

  “We’ll get to those. I was merely making the point that this particular rule isn’t the most important between us. The next time—”

  “And, of course, you’re the one who gets to decide what’s most important.”

  “—you want to blow off steam, say the word. I’ve got a fully outfitted sparring gym at Chester’s—”

  “Level seven. Boxing ring, every weapon imaginable. I exploded all your punching bags. I took your guns, too. Oh, and those cool studded leather gloves with the recessed blades.”

  “—where we can glove up and spar, you little snoop. In private.”

  I was getting mad again. He sees right through me. He was right and that pissed me off even more. Putting him in a mental compartment had, indeed, left me unprepared for his return. He was here now but I was still stuck two years ago, in a cemetery, hurt and angry, with two years of additional hurt and anger heaped on top of it. I needed to address that quickly, and physical activity always helps me think. “Fine. Let’s go now.”

  “And forgo a night with you in that dress? Not a chance. We’ll have our date first.”

  “People like you and me, and I use that term loosely in reference to you, don’t date. And rule, definition: something you don’t break and certainly not the first time out of the gate. Clearly, no one but you gets to invoke the rules. Typical. You’re always the only one allowed to make the decisions.”

  “Ah, and now we’re finally getting to your point,” he murmured.

  I descended the final step. “No, we’re not. And it’s commando. Friction’s a bitch when I freeze-frame. Nothing under here but skin, babe.”

  His laughter was soft, husky, and dangerous. “Battle engaged. Babe.”

  Raw current arced between us as I swept past him. I channeled that energy into a powerful, long-legged stride outside, feeling his gaze scorch my ass all the way to the car.

  And that pissed me off, too. Not that he was staring at my ass. He should be. It looked terrific. The car. It was a matte black Ferrari. Sleek, sexy. Date material.