CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jace didn’t completely
believe her; she could see uncertainty in his eyes.
Eyes she could have
spent at least an hour or two staring into without saying a word.
She’d had no idea eyes could be so beautiful, or so many different
colors. Gold, brown, and amber swirled together in Jace’s, framed
by lashes so long and dark they would have seemed feminine if it
weren’t for the rest of his face. Though his Chinese heritage was
dominant in some ways, the rest of him definitely bore the mark of
his Italian family, the side she knew he was closest
to.
His full lips and
strong jaw were the work of the Conti genes, as were the enormous
shoulders stretching the seams of his shirt and the hand that
curled around her own. He’d been determined to run away a few
minutes ago, but now he threaded his fingers through hers,
evidently too stunned to remember that he was a “very bad man” who
she needed to stay away from.
Sam couldn’t believe
Jace was bolting because he thought she was too good for him. She’d
assumed he considered her beneath his interest or boring or
pathetic or high maintenance … never that he’d avoided her because
he thought she deserved better.
If that was the only
thing standing between them, then there was no reason for them not
to be together. It was simply a matter of convincing Jace that he
was more than good enough, and the only man she
wanted.
The realization would
have captured her attention completely if there hadn’t been so many
other things buzzing around in her head. Like the terrifying
certainty that Jace was going to be attacked by the demons that had
killed the Choes and the man they’d seen lurking near the murder
scene. And the fact that she could see Jace. Really see him, not with her fingertips, not because
someone had described him so well that she could paint a mental
image, but because her eyes had suddenly honed in on his face. He’d
drifted into focus, though everything else remained as
shadow-filled as before.
No matter how
thrilling it was to be able to see the man she was falling for, to
know firsthand that he was as gorgeous as she’d always assumed him
to be, the fact that she could see the stubborn set of his jaw and
the bruise swelling one side of his face terrified
her.
“You’ve got to come
with me to see someone,” she said, squeezing his hand. “He’s the
only person I can think of who could help us figure
out—”
“Is this the
ex-boyfriend?” Jace said, pulling away with a frustrated
sigh.
“Yes,
but—”
“No, thanks.” He
dropped his jacket and tugged his shirt over his head and turned it
right-side out.
Sam did her best not
to stare at the golden skin he uncovered, not to notice the way his
hip muscles dipped sharply inward just before they disappeared into
his jeans, as if inviting her to look lower, to reach out and unzip
his fly and take a good, long look at the cock she’d had in her
mouth a few minutes past.
She’d never actually
seen a penis before, and she was suddenly very curious. Would the
skin be the same color as the rest of his body? Or would it be
flushed pink and blue, the way a couple of her girlfriends in
college had insisted was the case when a man was
aroused?
Jace’s head emerged
from the top of his shirt, and Sam pulled her eyes away from his
crotch, but not quite quickly enough, if the twitching at the edges
of his lips was anything to judge by. For a second, she thought it
would be worth getting caught ogling if it could bring a smile to
his face, but the hint of a grin faded as quickly as it had
arrived. “I’ll take my chances with my connections,” he
said.
“Why? You’d rather
die than meet a man I used to have sex with?”
“I don’t give a fuck
who you have sex with,” he said, but his scowl belied his harsh
words. He did care, no matter what he
said, no matter how tough he tried to play it. There was something
real between them, something she had to make sure they both lived
long enough to make the most of.
“He had another woman
in his bed when I was there this morning,” she said. “If that makes
you feel any better.”
“It doesn’t.” But it
did, at least a little bit. She could tell.
“Ezra knows more
about this kind of stuff than anyone in New York,” she said,
ignoring the throbbing getting started at the base of her neck. She
was getting a killer headache. No big surprise, really. She
couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone this long without sleep.
Or food. God, she was starving all of a sudden, flat-out dizzy with
hunger. Too bad there wasn’t time to eat, not when Jace might be
the demon’s next victim. “He contacted me a few years ago, and
wanted to do an interview. He tracked me down through the state’s
database on cult victims. He’s very professional, and I
know—”
“Professional?
Screwing a victim he found on the Internet is
professional?”
“I wanted to talk to
him. I was trying to figure out more about my parents. And I’m a
lot more than a victim, Jace.” Sam sighed and pressed her fingers
to her temples. Damn. The headache was
going migraine, fast. She consciously tried to relax her shoulders,
to release the tension knotting the base of her neck. “Can we fight
about this later? After we do our best to make sure you’re safe? I
really … I don’t know …”
“Hey,” Jace said,
steadying her with gentle hands on her shoulders when she swayed on
her feet. “Are you okay?”
“I think I’m just …
hungry. And exhausted. I haven’t eaten or slept in … a while.” But
it was more than that. She could feel it now, that pressure at the
backs of her eyes, pushing, shoving, until it felt like they would
explode. It was the same way she’d felt seconds before the vision
of the Choes had taken her over.
Sam sucked in a
terrified breath, but there wasn’t a hint of the demon’s smell
nearby, not a trace of evil energy. It wasn’t in the room with
them. Jace was safe, for now. It was the last thought to race
through her mind before she left her body, bursting through into
someone else’s head with a popping sound that made her ears
ache.
No, his ears ached. She was a man this time. The
blood-smeared hands that reached underneath the iron-framed bed
were masculine, though his bones were more delicate than average.
Still, he was a man who worked for a living. His skin was chafed
and scratched in places, and his chapped knuckles filled with
drying blood, forming obscene little smiley faces on each
finger.
He’d done something
horrible, Sam guessed, though she wasn’t privy to his thoughts. But
judging from the way his hands shook as he worked the combination
on the lockbox he’d pulled from beneath the bed, he hadn’t earned
those bloody hands butchering meat. Any doubt that this man was
about some very nasty work vanished when he lifted the lid of the
lockbox and pulled out another, smaller box of intricately carved
wood.
If she’d been judging
with her eyes—or his eyes, rather—she would have assumed she was
looking at something intended to hold jewelry or keepsakes. It
wasn’t a scary thing to look at, as far as objects went, its dark
wood warm and inviting, the twisting vines covering every side
painstakingly crafted. No, it was the way the thing felt that made the man’s skin crawl, made bile rise
in his throat as he fumbled with the intricate latch holding the
box closed.
Evil energy, even
colder and viler than what Sam had felt from the aura demons,
flowed over the man’s skin. She sensed that this box had been
around for a long time, had held wicked secrets, had soaked in the
murderous power of thousands of bloodstained hands. It was an
ancient predator lurking in the shadows, a thing of such immense
power it didn’t feel the need to hunt. It was content to wait until
its prey sought it out, willingly serving themselves up to its icy,
passionless mouth. It didn’t crave the kill, didn’t relish the
blood of its victims. It was too old for such frenzied emotion. It
simply waited and consumed, all the more evil for its utter
emptiness.
No … scratch that.
The box wasn’t empty. Not literally. It was nearly full, in fact,
crowded with its own diseased brand of keepsake.
Eyes. Human eyes.
Four of them. The two on top of the small pile were the same color,
and looked remarkably lifelike for tissue that had been removed
from its host. They still retained the deep brown color they’d had
in life, and actually—
If Sam had been in
her own body, she would have screamed when the eye twitched and the
pupil at the center contracted violently in response to the sudden
influx of light. Even the man flinched, and he knew exactly what he
was going to find. He knew the eyes were still alive, kept vital
through whatever nasty power lived in the box. He had to have
known. He was the one who had put the eyes inside, maybe even the
one who had ripped them from their owners in the first
place.
How else would he
have come into possession of this box?
The last bit of Sam’s
uncertainty faded when the man reached into his coat pocket and
pulled out another pair of eyes. They were slightly larger than the
rest, and clouded over, milky-looking … at least until the man’s
bloody hands placed them in their new home. As soon as the killer’s
trophies rolled to a stop, the cloud covering departed and the blue
eyes snapped to life.
Sam would have
assumed it was impossible for disembodied organs to express
emotion, but these did. They were confused, then betrayed, then
terrified, the full horror of the situation in which they found
themselves dawning just before the man snapped the box
closed.
He shoved his macabre
treasure chest back into the lockbox, slammed the iron lid, and
spun the numbers until the combination was concealed. By the time
he slipped the entire thing back underneath the bed, the man’s
hands were steady. He felt calmer, his heart rate dipping back down
into the mostly normal range. Oddly, Sam could feel his physical
responses, but still wasn’t privy to his thoughts. She was
guessing, however, that he felt relieved to have finished the worst
of his business. Surely whatever he was going to do next had to be
better than this.
Maybe he’d go to the
bathroom to wash his hands, taking a good long look in the mirror
while he did. If she could stay with him, she’d get a glimpse of
his face. Then she and Jace would know who they were looking
for.
He stood, inching
away from the bed as if he were hesitant to turn his back on what
lay beneath. Sam took in the luxurious surroundings, surprised to
see lush carpet beneath the bed and heavy drapes surrounding it.
The rest of the furniture in the room looked old and expensive and
was littered with delicate carved marble statues and intricate
pieces of glass. But for all its decoration, the room had the feel
of a place that hadn’t been lived in, and the man wasn’t
comfortable here. He was ready to get out, spinning on his heels so
fast, the other side of the room spun before his eyes
and—
The smell hit with
the force of a physical blow, snapping Sam’s head back. The aura
demons! They’d found her. She could feel them swarming around in
her head, surging deep into the pit of her stomach, so many of them
she couldn’t guess how many fought for space within her
skin.
For a second she
panicked, certain Jace was in danger, but before she could form the
words needed to warn him, she was kicked back into her body. The
demons cast her out with a high-pitched screech. The creatures
weren’t pleased to find her lurking inside their partner in
crime.
Partner in crime. The
demons had a human working with them! She should have
known.
Sam cried out as her
soul reconnected with her tissue, her back arching as painful
little shocks of electricity skittered up and down her spine. It
took several seconds for her to realize that she was on the floor
of the hotel room, draped across Jace’s lap as he held her head and
shoulders off the carpet.
As comforting as it
was to look up and see him still in sharp focus, it was also
terrifying. She had to make sure those mesmerizing golden brown
eyes weren’t added to Mr. Sicko’s collection.
“The murderer is a
man. I saw his bloody hands. He’s collecting the victims’ eyes in a
little wooden box. I think it’s one of the artifacts the demon
cults use to summon the aura demons into the earthly plane, but I’m
not sure. My dad had something similar, a box, but I can’t remember
what it looked like,” Sam said, her mouth dry and her tongue thick
and awkward in her mouth. It felt as if she’d been away from her
body far longer than a few minutes. “I wasn’t allowed to see or get
near it. None of the kids were.”
She shivered. It made
sense that she hadn’t been allowed near it if it was half as wicked
as the thing she’d seen in her vision. It seemed crazy to think an
inanimate object could be evil, but in the long run it probably
wasn’t any crazier than believing in invisible demons who entered
the world through some sort of ritual involving said inanimate
object.
“But the box and the
man, they are connected to the aura demon.”
“How do you
know?”
“It was like last
night, when I was inside Mrs. Choe. This time I felt the demons
inside the man I was …” How to describe seeing through another
person’s eyes, feeling the physical sensations he
felt?
“Inhabiting?” Jace
asked.
“Yes! And if I could
inhabit that man without his permission, it makes sense that the
demons can inhabit people without permission, too, right? Or at
least hurt them without permission.”
“I have no idea what
makes sense anymore.”
“But you believe me,
believe that I was inside someone else?” she asked, frightened by
how much she wanted Jace to believe her. She knew these things were
really happening to her; she didn’t doubt that. But, man, would it
be nice to know she wasn’t alone in that belief.
“You certainly
weren’t here,” Jace said, sounding spooked. “It was worse than last
night. You weren’t moving. I wasn’t even sure you were
breathing.”
“Was I?”
“Yeah, but … touching
you was like …”
“Like what?” Sam
asked, staring up into Jace’s eyes, doing her best not to imagine
what they’d look like ripped from his body. The demons and the
human monster it worked with and that nasty box wouldn’t get Jace.
She wouldn’t let them.
“Like holding an
empty container of cereal,” he said, pulling her a little closer.
“It looks the same as a full one, but you don’t have to open it up
to know there’s nothing left inside.”
Sam shivered.
“Creepy.”
Jace nodded. “That
pretty much covers it.”
But not as creepy as
what she’d seen. Sam pulled away from Jace, but stayed on the
ground, tucking her legs beneath her. She wasn’t ready to try to
stand up yet. As briefly as possible, she described what she’d seen
and the evil she’d felt coming from the box. “I was hoping the guy
would wash his hands or something and I’d be able to see his
reflection in the mirror, but then I smelled that smell I told you
about in the ruins. It was the same one that I noticed in my
apartment later, just before I was pushed down the
stairs.”
“The aura demons
smell?” he asked, but without the incredulity she would have
expected.
Sam nodded. “At
least, I can smell them, but there are a lot of times when I smell
things that other people can’t. I even smell things in my dreams,”
she said. “But this man could smell the demons, too. He—or I guess
we—smelled them, and then the demons
were there with me, inside the man’s body.”
Jace narrowed his
eyes. “You’re sure it’s not the man who smells?”
“No, it’s not a man
smell.” Sam sighed. “It’s a demon smell, but not a normal demon
smell. Not just demon waste or sweat, more—”
“I smelled something
earlier,” Jace said, hesitating only slightly before he went on.
“The man who jumped me from behind in the alley smelled pretty
rank.”
“Maybe it was an aura
demon!”
“This was a man,
Sam,” Jace said, though she could tell he was starting to buy her
theory. “He punched me in the kidneys. Demons without bodies
don’t—”
“But the man the
demons are working with could have punched you. If he had the
demons with him, that would explain the smell. It would also
explain how he came into possession of another pair of eyes,” she
said, piecing together the time line in her mind. “But it took him
a while to get to his box, if what I was seeing was happening right
now, which I’m going to assume it was. Since you already saw the …
body.”
Jace
nodded.
“And the demons
sensed me inside the man, which they couldn’t have if this was
going to happen in the future, right?”
“Um…”
“So, it’s been at
least a couple of hours,” Sam said, not waiting for another comment
on the far-reaching fingers of her logic. They were dealing with a
lot of unknowns, and far-reaching logic was the only kind
available.
“A couple hours
walking around with bloody hands. Not smart.”
Sam nibbled at her
lip. “No, but he’s … He wasn’t afraid. At least, not of getting
caught. He was anxious when he opened the box, but I think that was
just because of the box itself. It’s … evil.”
“So maybe he works
some kind of job where it would be normal for him to have bloody
hands. Isn’t there a meatpacking plant not too far from the Choes’
old place?”
The Choes’ old place.
God, it was still so hard to believe they were dead. “I need to
find out if there were flowers on the floor of the Choes’ apartment
when they were … found. In my vision I saw flowers on the ground,
my flowers.”
“I can call my uncle.
He has ways of finding out what went down at a crime
scene.”
“Great. So if he
confirms my flowers were really there …”
“Then that means
someone must have taken them out of the Dumpster.”
Sam smacked her
forehead. “What if the man used the flowers to get inside? What if
he hid behind the flowers and tricked the Choes into letting him
and the demons in?”
Jace sat up a little
straighter, and she could tell he thought she was on to something.
“Which means someone was watching us last night. Some sick freak
who likes to collect eyeballs.” Jace scowled and ran a frustrated
hand through his wildly spiked hair. It was truly out of control
now. He was in need of a long shower and about half a bottle of
hair gel in order to repair his hedgehog.
Hell, so was she. In
need of a shower. She could do without the hair gel. Food would be
good, too. They weren’t going to be worth shooting if they didn’t
at least get some food in their stomachs.
“We should eat
something. And maybe try to get some sleep.”
“I’ll order room
service,” Jace said with a sigh as he pushed to his feet. “But I
don’t think I’m going to be sleeping until I figure out why you can
see my face. Considering the last guy to have the pleasure lost his
eyeballs a few hours later …”
Sam shivered,
appetite destroyed once more. She almost told Jace to forget about
ordering anything, but he already had room service on the phone.
She smiled when he ordered veggie burgers. A veggie burger sounded
perfect. She would usually have shunned anything soy masquerading
as real food, but the events of the past twenty-four hours had
killed all her cravings for red meat.
“Do you think the
demons could be controlling the man?” Jace asked after he’d hung
up. “Making him commit these murders?”
Sam chewed her lip
for a moment. Her lips were as dry as the rest of her mouth. The
raspberry-lime soda Jace had ordered couldn’t get to the room soon
enough. “Maybe … but I don’t think so. I think the man’s doing it
of his own free will. Ezra said something this morning about pacts
with aura demons. That they usually require a sacrifice made from
free will.”
“The ex-boyfriend
Ezra?” Jace crossed the room until he stood right next to her,
forcing Sam to crane her head all the way back to keep him in
sight. The movement gave her a brief moment of vertigo. This
“seeing” stuff wasn’t as easy as the rest of humanity made it out
to be.
“Yeah, the
ex-boyfriend.”
“Guess we should go
see him after we eat.”
Sam smiled, more
relieved than she could say that Jace was being reasonable … at
least about the Ezra business. “I think that would be wise. Unless
you have a better idea.”
“I
don’t.”
“Well, I do,” Sam
said, nervously licking her dry lips. “Not for finding the man I
saw in my vision, but I can think of a few better ways to spend the
next fifteen minutes than sitting on the floor.” He took the hand
she held toward him and helped her to her feet. It was so strange
not being able to see her own hand, but being able to see his so
clearly. If she’d had any doubt that her ability to see was
paranormal in nature, it would have vanished in that moment. “They
said the food would be about twenty minutes, right?”
He
nodded.
“Good. Just enough
time for a bath.”
“You want to take a
bath?” He made it sound like she’d said she wanted to run over old
ladies while they were crossing the street.
“I’d like to be
clean. Wouldn’t you?” she asked, pulling the sweater she’d just put
on over her head. She was glad she hadn’t bothered putting her bra
back on before. Jace’s eyes dropped to her chest for a split
second, just long enough for her to read the desire in his heated
gaze.
He wanted her. Badly.
No matter what he thought was best for her.
“I don’t have any
clean clothes,” he said, stepping back, as if he feared what he’d
do if he stayed so close to her.
“I bet they have
something in your size in the shop downstairs. And I’m betting
they’d send it up. Seems like you have some pull around
here.”
“The Contis have
pull—which reminds me: I should call my uncle and see
what—”
“It can wait thirty
minutes until we get clean and a little food in our stomachs.” She
took his hand and pulled him back toward the door, hoping she
remembered the layout of the room well enough to find the
bathroom.
“How do you know? I
could be dead by then,” he said, though he didn’t sound
particularly disturbed by the thought. “If these demons have a
connection with you, they could find us here.”
Sam paused for a
second, considering his words. “They could, I guess, but I don’t
think they will. They weren’t happy to find me hanging around their
human friend. They’re not looking for me right now.”
“Why? Why did one or
more of them try to kill you, push you down the stairs, and then
suddenly decide to leave you alone?”
“Good question,” Sam
said. “And maybe Ezra will have some answers. In the meantime, our
bath time has been cut down to ten minutes.”
“I don’t want to take
a bath.” He dug his feet in, stopping her from taking another
step.
“Do you want to die
dirty and hungry and with a killer case of blue
balls?”
Jace’s eyes widened,
and then the most amazing thing happened. He smiled. And laughed.
“No, I don’t.” Then he pulled her into the bathroom and shut the
door.