Rapture

Chapter Twenty-four

As Devina folded her napkin beside her empty breakfast plate, she smiled across the table at her prey. All in all, things were going well. Matthias was starting to remember, and that little door she’d opened about his father had brought back just the kind of light she liked to see in his eye.

That old man of his had been key, of course, the beginning of the evil, proof positive that infection could happen even human to human, not just demon to human.

But she had to be careful to walk that line.

“I’ll get the check,” Matthias said, lifting his hand to signal to the waitress.

“You’re such a gentleman.” She reached into her bag and started shifting her lipsticks from left to right, counting. “I’m glad we ran into each other.”

…three, four, five…

“Stroke of luck.” He glanced over at the window, like he was making plans. “What were the chances.”

…six, seven, eight…

“What are you going to do today?” she asked, her heart starting to beat as she closed in on the end of the count.

…nine, ten, eleven…

He answered her with something she didn’t follow, but then, she was nearly finished.

Twelve.

Thirteen.

As she exhaled, she took the last tube out and popped the lid. Focusing on Matthias, she willed him to watch her mouth as she exposed the soft, blunt tip of the lipstick and began to run it over her flesh.

He did precisely as she wanted, but the response was not what she was after, the regard clinical, not sexual. As if she were an instrument he was briefly considering using.

Devina frowned. When he’d stepped out to go chasing after that fucking reporter, there hadn’t been any of this remoteness. He’d been naked while fully clothed, trained on that woman like she was something inside of him, rather than separate and apart.

The demon tucked her lips in and released them, feeling her mouth plump back up—and to make sure he got the point, she inserted a thought in his head of her mouth around his cock, sucking, pulling, swallowing.

It didn’t work.

He just glanced over at the waitress, took the check she gave him, and wrote his room number down.

The sound of a hard wind rattling all the windows in the place had people looking around, including Matthias: Sitting across from the guy, Devina seethed, her temper flaring and touching the elements outside the hotel, kicking up a gale that came from the south.

All she could think of was how Jim had toyed with her—and now this lame-ass cripple, who was going back to Hell as soon as this round was over, was blowing her off.

Bastards. Both of them.

She stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder. “How long are you staying?” she bit out.

“Little while longer.”

True enough. Things were moving fast with him, even if he didn’t know it, and this round was going to be over very quickly.

Maybe she should take him up to his room and remind him that he was a man, not a robot—and that those “injuries” weren’t going to be a problem as long as he was with her.

Good luck with your reporter on that one, she thought.

“I’m heading out right now,” he said. Like he was dismissing her.

Devina narrowed her eyes, and then remembered that she had a role to play. “Well, I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“Seems like it. Good luck with your mother.”

As he turned away, she kind of wanted to fuck him for reasons other than the round. He had the same kind of strength Jim did—as well as that essential elusiveness.

She should have paid more attention to this man when she’d had him. Fortunately, he was going to come home soon.

In the meantime, she needed to take care of that reporter. That was not the kind of influence she needed in this game.

And accidents happened all the time. The Maker couldn’t find fault with her for that.

Matthias took a cab to the offices of the CCJ and waited in the parking lot behind the building. He figured Mels had borrowed that Toyota to come over to the hotel, and sure enough, her friend’s ride wasn’t parked along with all the other beaters with trash in them.

As if having a wastepaper basket for a whip was part of the journalist job description.

Hanging out by the back door, he stood to the side, bracing his ass against the building, and leaning on his cane. Overhead, clouds came in and covered the sun, the shadows on the ground taking over as the sunlight faded away.

He was being watched.

Not by the stragglers who came and went out of the exit…or the smokers who lit up, exhaled like chimneys for a brief time, and went back inside…or the people driving around the crowded parking lot looking for a spot.

It was a steady, constant watching from a fixed position over on the right.

Could be someone in one of the cars parallel-parked along the outside perimeter of the newspaper’s lot. The only other option was the roof of the building across the way, as its walls had no windows.

He needed to get some ammo. Without bullets, the forty with the silencer that he’d “borrowed” from Jim was nothing but a delivery system for blunt-force trauma—which wasn’t exactly useless. Just not quite as deadly or long range—

The Toyota he’d been waiting for eased around the corner and pulled in. When the car stopped abruptly, he knew she’d seen him.

Mels parked in the first available, got out, and walked over with her chin up and her hair blowing in the breeze.

“Working off your breakfast with a good walk?” she asked.

A subtle sting inside his chest lit off as he met her eyes, and it gradually intensified, the sensation becoming hard to breathe through.

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly.

“What for?”

All he could do was shake his head, his voice gone. The cold, calculating clarity he’d felt after the visions of the past had come to him was gone. In its place, he was a destination undefended, stripped of fortifications.

“Matthias? Are you all right?”

Somehow it happened: He stepped forward and put his hands on her waist…and then he was holding her close, putting his face in that hair she’d left loose.

“What happened?” she said softly as she started to rub his back.

“I don’t…” Ah, shit, he was out of his damn mind. “I can’t…”

“All right, it’s okay…”

They stood there together as thunder rumbled like the skies disapproved, and lightning flickered across the underside of the cloud cover.

Goddamn him, but he wanted to stay where they were forever: When he was against this relative stranger’s warm body, there was no past and no future, only the present, and that lack of landscape or horizon was a kind of shelter—

Rain started to fall in big drops, to the point where it was as if they were pelted with marbles.

“Come inside,” she said, taking his hand and using a pass card to enter the building.

A strange chemical perfume in the air tingled in his nose. But it wasn’t floor polish or window cleaner; it was ink from the presses.

“Here,” she said, going over to a maroon door, turning a handle, and pushing the way open with her hip.

The conference room beyond had mismatched chairs and a long table that was a cobbled-together mishmash of components, the Frankenstein of office furniture. There was a Poland Spring watercooler in the corner, though, and she went over and got him a paper cup full.

“Drink this.”

He did as he was told, and as he swallowed, he tried to pull it together.

Mels hopped her butt up on the table, her legs swinging back and forth slowly. “Talk to me.”

Ah, shit, how could he tell her what he remembered? For fuck’s sake, why had he even come here….

Well, at least he knew the answer to that one. He wanted to be honest with one person. Finally. He just had to make the connection with her, like he was in a free fall, she was a rope to catch, and the words he needed to speak were the grip he’d have on his lifeline.

“I killed my father.”

Her feet froze in midswing, her shoulders tensing.

“It was after years of him…” Say it. Say it. Fucking say it. “He was a violent man, and he drank. There were…things that happened that shouldn’t have and I…”

The light in her eyes gradually shifted back, compassion coming to the front once again.

But when it looked like she might hit her feet and try to hug him, he put both hands up. “No, I can’t—I’m not going to get through this if you touch me.”

“Okay,” she said slowly.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”

“There doesn’t have to be a reason.”

“It feels like there should be.”

“You know you can trust me, right? I may be a reporter, but I meant what I said—that’s my job, not who I am.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed at his hair and then took off the sunglasses. “I’m sorry, but I need to see you clearly.”

She frowned. “There’s no need to apologize.”

He turned her Ray-Bans over in his hand. “I thought you preferred these on me. You know, back at the diner—so you didn’t have to see my face.”

“That wasn’t why I told you to keep them. You’re not ugly to me, Matthias—not by any stretch. And you don’t have to hide yourself.”

Somehow, he knew that wasn’t going to last. He had a feeling the more that came to him, the worse the picture of who he was was going to get—like a paint-by-numbers where you thought you were making a pretty portrait, but it turned out the subject was Michael Myers.

“I boxed him in,” Matthias heard himself say. “I went to my homeroom teacher, and then the school nurse, and I told them everything, explained the absences, and the bruises, and the…other stuff. I was fifteen. I’d kept it all in up until that point—”

“Oh, God, Matthias—”

“—but then I let the cat out of the bag, and the system took over. He had a heart attack in front of me when I told him the secret was everywhere.”

“And that’s why you think you killed him? Matthias, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Yeah, I did. I watched him die. I didn’t call nine-one-one, I didn’t run for help, I stood there and watched him as he went down to the floor in front of me.”

“You were a victim of abuse and in shock. It’s not your fault—”

“I did it on purpose.”

Now she frowned again. “I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t care what he did to me. That shit was more of an annoyance than anything.” He shrugged. “The whole thing about coming forward was just a mental exercise to me. See, I knew him.” He tapped his temple. “I knew the way he thought, the things that made him tick. He liked being mean and having power over me. He was a not-so-bright guy who worked with dumb animals and corn stalks all day long—it wasn’t until he had to deal with adults who were on his level that his inferiority complex came out. He used to threaten to kill me if I told anyone, and that was his tell. The secrecy was so important to him, and not just because it’s illegal to fuck with your kid. I knew it was going to get him, and more than stop the abuse…I just wanted to see what would happen.”

“Wait, let me ask you something. How long had you been with him?”

“My mother died in childbirth.”

“So your whole life.”

“I was somewhere else for a while, but then I came back to him.”

“When you were little.”

“Yeah.”

“And it doesn’t occur to you that you were just a young kid saving yourself?”

“That was the end result, but not my motivation. And that’s what’s rattled me so badly.”

Mels shook her head. “I think you need to be a little more forgiving of yourself.”

Ah, hell, she wasn’t going to get it. He could see it in her eyes—she had made up her mind about him, and nothing was going to change her opinion.

“Matthias isn’t my real name.”

“What is?”

It had come back to him. Over breakfast.

He stared at her for the longest time, lingering on her face and her neck and on her lean body…and then going back to her smart eyes.

He wasn’t going to give her that information. He couldn’t.

In the silence that followed, he felt an overriding need to be alone with her again, and not in public. In his room. In that hotel bed with the sheets that smelled like lemon. He wanted a little of her before he left, as if she were some kind of medicine that might keep him alive just awhile longer.

Because he was going to die soon, he realized.

It wasn’t paranoia. It was…as inevitable as his past was written in stone.

“I’m running out of time,” he said softly. “And I want to be with you before I leave.”

“Where are you going?”

“Away,” he answered after a moment.