Chapter Eight

Fil drew in a deep breath as she headed toward the stockroom. She had to fight back the urge to run, to put as much distance between herself and Spar as quickly as she was able. The electricity that flared between them had reached the kind of voltage she knew could stop her heart with one careless touch.

She had no intention of getting burned.

When she thought about the strange fascination she’d felt for the gargoyle statue just twenty-four hours earlier, Fil wanted to throw back her head and laugh. As scarily intense as that feeling had been, it was like a drop in the ocean of what she felt for Spar every moment she spent in his company. It was as if there was some strange physical force that wanted to draw them together, some potent pheromone that turned normally rational art restorers into raging nymphomaniacs the minute they came into range of a living, breathing gargoyle.

Or maybe, Fil winced, it was just her.

She really wished she had been able to convince Spar to let her out of his sight for even ten lousy minutes. A brisk walk around the block, just a few minutes of peace out of range of his brooding, sexy presence would have done her a world of good. With luck, it might even have given her panties a few minutes to dry out.

But no. The stone-skulled lummox had been adamant. She would not stray from his line of sight for so much as a minute longer than it took her to pee, and even then he had insisted that she leave the bathroom door open a crack so he could hear if someone tried to accost her. At this point, Fil could have told him that the only one in any immediate danger was Spar himself, and that was because she was about ten seconds away from wrapping her hands around his neck and squeezing for all she was worth.

Either her hands, or her thighs.

Groaning, Fil pushed open the storage room door and stepped inside. Convincing him to let her come down to her studio had seemed like a major victory an hour ago. It had certainly taken a hell of an argument and three of her favorite curses learned from her grandma to win him over. She’d thought that immersing herself in her painting might prove enough of a distraction that she could be in the same room with him for an entire hour without fantasizing about licking him somewhere inappropriate.

By her calculations, she’d lasted approximately seven and a half minutes.

It didn’t help that the man had started a conversation with her. Why did he have to ask about her life? And why the hell did he have to sound so sincere when he told her that her grandparents sounded like fine people? Her life had been hard enough when she’d just lusted after his delectable body. Why did he have to go about making her like what was on the inside, too?

Maybe coming to the studio hadn’t been the best idea. Fil was starting to think that the paint fumes in the air could not be helping her struggle for rational thought and hormonal control. After she grabbed the oil, she’d ask if Spar would let her open a window or two. She could definitely use a breath of fresh air.

Fil didn’t bother flipping on the light in the storage room. She’d been mucking around back here since the time she could walk, and she’d arranged every one of her supplies with her own two hands. The linseed oil, she knew, sat on the second shelf from the floor against the back wall. In her mind, she was already reaching for it when something shifted in the shadows.

She screamed before she could think.

The thing snarled at her. At least, she thought it did. It was hard to tell since she wasn’t even certain it had a face. Could something without a face really snarl?

Okay, having this conversation with herself was probably the first sign of hysteria, but what the hell with this day?

The thing leapt at her, and Fil dove to the side. Instinct sent her in the direction of the exit door to the alley behind the building, but it didn’t protect her from slamming her shoulder against the wooden frame hard enough to make her cry out. It also didn’t stop the thing from catching her side with the tip of a wickedly sharp claw. It slashed through fabric and skin and muscle like paper, leaving behind a gash that felt bathed in acid and lit on fire.

Pain and fury welled within her, and her vision went dark. Not black, like when she had lost consciousness, but darkened, as if she looked out through a thin veil of black tissue. She could still move, still think, could still hear the thunderous roar of Spar’s battle cry as he launched himself through the door to rescue her. She could even see perfectly clearly, as if her special sight had activated without her even trying. Both Spar and the creature crouched on the floor between them glowed with energy, Spar’s a brilliant blue-white, the thing’s a sickly yellow-green.

Her Guardian had come prepared to save her. Gone was the gorgeous human form with the dark stubble and the snug, worn jeans. In its place stood the seven-foot warrior with claws and spear and vengeance in his eyes. Even as he shouted and raised his spear, Fil knew he intended to destroy the creature that had threatened her, and she felt a stirring of warmth.

Too bad her left hand felt as if it had been encased in ice.

Without conscious thought, Fil raised it, she thought to check if it had turned blue with the cold, but instead she turned it outward, pointing her palm at the slimy, furry, faceless thing in the center of the storage room.

Seriously, how could something be slimy and furry at the same time? she wondered vaguely.

She knew she opened her mouth, but she could have sworn that the word that came out was nothing she had ever heard before in her life. It felt thick and heavy on her tongue, and it left a bitter taste behind. Almost before the last foul syllable had passed her lips, her palm turned from frozen to incendiary, and a ball of red-black energy flashed from her to the nasty little creature that had attacked her.

It exploded.

In an overwhelmingly creepy, messy, entrails-on-the-ceiling kind of way.

Fil screamed, and the veil over her eyes lifted, just in time to see black sticky thing’s guts drip off the tip of Spar’s wing. Turning, she took one frantic step and vomited violently into the trash can.

She heaved for what felt like forever, but there wasn’t enough in her stomach to sustain the episode for long. The dry heaves hurt enough that by the time she was finished, she fell to her knees on the concrete floor and was just grateful for the strength to keep her from landing face-first in a pile of putrid black goo.

Her eyes drifted shut, whether to block out the sight of the mess all around her or because her body had just expended enough energy to fuel a nuclear reactor for three days, she wasn’t certain. Either way, her lids simply felt too heavy to hold up. She kept them closed when Spar’s arms closed around her and scooped her off the floor in a single smooth movement.

Something in her wanted to protest that he shouldn’t touch her, but somehow she found herself leaning into his hard chest. “Put me down. I’m disgusting.”

He grunted. “I have emerged from battle with far worse than a bit of hhissih blood on me. You’re fine.”

Fil hadn’t been talking about the blood, but she kept quiet.

She felt him shoulder through the door to the enclosed stairway to the second floor. Carrying her seemed not even to register as an effort for him. He whisked her up the stairs and through her apartment without his breathing even changing, providing her with the clearest possible evidence that yes, he was exactly as strong as he looked.

When her feet touched the floor, she opened her eyes and found herself standing inside her bathroom being crowded toward the tub. Spar reached around her to turn on the shower and then frowned down at her.

“The smell of the blood will make you nauseated again if you don’t wash it off. Get under the water.”

Fil had no argument with that. He was right about the smell. Sulfur and rusty iron and rotten meat made for one hell of a stench, and her skin crawled when she realized it was coming from her. Well, to be fair, from both of them.

She waited for him to leave so she could strip, but Spar had other ideas. He reached for the hem of her tank top, clearly intending to whisk it off over her head. Fil squeaked in protest and slapped at his hands.

“Watch it, buddy! I can take care of that myself.”

“You are not in the water yet,” he grunted, ignoring her ineffectual blows and taking the expedient way into her panties. He flexed his talons and ripped straight through both the tank top and her battered BDU trousers. Her thin cotton panties never stood a chance.

By the time she had blinked past the shock and on to the outrage, he had lifted her over the edge of the tub and whisked the curtain closed around her. Fil stared at the expanse of white cloth and bounced between outrage and gratitude. The gargoyle might have the manners of a wild pig, but he was taking care of her, in his own brusque, domineering way. It was almost sweet.

That thought lasted all of five seconds, which was how long it took for the curtain to open again and a very human-looking and very naked Spar to step into the tub with her. Fil sputtered in outrage.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she shouted.

The man shrugged and reached for her bottle of shampoo. “My true form would not fit in such a confined space, so I shifted.”

Belatedly, Fil wrapped an arm over her breasts and pressed the other hand to the juncture of her thighs. God, she felt like a bloody cliché, but shock and the feeling of being really, really exposed could apparently do that to a girl.

“I mean, what the hell are you thinking, climbing into this shower with me?” she said, shooting him a glare that would have knocked his stony head right off his shoulders if he’d still been sleeping. “Get out! Now!”

Spar ignored her and spread a ridiculous amount of shampoo over the top of her head before beginning to work up a lather. “You are injured and in shock. I am tending to you. Now be quiet and let me tend.”

“No! I’m naked and wet, and I’ve known you for less than twenty-four hours. Get out. I can bathe myself, for chrissakes.”

Spar lifted his hands from her hair and raised an eyebrow. Very gently he touched one finger to the cut in her side. The contact made her hiss, and it wasn’t because he’d gotten soap in the gash. It hurt, burned and throbbed and stung badly enough to bring tears to her eyes. She’d almost forgotten it until he pointed it out. Maybe she was in a little bit of shock.

Then he lifted that same finger and grazed it along the side of her jaw. Abruptly Fil realized her teeth were chattering as if she’d been standing naked in a February blizzard, instead of directly under the spray of her steaming-hot shower. The fight drained out of her, and she dropped her forehead to his shoulder.

But she kept her hands over her important bits.

Spar said nothing, not even the mildest of I-told-you-soes. He just lifted his hands back to her hair and finished washing the silky strands. She obeyed the gentle pressure that urged her to tilt back under the spray for a rinse. When he was satisfied that the water ran clean, she let him turn her to face the tile while he reached for a bottle of body wash.

When his gentle fingertips brushed the bare skin of her rib cage just below her right breast, Fil gasped and stiffened.

“Your wound,” he murmured, and his fingers stilled but didn’t retreat. “The creature’s claws can carry poison. Let me cleanse it, and I will leave you to do the rest.”

Her head jerked in a shaken nod.

His hands were tender as they traced the length of the cut from a few inches below the lower curve of her breast, around her side, to a few inches above the dip of her waist. At least six inches long, she guessed, but judging by his probing not worrisomely deep.

Keeping her left arm over her breasts, she had to raise the right over her head to give him access, which also allowed her to see the cut. The edges looked clean and straight, as if they’d parted beneath the sharp edge of a razor, but the skin on either side looked almost bruised, mottled a nasty blackish-purple. The highlights of putrid green really gave it a certain je ne sais quoi, she reflected sourly.

Spar patiently soaped and scrubbed the wound, easing back every time she hissed in discomfort but never stopping. When he stepped back and angled her into the spray to let the water rinse the slice clean, she sighed in relief.

“Finish cleaning yourself,” he said gruffly. “When you are through, I will bandage the wound.”

“Will it need stitches?” she asked. At the moment, going back to the hospital sounded about as appealing as running a full marathon. Uphill.

He shook his head. “Sewing the cut would do more harm than good. I washed it as well as possible, but any remaining poison will need to drain. A bandage will protect it while you heal.”

“Okay.” She nodded, and he vanished behind the curtain.

Fil hurried through the rest of her shower. Well, as much as she could, given the pain and stiffness in her side. She wished for a second that Spar had left the injury alone, since it hadn’t started to hurt until she remembered it was there, but somehow the idea of the huge Guardian ignoring anything that harmed her made her snort. She didn’t think he had the gene for that. The man was a natural-born caretaker, like her grandmother had been.

Not that the feelings that overwhelmed her whenever she got close to him had anything to do with grandmothers. Even in her current state, weakened, injured, and traumatized, with the remnants of shock clinging to her like icicles, she couldn’t make herself stop wanting him. Oddly enough, the nudity of their shared shower hadn’t been what fed her desire. Instead it had been the tender way he had tended her wound, the care he had taken to examine and clean the gash that had brought her attraction to him welling back to the surface.

That had to be a sign of some kind of sickness, right? First, that she could even think about sex after having been sliced up by some kind of demonic creature lurking in her storage room; and second, that it was the man who had signaled the transformation of her life into the surreal nightmare it had become. There had to be something wrong with her.

The thought unsettled her, but it didn’t stop her from finishing up as quickly as she could so she could get back to Spar. Whether it was healthy or not, she felt comforted by his presence. He had already proven he would do whatever it took to protect her, and these days it looked like she could use the help.

When she pushed back the curtain and stepped from the tub, she found him waiting on the other side, a snug pair of jeans his only covering and half the contents of her medicine cabinet spread on the counter behind him. He moved so silently that she hadn’t even realized he’d stayed in the room. Of course, preoccupied with her own thoughts, she hadn’t exactly been listening.

Spar said not a word, simply handed her a towel and waited while she dried herself. When she began to wrap the cloth around her, he shook his head.

“I still need to bandage your wound. I brought this to protect you from the chill.”

He handed her the white spa robe she kept in her closet. Fil slipped it on, grateful for the covering, not just because she felt chilled after the warmth of the shower, but because standing naked in front of him set her nerves to rioting. Her skin pebbled with gooseflesh, and her nipples followed suit. No need to flash him with the evidence of her clamoring hormones.

“Come. Stand here.” After a glance to make sure his supplies remained in easy reach, Spar shifted to sit on the lid of the commode. Spreading his knees wide, he urged her to stand between them and brushed open the sides of her robe.

In this position, her breasts were almost level with his head, but instead of staring at them the way most men would have, Spar immediately ran his gaze down to the cut on her side. He frowned when her robe threatened to fall closed and block his view.

“Hold this,” he told her, pinning the fabric against the back of her hip with her own hand.

Reaching for a gauze pad and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, he wet the material and began to wipe carefully at the wound. Fil hissed at the first touch of cold, then relaxed. The solution caused minor stinging, but the sensation dissipated quickly. As sore as the gash felt, Spar took obvious care to be gentle.

“How does it look?” she asked, her voice sounding husky in her own ears.

“Offensive,” Spar rumbled. “I should not have let you out of my sight. The hhissih should never have gotten near you.”

“Hhissih? Is that what that thing was called? I’m still trying to figure out what the hell it was.”

“They are creatures of the Darkness, minor, unintelligent beings that are drawn to black magic. The Order often uses them as a distraction in battle or as a sort of guard dog. We are fortunate there was only one. Often, they travel in packs. They are not difficult to kill, but they are vicious and in numbers are capable of inflicting great harm.”

Fil shuddered. “Yeah, meeting one was enough.”

“It appears you caught only a glancing blow. The wound is not deep, and I do not think the creature had time to inject much of its poison into the wound. It should heal well.”

“Good.”

She watched while Spar finished cleaning the wound, letting it dry briefly before spreading it with a thin layer of antibiotic cream. His expression remained grim while he positioned a layer of gauze over the top and began to secure it with white medical tape.

“Spar, my getting hurt wasn’t your fault,” she told him after a minute of uncomfortable silence. “You realize that, right? I mean, you can’t keep your eyes on me twenty-four seven, no matter what you feel your duty is. I just went into another room. You were only a few steps away, and when I got hurt, you were right there to keep it from being any worse. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He grunted and reached for her left hand. “I have done nothing right from the moment I awoke. If I had, this would not be here.”

He traced a finger over her palm, following the lines of the demon’s mark. Fil followed his gaze and choked on a gasp. The reddened henna-like lines of the mark had darkened again, now appearing a dark, dark brown, almost black, with a charred look on the outer edges. It no longer pained her, she realized, but it was starting to freak her the hell out.

“What’s going on, Spar?” she demanded in a whisper that threatened to break into jagged pieces. “It’s getting worse. Why is it doing that?”

“It is the way of the mark. I had hoped I was wrong, that it hadn’t fully settled on you.” He looked up at her, pinning her with his gaze. “The mark is attempting to claim you.”

“Claim me?” She choked on the words, and a sense of foreboding swept through her. “What the hell does that mean?”

Spar grasped her other hand and tugged her closer. His knees closed around her, but instead of making her feel trapped the pressure comforted her on a visceral level. Without Fil realizing it, in the past twenty-four hours this man had become a safe haven for her. Somehow that frightened her almost more than everything else put together.

“Listen to me,” he said, squeezing her hands to focus her attention back on him. He waited for her to take a shaky breath before he continued. “I want you to understand that I will protect you from this moment forward. I will allow no other enemy to touch you, no other harm to come your way, and we will find a way to remove the mark. I swear this to you.”

“Okay, I know you’re trying to reassure me, Spar, but you’re just kinda freaking me out even worse. What the hell is up with this mark thing? Why is it changing?”

“The mark was placed on you to try to claim you in the name of Uhlthor, one of the Seven. By placing his symbol in your skin, the nocturnis hoped for one of two outcomes: either you would become an offering for the demon to feast upon, or you would surrender yourself to his power and become another in his army of minions.”

A hysterical laugh bubbled out of her chest. “Uh, neither of those options really works for me, you know?”

“And neither will come to pass. I swear to you.” He squeezed her hands again, then dropped her unmarked palm to wrap his free arm around her hips. “You have two advantages for which the nocturnis failed to account, Felicity. The first is that you have a Guardian sworn to protect you. The Defiler will never touch you so long as I survive, and were I to fall, Kees or one of the others would step into my place and a new Guardian would be summoned. You will never be left to face the evil alone.”

“Yeah, um, could you just not be destroyed, please? That would be great. In fact, if you could just not even talk about destruction unless it’s in relation to something evil, I’d really appreciate that.”

“Hush. I am going nowhere.” His arm tightened in a comforting hug. “And you need to know this, Felicity. The second advantage you possess, which the nocturnis could never have conceived of, is your own goodness. Had your will been weaker or your soul darker, the mark placed upon you would already have consumed you and turned you to the Darkness. But it hasn’t. That is due entirely to your own character. Continue to be the woman you have always been, and the mark will have to fight for every ounce of ground it gains.”

Fil shuddered out a sigh and raised her free hand to Spar’s shoulder. The feel of warm skin and hard muscle steadied her, grounded her. She needed something solid to hang on to, and she could think of nothing more solid than him.

“It is getting darker, though,” she managed.

Spar’s jaw tightened. “I have thought on that, and I believe I have seen something of interest. From what I can recall, the look of the mark darkened slightly from the initial impact until this morning when we first checked it, but then it seemed to remain steadily of the same color for several hours.”

Fil nodded.

“The next time it darkened was after we went to the hospital. Specifically, after your vision.”

“So?”

“So I believe there must be a connection. Even after the vision, nothing darkened again until you destroyed the hhissih. The energy you channeled then was Dark, and I believe that might be what caused the change in the mark.”

Fil jerked back, or tried to, but Spar tightened his grip and held fast. “Wait, what? I channeled Dark energy? What are you talking about?”

Even as the words tumbled out, the churning in her stomach told Fil she already knew the answer to her own question. She flashed back to the moments of the attack, to the dark veil that had clouded her vision and the bolt of red-black energy that had flown from her hand, almost against her own will. The foul bitter taste that had coated her tongue came back to her, and she grimaced.

“I spoke poorly. That was not you, Felicity. It was not your doing. The energy funneled itself through the mark, and it destroyed the hhissih because it threatened you. You did nothing wrong.”

The hand she had pressed against his shoulder trembled, but she still tried to use it to push away from him. It was like trying to push back a mountain. “Nothing wrong? I used black magic, didn’t I? That’s what I did to get rid of that … that thing. And it was like a reflex. I didn’t even realize I was doing it until it was too late. What if I use it to hurt someone else? Someone innocent. How could that not be wrong?”

“Because you would never do it,” Spar insisted. “You are not evil, so evil can take only so much a hold over you.”

“Wait,” she continued as if he hadn’t even spoken. “You said that the hhissih is drawn to Dark energy. That’s why it came after me to begin with, isn’t it? It was drawn to me because of the mark.”

His expression hardened. “It is possible. The fact that the Order knows of your existence means they could have sent it, but their way is more typically to deploy the creatures in packs. If they had sent it, they would almost certainly have sent more than one.”

Fil clenched her teeth. “Then I brought it on myself. It was my fault.”

“No, it was not.” Spar surged to his feet, but he kept Fil trapped in his embrace, her body now pressed against his in the small space of her bathroom. “You brought nothing on yourself, Felicity Shaltis. You have had this thrust upon you, and you have handled it better than most humans could ever dream of. I meant it when I told you that it is you—your character, the goodness in your soul—that has beaten the Darkness back thus far, and I know it will continue to triumph. You are a warrior in your own right, little human. Small and soft though you may appear on the outside, the weapons you possess could save the world if it asked you.”

She heard the ring of sincerity in his voice and knew he meant what he said. Fil was having a harder time with it. Suddenly she felt dirty all over again, as if she hadn’t just stepped from the shower, and exhaustion threatened to fell her.

“I wish I could believe that so easily,” she murmured, “but I feel tainted. Knowing this is here, that it’s trying to work its way inside me…” She shook her head and tried to tug her marked hand from his grasp. “It scares me.”

“Do not let it. I will see you safe.” He raised her fingers to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm, right in the center of the mark. “I vow it. The Defiler will not have you, Felicity. I have claimed you for myself.”

The rumble of those words, soft and dark, sent shivers racing through her. Her imagination supplied all sorts of images of ways she could be claimed by him, and none of them had anything to do with evil.

Heat flooded her cheek, then wormed its way lower. It built in the pit of her belly until she couldn’t bear it anymore. Her hand shifted from his shoulder to his cheek, and she lifted herself up on her toes.

“Show me,” she whispered, just before she pressed her lips to his.