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He put his glasses back on, grabbed me by the arms, and used some martial arts trick to sweep my feet out from under me. I fell backwards into the grass with a bone-rattling thud, and he caught himself with outstretched hands just above me. More dust sifted down on me. He muttered something in a language I couldn't catch, and the dust swirled into a compact little ball and dropped away from us.
Somehow, it just made me madder. I opened my mouth to yell at him, and he put his lips down very close to my ear and said, "If you scream, they'll hear you. I can't prevent that."
I caught the scream and held it in because I heard, just about two feet away, the crunch of footsteps in grass. A shadow blocked the light overhead, and I peered past David to see Shirl standing there, looking puzzled.
"Anything?" Marion's voice, coming from the left, coming fast in our direction. Above me, David's face was blank and still, and I could see he was doing something—whatever it was, it was blocking them from seeing us in either the physical or aetheric realms. Unless they stepped on us or I made some inappropriate noise, they wouldn't find us.
"Nothing," Shirl confirmed. Marion's shadow joined the other woman's. "Dammit, this isn't possible. She was down there, I swear she was. But Erik said she was gone when he went down."
"I saw dust here," Marion said. She paced slowly back and forth, too close to my head for comfort. "Right around here. But I don't know how she could possibly have done that. She's not an Earth power."
"Maybe somebody's helping her." Shirl was too perceptive for my taste. That and the nose ring were putting her on my bad side. "She got any Earth Warden friends?"
"A few, but I can't see them sticking their necks out like this, not when they know what she's accused of doing." Marion hesitated again, and I could see her looking down, looking right at me. I didn't even dare to breathe. David wasn't touching me, but I could feel the heat radiating off him—what if they could feel it, too?
"Maybe you should bring in your Dji
"I have other things for my Dji
"What if she doesn't?" he wanted to know.
Marion smiled. "You don't know much about Joa
The three of them tramped off through the grass. I didn't dare move, breathe, or speak as the sound of them receded. When the only thing left was the dry whisper of the grass, David let his arms bend and slowly lowered himself to lie on top of me. Sweet, hard pressure that made it hard to breathe.
"Get off," I ordered. His eyes flickered, brown and copper and gold, all the richness of the earth.
"Kind of you to offer, but don't you think we'd better get moving?" With no transition, he was on his feet. He was so fast, I couldn't even see him move. Dammit, he'd been playing with me all this time, playing at being human. That little drama he'd orchestrated back at the motel, that had just been fun for him.
I ignored the inconvenient fact that it had been fun for me, too.
I scrambled up and faced him, very aware that I was filthy and tired and scratched and bruised. At least I wasn't shoeless. I dropped the low-heeled pumps I was holding and stepped into them, ignoring the grit inside. "I am not going with you, not until you tell me whose Dji
"You want to go with them?" he asked, and looked in the direction Marion had gone. They were still visible, just at the edge of the trees, heading for my car. Poor, abandoned Delilah. "Just say the word—I can remove the veil and you can go right back to what you were doing. Which was, if I recall, dying."
"You didn't answer my question! Whose Dji
David smiled. Not the full, delighted grin of a being of limitless power, but the tight, unhappy smile of a man who knows too much. "My own," he said. "And I was really hoping you wouldn't ask that three times."
Three times. I hadn't meant to, but it was a ritual number, and he had to answer.
He meant he was free. Not bound.
A free Dji
That was… impossible. Absolutely—
It meant—oh, God, it meant I could claim him. And once I'd claimed him, I could make him take the Mark. He was exactly what I was looking for. He was the thing I had been hell-bent on asking Lewis to give me.
And now I didn't need Lewis at all.
He looked at me steadily, with eyes that were not quite human and not quite Dji
I felt the Demon Mark stir in my chest, and the sensation was enough to make me want to gag in horror. I could get rid of it, now and forever.
All I had to do was…
I could see fear flickering like heat lightning in the far horizon of David's eyes.
He'd saved my life—not once but several times—
I knew that now. Was this really how I was going to repay him? Enslave him? Force him to be a host to this filthy thing? Trap him into never-ending agony?
Dji
I could do it to him. All I had to do was say the words. It hammered my heart faster, made me weak in the knees. Made me light-headed and sick to my stomach. Come on, the logical part of me insisted. Don't go soft on me now!
But when I opened my mouth, I found that all I had to say was, "I don't suppose you know how to get my car back."
I was stu
I can't think about this right now. Self-preservation first, compassion second, right? I wasn't thinking straight. Later, I'd do what had to be done.
David must have sensed that, because he looked away from me for the first time.
"No," he said. "But if you're not that picky, Marion came in a perfectly good Land Rover with a full tank of gas."
The Land Rover—a massive white beast, liberally splashed with mud to show it wasn't just a suburban wa
The Land Rover looked like a massive mechanical roach on the wedding cake.
I tried the door, hoping Marion wouldn't have been anal-retentive enough to turn on alarms in the country… no panicked shrieking followed, but the handle clicked and failed to open.
"Locked," I said to David. He reached over my shoulder and touched the door. Metal thunked.
"Open," he disagreed. The door swung wide.
We climbed inside in silence—for me, tired and hurt as I was, it was like scaling K2—and once I was perched in the comfortable seat, looking out through the smoked-glass windows, I let the flavor of another woman's car flow over me. Subtle scents, not as well aged as Delilah's odors… herbs, mostly, and fresh grass, dirt. Nobody had abused this baby with decomposing fast food or spilled coffee; if Marion spilled anything, I guessed it would have been herbal tea. There was a single silver thermos lying on the backseat. Coffee, I hoped. Erik looked like he was manly enough to swill a cup now and then.