Instinctively, Ash raised her hands to show him that she was unarmed. She didn’t know if Nicholas had killed Rachel, but she wouldn’t give him a reason to fire now. She doubted he would, anyway. Instead of aggression, she sensed faint hope in him, combined with ragged uncertainty.
He couldn’t see her clearly in the dark, Ash realized, whereas she could see him perfectly. Shirtless, he wore only a pair of black trousers that hung low on his hips—zipped, but not buttoned. He must have yanked them on when she’d broken in. Had she woken him, or had he simply been lying in the bed?
Lying in wait.
As soon as Ash thought it, she couldn’t shake that impression. Nicholas St. Croix’s photos suggested he was a dangerous man, hard and emotionless—but the most recent picture had been taken more than three years ago. Instead of cold elegance, he appeared pared down and roughened. His dark hair had been cut brutally short. A few days’ worth of scruff shadowed his jaw, and his body . . .
Ash’s gaze fell to his chest. In the photos, he’d obviously been well acquainted with a gym. But the taut, wiry muscles on display hadn’t come from a single hour’s workout followed by a rich man’s meal. His body reflected an obsession of some kind, one that ate away at him no matter how much he fed it—and Ash didn’t think that obsession had anything to do with his looks.
Perhaps that obsession explained why he’d lain in wait at his mother’s house with a crossbow.
Ash didn’t lower her hands. “I’m not her. But if you look at me, can you tell me who I am?”
His aim didn’t waver as he flipped a switch on the wall. Light flooded the room. Ash blinked rapidly, adjusting to the glare. His eyes narrowed. Their icy blue focus shifted to the symbols tattooed over the left side of her face.
The warm hope she’d sensed in him burst into a hot, swelling pressure. But even as she recognized the change, he began hiding it from her, somehow. The pressure didn’t vanish, yet he closed his emotions away, as if shutting them behind a door.
Strange. No one had done that before. Everyone she’d met in London kept their emotions wide open, and had no clue Ash could sense them.
“You’re Rachel Boyle,” he said flatly.
“No.” Disappointment touched her, swift and light, but it couldn’t gain any traction and slid away. “I look like her, but that’s not my name.”
“Oh?”
Now his voice softened, and though he lowered his crossbow, Ash’s wariness sharpened. He approached her on silent feet, and his movements reminded her of the predators she’d seen—not the agile cheetah or the majestic, powerful lion. Not any animal driven by hunger or a need to protect its territory, but the human variety driven by deadly intent. She’d seen many of them prowling the dark London streets, had sensed the malevolence they’d felt toward others. Often, they hid it behind bland pleasantries and smiles, but she’d recognized what they were.
Ash couldn’t sense anything from Nicholas, but she recognized the same malevolence. A quick step back—not fear, but survival instinct—brought her up against the bed. Trapped. Escape would be easy, but now that she’d touched the bed, her mind began its desperate search again, reaching for the connection—
Someone’s been sleeping in my bed.
Had her memory been searching for him? Obviously, he’d been lying there—but on some level, had she known exactly who had been in that bed before he’d appeared with his crossbow? Had she been reminded of something from Before—something about Nicholas St. Croix?
If she had a connection to him, then he must know her. Not Rachel, but Ash. That realization kept her in place, despite the urge to flee.
Nicholas stalked close, halting less than an arm’s length away. He stood several inches taller than Ash; she had to tilt her face up to watch his eyes. Slowly, he examined her every feature. Did she look any different from Rachel? Ash waited, listening to the steady beat of his heart. Her own heart hammered, constructing unfamiliar emotions in her chest. Hope, trepidation? She couldn’t distinguish them amid the racket of her pulse. Ash wished she knew what he felt, but his expression gave nothing away.
She had to try again. “Who am I?”
“Who else could you be but Rachel?” With a sudden, thin smile, he tugged a pale lock of hair forward over her shoulder, rubbing the long strands between his fingers as if considering their texture. “Who else but the woman I love?”
Love? No, that wasn’t what she’d tasted in that swelling burst of emotion before he’d closed himself away from her. Disappointment, grief, and rage—she’d sensed all of those. But not love.
His head lowered, his gaze holding hers on the way down. Would he kiss her? Curious, Ash let him. Firm and cool, his lips settled against hers.
Emotion burst from him, blasting through the door he’d shut—a feeling that wasn’t hot but bitter withering cold, and Ash recognized the hate behind it before he hid that from her, too. She should have moved then. The hate felt like a warning, and she disliked the cold, but when he opened his lips over hers, his taste was fascinating—mint, because he’d readied for bed, and there was something else that was familiar, so familiar here. She knew the touch of his mouth, the heat that slipped through her like a warm drink when his tongue sought hers. So she remained still, searching for the connection sparked by the kiss and lurking in her ruined memory.
She didn’t find it before Nicholas lifted his head. Ash wanted to follow him up to prolong the contact, but she remembered— don’t break the Rules, respect their free will—and waited, panting, not needing the oxygen but relishing the sweep of air over her lips, wet from his kiss.
She’d felt all of this before. She’d felt—
A cold prod against her throat. Ash’s eyes widened—this was surprise!—and she heard a click. Pain stabbed her neck. White-hot, it yanked her muscles taut and raced up behind her eyes.
Then, for the first time in three years, darkness fell over her mind, and she felt absolutely nothing at all.
The moment Nicholas had spotted the woman’s pale hair, hope had shot through him. Rachel had become a Guardian.
Even though the Guardians had told him that Rachel hadn’t been transformed into an angelic warrior, no one could explain to him why she wasn’t one now. After sacrificing her life to save Nicholas’s, she should have been transformed into one of their kind. So despite the demonic symbols tattooed over the woman’s face and her claim that she wasn’t Rachel, he’d hoped her sudden appearance meant the Guardians had lied to him.
He’d hoped . . . until the feverish heat of her mouth instantly revealed that she wasn’t a Guardian or human. Neither of those beings had such high temperatures.
Goddammit. The woman was a demon.
Fortunately, he’d been expecting one—and kissing her had brought him close enough to the tall mattress that he could reach the modified Taser beneath the pillow.
He shocked her with enough juice to kill a human. The demon only seized once and shape-shifted. Her clothes vanished, revealing suddenly crimson skin. Gleaming black horns curled from her forehead around toward her ears; leathery wings snapped wide, the sharp talon at the left tip scoring a long vertical line on the wall. Nicholas released the trigger, cutting off the electric current.
The demon crumpled to the floor in a pile of loose, naked limbs. Her wings folded over her body like a blanket. She hadn’t fully transformed: She wore skin instead of reptilian scales, her knees weren’t jointed backward like a goat’s hind legs . . . and her slack face still resembled Rachel’s.
It didn’t matter. He knew who this must be.
Madelyn.
He’d spent years trying to find the demon who’d replaced his mother, destroyed his family, and murdered Rachel. At the beginning, Nicholas hadn’t known how impossible it might be to find her. Hell, at the beginning he hadn’t even known what she was—or that Madelyn could shape-shift to resemble any person she chose. But after he’d learned how unlikely his chances of finding her were, Nicholas hadn’t stopped looking.
Though he hadn’t found Madelyn, Nicholas had found a few answers—and enough information about demons that he learned how to look for her.
He’d learned that demons were creatures of habit who followed familiar patterns, particularly if those patterns had been successful in the past. So instead of searching for a woman who resembled Madelyn, he’d searched for a family who’d been ripped apart as his had been.
That search might have taken him forever, he knew—but he’d also learned that demons were vindictive and possessive. That suited Nicholas. He was vindictive and possessive, too, and his gut told him that if a new identity didn’t satisfy her, Madelyn would eventually come for him and try to reclaim everything he’d taken from her.
So he’d prepared. He’d kept watch over the properties that she’d once called hers. That diligence had paid off three weeks ago, when someone had entered the house using Madelyn’s old security code. He’d known it had to be her—probably returning to look at the items that she wanted to possess again. He’d been waiting for her to come back . . . and she had.
Finally, after almost six years of searching, Nicholas had her—and soon, he’d send her back to the burning pit in Hell where she belonged.
Except he didn’t feel the elation he should have. He was only sorry the demon crumpled on the floor wasn’t the woman she’d appeared to be.
Stupid, that he’d almost fallen for her trick. By taking Rachel’s face, the demon had known exactly how to shove him off-balance. He should have known, dammit. He should have been prepared.
No doubt she’d try to get to him again as soon as she woke up. He should kill her now—chop off her head, cut through her heart.
He couldn’t slay her yet, though. He had to make certain this truly was Madelyn, not some demon lackey running an errand for her. Even if it was Madelyn, Nicholas wouldn’t kill her until he had answers. Unlike in the movies, a demon’s spirit didn’t take possession of a human’s; a demon shape-shifted its corporeal form and physically took the human’s place. When Nicholas had been eight, Madelyn had transformed herself into a duplicate of his mother—which meant that his mother must be out there, somewhere. He didn’t have any hope that his mother was still alive, but he needed to know what had happened to her.
And he needed to know what had happened to Rachel’s body after her lifeless form had vanished from his arms. At the very least, she deserved that for saving his life. For loving him.
Nicholas only wished he’d loved her back. She’d deserved that, too.