Immortal Seduction Read online

  He finally located Darren up at the front of the sanctuary, standing before an altar that was covered with candelabra filled with white candles. The flames cast twisting light on his stony expression as he gazed at the statue of Jesus Christ on the cross that was suspended behind.

  "What the hell were you doing back there?” The controlled voice startled Tanner. Darren's dark gaze hadn't moved from the disturbing statue, and the candlelight glinting off his black hair and dark eyes gave him the appearance of one who was demon-possessed.

  "I just wanted to touch you."

  When he did not offer any extended explanation or an apology, Darren finally speared him with the potent intensity of his gaze. His depthless eyes held Tanner in place like a manacle on his wrist, and their blazing mixture of heat and fear drew him in like a black hole. He shivered from the power those eyes had over him. He couldn't look or turn away, even if Darren had tried to punch him and he had to watch the fist swinging directly towards him.

  It wasn't fair that he was so weakened by this man. He would give anything for Darren to feel just an ounce of the desperation to be closer that he struggled with every day.

  The longer they stared at each other, surrounded by silence and candlelight, the louder Tanner's breathing became. Just being touched by this man's eyes, really being seen, was enough to waken his arousal and increase his heart rate. He wondered what Darren would do if he leaned up and pressed his lips to the ones he ached for.

  Probably follow in the footsteps of their serial killer and sacrifice him on the altar.

  Darren's lips parted, but Tanner never got a chance to hear the words about to come out. The older Retriever's gaze was torn from him to a point behind him, and filled with a battle haze a second before he shoved Tanner roughly to the floor.

  Tanner hit the hard marble tiles with a roll and came up on his knees, using a pew for cover. The blast of dark energy that had been meant for him had taken out a row of candelabra on the altar, and candles lay scattered about the floor, thankfully away from any carpeted surfaces. Darren had dived to the floor before he could be singed, and was now using the pew directly across as a shield against their undead enemy.

  "I hope I haven't spoiled this touching moment. Two men staring at each other like that in a church must surely be sacrilege."

  The sniveling voice of Alex Creaton echoed around the acoustically-enhanced sanctuary and made it more difficult to pinpoint his exact location. Tanner leaned out around the pew, careful to remain close to the ground, and saw nothing. The madman was not down the center aisle, which meant he could reappear anywhere nearby, including directly behind them. That was not a wise idea, as he would need to attack and transfer again before Darren caught him in a restraining incantation and revoked his ass to hell.

  But he was an unstable madman, so one couldn't completely rule out that possibility.

  Tanner glanced at Darren, awaiting his orders. The hand signals they had developed for situations like this, when silence was mandatory, communicated that Tanner was to lie low while Darren drew the demon-possessed killer away into a confrontation outside. He shook his head vehemently, indicating he wouldn't agree to such a plan. No way would he allow the stubborn, suicidal idiot to take on a demon by himself. Darren might have done it in the past, but he didn't need to go it alone anymore. This was a partnership, and Tanner was going to prove that he could help.

  He told himself that he wasn't afraid of a homicidal demon, even if the thought of facing one conjured dark memories to scatter around his brain like cockroaches when a light was turned on. The idea of Darren being burned by dark energy terrified him, but he could take on one power-hungry evil spirit without flinching.

  Diving from behind his manmade barrier, Tanner dashed for the intricately-carved doors that would lead out of the sanctuary and into the light that would weaken their enemy's powers. He could hear Darren screaming behind him, but ignored the words and focused on reaching the doors before he felt hot, burning dark energy tearing through his clothes and flesh. His vision narrowed to what was immediately before him, as his breath tore through his chest and adrenaline excited his nerves to the point of pain.

  He was almost clear of the sanctuary, just short of the doorway that would lead toward safety, when a black form materialized before him. Tanner barely managed to skid to a stop, and stood paralyzed before the twisted look of pleasure on the demented killer's face. He realized he was about to find out what it was like to die twice.

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  Chapter Three

  "Stop!” The words were ripped from Darren's lips without consideration of keeping the location of his hiding spot a secret. None of that mattered now that Tanner was out in the open. Nothing mattered more than keeping his young partner safe.

  His anger toward the kid for his ludicrous behavior at Alicia Brody's house disappeared, along with his anger at himself for allowing his mind to be so occupied with a lithe, tan body and set of sparkling blue eyes, to the point of forgetting his surroundings. The devious monster that could take down his partner at any second should not have been able to transfer into the same room with them, let alone get off a shot, before he noticed. Now he would pay the price for his own stupidity, through the pain inflicted on Tanner and the inexplicable pain that threatened his own heart at that realization.

  He dove from the secure hiding spot that had become one of the safest places in the world to be, thanks to his brash partner, and ran like he was heading toward shelter instead of away from it.

  The sound of Tanner's sneakers thumping against the marble floor of the opulent cathedral matched the erratic racing of his heart as he blindly ran after the most foolish, pigheaded, obstinate teenager he had ever met. The mantra in his mind that kept repeating was close to unintelligible but resembled a plea that he make it in time. He had to reach the brat before the demon did. The alternative was ... unacceptable.

  The sound of malicious laughter made him look down the aisle, past the form of his sprinting partner, to the black smoke that was materializing into the form of a man intent on stealing the soul of his startled victim. Tanner nearly ran straight into the demon, halting his progress just in time to avoid contact that would melt the flesh of his exposed form.

  Time seemed to freeze as Tanner stood before a rapidly solidifying psychotic killer, a familiar defiant expression on the kid's face that couldn't hide the tremors of fear that were nearly toppling him to the floor. He raised his hands, beautiful, slender hands that were meant for a civil occupation, like arranging flowers, and prepared to do something. Maybe he intended to make a desperate attempt at binding the demon, but what he should have been doing was transferring his ass out of that church.

  "Dissolve, Tanner! Now! That's an order!"

  Darren might as well have saved his breath. Either the kid was too caught up in the nightmare looming before him to hear the shouted words, or he was still determined to accomplish whatever suicidal task had sent him down this road of destruction in the first place. In another second their enemy would be completely reformed and able to access his hell-inspired magic.

  Darren was still too far away. Damn it.

  He pushed his body harder than he ever had before, even in his days of pulling black ops in the humid land of an African rain forest. He couldn't risk transferring now that he was so close. It could end up costing him precious time that he didn't have because of the adrenaline-fogged state of his mind. He wouldn't be able to focus enough to make it a quick, clean process.

  Alex finished his reformation and stood before Tanner as a typical, creepy-looking predator. He was taller than the kid by a few inches, but still shorter than average, with a thinning shock of dull, greasy brown hair that he had combed over his receding hairline. His skin was pale and hung loosely around his body, and his flat brown eyes were sunken into the droops of whitewashed skin. The only color on his face came from the dark circles that extended around his eyes a full 360 degrees.

  The stomach-churning sneer on his face exposed the demon marking that was branded on the inside of his lower lip, where it wouldn't be seen unless he was careless, or intent on scaring someone who knew the significance of such a tattoo. Every demon carried the symbol for their house on the inside of their lip, each a different mixture of slashes that could be translated into meaning in the ancient language they sometimes still conversed in. Any ghost that was possessed by demons, derogatorily called a hell slave, would carry the same type of symbol in the same location for the house they served.

  Their predator was inconsequential by physical standards, but the twisted smile on his near-invisible lips predicted the reservoirs of sickening, corrupt power that twisted beneath his skin like carnivorous serpents coiling around their prey before choking and feasting on it. His malevolent eyes settled on the young dish before him with unashamed desire, and he raised his decrepit, shaking hands to unleash a burst of painful dark energy on a boy too stupid to save his own hide.

  As soon as Darren saw the potent black lightning leap from the killer's fingers and arch toward Tanner, he stopped running. His body would be no help from this moment on. Touching his partner would only transfer the current until they were both on the floor writhing in pain. His instincts were screaming at him to bull rush the evil-minded man and pummel him to the ground, give him back a taste of his sadism. But he would only get caught, and his juvenile attempt to feel the satisfaction of hurting the bastard with his bare hands would be pointless.

  Tanner screamed when the first jolt of electrical energy seared his flesh and blazed down his nerve endings. He fell to the floor in a convulsing heap and curled into a fetal position, clearly trying to escape the pain. Any further screams for help or release were lost to the agonizing pain that was no doubt all-consuming and endless.

  Darren knew firsthand how that kind of anguish could rob you of everything, including your awareness of time and self. Everything blurred into one, long test of endurance, and the only choice left to make was whether you would allow yourself to pass out and escape the pain mentally if not bodily. He knew from experience how demon fire could make a man crazy from the ceaseless torment, but he was discovering that watching it done to someone else was almost as unbearable. He had to act quickly before there was nothing left of Tanner to save.

  He raised his hands and began to chant the incantation that would paralyze the monster and allow him to send it to a fiery pit in hell. The words he used were ancient, in a tongue that had not been spoken on Earth since before the last ice age. It was spoken among the angels and whispered by the demons who cursed the Commander of the heavenly forces. Darren and his fellow agents did not belong to either faction. There was no place for them in Heaven or hell. They were chosen to remain in a type of purgatory, a realm in between ultimate pain and ultimate reward, serving a Higher Power for the good of mankind.

  Darren had never before hated his job. It was better than being an assassin and it came with perks, like the eventual cessation of feeling. But at the moment he despised his work, and any greater power that would call upon a boy who was barely a young man to sacrifice so much for a few humans who would never know the difference. He channeled his impotent rage into his words and chanted louder, his verbal weapons ringing off the walls of the cathedral, straight into the beatless heart of the monster still holding his partner in a searing grip.

  He could see that the demon spawn was getting worried about the angry man who was chanting gibberish at the top of his lungs. He kept moving his oozing gaze from Tanner's prone form to Darren's unbending one.

  In under a minute he would burn out Tanner's soul and leave the teenager a hollow husk. Already the kid's body had ceased to tremble and react in any way meant to avoid the pain. Tanner was beyond feeling the pain of his inner core's nuclear meltdown.

  Darren's fear and anger mixed into a palpable force that heightened the intensity of the primordial power he called upon. He could feel the light he summoned rushing into the sanctuary of the church, dispelling the darkness with its fiery tentacles. He closed his eyes and gave his body over completely to be the channel for the archaic essences pouring forth from a realm outside the one he currently inhabited.

  He opened his eyes once more, unable to fight his desire to see the killer's fear when he realized what was coming for him. Tanner might be about to die for all eternity, but he would make sure that demon bastard was expelled before his partner's last, shuddering breath was drawn.

  Alex's bulging eyes were wide and no doubt frozen in fear, his mouth folding in on itself in what looked like fighting the urge to retch. His skeletal hands were shaking so badly that the dark energy they were expelling was not even touching Tanner's crippled form any more. The demon was the prisoner now, caged within the horrifying possibilities that light suggested to his kind.

  Suddenly, the dark lightning ceased completely and the light that rushed into the church to consume all in its path found nothing to fill except the empty spot where a demon had stood moments before.

  * * * *

  "He's extremely lucky, you know. Not that I'm surprised. It seems this kid's lot in life is to live through sudden death situations and recover to brag about them."

  The snidely skeptical words were spoken by Dr. Tara O'Connor, physician for the Retrievers Division of the Agency of Afterlife Activity, and all-around firecracker. The woman was pureblood Irish, with the red hair and smattering of freckles to prove it. Not that her temper left any doubters as to the truth of her heredity.

  "There appears to be no external damage to his body, except this small scratch on his cheek. I assume that happened sometime before the incident, since it is almost completely closed over."

  Tara glanced at him, the only other person momentarily in the diagnostic room of the medical ward she ran inside the division facility. Darren forced his eyes away from the lifeless form spread out on a gurney and tried to focus on answering the doctor's questions. He doubted anything he said would drastically affect the outcome of Tanner's treatment, but he certainly owed the kid that much, and far more.

  "He did that to himself this morning. Tripped over God knows what and scratched his cheek.” The details of the ludicrous story were fuzzy in his mind, but his fresh guilt made him wish he'd listened enough to remember some of what could be the last words his partner ever spoke.

  The demon had not succeeded in killing Tanner, though he had gotten damned close. The monster had dissolved in fear before he could finish the kill and Darren could finish the binding.

  He had not disappeared before doing enough damage to send Tanner to the infirmary indefinitely, and by the end of this examination Darren would know the prospects for recovery. At the moment they looked grim. Tanner had not regained consciousness since Darren had scraped him off the floor of that gothic church and transferred them both directly into the hospital wing of their division. He hadn't reported in to Reed yet, and had no intention of doing so until he had some concrete answers about Tanner's condition.

  "Sounds just like something he would do,” Tara fondly laughed as she continued poking and prodding Tanner's unresponsive form.

  The brat looked so different without his big eyes open, broadcasting some intense emotion, everything from mischief to hyperactive joy. And lust. Darren had seen the way that feeling made Tanner's tilted eyes drop to half-mast and his pupils dilate until they almost eclipsed his stunning irises. The response such a look from Tanner could draw from Darren were scarier than the demon they had just faced.

  Damn, he was such a fucking coward. He didn't mind going toe to toe with a beast straight from hell, but one energetic young man sent him running to his room like a momma's boy.

  "He's going to be okay, you know."

  The solemn words redirected Darren's thoughts from the spiral of self-hatred he was descending into to the thirty-something woman before him. He didn't know much about the Irish doctor Reed had enlisted, beyond the bare bones of her employee profile. She had worked as a physician on Earth before dying from a diabetes-related illness, and had been with their division for a little over a year now. She apparently knew and was friends with Tanner, neither of which was surprising. Tanner was clumsy enough to hurt himself in a variety of inventive ways, and likeable enough to befriend anyone he crossed paths with.

  Almost anyone, Darren amended. He would not exactly call what they had friendship. It was a confusing mixture of lust, hatred, and a pressure in his chest that would not stop squeezing until the brat was awake and whole enough to annoy his brains out.

  "You've finished your admittance examination, then?"

  "Seems like it. The kid is banged up pretty badly internally, no question about it. He couldn't have held out much longer against the kind of dark energy that demon was tossing around. He's dehydrated and has massive internal burning, hemorrhaging, and bleeding, but he's not beyond saving. Our kind are amazingly resilient, even against odds like these. I'll begin his intensive rehabilitation schedule immediately, and we'll have to take it day to day."

  Darren nodded, feeling exhausted and useless. He'd promised the Chief he would watch the kid's back, and he'd done a bang-up job of that.

  An hour later he was still reluctant to leave the private room they had transported Tanner to. Nothing about his partner's condition had changed, and Tara promised to notify him if anything did, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he would let the kid down again if he went about his normal business. Finally, Tara threatened to call his supervisor and report that he was shirking his responsibilities if he didn't “get the hell out from under her feet."

  He relented and went to face Reed, knowing that would be the ruthless punishment he felt his irresponsible actions deserved.

  The Chief's expression promised hellfire and brimstone when he entered the intelligently soundproofed room. His face was set in an iron mask of disapproval, and his fingers were steepled below his chin, probably in an effort to keep from banging his fists against his solid wood desk.