Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

It took an enormous amount of willpower for Silas to peel himself out of Petra’s bed. Instinct fought every minute shift and flex of his muscles as he forced his arms to release her. Petra twitched, suddenly restless as he carefully arranged her limbs beneath the blankets. She’d dropped into a deep slumber almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, but now her expression crinkled and her fingers grasped at the pillow beneath her cheek.

A muscle in Silas’s jaw twitched. Stay, instinct implored. Guard her.

But logic and a certain amount of pride reminded him that he protected her just as well outside her bed as in it. A small kernel of resentment made itself known as he dropped his bare feet onto the cool wood floor of her bedroom.

He didn’t resent her. He resented the sudden wild internal fluctuation he experienced every moment he was around her.

At first it was fun. Entertaining. A little extra spice sprinkled on top of what would otherwise be a pretty mundane job.

Now, though…

Silas stood up from the bed to swipe his pants off the floor. A deep internal pressure began to build as he paced away from Petra’s bed. On the cabinet beside it lay a copy of the blueprints she’d promised him. He grabbed them and quickly folded the paper until they fit nicely in his back pocket.

After their intensely pleasurable diversion in the sanctuary — a place he’d gleefully informed her was not nearly as secure as she believed — he’d spent the day shadowing her around the cathedral. A game had developed between them as she pretended to do her normal day off tasks while he lurked in the shadows, waiting for an opportune time to haul her into a dark corner for a quick, filthy orgasm.

The only place she objected to it was in the columbarium, claiming it wasn’t right to let him slip his fingers into the blazing heat of her cunt with the dead all around. He agreed wholeheartedly. That was why he’d gotten on his knees and used his tongue instead.

For all her initial reticence, Petra turned out to be game for just about anything he wanted — a fact that should have delighted him if only it didn’t make some latent instinct bristle with suspicion.

That feeling had dogged him ever since her little breakdown over her snacks. He thought it’d been vanquished after he had most of his questions about her answered, but that was only a temporary lull. Everything she’d said since made him wary, as if an opponent lurked just out of sight, threatening to steal her from him if he dropped his guard.

Alongside that feeling came the unnerving unpredictability of his own internal landscape. Silas had been certain that satisfying some of his craving for Petra would settle him, but the opposite was proving true.

He couldn’t seem to relax, nor even work up the normal titillation he experienced the night before a job.

He couldn’t control his impulses, which were going haywire at the lack of security in her den and the knowledge that she made even less sense to him now than she did a few days prior. Everything became even more unstable after discovering another man wanted her.

Petra had been awfully cagey about why the Protector was visiting, but he didn’t need her to say it aloud. No man who installed video cameras in a woman’s bedroom did it simply for information. It was for blackmail or pleasure. Always.

Her admission to being the daughter of a crime family — something he’d be looking into when he had a damn second — made the blackmail option slightly more likely, but only just.

Silas had exactly zero doubts that Vanderpoel had taken one look at the mysterious, shining facade of Petra’s masks and wanted what he did: more.

If he hadn’t already planned to kill the man, that would have clinched it.

Silas couldn’t stop himself from glancing over his shoulder as he knelt on the floor by the bed. He was still looking at her, unable to tear his eyes away from her slumbering form, even as he rooted around in his backpack for his invisible ink marker.

It was large, with a thick chisel nib, and dried quickly enough to be useful for swift sigilwork. Exactly what he needed if he wanted even the smallest chance of his instincts allowing him to leave her side for a moment.

Teeth grinding, Silas forced his attention to the task at hand.

A few minutes passed as he worked. The astringent, chemical scent of the marker sliced through the rich haze of Petra’s fragrance, wrinkling his nose as he drew a protective ring of unique sigils around her bed.

He’d only be gone for a few minutes, but anything could happen in that time. Silas aimed to make sure that anything was nothing.

His hair still stood on end after he finished, but it settled something in him to know that nothing could cross that invisible boundary without their insides liquefying.

Silas’s lips quirked at the thought. He wondered if, like the story of Blight and Glory, the nastier sigilwork was another thing Petra hadn’t been taught in school.

Where did she go to school?

His smile fell. Another question, another gap in his knowledge. Normally he didn’t care to learn anything about a woman besides what her cunt tasted like, but the blank slate of Petra’s formative years gnawed at him.

In fact, the sweet, musky taste of her cunt only made him want to know more.

Damn.

Shaking his head, Silas shoved his feet into his boots and strained to keep his eyes forward as he crept towards the closet and its hidden door.

His skin felt a little tighter with every step. His jaw tensed. His shadows were a furious, roiling mass just beneath his skin, desperate to get back to the treasure they’d left vulnerable in the bed.

But he kept moving. He turned the knob on the closet door. He slipped inside.

The short, dank hallway — barely big enough to fit the width of his shoulders — seemed much longer than it had before. Every step took more effort and the walls, unsealed, rough concrete, seemed to loom around him like a tunnel of brambles.

His heart, normally steady even under the most dire circumstances, throbbed in his chest. By the time he squeezed out of the concealed door into the gap between two buildings, he was covered head to toe in a layer of cold sweat.

Silas braced a palm on the filthy wall and tried in vain to catch his breath. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Are you wearing Glory’s symbol? He didn’t think he’d ever heard Tal sound so incredulous, which was saying something.

Silas smoothed his palm over the cheap gold necklace. It was warmed with his body heat, but he thought he could still feel a bit of Petra in it. “Yes.”

Why are you ? —

“Worried I’m becoming religious?”

Fuck no, Tal replied. It just seems a little blasphemous, even for you.

Silas scoffed. Of all the things to be pulled out of bed for… “What do you care? The gods aren’t real.”

People don’t think wraiths are real, either, but here I am.

Rolling his eyes, Silas demanded, “What did you find?”

You won’t like it, Tal answered from somewhere deep in the murky shadows of the alleyway.

Silas unconsciously ran his palm over a horn as he paced a tight circle, his boots dodging the usual alley detritus not even the squeaky clean EVP street sweeper bots could fully eradicate.

“I don’t like any of this,” he grunted.

You could back out. Tal’s shadows undulated and his voice, soft and low, carried a distinct note of unease. But I don’t think you should.

Silas stopped pacing long enough to send his brother an incredulous look. “Weren’t you the one who told me I shouldn’t do this?”

Not that he was considering backing out. Silas couldn’t imagine walking away now, not after he’d just begun to peel back Petra’s layers with his clawtips. But it was unlike Tal to approve of a plan like this. He didn’t really have a problem with murder and mayhem for profit, but Tal was staunchly against using innocent people — an amorphous, blurry line to draw in the moral sand.

I still don’t think you should bond with a witch you don’t care about, he explained, but that doesn’t mean I think you should just leave Petra high and dry. Something is seriously wrong here, Silas.

“I know. She’s given me enough bits and pieces of the truth to put that together on my own.”

No, you don’t understand. Tal’s voice was a whisper in his mind, a low hiss of urgency. I followed a couple of the acolytes tonight after they came back from dinner. They weren’t using explicit language, but I could tell they were discussing Petra’s meeting with the Protector.

A deep rumble built in Silas’s chest. He didn’t like the idea of people discussing Petra behind her back, and he loathed her plan to meet with the man she believed was a murderer.

It wouldn’t happen, of course, but the fact that she even considered it made him want to bite her someplace tender.

When she told him the plan, it was only the knowledge that she’d do everything in her power to thwart him that kept him from telling her she wouldn’t be going into a room alone with that man under any circumstances. He didn’t care that she might be wrong about his involvement in Dooraker’s murder. He didn’t care that there was no proof the man wanted her as anything more than a political ally.

She was not having dinner with him. Period.

“What did they say?” Silas resumed pacing.

They were speculating about her meeting, Tal answered, and worrying.

“Worrying? About what?”

About Petra. They wouldn’t say it aloud, but it was clear they were talking about whatever it was Vanderpoel wants from her. They kept whispering about how they hoped ‘she has a choice’.

Silas stopped abruptly, his head swinging around to stare out through the opening of the alley to where the cathedral complex glowed with an impressive array of decorative lights. He and Tal had chosen to meet across the street, despite the fact that Tal had long since established himself in the shadows of the cathedral. Although Silas was confident in his abilities to jam any surveillance equipment, the most prudent option when exchanging information was to simply do so when one wasn’t surveilled at all.

He narrowed his eyes. My little liar, what aren’t you telling me?

Speaking to Tal, he said, “Petra believes he killed her uncle. Apparently Maximilian Dooraker was at one time a criminal from Los Angeles by way of Baltimore.”

He could almost feel Tal’s dismay as his form, indistinct but more solid than any other wraith Silas had encountered, shimmered like hot air over a blacktop. So she’s doing this to get revenge?

Silas snorted. “No, worse. She wants to bring the man to justice.”

She hadn’t said it in so many words, but it was there. Despite her apparent consideration of simply ridding the world of the man, he doubted she would have gone through with it even if she’d had the money required for a hit. For all her lies and scheming, Silas had begun to suspect that something soft and naive lurked within his little goddess.

Normally that would have been enough to put him off anyone, explosive sexual chemistry be damned, but just like everything else related to Petra, the knowledge seemed to have the opposite effect.

It made his gut churn to think about, but Silas actually wanted to see that softness, if only so he could hold it in his fist. No one else can have it, he reasoned. That’s why I want it so much. I won’t let anyone else touch her — any part of her.

Tal drifted along the filthy walls, avoiding the dull shaft of light cast by the street lamp just beyond the opening of the alley. I told you she’s a good person, Silas. I told you.

“I never said she wasn’t a good person,” he argued, temper flaring. “I said she was a liar and that she would get us what we need. What you need.”

He wasn’t the only one beginning to lose his temper. Tal’s shadows stretched out along the wall in a sticky wave of black threads, like he was adhering himself there to keep himself from doing something rash. What I need? Don’t you put this on me, Silas. You aren’t doing this for me. There are a thousand different ways we could have gotten the power we need for the body! Petra was a barely viable option, but you took one look at her and ? —

“What?” Silas rounded on his brother with a snarl. He wasn’t even entirely certain why they were fighting, but something about Tal’s criticisms, his staunch belief that he’d known Petra’s character better than Silas himself, made him want to rake his claws through the shadows. “What happened, Tal? Because all I remember was making a deal that’d get you a fuckin’ body back, just like you wanted.”

Tal’s voice took on the tone that drove Silas up a wall — an infuriating combination of patience and condescension. I’m not saying I didn’t want it. I’m just trying to explain that maybe this is more complicated than you’re ready to deal with. I want you to help Petra, Silas, but I don’t think you’re ready for her bond, or what being tied to her would do to you. Look at you! You look like you’re barely keeping it together.

“You think I should let her go.”

The words were a tiny, insignificant pebble dropped down a dark well inside him. At first there was nothing, no reaction, as it sailed into the depths of him. Then, all at once there was a splash — a great, echoing cataclysm that rippled through the very core of his being.

Petra wasn’t just a mystery. She was his mystery. Her magic was his magic. Her body was his body. All her little secrets, all her lies, all her curious soft spots — they all belonged to him. They had since the moment she dared to walk into that bar and lie to his face.

Silas’s fingers curled into a fist, one by one, when he announced, “No.”

No?

“I’m not letting her go. I’m never letting her go.”

Silas, listen to yourself. Tal lost the patience and exchanged it for outright concern. You’re obsessed with her now, but what if this is just the rut? I don’t want you to tangle yourself up in this poor woman’s life, only to break her heart when you don’t want anything to do with her come fall. Say it’s not the rut— What are you going to do if you actually want to keep her? I’m just asking you to think this through.

Dissatisfaction wasn’t a heavy feeling then, but a sharp sting inside him. “You think I’m going to hurt her.”

It wasn’t the first time Tal had warned him away from hurting someone he felt didn’t deserve it, but something about this warning made the muscles of Silas’s throat tighten.

I think you’re stepping into something far more complicated and dangerous than you accounted for. And I’m not just talking about whatever is going on with the Temple and Vanderpoel.

That, at least, Silas could agree with. He didn’t care about whatever was rotting the Temple from the inside out, but he was beginning to understand that whatever it was that existed between himself and Petra had taken on a life of its own.

It was its own kind of predator, and he sensed that it was simply biding its time before it swallowed them both whole.

But he couldn’t articulate that feeling even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. Silas was intensely possessive of his relationship with Petra, and things he’d normally feel nothing about sharing with his only friend in the world were suddenly precious little jewels to be hoarded.

He didn’t want anyone else to see them when he took them out and held them to the light, inspecting every facet and color. He wanted to keep them close, locked where no one could touch them, and know they belonged to him and him alone.

Not even Tal would get the privilege of admiring the treasure he’d found.

Trying to end the conversation before he really did rake his claws through Tal’s barely-there form, he said, “I’m not leaving Petra to fend for herself. I’m going to handle this for her and then figure out the rest.”

That’s all I ask, Tal replied, sounding relieved. Just use your head, Silas. That’s all. I know you hate being told what to do, but I’m worried about you. I’m worried about her, too.

“Well, stop worrying about her. She isn’t fuckin’ yours.”

Silas’s teeth clicked together as his jaw snapped shut. A beat of silence passed. In the distance, a flurry of honking horns and a lone disgruntled voice interrupted the relatively quiet city night.

Then, in his whispery voice, Tal asked, Do you hear yourself? Tell me what you sound like, Silas.

He turned on his heel to pace again. Anger was a burning coal in his stomach, its heat fueled by the urgent need to get back to Petra’s den, where she lay vulnerable and soft beneath her sheets.

“I sound like a demon on the edge of rut,” he grunted. “It’s not that fuckin’ deep, Tal.”

You seem to forget that I’ve known you for decades, Silas. Long before you entered your first rut. And before that, I went through them myself. I know the fucking difference.

It was on the tip of Silas’s tongue to ask what Tal’s own experience had anything to do with this, since he could barely remember something that happened a lifetime and a millennia ago, but that was too cruel even for him.

“What do I sound like, then?” he snapped instead.

You sound like a mate.

Silas rolled his eyes in such a way that his matriarch would have warned him that they’d get lost in the back of his head. “I’m not anyone’s mate.”

Are you sure? Because you seem awfully tetchy for a man who just wants to get his cock wet in a pretty priestess.

Silas turned his head so fast something in his spine cracked. “Watch your fuckin’ mouth!”

See?

“She’s not my mate,” he ground out, disturbed by the very idea. Not because he disliked the thought of Petra being bound to him for the rest of her life — that was a lovely benefit of her bond, after all — but because his instincts were out of his control. Demons didn’t get to decide who their partners were, unlike witches, and he’d always gotten the feeling that he would be one of those pitied few who never discovered his other half.

Silas wasn’t ignorant to the fact that his clan whispered that though it was regrettable for any demon to never meet their mate, in his case it was probably for the best. After all, who could be that unlucky?

He didn’t take offense. His family meant well, as they always did, and he was certain they would be delighted if he did find his mate, but he had historically agreed that it was for the best that he didn’t. Silas had never felt the craving to find a mate like his cousins and couldn’t stomach the maintenance of one besides.

Until now. What had long been considered a blessing now felt… wrong.

Despite Silas’s combative tone and posture warning him to back off, Tal kept pushing. How do you know?

“Because my shadows haven’t— It hasn’t happened.”

When demons met their mates, a piece of their shadows lived within their partner and acted as a brand of ownership. No other demon would mistake them for being unmated when a piece of living shadow possessively curled around their arm, ankle, waist, or throat. Demons and their clans shared a unique fingerprint, a tenor to their shadows that could be perceived by any of their kind, giving even more depth to the claim. If Petra wore his shadow, it would be the equivalent of having his name and that of his clan tattooed across her forehead.

…Which, in hindsight, helped him understand the appeal of a marriage sigil a little bit more.

It doesn’t always happen right away, Si, Tal argued, and you’re a hybrid. Who knows what that means for mating?

The thought of Petra wearing a brand of his shadow, telling all the world who she belonged to, reminded him of how her lush cunt stretched around the very essence of Silas’s soul. A fresh wave of cold sweat broke out across the back of his neck. Want curled in his gut, syrupy and sweet like molasses.

But if she was his mate, surely his shadows would have known then, when they were literally inside her. Right?

Unfortunately, that wasn’t a question he could ask without telling his brother things he should never, ever know about his witch.

Silas drove a knuckle into his eye, trying to thwart the beginnings of a headache. “Fuck this,” he muttered, striding toward the entrance of the alley. “I’m not having this conversation with you, Tal, so drop it. I’m going back to bed.”

Tal wasn’t happy, but he begrudgingly allowed, Fine. What about tomorrow? What’s the plan?

He paused, shrugging. “Tomorrow? We kill the motherfucker who put cameras in my witch’s bedroom.”