Embraced (The Eternal Balance #2)(8)

But this was different. This was all me. “I don’t want to be cooped up in a confined space with you right now, okay?” I took a deep breath, then blew out slowly, trying to get myself under control. “If I don’t feed Azi, I’m going to lose my shit.”

She held my gaze for a minute, eyes full of uncharacteristic fury, then bent to retrieve the keys with a jerk. She wanted to hit me. Scream and rage until the anger faded and there was no energy left to expend. The potency of it slammed through me, nearly stealing the breath from my lungs. Without thinking, I grabbed her hand.

The alley next to the Viking fell away. Sam was still in front of me, but she was with someone else. A tall guy with a spider tattoo on his forearm. He leaned in to kiss her and I felt my body coil, ready to pounce. But before I could act, the scene shimmered and faded, and it was Sam and I again outside the Viking.

The moments that resulted from our link were mostly innocuous scenes from the past, but once in a while, the visions were intense, coupled with a full gamut of debilitating emotion. Eventually one of us was going to see something that did some real damage.

We still didn’t understand it all. Some demons could create a link to their victims, constructing a parasitic relationship that benefited them at a horrible expense to the human. But this was different.

First, Sam wasn’t a demon. She was…something else, but we had no clue what. Also, unlike with a demonic link, there didn’t appear to be any adverse effects—at first. A few weeks ago, things began to change. We’d become more in tune with each other’s moods. It was subtle at first. So brief that we both thought we were imagining things. The frequency seemed to be increasing, though it was still random.

In that moment—at the look in her eyes—if she had begged me to get in the car, I would have without hesitation. Thankfully she was stronger than me. Without a word, she slid into Rick’s old clunker, slammed the door, and started the engine. The inside of the cab flooded with red as she peeled from of the lot, so thick I could barely make out her silhouette. I hated that she felt that way, but it was a relief. Anger, in my book, was always better than hurt. It was easier to deal with. To conquer. Anger fueled you. It could poison you if allowed to run rampant, or drive you if it remained focused.

I just wasn’t sure whose emotions I was fighting anymore—mine or hers.



I walked the streets of Harlow for hours before catching a whiff of fear, four miles from the club. When I went to investigate, I found a guy trying to steal some lady’s purse as she unpacked suitcases from the trunk of her car.

While I couldn’t go as far with a human as I could a demon—killing the demonic bastards left me with one hell of a high and virtually no guilt—I could rough them up enough to calm Azi for a time and gain a small amount of peace.

After giving the scumbag a proper beat down, I went in search of answers. Heckle owned a bar in downtown Harlow, The Inferno. Unfortunately, the man behind the bar wasn’t him. All he would tell me was that Heckle was away and he had no idea when he would return. After a few rounds of Q and A—the kind that involved pain and bloodshed—I started for Rick’s.

An hour after getting home and trying repeatedly to reach Heckle’s cell, I gave up. Wherever he was, he wasn’t interested in chatting. I knew I should try to catch a few hours of sleep then tackle this thing with a clearer head in the morning. But it was impossible. Each time I closed my eyes, Azi flooded my mind with images. They ranged from raw, animalistic sex to wicked teasing, all with the same effect. The thing was relentless and I was on fire. It wasn’t long before I found myself standing outside Sam’s door, hands braced against the frame and fingers digging into the molding. It took all my willpower not to bust through and—

“Since we’re both awake, you might as well just come in,” she said softly. She was inside the room, behind the closed door, but since embracing the demon, I couldn’t turn off the heightened senses it afforded me. Before, I’d had to surrender a certain amount of control to the monster to gain access to its more than human abilities. But since turning myself over to it, I had full access without the surrender. It’d been disorienting at first—hearing the heartbeat of everyone in a room, or the sound of their breath as it moved in and out of their lungs—but I’d gotten it under control for the most part.

Except when it came to Sam. I was hyperaware of her all the time. The way she moved, and the subtle hitches in her voice as her mood changed. Being so in tune with the one person I couldn’t get close to was a fresh kind of torture every day.

I sucked in a breath and pushed open the door. Sam was in bed with the covers pooled around her waist. The small lamp on the nightstand beside the bed illuminated her features, accentuating each curve in sharp, painful detail.

“I owe you an—”

“Don’t.” She held up her hand. “I get it, and I hate it. But…I get it.”

Of course she did. Always so damn understanding. Everything from my mood swings to the blood that always seemed to stain my hands—Sam was able to look past all of it, and a part of me hated her for it. I was a bastard. A monster unworthy of redemption. If I could get her to see that, to believe it, then it would be true.

But she didn’t. She wouldn’t. When she looked at me, there was nothing but love and optimism, and it was exhausting, trying to live up to her expectations and knowing it was impossible.