“I assume that smile means you realized you could’ve broken the door open,” she said.
“I did.”
“Were you tempted to force your way in?”
“A little,” he admitted. “It’s very cold out there.”
“And yet you restrained yourself. Well done.”
He raised his brows. “You suspect it was a struggle for me?”
“I honestly don’t know.” In her nightmares, despite the blade against her throat, he didn’t try to reason with his enemy, didn’t try to get her out from between them. He lunged into battle, oblivious to whether she would be injured. That thought sobered her. She turned, holding her hand out to the side. “Give me your clothes. I’ll take care of them for you.”
A moment later, she had them, such as they were. She exited without looking back and heard the water jets as she closed the door.
At the washing machine, she glanced over his clothes. No underwear? And what was with the uneven stitching? Were they hand-sewn? There were no care tags inside, and the fabric was rough. She pictured him buying them at a bazaar in a third-world country. Maybe he had been a soldier. Perhaps stationed in the Middle East? But that didn’t explain why he wasn’t dressed for Colorado weather now.
In the kitchen, she warmed corn chowder and toasted thick slices of buttered French bread in the oven. In between preparing lunch, she checked the Boulder Police Department’s online blotter. The only local missing person report was of an elderly woman who’d wandered away from a nursing home.
After she fed him, Kate would drive her mystery guest to the police department to start the formal process of finding out who he was.
“Kate,” he said, rushing into the room with a towel barely fastened around his hips. Muscles deep inside her contracted. Wet and nearly naked, he looked ... edible.
Then he flashed a smile, and his sudden exuberance was like champagne and strawberries, intoxicating her, curving her lips into a smile.
“Kate,” he repeated, tapping the counter with his palm.
“Yes?”
“What part of the Roman Empire is this?”
She raised her brows and set her spatula on the stove. “No part. There is no Roman Empire anymore.”
“Defeated? How long ago?”
“Around fifteen hundred years ago.”
“That long,” he mused, taking a step back. “Apparently I’m very good at what I do.”
“And what is that?”
Triumphant as a conquering hero, he grinned. “I’m a time traveler.”
Chapter Three
“There’s nothing as satisfying as breaking the law,” Tamberi said, smirking.
Her brother, Cato, laughed in agreement.
Dark as a womb, the deep, damp cave sheltered bats, rats, and a delicious secret. It was about to become a vortex of forbidden magic.
“Don’t go outside the lines,” Tamberi said crossly.
“What are we? Five?” Cato asked, rolling his eyes.
“You paint like you’re five,” she said, dipping her brush into the small bowl of blood. She pressed the black bristles against the side of the bowl, allowing the excess to run down into the crimson pool.
“I get to lick both bowls when we’re done,” Cato said. A few drops fell from his brush onto his arm.
“Speaking of which, for f**k’s sake, don’t waste it,” Tamberi snapped. She bent her head and snaked her tongue over his arm, licking away the savory spots. He grinned and leaned forward, nipping her bare neck with his fangs. Tamberi’s black hair was buzzed to about an inch long, which should’ve made her look as repulsive as an army recruit, but Cato found her sexy as hell.
“There,” she said, dabbing in a last spot on the inverted pentagram. She smirked and caressed the head of one of the shackled virgins. She backed away to get the full effect. A small mat on the floor had been covered with purple velvet. The human sacrifices were arranged in a V formation with the pentagram forming the third side of a triangle into which they would welcome the demon Gadreel. Tamberi couldn’t wait to see him in the flesh. She’d done a ritual to commune with a demon and had been communicating with Gadreel through her dreams ever since. He was an incredibly powerful presence in her unconscious world, but she was sure that her dreams of him would pale in comparison to what he was like when alive.
Large tears rolled down the bound girl’s round cheeks.
“What?” Tamberi demanded. “You see where all that ‘saving yourself’ got you? You couldn’t have been a virgin sacrifice if you hadn’t been a virgin.”
Cato snorted with laughter. “Did the demon really specify virgin sacrifices? Or did you want to use virgins because they piss you off?”
Tamberi ran a hand over the bound boy’s hairless chest. “Gadreel likes them innocent.”
“Speaking of what he likes, you sure he won’t mind me being here for the raising ritual?”
“Why should he care? Two sacrifices means twice the power. And I want you here.” She stretched and cracked her neck. “All those muses getting ready for their Christmas party, they have no idea what they’re in for. This year I’m not raising some pathetic minor demon that Merrick could slay without breaking a sweat. This year, if the beautiful enforcer decides to crash the party, Gadreel will dine on his heart and pick his teeth afterward with Merrick’s finger bones.”
Cato sighed. He hadn’t known that Tamberi had been the one who’d raised the demon in 2007. Before the ventala syndicate had sent Merrick to deal with it, that monster had killed four people in the Varden, including Cato’s friend Davy Roma.
“And Gadreel’s smart,” she added. “He’s not going to cause trouble in the Varden, so Dad won’t even call Merrick. What happened in’07 is what I get for trying to avoid using a human sacrifice. Minor demons are like rabid dogs. Can’t control them once they’re raised.”
“Fuck, Beri, Davy used to be part of my Friday night game. You know Lou can’t play Texas Hold ’Em for shit.”
“Yeah, sorry. I cracked a few eggs making that omelet, but this time is going to rock. After Gadreel gets his ring of power, those prissy pricks from Etherlin Security are going to have a slaughter shoved down their throat.”
Kate’s startled laughter echoed off the walls. “Time traveler. That would be the story of a lifetime,” she said. Faced with his warm, magnetic presence and the smell of soap and male skin, her body registered its strong inclination to do more than photograph him for a story. “I guess your DeLorean is buried under a snow drift. Why don’t you sit and tell me why you think you’ve been traveling through time?”