Chapter 20
Lionel
Tiamat, canapé in hand, looked at me expectantly. I was almost sure she was doing something to me with her gaze. I couldn’t feel anything magical happening, but the way she stared was oddly intense.
Either way, I answered.
“It was some time ago.”
“Four years,” Lucifer said.
“What, you’ve been keeping track? Whatever.
It was four years ago, and I was working.
Some rich kid had dabbled in necromancy.
He’d drawn mostly from artifacts, not real power, but he’d managed to raise his dead father.
” I sipped some more of the juice before I continued.
“He wanted the zombie to sign a new will so the rich kid could keep on being rich.
His father had written him out of his will before his death, clearly knowing his son well enough to do the responsible thing and leave his money to charity.
“Anyway, the detective I work with already had the kid in cuffs, but the zombie had shambled off.” I shrugged. “I followed him and took him down with a rock before he could bite me.”
Tiamat nodded. “And Lucy?”
Right. The fucking Devil caressing my shoulder. The Devil who had stolen my juice and given me his. The Devil whose fault it was that I was even drinking this delicious juice.
“He was…there. Swaggered along the riverbank and dragged the dead zombie off me.”
“All zombies are dead,” Tiamat said.
Godmotherfucking immortals. “I know that, but I mean dead again.”
“The word is de-animated, babe. I told you.” Lucifer, that smug asshole, kissed the side of my head.
“I thought he had a concussion with amnesia at first. He had trouble with my name, and there were so many rocks there. I was afraid he’d fallen on one and hurt himself.
I would have been ill-prepared then, but since that day, I have taken several courses and learned about CPR. ”
“I didn’t—damn it, I was fine, and I had the situation under control.” I put my empty glass down on the table. “Also, no one told you to learn CPR. I didn’t need it then, and I don’t need it now.”
Lucifer made that dark growly sound again. “I can see that. You’re quite energetic. The juice cleanse is already paying off. But if you ever do need me to breathe life back into you, I now have a certificate that says I can.”
“You can stuff your fucking certificate up your—”
“You want more juice?” Metatron—Trony—was back with another tray, and this time around, she had something orange on there with a slice of green apple for garnish, and fuck me, but that garnish made my mouth water.
“Yes, please. Gimme.” The angel sighed. I cocked my head. “Gimme, please?”
Metatron smiled like a bear high on honey. “Of course, since you asked so nicely. Please go ahead and try. It’s mango, green apple, papaya, and lychee.”
I grabbed the drink and went right for the garnish, stuffing the crunchy slice into my mouth. It was heavenly, and not just because it required chewing. It was a really good apple.
“Trony, you’re making Nelly cheat during his juice cleanse.” Lucifer took the garnish off his own glass and put it on the canapé plate, well out of my reach. Dick.
Metatron rolled her eyes. “So sorry about that. I will strive to not make the juice look pretty in future.”
I was contemplating making a dive for the canapé plate, but Lucifer’s hold on me wasn’t really wavering.
He was also keeping his eyes on me, so the juice was going to have to tide me over until I could get solid food again.
Which was going to be when I went home. Alone. Without the poodle and without—
I was just going to go home.
“What you are saying is, you were uninjured, yet you used a rock to stop a simple zombie? I do not understand,” Tiamat said, ignoring Lucy and Metatron. “Why did you not siphon the magic back out of the corpse?”
That made me sit up straighter, as straight as Lucifer’s hard body next to mine allowed.
The ways I knew to kill a zombie were either overloading them, meaning I had to get close enough to pour my magic into them and watch it zap them, or I could try to collapse the magic keeping them alive-ish and shambling; something that took more time, finesse, and concentration.
None of those things had been an option when the zombie had come up behind me and tried to take a bite out of me that day. Things had simply happened too fast. Option number three was open to basically anyone, and it was bash the zombie’s brains in. It had worked just fine.
Siphoning though, that wasn’t something regular magic users or even mages could just do. If they tried—even if they succeeded—it might lead to the kind of consequences that would make taking a stroll around a nuclear reactor core look like a spa day. Everyone knew not to fuck around with siphoning.
At the Collegium, they’d been very specific about magic going only one way: from the practitioner—the far more common route—or toward them. Nearly all magic users could let it flow outward, just like I did when I reanimated someone.
Siphoning could cancel a spell, hypothetically pretty much any spell, but it also meant taking in that amount of magic.
And that, in turn, could be catastrophic for the mage attempting it, even for those few who had the ability to begin with.
I was pretty sure I didn’t, and I wasn’t suicidal enough to try it out on some random zombie.
“That’s not—it’s not something you’re supposed to even attempt, and I don’t think I could.”
It was possible immortals hadn’t ever considered that. We were, after all, on very different power levels, magic-wise. Tiamat regarded me thoughtfully while she devoured three more canapés.
“Did not your mother teach you how to use your powers properly?” she asked.
I stiffened. What this immortal thought about me should not have bothered me, but telling people always made me uncomfortable.
“I never knew my mother,” I told Tiamat. “I grew up in an orphanage.”
The Dragon Mother’s eyes widened, and she was on her feet in moments, walking over to me and putting her hands on either side of my face.
“You poor thing,” she said before bending down and placing a kiss in the center of my forehead.
Tiamat’s power flowed into me—the second time tonight that I’d felt an immortal unleash their strength and aim it at me.
But where Lucifer’s had been smothering, Tiamat’s kiss flooded me with a sense of…
home. Belonging. Being loved. It felt nice, and there was a whole-body sensation of peace I’d never known before.
I’d never even known I was capable of feeling that.
The Dragon Mother pulled away, and I was left in Lucifer’s arms, calm and relaxed, almost happy. Until I realized I was in Lucifer’s arms.
“You should take your mortal to bed now,” Tiamat said. “He’s exhausted, and I prefer taking a swim in your lake under starlight to conversation anyway.”
Lucifer pulled me to my feet. I briefly looked around for the juice, but what was left was on the table. I wasn’t sure who had whisked the glass from my fingers and put it there.
“If you insist, Dragon Mother. You are most welcome to the pool as well, and the Jacuzzi, of course.”
Tiamat snorted. “I prefer the lake. So much more life in the mud and the silty water.” She looked at me again, and those hard green eyes softened. “Take your lover there sometime, make him feel what it is to find pleasure in the living things all around him.”
Lucifer laughed. “Oh, I always help Nelly find pleasure, don’t worry about that.”
Asshole.
“You—”
Before I could tell him where to shove his ideas of “finding pleasure,” I had his lips pressed against mine for the second time that night. He shoved his tongue firmly into my mouth, the sweet and spicy taste of him overtaking the reasoning part of my brain.
My cock twitched in response. Oh no, I was not going to let this happen.
The walk of shame that would ensue would haunt my nights for years after, and I, as a professional necromancer, simply wouldn’t stand for it.
With all the mental effort I could muster, I bit down on the Devil’s tongue.
That would teach him a lesson about kissing random people.
Except it didn’t. Lucifer was too annoying. After a surprised inhale, he pulled away from the kiss without letting go of me.
“Nelly.” He made my name sound like silk running over a stripper’s thigh. “Keep doing things like that, and I’ll have to restrain you.”
Oh, that fucker. He even had the nerve to lick his lips, showing me his tongue as if he wanted to dare me, but I wasn’t going to take his bait. I looked away.
I was going to leave, any moment now.