To Tempt the Devil

Series: Brimstone crossover with ? I can't tell you any more without ruining the story

Disclaimers: Brimstone characters belong to Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, Warner Brothers, and now I guess to SciFi. Guest characters belong to their own creators (most likely you'll recognize them). Cassie belongs to me (Sorry, Luke), but has a mind of her own.

Rating: PG-13 for sexual innuendo and mild violence. Future parts may go to R.

By Wesa.

Zeke Stone was worried when he consulted his 'employer.' He paced the length of his small apartment and occasionally peered out his window as he complained, "How can I send any more of them back with this guy following me all the time? He never actually comes close enough for me to confront him, but he's always there."

Lucifer looked out the window and began to chuckle. "Apparently, Ezekiel," he said, "someone has done some checking into that badge you flash so casually, and come to a remarkable - though quite mistaken - conclusion."

"And what conclusion is that?" Zeke demanded impatiently. His boss had a warped sense of humor, which surfaced at the most irritating times.

Lucifer continued to grin as he chastised his bounty hunter. "Tsk, tsk, Ezekiel. Remember, patience is a virtue. Interesting tattoo he has, don't you think?"

Zeke perked up instantly. "Tattoo?" he repeated, coming over to the window.

With a flash, the devil was gone, leaving Zeke staring at the dark symbol on the man's wrist, a bird, perhaps, or whale flukes, maybe even a stylized T enclosed in a circle. Perhaps realizing that Zeke was watching him, he put out the cigarette he was smoking, and walked away. Zeke breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to go downstairs to see if he could get Max to fire up her computer.

**********

Cassie woke with a gasp and a shudder, unable to bite back the cry of pleasure that burst from her lips. Beside her in the motel bed, a familiar face smiled, not quite leering. "Did you like that?" Luke asked softly.

"What - What did you do?" she asked, still breathing heavily.

"Just because I can give nightmares doesn't mean that I can't give pleasant dreams as well," he replied.

Cassie sighed and worked her head luxuriously into her pillow, then lifted her arms and wrapped them loosely around Luke's neck. "Do you only give pleasant dreams?" she drawled.

Luke drew back, almost pulling free of Cassie's loose grip. "You want to have sex?" he asked in astonishment. "Then why did you try to run away from me?"

"What?" Cassie asked, startled. "I didn't. It wouldn't be possible, anyway."

Luke reached behind himself and pulled the cord that opened the drapes on the window, revealing the snow-capped mountain in the distance, the sun just rising behind it. "No mountains like that in Los Angeles," he pointed out.

Smiling, Cassie ran a thumb along Luke's high cheekbone. "It's a lot like you, isn't it?" she asked softly.

"Moi? And a mountain? What do you mean?"

"You're both beautiful. Magnificent," she explained, "...and dangerous. It's a volcano, you know. The kind that explodes."

He chuckled. "All right. But you still haven't explained why you're in Seacouver. If you aren't trying to hide from me, why are you here?" He played gently, possessively, with her hair.

Grinning, Cassie pulled his face down and kissed him gently on the mouth, impishly thrusting the tip of her tongue between his lips. "You do have a bit of an ego, don't you?" she teased lovingly as she loosened her hold on him, allowing him to pull back a little. "My entire life doesn't revolve around you, Luke. I knew other people before we met, you know," she laughed softly.

"Ah, you've come to visit an old friend?"

"Well, sort of. He's actually a friend of my uncle's. I probably won't get to talk to him much, though. Joe has a bar not too far from here," she explained. "There's supposed to be a rather popular band playing there tonight and he invited me to come and see them. Do you want to join me?"

Luke made a face. "Cassie, I don't care for rock-and-roll."

She grinned. "You haven't been listening to the right rock music," she told him. "But Joe doesn't book rock-and-roll bands anyway. His bar focuses on blues." She traced her fingertip over his sensual lips. "Will you be my date tonight? You don't have to dress up or anything if you don't want to."

He kissed her, thrusting his tongue between her lips and exploring her teeth. "I can deny you nothing," he murmured. He nipped at her earlobe, then at her throat. "We can even have sex, if that's what you really want."

"Sex isn't enough for me; you know that," she told him. "I'd like to make love with you, though, if you can give me that."

Luke looked down at her mournfully. "Cassie..."

"I know, you've never loved anyone but God." Cassie sighed and turned onto her back, looking up at the ceiling, slowly brightening with the dawn. "Will you lie here with me, then, and hold me, make me feel protected in my sleep?" she requested.

"As long as you want me to," he replied softly. "For the rest of your life, if that's what you want."

Cassie turned back onto her side and snuggled into his arms, murmuring happily. "I do love you, you know," she said against his throat.

"I know," he replied, stroking her hair. "Sleep now."

**********

"That shirt brings out the color of your eyes. But I like your hair long," Cassie protested. "The jeans are nice, though." She gently rubbed her hand along his thigh. She frowned. "What did you do with your shoes?"

With a brief flash of light under the table, his white Nikes reappeared. "Ah, there he is," Luke said with a satisfied smile.

Cassie turned her head to see the familiar figure in the long brown coat standing just inside the door, and laughed. "This morning you didn't even know about it. How did you get Ezekiel here so fast?" she asked in a low voice.

"I sent him an airplane ticket," Luke explained.

"And a ticket to the performance tonight, huh?" Cassie waved to Ezekiel, drawing his attention to the corner table they shared near the small stage at the end of the bar farthest from the door. She frowned at Luke. "Do I dare ask why? Do I even want to know?"

"I'm a wonderful employer," he assured her. "Think of it as a fringe benefit."

Cassie looked at him askance, then smiled at Stone as he reached their table. "Hello, Ezekiel," she greeted him. "What would you like to drink?"

He looked at her in surprise. "Uh, beer. Thanks," he replied. As Cassie moved toward the bar, he looked around the room, which was rapidly filling with people, and said to Lucifer, "Love what you've done with your hair. Why am I here?"

"Sit down, Ezekiel," the devil invited genially. "You made good time."

"Tailwind," Stone replied. "So I'm early? Does that mean that I'll actually get to drink my beer?"

"Could be," Luke told him, watching Cassie laugh with the bartender, a graying man who looked at her two male companions interestedly as he placed three drinks on a tray in front of her. He seemed to move stiffly, and when he came out from behind the bar, he leaned heavily on a cane.

Zeke looked at Lucifer questioningly. "Mine. Vietnam," came the briefest of explanations, in a low voice as Cassie returned. She was grinning and shaking her head. "What's so funny?" Luke asked her.

"Joe," Cassie replied, setting out their drinks. "He wanted to warn me that I should be wary of the guy in the coat," she explained, "but was rather pleased when I told him that I'm actually here with the guy in the green shirt and jeans. If he only knew."

"What's wrong with his legs?" Zeke wondered, watching as Joe moved awkwardly up to the stage and picked up a guitar that leaned against a stool. As he did, two other musicians joined him.

"He was wounded in Vietnam," Cassie explained. "Both his legs were amputated above the knees."

"Rough," Zeke said as the crippled veteran perched on the stool and began to play; apparently he and the band members who joined him provided the warm-up entertainment. They were good, boding well for the primary act to follow.

"Yeah, but he seems to get along," Cassie told him. "His friends help him a lot," she added, gesturing to the tall, lean man behind the bar. Luke snorted softly into his martini. "What?"

"Do you know who that is?" he asked her.

She shrugged. "Joe introduced him as Adam Pierson. Said he works for beer," she replied.

"'Adam,'" Luke repeated with a sly grin. "Yeah, that's appropriate."

Zeke looked at him sideways. "You're joking," he said in voice that betrayed both hope and worry. "I don't have to take on anyone that old, do I?"

"He's not one of your escapees, is he?" Cassie asked in dismay. "He seemed rather nice."

"Cassie," Zeke told her, "I worked with the ringleader for weeks without even knowing she was dead. I thought she was a cop. You just can't always tell."

Luke sipped at his martini. "'Adam Pierson,'" he said, "is not one of mine - yet. He has done some things, though, that could bring him to my tender embrace one day."

Zeke snorted. "Maybe I should warn him about what you consider a tender embrace," he observed.

"Ezekiel, please," Cassie protested. "He can't have grown up in this culture and not know that he risks Hell for doing such things."

"He didn't exactly grow up in this culture," Luke told her. "Oh, look."

The others turned to look toward the door, where a beautiful woman and a gorgeous man entered together. "Wow," Zeke said.

"Uh-huh," Cassie agreed. "Very easy on the eyes. Jeez, does he own a gym or something?"

"I was talking about her," Zeke told her.

"I wasn't," Cassie retorted, but she leaned slightly to her left and briefly pressed her cheek to Luke's shoulder. "Why did you draw our attention to them?" she wondered.

Luke stroked her jaw tenderly with one forefinger. "Cassie," he said gently, "I'm going to alter your perceptions. I want to show you who these people are."

"All right," Cassie agreed.

"You ask her?" Zeke asked in astonishment as the three found themselves standing together in the living area of an apartment.

Before them, the man they had seen in the bar was telling a different woman that he was immortal; to prove it, he drove a knife into his own chest, and died. His aristocratic-looking blonde companion panicked. She started to call for an ambulance even though moments earlier she had promised him she would not. Only seconds into her call, the man suddenly took a deep breath and lived again. She was not reassured until she could see and touch the place where his wound had been.

"How?" Zeke asked.

"Come now, Ezekiel, why should I do your job for you?" Lucifer protested. "Did you find nothing in your research yesterday? Nothing this afternoon?"

"Nothing," Zeke retorted, "and I had Max helping me, too, on the computer."

"Ah, yes, the computer. One of my lesser triumphs."

Cassie looked at him sideways. "Luke," she protested, "I'll grant you that computers can be terribly frustrating, but using one can't possibly be a sin."

"Well, no, not as such," he admitted, "but they frequently facilitate those who are prone to sin."

"Well, you'd get most of those anyway," Cassie told him. "You don't need to blame a machine."

Luke smiled at her and gently took her hands between his own. "Always to the defense of the innocent, ma cherie. So charming." She stuck out her tongue at him.

Cassie and Zeke suddenly found themselves standing on a bridge, Luke between them, gesturing to the two men fighting with swords. One, well over six and a half feet tall, wore a sort of leather helmet over his face, which gave him a threatening visage. The other was the handsome man from Joe's bar. The fight continued until the handsome man's curved sword sliced through the taller man's neck, dropping his head on the tarmac of the road across the bridge.

"Oh!" Cassie exclaimed and looked away.

"Watch now, Cassie," Luke murmured, touching his fingertips to her chin, lifting and turning her head.

Zeke stared in fascination at the lightning repeatedly striking at the man with the sword, while Cassie cried out in surprise and clutched at Luke, who put his arm around her shoulders but insisted that she watch the light show.

Finally the electrical discharge stopped, and the man staggered and almost fell before he looked intently toward a red-haired teenager watching from the bushes, then stepped to the edge of the bridge and leaped into the water.

Another place, another time. The handsome man howled in grief, holding the blonde woman from the first place Luke had taken them. She was obviously dead, shot to death. On the street beside them, the teenager from the bridge had also been shot to death, but the handsome man had tears only for the woman. As they watched, however, the young redhead took a sudden deep, gasping breath and opened his eyes. With a confused expression, he sat up, clutching at his chest. "Mac?" he asked. His gaze turned to the dead blonde. "Tessa? Tessa, no! No! Wake up!"

In the face of the teenager's anguish, the older man gathered his wits. "Go home, Richie," he said, his voice rough with his tears. "Ye canna be seen here - the police canna see ye here wi' blood all o'er ye." Sorrow or stress had made his Scots burr almost unintelligible. "Go home, lad."

"You have blood all over you," Richie protested. "Mac, why isn't she waking up?"

"It's nae my blood," Mac said shortly. "She won't - She's nae --" He sobbed. "Go, lad! I will call ye there when the police hae done wi' me." He collapsed, then, overcome with grief.

Richie stood a moment longer, until the sound of approaching sirens finally galvanized him into motion and he set off down the street at a trot. The scene dissolved in a flash of light.

Back at the bar, and Joe's band was just finishing their song. At three different places around the bar, Adam, Mac, and the brunette woman Mac had arrived with all froze, then turned their faces toward the door. After a moment, the door opened and Richie entered; the other immortals relaxed.

"There's one more thing I'd like to show you," Luke told them, and they found themselves standing in a small room, watching Mac towering over Joe, who sat behind a desk and brought up information about the immortal on a computer.

"Joe?" Cassie worried. "Luke, what's going on?"

"He has the same tattoo," Zeke realized. "What is this, some kind of organization that watches immortals?"

"Bingo," Luke told him. "And they know you died in 1983..."

End of part 4.