Demon Marked: Book 1 of the Venandi Chronicles ( An Urban Paranormal Romance Series)

by Sara Snow

  “If I were a drinking man, I’d join you for some of that cognac,” he said. “As it is, I’ll have to be satisfied with a sandwich. Could I interest you girls in a snack?”

  Soon, we were all sitting on barstools at the kitchen counter with heaping sandwiches in front of us. Jose padded into the room on his bare feet and slid onto a stool to join us. My abs ached from laughing, but I managed to stuff a sandwich down in spite of the pain. I hadn’t eaten so much, laughed so much, or felt so much genuine affection surrounding me for as long as I could remember.

  This must be how it felt to have a family, if a family consisted of people who accepted you for who you were.

  When our conversation died down, I turned to Jose. “What did you dream about last night? Sounds like it was a doozy of a nightmare.”

  Jose nodded. “It was terrible. I woke up screaming, and that woke up Carter. He sleeps in the room next to mine in case I have a bad dream. My dreams are so intense, they’re more like night terrors.”

  I hated to admit it, but Carter’s protective attitude towards Jose touched me deeply.

  “Go on, tell us what you dreamed about,” Olympia urged.

  “I dreamed about a man being stalked by a woman with spiky hair and long nails,” Jose said. “He couldn’t get away from her—she was going to kill him. When Carter woke me up, I had just dreamed that she was dragging him into an alley. There was a big clock with green numbers on the wall of the building that helped us figure out the time. Turns out the murder hadn’t happened yet. Carter got there and stopped it. He told me about it this morning.”

  “Wow. Carter has a lot of guts, breaking into a scene like that,” Eli said. “I’m surprised he didn’t wake me up to go with him.”

  “The woman in the dream was someone he used to know, someone like him. He didn’t tell me that out loud, but I heard it in his head.”

  Someone like him. Hadn’t Carter told me that he’d been out last night killing a creature who was half-demon, half-vampire?

  “Did you see the woman in your dream, Jose?” I asked.

  He shuddered. “Oh, yeah. She was sexy and scary at the same time. I was worried about Carter going to find her, but I knew we needed to save the guy. She was going to rip his heart out and suck all his blood. I saw her kill him, but Carter kept it from happening.”

  “Next time that happens, wake me up, too. Okay, buddy?” Eli said. “I don’t want Carter slaying alone if I can help it.”

  Neither did I, I realized. Especially if he was sneaking out of the training center to meet sexy vampires.

  My hand drifted up to touch the spot on my left breast, the spot that would have been a scar on a normal woman. My suspicions about that incident came rushing back.

  I was pretty sure I’d figured out what Carter was.

  That night, as I lay in the bed of the guest room at the training center, I watched the sky outside the warehouse window. An enormous full moon illuminated fathoms of shifting clouds, whose depths hid hordes of flying creatures. I saw their wings darken the sky as they swirled overhead with their beating wings. Faces of demonic beings appeared in the moonlight, then vanished.

  Carter was right. I was being watched. Not just when I walked down the street or drove my car to work. These beings were observing me constantly, waiting. As soon as I let down my guard or left the protection of the Venandi, they would strike.

  I pulled the covers over my head and turned away from the window. I curled up against a pillow, cradling its softness in my arms the way I had when I was a little girl, scared and alone.

  13

  Carter

  The streets of Chicago were teeming with Friday night revelers: office girls still wearing their suits and high heels, executives clutching their smartphones, kids just under legal drinking age who were hoping to sneak into one of the city’s packed bars. I didn’t notice the details that made them unique, only the veins and arteries that throbbed in their necks and foreheads.

  Every now and then, when a woman passed me on the sidewalk, I caught a flash of her soft throat and breasts and smelled the scent of coursing blood.

  “Oops! Excuse me!” A girl in a sorority sweatshirt came stumbling out of a nightclub, colliding with me. She giggled her apology. Her cheeks were hot pink from the cocktails she’d been drinking. I could practically taste the alcohol that would be mixed in with her fresh young blood.

  My fangs shot out and my lips curled back in a snarl. She threw me a look of terror, then hurried away to join her friends.

  I hated seeing that look of stark fear on human faces, especially when I had caused it.

  But I couldn’t go on much longer without feeding.

  In the past, during dry weeks like these, I had gotten a temporary fix from the blood of stray dogs or cats. But animal blood didn’t have the right composition, and killing innocent beasts made me feel like shit. With humans, at least I could justify the act. No mortal was completely innocent—that’s what separated them from the angels.

  I thought about texting one of my connections at the blood bank to find out if he could steal me a couple of bags of type O+. Type O went down smooth, but it didn’t really satisfy me. Then, there was my guilt about stealing blood that could have saved a human life when blood donations were getting harder to come by.

  So, I walked the streets, waiting for my need to build to the point that it drowned out my conscience.

  Since I’d met Georgia, I had found myself thinking a lot about my father. My mother, Lenora, was a vampire, but my father was human. I used to beg my mom to tell me what his name was. What did he look like? What did he do? Where had she met him?

  Lenora had blown off my questions with a wave of her red-taloned hand. Lighting one of her Lucky Strikes, she would laugh and say that the stork delivered me. What else did I need to know? Besides, I should be overjoyed to be immortal.

  I had to assume I’d been born out of a one-night stand with one of her blood donors. My mother had plenty of those. Lenora was a torch singer at a nightclub, and men fell over themselves to hook up with her after her sultry performances. One of those men, maybe a traveling salesman or a married accountant out for a night on the town, had been the lucky stud who became my father.

  In 1950, when I was born, those secret dalliances were accepted. Men went out and did what they had to do to satisfy their needs. They fantasized about women like my mother, who had the wavy auburn hair and knockout curves of Rita Hayworth, while they dutifully mated with their wives at home.

  I had spent years trying to track down my father’s side of my family, but the only trace he had left behind was a human conscience, which filled me with guilt every time I tried to satisfy my blood thirst.

  Olympia had tried to help me out by creating a salve that would numb my victim’s skin and eclipse their memory of the feeding. Her potion had been a lifesaver on more than one occasion, allowing me to drink my fill while knowing that the human would never remember what happened. They’d feel a little anemic for a few days, but their blood cells would regenerate and they’d never know why they’d felt so weak and tired.

  I had a jar of that salve in the pocket of my trench coat tonight. Just in case.

  I strolled by one of my usual hunting grounds, a plasma donation center. The donors usually needed money, so I would slip a fifty-dollar bill into their pockets after leaving them unconscious at the back of the building. They weren’t my favorite victims—their blood was often altered by booze or drugs—but they were easy to target and readily available.

  But I’d waited too long to start hunting tonight. The plasma center was closed.

  Shit. Now I would have to hang out at a bar. I wasn’t in the mood for casual banter, or feeding cocktails to unassuming women. I just wanted a deep, long, solitary feed—the kind that could keep me going for a few weeks.

  With the plasma center closed, it looked like the bars were my last option. I headed back in the direction of the night life, taking a shortcut through a par
king lot. As I crossed the lot, my footsteps quickened. Now that I’d made up my mind, I was more anxious than ever to feed. My heartbeat accelerated at the thought of warm, rich human blood pulsing from its source into my mouth and down my throat. There just wasn’t any substitute.

  I almost didn’t notice her at first. In the unforgiving light of the fluorescent parking lot lamps, she was plain, a brown sparrow dressed in a cheap business suit that fit snugly around her plump figure. Her wobbly, lopsided gait told me that her high-heeled pumps were too tight—her feet were probably swollen after hours behind a desk. Her brown hair, worn in a chin-length bob, was threaded with gray.

  She stopped at a silver Toyota hatchback and fumbled in her purse for her keys. She’d had a couple of drinks, maybe a dry white wine to spare herself any extra calories. She pulled out a pair of reading glasses, put them on, and went back to rummaging in her bag. With an audible sigh of relief, she successfully fished her keys out of her purse.

  Then she dropped them.

  As she bent over to find her keys on the asphalt, I noticed the wiggle in her round bottom. That polyester skirt didn’t look half bad covering her broad hindquarters. Her ankles, slim and delicate, rose gracefully up to rounded calves.

  “Hey there. Can I help you?”

  She stood up. Her face was flushed. She brushed a stray lock of hair away from her eyes. When she smiled, lines formed around her curving lips. Somehow, those lines made her full mouth all the more appetizing. I guessed her to be in her mid-forties, divorced or separated from a husband who had left her for a younger woman. That would explain how she was able to afford a pricey haircut, but not the color to hide that gray.

  “Oh. Well. I dropped my keys, and now I can’t find them. They must have slid under the car.”

  “Let me take a look for you.” I bent over and peered under the Toyota. I found her keys and slipped them into my pocket.

  “How strange,” I said. “I saw you drop them, but now I don’t see them anywhere.”

  “It’s not that strange.” She laughed. “Happens to me all the time. There are three locksmiths in the city who have my phone number in their contact lists.”

  “I’m sure there are a lot of men in Chicago who have you in their contacts. I wouldn’t mind being one of them myself.”

  I kept my tone light—a lady like this didn’t need a heavy hand. Her round face turned pink again. Her neck was smooth, her skin glossy. I could feel the sharp pop my fangs would make when they broke through the thin barrier over her jugular vein.

  “I’d better call someone before it gets dark,” she said. She was trying to pretend she hadn’t heard my come-on.

  “Most locksmiths charge a fat fee for coming out after hours,” I remarked.

  “I know. I’ve paid that fee more than once.”

  “Why don’t you wait till tomorrow morning? I could call a cab for you.”

  “Oh, no. Don’t do that.” She laughed nervously. “I’ll take the bus. The bus line runs right by my apartment.”

  I imagined the kind of apartment she would live in—a one-bedroom economy rental in some anthill for hopeful cubicle slaves like herself, who were always just missing the boat to success.

  When she dropped her keys, she had probably been heading home for a quiet evening, dinner in front of the TV with a glass of wine in one hand, her phone in the other. Every now and then, she would check her phone for messages from whatever dating app she was using these days.

  Tonight was going to be nothing like what she’d imagined.

  As we talked, I scanned the parking lot for strangers who might get in the way of my plans. The lot was empty. I moved subtly toward my target, backing her closer to her car as we talked about the easiest way to get her back home.

  “If you wouldn’t mind walking me to the bus stop, I can take it from there. It’s really no problem. I take the bus all the time. Sometimes just for fun, just to watch the people—”

  I took one last step in her direction. Just a little too close for her comfort.

  “Oops!”

  She teetered backwards, collapsing against the hood of her Toyota.

  Time to strike.

  Her eyes, an innocent shade of blue gray, widened in terror. I held her head down on the car, clamping her carotid artery between my thumb and index finger. Not hard enough to leave bruises, just enough to knock her out. I reached for the tube of Olympia’s salve and squeezed a generous dollop onto the right side of her throat.

  I shifted my weight so I was leaning over her. Anyone who happened to see us would think we were sharing a passionate kiss.

  Then, I struck.

  The first taste of her blood sent a current of relief and desire through my body. She was just what I’d been longing for—a clean source, a pure fountain of the red life-juice that I craved. Her blood was untainted by toxins or debris: a vampire’s version of Evian.

  Her body undulated under mine. She was just awake enough to know that I was using her, but not alert enough to fight me. Her full, bucking hips added to my excitement. I almost reached for her plump ass before I stopped myself.

  This wasn’t about sex. It was about survival.

  I drank my fill like a ravenous wolf. The guttural noises that I made while I fed always left the human half of me feeling disgusted, but I couldn’t do anything about it. That lust was the only legacy that dear old Mom had left me.

  My victim’s body went limp. Her throat, once warm and pulsing, now felt flaccid and cool under my hand.

  She wouldn’t last much longer.

  Reluctantly, I pulled away, retracting my fangs. Twin streams of blood trickled from the puncture wounds in her neck. Girly-girl that she was, Olympia had included a healing herb in her salve that would close those wounds before morning, leaving no unsightly scars on my victim’s skin.

  Holding the woman by the waist, I pulled her keys out of my pocket and opened the driver’s side door to her car. I eased her into the driver’s seat and left her keys in her lap. Then, I leaned the driver’s seat back so that she could get a good, long sleep before waking up at dawn, wondering what the hell had happened to her.

  I left her keys lying in her lap, locked the door of her car, and closed her safely inside.

  Whadda gentleman! I never even copped a feel.

  By the time I got back to the warehouse, I was wiped out. Even though I was the one taking the blood donation, I felt just as drained as my victims after a long feed. According to Dominic, that was the human side of me trying to “process my guilt.”

  He was probably right.

  “You really should try just one kill,” Dominic had told me. “You wouldn’t believe the rush you get when they take that last breath. It’s like having the most astounding orgasm of your life while you’re winning the lottery. No other way to describe it.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I had replied with a shudder. “I like to keep my karma as clean as possible.”

  “Only humans have karma,” Dominic had said with a sniff. “Vampires don’t need it. We don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen to us in our next life—we never die in the first place.”

  I had to admit he had a point.

  Before heading up to my room to pass out, I stopped at the training center to see if anyone was there. I was hoping to catch up with Kingston to see if he knew anything about a demon called Paimon. I wasn’t going to tell him about the gruesome death of Paimon’s minion. I just wanted to see how Kingston would react when I mentioned Paimon’s name.

  Kingston wasn’t in the training center, as it turned out.

  Eli was there. With Georgia.

  “Stay low!” he shouted. “Don’t stand up—you need to be ready for me.”

  Georgia crouched in front of him, her graceful arms extended for balance. She shifted back and forth, trying to keep up with Eli’s swift movements. Her long hair swung around her face like an ebony curtain. That exquisite, heart-shaped face of hers was flushed from her training, her
violet eyes bright from the exertion. Her full lips were pressed tight in determination as she trained those incandescent eyes on Eli.

  Had she ever stared at me with such intensity when we’d trained together?

  When she moved, I noticed that Georgia had gotten faster, nimbler than she’d been only a few days ago. In those skin-tight jeans she wore, her thighs had new muscle definition. Georgia healed fast, and it turned out that she built muscle fast, too.

  Maybe she was simply on steroids. That would explain it all—if Georgia were only human and not half-demon.

  Before Georgia could block his attack, Eli rushed her. If her reflexes were on pointe, she would have tripped him or caught his forearm before he could reach her, but she wasn’t quite quick enough. Georgia shrieked. She managed to escape being crushed by Eli’s weight by diving under his left arm and falling in a heap on the floor.

  “Not bad,” Eli said. After all that ducking and weaving, he was barely out of breath. His tight white t-shirt displayed his abs, pecs, and biceps to perfection.

  No wonder Georgia couldn’t keep her eyes off him. I envied Eli’s ripped abs, his sinewy arms and legs. He didn’t carry a lot of bulk—he didn’t need to. His muscles were compact, his limbs lean. He was a warrior, not a bodybuilder.

  “Hey, Carter,” Eli called. “Want to go a few rounds with me?”

  I replied with a weak smile. I couldn’t imagine anything I’d rather do less right now than fight with Eli. Under the best of circumstances, he always kicked my ass. I had only fought him three times in the years we’d known each other, and that was to protect my ego.

  “You don’t look so hot, Carter,” Georgia remarked. She stood with her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “You’re not sick, are you?”

  “I’m fine. Nothing a long nap won’t fix.”

  “In a coffin, maybe?” Georgia tilted her head and waited for my reaction.

  I snapped to attention, suddenly one hundred-percent awake. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked.