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

by Sara Snow

  “Happy birthday, darling,” I whispered into her hair. “And many, many more.”

  The moment my body hit the mattress, sleep took over. If Georgia reached for me in her dreams, I wasn’t aware of it. My slumber was so profound that I didn’t dream at all, even after that wildly exciting kiss.

  I don’t remember what woke me, but I found myself bolting upright in bed in a pitch-black room. The green digits on my alarm clock’s display read 03:33. I rubbed my eyes.

  A magical number if ever there was one.

  I realized what had woken me when I heard Jose’s knock on my door. I recognized its pattern: a scurry of knuckles across the wood. He always claimed that he didn’t want to wake me, but when he had one of his nightmares, he would knock and knock until I finally tore myself out of the arms of sleep.

  Unless, of course, he woke me with his screams.

  I got out of bed and stumbled to the door. Under the dim track lights of the hallway, Jose’s face was drawn and haunted.

  “Nightmare?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t have woken you to tell you about it, but I thought it was important. It was about Georgia.”

  Now I was fully awake. When Jose had a nightmare about someone, it was a sure sign that the subject of that nightmare should watch their back.

  “Come on in and tell me about it.”

  “No, that’s okay. We can talk here. The nightmare itself wasn’t all that scary. It was what I learned that woke me up.”

  He hesitated, as if he was having second thoughts about coming here to talk to me.

  “Go on. What did you learn in your dream?”

  “It was more like a message than a real dream. I saw a thin man sitting on a horse. The man wore a hood with jewels on it, or maybe the jewels were a crown. He wore a long, red robe tied at the waist, and the rope tied around his waist held a chain of human skulls. I couldn’t see much of his face beneath the hood, but he scared me a lot.”

  “Where does Georgia come in?” I asked.

  Jose shook his head. “My dreams aren’t always easy to interpret, you know. Sometimes I make mistakes. Visions turn out to be false. Messages turn out to be confused. The man in the long robe sitting on the horse had a name: Paimon. A voice in the dream spoke out of nowhere, and it told me a secret.”

  I had never felt impatient with Jose until tonight. I couldn’t stand there waiting for him to tell me what this dream had to do with Georgia. Right now, she could be in grave danger, and I was standing here waiting for Jose to take his sweet time with this story.

  “What was the secret? What does it have to do with Georgia?” I repeated. Maybe if I kept repeating my questions, my pleas would finally reach Jose.

  “Do you know who Paimon is?” Jose asked.

  “A powerful high-level demon. One of the overlords, known as King Paimon in Hell. Very handsome, very seductive. Why do you ask?”

  “Because the voice told me that Paimon is Georgia’s father.”

  That statement knocked the impatience right out of me. Jose’s dreams could be terrifying, and they were often weird. But they were never wrong.

  Paimon. I recalled the flayed chest of the body in the park. A single letter had been burned into the victim’s flesh with a branding iron: P.

  “Did you see anything else in your vision?” I asked, sounding much calmer than I felt. “Anything that might happen to Georgia in the future?”

  “No. I just got the message that Georgia was in danger. Something’s going to happen to her. Someone is going to try to hurt her.”

  It had been years since I’d met with Paimon, a faithful servant of Lucifer. It looked like I would be wrangling with King Paimon again very soon.

  23

  Georgia

  When I woke in the morning, my head was spinning—not just from the brandy I had drunk the night before, but from the kaleidoscope of memories from the party and Carter’s kiss. Images of balloons, streamers, food, and cake swirled through my head. Then, there was the heart-stopping gift that Carter had given me and the surprise of that kiss.

  I knew that my attraction to Carter was growing, but I’d been stunned by how much I wanted him in the game room last night. Now, I was glad that he’d stopped our kiss before it got out of control. If he had given into his vampiric nature and sunk his fangs into my throat, I don’t think I would have had the will to stop him.

  After a long, hot shower, my whirling mind slowed down again. I was going to have to face my normal life again soon. My school assignments, the failing test grade, and my job weren’t going to vanish just because I made out with a vampire. But there was no denying that the kiss had changed something in me.

  This morning, I knew that I wanted more from life than an apartment and a job. I wanted my passion back. I wanted to feel deeply desired. And I wanted to build a life that had lots of room for my music.

  Carter was nowhere in sight when I padded downstairs in my bare feet to find coffee. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a mug from the coffee machine that always seemed to magically fill itself. The caffeine cleared the last of the cobwebs out of my head, and I was able to think clearly again.

  “Hello, birthday girl.”

  Carter’s voice broke the peaceful silence in the kitchen. He poured coffee for himself and drank while he scanned the display on his phone, as if this were just another morning in the course of his life. He didn’t even meet my eyes as he picked up a copy of the Chicago Tribune and began to browse the headlines.

  Apparently, he was going to play off our kiss like a drunken accident.

  Fine. It wouldn’t be the first time a guy had brushed me off after a drunken make-out session.

  “Hey,” I said, keeping my tone light. I wished I had a newspaper and a phone to hide behind. “Any good news out there?”

  “Not in the human world.”

  His cool attitude was pissing me off. His brow furrowed as he read.

  “Are you the same guy I kissed last night?” I blurted out. “Or has that guy been replaced by a total jerk?”

  Carter folded the newspaper and slapped it down on the counter. He ran his fingers through his dark hair.

  “Shit. I’m sorry, Georgia. I was up late last night.”

  “Well, in case you forgot, so was I.”

  “Believe me,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  Finally, Carter looked up from his newspaper and smiled at me. His face softened, and the desire I felt for him last night came flooding back. That smile almost made up for his cool attitude earlier.

  “Okay,” I said. “So, what happened last night?”

  “After I went to bed, Jose had another nightmare. He woke me up around 3:30 in the morning, and I never got back to sleep.”

  For the first time, I noticed the bluish circles under his eyes. He gave me a searching look, as if he was studying my face to find the source of Jose’s bad dream. I wished that I could ask Carter what was bothering him, why his lust for me had suddenly gone as cold as day-old coffee. But that would make me sound like a needy little kid, and I wasn’t going to go there.

  “What was his nightmare about?” I asked.

  “Another demon. We’re not talking about a low-level scumbag. There’s a demon from the higher echelons involved this time, and he’s going to have minions behind him. We need to get you ready to help us win a major confrontation.”

  I had been thinking of something more along the lines of a cozy brunch with eggs Benedict and a few mimosas, maybe followed by another kiss or two. Talk about a change in plans.

  But I was becoming one of them now—a demon hunter. I couldn’t skip training when there was a new threat on the horizon.

  “Sounds like there’s a training session in my future,” I said, already regretting the loss of my lazy morning.

  “You’d better believe it. Finish your coffee and follow me.”

  The training room had been stripped of its festive streamers and heaps of balloons. All of the leftover food a
nd crumpled gift wrap had been cleared away, restoring the space to its original state. Without the party decorations, the room looked about as inviting as an empty school gymnasium. Dancing, music, and laughter weren’t welcome—today, we were there to get strong and kick ass.

  Carter pulled off his shirt and threw it onto a chair. I’d never seen him undress for training before. Standing there in only a pair of track pants and running shoes, he looked like he was warming up for a martial arts tournament.

  “You must be serious about this—you’re getting naked,” I said.

  “Half-naked,” he corrected. “I fully intend to keep my pants on.”

  I couldn’t help noticing, though I tried not to, that he looked hot that morning. The muscles of his arms, chest, and abdomen were lean but perfectly sculpted. His torso was almost hairless, except for a line of dark hair that started at his navel and disappeared below his waistband.

  I gulped, wondering what it would be like to trace that line with the tip of my tongue. I remembered how hard and unresisting his body had felt last night when he held me, and how painful it had been to feel him pull away.

  But this wasn’t the time to talk about last night. Carter was all business, pushing benches and other equipment against the walls as he got the room ready for training.

  “Are we going to use the iron stakes today?” I asked.

  “Nope. Today, we’re going mano a mano.”

  “Want to translate that for me?”

  “One-on-one. Hand-to-hand combat.”

  “I thought that was Eli’s specialty,” I said.

  Carter scowled at me. “Eli isn’t the only one who needs to know how to street-fight. We all do. If we find ourselves in deep shit with an army of demons, we can’t count on keeping our weapons in hand. We’ll have to rely on these.”

  He held up his fists. I got the point.

  Before I could ask him any more questions, Carter made the first move. He crouched down and rushed me, pinning my arms to my sides and lifting me off the floor.

  I shrieked in surprise. “What are you doing?”

  “If I were a demon, you’d be halfway across the room by now,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m not going to throw you—I just want you to see what a demon is capable of.”

  Carter let me go. I landed on my feet with a thud. Then, I grabbed him by the shoulders and kneed him in the crotch.

  “And that’s what I’m capable of,” I said.

  He grunted in shock. The blood drained from his face. I almost felt sorry for the guy, until I remembered how he’d blown me off in the kitchen. He had been so condescending, hiding behind his newspaper. I might as well have been a twelve-year-old with a crush, someone he would joke about with his buddies later.

  Georgia has the hots for me, I could hear him saying to Eli. Isn’t that cute? Too bad she’s not any older. I don’t have time for little girls.

  Clutching his goods, Carter tried to stand upright. I wheeled around and clocked him in the jaw with a high kick. The blow knocked him flat on his back. I jumped on top of him and squeezed his lower body with my thighs as I pressed his shoulders into the ground. Now, he was the one getting pinned.

  If he wasn’t messing around, then neither would I.

  “Beg me for mercy! Beg me!”

  “Mercy already,” he groaned.

  I sat up, triumphant. It was so good to be on top for once. I couldn’t believe how powerful I felt, how fast I had become since I’d started training. A wild excitement pounded through my veins. I could have roared like a lioness.

  The second I let down my guard, Carter bucked his hips and flipped me over onto my back. He grasped both of my wrists and held my arms over my head.

  “Do you give in?”

  “No,” I gasped. I kicked and flailed, but Carter’s muscular body was much stronger than mine. I was able to twist and turn, but I couldn’t regain my advantage. His grip loosened, and I knew he was giving me just enough slack to writhe around for his entertainment.

  I wasn’t playing. I shook my wrists free, sat up, and slapped him in the face—hard. The sound of that hard slap rang through the training room. A bright red handprint was already forming on his cheek. Panting, I fell back onto the floor.

  He stopped, stunned. He touched his cheek gingerly.

  “That was personal, wasn’t it?”

  “You’d better believe it. That was your payback for the attitude you gave me. The way you feel is exactly how I felt when you ignored me.”

  “I wasn’t ignoring you, I didn’t know what to say—”

  “Mr. Suave didn’t know what to say?” I laughed mockingly. “Bullshit. You were blowing me off, hoping I’d pick up my toys and run home.”

  “Georgia, no. That was the last thing on my mind.”

  From the shocked look in Carter’s eyes, I almost believed him.

  “If that’s true, then what was the first thing on your mind?” I demanded.

  He paused for a second. “This.”

  Carter held me down again, but the goal of our game had changed. He cupped my face in his hand and kissed me. I kissed him back. This wasn’t the tender, shy kiss that we’d shared last night. Our mouths met in a rough clash of lips and tongues as our hands roved across each other’s bodies. Carter’s naked back was moist with sweat. I ran my fingers along his shoulders, then down to his waist. He reached for my hips, drawing me close as he pressed his groin into the soft hollow between my thighs.

  “What...the...fuck.”

  Olympia’s disbelieving laughter rang out like a bell. I broke away from Carter and pushed myself up onto my elbows. Carter rolled off me and awkwardly attempted to stand. At least we hadn’t ripped each other’s clothes off—yet.

  “We were, um, training,” I said. Even to my own ears, that sounded incredibly lame.

  “Yes, he’s a very experienced trainer,” Olympia said. “In fact, it might be safer for you to train with someone less experienced, Georgia. Carter is a wicked old vampire who doesn’t know any better than to leave his female students alone.”

  “Shut up, Olympia,” Carter snarled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think I know all too well.” Olympia winked at me. “Be careful. You wouldn’t be the first sweet young thing to become infatuated with a big, bad wolf.”

  She flounced out of the room. Blushing, I got to my feet. Carter and I exchanged guilty looks.

  “Is there some kind of history behind that?” I asked.

  “Yes. Olympia’s history. If I’m a wicked, old vampire, she’s a cynical witch. She can’t stand to see two people falling for each other. Her love life is nothing but a trail of dead bodies.”

  I did a double-take. Falling for each other. Had Carter really said that? More importantly, had he meant it?

  “But she does have a point,” Carter went on. “You’d be better off training with someone who doesn’t have feelings for you. Someone like Eli, who can stay objective. Clearly, I can’t.”

  The light in his eyes made me melt. “I’m sorry I slapped you so hard,” I said.

  “I’m not.” Carter stroked the place where I’d struck him. I could see the pink trace of my handprint on his cheek. “It was quite the turn-on. But it did bring our training session to a screeching halt. I’ll ask Eli to work out with you later today. I’ve got him out on a reconnaissance mission right now.”

  “Actually, I’m going back to my apartment this afternoon.”

  “Really?” Carter’s frown returned. “That’s not a good idea. Not until we know what we’re dealing with. I don’t want you out there in the city unless one of us is there to protect you.”

  There was a genuine note of fear in his voice. He knew something that I didn’t, and I wondered if Jose’s dream last night had anything to do with it.

  I tried to make light of his warning. “I did pretty well protecting myself from you not long ago. I can handle myself, Carter. I’m twenty-one years old now.”

  �
�All the more reason why you shouldn’t be out on the streets by yourself. At twenty-one, you’re right on the edge of becoming an adult. That’s prime time in the demon realm. You’re coming into your own, physically and emotionally. Your powers are emerging, and you’re getting good at using them. At the same time, you’re still naive enough for one of those scum-suckers to lure you into a trap.”

  “I don’t intend to let any demons or monsters trap me.” I tossed my hair back. “I feel stronger every day, Carter. I helped Eli kick Mammon’s ass, remember?”

  “Yes, you did. But if you had been alone, the ass getting kicked would have been yours. Trust me on that one. Eli makes it look easy to sneak into a demon’s lair and rip it to shreds. But that’s because he’s had years of practice and he knows all their tricks and cons. I’m afraid that if you were to walk out into the city right now, a thousand demons would descend to prey on you.”

  I sniffed, dismissing his fears with a wave of my hand. But I wasn’t as brave as I sounded. The thought of hordes of unseen demons following me through the streets of Chicago, waiting for their chance to maul me and make me one of their own, was terrifying.

  Had these evil beings been following me around since I was a kid? Or had they scented me out once I hit the end of puberty?

  “Fine, you win,” I said. “I’ll stay and train with Eli this afternoon. But only if you promise that someone will escort me back to my apartment tomorrow. I need to check on my school assignments, and I need to pick up a few things.”

  “I can promise you that.” Carter tugged playfully at a long strand of my hair. “If you promise to keep your knee at least six feet away from my crotch. That hurt.”

  After a quick shower, I went to the game room to hang out with my own thoughts for a while. The Venandi rarely left me alone when I was here at the warehouse. I needed time to process all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, and I couldn’t do that with Carter or Eli hovering over me.