“I think you should let him,” Samantha said to Fulton. “I’d like to hear what she has to say as well.”
Fulton shook his head. “Child, you know so very little. What’s been done to Nadia and her sister is an abomination. If our matriarch thinks another demon clan has committed an atrocity against the Lamiah, she will declare war, and you do not want to be in the middle of a demon war. What happened last year is a schoolyard scuffle compared to what an all-out demon war would do. There hasn’t been one in centuries.”
Samantha felt a qualm of unease, but she pressed on. “The matriarch might already know who is doing this and point me in the right direction. Then I make an arrest and stop a war before it starts.”
Fulton let out his breath, resting his fists, one still clutching the pancake turner, on the counter. “That is the other thing you don’t understand, Sam. I can’t simply take you to the matriarch. You have to be accepted into the clan before you’re allowed to even get near her.”
“But I’m your daughter. Doesn’t that make me of the clan Lamiah?”
Fulton straightened up and slid another finished pancake onto the stack warming on the back of the stove. “You’re not of full blood.”
Samantha’s irritation rose. “And that’s bad, I take it?”
Tain broke in, his rumbling Welsh accent filling the room. “Demons are very old-fashioned. Trust me on this. I was taught about demons by a master.”
Fulton dribbled more batter onto the grill. “It’s difficult for some demons to accept that we now mate with non-demons. Less than a hundred years ago, a demon could be slain if he even married outside the clan. His mate and any offspring would also be killed. Times have changed, but still it is difficult for demons to accept intermarriage.”
Samantha’s uneasiness rose at her father’s flat statement—His mate and any offspring would also be killed.
“If demons weren’t allowed to marry outside the clan, didn’t that lead to inbreeding after a while?” Samantha asked Fulton. “Receding chins, genetic diseases, that kind of thing?”
“Demon clans are huge,” Fulton said. “And not all the families are related. But yes, learning about genetics was one reason for lifting the ban on intermarriage. That is, it’s acceptable for demons to mate with humans, but marrying across clans is still discouraged and carries a stigma for the mated couple and their children.”
“What happens if the Lamiah clan decides not to accept me?”
Fulton looked quickly back at the griddle, scraping his plastic turner under the firming batter. “That’s up to the matriarch.”
The way he carefully avoided Samantha’s gaze as he finished the pancakes told her that things could get bad for the rejected half-blood demon.
“Nothing will happen to Samantha,” Tain said, his deep voice breaking the silence. “I won’t let it.”
“You won’t be there at all,” Fulton said, looking up at him. “The clan matriarch will never allow someone as full of life magic as you anywhere near her.”
“That’s what Merrick said,” Samantha added.
Fulton scowled. “Merrick. He’s scum of the earth. Stay away from him.”
“I know he is. That’s why I arrested him. It’s kind of my job, Dad.”
Fulton turned quickly away. Tain watched both of them, his expression revealing nothing.
“The matriarch will see me,” Tain said to Fulton after a moment. “The easiest way to do this is for you to bring me in with Samantha. I’ll follow the matriarch’s rules, but she’ll meet me.”
Tain was going to insist, and Samantha decided not to argue with him. The idea of having Tain at her back when Fulton presented her to the matriarch appealed to her.
“She might decide to take it out on me,” Fulton said still focusing on the pancakes. “Maybe forbid me to see my wife and Samantha.”
“She won’t,” Tain said.
Fulton finally turned around, his dark eyes moist. “I take it you’ve never met a clan matriarch, Immortal. You couldn’t have, or you wouldn’t be so cocky.”
“Perhaps not,” Tain said.
“Tain killed an Old One,” Samantha said. “One of the most ancient and powerful demons that walked the earth. Perhaps it’s the matriarch who shouldn’t be cocky.”
“I heard about that,” Fulton said. He looked sharply at Tain. “But when you meet the Lamiah matriarch, you might wish you were back doing battle with that Old One.”
Samantha’s mother returned not long after that, happy to see Samantha and intrigued to meet Tain. Tain even agreed to a breakfast of pancakes and bacon and ate heartily—maybe tearing up a demon club first thing in the morning gave an Immortal an appetite.
Fulton finally agreed to try to set up the appointment with the matriarch and told Samantha what they’d be expected to do and even wear if the matriarch accepted.
Mission accomplished. Samantha finished breakfast with her family and called another taxi for her and Tain.
“Are you sure I can’t drive you home?” Fulton asked as they all went outside.
Samantha shook her head. “You did enough, fixing breakfast and helping with the matriarch. Call me once you know?”
Her father nodded. When the taxi arrived, Samantha hugged her mother, promising to return to visit soon, and she and Tain climbed in the back.
“I think my father started crying while we were talking about what the matriarch might do to him,” Samantha said as the taxi rolled away from Pasadena, heading west. “He must be very worried about the consequences of this meeting.”
Tain’s harsh gaze suddenly softened, making his face more human. “He wasn’t crying because of that.”
Samantha gave him a puzzled look. “What then?”
Tain’s blue eyes became more gentle than she’d ever seen them. “He was crying because you called him Dad.”
Before Samantha and Tain could meet with the clan Lamiah matriarch, Merrick’s club in Venice burned to the ground.
It happened at mid-morning, two days after Samantha and Tain had talked with Fulton, when anyone who worked at the club, which closed at five a.m., would be gone or sleeping in apartments above it. Samantha and Logan went to the call, watching from the perimeter while firemen directed their hoses onto the club and the buildings close around it.
The demon employees who lived in the building—the bartender and several of the female demons—huddled in blankets outside the ring of police barricades. The young women were crying, the bartender watching the fire with a stunned look on his face.
“Where’s Merrick?” Samantha asked the bartender, but he shrugged as though he couldn’t manage enough energy to answer.
“He didn’t get out,” one of the women sobbed. “He pushed me down the stairs and got me to the door, but he didn’t come after me.”
“Damn it.” Samantha shoved her way to one of the firemen who’d stepped back to drink some water. “Did Merrick make it out?” she shouted at him. “The owner? One of the girls thinks he’s still in there.”
The fireman shook his head, looking grim. “We tried to get to him, but we couldn’t. The middle floors are completely gone, and the ladder trucks had to back off.”
Samantha gnawed her lip. She didn’t like Merrick, but she didn’t necessarily want to watch him burn to death either. If he reverted to his demon form, he might make it—demons were tough—but smoke inhalation could take down most forms of life except vampire.
“Hey!” one of the firemen bellowed. He backed up to where Samantha stood with the other fireman. “Someone just ran in there. Asshole. It’s a death sentence—for us too, because now we have to try to get him out.”
“No.” Samantha stopped him. “You don’t need to go after him. He won’t die in there.”
The two firemen stared at her in surprise, but Samantha had seen California sunshine on flame-red hair and knew exactly who’d run into the fire.
Chapter Nine
Tain found Merrick in his living room, the demon recli
ning on a leather sofa and sipping a glass of brandy. The walls were bare, the expensive artwork gone.
Flames and smoke rampaged in the rooms surrounding this one, but the living room was an oasis of relative calm. Merrick had employed some kind of magic to seal himself into safety, but the spell wouldn’t be strong enough to keep the fire back for long.
“Now I know I’m in hell,” Merrick said when he saw Tain stride in, straight through fire and the magic barrier. “And not the good kind.”
Tain didn’t answer. Smoke seeped under the doors on the other side of the room, the fire starting to break through Merrick’s magic.
“Are you here to save me?” Merrick asked, unruffled. “Or to make certain the fire does its job?”
“Samantha wants you out.”
“Sweet girl, our Sam. What do we do? Run out through it? That’s fine for you. You can survive a burning building falling on you.”
Tain folded his arms. “Whenever you’re done with your drink . . .”
The magic shield cracked like breaking glass, and fire roared through the open door. Merrick threw aside his brandy and leapt to his feet. “What now?”
The window that had afforded the beautiful view of the sea and pier was already broken. Tain kicked away melting, jagged shards and stepped up to the cleared sill.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Merrick said, eyes wide. “We’re at least fifty feet up.”
Flame roared through the room, engulfing the opulent leather couch on which Merrick had just been sitting. Without a word, Tain picked up the protesting Merrick, slung the demon-man over his shoulder, balanced a moment in the window, and stepped off the sill.
Merrick screamed obscenities. Tain threw a handful of white-hot magic at the ground to slow their fall, but he still landed hard, going down with Merrick’s weight. Tain rolled and came back to his feet as the building’s bricks began popping out with the heat.
Paramedics dragged Merrick out of the way, he collapsing against them and groaning. Tain tossed off his ruined coat and scrubbed his hand across his grimy, cut face.
Samantha hurried to them, her dark eyes round. She reached for Tain, her cool hand contacting his hot skin, an impulsive gesture of worry and caring.
“Are you all right? I saw you jump.”
Tain waved off the paramedic who was trying to get him to sit down and be examined. “Merrick will live.” He glanced at the demon the paramedics were easing onto a stretcher. “But I think he wet himself on the way down.”
“I would too if you jumped out the window with me. You damn near gave me a heart attack.” Samantha’s eyes were watering, probably from all the smoke. She blinked them clear, then looked at him in horror. “Tain, your hair.”
Tain put his hand up and came away with a handful of brittle, charred lumps. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll cut it off.”
“I like your hair.” She sounded wistful.
Tain held out the clumps out to her, the corners of his mouth lifting into a smile. “You can have it if you like it so much.”
Samantha put her hand over her mouth, and tears leaked from her eyes. “You are such a shit. I know you can’t be hurt, but . . .”
“I can be hurt. I hurt all the time.”
Again, the cool hand on his wrist. “I hate seeing you like that.”
Tain looked into dark eyes that dragged him inside her. He hadn’t spoken to Samantha since she’d left the taxi they’d shared from Pasadena two mornings ago. Tain’s basic urges had wanted him to go with her into her apartment and stay, but he’d made himself turn away, returning to prowling the city.
He’d wanted her in his own apartment in the small hours of the night, as he lay on his bed and stared at reflections of city lights rippling across his ceiling. He wanted her to be with him, her head snuggled on his shoulder, her silken hair spread over his chest while his neighbor’s music thumped through the wall.
Tain craved Samantha like a starving man. He feared the hunger at the same time he embraced it. He didn’t want the emotions that had begun to stream through him in Seattle to continue, and at the same time, he didn’t want what was nudging its way to his surface destroyed.
Samantha’s voice had cut through the nightmare of his mind the night of that final battle. I prefer to go out kicking and screaming, she’d said, her voice crisp. And then she’d given him an all-over assessment and told him frankly that she liked what she saw. Samantha had been terrified—Tain had tasted it in the air, and yet she’d looked him in the eye and told him to get over himself.
For the first time in centuries, a spark of interest had crept into Tain’s dark, tormented world. A half-demon woman, of all people, had finally snapped his bonds.
Tain touched the corner of Samantha’s mouth, wiping away a smudge of soot. He stroked again, the softness of her like rose petals against his fingertips.
The chaos around him vanished—the stench, the shouting, the fear of the fire’s victims. Tain saw only Samantha, her dark eyes, her red lips slightly parted, her skin beneath his touch.
Samantha swallowed, her slender throat working. “We should go talk to Merrick,” she said, voice cracking.
Tain traced the corner of her lip with one finger, something tight inside him loosening. Then he lifted his hand from her, though he still held her gaze.
Samantha swallowed again and stepped back, turning her burning black eyes away from him.
Tain’s heart bore a little ache as he followed her to the ambulance where the paramedics had carried Merrick on his stretcher, an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Merrick’s hair had burned too, leaving him half-bald and scowling.
“Hi, Merrick,” Samantha said in a cheerful voice. “Glad to see you made it.”
The demon mumbled something, the words lost behind the mask.
“Any idea what happened?” she asked him. The no-nonsense policewoman was back, the demon seductress hidden away.
Merrick nodded. They’d bandaged burns on his hands, which made his fingers clumsy as he fumbled with his suit jacket. “In the pocket,” he said under the plastic mask.
Samantha took a pair of latex gloves from her pocket, pulled them on, and dipped her fingers into the ruined silk of Merrick’s coat. She pulled out a piece of paper, which she unfolded.
Tain read over her shoulder. In letters cut from newspapers and magazines, the message read, Thy Doom is Here.
Merrick slid his mask to his forehead. “Found it this morning as I was closing up. I didn’t know what the hell it meant, but I guess I do now.”
Samantha folded the paper and dropped it into a bag for forensics. “I’ll have it checked for prints or anything else that can help us, but I’m not hopeful. Do you know how the fire started?”
“Explosion of some kind, I think in the room right under my bedroom. It spread fast. I didn’t know fire could move that fast.”
“It can. Especially if it was helped along by fuel or magic. Or both.”
“No kidding.” His sarcasm carried beyond the oxygen mask. “Please tell me you’re going after the bastards.”
Samantha nodded, looking competent and confident, another thing she was good at. “You’ll be happy to know that Kemmerer of the Djowlan clan is in jail. He sold Nadia and her sister to their captors.”
“I heard.” Merrick oozed satisfaction in spite of his life in ruins around him. “Did he tell you who the captors were?”
“He didn’t know. They took good care to keep from being seen. We had a telepath do lie detection on him, but he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t know. And lo and behold, he’s been getting the same kind of ‘doom’ letters you are. I have the feeling these captors and letter senders are one in the same.”
“Good work, detective,” Merrick said in a dry voice.
“Don’t push it. The fire is a pretty good way to hide any traces of Mindglow we might have found if we searched your club.”
“Oh, please. I’m not blithering stupid enough to burn down my own club to get rid
of evidence.”
“I know.” Samantha patted Merrick’s shoulder. “I was teasing you. I’ll get whoever’s doing this, I promise you that.”
Tain believed her. Samantha wore a determined look, and Tain had the feeling she’d do any kind of crazy thing she could think of to bring down the perpetrators. Which meant Tain needed to stick with her to keep her alive through it all.
Samantha had saved his life once. Maybe if he got her alive through this, it would make things even.
Tain knew things between him and Samantha would never be even, but the idea was one he could grasp amid the smoke and madness, a tiny lifeline to cling to.
When Fulton told Samantha she needed to dress formally to meet the clan matriarch, he meant it. No slinky dresses, no spike-heeled shoes, no bare legs, no bare shoulders.
Samantha had to rent a gown, a shimmering blue silk with elbow-length sleeves, a collar that hugged the base of her neck, and a long skirt. The bodice itched, and she had to kick the skirt out of the way to walk, but Fulton said it was modest enough for the matriarch.
“I feel like I’m being presented to the queen,” Samantha muttered as she studied herself in the full-length mirror in her mother’s guest room. Of course, in the demon way of thinking, she pretty much was.
Tain met Samantha at Joanne’s house, from which Fulton would drive them to the matriarch’s mansion. Fulton had made it clear that the matriarch had agreed to see Samantha only after a long debate. Fulton speculated that the reason the matriarch had granted the audience at all was her curiosity about Tain.
Tain’s idea of formal was a Scottish dress kilt. Samantha stopped in heart-pounding delight when she saw him.
Whatever the Celtic man of fashion had been wearing eighteen centuries ago, Samantha didn’t know, but Tain had chosen a black suit coat, white shirt, and red-and-black plaid kilt. He was a big man, but the coat fit him perfectly, tailor-made, she could tell. The kilt’s hem brushed just below his knees, and his muscular calves were encased in supple black boots.
The Redeeming Page 9