“Anything else? For instance, would it weaken a demon to the point that he or she couldn’t revert to their demon form?”
“Possibly.” Merrick shifted in his designer chair. “But that’s not information I’d like to see made public.”
“I’m not a reporter,” Logan said.
“True, but you feed things to reporters you want the public to know.” He lifted his cup again. “I’m not sure what Mindglow would do to a demon for certain—I’ve never had reason to test it—but I believe it could keep a demon subdued enough to not be able to change at will.” He gave Logan a sharp look. “Is that what you think happened to Nadia and the Lamiah matriarch?”
“And possibly the assistant to the leader of No More Nightmares.”
As expected, Merrick didn’t look surprised by the news of Melanie Atkins’ death. Like Septimus, the demon seemed to know everything that went on in Los Angeles thirty seconds after it happened.
“An interesting problem for your police division.” Merrick took a thoughtful sip of coffee. “No doubt our dear Samantha will have her teeth in it as soon as she recovers. That is, if she takes her teeth out of her Immortal warrior long enough to pay attention to anything else. I’ll have to wait until Tain dumps her in the dust before I ask her out myself. I’m a snappy dresser and have all this luxury, but I can’t compete with muscles and gleaming swords.”
Logan let this speech run out before he asked, “What do you know about the demon attack today?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Merrick said at once. “I admit it—when I found out Samantha had come into my club as a honey trap, I was hurt, quite hurt. I didn’t even realize she was demon—she hides that part of her very well. But I respect her and, like I said, wouldn’t mind a little something with her. How you, werewolf, can work side by side with her every day without wanting to jump her bones, I can’t imagine.”
“I contain myself,” Logan said dryly. “Now, about the attack . . . ”
“I’d never do anything so crude as open a death realm portal on top of a skyscraper and try to batter my enemies with it,” Merrick said. “If I’d wanted Samantha dead—and my point is that I don’t—I’d be much more subtle. In fact, if I went after Samantha I’d want to do it myself, make it personal. I assure you, wolf, I have no idea who instigated the attack, though I could find out, if you like.”
For a price, Logan was certain. He kept his expression noncommittal and pretended to consult his notebook. “I came to ask you something else as well.”
Merrick smiled. “You amaze me.”
Logan met his gaze. “I’ll be blunt. Who is supplying Mindglow to the demon clubs? To be fair, I don’t think it’s you.”
Merrick made the slightest of shrugs. “I don’t know why you’d think I know anything about that.”
“You offered Mindglow to Samantha when you thought she was a demonwhore.”
“I did no such thing, my lad. I offered her herbal tea, to calm her down. Any Mindglow found in my club was planted there by those who attacked me.”
Logan kept his temper in check. He knew he was lucky Merrick had agreed to talk to him at all, and without his cold demon lawyer present, but he’d hoped he could get the man to give him something.
“Hypothetically, then,” Logan said. “If I wanted to get Mindglow in this town, and if I found it at a demon club, who would be supplying the club?”
“It would depend on what clan the club owner belonged to. Dealers like to deal within their own clans—they don’t trust outsiders.”
“All right, say it was a demon club in the Djowlan clan. Who, in theory, would supply them?”
“I’m not familiar with the goings-on of the Djowlan clan, at least with regard to Mindglow. Apparently, I don’t even know when they’re gearing up to attack me.”
“The Lamiah clan then,” Logan said, clenching his teeth. “If you happened to know who supplied clubs in the Lamiah clan, who—in theory—would that be?”
Logan didn’t really expect Merrick to answer. The man loved to dance around and not say anything while talking a lot—he was a careful criminal. He knew Merrick couldn’t afford to be seen assisting the police either, though he could be seen pretending to assist them. But whether he would tell Logan anything helpful was anyone’s guess.
Merrick laughed suddenly, a deep throaty laugh of true mirth. “You’re so much more diplomatic than your partner, Detective. She’d have been threatening me with bodily harm by now, or arresting me to show me that she could.”
“I’m not above a little arresting myself,” Logan said. “I enjoy it.”
Merrick held up his hand. “Peace, wolf. I know you’re dying to turn into your beast and tear up the place. Shapeshifters are so predictable. But I’ll be fair to you, since you’ve been fair to me. I’m only surprised you haven’t figured it out yourself.”
Logan said nothing, not wanting to indicate one way or another what the information meant to him.
Merrick laughed again, softly, shaking his head. “Since she’s dead and the route will dry up for obvious reasons, I think it no harm to tell you.” He leaned forward. “The supplier of Lamiah clan clubs was the Lamiah matriarch herself.”
Tain slept. He had no idea where he was, his body an immobile blank.
He dreamed again, of darkness swirling through standing stones. At first he thought this a continuation of his earlier dream, but in this one he was older, his body strong and covered with chain mail. He was far to the north of where he’d grown up, in a crease of tall mountains overlooking a dark blue loch with a square stone castle on the other side. Tain recognized the setting and tried to twist away from the dream, knowing what was coming.
His shoulder rocked from where his brother Hunter had just clapped it, the man walking down the hill, ready to fight the menace they’d been summoned to kill. Unseelies—ugly, nasty, dangerous beasties—had broken into the world, and the brothers had been called to seal them back into their bubble of hell.
Easy work for Immortals with swords and powerful magic. They’d finish the job, retire to the castle for ale and women, and return home to Ravenscroft. This was their life.
Except Tain had headed for the castle as soon as the battle was done, without waiting for his brothers. The dream forwarded to him rowing himself across the loch in a coracle, his sheathed swords crossed in the bottom of the little boat. He left the boat, took up his swords, and climbed the hill to the keep, knowing she waited for him.
The demon woman had dark hair and liquid dark eyes, and Tain enjoyed her. Unlike Hunter, who had a fanatic hatred of demons—for good reason—Tain let himself take what they offered. He knew how to taste without letting their death magic entwine him, knew how to let them imbibe his incredible life essence without becoming addicted to them.
Tain liked to walk with the danger, knowing he could easily walk away again. Kehksut was different, a little more powerful and much more beautiful, although she’d never asked for Tain’s life essence. Now she lifted her face for Tain’s kiss, and he gave it. Why not? She was one more pleasure in his lifetime of snatched pleasures, a brief respite between battles.
Tain took her on the stone floor of the castle’s empty hall, with nothing but furs beneath them. When he finished, he noted how silent the place was. Tain dressed and left the demon woman, climbing to the solar to see if he could spy his brothers coming across the lake. There he’d found the inhabitants of the castle—who’d lain dead and dying across the floor.
He’d tried to heal them, but he was too late. As anguish took him, Kehksut became who she truly was, an Old One, one the most powerful of them. Tain’s magic was depleted from helping his brothers conquer the Unseelies and from pouring his healing power into the dying. He had nothing left to fight the unexpected wall of death magic, stronger than he’d ever experienced in his life, that surrounded and crushed him. He awoke imprisoned in pain and darkness, terrified and alone.
“Cerridwen, help me!”
There was
no answer, only the sigh of darkness.
Tain called over and over again, begging the goddess to at least soothe his pain, begging his brothers to find him, to release him. No one answered, and no one came, except Kehksut.
“They can’t hear you,” she’d whispered, her red lips against his skin. “They gave up looking for you. They despise you for taking a demon lover.”
Tain didn’t believe her. His brothers would never desert him, no matter what—they’d made that clear time and again, Adrian especially.
Kehksut had healed him, made love to him, and then she became a powerful male demon and tortured him, leaving him in a pool of blood and pain once more.
Over and over again, Kehksut healed Tain and then tortured him again, every three days, until Tain lost all track of time and memory of any life before this. He kept waiting for Adrian to find him, kept calling out, pushing his magic to enter his brothers’ dreams, but Adrian never came.
As time passed, Tain knew what Kehksut told him was true—they’d stopped looking for him. They couldn’t find him, had given up and gone on with their lives.
Tain hated them for that. The memories of them tasted of ash, his love for them had been depleted by rage and pain.
The only way to survive was to make himself believe he liked the torture, embracing it, lowering himself into complete madness. As the years rolled by and Kehksut’s sadistic ritual went on, Tain grew stronger. The madness grew greater as well, until the remaining tiny, hot spark of his true self got lost in the whirling vortex.
“You are mine, my love,” she would say to him, caressing him with her exquisite touch. “You were born for me.”
And Tain believed her.
Tain dreamed he saw her now, her black hair like watered silk, her eyes voids of darkness, her red-tipped fingers raking his skin. She’d never touched the tattoo on his face, the mark that meant something Tain no longer remembered.
“Tain,” Kehksut whispered. She touched a kiss to his lips, and he felt the madness swirl around to suck him down yet again.
Another voice came out of the darkness, holding the same taint as the one he’d sensed in the death-magic portal on top of the building. An Old One, calling out to him.
Come to me . . .
Tain screamed and swung his fist, waking in time to see Samantha catch his wrist in a competent grip. She had the same demon-black hair and dark eyes as the woman of his dreams, but these eyes held concern.
“Tain?”
The world stopped spinning. Samantha knelt on a wide bed beside him, wearing nothing but a long T-shirt. Tain realized with a sickening jolt that he’d flailed out at her, and she’d caught his fist just in time.
“Samantha,” he said, his voice barely working. Saying the name helped him swim back to reality, to know the darkness was over. This white bed and Samantha was the truth.
Tain gently slid his wrist from her grasp. “Are you all right?”
“I wanted to ask you that.” Samantha touched his cheek. “You were dreaming. But everything’s all right now.”
“No, it isn’t.” Tain swung out of the bed, standing and looking down at her. His body was cold with sweat, his head pounding.
Samantha put her back to the headboard and crossed her legs. “You saved me today. All those demons would have killed me.” She gave a little laugh. “Next time you want to jump off a building, though, warn me. I’ll say no.”
Her laughter wrapped around him like a balm, but the dream of Kehksut had been too real. Tain could still feel his skin being peeled from his bones, the pain that went too deep for healing. “Kehksut is dead,” he said. He needed to say it out loud.
Samantha’s eyes widened. “I know. Is that what you were dreaming about? Come here.” She held out her hand, her invitation apparent. She wanted to soothe him, help him.
Tain shook his head. “Kehksut’s death doesn’t mean I’m healed. It was seven hundred years in madness, and my mind won’t let it go so easily.”
“I know,” Samantha said. “That’s why you’re here with your family and your friends.”
“Friends and family I can hurt.” He clenched his fists, the remembered whisper of the new demon too near. “Look what I did to you yesterday, when you took my life essence. I was so far gone with it I didn’t know I was hurting you. Is that what you want?”
Samantha’s throat moved with her swallow. “We can slow down. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Tain reached for his jeans and pulled them on over his bare backside. “You said the first time that if you wanted a diet of life essence, you wouldn’t start with me. But I pushed you into it, showing you how to take it, knowing you could get addicted to me, and me to you. What if next time I can’t stop?”
“We’ll think of something.” Samantha reached for him again, anguished. “I’m not going to give up on you. We’ll think of something.”
Tain leaned his fists on the bed, pushing his face close to hers. “Even here, in this house, you’re not safe from me. Kehksut made me stronger than all my brothers put together, did you know that? Hunter can’t stop me, and Leda can’t stop me. Even Adrian, the most powerful of them all, can’t stop me. What if I become the killing madman I used to be? What will stop me then?”
“You won’t,” Samantha whispered. “You’re a healer—you’ve proved it time and again.”
Tain shook his head again. “You know nothing about me, Samantha. You know nothing of what I am and what I endured, and I can only thank the goddesses you’ll never really understand. Kehksut tried to make me a force of destruction, but I refuse to destroy you.”
Samantha stared at him, tears beading on her lashes. Tain couldn’t pause to comfort her. Comfort might lead to sex, which would lead to her taking his life essence again, and who knew what might happen after that?
He turned around and walked away from her, out through the dark living room to the back door. Samantha didn’t follow, and Tain was grateful. Not that he’d intended to let her—he could wall her into the room with a shield of magic if he needed to.
Pickles leapt off the sofa as Tain opened the door to the terrace, happy to be let out of the stuffy house. Tain made his way down the board stairs to the beach, the cat at his heels, the cool sand welcoming to his bare feet.
While Mukasa lumbered out to greet Pickles, Tain strode into the water, embracing the waves that pulled at him. He kept walking, his jeans soaking and heavy, water spilling into them.
Behind him in the house, the light went on in the room he’d shared with Samantha, but Tain kept walking forward until the dark, cold ocean closed over his head. Only then did the whisper of the demon in his death realm cease to call.
Chapter Twenty-One
Four days later, Samantha met with her father to discuss becoming the Lamiah clan matriarch.
She’d been working almost nonstop on the death of Melanie Atkins, realizing she was throwing herself into her work to forget that she hadn’t seen Tain since the night he’d woken from his dreams and left her.
At first Samantha worried he’d truly gone insane again, but Hunter didn’t seem concerned at all, which told Samantha that Hunter knew where he was. Leda also looked anxious, but she wouldn’t talk about it with Samantha, which meant Leda knew where Tain was too, or at least knew that Hunter knew. Neither Leda nor Hunter would share the information with Samantha, which was driving her crazy, but short of arresting and interrogating them, she had to let it go. If and when Tain wanted to communicate with Samantha again, he would.
In addition, Samantha had been feeling sick and weak. She realized it was because she’d stopped taking Tain’s life essence—all life essence. Now that she was aware she’d taken it from others, like Logan and her mother, she deliberately tried not to. As a result, she was cranky, tired, and working on a four-day headache. Like permanent PMS, she thought irritably.
Fulton had gone ahead with plans to declare Samantha as a candidate for matriarch. Samantha had grudgingly let him, re
membering what Tain had told her during the demon attack—the matriarch had set up a shrine to an Old One, and the prostitutes’ deaths and No More Nightmares was somehow connected with it.
Melanie had been part demon, as Logan surmised. She hadn’t been Lamiah or Djowlan, or from any other Los Angeles clan—turned out, she’d moved out here from the heart of South Dakota. Her clan, Samantha had discovered, rejected all those not of pure blood, so Melanie had been raised human with no contact with her demon clan at all. Logan speculated Melanie had joined the demon haters because of her clan’s rejection, but that brought Samantha no closer to finding her killer.
Ms. Townsend had returned to the No More Nightmares office the morning after Melanie’s murder, seemingly upset at the death of her assistant and surprised to learn that Melanie had been part demon. She behaved as though her encounter with Tain out in the desert had never happened, and she had an alibi for the time of Melanie’s death. She’d been at a conference in Phoenix, six hours away by road, or one hour and however long it took to navigate airports by air. The medical examiner said that Melanie died at two in the afternoon, and precisely at two, Ms. Townsend had been speaking to five hundred people in an auditorium.
Searches of the No More Nightmares offices had turned up no evidence they’d been sending the threatening letters. McKay had sent Logan out to Nevada to meet with local authorities there and investigate the canyon Tain had discovered, but the locals hadn’t been very cooperative, and Logan had found nothing.
Merrick’s revelation that the matriarch of Samantha’s clan had been supplying Mindglow to the clubs bothered Samantha, and she wondered how it tied in with the matriarch’s shrine and sacrifices. She wondered, too, if anyone else in the clan had known about the shrine, or if the matriarch’s fixation on the ancient demon had been private. Tain hadn’t told Samantha which Old One was involved. Was it because Tain didn’t know, or because he didn’t want her to know?
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