McKay beamed up at Logan, her half-Sidhe beauty shining. “Please tell me he confessed to the kidnappings and the murders, named all his accomplices, and then signed the confession.”
“Sorry, boss,” Logan said, and McKay gave a resigned sigh. “He insists he didn’t do the killings or kidnappings, and he wants his lawyer. But we pretty much got him on the terrorizing letters.”
“Oh, well. I didn’t really think it would be nice and neat.”
“He must know who’s doing it, though,” Logan said. “Lawyer or no lawyer, if we can get him to give away his buddies or whoever employed him, we can close the case.”
“He said nothing about the canyon in Nevada?” McKay asked.
“No. I’d swear he had no clue what I was talking about when I mentioned it.”
“What has the sheriff there told you?”
“Not a damn thing. She said neither she nor her deputies could find anything out of the ordinary, just another canyon that woo-woo people like to call a vortex. A collection of energies. She thinks it’s all bullshit.”
McKay grimaced. “Unfortunately, we need their cooperation if it really is something, or we’ll have to make it a federal case, which I’m not in a hurry to do. On the other hand . . .” She gave Logan a look. “I can’t stop you hiking into a canyon in Nevada on your day off.”
Logan nodded. “I’d planned to check it out.”
McKay held up her small hands. “Not that I know about this.”
Logan grinned. “Know about what?”
As he started to turn away, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled out the phone and smiled when he saw Samantha’s number on the display. He already missed talking to her.
However, it wasn’t Samantha who shouted at him as soon as he lifted the phone to his ear. “They’re gone!” a woman yelled.
“What? Who’s gone? Who is this?”
“Samantha is gone,” the woman said, distraught. “I’m Flavia, her cousin. Someone put Mindglow in the coffee. When I went into the matriarch’s office, she was gone—she and the majordomo both.”
“Slow down a minute,” Logan said, his heartbeat speeding. “What about Tain? Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find him anywhere. There was one of those letters in cutouts left on Samantha’s chair.” Flavia faltered, crying. “It says, The Final Sacrifice.”
Samantha awoke in pitch dark. Her head pounded and made her sick, not helped by the fact that she lay facedown on something hard, her ankles and wrists tightly bound with what felt like duct tape. She was happy to find she hadn’t been gagged, but her mouth was so dry it didn’t much matter.
“Damn it,” she croaked. “Is this what Mindglow does to you?”
“I certainly hope not,” a male voice rumbled. “Or I’ve been getting ripped off.”
“Merrick?” Samantha groaned. “Hell, I’d decided you were innocent of all this.”
“I am innocent, sweetheart. I’m lying here trussed up hand and foot, and I have the feeling the next heart in a box will be mine.”
Not good. “You can’t become your bad demon self and break your way out?” she asked hopefully.
“Oh gee, I never thought of that. The answer is no, I can’t. I’ve never felt this weak and sick in my life. All I can do is lie here and spout feeble sarcasm.”
“If I can find you, do you think we can get each other untaped?”
“Worth a try,” Merrick grunted. “Not that I expect it to do any good. I imagine if there was any way out of this pit, they’d have chained us to the walls to keep us from finding it.”
“Who’s they?” Samantha asked.
“Hell if I know. I never saw their faces.”
Samantha spent the next few minutes trying to roll in the dark, hearing Merrick doing the same. It took a long time, but eventually she landed on her side and felt the warmth of him behind her. She groped for Merrick’s wrists and found slick tape around them. She felt his fingers connect with the tape on her wrists and start picking at it.
“Demon claws would be handy about now,” Samantha said.
Merrick growled. “Your warrior lover and his big swords would be handy about now too, even if he did almost cut my head off once. I’ll forgive him if he gets me out of here.”
“You hit me.”
Merrick jumped. “Pardon?”
“In your club, you hit me,” Samantha said. “That’s why Tain tried to cut off your head. He didn’t do it all the way, because a headless man can’t learn a lesson.”
Merrick kept picking at the tape. “Very, very funny, and anyway, you’d just shoved a gun in my face.”
“I was making an arrest for possession of Mindglow.”
“Hypothetical possession of Mindglow. My club has burned to the foundations now, so it’s a moot point. Funny how my life has gotten so exciting since I met you.”
“Pure coincidence,” Samantha said.
“Really? I wonder. Ah, I think I might have found an edge to the tape. I’ve always hated this stuff.”
For silent moments, Merrick tugged and pulled at the bonds on Samantha’s wrist until she heard a hiss of tape being ripped from tape. After an infuriatingly long time, the tape was loose enough for Samantha to pull it free. She lay still, her aching arms at her sides, wincing as circulation returned to her fingers.
“Will you be returning the favor any time soon?” Merrick asked, his voice as rasping as hers.
“Give me a second to get the feeling back into my hands,” Samantha said wearily. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”
“True.”
When Samantha felt well enough to roll to her knees, she groped for Merrick’s wrists.
“Once we get out of here,” Merrick said as she started working at his bonds, “how about we ditch your sword-toting boyfriend and spend a wild weekend in Vegas?”
Samantha snorted. “I don’t think so.”
“You think matriarchs don’t fool around with their underlings? The previous one certainly did.”
“Really?” Samantha asked in surprise.
Merrick chuckled. “Oh, my, yes. When she was younger, especially. She’d host orgies and join right in. She liked sex, with men or women, she didn’t care which.”
Samantha patiently picked at the tape. “Weird, she seemed so straight-laced when I met her. Very disapproving of Nadia and her sister—even of demon women working in the clubs.”
“In her later years she calmed down,” Merrick said, grunting when one of Samantha’s nails nicked his wrist, “but she certainly got a lot out of her system in her youth. She’d have humans, demons, vampires, shifters—used her position to find the best-looking of the bunch and command them to be brought to her. She had sex with them and sucked down life essences like there was no tomorrow.”
“And yet she was so snotty about Nadia,” Samantha said, remembering her meeting with the matriarch. “No sympathy whatsoever.”
“Ah, but the matriarch didn’t sell her services or exchange anything for life essence. She wasn’t a prostitute. Stayed home like a good girl and used the power of her rank to get whatever she wanted.”
“Maybe that’s why she was murdered,” Samantha said thoughtfully. “Someone whose life essence she gobbled held an old grudge. Or the relative of someone she used.”
“Could be. Or it could be the killer knew you were likely to be the next matriarch and wanted you in power.”
Samantha’s fingers stilled. “Why on earth should they?”
“Who knows? Maybe whoever it was wants to control you, like the majordomo controlled the matriarch and planned to control her protégé, Ariel.”
“How did you know about that?”
“Everyone knew, my dear. A demon clan is a hotbed of gossip, as you will learn soon enough. You know, this tape isn’t coming off by itself.”
Samantha resumed the task. “You’re an asshole, Merrick.”
“But a very shrewd one, don’t forget that.”
&nb
sp; “What am I doing here?” Samantha said to herself as the tape started to give. “A few weeks ago I wasn’t doing anything more difficult than staking out demon clubs. All the sudden I’m hunting people who cut out demon hearts and becoming a demon matriarch.”
“And screwing an Immortal warrior.”
Samantha scowled in the dark. “That is none of your business.”
“It is my business now that you’re the matriarch. We’re death magic, and Tain’s life magic knocks us over. We demons are wondering when he’ll turn around and kill us all—he’s nearly killed me already. Besides, if you haven’t guessed it yet, an Immortal warrior isn’t the kind of man you settle down with.”
Samantha’s heart squeezed until it hurt. “Neither are you.”
Merrick laughed, the sound harsh in the darkness. “I never claimed to be, but I can make that weekend in Vegas the best of your life.”
“Save it.” Samantha peeled the tape from Merrick’s wrists, and he sat up, rubbing them.
Samantha worked on the tape around her ankles, and from the sounds in the dark, Merrick was as well. She got herself free first and massaged her bloodless feet.
“Now what?” she asked, trying to looking around. It was so dark she could see nothing, not even shapes in the gloom. The air smelled close and dank, more chilled than the September weather should make it. “I think we’re underground,” she concluded.
“You have amazing powers of deduction, my love.” The sound of tape ripping told her Merrick was peeling it away from his ankles. “But there must be air coming in or we’d be dead by now.”
Samantha got shakily to her feet and instantly regretted it. She held her stomach, struggling for breath, her head spinning.
“I wasn’t hard to capture was I?” she said, angry at herself. “They carried me off without a struggle.”
“I struggled,” Merrick said. “Until they shot me with a tranquilizer.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know. Obviously someone crazy. They abducted me as I was leaving the muster.”
“Someone from the house in Santa Barbara?” Samantha immediately thought of Tristan, her disgruntled cousin. He’d been very angry that Samantha had won.
“No, no,” Merrick said. “I never went into the house. I have a portal to the Lamiah realm at my old club. The club might be gone, but the portal’s still there. One minute I’m walking out of the club’s ruins, minding my own business, the next, I’m waking up here, sick as a dog. I bet there are snakes down here.”
“They hibernate when it’s cold,” Samantha told him, refusing to think about sharing wherever they were with a mass of snakes. “I wonder who else they plan to take.” Her heart thumped in fear as she thought of Fulton, head of the most prominent household in the clan.
“There might not be snakes down here,” Merrick said as he got to his feet, his clothes rustling in the dark. “But scorpions are highly likely.”
Samantha made a noise of impatience. “You’re a big, bad demon, Merrick. Are you afraid of a few insects?”
“Ones that sting? Yes.” Merrick turned, scraping on rock. “So what’s your great plan, oh my matriarch?”
“My great plan is to get out of here.”
“Now why didn’t I think of that? Any ideas how, brilliant one?”
“No,” Samantha snapped. She found a wall, smooth and seamless, and felt her way along it. “Just help me look for a way out.”
“You know,” Merrick said as he joined her, “in movies, when the hero or heroine gets captured, sometimes the helpful secondary character dies during the escape. To give the film that touch of pathos.”
“This isn’t a movie,” Samantha said abruptly.
“The question is, whose movie is this? Yours or mine?”
“Merrick.” Samantha rested her hands against the wall. “We’re both getting out of here, neither one of us dying. That’s my job, not just to uphold and enforce the law, but to protect others.”
“You’re not a police officer any more, my dear.”
“No, but I’m the matriarch, for better or worse.” Samantha’s conviction grew as she spoke. “It’s my job to keep the clan from falling apart, which means I protect those within it. At the moment, that means you.”
“Hmm.” Merrick continued to tap on the wall, shuffling next to Samantha. “Then I know what kind of movie this is.”
He wouldn’t say what he meant by that, and they worked their way around the room in silence.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The chill of the death realm filmed Tain’s skin like half-dried sweat. He found himself in a vast room, very unlike the elegant, marble-pillared chamber Fulton had taken them to for the muster. This chamber had crumbling square columns carved with strange square designs, as though someone had decided to mock the clean lines of the Native American petroglyphs etched into the canyon walls outside.
A demon woman stood in the middle of this room, black-haired and sensual, glammed to look young and lush. She wore a gauzy wrap pinned at the shoulder, similar to those depicted in Egyptian paintings, with thick gold bands clasping her wrists and upper arms. Her smile was sultry, but Tain saw in her liquid dark eyes the steel sharpness of the woman who had been Ariadne, the Lamiah matriarch’s majordomo.
The woman was not what created the miasma of darkness that filled this room, however. The majordomo was a lesser demon, easy to deal with.
The evil Tain sensed in the darkness behind her was so vast it made his stomach churn. It had been a year since he’d been in the presence of an Old One, but the death magic rolling off the demon called Bahkat was unmistakable. The thick touch of it found Tain, pressing on him, calling to him. The lesser demon woman in front of him was a minute distraction compared to the clamoring need building in Tain to follow the Old One into that darkness.
Tain tried to focus on the majordomo. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Haven’t you guessed?” She came to Tain and touched his chest, but her fine-nailed caress did nothing against the death magic beating on him from behind her. “I am the matriarch of the Lamiah clan.”
Tain snapped his gaze to her, the surprise of her words breaking his contact with the Old One. The woman looked up at him with glee in her dark eyes, but Tain shook his head. This woman was the majordomo, he was sure of it.
“The matriarch died,” he said. “I saw her body—what was left of it.”
“No, simpleton. That was my majordomo, playing the part I gave her. I am the real matriarch.”
Tain studied her, able to see beyond the demon glam of the beautiful woman in the Egyptian tunic and gold to the ugly, harsh beast beneath. He’d glimpsed what had been behind the glams of the majordomo and matriarch as they’d stood side-by-side at the mansion—he’d known their demons looked different, but there’d been nothing to tell him which was matriarch and which was underling.
The demon gazing up at him now still held the form of the demon they’d been introduced to as the majordomo. Plus, the woman they’d met as the matriarch and the woman who’d been murdered had definitely been the same. If the majordomo and matriarch had switched places, it had been before her death.
“How long had the majordomo been playing this part?” Tain asked her.
The demon who was the matriarch smiled. “Nearly nine hundred years. She put on pearls and met with the heads of clans while I did as I pleased and went where I wanted, discovering oh, so many things. It was wonderful—having all that power and being able to move about as I wished at the same time. I was very young when I became matriarch. In those days, matriarchs were inaccessible, and in time there were no more demons alive who remembered what I looked like. The new generations had no idea.” She laughed. “Ariadne gave me great freedom. Her kind were born to serve, after all.”
Tain’s eyes narrowed at her glib speech. “If you had so much power and freedom, why did you need to start calling to the Old One?”
The matriarch’s smile widened, the black in her e
yes spreading to fill the whites. “Oh, I didn’t start calling to him. I’ve been with him from the beginning. I’ve always preferred the company of Old Ones. They know what it is to have all bow before them.”
“In ancient times, maybe,” Tain said. “Now they hide in death realms and don’t like to walk the surface of the earth.”
“No thanks to you and your Immortal brothers.” The matriarch lost her amused look, her beauty dimming with her anger. “You drove my master underground, and you killed Kehksut, the most beautiful of them all.”
Tain couldn’t stop his flinch at the sound of Kehksut’s name, but he forced his voice to remain even. “It’s what I was made to do,” he said, sounding off-hand. “Call it my raison d’être.”
“Ha. You were Kehksut’s slave, and then you killed your own master. For that, you will be punished.”
Tain pinned the matriarch with his stern gaze. “You’ve sacrificed demons of your own clan. The new matriarch is pretty pissed off about it.”
The woman gave him a deprecating look. “The new matriarch has no power. The Lamiah clan is weak—more interested these days in buying stocks and shopping the latest fashions than acquiring human slaves and power. They’ve been yuppified.”
“And so they deserve death?” Tain asked.
“They deserve to be utterly destroyed,” the matriarch said calmly.
“Not all the demons that were killed were Lamiah,” Tain pointed out.
The matriarch shrugged, her loose dark hair sliding across perfect shoulders and catching in one of her gold armbands. “I can’t help it if the Townsend woman is too stupid to distinguish one clan from the other. But they were good kills, and helped blind the pathetic paranormal police to my true purpose.”
“Who sent the threatening letters for you? “ Tain asked, wanting to keep her talking while he tried to figure out what the Old One behind her was doing. “No More Nightmares?”
“I got Samantha’s foolish cousin Tristan to do it. He was easy to manipulate, wanting more power than he could handle. I promised to back his candidate for matriarch, and he jumped to do anything I told him. I look forward to ripping out his heart.”
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