by Elisa Adams
“She doesn’t belong to anyone. You can’t just take whatever you want, Eric. The world doesn’t work that way anymore.”
He kept his tone acidic, partly to cover up the fact that he genuinely cared for Ellie. “The world works however I want it to. You’ve warned me to stay away from your woman. You may leave now.”
Royce relaxed his stance, shoving his hands into his pants pockets. Defeat took root in his expression. “Believe it or not, that’s not why I’m here.”
“Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“I want to talk to you about the murders.”
Realization dawned. He should have seen this sooner. “And you think I’ve had something to do with this.”
“It wasn’t me, or Marco or Amara. That leaves you.” Royce paused, letting the information sink in. “And I’ve got to tell you, with your history I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Eric stalked to the balcony and looked out through the doors. “I wouldn’t kill a woman for the sake of a meal. Vampires do that sort of thing. I’m far less barbaric. I don’t kill humans, at least not often. And that’s only if they deserve it. Deep down, I think you know that.”
“It seems to me that you’d do just about anything if the mood struck.” Royce leaned against the wall, not moving more than a few feet away from the door. “You weren’t exactly discriminating before. Why change now, after so many years?”
Eric reined in the urge to haul off and punch the man. Royce truly didn’t understand, even after all these years, the importance of Eric’s job. Royce didn’t approve of the killing aspect, but sometimes it was necessary. If someone didn’t take care of the rogues, the planet would be overrun by vampires, werewolves, and similar creatures. Such egos running rampant would destroy the planet in a matter of months. The balance had to be kept, in whatever way was required. Sometimes, it took the death of a few to protect the masses.
“I haven’t killed humans, or any other being, without good reason in a thousand years, no matter what you think you believe. You should go now, before I decide to kill for fun, starting with you.”
The corners of Royce’s mouth curled in a sneer, but he looked like he as fighting a genuine smile. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“And why not? According to you, I live for killing. What’s one more vampire to me?”
“Okay. Enough. This has gone too far, for too long.” Royce shook his head, his expression turning weary. “This may surprise you, but I’m sick of the hostility. It’s time to move on. You’re going to hurt Ellie. I’m going to tell you this right now. I’ll do anything to prevent that from happening. She means a lot to me, and to my brother and his wife. Hurting her would be a big mistake.”
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were jealous.” Eric raised his eyebrows and waited for the reaction.
Royce crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze unwavering. “Ellie’s a friend. I don’t suppose you’d understand that, since you don’t have any. But I care about her, and I refuse to stand by and watch you tear her apart. That’s my only warning. Now tell me what you know about these murders. Prove to me that you’re not involved.”
Eric nearly rolled his eyes. He’d never had to prove himself so often in his life. He took a deep breath, not sure how much he should tell the man—one who’d shunned his kind of lifestyle so many years ago. “I think Aiala’s involved.”
Royce laughed, but Eric didn’t miss the apprehension that flashed across his face. “Aiala wouldn’t sully herself killing ordinary humans in a place like this.”
“It isn’t about the humans. It’s about us.” He paused. “Christopher, Bryant, and Edward are dead.” He paused again to let the implications of his words sink in. Royce’s gaze grew incredulous, then suspicious.
“And that couldn’t be a coincidence, considering the lives they led? They weren’t exactly saints.”
“It’s not a coincidence. I’ve been tracking the same vampire for months. I tracked him here, and then the trail vanished. He didn’t leave, but I can’t find him. And now the bodies are starting to appear.”
Royce rubbed the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb. “That sounds just like a game Aiala would love to play—Cat and Mouse of the highest order. Does Ellie know any of this? Does she know what you are?”
Eric shook his head. If she knew, she’d never speak to him again. “She knows the name. I didn’t explain it.”
“You’d better, before she finds another source of information—one that might be misleading. You wouldn’t want her getting the wrong idea.”
He was right, of course, but Eric would cut out his tongue with a plastic knife before he admitted it. “I’ll think about it. She doesn’t need that much information.”
Royce snorted. “It sounds more like you don’t want her to know, because you’re afraid she’ll walk away from you if she finds out. Trust me on this, Malcolm. Ellie is one lady who doesn’t like being kept in the dark. If you want even a chance with her, you’ve got to tell her.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Eric said, but he still planned to do nothing just yet. If she really wanted to know, she had a name she could reference at the library. He’d rolled, and now he just had to wait and see where the dice landed—at least on the personal front. The professional front still troubled him. That was where he needed to focus. “Have you noticed anything unusual around town recently?”
“Not since I’ve been here. What about you?”
“I’m not even close on this one. Honestly, I don’t know where to turn next.” It killed him to admit that. For Eric, failure of any kind was not acceptable. Royce knew that, and Eric had no doubt he’d exploit that weakness. He didn’t, which baffled Eric.
Royce nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the window across the room. “Let me talk to my brother and see if we can come up with something. I’ll get back to you soon.” He walked to the door and turned back to face Eric. “If you hurt Ellie, I’ll kill you. If you get out of line once, I’ll rip your head off.”
Without waiting for a response, he left the room, slamming the door behind him. Eric sank onto the bed and turned on the TV with the remote on the nightstand. He should feel better after that visit, but he only felt worse. He had to find the vampire before it destroyed him. He found the eleven o’clock news and watched the anchor talk about the latest murder, which only added to his melancholy.
“The woman’s body was found half dressed in an alley behind a restaurant. Her identity has yet to be confirmed. The police aren’t yet revealing any other details about the crime.”
He sighed heavily. He didn’t need to hear the cause of death to know what had happened—severe loss of blood. He had to find a way to bring Aiala and her lackey out into the open before someone else died, possibly someone he’d grown fond of in his time in the little town.
* * * * *
Ellie couldn’t concentrate on anything the next day. That seemed to be a common occurrence since Eric had started hanging around. Even the hour she usually spent meditating in her quiet place—a dark corner of her studio—hadn’t helped. She sat out on her patio, her laptop on the table in front of her. A damp chill hung in the air, promising a summer storm.
She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, thinking about what those poor women must have gone through. For a vampire to kill during a feeding, it would take an amazingly long time and a great deal of strength. The woman would have squirmed at first, maybe fought violently when she realized what was happening to her. To hold her down for that long would never be an accident, unless the vampire was a fledgling with no understanding of what they were doing.
Amara would have easily detected a fledgling.
So the killings had to be deliberate murders. Not accidents caused by someone young and out-of-control. The thought left her blood cold. There were never murders in Stone Harbor. She liked it here because she felt safe, all the time. It had been the perfect place to live.
But not anymore.
Two women were dead, most likely victims of vampire attacks, and she had a feeling it wasn’t over yet.
Her nerves were shot and her hands shaky. She needed to talk to Eric, see if he could make sense of any of this. The way they’d left things the last time they spoke bothered her. She wanted his explanation of what he’d told her, but so far he hadn’t been available. She’d been afraid of the questions she had, and more afraid of the answers, but now she didn’t care.
She had to know.
She logged online through her cell phone and typed the name he’d given her into the search engine. It took a few tries to get the spelling right, but once she did she found a wealth of information. Disturbing information. Her throat went dry and she almost fell out of her chair. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her he was neither a vampire nor a lycanthrope. He wasn’t any of those things—wasn’t even close. She now realized why she’d never heard of Panthicenos before she’d met him. This wasn’t the kind of thing a person readily disclosed.
She shook her head, her hands shaking so much she could barely scroll through the pages. She didn’t believe in absolute evil of any kind—not hell, or Satan, or anything of the sort. Her mother and grandmother had raised her in that tradition and she’d accepted it blindly, until now. If the information she found proved to be true, then some of what she’d accepted as fact all her life was a lie. It wasn’t possible, but at the same time she knew what she read had to be true, and now her life would never be the same.
Eric was a demon.
Chapter 9
Ellie stared at the screen in mute distress, not knowing what to think. According to her family, demons didn’t exist, but Eric was definitely not a figment of her imagination. So who was she to believe—the family she’d trusted all her life or a couple of Internet websites? There had to be some other explanation.
“Panthicenos are demons with the ability to shift into several forms, including that of a large cat similar to a panther and a human form.” She took a deep breath before she continued reading, not certain she really wanted any more information than she already had. “The true Panthicenos form has been depicted as a large feline with black fur, red eyes, enormous teeth, and a row of spiked scales along the length of the spine.” She ran her fingers over a black-and-white drawing of the Panthicenos on the screen.
She shivered at the thought, unable to accept that she could very well be reading a description of Eric.
“What are you looking at? Anything interesting?”
Ellie whirled at the sound of Eric’s voice behind her. “Why are you here?” She glared at him to cover the fact that her heart threatened to pound right out of her chest. She’d never known fear like she did at this moment, faced with something that could have come from childhood nightmares, but she couldn’t let him see how frightened she was. “What do you want from me?”
He leaned against the side of the house, remaining a few feet away, and shrugged. “That depends. How much do you know?”
He shook his head when she must have looked ready to pass out. A smile broke over his face—out of place with everything she’d just read. “Sorry. Bad joke. I suppose, by the look on your face, I should assume that you’ve taken it upon yourself to do some research?”
She pursed her lips and nodded, looking for a way to get away from him—and not have him follow. How could he joke with her at a time like this? Confusion had replaced any sensibilities she’d had, and she couldn’t think straight.
“You don’t have to worry, Ellie. I didn’t lie when I said I wouldn’t hurt you. In fact, lately I’ve been thinking more and more about protecting you.”
Amara’s words about a stalker came back to her then. Had she been right? She’d been so sure she could trust him. She rubbed her totem, asking for clarity. She remembered the disturbing dream as the panther heated again under her touch. With jerky movements she unclasped the silver chain and set the necklace roughly down on the table surface, the connection she felt with the animal severed. In one afternoon, one minute, she’d gone from having absolute trust in her faith to doubting everything. She turned slowly to face him, a knot of fear twisting her gut.
His gaze begged her to believe in him, but she couldn’t, not yet. Her world had just fallen down around her and she needed some time to pick up the pieces.
“Ellie, say something. I can’t stand the silence.” His voice held so much sadness she felt a sharp urge to go to him, to wrap her arms around him and comfort him. Instead, she just sat there, unable to convince her body to move.
“I don’t believe in you.”
“What?” Confusion etched his features as he shook his head.
She let out a heavy breath before she answered, choosing her words carefully. “My family has been practicing witchcraft for generations. It’s a big part of who I am. Witches don’t believe in evil. I’ve always been told that demons are figments of imagination, horrible stories parents invented to scare misbehaving children. So either my family lied to me, or you did.”
“I haven’t lied to you. I’m willing to talk now, if you still want to.” His words, and the sincerity in his gaze, gave her pause. How could she even entertain the idea that this man could be evil? She knew in her heart at that moment, as the clarity she’d been begging for calmed her rampant emotions, that there was more to the situation that what she’d read.
“Will you answer my questions now? All of them?”
He quickly nodded. The simple act, coupled with the hope that flared in his eyes, made her believe that anything was possible. Maybe this would work out fine in the end.
“Are you a demon, Eric?”
His stance shifted and he seemed to shrink away from her. At the same time, she felt him in her mind, not controlling or reading, but comforting—just there. He begged her to understand, to accept him for what he was. “Yes.”
Now she couldn’t pretend anymore. She couldn’t call her fears the work of an overactive imagination, or the result of an article full of mistruths. This was all very real, and it was her life. She’d allowed him to get close, and allowed herself to care about him, and now she’d have to live with the consequences.
He took one step closer, then another. “The word ‘demon’ by definition doesn’t have an evil connotation. There are good demons in the world as well as evil ones. Unfortunately, the general populace only cares about the evil ones.”
A question from an old movie popped into her head. Are you a good witch or a bad witch? The absurdity of the situation made a hysterical laugh bubble in her throat. “So then, you’re a…good demon?”
“Not exactly.”
She pushed out of her chair and stalked away from the table, hugging her arms around her to ward off the sudden chill. “Excuse me if I find this conversation more confusing than enlightening.”
“This situation isn’t black and white. It’s so hard to explain this to someone who hasn’t lived the life I do. We all have our urges—anyone is capable of killing if the circumstances are right. You know me well enough to know what kind of a man I am.” He walked over to her and toyed with a strand of her hair. She jerked her head back and stepped away, and his expression darkened.
“I hardly know you at all,” she whispered, just learning how truthful that statement was.
“You might not know me with your mind,” he paused, brushing one finger over her head. When he spoke again, he did so in a whispered tone. “But you know me with your body, and with your heart.” He settled his finger over her wildly thumping heart. “It’s been like that from the beginning, for both of us.”
“I don’t think…” Her words trailed off when she realized he was right. Something in her recognized him in a very primal way, and she knew he felt the same. But it didn’t make trusting him any easier, not with this new information.
“Can we talk for a little while?” he asked when she didn’t say anything.
She hesitated. The news of the murders had shaken the entire town—
her especially. The more she heard about them, the more she assumed it was a vampire killing. But what if demons were the problem instead?
He read her suspicions before she could voice them. “I know you don’t trust me. I understand. I don’t blame you for being angry, and scared, but I thought if you didn’t know…” He sighed when she raised an eyebrow at him. “Okay. I was being selfish. I thought if you knew what I was, you would think of me differently.”
“Gee, ya think?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “This is not the sort of thing that happens every day, you know.”
“I realize that. It’s not something that’s ever happened to me before, either, so this is new for both of us. I thought if I told you the truth, you’d never want to see me again. I couldn’t take that. Haven’t you ever been rejected because of something other people found different about you?”
She opened her mouth to berate him again, but snapped it shut when his words sank in. She thought back to her marriage, and how poorly Todd had reacted to the idea of her being a witch. Even during grade school, she hadn’t fit in. She’d been the creepy girl from the weird family, the girl who wore a pentacle around her neck when the other children wore crosses. She’d hated it then, the way they’d judged her without really taking the time to know her, the way they’d made her feel she had to hide her true self in order to be accepted. Wasn’t she doing the same thing to Eric?
He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing the center of her palm. “You know me, Ellie. I can feel it inside you. Don’t give up what we could have because you think you know something about me.”
She shook her head, but at the same time his words hit a chord inside her. When she thought of demons, she pictured the typical storybook image—horns and claws and fangs and fire, the smell of brimstone in the air. She’d certainly never pictured a man who looked like an ordinary human. It just didn’t fit. She glanced at him and saw his expression filled with apprehension and remorse. Maybe she was judging him unfairly. Didn’t he deserve a chance to relay his side of the story before she made snap judgments? “Tell me about yourself, Eric. I need to hear it from you, not from some website.”