Personal Demon

by Susan Sizemore

  Maybe he still felt comfortable with his own name because he was only a little over one hundred years into his vampire life. The Legacy—Christopher had called her Maggie when he’d been her companion—had been mortal when Rome ruled Britain. Ariel was her child from the sixteenth century.

  Ariel—or whoever he’d been before adopting his fancy moniker—moved to America before World War I, and America was where Ariel had been reborn from normal strigoi into the superior type of vampire known as Enforcer in this era. There’d always been powerful vampires who policed the rest of their kind, but Enforcer was an American term. Nighthawk was the traditional title. Enforcer was coined in Chicago, wasn’t it? Maybe Ariel had been the first to adopt the title in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties.

  Christopher made a note to ask his brother in blood about it. He had a few more questions for Ariel, as well. If he ever found him, that is.

  Oh, he’d located Ariel’s residence during his dream-walking expedition the day before. He’d been able to tell that Ariel wasn’t resting there. He didn’t expect Ariel to be home this evening, either. It wasn’t an Enforcer’s job to sit around the house watching sports on the telly in the evening. Vampires lived at night, and that was when Enforcers worked their pitch—enforcing.

  Just what Ariel was enforcing these days was one of the other things Christopher wanted to ask him about. Protecting vampires from mortals was one of the Enforcer’s jobs. Was Ariel doing that? If so, why was this Selena person, and even perky, pretty Ivy still alive? Fodder for Ariel’s personal harem, perhaps, on a leash and used for his own reasons? Christopher hoped it was something as complicated as that. It would be bad for Ariel if the Enforcer of the City proved to have become lax in his duties. Brother in blood or not.

  Ariel made his home on the north side of the city, in one of a discreet row of expensive renovated three-story brick town houses.

  “Very nice,” Christopher murmured after circling the block to examine the outside of the building from front and back.

  He’d discovered that no one was inside, not a scent of mortal or strigoi blood lingered. If Ariel had a companion, she or he didn’t live with the Enforcer, but that was frequently the case. There were no slaves lurking indoors. Enforcers rarely had nest mates, either. Hard to be part of a familial group when you might have to eat them someday if they were naughty.

  No hellhound pet for the Enforcer of the City, either. Not even a cat, and Christopher knew that Ariel used to be fond of cats.

  Christopher considered settling on the cold, concrete front steps to await Ariel’s return. But a police patrol car passing by might make note of his presence and stop to ask what he was doing loitering about.

  So Christopher broke in.

  Oh, there was a sophisticated alarm system set up to thwart intruders, but it was the sort of thing meant to keep out mortals. Easy enough to disarm before it could go off when you had the speed of a vampire. As for a warning system to keep out vampires—well, the Enforcer of the City obviously didn’t believe any normal vampire would dare invade the sanctity of his home. And he was certainly correct about that.

  Christopher stood in the entry hall after he’d made sure all was safe, closed up tight and secure. He closed his eyes in the darkness and sent his senses through the interior of the house. It was just as he’d sensed from the outside.

  Empty. Yes, but not just for the moment.

  Christopher walked through the house, one room at a time, one floor at a time. He did it with his eyes closed the first time through. Eyes open in the dark the second time. With every light blazing the third time. Then back to darkness, which was not only easier on his eyes but helped mute his freakish senses.

  He liked the library the best. He settled there in a huge old leather chair and considered the significance of having found nothing in Ariel’s house. Oh, there were furnishings, personal items, food in the kitchen, some nice wines in a cabinet. Ariel’s wardrobe, mostly black, was in the bedroom closet. His actual bedroom, a hidden room in the basement, hadn’t been slept in for at least several days.

  It wasn’t just that Ariel hadn’t been home for a while. Christopher could feel no lingering emotions in the place. Ariel certainly wasn’t dead. Christopher would have sensed the demise of an Enforcer months after the tragic event.

  Had Ariel resigned the job? Taken himself elsewhere?

  What had Ivy meant when she talked about Chicago’s being Selena’s town? That was one of the things he wanted to ask the absent Ariel about. Were the witches responsible for his absence?

  It was all very strange.

  It was also close to dawn by the time he finished searching and puzzling. He was going to have to continue trying to get some sense from Ivy about what was going on.

  Not that he thought Ivy would be there if he returned to her apartment. The woman who’d come to rescue Ivy wouldn’t be foolish enough to let the girl remain in her own place. Not when there was a mortal stalker in the picture, and a vampire had recently been rumpling Ivy’s bed.

  No, this famous Selena person would have taken Ivy to her own home. Finding Ivy wouldn’t be any problem for him. In fact, it was a necessity. So, find Ivy, find the mysterious Selena.

  But not that night. It was gone. It was time for bed.

  Since Ariel wasn’t using his house, and his secure safe room downstairs, Christopher decided to make himself at home.

  chapter nineteen

  I can smell it,” Jack said as they walked along a dark path late at night. “Fear. This way.”

  He began walking faster, Ted keeping pace beside him. A wind rattled the bare branches of trees close to the path. Branches arched over their heads. Lights and traffic sounds were behind them, but fear and death were ahead. A pitiful moan sounded on the wind very close by.

  Ted looked at him, a fierce grin on his face. “I want me some of this.”

  So did Jack. He wanted a kill. But he also wanted to make sure the other servants of the Master were doing it right, remembering the magic instead of just having fun. They had to be constantly reminded that it wasn’t all about them. They were there for the Master’s needs. There to drain every drop of energy from their kills, hold it, protect it, store it, then pass this magic on to help the Master’s powers grow.

  Not that they weren’t expected to have fun. To enjoy their work, take pride in it was their reward. They weren’t supposed to be stupid. They weren’t supposed to get caught.

  But he could smell blood. Blood and sex and fear. Someone was whimpering, hoping for mercy. Life was draining from another body, but the victim wasn’t dead yet. Life energy was waiting to be sucked up.

  Jack grinned back at Ted. He took a knife from inside his coat. He wanted some of this, too.

  They had to leave the path and make their way through thick, thorny bushes to reach the kill site.

  “Good cover here,” Ted complimented, as they reached the party. “As long as nobody hears screaming.”

  Jack saw that all the victims were bound and gagged. There were three of them, the dead, the dying, and the one John was on top of, banging away.

  John looked up, sweat running down his face. “Get your own,” he said between grunts.

  Jack looked away from the obscenity, glad that darkness covered the sight of much of what was going on. He went to the dying victim, but his plan to use his knife on the woman was spoiled when he caught sight of Dick.

  The fourth member of their coven knelt in the center of the little clearing, sobbing like a girl about to die. His body shook with the sobs. And Jack realized that the whimpering wasn’t coming from one of the prisoners but from the killer. Dick’s hands covered his face, but the sound wasn’t being muffled that much.

  Jack hurried up to Dick, knelt by him, and shook him. “Quiet! What is the matter with you?”

  Dick held out hands sticky with blood. Not with justifiable pride, either. “What is going on? What have I done? Where am I? Did I—?” He looked at the body lying beside hi
m, revulsion and guilt staining his aura. “Did I do that? How could I—?”

  “It’s the Master’s will,” Jack told him. He put his face close to Dick’s. “We do the Master’s will. That is all you need to know.”

  “Who am I?”

  “A tool. Nothing but a tool for the Master’s work.”

  Dick pushed Jack away, then staggered to his feet, looking around the clearing. “What the fuck is going on here? This isn’t me. I didn’t do this.”

  Jack looked up from the ground in shocked puzzlement until he realized that Dick’s host’s consciousness was fighting to take his mind back. Somehow, the spell that suppressed the original self was wearing off.

  The noise of his anguish could draw attention to them all at any moment.

  Jack moved swiftly when he saw Dick open his mouth to scream. Jumping forward, he grabbed the man around the legs and brought him down. Ted joined him. Dick tried to fight them off, but they quickly had him bound and gagged.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Ted demanded, once Dick was subdued.

  Jack shook his head. “We have to get him home.” He glared down any rebellious questions.

  By then, John was done with his kill. He joined them. He was the only one who’d absorbed any of the death magic the Master needed. Every other bit of energy swirled away on the night air, rendering the kills useless.

  And they were left with a comrade, crazed with his own guilt, fighting to get away from them. It was a good thing they were all there. It took all three of them to wrestle the struggling Dick out of the park and into the trunk of Ted’s car. It was dawn before they drove away.

  “We have to get him home,” Jack told them. “The Master will know how to help him.”

  chapter twenty

  Ivy thumbed through the text messages waiting on her cell phone and deleted all of them. She did the same with the voice mails. Everyone who had tried to contact her in any normal fashion were from her real life, well, her everyday life, where she helped people, kept appointments, paid bills, updated her Facebook page. That was pretty much shot to hell.

  “Hell,” she grumbled. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  “Oh, quit your whining,” Paloma said.

  “My home is being watched. My career is in ruins.”

  “You’re alive.”

  “And grateful for it,” Ivy said. She dabbed toast into egg yolk on her plate. “My problem is, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

  Paloma gave her a significant look.

  “I don’t know how I’m supposed to go about what I’m supposed to do.”

  Ivy and Paloma had met for breakfast, as they frequently did before heading off to their day jobs. Paloma was a couples counselor, very good at getting people to remember that they loved each other. One way or another, most of the members of the familia ended up working with people. In good ways. Their con-artist ancestors must be spinning in their graves. The ones that weren’t vampires, that is.

  Even a cop in the family. What would Grandma Meaghan say? Maybe they should have a séance.

  A bossy cop.

  Selena, of course, had ordered Ivy to stay put at Selena’s house, then went off to do police things. But even though Selena used handcuffs in her day job, she hadn’t locked any around Ivy’s wrists before going on her way.

  She almost wished Selena had. No, Selena had to go and let Ivy be responsible for her own actions and fate.

  “Being a grown-up sucks,” she complained.

  “Eat,” Paloma said. “You always sulk when you’re hungry.”

  Outside the café, the morning sun was shining on rush-hour traffic. Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations were vying with each other in store windows. Paloma’s makeup was perfect. Ivy barely looked presentable. Everything was so very normal.

  “Have some more coffee, too,” Paloma suggested, waving a waiter with a carafe over. “You’ll feel better.”

  Ivy made a face at her cousin. “You sound like a vampire. Coffee makes everything better if you’re a vampire.”

  “At least that’s one thing that’s civilized about them.”

  I like this one.

  The waiter gave them an odd look and left, while Ivy sat up straight and pretended she hadn’t just heard Christopher’s voice in her head.

  Did you miss me?

  She had the oddest sensation that he was sitting right next to her. Just the way he’d physically been there the last time she’d had breakfast. Imagination.

  Imagination is a powerful thing. So’s memory. So’s desire. Are you going to introduce me to your friend?

  Oh, go drink a cup of tea.

  Can’t walk in my sleep, love.

  Really? What are you doing right now?

  “Oh, shit!” Ivy said. She was talking to Christopher! Inside her head. She couldn’t do that.

  Apparently she could, with him. Who was this Christopher? What was he?

  Her hands were trembling. She carefully put her cup down before hot coffee sloshed all over them, and began imagining a wall around her mind, building it stone by stone.

  Paloma was looking concerned, and her gaze moved from Ivy to the empty space beside her in the booth, and back again. “We aren’t alone, are we?”

  Ivy gave the slightest nod. Can you see him? she mouthed.

  Paloma gave a quick, decisive shake of her head.

  Oh, well, at least her cousin didn’t instantly think Ivy was insane. Hearing voices, even real ones, was scary. One of their generation of the familia, a kid they’d grown up with, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and she certainly didn’t want to go that route.

  “If he keeps this up, I’m going to end up a crazy bag lady out on the streets.”

  Nonsense. I’ll likely keep you as a pet.

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  Heads turned toward the booth. Paloma leaned over the table and touched Ivy’s temples. Ivy closed her eyes. She expected to find Christopher standing with his arms crossed filling her inner vision. Darkness showed behind her eyelids. Not even a disappearing Cheshire cat grin greeted her. Maybe there wasn’t a complete invasion by the vampire into her waking world. Maybe she heard his voice because of lack of sleep. Maybe she had too much imagination. She kept piling up mental stones in her shielding wall.

  “Well?” she asked, after Paloma concentrated for a while.

  “Ain’t nothing in there that’s not supposed to be there.”

  Ivy wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or annoyed. What she needed to do was stop worrying about the vampire and start looking into Aunt Cate’s theory about the killings.

  When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t surprised to see people staring at her and Paloma. Paloma put her hands down. Ivy took out her wallet, laid cash on the table, and stood. She’d decided this wasn’t the time or place to have the conversation with her cousin she’d planned.

  “See you tonight,” she said.

  Paloma nodded. “You’re going to be very busy today,” she predicted. “But we will see each other.”

  A tingle went up Ivy’s spine at Paloma’s phrasing, but she walked out of the café without asking what her cousin meant. Paloma didn’t like telling people the futures she saw, anyway. Always in motion is the future, like the little green guy says, was Paloma’s philosophy of her seeress abilities.

  Ivy let her senses lead her when she walked out into the cool morning air. Instinct told her to go right, so that was what she did.

  Toward Lincoln Park.

  It hadn’t been hard to find Ivy. The oddest thing, though, was that Christopher hadn’t planned on the contact. No more than he had the day before.

  When the dawn came, the curse took over, as it would for all eternity. All signs of consciousness left his body. He was frozen in place, unable to move until sunset. Christopher was lying in a safe, comfortable place. Darkness, nothingness settled over him for a while. When the ability to think returned, the first thing he thought about was Ivy.

  T
he plan was to send out every bit of energy he could muster to hunt for Ariel. The plan was to ride the dreams of every companion and slave in every nest in Ariel’s territory.

  He tried. He tried very hard to marshal his telepathy, to focus his senses on these unknown daywalking psychics. He did let himself think about Ivy for a time, getting his interest in her, his questions about her, out of his system. Then he filed the lowly mortal away for later consideration and concentrated on his duty.

  But there was this distracting bit of light bouncing around on the edges of his brain, waving at him. He knew she didn’t want his attention on any conscious level, but her subconscious seemed to be in control.

  She wanted him.

  He laughed. He tasted her tasting deep, dark brown. Coffee. Gold was egg on her tongue. Worry was acid in her blood.

  She wasn’t afraid. He admired that and thought it was stupid of her. She was tired. She was concerned. There were secrets in her soul she didn’t want to take out and look at.

  He needed to know what those secrets were.

  For himself? His inner form nodded acknowledgment. Christopher wanted Ivy—the boyish sort of thing one might carve on another’s heart.

  Duty.

  He, who had once been Captain Christopher Bell of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, reminded himself of duty several times, dragged his attention from Ivy, and it always got yanked back to her. Fine. There was nothing to do but go where his instincts insisted he needed to be. He’d get back to Ariel later.

  So Christopher slid gently in beside Ivy’s thoughts and teased her.

  Then the other girl invaded Ivy’s mind. No. He’d invaded, Ivy consciously let this other person in. He resented that. Admitted to jealousy. He stayed where he was inside Ivy, but the other girl accepted him, told Ivy he belonged there. Interesting. Scary, but interesting.

  Once Ivy was alone, walking along a Chicago street, he eased deeper into her consciousness. He looked through her eyes.

  Stop that, you’re making me dizzy.

  He jumped back. May I join you?