“Nighthawk,” he corrected. “Or Hunter. And yes, that’s why your demon nature isn’t toxic to me.”
She sighed. “I wish I could say the same about myself. Is it because I could go all evil on your ass that you think I’m dangerous to you?”
Christopher laughed, long and hard at that one. “You wouldn’t know how to go evil if you had a handbook and a DVD with step-by-step instructions.”
“I could surprise you.”
“You won’t. You won’t surprise yourself, either,” Christopher added reassuringly.
They were lying next to each other, all warm and comfortable, naked skin on naked skin. More real than real.
Ivy rolled to her side and looked at him. Her fingers ran in slow circles over his chest as she did. “What sort of Hunter are you? You’re not an Enforcer of the City, are you?” she asked.
“Certainly not any city around here,” he answered. “But you are correct. No one city is under my protection.”
“You’re not a dhamphir, there’s only one of them. I know that.”
“You’re not supposed to know about dhamphirs.”
“Family secrets,” she said. “We’re discussing your secrets right now. If there’s only your Legacy lady in England, what do you do? What territory do you police? What are you really doing in Chicago?”
Improbable as it was, the woman was a part of his consciousness. Secrets were possible, but damned hard work. “I work for the Strigoi Council.”
“Every Enforcer does—technically.” She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. He waited for her to make the neural connections. “You work directly for the Strigoi Council. A special agent. Not good,” she added. “They sent you here to—”
“Spy,” he supplied for her. “You might see it that way. My assignment is to investigate certain rumors of irregularities in enforcing the Laws of the Blood.”
She tensed, her fist resting over his heart. She wanted to pound some sense into him.
“Your Laws are outdated, you know.” She spoke mildly, reasonably. A fireworks display of anger shot out of her.
“They aren’t your Laws. It’s not up to mortals, demons, elves, unicorns, or little green men to judge the code by which vampires live.”
“Bullshit.”
He’d expected some such flippant reply. He didn’t bother answering.
“All your laws do is make people miserable.”
“We’re a cursed people,” Christopher pointed out. “We’re supposed to be miserable.”
“The Laws didn’t come from the goddess that supposedly cursed vampires.”
“The Laws exist to keep our people safe, to keep us hidden, to keep mortals from destroying us, to keep demons at bay. I uphold the Laws. Which is more than anyone around here seems to be doing.”
Ivy was very concerned, very serious, and just a bit contemptuous. She worried about him. “It’s not a curse, sweetheart, it’s a very convenient excuse to do what you damn well please with the mortals you take into your world. No one volunteers to be a vampire, do they? Those who are kidnapped and raped into the life become just as mean and selfish as their owners when they’re turned—thanks to the example their parents set for them. It’s an insane way to run a culture.”
There was no need to listen to this nonsense. He turned on his side, putting his back to her. They were together in a dream, he reminded himself. He could send her away, take himself to another place, dream walk in search of clues to his own assignment.
“That isn’t how we roll in Chicago,” Ivy said.
The bed grew instantly cold when she got out of it.
Christopher sat up. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I have work to do. You’re not the only one on assignment.”
He reached for her. “You’re not going anywhere. Not without me. It’s not safe—”
She disappeared. In a poof of sparkling sarcasm.
Only then did Christopher recall that she was not a prisoner of the daylight. That this companionship was only one reality. She could physically get up from the bed they shared in Ariel’s secret room. His body was frozen there. He couldn’t stop her.
Especially since he had forgotten to change the combination on the digital door lock.
He was annoyed enough—by everything between them and in the whole world—to let her go. Let the demon child go about her own duty.
It was easier if she got herself killed.
He was used to making harsh decisions. He decided to let Ivy fight on her own even though he knew she was no warrior.
Life and death was in his Nighthawk’s hands. He must protect the Laws of the Blood. These Covenants must be ripped to shreds, along with the mortals who had forced them on vampires. The vampires must be brought back into line. The Strigoi Council must be obeyed. He’d realized this days ago, but Ivy had distracted him, weakened him.
How easy would it be for him to remain true to his vows when sharing night and day with Ivy, while she tempted him simply to be with her, love her?
He was a Nighthawk, different in so many ways from strigoi. Above them, beyond them.
Love wasn’t for the cursed, and especially not for the defenders of the cursed.
chapter thirty-eight
Ivy stepped onto the sidewalk and closed the door to Caetlyn Bailey’s magic shop. She took a refreshing breath of cold air as she adjusted the strap of the big bag on her shoulder. Then she lifted her chin and faced the hostile trio waiting around in front of the store for someone to pick on. There was a restraining order, but these good folk weren’t abiding by it.
It wasn’t just the Covenanters who thought laws were meant to be broken.
“Satanist!” one of them yelled at her. “Witch!”
“Demon worshipper!”
Oh, if they only knew.
She was dizzy. She had the mother of all headaches. And there was this vampire, see—
No.
Calm. Deep breaths. Blank mind. Forget heartache. Forget the body’s longings.
Do not think of Christopher. Block all knowledge of him, from him. Make him a memory. Then forget the memory.
“What’s wrong, witch?” one of the hecklers demanded, stepping too close. “Are you stoned, or just stupid?”
“A bit of both,” Ivy replied, and stepped around the woman.
“How many humans have you sacrificed?”
Ivy didn’t turn to face her accuser, but she did say over her shoulder, “None. Yet.”
She wandered almost aimlessly for a while, her hands deep in her coat pockets. Her mind was on building her mental shielding, on blocking all the connections, wondrous, sensual, and horrific that had filled and changed her perceptions over the last few days.
The dizziness finally began to clear—it wasn’t as if she’d lost a lot of blood or anything. And she began to think that the headache might have something to do with lack of food and caffeine.
She made her way to her favorite restaurant, hardly aware of the aching cuts on her calf as she walked. It was hard to eat when her breakfast was set before her, hungry or not. She picked up a fork. She was on her second cup of coffee and most of the way through a large meal when her cell phone rang. Selena’s ringtone.
“Washed that strigoi out of your head yet?” were her cop cousin’s first words.
Selena must have been talking to Aunt Cate.
“Meditation and medication work wonders,” Ivy said.
Washed out of her heart? Out of all her desires and longings? That wasn’t going to happen. Don’t think about him now.
“You know what happened last night?”
Selena answered, “I’ve learned that one of our serial-killer crew was taken out. No victim bodies have turned up today.”
“Hopefully none will,” Ivy said. “But a woman was killed. She belonged to a strig. The strig took out the demon minion.”
“So I have heard.”
“What about the strig’s human slaves?”
“Already arranging to get them picked up and deprogrammed. I believe there are at least two more demon minions out there. The regular police task force working the case are still in the dark. My people have no line on the actual demon yet. But I do have some new info.”
No instigator of this horror on any mortal cop’s radar. And if anybody in the magical community knew anything, Selena would have the information out of them by now. Cagey, this demon master. Damn.
Ivy was so scared she couldn’t do this.
“So what’s this news you have, Selena?”
“We’ve nailed down the identity of the man Gacy’s spirit is possessing. A man named Martin Cruszek was reported missing by his wife two weeks ago. He owns a bakery, but his wife says he was always a little psychic. One morning he took off his apron and walked out. In front of witnesses, so there’s been no suspicion of foul play. In fact, suicide was suspected. Witnesses said he said something about returning to the river.”
“This Cruszek is the man Ian bailed out of jail.”
“Yes. With IDs on both men, it’s easier to find them. I’m checking out a line on Cruszek right now. As for Ian—watch out. Be careful.”
Ivy looked across the booth, to where Ian Doherty had just sat down opposite her. “I will,” She told Selena. “And—be careful with my toothy friend. He’s here to destroy the Covenanters.”
“Guessed that al—”
Ivy turned off the phone before Selena finished. She concentrated all of her attention on Ian. She tried out her newfound gift for telepathy. Hello, Jack.
It must have worked. His serious face lit with his wide smile. He’d always been a thin, fragile boy, with fine-boned dark Celtic good looks. He looked healthier than she’d ever seen him before, handsome and whole. Too bad the person looking out of his gray blue eyes was mad as a hatter.
“Someone who finally knows who I am!” he breathed in an excited whisper.
We met in a dream, Ivy whispered in his damaged mind. She was searching for Ian while talking to Jack. Her recent introduction to roaming around inside other people’s heads was proving to have professional uses. Don’t you remember?
“He killed me in a dream. I don’t want to remember dreams.”
You’re dreaming right now, Ian. Think about waking up and being Ian. Just let yourself think. Let yourself feel. Feeling hurts, but it’s what you do best.
“I felt them die. I’ll feel you die. But the Master wants you first.”
Of course he does.
Ivy considered her options. She could make a fuss, call for help, get Jack the Ripper safely out of the way. But the real problem would still be out there. The master demon would know if his minions were taken from him. He’d run, hide, enslave others. The murders wouldn’t stop. Not until whatever spell the demon was working drew enough power to succeed.
She could pretty much guess what the demon was after. Power, power, and more power. Over mortals. Over the doors to other dimensions. Demons were pretty straightforward in their ambitions. Jack’s Master was cleverer than most, his sadistic streak deeper and more imaginative. He ruined lives as well as took them.
She’d been bound by blood and magic to find this evil. Now she volunteered for it. She was not looking forward to doing so.
“The Master ordered me to bring you to him,” Jack said. “At first I thought it was your death energy he wanted, but it was you, alive, that was my assignment. You will be our transformation.”
“Transformation. Into what?”
Jack ignored the question. “I believe that finding you was his aim in putting me in this host body. He knew the pleasure I would have taking you.” He sounded very proud of the assignment. He gave a glance around the crowded room. “Don’t make me hurt anyone here. Come quietly.”
She fought nausea. Ruined lives.
Ian. Come back to us, Ian.
“All right,” Ivy said. “I’ll come with you.” She slipped on her coat and picked up her purse.
“Leave your stuff.”
She put her bag down, and stood. “If you want me to leave my coat in the middle of November, you will get a fight from me.”
Ian “Jack the Ripper” Doherty didn’t look happy, but he let it go. Her coat stayed on. She let him take her hand—it felt obscene to have anyone but Christopher’s fingers clasped around her wrist—and he led her out into the cold.
Christopher held his hand before his face and slowly flexed his long, strong fingers. Something was wrong. They wanted to be holding something. Someone.
“Oh, bugger it.”
He would have tossed the hand angrily aside had it not been attached to him. There were some things you couldn’t do, even in the dream state.
Such as forget the woman whose absence was driving him mad.
He wanted Ivy to be gone.
But she was gone.
He hadn’t meant to look for her, but he couldn’t stop. He had planned to ignore her, but he hadn’t thought she wouldn’t be there.
“Go ahead. Walk out of my life just because I told you to.”
When did any man ever act sane over a woman whether he was mortal, immortal, or something in between?
Demons, for example?
Oh, no. You are not going there. No thinking about demons. You can’t help her. You won’t help her.
She’s nowhere in the city of Chicago to be helped.
That terrified him.
chapter thirty-nine
The run-down warehouse building was certainly not the sort of place she’d expected a demon to live. They were luxury loving. If they couldn’t get luxury, they at least wanted comfort. Ivy took note of broken windows, layer upon layer of tagging spray painted on the sagging brick walls. Some of it was quite artistic; most of it was obscene.
Ivy looked the wreck of a building up and down. The place was huge, empty but for pigeons perching on window ledges. She bet there were rats inside. It was one more abandoned warehouse in a run-down neighborhood of abandoned buildings.
“It’s all kind of demoralizing, isn’t it?”
“This is Plan B,” Jack said. Or was it Ian? “The Master decided it was time to move locations.”
“I’m glad I wore my coat.”
“Come along.”
He was holding her arm. Ivy’s impulse was to twist away and run. She so wanted to let self-preservation trump duty.
Feet dragging, she let the demon’s minion lead her inside. Up one flight of creaking stairs. Then another. She’d been right about the rats.
She felt the evil presence the moment she reached the top of the second staircase.
Jack saw that she was aware of the demon’s presence. He grinned proudly. He breathed in the stench of the creature’s power. “Isn’t he wonderful?”
“Eh. You didn’t grow up with it.”
Ivy was shaking, but she ignored it and strode forward. The poor possessed bastard trailed up the hallway behind her, thinking he was the luckiest serial killer in the world.
She halted in front of a closed door. She stared at the door handle. Dizzy, head pounding, shaking. For a moment, she wished she was tied up, helpless, being forced to enter the demon’s presence. She did not want to go in there. She didn’t want to go through with the confrontation to come.
Jack came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders.
The touch changed her mind. She wasn’t going to let somebody else push her inside.
Ivy opened the door. She kept her gaze on the stained and worn linoleum floor as she walked inside. The demon’s presence was stronger with each step. His heat reached out for her. Tendrils of hate swirled all around her. When Ivy couldn’t make herself take another step, she did make herself look up. Into the face of the demon.
“Hello, Dad,” she said.
Jack the Ripper looked particularly smug, standing with his arms crossed beneath the Shakespeare statue.
“That’s my spot,” Christopher said.
“It never has been. She’s mine now.”
Christopher stepped up to the crazy little— “She’s mine. You can’t have her!”
“You gave her to me.”
He had.
The dream went heavy and black around Christopher. Good. Better to be in blackness. Better to be alone.
The hell it was.
“Ivy? Where are you?”
Empty. Black. The heaviness was his heart.
Ivy was stunned at the changes in the person who’d sired her. It had been a few years, and she hadn’t missed him. He had still looked human then. She fought nausea and disgust at the changes. James McCoy looked a lot like Grandpa now. Grandpa had always been disappointed that his witch lover’s experiment in reproduction had turned out more human than demon, at least in looks.
Dad was dark, all right, but in a sleazy way.
But—there was something noble about her grandfather, something pure in his otherworldly wickedness. He was a demon, pure and simple.
She’d always thought her half-demon father more intimidating, more dangerous because he was evil in human form. He’d made the choice to be bad. He was charming, handsome, witty. A total piece of human-shaped shit.
And Ivy didn’t think this just because of the way her mother cursed the cousin who had gotten her pregnant and deserted her. The reason Ivy didn’t think that way was because James McCoy only showed up in her own life when he wanted something from her.
She guessed what he wanted this time. She was not going to throw up.
“How did you—?”
She gestured, taking in the changes in James McCoy’s form.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Jack asked, coming to stand beside her.
Technically—yes.
“Magic, of course,” her demon father said. “Dark. Deep. Damning. I’ve learned things Mother could never comprehend. She would be proud.”
“Maybe you should pay her a visit. Show her the new you.”
“I plan to. I will take Father’s place.” He ran a hand over his broad red chest, stroked the horns sprouting from his head. “You see the real me at last.”
She gave him a critical look. At least he wasn’t completely naked.
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