Personal Demon

by Susan Sizemore

  No. He would know if Ivy was dead. He prayed he would know if anything happened to her. Prayed it wasn’t too late.

  Prayed to who? He was cursed and—

  Fuck that.

  Fractured and confused—? The demon’s slaves were fractured and confused.

  Christopher certainly knew about that. It was being fractured and confused that had brought him into contact with the Ripper in the first place. The monster had called him across London to—

  “Jack, Jack, Jack.” Christopher grabbed on to the one bit of hope that had come his way tonight. “If I found you once, I can find you again.”

  He closed his eyes and opened his mind. Let’s start the death game all over again.

  Ivy was dizzy and weak enough not to care that she was dizzy and weak. She was tired of looking at the crumbling water-stained ceiling. Shadows were creeping across it. It was a lot of work to turn her head, but she managed an inch or so to her right.

  Ian Doherty came into her line of sight. His handsome face was so very intense, so focused. His brow was wrinkled. “Do you have a headache, Ian?”

  “Hurts being Jack. Helping. Help.” He threw back his head, and shouted, “I’m Jack! Jack the Ripper! I am—”

  “Hush, now,” the demon’s voice soothed from the other side of Ivy. “It won’t be long now.”

  “Jack’s here!” Ian shouted. “I’m waiting for you! Help!”

  “You’ll always be my Jack.” The voice was so soothing, so seductive. “You’ll be Jack forever. Lift the basin now. Drink, my Jack. Become who you truly are forever.”

  Ian stepped back. His gaze came up, across Ivy to look at the demon. He looked at his Master for what seemed a long time to Ivy’s screwed-up senses. Finally, he lifted the dish in his hands toward his lips.

  “It’s going to make you sick,” Ivy said. “Humans can’t digest human blood.”

  A claw raked across Ivy’s stomach. “Hush.”

  “Just trying to help, Dad.”

  As she spoke, Ian gulped down some of the blood. More of the blood—her very own “she really needed it in her and not on him” blood—spilled down his chin and onto his bare chest. Oh, he was naked, too. She guessed they all were.

  He gagged. But he managed to swallow what was in his mouth. He gagged again, held a hand over his mouth. The basin clanged to the floor. Her spilled blood spilled. Ian made a strangling sound, doubled over, and fell to his knees. He threw up.

  “Told you,” Ivy murmured. She slowly turned her head toward the demon. “He’s not a demon, Dad. Can’t handle their blood, mortals.”

  The demon stroked her hair, with claws that left gashes in her scalp. He gave her a knowing smile. “He’s not like us,” he agreed. “But I had hopes for him. Oh, well.” He shrugged, and his attention totally left Ivy and his pet, Jack the Ripper.

  Ivy wanted to sleep. She made herself watch her own father lift the goblet and drink her down. When he’d drained every drop, thrown the cup away, and stepped triumphantly back, she smiled.

  “I’m going to enjoy this,” she said.

  “Thank you, Christopher,” she added, when the door crashed open, and a roaring whirlwind came rushing in.

  chapter forty-three

  Thank you, Christopher,” Ian said, while screaming Jack inside him waited to die.

  You brought him here! You brought him to kill the Master! You brought him to kill me! Us! You!

  I did.

  You called out to him when I tried to hide!

  Die, Jack. Please die now.

  Ian was himself, mostly. Even though being Ian hurt. Ian had come up out of the dark when Ivy called. He’d always loved her. She’d begged him not to be Jack anymore. But when the vampire began calling for Jack, it was necessary to continue sharing, so the vampire could find Ivy. It wasn’t necessary anymore.

  He was as much as he ever could be one isolated-inside-himself person when he was around people. Some of the pain in him was his own, but mostly he was aware of Ivy slipping away.

  He closed his eyes and curled around himself. James McCoy was screaming. Good.

  chapter forty-four

  The demon screamed before Christopher even reached him. The huge red creature drew back from the altar, his claws tearing at the skin on his chest. Christopher was stunned for a moment, staring. The pounding of the demon’s heart was visible in his chest, and not just to Christopher’s vampire senses. The demon’s chest rippled, throbbed.

  His blood boiled. Demons were hot creatures, but this one was burning. His blood was lava.

  Christopher felt it, heard the sizzle. Scented roasting-meat pain.

  Such awful pain.

  Such awful familiar pain.

  Oh, yes, he’d tasted that killing pain.

  Christopher smelled Ivy’s blood and everything that was wrong with it. It pooled on the floor around the table, dripped out of ritual vessels, drained from her in a slowing stream.

  Jack was covered in her blood. And the demon—

  Her poisoned blood roared inside the demon, ravaged him. Was killing him. Ivy had drugged herself, given her blood—sacrifice—

  “Oh, love, what have you done?”

  A knowing, willing sacrifice disguised within a demon’s black-magic ritual sacrifice. The whitest of white magic.

  Admiring her sneakiness wasn’t accomplishing the rescue. Christopher went to untie her. The demon moved first.

  The demon’s mouth was a screaming hole in his head. His claws were covered in his own smoking blood when he rushed forward. Toward the altar. Toward Ivy.

  Christopher tackled the demon before he could reach her, do her any more harm. He picked the creature up and tossed him against the wall on the far side of the big room. The demon slid to the floor, where he stayed, writhing and howling.

  Christopher ripped the ropes fastening Ivy’s wrists. Ripped strips off his shirt to tightly bandage her deeply cut wrists. He moved as quickly as his kind could, and as gently as was possible. She watched him work, her consciousness barely there; her sense of peace and happiness as she looked at him disturbed him greatly.

  “I won’t have you dying,” he told her. “Stop being resigned to it.”

  “Not done yet. Knife,” she said. The words came out slowly, carefully, with great effort. She was as pale as a hungry vampire. “In my coat pocket. Help me up. Dad isn’t done yet.”

  “Dad?”

  Christopher looked from his quarter-demon lover to the red, screaming creature across the room. Dad. The true villain of this piece’s most evil act was sacrificing his own daughter? He was so going to die.

  Christopher helped Ivy sit up, watched her swaying weakly as she fought to stay upright. Saw her force her attention on the poisoned demon.

  “Leave him,” Christopher said. “The demon is disintegrating.”

  “The pure demon, yes. Not the born one. Knife. Inside pockets. Coat.”

  Ivy tried to stand. Christopher pushed her back down. He followed her scent to the garment, went through the pockets. He found the knife in an inside zip pocket as she said. He also found a small bottle of cloudy liquid. When he held it up to look at it, the substance in the bottle glowed in the moonlight from the big broken window.

  He took what he’d found to Ivy. He held up the bottle. “Antidote?” he asked. She nodded, and was so weak she couldn’t lift her head afterwards. Christopher twisted the top off the bottle and made her drink all the liquid down. “Rest,” he said, when she was done. He made her lie back down. She needed a transfusion. His impulse was to make her drink his blood. But that would turn her into his companion. He wanted that, and once she tasted him, she couldn’t help but want him and no one else. But—

  “That’s not how we roll in Chicago.”

  Companionship was her choice. He wanted it that way. Because he loved her.

  “Let’s get you out of here.” He started to pick her up.

  She struggled feebly. “Dad.”

  Ah, yes. Dad. Christopher st
ill held the stone knife. There was something he could do for Ivy.

  Christopher had never had contact with one of demonkind. He’d certainly never killed one. There was a treaty between demons and the Strigoi Council that forbid them from interfering with one another. Christopher didn’t give a damn about the Laws of the Blood just then. He wasn’t going to let the woman he loved have to live with the guilt of killing her own father. Even if she’d accepted the necessity, she was going to be spared from that last horrific deed.

  He unsheathed the razor-sharp flaked-obsidian blade and crossed to the demon, who had at least once been half-human. He knelt beside the moaning, panting man-shaped thing. “You’re a right bastard, aren’t you?”

  He was trained to kill vampires. With a vampire, you took out the heart or took off the head or burned them to ash. SOP for Nighthawks was removing the heart. If it worked on a vampire, it ought to work on a demon. And the obsidian blade was much sharper than the ritual silver blade issued to Nighthawks by the Council.

  When the deed was done, Christopher returned to Ivy. He picked her up, cradling her gently in his arms. Jack moved as Christopher turned to leave.

  Christopher automatically flashed his fangs at the demon’s creature.

  Jack flinched and covered his face.

  Ivy tugged on Christopher’s ear. “He hasn’t hurt anyone. He needs help.”

  And the possessed mortal had helped, hadn’t he? When Christopher latched onto the mind of Jack the Ripper, that spirit’s awareness had been weak, failing. The mortal had been fighting for his own mind. But he’d realized what Christopher needed and let Jack’s ascendancy return. It had been a selfless, brave act.

  “All right,” Christopher said. He held Ivy close against his heart, where he was going to keep her. He reached a soothing thought out to Jack, reassurance, thanks. “Come along. Let’s get everybody fixed up.”

  chapter forty-five

  Will you stop calling me Pickles?”

  “No,” Christopher answered. “It suits you better than Ivy.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “It suits you better than Lilith.”

  “I agree with that one. Why Pickles?”

  “Because you are all vinegar and spice.” Christopher kissed her. Pickles are delicious.

  They were sharing a dream, but the sweet, hot taste of her was real as real could be.

  She slept beside him, healing, growing stronger. She’d had a transfusion along with her Aunt-Cate restorative; the deep cuts on her wrists were stitched up. One of her numerous relatives had been the blood donor, and Christopher fought down the twinge of jealousy at allowing anyone’s blood twining with Ivy’s but his.

  Finally, the daylight was burning away, and he and Ivy shared a bed in Ariel’s house. Their still bodies were as twined together as their active minds.

  “Mind you, Lilith might be a pretty name if it weren’t associated with a baby-killing demoness,” he added after they’d kissed and caressed for a while. Horrible name for a mother to pick for a child, never mind the family history.

  “That ‘Adam’s first wife was named Lilith, who became a baby-killing demoness when he wouldn’t let her be on top’ thing is all Midrash,” Ivy said. “It’s an explanation biblical scholars gave for the name Lilith when it appeared only once in the Bible. Nobody knew who Lilith was, so they came up with a good story. Fiction turned into folklore. And a character on Cheers.”

  “Never watched the show,” Christopher said. “Pickles.”

  She ran a finger down the extensive length of his nose. “Proboscis. Maybe I’ll call you that if—”

  “Ivy, it is, then.”

  She grew suddenly serious. “You aren’t still thinking of killing me, are you?”

  Christopher was taken completely by surprise. He held her closer, as tenderly as he could. “Why would I do that? After all the trouble I went through to find you?” After she’d turned his world and everything he believed upside down? “Of course, you’re likely to continue to be nothing but trouble. Why bring up homicidal mayhem now?”

  “Dunno, really. Just a stray thought about your Legacy girlfriend.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. I’m more likely to introduce you to her than kill you over her. Now.”

  “People aren’t supposed to know she exists.”

  “Times change.”

  His dream of Lady Legacy hadn’t been a dream. He’d called her while Ivy was being treated. It had been a short conversation, but enlightening on the history of vampires. She’d mentioned ancient documents he might want to look up if he was up for a quest. Well, he’d think more about that later.

  “You’re part of the strigoi world now,” Christopher told Ivy. “And I think you’re very good at keeping secrets.”

  And he was part of Ivy’s world, may the dark goddess help him!

  “I tried to let you sacrifice yourself,” he admitted, and waited for her to hate him.

  She kissed him instead, lips tender against his. “It would have been the smart thing, for an Enforcer of the Laws. I’m glad you decided not to be smart.”

  “Thank you so much for putting it that way.” Guilt pulsed around him, green-and-brown fog. “You didn’t know I’d come for you.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. I’ll do plenty of that in years to come. I don’t know if I can even become a companion, considering my ancestry.”

  It pleased him that she sounded worried about that. “We’ll work it out. We’ll be together.”

  He wanted to say they’d be together forever, but that wasn’t the strigoi way. Once a companion was changed into a vampire, the maker and blood child were separated forever. But—she was part demon, maybe the rules didn’t apply…

  Ivy chuckled even though Christopher could tell she knew what he was thinking. “We’ll work it out,” she promised. “Trust me.”

  If they could be here, like this, Christopher supposed they could do anything.

  “Come on,” she said, pulling him onto his side, throwing her leg over his hips. “Let’s enjoy the now.”

  Christopher buried himself in her heat. Oh, yes, the now was lovely!

  Those cuts are looking good,” Sanjay told Ivy. Ivy smiled up at Christopher, who was standing by the mantel. “James McCoy knew his way around a scalpel, didn’t he?”

  “He was a man of many pseudotalents,” Aunt Cate said. “Some of the con games he ran were of a medical nature.”

  Sanjay patted Ivy’s hand, under Christopher’s stern gaze, and let her go.

  Sanjay was Paloma’s longtime Tantric magic partner, and the family doctor. “It’ll itch when the stitches start to dissolve.”

  “I have a cream to help with that,” Aunt Cate spoke up.

  Ivy, Christopher, Caetlyn Bailey, Lawrence, Sanjay, and Paloma were gathered in Ariel’s Victorian living room. Lounge, as Christopher called it. Ivy knew that Christopher wasn’t happy with all this company—she rather liked that he said he wanted to keep her all to himself—but he didn’t complain about this family gathering. It was for medical purposes, after all.

  Talking about her father, even thinking about him, had never been easy for Ivy. But her curiosity was itching at the moment. “I wonder how he picked the men he worked possession spells on? I understand Ian, but I wonder how he picked the others?”

  “I wonder how he called up the demon that possessed him,” Lawrence said. “Do we have to find and close an opening between universes now?”

  “What is that to you?” Christopher asked Lawrence, quietly and threateningly.

  “By we I meant Caetlyn,” Lawrence replied.

  Christopher shook his head, visibly relaxed. Ivy worried about him. The poor Nighthawk wasn’t sure whose side he was on yet. Reforming from a lifetime of bad behavior took time. Or at least enforcing bad behavior because he thought it was the right thing to do. Anybody would be confused if their moral compass went spinning out of control.

&nbs
p; It worried her that the old-world Strigoi Council were bound to send someone looking for Christopher. Worried her, yes, but they’d work it out. Let the future take care of itself. After planting a few mines and spies, of course.

  Ivy concentrated on the present. She turned to Paloma. “How’s Ian doing?”

  “He’s with his parents right now. It’s going to take a lot of work to get him completely back, but his fighting the possession the way he did at the end gives me hope.”

  “How did you know the poison was going to work?” Christopher asked suddenly. He was glaring at Aunt Cate.

  “Grandma told me,” Ivy said. “Oh, not directly. She didn’t say—go kill your father, my only child, with this vial of sparkly poisonous crystals. Grandma never lies. But you have to listen very carefully to what she tells you. She told me that she’d do what was necessary to save Grandpa, and I knew she was talking about Dad.”

  “Your father did try killing his father some years ago,” Aunt Cate said. “He was forgiven for that attempt.”

  “But Grandma’s not the sort to give you a second chance to go against her,” Ivy said. She shrugged sheepishly and concentrated on Christopher. “When she gave me the poison—which I so very stupidly mistook for medicine at the time—she told me to use just a little for vampires. When I saw what a couple of crystals did to you, it occurred to me that perhaps she meant the poison for a different purpose. If a little bit did that much damage to a vampire, what would it do to a demon? I made the choice to find out.”

  “You let her,” Christopher said to Aunt Cate. “You encouraged her.”

  Aunt Cate only smiled at his accusing anger. “So did you,” she told him.

  Fortunately, the doorbell rang before anyone said more on the subject. Paloma hurried off to answer the door.

  Selena came in a moment later. She tossed a set of keys across the room. Christopher caught them.

  “What’s up?” Ivy asked.

  “We’re going on a road trip,” Christopher told her. “I’m told there are some people I need to meet with.”