Hot Demon in the City (Latter Day Demons Book 1)

by Suttle, Connie

  One of them hissed when we herded our charges down the hall toward the restrooms. I figured we had minutes at best before the fanged and clawed came after us. I regretted not buying the knife I'd considered after the attack in the parking lot.

  "Why are we going in here?" Mike asked when I hauled him through the ladies' room door.

  "Shut up," Anita hissed while dragging Rick farther in. I wanted to laugh—there was a baby changing station folded up on one wall. It must have been part of state law or something—I couldn't imagine anybody in a supe bar needed a changing station.

  "I'll get us out of here," Anita began before the restroom door hit the adjoining wall so hard it cracked.

  Six vamps attempted to crowd in while Anita folded space, dragging all of us with her.

  * * *

  Kordevik

  Mason insisted on coming with me; I was forced to skip with him tucked under an arm—for the second time. He didn't remember the first time, actually; he'd been unconscious during that trip.

  By the time we walked into the bar, it was to find six angry vamps headed toward the front door. That's when they saw Mason. Their attention shifted from their first targets (I could only assume they were Mike and Rick), to Mason and me in the space of a heartbeat.

  None of their hearts were beating; I could only count nanoseconds between the beats of mine. Those had ratcheted up to an alarming rate the second the vamps settled on us as a suitable second objective.

  "Well, well." The six separated into groups of three to allow a seventh vampire through.

  Granger.

  No, I'd never seen him before, but I could put one and one together, just like most people could. The way he eyed Mason, too, spelled doom for the vampire at my back if I didn't do something quick.

  "Clear the bar," Watson shouted behind the counter, before blasting the ceiling with the rifle he kept within easy reach below the bar.

  Granger didn't blink while everyone else ran past our little standoff and out the door.

  "You on their side?" Granger turned to Watson, then.

  "Yeah."

  "Then get over here," Granger sounded magnanimous. He and six other vamps intended to make mincemeat out of us—in short order.

  Watson left his rifle on the bar and walked past several tables to get to my side. "You ready, bro?" He gave me a dark look.

  "Oh, yeah," I agreed. I skipped Mason and Watson six blocks away, landing on the sidewalk just in time to hear the explosion and watch the fireball from Clawdia's bloom upward into the foggy night sky.

  * * *

  "Didn't kill a single one of the vamps," Watson reported the following morning. "That means Granger will be more determined than ever to wipe the floor with what's left of us after his goons are done. They ran away when we disappeared, so they weren't caught in the blast. What I'm worried about," he hesitated, "what I'm worried about is the news guys. They went toward the restrooms with two women just before you came along. I expected the vamps to have blood on their claws after coming back down the hall, but they didn't. I have no idea why that is, or why there weren't any bodies found in the restroom area."

  "This was Clawdia's plan? To blow the place up? While there were humans inside?" I shook my head at Watson.

  "Yeah," he shrugged. "Humans getting too close; she gets rid of her problems and still owns the ground the bar stood on. It'll sell for quite a bit. She has plans to rebuild the bar somewhere else."

  "Insurance?"

  "Werewolf-owned company," Watson shrugged and went to find something for breakfast.

  "They didn't find a finger or anything else?" I pursued the human aspect of Watson's story.

  "Nothing. That's what Claudia called to tell me a few minutes ago. According to the police, fire and everybody else at the scene, the place was empty when it blew."

  "Then how the hell did they escape? Through a window?"

  "Not unless they made one," Watson replied. "Want eggs?"

  "I guess I'll know for sure if Mike doesn't show up for work today," I growled.

  "Well, you won't have to worry about Vann sticking his nose into werewolf business, now," Watson snickered.

  "You," I pointed at him, "are a piece of work. Or shit. Take your pick. What about the women who came in?"

  "Both lookers, but the one with long, platinum hair and a black eye made everybody sit up and take notice, if you know what I mean."

  "What the hell?" Smoke escaped my nostrils as I went for Watson's throat.

  "Dude, stop choking me," he managed to get out as I bent him over the island and breathed clouds of smoke in his face.

  "Look like this, did she?" I jerked my cell phone off the counter with one hand and scrolled through my recent photos until I got to the one I'd secretly taken of Lexsi.

  "That's her," Watson coughed as I let him go. "Who is she?"

  "None of your business. If I find out she got hurt or killed last night, I'll kill you and Claudia for keeping that bomb shit to yourselves."

  "You're serious?"

  "Hell, yes."

  "Damn. Do you have a way to reach her? I need to know whether I ought to start running or not."

  I had the news station on the phone in seconds. "She's here—with Mike, the weather guy from Eighty-Two and somebody else from the downtown office," the intern at the night desk informed me. "Mike looks like he's been through hell and keeps yelling that his car was blown up."

  "Thank the Mighty," I muttered. "Look, I can come get them if you think they need a ride."

  "Mike and the other guy for sure," the intern said. "I'll have to ask Lexsi."

  "I'll be there in half an hour," I said. "Tell them not to go anywhere," I added. "I'll drive them home."

  * * *

  Lexsi

  Kory showed up in less than half an hour, checked out one of the station's vans and herded us into it. Anita didn't like it—she'd intended to fold space to get us away from Mike, who was still yelling about his car.

  My headache still hadn't gone away; that meant I wanted to yell right back at Mike, telling him he was damn lucky to be alive instead of blown up or drained vampire bait. Those six vamps would have been all over him and Rick, with the bodies hidden so well afterward nobody would have found them.

  "We're gonna talk," Kory growled as he held the van's back door open for me to climb inside.

  "About what?" I rubbed my forehead.

  "Fuck," he muttered before shutting my door and stalking toward the driver's side door.

  He dropped Rick, Mike and Anita off at their homes, leaving me for last.

  "Get in the front seat," Kory barked after Anita walked into her building.

  I was too weary and in too much pain from the perpetual headache to argue with him. He buckled me in after I fumbled the seat belt. He waited until he'd pulled away and headed for the bridge to start talking.

  "What the hell were you doing at that bar," he demanded.

  "Farin," I whispered. "Rick is her brother. She was worried that he and Mike would get hurt at the bar. She begged me to convince him to leave. I had to ask Anita to go with me, because I sure as hell didn't want to go by myself."

  "Why didn't you call him?" Kory still wasn't happy with my explanation.

  "We tried. He wasn't answering."

  "Fuck."

  "Yeah. I hear that, all right." I closed my eyes, hoping that would help with the pounding inside my skull. "If Vann hears that Mike tried to go around him to get the bar story," I didn't finish.

  "Maybe Vann needs to hear exactly that. Mike could have gotten you killed, tonight."

  "Mike could have gotten himself killed, and Rick, too."

  "I don't give a damn about Mike or Rick."

  Silence fell after that statement, and somewhere between the Golden Gate Bridge and Aunt Bree's house, I fell asleep.

  I dreamed about Kory carrying me into the house, while someone else opened the back door for him.

  Everything was hazy, after that. I just remembered
falling into a deeper sleep when the pain went away.

  Chapter 4

  Kordevik

  I worried that Li'Neruh Rath would be angry that I sent mindspeech, or that he'd ignore me altogether, but he didn't. After I carried Lexsi to her bedroom, he took away her headache with gentle fingers.

  They hit her harder than she thought, he sent afterward. It's taken care of. Go home. She doesn't need to find you here in the morning.

  I know. I hung my head. Things were supposed to be so different, yet here we were.

  Woo her. Carefully. You're not a caveman, you know.

  Li'Neruh disappeared. That's when I figured out why he'd placed me on Earth to start with. So I could win my intended, instead of expecting her to be handed to me outright.

  I was still so angry with her about going to that fucking bar, though, while she was injured and in pain. I almost touched her, too, while she slept. I only wanted to run a finger down her cheek; I knew her skin would be velvety soft beneath my hand. Tearing myself away from that thought, I walked back through the house and made sure everything was locked up before driving the van back to the station. Little Miss Lexsi occupied my thoughts the entire time.

  * * *

  Lexsi

  The headache was gloriously absent when I woke, and upon my examination of the bruises and black eye in the bathroom mirror, I found both looked fainter and my eye had actually opened all the way.

  Still, feeling as if six more hours of sleep would be the greatest gift ever, I showered, dressed, filled a mug with coffee and shut myself in the TinyCar to drive to work.

  Farin wore a guilty expression when I walked in. She wanted to say something and worried I was upset with her. "I'm not mad at you," I said, heading for my tiny cubicle. "Is Mike coming to work today?"

  "Oh, uh," Farin looked extremely uncomfortable for a moment.

  "Mike's looking for a new job," Vann snapped as he walked along the hall toward Farin and me. I'd known Vann was a camera hog, but firing Mike because he'd acted foolishly and was nearly killed for his efforts sounded a bit extreme to me.

  "I have something for you," Farin took my arm and led me away from Vann, who was headed for the coffee machine.

  "What's that?" I asked, once we'd reached my cubicle.

  "Rick says thanks," she whispered. "He doesn't remember much, just that you and Anita got them out of the bar before things went boom."

  "What will Mike do?" I asked.

  "I think Rick will put in a word with his station; Mike won't be unemployed long. Everybody knows how difficult Vann can be to work for."

  "Farin, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but you should tell your brother to stay away from that bar if it happens to pop up somewhere else. Let the police handle this, all right? It's dangerous."

  "I think he got the message last night, but I'll tell him." She started to walk away, then turned back to me. "He likes you. He says you're gorgeous, even with a black eye."

  "Oh. Uh, tell him thanks, I guess. You ought to thank Kory, too, for driving them home last night."

  "That ought to be fun," she grimaced.

  "Maybe I'll send him a bottle of something," I said. "He had to be awake most of the night to get all of us back where we should be."

  "I owe you," Farin said. "Dinner, sometime, at my place? I'm a decent cook."

  "That sounds like a deal," I said. "Thanks."

  "Silver," Vann appeared as Farin walked away, "I want to go back to what's left of that bar. I intend to get to the bottom of this, if it takes the rest of my life to do it."

  * * *

  Kordevik

  The look on Lexsi's face as she followed Vann and his crew out of the station told me exactly where we were going—to the burned remains of a bar, where a mysterious explosion happened the night before.

  She was pissed about it; Jessie and Chet weren't looking forward to it, either. It made me want to turn my smaller Thifilathi loose on Vann, but that couldn't happen. Instead, I drove us to Clawdia's—or what remained of it.

  * * *

  Lexsi

  Vann waved his copy of the police report from the explosion the night before, and referred to the bar fight before that. "While the police say it is too early to link these two incidents, it certainly looks suspicious," he preened before the camera.

  "Our requests for an interview with the bar owner have been refused; her assistant referred us to the police investigation unit, and gave their phone number. When we pointed out that we'd already spoken to them, he hung up."

  Half a block away, Kory stood with his cell phone in his hand, texting someone. At least he could walk away and not pay attention to Vann; his job was to drive us and nothing else.

  I held Vann's notes and brushed hair from my face—a breeze was blowing off the bay, stirring ash in the bombed building behind us. We'd had to set up across the street; crime scene tape was still strung up everywhere and a grumpy security guard eyed us with a mixture of disgust and malevolence from his nearby post.

  At least the owner had thought to protect what remained of the bar; looters would probably be all over it if she hadn't.

  Besides, it was probably hazardous to walk through the rubble without thick boots on—broken glass from liquor bottles was everywhere.

  "How long is he going to babble?" Kory appeared at my elbow.

  "As long as he wants—he's the boss."

  "Gee, that's too bad," Kory rumbled.

  "What do you like to drink?" I asked. "I'll buy a bottle to say thanks for getting all of us home last night."

  "Crown works."

  "All right. I'll see what I can do."

  "Do you drink?" he asked.

  "Not often. A glass of wine with dinner, sometimes."

  "Wimp."

  "I fought three guys in a parking lot. You think that's wimpy?" My temper was beginning to rise.

  "Not that way," he held up a hand. "Just in your drinking habits."

  "I'll get your bottle of Crown," I said and stalked away from him.

  * * *

  Kordevik

  Way to go, Weth, I chastised myself as she walked away. I needed to remind myself of how young she was. Yes, she was extremely mature, which likely prompted my lack of propriety.

  Or maybe I'd just been hanging around males too long. My father would be ashamed of me. My mother, too.

  "Look, I didn't mean it that way," I strode after her. "I think I've just had too much male company for a while, and tossing back a few drinks is what we do."

  "Should I buy them a bottle, too?" She turned to look at me. Her eyes betrayed her anger; her words merely conveyed sarcasm.

  "Really. I didn't mean it," I repeated.

  "Fine." I watched as her shoulders slumped. At that moment, she appeared lost. Alone.

  As she was. I wondered if any of her family knew where and when she'd landed. I hadn't taken the time to consider what Lexsi's disappearance had done to them—or to Kifirin's reigning King and Queen.

  Lexsi was related to royalty, after all. I didn't even want to consider her paternal grandmother, who was also a Queen, Or one of her uncles, who was a King. Another uncle was the founder of the Campiaan Alliance, for fuck's sake.

  Damn. I'd just been so angry I'd burned down a bar and was sent here as punishment by Li'Neruh Rath.

  Fuck. He'd sent me here to protect her, and I was too stupid to see it.

  Except she didn't want my protection—as far as I could see.

  Well, she didn't know who I was. If she did, she'd get away from me as fast as she could. I had to work around that and—according to Li'Neruh Rath—woo her at the same time.

  He'd planned my punishment perfectly, by placing me in a situation I had no idea how to deal with. The biggest problem I faced, of course, was that Miss Lexsi didn't want protection. I'd seen that firsthand when she'd waltzed into a supe bar to haul two humans out of it.

  That's when it hit me. I had a temporarily out-of-work werewolf and a vamp staying at my h
ouse. Lexsi had a house far too big for only one person; Mason and Watson could help protect her. There had to be a solution she'd accept, I merely hadn't thought of it, yet.

  * * *

  Lexsi

  By the time Vann wound down, cut the recording and waited for us to pack the equipment in the van, I was ready to strangle him. For some reason, Kory chose to make things worse by calling me a wimp.

  For not drinking.

  Go figure.

  I knew Vann could still draw unwanted attention with the interest he was paying to this; he'd referred to it in his monologue as a cover-up—by the police and the bar's owner.

  Difik.

  If he'd bothered to talk to Mike before arbitrarily firing him, he'd at least be forewarned about some of the dangers related to the bar and its destruction.

  While we were on our way back to the station, Vann got a call from Lee, his producer. Someone had already hired Mike. Not only had they hired him, he was doing the noon news, describing what he recalled from the evening before—and the bar's subsequent destruction.

  He even showed images of his car, which had been parked close-by. It looked as if it had been hurled into a building by an angry giant.

  Vann had been upstaged by his former employee and he wasn't happy about that. I didn't intend to tell Vann that Anita and I'd pulled Mike and Rick out of the bar to save their lives; he was too busy cursing Mike and threatening to ruin him at the same time.

  Farin looked guilty when we trooped into the station; I knew then that Mike was working at Eighty-Two. Rick had likely gone to a producer there, who'd listened to his and Mike's story and hired Mike on the spot to report on it. After all, they got their scoop in first, leaving Vann to do cleanup.

  Vann was furious as he stomped toward the editing room. He was determined to make his report better than the one Mike had hastily put together for a rival station.

  To me, none of that mattered. What did matter was the fact that they were making the bar fight and subsequent explosion into a turf war, and I worried that the vamps involved would certainly take notice.

  Unwelcome notice.

  "Farin," I grabbed her arm and led her toward the ladies' room.

  "I didn't know this was going to happen," she began the moment the restroom door was shut and we'd checked for anyone else inside.