by K. F. Breene
“What’s your plan, then, Darius?” I tried to read his impassive face. Nothing came of it. Surprise, surprise. “Are you going to try to solve this with me, or just lurk around like the boogeyman?”
“I can help you solve it, if you’d like. As I recall, we made an excellent team.”
“We were the worst team imaginable, actually. That point was driven home when you took off on your own with no explanation, then got captured and needed rescue,” I said. His lips thinned. “But if I’m going up against a level-four demon and a bunch of mages, that monster form of yours might come in handy.” I tucked a wisp of hair behind my ear. “You’re not legit, though. The shifters there will be all over you.”
“Do you think I went to all this trouble to help you, only to neglect such an important detail?” He tsked at me. “I added my name to the contract. It was easily done. The magical board is eating out of my hand. They will do anything for money, as corrupt as they are.”
“Wow. You’re something.” I shook my head. “Okay, fine.” I stuck my finger in his face, making him lean back. “But I’m taking the lead. This is my case.” He nodded, but I didn’t miss the humor sparkling in his eyes. “And I am keeping a low profile, got it? I’m there to find the mage who is killing people. I don’t care about that demon. If it’s around, their local people can handle it. I don’t need it getting word of me. I’m going in as a normal, everyday magical person.”
“Good luck selling that, Reagan.” Dizzy chuckled and loaded a piece of bread with cheese and some sort of orange jelly.
“Got it?” I prodded Darius in the chest.
“I understand.”
“Fine.” I sat back, but jumped when I felt his arm—so warm and strong—nearly resting on my shoulders. My heart started racing. “And no hitting on me.” I pushed his arm away.
“That might be harder.”
“I will shoot you in the leg. You know I will.”
“Does no one tell me anything?” Dizzy said.
“What is the other part of your reason for tagging along?” I asked.
Darius rose and crossed through one of the concealment spells. It disintegrated. He returned a moment later with a bottle of whiskey and one of champagne. While he refilled Dizzy’s drink, he left the whiskey beside Callie’s empty glass.
“Thank you,” Dizzy said.
“Reagan?” Darius stayed standing.
“I’m good, thanks.”
After he used another spell to restore our privacy, he resumed his seat. His arm came across the back of the couch. “As you know, Vlad is unsettled with the power the elves hold in the Realm. He has been working to increase our numbers, but also to create alliances. He hopes one of those allies will be Lucifer, and if not him directly, then a host of sufficiently powerful demons that can maintain their own forms in both the Realm and in the Brink—the Brink being the harder of the two, of course.
“I have always monitored Vlad vaguely, as he has done with me. It is important to be aware of what other political powers are doing. After hearing about his interest in the demons, however, I have watched him more carefully. In so doing, I learned about a collection of demons that had sprung up in a Northern Californian town. Like a whirlwind, the small town was plagued with vicious deeds and atrocities the area had never seen before in that magnitude.”
“Why haven’t I heard about that?” I asked, aghast.
“News coverage has been minimal. Many are blaming the occult. The effect lasted about two weeks. After that, the people who’d committed the crimes came out of their trance. Many of them were already incarcerated, but they had no idea what had happened, let alone what part they had played in it. Vlad’s people checked it out and determined the demon responsible wasn’t one they knew.”
I shifted. “I thought you said there were a bunch of demons?”
“Dimensional demons,” Callie said quietly. “Humans turned into demons by one powerful demon.”
Dizzy moaned and shook his head. “I hope not.”
“Did you not just hear the vampire?” Callie asked Dizzy. “He all but described them.”
“Honey, don’t be rude. Call him a man.”
“But he’s not a man. He’s a vampire. Why shouldn’t I call him what he is?”
“Fast-forward to the point, please,” I said, rubbing my temples.
“A fifth-level demon sheds power as it moves through the world in its chosen form. That power alters humans in the demon’s image.” Callie poured herself a finger of whiskey. “An experienced demon can prevent this, if it so chooses. Depending on the type of demon, the effect can make humans more villainous, lustful, deceitful, or even more loving. I once heard of a whole town that erupted in orgies. This demon, clearly, is swirling around our classic definition of evil.”
“I honestly didn’t know there were good demons,” I mumbled.
Callie took a sip before replying. “People like to glorify the negative aspects of themselves in demon form. Demons are the scapegoats. But let’s be honest, a great many of them are very bad creatures.”
“Besides,” Dizzy said, “they tend to make weak-willed people do uncharacteristic things. Forcing your will on others is never a good thing.”
“Burn!” I pointed at Darius.
He looked at me quizzically.
“You know, because of the forcing your will on others thing. Namely me… Never mind. You’re slow.”
“It is not my inability to understand that is the problem,” he said. “It is your inability to tell a joke.”
“No…” That’s all I had. A one-word rebuttal. “So what does that Northern California demon have to do with me?”
“Hopefully nothing,” Darius said. “Demons that strong, ones that can’t control the power they shed, rarely come up to the surface. And if they do, they usually don’t last long. Nothing brings magical people together faster than a demon threatening their way of life. I am hoping this particular creature went back down without any further issues.
“My worry is this: the mage we captured a couple months ago learned of you through an ingested demon. The demon was the one that recognized your power. If just once, upon banishing the demon, the mage forgot to bind it to keep her secrets, the demon could’ve communicated about you. I want to stay vigilant in the event that the information fell on opportunistic ears. Our worst-case scenario is that the powerful demon came to the surface as a byproduct of that situation.”
Cold washed through my body. “I’m sure any demons that know about me would also know where I live.”
“One would think. Still, it is wise to keep our eyes and ears open.” I felt his thumb rub against my neck supportively. Everyone was quiet for a moment.
Dizzy shrugged, looking at the leftover food. “There’s nothing we can do right now. We might as well enjoy the flight.”
“It was probably just a demon up for a joy ride.” Callie turned her mouth into a duck bill and nodded. “That’s probably all there is to it.”
I truly hoped so.
Chapter Twelve
“Is this room to your satisfaction?” Darius asked, standing just inside the large hotel room he’d booked for me.
We’d gotten the same treatment leaving the private jet as we’d had traveling to it. Darius had called ahead to make sure Dizzy and Callie had accommodations, and now we were all checking in and getting comfortable before the next thing.
I had no idea what the next thing was. I realized I should probably figure that out in the next hour.
The curtains had been left open, revealing a yawning blackness beyond. I knew from the walk to the room (there had been no formal check-in, simply Darius stating his name and waiting for the staff to run around like chickens with their heads cut off) that one side of the hotel overlooked the water. I seemed to recall overhearing it was a bay, but I had no idea which one. I hadn’t studied a map en route to our final destination. It seemed, however, that I would get to stare at the bay from the large windows of my room when
I had nothing better to do.
“Looks great,” I said, looking over the leather chairs that formed a triangle with a cold fireplace in a hearth of stone. “It’s big.” A modern desk sat against the wall with lit candles on its surface.
Actually, upon closer inspection, they were lights made to flicker like candles. Which made sense. Open fire posed a hazard. I knew from experience.
“Through here…” Darius crossed the room gracefully. “You can easily reach me.”
He unlocked a deadbolt to a nondescript door that blended in with the wall. It led to the room next door—or so I realized when he used his magic to unlock the other side and pushed the door open.
“But this is a suite, right?” I gestured around me. “I didn’t realize suites connected with other suites. That’s kind of a weird feature. Super-rich people give their kids matching suites?”
Darius had already moved on with his examination. He stood in the threshold of my bathroom, which had a brick-red wall and a trendy sort of brown stone design that resembled my new bathroom at home. “That wall color is hideous.”
“It’s just a hotel, Darius.”
“This is the vampire wing, designed with our special needs in mind. One of my children owns this establishment. I helped him get it off the ground. He keeps up the rooms to change with the times, but he has badly missed the mark on this. It is gaudy. I will speak with him about it.”
I shrugged. If he wanted to waste his time, I’d get a drink at the bar while he made his complaint.
“Your room is commonly reserved for humans attending to their vampires.” Darius looked me over expectantly.
“I’m not attending to anyone. But I sure hope room service attends to me.”
“There is a young alpha shifter of a sub-pack in this town who has drawn Roger’s eye.” Roger was the head shifter of the pack that helped police supernatural activity in the Brink. “This alpha leads a pack to exterminate new vampires.” Darius’s lip curled aggressively. “I am on official business, focused on the issues concerning you, so I will not kill him and his whole pack, though they have killed one of my children in this area.”
“Do you have children all over the world?”
“Yes. Hence my need of a private jet,” he said, speaking slowly as though to an imbecile.
“Right. How stupid of me to ask.”
“Yes.” He paused. “The shifters might be sniffing around, getting under our feet.”
“I have no reason to deal with them—I’m here on human police business. Besides, the only shifters I have a problem with are from the New Orleans pack.”
“Reagan, you are rarely dimwitted. I’d prefer you didn’t make a habit of it now.”
I furrowed my brow at him, a silent rebuttal to his being an ass.
“They so seldom deal with elders that they might assume I can’t control myself, and therefore, will watch and report,” he went on. “I have to follow magical law to the letter to avoid an altercation.”
“Darius, honestly, I was up all day, and now I’ve nearly been up all night. I’m human, remember? I need sleep. So could you please get to the point? And following the rules is not it, because you did that just fine when we worked together on the last case.”
“Do you not remember my need for blood when we stayed at my house in the French Quarter?”
“So? Ask one of your friends to loan you a human for the night.”
“That would not be following the letter of the law, something the local wolf pack will make it their business to know. Their leader, Devon, has the ear of Roger directly. He’ll make sure my transgressions are made known and a witch hunt is organized.”
“Well…not really a witch hunt, right? Since you’re a vampire.” I squinted at him, feeling the pressure of a ball about to drop.
“We are not supposed to feed on humans in the Brink at all. That violates the rule of not revealing what we are. We have to limit our needs to magical people. Something you seem to have blocked out of your memory of late. It does not change your promise, however.”
A wash of tingles spread across my skin. Heat dripped down my core and puddled in a hot, sticky mess. I suddenly knew exactly where he was going with this.
“You promised Roger that if I needed blood, I could take it from you.”
A rush of breath escaped my mouth. I tried to shrug, but the sudden rigidity of my body turned the motion into something Frankenstein’s monster might do. My smile, intended to look blasé, probably resembled a grimace of pain, and the flush of heat in my face certainly gave away the pounding in my lady parts. All the sensual moments I’d ever experienced with Darius—his leans, his soft whispers, the flashes of hunger in his eyes, the few blissful kisses we’d shared—crowded in and invaded the conversation. My legs started to shake and a sheen of sweat coated my forehead.
“You filthy bastard,” I said, balling my fists. “No wonder you were in such a hurry to fire up the jet and tag along on this trip. Worried about me, my ass. You knew the scent of my blood, teamed with the danger I will surely find, would make you desperate to feed—not to mention the fact that there’s a pack of shifters prowling around. You were counting on it. Bing, bang, boom, you finally get to see if the curtains match the drapes.”
A teasing smile wrestled his lips. “I already know they do, since I have seen you bathe.”
“I meant, do I taste as good as I smell, you donkey.”
“I am greatly looking forward to finding out, ma chere.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m going to make you wait until you’re begging for it. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“A type of teasing I can easily reciprocate once you finally give in.”
“Oh no.” I waggled my finger at him. “No, sir. I didn’t say I would sleep with you; I said that I will keep you from killing a small village out of hunger by letting you feed from me. The two are mutually exclusive.”
He gave me a knowing smile. “It is nearly impossible to resist. I don’t think you’ll want the strength to be one of the few.”
“I know how hard it is not to give in, but for you, I’ll make the effort—”
I cut myself off because his whole demeanor had changed. He’d gone from loose and easy, with a teasing smile and sparkling eyes, to balanced and squared off, his muscles taut and his eyes flashing with a predator’s gleam.
“What just happened?” I asked. I glanced over my shoulder, wondering if an intruder had broken in on the sly. I had been known to miss the obvious every once in a while.
“You have been with another vampire?” he asked in a rough voice. Menace crowded the room. “Was this recent?”
I let a smile drift up my face. “Aw, you’re jealous. How cute.” I patted him on the arm, ignoring the bulging muscles, and then proceeded to stoke the fires. He deserved it for knowingly backing me into this corner. For all I knew, he’d planned the whole thing. I wouldn’t put it past him. “Yes, I have been. You remember, I briefly mentioned it when we were in the Dungeon. I had a wild couple of years right after my mother died. I gave in to curiosity, let him bite me, and spent a solid month throwing my hands in the air as the O-Express took me for a ride. It was a good time.” My smile grew as the gleam in his eyes turned into something inhuman. Something monstrous.
I grinned. I knew what he was capable of, but he no longer knew my limitations. I’d grown in power, strength, and speed. Bring it on, swamp man.
“So yeah.” I shrugged. “I know how good it feels when your special serum spreads through the blood. So good. And the things that vampire did—”
He put his hand up to stop me. Fangs elongated. “Please stop,” he said softly. “Please.”
“How about this. Don’t jerk me around, and I won’t mention the long nights I spent with his mouth trailing up the inside of my—” I stopped again as he flinched and then bristled. I laughed. “Look, I’ll be an adult about this if you will. I made a promise, and I’ll stick to that promise if you rein in the teasing
sex crap. I swore to myself I’d never repeat the vampire situation, and I would like to keep that promise.”
He took a deep breath, and I could see him fight for control over his primal, predatory side. The man had power in spades, and the more time I spent with him, the more I could see it.
He stuck out his hand. “I really have no choice, but it would be a shame to hold back on one of the most enjoyable parts of feeding.”
“Ew.” I didn’t have to pretend to grimace this time, but I shook his hand anyway. “Don’t say feeding. The idea of me being food is not pleasant.”
“Would you like to sleep in my bed?”
I paused in my shake and yanked my hand back, my mouth open and my eyes wide. “Really? You couldn’t even wait until after we finished shaking hands to start that up?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” He held up his hands in surrender. “For warmth and companionship. I am offering closeness.”
“That wasn’t even a good save.” I pushed him back into his room. “Hopefully, we’ll make it back before you need blood.”
“If that’s what you wish.”
“I wish that, yes. You know, I’m not sure I get this new Darius. A soft spot on you is about as comforting as a brown spot on white carpet. I don’t know how it got there, I don’t know exactly what it is, but I’m expecting the worst.”
He took a few steps back, giving me that danged teasing smile as he stepped from my room into his. This was a cat-and-mouse game, and I was way too stupid to play. It was a humbling situation.
“Good night. Or…good day, I guess. G’day. Mate.” My Australian accent was the pits. “Anyway. See ya.” I waved and moved to shut the door.
“Please engage the enhanced protections against the sun in your room,” he said before I had the door completely closed. “As a special favor to me. If you are in danger for any reason, I don’t want to fight the sun when joining the battle.”
“Fair enough, but don’t be creepy. Don’t sneak in here, stand at the foot of my bed, and stare at me. I will firebomb you so fast you won’t have time to dodge.”