The quiet turned profound.
“What?” Claudia whispered. “What is it?”
“Bak-Faru,” Siath replied.
The black-haired demon walked into the moonlit night and stared at her and Siath. A shiver ran down her spine. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. He wasn’t muscle-bound, but Claudia couldn’t look at him without thinking of the hours in the gym it took to get ripped like that. The demon continued crossing the courtyard, walking in a trail of moonlight. One of the narrow plaits that held back his hair fell over his shoulder. Twined in the black-as-pitch braid was a thin platinum thread. Siath quivered but stayed in front of her. Claudia stared at the demoness’s back. Protecting her? The other demon was still some twenty feet away.
“What is he?” Claudia asked.
“He is very strong in power.” Siath said. “Very strong.”
“Stronger than you?”
Siath glanced at her. “He is Bak-Faru, human.”
“What does that mean? Bak-Faru?”
“He is dark. A dark demon.” Claudia would have stepped from behind Siath but the female grabbed her arm and stopped her. The woman’s palm felt hot. “If he addresses us, say nothing to him. Do nothing. Do not even breathe.” She sucked in air, a hiss of fear.
“Why?”
Siath’s voice shook. “He hides nothing,” she said in a low, urgent voice. “Among Bak-Faru, this one is strong. Very powerful. Dangerous.” She rocked her shoulders as the demon continued in his slow approach. Now and again he lifted a hand. One by one, the guards in the courtyard disappeared. And now there was no doubt he was headed straight for them. Siath drew herself up.
Cornered meat, Claudia thought. She was no better than a hapless human citizen cornered by a hungry dog or a starving vamp. Siath didn’t move even though the male demon had blithely dispatched the guards.
The Bak-Faru walked to within a foot of them and halted. From behind Siath, Claudia waited for him to lift a hand and vanish her into oblivion the way he had the others. His eyes were an eerily pale lilac in an Aztec face. What scared her, what scared her more than guards who vanished without a trace, was that, put the guy in regular clothes, fix the freaky hair style, and he’d completely pass for human. She felt dizzy. Fluttery. Like she was at a party and the best-looking man in the room was staring at her. A gorgeous killer.
The demon studied Claudia so openly she felt her cheeks flush. His gaze started out chilly and ended as hostile, but, for all that hatred, she couldn’t mistake the sexual interest in his perusal of her. The demon tilted his head to one side, as if listening to something only he could hear. Awareness sparkled in his eyes. Claudia could not look away from him. He nodded to her, put his palm over his fist and bowed once.
“Nir,” Siath said. She too bowed, hand over fist, but to waist level.
“Not Nir, grandmother,” The demon spoke in a voice that was all black smoke and velvet. He smiled, and dimples appeared in his cheeks.
Siath straightened, though her palm remained clasped over her fist. She stood tall. “May a grandmother ask why a Bak-Faru comes to Biirkma palace?”
Lilac eyes swept over Claudia, studying her. The sensation of fullness in Claudia’s head surged to life. She recognized it as what she’d felt in her head since the hotel in Crimson City. Almost. But, this was different somehow, a different shape, a darker density. Something else. Desire. How sick was that? Claudia Donovan, who in Crimson City often went weeks and weeks without even thinking about sex, was consumed by the thought of making love to a demon. Siath gave Claudia a sharp look, and there was more than enough light to see a cunning flicker enter the demoness’s yellow eyes.
“Grandmother,” the black-haired demon said. He sounded like a sweet old lady’s favorite nephew. “The Bak-Faru hear demons may soon be in the Overworld again.”
Siath bowed. “That is so.”
“Then the Bak-Faru have much to say.”
“The Bak-Faru oppose the Council. I think there will be little for you to say to us.”
“Grandmother, the Bak-Faru are led by the Bak-Faru. But that does not mean we cannot speak. Or that the Council should not listen.” The demon faced Claudia, devouring her with his ludicrously pastel eyes. “A human female,” he said.
“She belongs to Nir-Jaise,” Siath replied. She sounded out of breath.
The statement distracted the demon. He turned his head, and Claudia read surprise in the curve of his mouth. “Grandmother,” he said with a nod at her. “Her bond is dark.”
Again, Siath bowed waist level. “Aslet’s doing.”
The Bak-Faru’s lilac eyes hardened. “No Elismal has the power for this bond.”
Siath straightened from her bow. “It is not my concern if the Bak-Faru are careless with their spells. Aslet knows how to bind humans.”
“Who else?”
“Only Aslet. But what matters except that she can open the portal?”
The Bak-Faru stepped close—too close. within a foot of her—and Claudia found herself measured by the lilac pools of his eyes, the thick and dark-as-soot lashes. Was that regret she saw in his eyes? “You will die from this bond. Soon,” the Bak-Faru said. “The Elismal who did this is strong, but not Bak-Faru.” He reached for Claudia, resting a hand on her shoulder. One finger slid over the nape of her neck. She shivered at the contact, dizzy. “If you were demon, I would mate with you, female.”
She touched his chest. She didn’t know why she touched him, but she did. His skin was warm and smooth, a layer of silk over muscle. He looked at her and, swear to God, she felt a spark pass between them. The demon sucked in a breath and took a step closer. Claudia snatched away her hand.
“The vishtau?” Siath said.
The lilac-eyed demon growled. The sound rumbled in Claudia’s chest. “I refuse.” His eyes shot to Siath. “I refuse this.”
“If it is the vishtau,” Siath said, “you cannot.”
“That may be so, Grandmother.” He touched the underside of Claudia’s chin and slowly smiled. Dimples flashed in his cheeks. “When you die, I will rejoice.”
Chapter Eleven
Korzha clung to the outside walls of Biirkma Palace as he moved into the streets of the demon city, keeping to the shadow of eaves and roofs. He knew the general direction of the rogue he’d come here to take, but, first things first. He needed information and a meal. There wasn’t any way in hell he could deal with the rogue in his current condition. Drained by healing himself from the attack at the portal, he was suffering the effects of starvation that would never kill him, no matter how badly he hurt because of it.
Ancient habits came back with a sharp sense of having—how perverse—come home. In L.A. he did not hunt, and he hadn’t realized how much he missed the pursuit. He found the city center by following the glow of light, the sounds, the flow of traffic. Satisfy this hunger first, then he would search for the vampire he’d felt the moment he set foot in Biirkma. He lurked in courtyards and streets and waited for someone who suited his needs. He found one quite soon: an attractive female, alone and whose mind he could touch without difficulty. Very nice.
Slinking, slithering, he lurked in the shadows while the demon world walked past, unaware of the monster in their midst. He knew now how to hide himself from them. In L.A., when he’d followed the pair of half-demons, Mika and Conor, he’d not known precisely how. He did now. Demons, while impressive and even frankly dangerous, were not, it seemed, invincible. They were every bit as susceptible to mental persuasion as humans, though in variable degrees. Certain demons he touched with difficulty; a few he could not touch at all. Some were highly susceptible even from the distance he kept. When his chosen prey would have turned to a populated street, he urged her otherwise, using a light touch, a gentle suggestion:
Not that way.
Take the narrow street.
The darker street is so much quieter.
Hunger urged him on, and he needed every ounce of his restraint not to throw himself on her too soon. At last, s
he did turn. He slid behind her. The noise from the main square faded and became a hum where before it had been a din of conversation, of shutters opening and closing, of laughter and movement along the stone streets. He moved toward her. Closer. Nearer. In the shadows, closer yet. His mental touch became a caress and then an embrace. By the time he revealed himself, by the time he stood, in fact and in deed, with her in his arms, she relaxed against him and lifted her face to his. She was warmer than a human. Feverish. He enjoyed the mental connection, vampire to demon. This as a first for him. She was pretty, with thick, blonde hair like straw and eyes of tourmaline, but paler, more a memory of tourmaline held to the light. A kiss. Their tongues touched. Almost, he lost control. His hands moved over her, stroking. He nuzzled her throat. Hunger. Raging hunger. When he fed, her blood was warm. Hot. Too hot. He took more than he intended and came away unsatisfied even as she slipped bonelessly to the ground.
Unsated.
He touched her head and wiped away all memory of their encounter. What, he wondered, would demons think of the marks on her neck when she woke? An interesting thought. Given the length of time the other vampire had been here, had they developed a myth to account for such a presence? Were demons long-lived enough to recall everything about the races of the Overworld? That was another interesting question. The rogue had been here a very long time. The rogue must know Korzha was here, too. He must be able to feel Korzha just as Korzha felt him. The tie of their blood and creation linked them forever.
Korzha pondered the nature of Orcus as he worked his way further from the palace. Cloaked though he was, Korzha could not mingle with demons as he could with humans. His Overworld clothes marked him as foreign on sight. Next time, with something local to wear, he might be able to pass in two worlds. It was risky, but possible. Since he was unable to walk in the open market as at home, he avoided the most crowded streets.
Eventually, he came upon an outdoor kitchen erected in a wide alley with walls covered by a flowering vine of murky sweetness. He crouched on a rooftop and watched from the shadows. Demons stood holding buns or other pastries he didn’t recognize. The smells of savory meats competed with the blossoms. Several demons held small cups of a liquid that smelled fruity. All of them were males, all were blustery and full of spit and venom. Chances were good, Korzha decided, that whatever they were drinking wasn’t as mild as it smelled. A knot of half-a-dozen young males bragged to each other of the exploits they intended, full of alcohol and bravado.
He chose his second victim from among them: a male in his early twenties with an undercurrent of humanity about him. He had a richer scent than the others, a mind less foreign and, to be sure, more inebriated. Korzha’s hunger flared, and he almost missed a crucial remark: They were heading for someplace they called “the snare.”
Korzha laughed to himself when he edged closer and let his mind touch the one he’d chosen. Vampire myth did exist in Orcus. With a twist. These males were bound for the demonic snare that served as prison for the rogue. The best description Jaise had been able to give was that demons had trapped the rogue in a morass of magic. According to Korzha’s information, when the rogue, already many years insane, escaped into the Underworld, it raged among them like the vampires of human lore; wily, cunning and able to elude even the demon’s senses. Interestingly, or so Jaise claimed, a demon couldn’t be made in the way a human could. Instead, demons taken by the rogue found themselves cut off from all demon kind. Few survived such an encounter.
The rogue, frustrated in his futile attempt to create a vampiric family of his own in Orcus, began to kill and did so liberally until a particularly powerful demon had encircled it with the demonic equivalent of an electric fence. They’d decided to leave it there, trapped in a prison keyed to its physical body. Because the snare was magically keyed to the vampire, anything else could, theoretically, enter and exit the snare at will, but the reality was that precious few of the demons who went in ever came out. By now, most of them knew better. Every generation had its skeptics.
For these young demons, if they were not brave and valiant facing the monster, the beast inside the snare would take their blood and eat their bones. Their worlds were not so different, if young demons took deadly risks to prove their valor. When the demons had drunk down their courage, Korzha followed them and with the gentlest of touches convinced his choice to leave the others.
The young male wasn’t full demon; Korzha knew the instant its blood flooded him. It was part human. Only part. A suggestion of human, but the genetic cross was there. In the end, the male demon made a more satisfactory meal than the other but still Korzha was unsated. His lingering injuries continued healing slowly, drawing from him what little strength he’d regained after his first victim. He remained empty inside. He might have sought a third, but as he was stepping out of the cloistered square where he’d left his lovely prey stripped of all memory he felt the unmistakable slide of night toward sunrise. On silent feet he followed the others to the snare. It was easy to follow drunken minds.
The rogue’s prison turned out to be an entire area of the city, lifeless of energy and sense. He would have noticed it even if the young males had not stopped, even if Jaise had not told him where it was and what to expect. Silence rose between the demons, high contrast to their earlier raucous braggadocio. Korzha moved closer and felt a mind inside. A mind beyond insane. The males, minus their part-human companion, stood at the threshold of shadow. One of them, wearing a gem-encrusted vest of yellow and purple, egged on his friends. Korzha felt the muffled pull of the vampire trapped within. The first demon, the one in the vest, stepped into the shadow. His friends waited outside. Perhaps two minutes later, the demon’s upper body emerged from the darkness. He opened his mouth for what Korzha was certain was to be a taunt, but just before the sound would have come out, his body jerked backward into the void.
Demons, it seemed, could be as stupidly brave as humans. The friends charged through. From inside the snare, Korzha felt skittering madness. He perched on the eave of the house opposite the shadow and contemplated his next action. Dawn approached, perhaps half an hour away, and he was not at full strength nor did he have any of the protections afforded his kind in Los Angeles. No sunscreen, no stimulants to keep him alert and alive through the daylight hours. To face the thing lurking in there with sunrise approaching was madness.
Korzha headed back to the palace.
The snare was not far from the portal, perhaps a mile distant. Roofs made for a convenient road above the street and provided a clear view of the palace. He slipped away and then up, clinging to walls beneath eaves and to the shadows of dormer windows, attics and garrets as he worked his way back to his cell. He felt the pull of humanity when he was scaling the wall to his room, his fingers unerringly finding the notches and seams in the wall. Unquestionably, it was the draw of blood and pulse, full on. He slid up the window and flowed into his room, his hunger surging.
Jaise waited for him with the human he’d felt from so far away, that warm and sensual scent of blood coursing through a human body, fully human, sharp and clear to his senses. The demon lifted a hand and motioned with his fingers. The room flashed once with a blue light, then settled into a persistent glow more than sufficiently bright for Korzha’s eyesight. The game began immediately.
“Fang.”
“Demon scum.” Korzha did not look at the human crouched beside the demon. He didn’t need to.
“I’ve brought you a gesture of good faith.” Jaise’s grey eyes flashed red. “A human female.”
The woman stood but remained behind Jaise, out of direct sight. Her mind felt too disordered for her to be Donovan. Since his encounter with the police officer at the construction site, when he’d already been hungry and out of sorts because of the spilled blood, he’d been fantasizing even more than usual about how lovely it would be to feed on her. It was a game he liked to play, imagining which human he’d most like to bite. Officer Donovan headed the list.
Ja
ise pulled his offering forward. The familiarity of the woman disoriented Korzha. Not Officer Donovan. His disappointment wasn’t so surprising. He was well aware of his desire for the cop. The woman with Jaise was shorter than Donovan by a good four inches and blonde instead of brunette. Her clothes were ragged, her hair unkempt, but the suit wasn’t off-the-rack and the haircut had been skilled enough to hold its shape.
“Well,” the woman said in a creaky voice. Was she unused to speaking or was her voice strained by overuse? “If it isn’t L.A.’s bad boy vamp, Tiber Korzha.”
“Laura,” he said, aware of Jaise’s intense regard. He refused to show the depth of his shock. “Delighted to see you again.”
Laura Masters was a Los Angeles City Council member. She had been missing long enough that even B-Ops couldn’t control the rumors about her disappearance. She wasn’t popular among the city’s paranormals. Once, just for show and, frankly, because he could, he’d pissed off the entire vampire Primary Assembly by getting his picture taken with her at a fundraiser. He wouldn’t have minded taking her to bed, but that, alas, was not to be. Word on the street was that she believed every word of every hate-filled speech she gave. And, in point of fact, as he discovered, she did believe them. Worse, she represented a rapidly growing minority in the city government, a powerful minority re-elected by a resounding margin last year. Vamps were the primary target of Masters’s signature bitterness, but the dogs hardly fared better. Parasites, she called them all. Parasites who ought to be wiped off the face of the earth. Her abhorrence of the supernatural was legendary. More than one attempt had been made on her life or that of her long-time partner. A rogue vampire had managed the most spectacular failure, which meant vamps were first in line for suspicion when she’d vanished.
Rumors about her disappearance centered on paranormal-inspired murder. Korzha’s reputation being what it was, and considering his public pursuit of her, his name had been whispered most often in connection with the talk of her death. Since the day Masters vanished, her partner, a woman, had accused Family Korzha of murdering her, a not too subtle accusation of Korzha himself. If Family Korzha hadn’t killed her, she told anyone who’d listen, then they’d surely sponsored the hit. Until now, Korzha hadn’t been sure it wasn’t true that a member of some other vampire family had taken the job.
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