A Darker Crimson

by Carolyn Jewel

  He tilted his head and had the odd sensation of seeing and feeling Donovan with the demon’s perceptions: attractive, a desirable partner. Jaise found her more than a little attractive. Hell, yes. Korzha did, too. She was a gorgeous woman for a beat cop in his quarter of the city. It was intriguing, too, that she had a daughter. That made her less typical than the typical Crimson City blue-hat. How many female officers in their early twenties had school-age children? Answer: None. How many teenaged mothers rose above the demands of parenthood and made their lives a success? Not many.

  How long had it been since a human woman had intrigued him to this extent? Eons. Centuries. Since she’d been assigned to the precinct in his neighborhood, he’d always thought she was one of the less transparent humans. In his experience, most young cops were either fanatics about power or, more frequently, they simply believed the Protect and Serve nonsense. Korzha was curious. Very curious. And so was Jaise. She would be good to mate with.

  The demon laughed, a welling up of amusement. One thing Jaise understood quite plainly was the duality of indwelling. Korzha struggled to understand how and in what ways Jaise controlled him. And he waited to see what his vampiric nature would do to the demon. In the background, one of the guards crowed over a dice win; the others protested.

  Korzha studied Donovan. Both he and Jaise did. Her eyes were brown. Plain brown. A dark, deep color, not pale demon eyes. This difference in the pigment saturation between human and demon aroused Jaise. He found her eyes compellingly different. She swallowed hard. Pretty eyes, he thought. Different eyes. Human eyes. Human emotion. There was no aura of rank and power to sense. To a demon male, a human woman was exotic in her complete lack of demonic energy. There could be no question of his dominance because a human had no power to oppose his.

  She had a pretty face, a lovely face and a prettier body. Her legs were long and sleek, just the way he preferred. Korzha did like females with long legs. He’d like to see her in high heels and a dress. Something expensive. Something to cling to all her curves. He’d show her off in Strata +1. A human trophy in witness of his power.

  Among male vamps, most typically among the warrior class, a woman like this lent cachet to one’s reputation. Walk into a Strata +1 party with a beautiful, intelligent human female on your arm and every male vamp in the room knew you walked a wicked edge and wished he had the balls to do the same. A few of the women ended up made, which wasn’t always unmitigated disaster unless she went rogue. Even the uptight vamps of Family Dumont understood the lure of humans and the edge of bloodlust. Sometimes a human got converted. It happened.

  What most appealed to him was that she wasn’t ten pounds underweight like so many women who aspired to beauty. Jaise’s desire surged, a bubbling up of demonic sexual impulses; a desire to mate with this dark-eyed human female. Under the circumstances, sex with Donovan was almost certainly unavoidable.

  “I’m sorry,” Korzha managed to say. His voice was soft and regretful. She gave a restricted shake of her head.

  Korzha didn’t doubt that if Jaise wanted Donovan dead, he could permanently end her life in a hundred different ways. But what Jaise really wanted was what he hadn’t gotten with Laura Masters. The problem was the demon had just realized he didn’t know how to convert a human. For that, he would need to cede some control to Korzha, leaving them at an impasse of sorts. Inside Korzha’s head, the demon laughed, and his amusement was clear in Korzha’s voice. “Making you is a rather neat solution to the problem of human fragility, wouldn’t you say?”

  Donovan’s eyes opened wide, irises the color of bittersweet chocolate. He’d like to be looking into those eyes while he caressed her, touched her, bit her deep and hard, brought her under his mastery. He caught himself. That was Jaise. Pulling his strings, taking the thread of his body’s sexual attraction and using it, twisting it, amplifying it.

  Korzha laughed, crazily overwhelmed, and along the peaks and valleys of the sound he felt Jaise’s delight. They both wanted her. He was surprised to pick out the fact that in L.A., Donovan had turned the demon down quite firmly. Good judgment, he thought, a woman of discernment. She was much prettier than he’d thought the first time he saw her in the precinct, and he’d taken a second look then. Sex with a human came fraught with complications, and despite his appearances in the society pages, he’d avoided such complications for some time. Mostly. Now and again he indulged. He wished he’d been able to indulge with Donovan. She would definitely have been worth the risk.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  He stroked her temple with the tip of a forefinger and pressed the pad of his finger on the pulse point. A conundrum of irony. Jaise needed to give over some control to Korzha if he was going to force him to convert Donovan. Korzha didn’t want Jaise to understand how a conversion was done, but he needed to feed in order to regain his full strength and force the demon out.

  Korzha leaned close, practically touching her while Jaise raged inside him, impatient and aroused. The demon wanted Donovan converted, but he wanted sex, too. Sex with a human female. Sex with Donovan, whose earlier refusals still rankled. He wanted sex with a female with dark eyes and a tender body. The hell of it was that so did Korzha, separate and apart from Jaise. Separate from his rising, urgent hunger, he wanted her, and it was a strange feeling for him, to resist something he wanted. He could plunge his teeth into her now. Right now. Take everything from her. Every hope she had for her human life. “I won’t convert her,” he managed to say through gritted teeth.

  “She will die if you don’t,” Jaise responded.

  Donovan’s eyebrows drew together. “Korzha?” she asked.

  He shook his head, and Jaise made him pay for that: a flash of heat seared his body from the inside out.

  Donovan grabbed his arm. “You okay?”

  “I…won’t.”

  “Why not just do what he wants?” she asked. She seemed surprised and that pissed him off. Did she think him without scruples of any kind? “What difference does it make to you?”

  Fighting Jaise with all his strength, he said, “A lion in a zoo no longer hunts. There’s no need. In the wild, he must hunt or he dies. Crimson City is one huge zoo, and the lions who live there are practically tame.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re human, Donovan.” He put his hands on her shoulders and her humanness seeped into him, flowed into both him and Jaise. The demon wanted to bite. To fuck. To satisfy the demand of his cock. “You live with vampires and you don’t understand the first thing about us.” Korzha said. “You’ve never seen what we real vamps do. You think we’re like the lions you see at the zoo.” He looked away and then back. His body quivered. His hand went to her cheek, and the demon’s senses were concentrating on her, the softness of her skin, her curves, her lush, dark eyes. The demon lusted after this body, this woman. So did the vampire.

  “He promised,” Donovan said.

  “What if he’s lying?”

  “Demon’s can’t lie.”

  “Who told you that? Of course they lie. They lie all the time.”

  Jaise howled. He wanted Donovan. Now, this moment. Korzha quivered with a double anticipation, Jaise’s and his own. The demon urged him forward, and Korzha wasn’t exactly resistant. He slid an arm around Claudia Donovan’s waist. She tensed, but with a hitch of breath, moved toward him. Emotions in conflict flooded in from her. Fear. Trepidation. Determination. His own contradictory feelings swirled in the mix. Arousal. Reluctance. The impulse to feed. The need. The pull of her warmth, the blood beneath her skin. He drew her closer, and she leaned into the curve of his arms.

  He grabbed her hand and kissed her palm. She pulled back, but he didn’t let go. She gazed at him from beneath her lashes. His tongue traced a swirl on her palm then moved downward to her wrist. Eyes closed now, he pressed his mouth to the inner surface of her wrist. A normal kiss. For now. Jaise amplified the sensation for him.

  “Korzha?” she whispered. He lifte
d his head and looked into her chocolate eyes. Her teeth pressed into her lower lip when, with Jaise’s impulses, he loosened the belt at her waist.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “It’s all right. I know it isn’t you.” She drew a breath. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”

  “I’d much rather take my time.”

  His arm tightened around her, and she flinched. “Will it hurt?”

  Her brown eyes fixed on him. Did she have to look so trusting? “Claudia,” he softly said. “No. I won’t let him hurt you.” His control slipped a little more. Maybe he should forget his scruples and give everyone what they wanted. Whatever sick game Jaise wanted to play, the truth was that feeding from Donovan was inevitable and natural. Vampires fed from humans, and Korzha was hungry. If he was going to best Jaise and have any hope of keeping Donovan human, he needed to feed. What choice, really, did any of them have? He heard the policewoman’s heart beating in her chest when he kissed her wrist again, maybe a little harder than a normal kiss.

  “Mm,” he said, low and growly, and it was mostly him. Jaise had relented. Backed away. The demon was present, participating, in control but not controlling.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Korzha’s teeth slid into her wrist. She gasped, but he held her tight against her reflexive recoil. The sensations absorbed him completely. In this moment there existed only her scent and his need, the brush of his tongue against her wrist, the salty taste of human skin. Blood. The sweep of her lashes against her cheeks, the heat of her skin beneath his fingers. He wanted her desperately. His cock ached with longing, his belly quivered. Her pulse beat in his ears. Her blood flowed into his body, and he healed. His strength returned, not in a rush, because he’d started at the relatively blood-poor wrist, but as an inexorable remediation nonetheless.

  His fingers remained curled around her lower arm when he lifted his head. He kept his eyes closed, too, but when he did open them, he smiled and licked the tip of his fang. He felt more himself with every second that passed. Donovan stared at her wrist, at the two still-bleeding punctures in her skin. He could feel her trembling and savored the reaction.

  “Holy shit,” she whispered.

  Strength and health came back. Still holding her, he watched her face, and damn if he didn’t decide her eyes weren’t plain brown at all. Chocolate eyes they were, dark in her face, bright in the whites of her eyes. Such lovely, alien, other eyes. He grabbed her head, holding her so she had to look at him.

  Her eyes widened, and Korzha saw understanding dawn. He would have laughed if it weren’t so fucking pitiful. “You don’t want this anymore than I do, do you?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t.” She was beautiful, beautiful, so beautiful, and she did not deserve this. She still thought he was going to make her. Instead, he was going to betray her. He spread his fingers and traced the curve beneath her eyes and wished like hell the circumstances were anything but these. While Jaise raged at his dawdling, Korzha said, “Be patient.”

  “There’s got to be something we can do,” she said.

  He needed enough blood from her to heal. Enough to give him the resources to evict Jaise. Hell. He tested his physical state. He was stronger now, but not enough. He might…might…He pushed Jaise back. He got himself into the forefront. But only barely. Possibly not for long. Korzha didn’t understand enough about an indwelling demon to be sure that was enough. He did know Jaise was still in control.

  Quiet did not mean weak. The demon was still in charge. Korzha tilted Donovan’s head upward. With the sides of his thumbs, he smoothed the line of her cheeks. She shivered, a delicate tremor. He imagined holding her, caressing, stroking while she quivered like that, nude of course, completely nude, while he tasted long and deep. “Let me in, Officer,” he whispered. The words thrummed in his ears, in his head. “Let me into your divine self.”

  He closed all distance between them and slid his fingers upward over her body then down her back.

  “Can he see?” she asked.

  “Yes. And he thinks the same thing I do.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Her bravado was touchingly human.

  “Yes. He thinks you are beautiful, and he’s right.” His hand skimmed the underside of her breast through her uniform shirt. “He wants you very much.” He bent his head and flicked his tongue across the pulse at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, the hollow there, below the veins and arteries. He felt her reaction all the way down to his toes and along with that, he felt his own anticipation of sating himself at her throat. “He’s eager for you.” There was no point in mentioning that so was he. She swallowed, and he watched the play of her skin along her throat. “Intoxicating,” he whispered. Wasn’t that the truth? He whispered again, but he wasn’t talking to her this time, but to Jaise who wanted to spoil everything with precipitous curiosity.

  “Be patient. She’ll agree to whatever we want.”

  Korzha slipped his hands past the waistband of her pants. Heat from her body warmed his palms.

  “Korzha.” Her cheeks were flushed. “The guards? We’re not alone.”

  “This is a night of apologies for me. I’m sorry,” he murmured. At least he could keep her back to the portal guards. He didn’t yet have the strength to keep Jaise from objecting, but he ignored the demon’s complaints.

  “Oh, man, oh, man. I can see fire in your eyes. He’s really in there.” She tried to back away but with a growl that wasn’t him at all he moved forward and slipped an arm around her waist.

  “Officer Donovan.” In his head, Jaise demanded he lay her back and thrust into her now. Right now. He resisted the demon’s impulse. The connection between them narrowed and gained focus. He loved this, the fey closeness with a human woman, warm and soft in his arms. He loved their confusion about whether he was speaking out loud or just sending the words straight into their heads. And at the borders of his mind, Jaise’s arousal twinned with his. The demon wasn’t thinking about much except sex.

  Korzha trailed a hand upward, along her belly, pausing at the level of her navel. He felt a tripling of minds now: his, Jaise’s and hers. She felt his desire for her, and behind that a flicker of something else. Someone else. Because of the mental connection, she felt Jaise too. The fear in her grew, but she tamped it down, and, with Jaise less resistant to restraint, Korzha reached for her mind, taking himself deeper into her head, soothing, distracting her.

  “Fuck you, Jaise,” she said.

  He drew away, just a bit, and settled his mouth by her ear, nuzzling, breathing in the scent so close to the surface of her skin. He kissed her throat once, just once. The pad of his finger slipped over the dampness his mouth left behind. He drew her earlobe into his mouth. Her body tensed, a surge of fear because she’d caught the sharp blade of his anticipation and the demon’s. He held her head to prevent the instinctive jerk back when he used the side of his canine to prick her skin. He licked away the welling blood. Hunger raged up, a lion’s roar, the beast coming to life. Her blood had a delicious tang and a faint taste of something unique. Darkness? Jaise quivered in Korzha’s head, curious, eager and impatient.

  “You’ll spoil everything, Jaise,” he hissed.

  He balanced at the abyss of capitulation to Jaise’s impulse to lay her down and drive his cock into her. Korzha’s command over her thoughts and reactions was nearly complete, and he was absolutely merciless in intensifying her sensations. He wished he’d moved on her in L.A., because she would have been worth breaking taboo. She was worth a world of trouble. He fit one palm behind her neck, bringing her toward him, tasting her. At the very edge his conscious control, he said, and he must have said it in her head, “Now. Yes. Now.”

  Then he laughed, and it was a bizarre, crazy sort of laugh that sounded more like Jaise than him.

  “I don’t think so.” And then, at last, she did what he’d been hoping she would do. The heel of her hand came up, his hand still wrapped around her wrist. She struck hard at the
underside of his nose, driving her hand upward.

  He felt bones break, shattering inward. And then he didn’t feel anything, because that’s what happens in a mortal death.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “So what happened?” Tiberiu Korzha asked her.

  The vampire stood by the window, leaning against the sill in a suit that would cost Claudia four months of her salary. One deep brown ringlet of hair curled around his ear, and he looked like himself. Just a vampire and nothing else, except really, really good. Really good.

  “You mean after I killed you?” she asked. They were back at Biirkma Palace under something she supposed was the demonic equivalent of house arrest. Who knew demons didn’t react well to being trapped inside someone when they died? Jaise was decidedly not himself when he finally dis-possessed Korzha. And then, when Korzha came back to life a short time afterward, the vampire had lit into the demon with a ferocity that scared the hell out of her even as she admired the sheer dominance of his attack. He’d been pretty freaking pissed off. She wanted to make sure he wasn’t still pissed off.

  “Yes,” he said a bit too calmly. “After you killed me.” If the vamp was angry, he didn’t show it. He looked perfectly calm. But considering she’d just recently offed him, she didn’t think it wise to conclude his expression matched his mood. “After you killed me and before I rose, what happened?”

  Well, how about that? He sounded concerned for her. If so, that was unexpectedly sweet of him. But she still didn’t trust him. “One of the other demons had a knife, so I got my hands on that. And after that they were too afraid to do anything.”

  “It was four against one, Officer. Why would they be afraid of a human with a knife?”

  “I kind of told them I’d make sure you stayed dead if they tried anything.” She smiled tentatively. “I think they were afraid Jaise would die, too.”

  “Believe me, that I recall.” He smiled. Sort of, and he still managed to take her breath. “A vampire does not easily forget when a beautiful woman threatens to take his heart.”