The Hidden Demon

by Monica La Porta

  Monica La Porta

  The Hidden Demon

  Book Four of The Immortals

  Copyrights and More Information

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Monica La Porta

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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  click here or scan the QR code with your smartphone or mobile device.

  Dedication

  To Roberto.

  Chapter One

  Peter moved toward the edge of the bed, extricating his long legs from the tangle of limbs and sheets, careful not to touch the two women. Despite his caution, the fingertips of his right hand trailed over one linen-clad arm. It had been but a brush, yet enough contact to rouse her. He cursed under his breath. The redhead moaned in her sleep. The blonde’s eyelids fluttered for a moment, then the woman rolled to her stomach. They had been fun to play with, so willing and eager to please him, but yet again, Peter’s eternal thirst hadn’t been quenched.

  Still naked, he put his black gloves back on, splaying his fingers wide and stretching the leather at the seams. The material was thin and weighed nothing, giving him sensitivity of touch without the fear of casual contact.

  “Where you going, stranger?” The redhead’s hand reached for Peter’s thigh.

  He scooted away from her. “To work. Go back to sleep.” He planted both feet on the cold, tiled floor and pushed himself up, his eyes darting around the dimly lit room, looking for his clothes. He found his faded jeans by the nightstand, dangling from an open drawer. His black shirt was a dark heap lying at the foot of a pink dresser. He donned both and headed toward the door. He would have to drive back to his house and change before heading to his office in Castel Sant’ Angelo. As the only active renegade controller, he had more work than he could handle, and late-night debauchery didn’t help matters.

  “Will I see you again?”

  From the oversized mirror by the door, he saw the redhead staring at his back. Peter cocked his eyebrow, but gave her a smile. “You know the answer, sweetheart.” He raised one hand in goodbye, then left the room.

  As he entered the hallway, Peter had already forgotten the two women’s faces—not that he had given them more than a perfunctory glance when he had picked them up at one of the many nightclub barges by the Tiber River. Their names? He hadn’t asked. He never did.

  At the end of the hallway, a ticking sound made him pause; he looked at the clock on the wall shaped like the silhouette of a cat from a cartoon he couldn’t remember the name of. Pop culture had never been his forte. The cat’s tail moved one way as its eyes moved the other. That clock would be his token for the night. He would remember that.

  Peter collected memories of things. A light blue lampshade made of fishnet. A chess piece, a white queen, carved from marble. A jewelry box decorated with small sea shells covering its lid in a spiral. An empty frame, all black, dust gathering in the nook and crannies of its décor. Every object, a different night. Every night, one or more different women.

  He wasn’t under any delusion they would remember him, either. He only went after the ones who were looking for the immediate thrill, the temporary oblivion. They were all numb. He. The women who slept with him. They all had something to forget. In his case, he wanted to forget he couldn’t remember who he had been before becoming Peter, the demon.

  His cell phone vibrated in his jeans’ rear pocket. He opened the door and exited the apartment as he took the call. “Peter.”

  “Arariel.”

  The angel’s cold, measured voice surprised Peter. He had automatically answered before checking the caller ID, thinking it was related to the reading he had done earlier in the week. Beside Ludwig Barnes from the Immortal Council bureau, no one called him. A direct call from the Holy Council’s president meant unpleasant business was coming Peter’s way. “Archangel.”

  “You’ll be asked to read a couple. Report to me whatever you find.”

  The archangel’s command upset Peter. Not only because Arariel could kill him by simply raising his voice and unleashing his Wrath on him, cooking him from the inside out. For Peter, it had been one of those cases of aversion at first sight. He had immediately disliked the angel since he relocated to Rome and Arariel summoned him to the Holy Nation’s headquarters for their mandatory census. Per Peace Pact Alliance laws, demons—nothing more than perverted and demoted angels—had been assigned to the Holy Council to manage. During that session, Peter had been explained his place in the world, and he lay at its very bottom. His choices, too, were made clear. Either he pledged his fealty to the Holy Nation through his political allegiance to the Holy Council or he could become a renegade and have no rights in the paranormal world. A renegade demon wouldn’t have had an easy life in the modern world. Demons in general weren’t a gregarious race and tended to live isolated from each other and the rest of society, but, added to the self-inflicted shunning, a renegade had no rights at all. So he had ended up working for the Immortal Council and, at the same time, for the Holy Council whenever the archangel remembered he existed.

  “As you wish.”

  Peter ran down the stairs of the building and swung open the big metal-and-glass door to gulp some air. The smell of exhaust fumes mixed with freshly baked croissants hit his nostrils. Spring breeze played with his dark brown hair. Automatically, he looked in his jeans’ front pocket for the rubber band he used to tie his hair, but it must have fallen on the bedroom floor. He pushed his long bangs behind his right ear and walked to his car.

  The old military Jeep stood at the corner where he had left it the night before, but a few cats had decided to sleep on its hood. He was about to shush them away when a second call vibrated through his jeans. This time, he checked the identity of the caller, and as expected, it was Barnes.

  “Hi, Peter. I apologize for requesting your presence once again this week, but the remains of a dead couple have been discovered—”

  His third job. This job drained him, but it was the one that also made him feel he could make a difference in this world. Peter was still trying to get rid of the stench he could taste in his mouth from the previous reading. Every time it was the same. He gave the dead a voice, but lost a piece of himself in the process. The shifter girl he had read last had been tortured. Her assassins had cut her womb to steal her unborn baby, then had stabbed her heart with a wooden stick and left her to bleed. He could do nothing for her, but be the keeper of her last memories. It came at a great price, but he knew the dead wanted to be heard one last time, and he would never deny them that.

  “Where to?” He climbed in the Jeep and turned on the engine, awakening the cats who loudly complained, but jumped off the hood.

  “Remember Laurentius’s villa? The one just outside of the Suburra, by the Church of Santa Prassede?”

  “Isn’t it the one that was discovered like six months ago?” Peter merged into the commuting traffic, mentally calculating the route to the Esquilino Hill.

  “Yes, that one. They dug two more layers under the villa and found cellars at the same level of the Promenade.”

  “But that would be in warlocks’ and witches’ territory.” He hung a left and slowly gained some road, only to stop behind an ice cream truck on its delivery route.

  “Almost. Laurentius’s villa was built where the border between the Suburra and the Magik Nation is now.”

  “I assume the dead are both paranormals.”

  “Yo
u are correct.” Ludwig Barnes, not a man to mince words, paused long enough for Peter to wonder.

  “But?”

  “They were found by a human crew and pictures were leaked to the press faster than we expected, making it more difficult for us to get hold of the remains and study them.”

  Peter shrugged. “It happens all the time, but humans get easily bored. Once the news isn’t new anymore, they’ll forget about it.”

  “Well, it doesn’t happen often that the remains of a couple are found together…” Barnes paused again. “Embraced.”

  ****

  Ophelia stared at the remains and shuddered. “I shouldn’t be working.” She shook her head and sighed. “What in the name of the Great Wepwawet am I doing here?”

  She was nursing the headache of all headaches. She was heartbroken. After having done everything in her power to save Martina two nights ago, she hadn’t stopped crying. Martina was alive and Ophelia felt as if she, herself, would be better off dead. Ophelia had always known Samuel wasn’t interested in her, but it had hurt to see the fire in his eyes when looking at Martina. She had wanted him to look at her with that intensity. Then Martina had almost died on her watch, after Samuel had asked Ophelia to look after her. The events of that horrific night came back to her once more. For two days, she had been replaying those memories over and over.

  Ophelia had been waiting for Martina to reemerge from her shower. She resented Samuel for having put her in that situation, but would have never said no to him and accepted the job of babysitting his human girlfriend. She’d cried the whole ride to Samuel’s, but the moment she had entered his apartment and saw the other woman cuddled in Samuel’s arm, her pain heightened to a new level. Every caress Samuel gave Martina felt like a stab wound in her chest. She wanted nothing more than to drive back to the Roman country, let her wolf out, and howl to the night sky. Maybe she could stay a wolf forever and never go back to her human form.

  He had kissed Martina once more before turning to Ophelia. “Please—”

  He didn’t have to finish. Ophelia couldn’t bear to hear him say the words. She could see for herself he loved Martina with the kind of love you only find once in a lifetime. Inside, she was bleeding, but tried to smile at him. “Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to her.”

  Accompanied by Alexander and Marcus, Samuel left to pursue the vampire who had attacked him and Martina. Not for the first time that week, Ophelia had found herself alone with the mortal woman. The worst part was that she liked Martina, but couldn’t help but want her out of the picture. At yet another of Samuel’s requests, Ophelia brought her clothes and lingerie. She had also gone the extra mile and chosen something that she knew would look good on the brunette.

  Things had gone from tense to uncomfortable though, and Ophelia let a sigh of relief when Martina went to change, only to be caught crying when the woman reentered the kitchen looking for something she had forgotten. Ophelia kept her back to Martina for the entire length of the brief conversation.

  “I think I need a long shower.” Martina’s voice reached her as she was hurrying toward the hallway.

  “Take your time.” Ophelia choked back another sob and wished she could just leave. She then prepared some espresso, and, holding her cup, walked to the living room where she sat on what she had always thought of as her couch in Samuel’s apartment. She stared at the illuminated Coliseum dominating the opposite glass wall. She had spent many hours on that couch. After a poker night with the boys, she usually remained behind for a last shot. Samuel would gift her with anecdotes from his job and she would tell him about her latest gruesome discovery. A few times, she had drank too much and Samuel had refused to let her go home. He joked that he should rename the guestroom after her. Not anymore.

  No more easy banter with her angel.

  She grabbed the chenille throw blanket she had given him a few years back and brought it to her face. His scent was on it. She hugged the blanket tight, then lay down on the couch, letting her hair trail to the side, her eyes to the ceiling. She thought back on all the times she had been so close to telling him her feelings, but never had the courage. Now, her chance had come and gone, and she was left with a hole in her heart.

  The clock on the wall had chimed the hour, and she had been roused from her morose thoughts and realized Martina had been in the shower for some time. Feeling guilty of having scared her away, Ophelia reluctantly left the blanket behind and dragged herself up to make amends with Martina. She had passed through Samuel’s bedroom, and among all the gore and blood painting a ghastly scene of what had happened earlier that night, her eyes had immediately gone to the feminine clothes discarded on the floor. Tears sprung unbidden again, but she willed them away and cleared her throat as she knocked on the master bathroom’s door and called Martina.

  When there was no answer, Ophelia knew something had gone terribly wrong. The smell of blood and decay was everywhere and masked everything else, but her keen nostrils caught Martina’s human scent mixed with something—someone else’s scent, and it wasn’t Samuel’s. She barreled through the door and found Martina on the bathroom floor, barely breathing, her eyes wide open staring up at her. Ever the forensic anthropologist, she had immediately assessed the quality of damage Martina’s body had sustained. If the blows hadn’t been enough to kill her, Martina’s vital essence was flowing out of a deep cut on her wrist. Ophelia applied pressure to it, then ran to grab her cell and called for help. Martina was dying and there was no running to the hospital for her. No human doctor had the power to save her. Her first thought had been to bite her, but she was too damaged to withstand the rigors and length of the metamorphosis. Only one viable choice was left to Ophelia, so she called Diana and begged her to hurry to Samuel’s place. Diana’s vampire blood would regenerate Martina, but she needed it in such a quantity she would be changed anyway.

  Martina was now a vampling—a newborn vampire, two days old.

  Back to the present, and after pulling an all-nighter, Ophelia wanted nothing more but to swallow herself in self-pity for the rest of the day. Even her wolf had let her know she was tired by making her feel restless and looking forward to the next full moon. The usual combo of drinking more than she should have and picking up a delectable male hadn’t helped. In fact, after approaching said man and wasting half an hour chatting with him, she had decided his voice wasn’t deep enough, his eyes were too light, and his conversation had lacked. As if conversational skills had ever been a requisite for the mindless one-night stands she sought. But she had been looking for anyone who had a resemblance to her fallen angel and she knew no one would ever do.

  Ludwig Barnes had called her first thing in the morning—maybe half an hour after she had finally found her way to her bed—asking for her professional help. She had cursed him to the seven hells and hung up. He had called two more times on her cell phone, which she had proceeded to shut off, then he had called home three times. She couldn’t find the land line, buried under a pile of discarded outfits she had thrown on the floor the night before. The white phone, a modern replica of its original counterpart, kept ringing at full volume for a while, disrupting what little sleep she had achieved. Finally, she had given Barnes a chance to explain why he was calling her at such an ungodly hour.

  A fast shower, a swish of mint mouth rinse, and several shots of espresso later, Ophelia had reached the lower level of the Promenade at the corner between the gate to the Suburra and the Catacombs’ maze. Just outside Magik Nation’s territory. The atmosphere was dark and damp, the smell of tuff rock and mildew hitting her nostrils. The place was already crowded with curious bystanders and the press. Humans and paranormals equally represented.

  “We are here, just outside the cellars of Laurentius’s villa, with the forensic anthropologist Ophelia Neferet, who is better known for her affiliation with the playboy Drako and his companion—”

  Ophelia gave Lena Chiosi, the reporter from the Roman Chronicles, a venomous glance, but t
he woman didn’t seem to notice and droned on and on in her mockery of journalism. She couldn’t understand how Alexander and Ravenna could tolerate that busybody always spying on them. Lena Chiosi was following Ravenna’s pregnancy, and whenever the expecting mother didn’t go out for a day, the reporter started all kind of rumors about the triplets’ health.

  “Our readers want to know how the couple died.” Lena Chiosi shoved the microphone under Ophelia’s mouth.

  Ophelia wondered if punching the woman was worth the trouble, but one look at the camera pointed at her face and she decided to count to ten. “I will ascertain cause of death after I have had time to study the remains. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll try to do my job.” She signed to one of the immortals guarding the site to come closer. “Keep them out of here, will you?”

  The man nodded, then turned and asked his colleagues for help, and they gently but firmly pushed the first line of the crowd, included Lena Chiosi and her cameraman, beyond the yellow tape everyone had ignored. Once she was relatively free to move around the burial site, Ophelia took in the scene the dead made, and felt her heart throb in pain. Again.

  Two lovers, embraced in eternal death. She enveloped by his arms, her skull resting where his chest had been. Protecting her to this day with his skeleton.

  Ophelia blinked and focused on the scene, at the pile of bones lying inside the grave, trying not to let her imagination supply a story when only facts were needed. She crouched low to the ground and inhaled the scent of fresh-dug soil. Wearing latex gloves, she touched the man’s humerus. His skull was still buried, but his skeleton appeared in perfect condition. She opened her designer messenger bag she wore over her linen jacket, grabbed a handful of small glass containers, then scooped up the soil around and beneath the bones and collected a few samples of it. She then labeled each container, specifying from where the soil had come. She removed her right glove to feel a handful of the dark brown mixture, then brought it to her hypersensitive nose and mentally catalogued all the different smells she recognized. With her back to the crowd, she selected a Plains trowel, a gift from an archeologist friend, and a brush to clean away the frail, clay sediment covering the male skull once she had freed the bones.