“That I did.”
“You stole my feather?”
“That I did.”
“Can I have—”
It appeared on her lap before she could finish. She stroked her fingers down the length and tucked it into her sweatshirt pouch. Her throat felt oddly thick; she hadn’t thought she’d be this glad to get the silly thing back. “Thank you.”
Then, because Ethan’s expression was changing from amusement to a deeper, searching look, she quickly added, “You were telling me the other things?”
“Yes, well—” He glanced behind her, toward the bed. The skin across his cheeks tightened, his lips thinned. “We’ll fly slow.”
The city sparkled as she’d never seen it before, each square window perfectly outlined, even from across the lake. Charlie soaked in the vision of it before rubbing her palm lightly against the down-covered frame of Ethan’s left wing. It flexed beneath her fingers with each powerful stroke.
“The other thing?” she reminded him, although she was certain he hadn’t forgotten, and slid her arm fully around his neck so she wouldn’t be a distraction.
Ethan didn’t glance away from the air in front of them. “It may be that Sammael doesn’t know this, but rumor ain’t an imaginary many-tongued chimera, and so it’s equally possible that he does. There was a vampire. A woman, about twenty years ago.”
She studied the wooden line of his jaw. His voice wasn’t giving much away, but she’d have bet anything that talking about this was difficult for him. “Jake said something about her. You loved her?”
“Didn’t know her from Eve. Didn’t know her name. Still don’t.”
The wind was stinging cold tears from her eyes; she wiped them away. “What went wrong, then?”
“I did.” He swallowed hard, and her gaze dropped to the muscle that ran from behind his ear to the hollow of his throat. Hunger flicked a teasing tongue across her fangs. “It was my first year back on Earth. The worst part of the Enthrallment had passed, but it still hit me now and again.” He glanced down at her. “You’ll get the same. Days where you’ll be all right, then a sound or a scent just gets in you, overwhelms you.”
“Worse for Guardians, though?”
“I reckon.” The flap of his wings and the distant buzz of the city filled the brief silence. “One night, we ran across a vampire defending herself against a demon, but she was losing quick.”
“We?”
“My mentor—Hugh Castleford, they call him now—and I. Hugh took on the demon; I was just to get her to safety, watch over her until Hugh finished up. But she’d been hurt pretty bad, had bled out some, and she needed to feed. So I offered myself on up.” A rueful expression crossed his features. “Was more than willing to offer myself up. She’d fought like a warrior, was strong, beautiful, and she smelled something wonderful.”
“And you wanted her?”
His eyes closed; when he opened them again, they were flat and dull, like a water-worn stone. “Yes. She began feeding—then the bloodlust grabbed hold of her. I should have known that the way she was responding wasn’t her, Charlie. Hugh taught me well—I knew what happened to vampires when it hit them like that. Sometimes, when they’re not too hungry, they can feed without it ever taking them over. But my blocks were down, and her hands were so cold and she looked and smelled so good, and she was sending me the pleasure of the feeding…and I just wasn’t thinking with my head. What she was feeling got into me, too, mixed with the Enthrallment. I pretty much lost my head.”
Charlie was shivering; she wasn’t cold. “It’s that strong? The bloodlust—it’s that overwhelming?”
“Yes. I thought she was eager enough, and I didn’t have any inkling that something was wrong until after. I didn’t physically hurt her—but then she told me the demon had just killed her partner of over a hundred years. And she’d thought that, because I was a Guardian, I would feed her without taking anything. And the way she looked at me, Charlie…”
He fell silent again. Charlie tried to speak, but shame was clawing at her lungs, guilt holding her tongue in a bitter grip. They were unfamiliar, unexpected—and heavy.
Panic followed, weighing down on her chest, and she tugged at Ethan’s hand, frantic.
“Son of a bitch.” He drew up vertical, hovering high above the edge of the lake. The shame and guilt vanished; her fear receded. “Charlie…Charlie—they’re not yours. I opened my shields a bit and projected. It’s easiest to do that when we don’t have the words to express something.”
“Okay.” Her breath came hard. “How can I tell?”
“I’ll do it again, slow. It’s not yours, and you’ll feel the difference.” He held her gaze, and something slipped into her, light but firm, with lilting, hopeful notes playing at the surface. Apology. “Most vampires say it’s like a scent or a taste, probably because those senses are—”
She shook her head. “It’s more like a sound. This is almost like…a clarinet, accompanied by a flute.”
His brows lifted. “That’s rare, but some Guardians were the same way. Most of those were musically inclined, too. For me, it’s scent and feel.” The wind picked up around them again as Ethan flew forward. “Blood, I’ve heard described as light or electricity for vampires drinking it. Could be your perception will be different there, too.”
“It didn’t taste like anything.” She pulled a strand of hair out of her eyes, and averted her gaze from his neck. “My blood.”
“No, I don’t reckon it would, even if you could still taste food. It isn’t necessarily the blood that feeds you, but the psychic energy it carries when it’s taken from the living source—and that’s what vampires taste when you drink it.” He paused. “Leastwise, that’s what we figure. And you wouldn’t taste your own psychic energy, any more than you’d taste a candy if your tongue was made of sugar.”
Jane had been studying vampire blood. Charlie hadn’t understood all of Jane’s description, but she couldn’t remember her mentioning anything about energy—just artificially replicating the blood, and its healing properties. “So Legion intends to…what? Replicate psychic energy?”
Ethan’s brows drew together, and he shook his head. “I don’t rightly know, Charlie. First, they’d have to measure it—and so far as I’m aware, it can’t be detected by scientific instruments, only by living beings who are sensitive to it. And once vampire blood is outside a body it can still heal or transform a human—but it doesn’t carry that psychic energy.”
“Would Legion be trying to measure it inside the body then? Trying to find a way to detect it?” And using vampires as test subjects. Charlie closed her eyes, felt slightly sick. Jane would never be a part of that.
His voice was troubled. “I hope not, Charlie; but if so, I hope the vampires are there voluntarily. But with demons, it’s impossible to be certain. They’ll stoop lower than most people want to imagine.” They banked northwest. Capitol Hill slid by far below them. Ethan took a long breath, seemed to gather himself, and said, “Regarding that vampire, Charlie…if Sammael knows, he’ll use it. He’ll claim that I’ll never be able to give you a day, let alone the time you need to adjust—and that I’ll succumb to the bloodlust again.”
Trepidation rolled through her. Not that they’d have sex—she wanted that, wanted him. But she wanted a choice just as much, so that when she’d adapted to life as a vampire, she could accept him because of that desire. Not because her body and the bloodlust forced her to. “Will you succumb?”
“No. I swear it. You rile me up pretty good, Charlie, but I ain’t an Enthralled novice.”
He opened his shields to underscore his words, and his determination filled her with a strong, steady beat. How strange and amazing, to sense his emotions that way. To immediately recognize them—though there must be nuances she’d have to learn to decipher. These were in broad, single layers; but emotions were rarely uncomplicated.
“All right,” she said softly.
Jane’s neighborhood slept below them. C
harlie opened herself to the sounds—the sparse traffic, the televisions and music, a few voices—and pushed them away before it became too much. So many families, couples, lovers.
She closed her eyes, shut out the vision of her sister’s perfect house, and thought of Ethan’s brother. “You’re going to kill Sammael, aren’t you?”
Ethan took a long second before answering. “Probably not tonight. But eventually, it’ll come to that. He’ll kill me, or I will him. I admit I’m looking forward to slaying him, and if an opportunity arises, I’ll take it.”
Tears pricked behind her eyelids. When she finally stopped thinking of Sammael as Dylan, and when she could separate the demon she’d met from the man she’d thought she’d known, Charlie imagined that she wouldn’t regret it either.
Except for one thing.
“Jane loves him. I know who he’s pretending to be isn’t real, but her feelings are.”
“Yes.” His arms tightened around her. “She’ll need you.”
“Yes.” She turned her face against his shoulder. What would she do if it was reversed? How would that tear her up, leaning on a sister who was with a man who’d brought such pain…however good his reasons for doing it? “I don’t know how she’ll take it, if you’re feeding me and she still loves him. I don’t know if you being around will hurt her.”
Ethan’s jaw looked as hard as the knot of dread in her belly. He didn’t reply until they were hovering over Jane’s eerily silent house.
“Well,” he finally said, “if it comes to that, then it’s fortunate that I’m real good at sneaking through windows in the middle of the night.”
CHAPTER 14
From their positions behind the sliding door, Sammael and the second demon could likely smell the gasoline fumes, but they probably thought a Guardian was too sissified to light it.
Charlie obviously had no doubts. She took one sniff and backed away from Sammael’s fancy SUV, unease rolling through her psychic scent. “Are you sure Jane won’t be trapped in there?”
“Yes. The security system has a fire alarm, and it’ll blare something fierce when smoke starts moving in—the spell can’t stop air, smoke, or fire. And Sammael will wake her up if it doesn’t ring loud enough.” Ethan yanked his sword out of the gas tank and stood. He’d shoved the SUV as far onto the backyard patio as it’d go, and the driver’s side was almost flush with the glass sliding door. “My most pressing concern is how big a chunk Lilith’s dog is going to take out of my ass when she has to find a way to cover this up, too.”
Eyes narrowed, Charlie backed up another step. “Are you enjoying this?” She sounded on the edge between falling into laughter and flying into a temper.
God Almighty, she sure was something. Despite everything that had come at her, how bad it had knocked her around, she’d gotten right back on her feet. Not perfectly steady, but fighting. And he figured it did him good just to look at her, to hear her voice, to breathe the same air.
“I’m enjoying it a bit,” he said easily. “Now you step back a little farther. A spark won’t set you aflame, but this much heat will leave a burn on you.” Him, too, but it wouldn’t pain a Guardian as much as it would a vampire.
She was across the backyard within a blink. Ethan vanished his jacket; no need to singe it.
He pulled her pack of cigarettes and her lighter from his cache. “You want a smoke, Charlie?” he called softly over his shoulder.
“Thanks, but I’m trying to quit.”
Ethan grinned. Mostly amusement filled her reply now, and that was just fine. “I used to roll my own cigarettes.” He slipped one between his lips, tossed the rest through the missing passenger door. Charlie’s blood stained the seat’s leather upholstery. “It was more manly that way. Out west, only dudes smoked store-bought. But the rest of us, we rolled our own, and used live rattlesnakes as suspenders.”
Charlie was choking on her laughter; Sammael was frowning at him through the window, starting to shake his head. The demon at his side was smaller in stature, not as pretty, and was backing away from the door.
Now, that was interesting. Appearances mattered to demons. He was likely subservient to Sammael, then.
“You cover your ears, Charlie. It ought to just flare up pretty good, but if it blows, it’ll set them ringing. And when they lower the spell, the alarm will.” He glanced back; her hands were tight on either side of her head. “You ready?”
She nodded, and he cupped his palm around the end of the cigarette, lit it, and took a long drag. It burned his throat and lungs like hell, but he kept smiling into Sammael’s now-glowing eyes.
Then he vanished a good amount of gasoline into his cache and dumped it onto the SUV’s backseat. Even if nothing else roasted, that seat would.
“All right then,” he said, and pitched the cigarette in after the fuel.
His jacket was in his hands again less than a second later, and he wrapped it around Charlie, used it and his body to shield her from the rush of superheated air. The sky lighted up, orange as a sunset. Metal squealed as it warped. Glass shattered—the SUV’s windows. The sliding door had likely done the same, but he wouldn’t be hearing it.
From beneath his jacket, Charlie whispered, “Holy shit.”
That about summed it up. His arms tight around her, he formed his wings and took to the air, avoiding the wavering column of heat rising from the burning vehicle. The side of the house was catching, too, little runners of fire climbing the shingles like ivy.
A light winked on in the upstairs bedroom. That’d be Jane, jolted out of bed by the alarm. Sammael was likely already in there with her. And not doing anything a human couldn’t do yet, Ethan figured, because the demon would be confident he could continue his charade indefinitely. He’d hold on to that human identity, not wanting to scare Jane away.
And it was far too hot for a human to escape through the back, so they’d go out the front door.
Ethan set Charlie down on the opposite side of the street, vanished his wings again. Neighbors would be coming out before too long, or peeking through their windows. He put Jane’s little car by the curb, and didn’t suppress the tiny shudder of relief that the demon blood inside was out of his cache, as well.
A tug on his jacket spun Charlie out of it, and he steadied her without taking his gaze from the house. Shadows moved behind the closed drapes on the first floor, coming toward the door.
“All right,” he said, slipping his coat on. “When she comes out, you yell for her, get her attention. They can’t hold her back.”
“I can’t yell.”
He darted a glance at her. No, she hadn’t on the roof that first night, either. At the time, he’d thought her fear had kept her quiet, but he reckoned now she’d have broken a few windows if she’d had her voice. Maybe a few eardrums, too. “I’ll get her attention, then. You just wave her on over.”
Her fingers clenched on his arm when the door opened, and Jane ran through in a pair of flannel pajamas, holding on to Sammael’s hand and with a big bag in her other hand. She slowed and backpedaled, watching the house and looking away from the street.
“That’s Jane. It ain’t a demon,” he assured Charlie. “Cover your ears up again.”
He hadn’t done this in over a century, but it just took two fingers against his tongue and a blast of air from his lungs—and his whistle was loud enough it about broke his own eardrums.
Jane spun around. A line appeared between her brows, her mouth turning down with surprise. “Charlie?” She stepped toward them, pulling Sammael along with her.
Where was the other demon? Must be still inside—Ethan couldn’t hear the alarm yet, so the spell was up. It’d fall just as soon as they all left.
Jane took another step, and Ethan met the demon’s eyes.
That wasn’t Sammael.
“Jane, darling, hold on a minute,” the demon said.
“Come on, Jane.” It was a rasp, but Charlie’s frantically gesturing hands spoke it louder and better.
/> Jane looked away from her sister to frown at the demon. “The alarm’s off, Dylan.” She tugged her hand, but he didn’t release her. “Why can’t I hear the alarm?”
“I can’t let you go, Jane.” He held her hand tight, though she pulled at it again. His voice was almost pleading. “I can’t let you get away from me.”
Ethan sucked in a hard breath. The demon was denying her free will. There wasn’t much Ethan could imagine would make a demon do that—unless he was compelled by a bargain with Sammael to keep Jane from leaving with Charlie.
That sure as hell would explain the subservience. A demon might be destroyed or Punished for denying a human’s will, but many would consider the punishment for breaking a bargain worse than death or torture. And with the Gates closed, maybe this one wouldn’t face the consequences for going against Jane’s will for five hundred years yet, so it seemed a better alternative than facing Sammael’s immediate vengeance.
Jane yanked on her arm, and when she couldn’t get away, got up in the demon’s face. The woman had a powerful temper on her.
“Charlie wrote me a sticky, Dylan, about silencing spells and vampires and demons, saying that you can’t stop me if I want to go. I thought it was a joke—but I can’t hear the alarm. So you’ve got about one second to prove her wrong, and then I’m walking over there.”
“Just do it now,” Charlie muttered, but apparently she wasn’t going to wait for Jane’s second to pass. She made a move forward. Ethan put his hand over hers, keeping her from approaching the demon.
“That’s not Sammael, Charlie,” he said softly. “I don’t rightly know if he’ll come after you to keep Jane from going, even if Sammael has told him not to hurt you. I reckon he’s got a lot to lose right now.”
The demon met Ethan’s eyes again. “He’ll kill me, Jane. If you leave with him, he’ll kill me.”
Jane had turned her head to look at Charlie, but at that statement her gaze lifted to Ethan’s face, then returned to the demon’s. “Him?”
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