Demon Night

by Meljean Brook

  But even if she could, it wouldn’t be right to go in without asking; and if he’d wanted her to know, he’d have projected as he had before.

  And the blood told her some: grief, arousal, and determination sang louder than anything else, and all of them ran deep.

  As deep as her own. Lust and love and thirst…

  Thirst. It struck quick, hard, disguised and gathering below her sexual need, then tearing its way through. She’d been feeding softly, leisurely, but now she was sucking down great drafts, her fingers digging into Ethan’s shoulders, and she had to have him in her in her—

  “Charlie.” Ethan panted her name. “You’re all right. I swear I won’t—”

  But the rest was lost beneath the shriek that ripped into her mind.

  She couldn’t scream. Tears slipped from her eyes, and she tried to brush them away before Ethan felt them, but her hands were tugging her pajamas, tearing them, her fingers fanning and flaming the cold fire burning inside her.

  Until she came apart, ecstasy splintering and flinging her wide—and agony followed every sharp piece.

  When she pulled herself together, she was soft and dull, with Ethan ebbing into her. His palms ran gently over her hair, down the damp skin of her lower back. Her shirt was gone again. She slid her fingers from the wetness between her legs, her fangs from his throat, and licked the puncture wounds as they closed. Only a few crimson drops marred the pillowcase.

  “Ethan.” She couldn’t look at him. “Are you all right?”

  His hands found hers, clasped them tight. A now-familiar harmony vanished from her mind; she hadn’t noticed his psychic presence until he slipped away.

  “No, Miss Charlie.” His voice was ragged around the edges. “I don’t reckon I am.”

  Ethan waited until he heard the spray of the shower before slipping out of the room. He didn’t like leaving her alone, but he couldn’t put this off—and he wasn’t going to feed her again until he had some answers.

  Charlie had called whatever she’d been hearing painful.

  Ethan hadn’t heard it, but he’d felt it when he’d pushed his way into her head—and it hadn’t been anything like what he’d expected. “Painful” was the stab of a knife, a gunshot wound.

  Not his skin slowly being flayed from his flesh; that was more like torture.

  And it had worsened—not when the bloodlust had grabbed hold of her, as he’d half-expected, but when he’d begun actively resisting the need tearing through him.

  The previous night, she’d said it wasn’t hers—and now he figured she was correct.

  It was his.

  Had it been hindering her transformation? She’d been adjusting in every other way, but feeding was central to a vampire’s existence. And there hadn’t been much good to come out of living as one yet—only loss and pain.

  He stepped into one of the soundproofed communications rooms adjacent to the main offices to make the call, and he’d spoken just a few words when Selah was suddenly in the room with him, her cell phone against her ear.

  “This is so much easier,” she said as she lowered the phone. “What’s the problem?”

  This was about as uncomfortable a topic as he could imagine, but there wasn’t anyone who knew more about being with a vampire than Selah. “Feeding,” he said quietly. “It’s hurting Charlie.”

  A line formed between Selah’s brows. “Are you forcing yourself to submit to her?”

  “No. I’m more than willing.” He drew a deep breath, and he focused on a point over her head. “I’ve heard that when you first fed Marsden, you kept him from…well, from—”

  “Yes,” Selah said, and he felt her studying him. “You’re giving her time.”

  Ethan nodded. “Was it painful for Marsden—you resisting him?”

  “I didn’t resist him,” Selah said. “I kept us from having sex.”

  Ethan frowned and leaned back against a desk, crossing his arms. Most times, he had no trouble understanding Selah. But when feelings and the bed came into a conversation, he figured some women just started speaking a different language. “You want to explain the difference to me? Because I sure ain’t following.”

  “If you resist what the bloodlust is doing to you, you’re going to hurt her.”

  “And if I don’t resist, I’ll hurt her another way.” If not physically, then by destroying the trust between them, breaking the promise he’d made. He couldn’t determine if that would be worse than what his resistance was already doing to her.

  Selah’s eyebrows winged upward. “You already want her. The bloodlust only increases the intensity of it.”

  “That it does. Makes it near impossible not to—”

  “Near impossible. But if your reaction to her is anything like mine to Lucas, I’d bet that even without the bloodlust, it’s near impossible, too,” Selah said.

  He scrubbed his hand over his hair, feeling damned awkward as he admitted, “That’s true enough.”

  “Yet you’re able to stop, no matter how badly you want to keep going.” A small smile touched the corners of her mouth. “Have a bit of faith in yourself, Drifter. The bloodlust takes their choice, not yours—and you won’t hurt someone you mean to protect. You aren’t an Enthralled novice anymore.”

  And he wasn’t—but he sure hadn’t trusted himself any more than if he still had been one.

  Well, hell. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “In the past twenty-four hours, I’ve said something similar to Jake about faith, and told Charlie the same thing about not being a novice.”

  “Funny how that happens. I find myself quoting Hugh about once a day,” she said, then added wryly, “And, depending on the situation I find myself in, I change the wording about ten times a day.”

  Adapting, adjusting. Selah vanished, and Ethan walked back to Charlie’s room. He’d be doing his own adjusting now. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference, but he wouldn’t be resisting Charlie again.

  And if it didn’t make a difference…he simply didn’t know what he’d do.

  Ethan was quiet when he returned, and he stood watching her as she finished getting ready—but Charlie couldn’t find much to say, either. And her attempts to reassure him, tell him that she was okay only seemed to deepen his silence.

  It continued as she walked with him to the tech room and endured a searching glance from Jake. Even seeing the e-mail from Jane did little to lighten her mood. And though Jane had included a personal reference to let Charlie know it truly was her sister, the bulk of the message wasn’t for her.

  After she’d read halfway through, she turned in her chair. Ethan was frowning down at the new cell phone Jake had placed in his hand.

  “Drifter,” she said, and he looked up. “Jane says that Sammael let the vampires go, and gave each of her colleagues the option to stay or leave—although those who left couldn’t take any of their research with them. Five of the scientists—and all of the vampires—stayed.”

  Jake frowned. “All of them? How’d Legion manage that?”

  “Because a demon could likely convince a wolf to shed its fur in the middle of a blizzard,” Ethan said dryly, then released a heavy breath. “Or he’s lying. I ought to contact those who left, then, and see if they want any help from us.”

  “Or a job at Ramsdell Pharmaceuticals,” Jake said.

  “When Michael shows up, I’ll put that in front of him,” Ethan said. “I can’t see as it would hurt to study the blood, but I don’t know if he’ll be wanting to follow in a demon’s footsteps.”

  Charlie read a little more. “Also, she’s making Sammael give her samples of demon blood. She wants to know if she should send some down, so you have another link to her if you need one.”

  “I reckon we can just keep it stored here. Ain’t no one going to want to carry it around in their cache.” Ethan glanced at Jake as the younger Guardian shuddered. “And how is it that you know what demon blood feels like?”

  “I don’t,” Jake said. “I’ve just
heard.”

  Charlie’s brows rose in question, and Ethan explained, “It creeps, Charlie. Nosferatu blood, too—but just when it’s in our cache. I’ve heard a few vampires mention that it tastes better—more powerful—than vampire or Guardian blood.” He straddled the chair next to her. “Not that there’s many vampires who’ve fed from demons or nosferatu—leastwise, not many who’ve lived to talk about it.”

  Charlie angled the monitor so that he could more easily read Jane’s message. “What’s a nosferatu? Was that what you were fighting at Jane’s house?”

  “No, that was supposedly one of the nephilim,” he said, scanning the e-mail. “But the nosferatu ain’t any more partial to vampires than the nephil was, Charlie. So if you ever encounter one of them, you take off running and get behind the spell.” He glanced over her head. “Jake? You want to show her what they look like?”

  Charlie blinked and turned. Instinctively, she kicked at the floor, but Ethan caught her before her chair skidded across the room, away from the huge hulking monster Jake had become: pale and hairless, with membranous wings, pointed ears, and fangs twice as long as hers.

  Then he was Jake again.

  Ethan’s hands smoothed over her arms. “Easy, Charlie. Hell, I should have prepared you for that.” His apology was almost lost below the choking noises he made, keeping his amusement in check.

  She couldn’t stop hers; now that the scare had passed, fear bubbled into laughter, and she said, “I saw that movie a couple of years ago. He wasn’t that big, and his fangs were—” She held two fingers below her front teeth.

  “All of that stuff is bullshit. The movies, the stories. They’re just bits of the truth that humans have picked up over the years.” Ethan held her gaze, and his palms ran the length of her arms again, warming her skin. “You ready to make a few calls?”

  To Jane, and then Old Matthew. Her stomach ached, but she nodded. “Yes.”

  “We’ve got soundproofed rooms if you don’t want to be overheard,” he said. “But if it’s all right with you, I’d like to listen in.”

  “You might as well.” She glanced at the computer, and offered him a shaky smile. “It’ll probably be for you, anyway.”

  Charlie hadn’t been far off; Jane never asked for him, but the call wasn’t much about Charlie, either.

  Ethan watched her sit at a desk and smile her way through the conversation. She barely got a word in edgewise, but her fingers were busy. She fiddled through a small box of paper clips, straightening them out and lining them up in front of her, then using her ID card like a plow and pushing the pile around the desktop.

  Sammael had done a damn good job of latching onto Jane where she was most vulnerable—and most ambitious. And wrapping both the research and Charlie’s vampirism up into one goal meant that Jane was more excited about what her work might do for her sister than concerned about finding out how her sister was doing now.

  Ethan reckoned Jane asked all the right questions—how was Charlie doing, did she have a place to stay, was she feeding—but Jane didn’t listen to the answers all that well. Instead, she went on about everything she’d learned…and everything Sammael had told her.

  Some of the information she relayed might have been new to Charlie, but not most of it—and there was nothing that Ethan hadn’t already known or already figured.

  Yes, Sammael was playing Jane real well.

  And no matter how often Charlie called herself slow, she surely wasn’t about this. Her face wasn’t giving much away when she finally disconnected, but he could hear the hurt and frustration in her voice when she said, “It doesn’t even matter what Sammael did to me, to all of those others. Or rather, it matters—but she just rationalizes it so that she doesn’t feel like shit that she’s still there, and so that she doesn’t hate herself for it. Because she just can’t cut herself off from him, can she?”

  “No.”

  She met his gaze and flushed, as if struck by guilt that she’d been critical of her sister. “I know she’s doing what she thinks is best, but—”

  “You also reckon she ain’t thinking with her head.”

  She struggled with that before admitting, “No. She’s probably not.” She closed her eyes, and the tired smile curving her lips tugged at his chest. “Okay. Old Matthew now.”

  A call that would force her to take another emotional beating. The dread was already dripping heavy from her psyche, and he saw the way she bolstered herself, staring at the phone as if it was an opponent to be defeated.

  “Charlie.” He dropped into the chair beside hers, swiveled her to face him, and scooted forward until his knees bumped up against the front of her seat. “Just wait another day.”

  He couldn’t fight this for her. But maybe he could find some way to lessen the blow.

  She firmed her lips and shook her head. But she held on to his hand when the old man answered, her fingers closing on Ethan’s with crushing strength when a long pause followed her rough greeting.

  “Well, Charlie—since you’re calling, I’ll assume it means you aren’t coming in again.”

  “I’m not.” She couldn’t seem to get any more out.

  There was another silence, until Old Matthew asked, “Are you sick, or are you just saying you are?”

  She gritted her teeth and leaned forward, her shoulders hunching, and Ethan pulled her onto his lap. Resisting the need to take the phone and finish this for her was about the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  “I’m just saying it.” She buried her face in the curve of his neck, the phone pressed tight to her ear. Her voice was thick. “I’m so sorry.”

  “So am I, Charlie. But I’ll tell you: I thought it was odd that the healthiest white girl I’ve ever seen, and who never missed a day of work in two years, suddenly came down with something so bad. But now I think what’s even stranger is that she lied to me for a couple of days, all the while sounding like she’s miserable—even though I’ve never known her to spin a lie that wasn’t a hell of a good time, and that didn’t have a laugh underneath of it. So I’m wondering, Charlie girl: Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  She curled in on herself. “Yes.”

  That had been more a sob than a word. A sharp pain cut through Ethan’s chest, and he tried to pull back to look at her face, but she followed the movement, kept her cheek against his throat. Her free hand lifted and made a swiping motion.

  “Where are you at, Charlie girl? Do you need me to come get you?”

  “California.” She drew in a shuddering breath; resolve suddenly strengthened her psychic scent. Her fingers wrapped around Ethan’s suspender strap, and she began rubbing at the leather. “But I’m okay. I’m with someone, and he’s helping me. I just don’t think I’ll be back anytime soon.”

  Doubt filled Old Matthew’s voice. “Charlie, if it’s keeping you away, what kind of trouble is it? Now, it’s been a while, but I know a few lawyers. And if it’s worse than that, there are a couple of guys from inside that owe me favors—”

  “It’s nothing like that.” She tipped her face back, and Ethan was finally able to meet her eyes. Her dark lashes were moist, but a smile tilted the corners of them. “I was turned into a vampire.”

  Despite the ache in his chest, Ethan grinned and shook his head. But there was no humor in Old Matthew’s reply.

  “Charlie girl, that’s what I expect from you. And if I hadn’t thrown some clown out of here yesterday after he came in looking for you, asking about your sister, saying that your apartment had been cleaned out and that you were in danger from bloodsuckers and demons, I might have been laughing now.”

  CHAPTER 22

  “So it was Mark Brandt,” Lilith said.

  Though the woman’s voice was slightly muffled over the phone, this time Charlie was close enough to hear her responses. Ethan was standing now, and had set her up on the desk in front of him—but hadn’t quite relinquished his hold on her. His large hand rested on her hip, his body a mountain of heat in front of her.r />
  “By Cole’s description, I reckon it must have been,” Ethan said, and Charlie nodded her agreement when he met her eyes. “And Charlie had the same impression.”

  Lilith made a growling noise before she said, “I hate this unexpected shit. Rael didn’t know much about the son—just the father. And he had the same impression that you got from the bloodsucker up in Seattle: he was looking to expose all of us, but not wanting to venture further without proof.”

  “It may be why he’s trying to contact Jane, then—hoping she’ll provide scientific evidence that can be presented to the media. And as she’s already inside, has access to vampire blood, she’d be the right person to approach.”

  “Through the son? That’s a good possibility—that’s what I would do.” Lilith sighed. “All right, Drifter. Hugh and I are looking over those Scrolls tonight. You’ll be in Seattle tomorrow, and then back in the evening?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “We’ll meet up at ten. It’d be real fucking nice if the goddamn golden boy Michael would get his ass back here.”

  Ethan’s expression turned grave as his gaze roamed Charlie’s face. “I’ve got an awful pressing reason to speak with him, as well.”

  His phone vanished a moment later, but he was still looking down at her, his eyes the color of honey caught in the sunlight. Slowly, he flattened his palms on the desk beside her thighs and lowered his head until his mouth was even with hers.

  “You got anything else you need to do tonight, Miss Charlie?”

  Her heart pounded. “No.”

  “Then I’m about to hand you a whole lot of choices, and maybe we’ll come up with something to fill the time.” His lips brushed a feather-light kiss across hers. “Do you like the desert?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, and added quickly when his head lifted, “I’ve never been.”