“No,” I said, moving closer to him. “If you keep touching me like that, I’ll lose control and take advantage of you.”
His deep, sensual laugh felt like it brushed my most sensitive nerve endings, leaving them aching for more. When he leaned closer, I met him halfway, and when I slid my hands over his chest, I felt how much he wanted me in the sudden clenching of his muscles and the changing of his eyes to purest emerald.
That’s why I was shocked when he grasped my hands and set me back. “No. You’ve already done many things you’ll regret when you sober up tomorrow. I won’t let this be one of them.”
“You’re rejecting me?” I asked with complete disbelief.
A harsh laugh escaped him. “Yes, and if my cock could talk, it would be screaming its disagreement. But while you’ve been more honest with me drunk than you’ve ever been sober, I don’t know if this is real. And if it isn’t, then I don’t want it.”
He was serious. I felt it in the finality of the way he set me back. How admirable of him, dammit. I leaned against the shower wall and let out a frustrated sigh. “Your unbreakable sense of honor is your biggest damn secret, isn’t it?”
He laughed more naturally this time. “Never tell anyone. My reputation would be ruined.” Then he touched my face with affection instead of enticement. “And your biggest secret is that you’re demon-branded, like I am.”
Maybe it was my exhaustion. Maybe everything I’d drunk hit me with its final, best shot. Either way, I did what I should have done before I revealed too many of my secrets.
I passed out.
Chapter 22
Nip. Nip, nip, nip!
“Stop it,” I muttered, swiping at whatever was nipping me. A frightened squeak made me open my eyes and sit up. Immediately, I wished I hadn’t. Even that small movement made my head clench as if it were being compressed by a vise.
Through barely open lids, I saw the Simargl dart under the covers. I didn’t remember getting tucked into bed, let alone the Simargl getting tucked in with me, but here we both were. Now, I’d terrified the poor thing.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wincing because each word made that pitiless hammering in my head even louder. But the Simargl was still shivering beneath the covers and I hated that I’d scared him. “I’m not mad at you,” I continued, trying to croon as I petted the blankets over him. “It’s okay. You can come on out.”
Slowly, his head peaked out. I smiled encouragingly even though it felt like my face split from the effort. It had been nearly a thousand years since I’d last had a hangover. It was every bit as horrible as I’d remembered. Worse, even. Had I longed for death to stop the pain like I did now?
Finally, the Simargl came all the way out from beneath the blankets. Once he did, he looked beseechingly at the door.
“What?” I asked in confusion. “You don’t need to go out to pee; you don’t have those parts.”
The Simargl’s look-at-the-door, look-at-me gestures grew more frantic. Something had him agitated. I didn’t know what it was, but it obviously involved the other side of the door.
I got up, then instantly grabbed my head because it felt like it was about to explode. I only managed not to throw up because the thought of how much that would hurt scared me pukeless. Worse, the sun was up. All that light streaming through the windows made me recoil as if the rays posed a real danger, like all the old vampire myths claimed. By the gods, had the sun always been that horribly, hideously bright?
A knock on the door felt like it boomed through to the back of my skull. “Room service,” a male voice called out.
Had Ian ordered breakfast? If so, then sensing the hotel attendant must be what had rattled the Simargl. He didn’t like strangers, judging by how he cringed away from the door.
“Coming,” I mumbled, deciding I could use a sip from the attendant’s neck, anyway. Maybe some fresh, clean blood would help with the relentless pounding in my head. I was almost at the door when the Simargl threw his paws around my leg and used all his strength to try and stop me.
“What?” I began, then looked at the door with new understanding. I didn’t sense anything threatening on the other side, but everything the Simargl was doing warned Danger!
“Be right there,” I called out, changing tactics as I gestured for the Simargl to hide under the bed. Once he did, I started looking for my weapons. “Just have to get my robe—”
The door burst off its hinges and nearly hit me as it flew across the room. Then a grinning attendant pushed a meal cart into the bedroom. Before he’d finished crossing the threshold, vampires started to come out from beneath it, so that the small cart reminded me of the clown car back at the Polish whorehouse.
They weren’t just vampires, I realized when my defensive spell bounced off the first ones it hit. They were also trueborn witches, aka demon-kin, and that made them very dangerous. My freezing spell wouldn’t work on them. Neither would most of my magic, and I was hardly up to fighting form when it came to conjuring something more powerful. That’s why I threw myself at them and began to brawl the old-fashioned way.
The other bedroom door burst open. Ian, clad in only a pair of black jeans, joined the fray. After a few moments of catching his movements out of the corner of my eye, I realized he must have been holding back in our first fight. He’d been formidable but not unbeatable then. Now, he looked like a grim reaper with terrible anger-management issues. Soon, I was only getting the stragglers because Ian tore into the brunt of the attackers with such effective, gleeful viciousness; it left body parts flying and much of the hotel room demolished.
“Love a good slaughter in the morning!” he shouted before his next aerial assault drove five of them through the wall and into the next hotel room. It left me facing four, and I managed to take care of two of them before the bed flipped over, revealing the cringing, whimpering Simargl.
“There you are!” the ivory-skinned, Nordic-looking vampire exclaimed. “Boss’s tracking spell on your blood wasn’t wrong after all.”
I dove in front of him, snatching up the Simargl and holding him between my back and the window.
“Come closer and I’ll carve out your heart,” I warned, holding my very bloody silver knife in front of me for emphasis.
Nordic vamp and his swarthier, brunet buddy exchanged a glance before they looked at the food cart behind them. It was vibrating and magic tasted heavy in the air around it. That meant it probably contained a portal. How else could a dozen or so vampire-witches use it to get in this room?
“Why don’t you stop fighting?” Nordic vamp suddenly said. “All we want is the source. Give it to us, and we’ll let you live.”
His inky-haired companion grunted. “That’s not what the boss ordered.”
The blond gave him a look that said, I’m lying, stupid! Then he smiled at me as if I hadn’t noticed the subtext. “Come on, you don’t want to die for a furry-winged version of heroin, do you? And believe me, your other friend is coming with us one way or the other. I’ve seen his picture on the demon boards. He’s got a bounty on his head that’d make leveling this hotel worth it to get him.”
I gave a quick, calculated look around, wincing when I heard more walls break in the next room. Ian and I could probably win this fight, but at the cost of how many innocent lives? We couldn’t let this brawl spill out to the rest of the hotel floor. Dagon had put a bounty out on Ian. These mercenaries wouldn’t worry over collateral human damage to collect it.
The wall nearest me suddenly burst open and Ian tumbled into the room. He had two vampires by the neck when a vicious twist narrowed that number down to one. Then, in an impressively athletic move, he punted the head he’d twisted off while simultaneously breaking the back of the vampire in his arms.
“Goooooooal!” he cried out when that head sailed right between the two vampires opposite me. Then he ripped the arms off the vampire he still held and began stabbing him with the rapidly withering limbs.
Some people were cold and ruth
less fighters. Others were reckless yet talented. Ian combined all those traits with a joy that made watching him feel like taking in a blood-soaked ballet. “I could watch you fight all day long,” I said with complete sincerity, but more vampires were starting to come out from the food cart. I was right; the damned thing was a portal.
This had to end before anyone got hurt who didn’t deserve to. I had never wanted to do this next thing in front of Ian, especially with an additional audience, but I had to. If I didn’t, I’d be just like these mercenaries—fine with sacrificing the lives of innocent people to suit my own purposes. I set the Simargl down and used my knife to slice open my hand, running it over the Simargl’s gray head. Then I sliced it again and ran my blood over Ian’s arm.
“Stop fighting them,” I told Ian as more vampires came from the portal in the food cart. “Go with them instead. Remember what I told you last night because I will see you again soon.”
Then I stabbed the silver blade into my heart and twisted it.
“No!” I heard Ian scream before agony stole his voice away. I felt Ian clutching me, then the new, horrible pain of fire erupting all over me. Ian let me go when the fire intensified, which was a good thing, because I exploded.
I didn’t feel anything after that.
Chapter 23
Dying is terrifying the first dozen or so times you do it. It flat out takes a while to get used to being a disembodied form flying toward the cusp of eternity. And don’t get me started on how horrifying it is when you first see the Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld. Let’s just say it’s a good thing you no longer have bowels or you’d empty them all over yourself.
But hundreds—more?—of times later, I only felt a mild sense of trepidation as I zoomed toward the river that separated this world from the next. Of course, there wasn’t really a river; that was a construct of my own mind. So was the image I first saw of the figure that stood at its bank. The image changed according to individual beliefs. If I worshipped ancient Egyptian gods like Mencheres did, I’d see Aken the Ferryman. Right now, I saw the first god I’d ever worshipped—and shuddered.
Then that image dissolved into the reality of a tall man with bronze skin; silver hair streaked with gold and blue; and eyes that flashed so brightly with silver, I couldn’t see their actual color. When he saw me, he gave the barest shake of his head, as if disappointed that I’d died again. But before I was launched back to the land of the living, I said, “Wait!”
I hoped he’d listen. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t.
His hand beckoned me forward. I felt myself zoom up until I faced him. Thankfully, he’d decided to listen this time.
“What do you seek from me?” he asked.
I’d long since ceased being afraid of him, but I’d never felt comfortable with him. Whatever name religions gave him, the Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld was not a relaxing figure. “I need an hour to pass in my world, but no more than two, before you return me to the ones I marked with my blood.”
He didn’t smile. That would be too human a reaction, but the faintest flicker in his expression made me wonder if I’d amused him. “Do you?”
I’d once begged him for something he didn’t give me, so I didn’t know what my odds were with this request. Unlike the other one, this was small, and hopefully, he was in a generous mood. “Please,” I said. “This is very important.”
He extended a hand and a small, narrow vessel appeared on the river. “You know the cost of a bargain with me and what you forfeit if you fail.”
“Oh, I’ll fill your boat,” I said with grim purpose.
Without another word, I was zooming backward and the Warden, the river, and everything else faded from my sight. Then brightness exploded in my vision and I saw the tops of buildings as if I were falling from a great height. I instinctively braced, but I didn’t have a body, so I felt no impact when I hit one of them.
I went through several floors, everything blurring, before I found myself looking down on an underground parking garage. Ian was there, and he looked far more worse for wear than when I’d last seen him. He had multiple silver harpoons protruding from him that were secured by chains. No fewer than a dozen vampire guards held the other ends of those chains. The tips of the harpoons must have been hooks, because every time Ian moved, they ripped open large pieces of his flesh.
The Simargl was there, too, chained inside a metal cage. The Nordic vampire stood next to the cage. From the way he kept checking his watch, he was expecting company soon. Time to crash this party.
I aimed for Ian’s shoulder that I’d marked with my blood and everything went black. Before I could see again, I caught snatches of conversation.
“Where’d all those ashes come from?”
“They’re pouring out of his shoulder! Look!”
“Now something’s moving in them.”
“It’s big. It’s coming up out of the ashes. What is it?”
“Holy shit, it—it looks like a woman!”
I brushed my silvery gold-and-blue hair out of my eyes, my gaze finding Ian. For a split second, I saw him through the otherness in me instead of my vampire nature. Lights burst from him, hallmarks of the integrity and inner nobility I already knew he had. But darkness also swirled around those lights, and it wasn’t only from his brands. Ian had had inner demons long before he made his deal with Dagon.
At that same moment, Ian looked at me. Recognition lit his face, making me glad I’d showed him this appearance before. I’d half expected him to be frightened when he realized I was the creature forming from the ashes near his feet. His captors certainly screamed as if gripped by terror. But elation washed over Ian’s expression. Then he bent to yank me into his arms despite the harpoons tearing bigger holes into his flesh.
A spray of his blood hit me. Rage took over. They had hurt him. They had hurt him and he’d let them because I’d told him to go with them. Now, I would avenge every single drop of his blood. I let my hands grip his for the briefest moment. Then, naked except for the ashes clinging to me, I launched myself at Ian’s captors.
The good thing about having my former body explode is that it cured me of my hangover. This new body wasn’t exhausted or filled with chemicals. That meant I was at full magical and physical capacity. I unleashed my powers like a fireworks finale on the Fourth of July. Truth be told, I might have been showing off a little. Ian had really impressed me with his fighting skills. Now, I was showing him what I could do.
When I was finished, nothing in the garage moved except me, Ian and the Simargl, who was doing circles in his cage in excitement. “Missed you too,” I told him, making a mental note to give the Simargl a name as soon as possible.
I pulled a coat off one of the dead guards. The coat was bloodstained, but it was black, so the blood didn’t show as much on it. It would have to do until I could get some real clothes. I shook the worst of the gore off it before I put it on. Then I pushed my hair back, wishing I had a clip or hair tie. The long tricolored mass always seemed to swirl around my shoulders as if blown by a hidden breeze when it was down.
Finally, I used magic to blunt the forked edges of the harpoons embedded in Ian so I could remove them without taking out more hunks of his flesh. When they were all out, Ian stared at the dismembered remains of the bodies, at the wreckage done to several cars in the garage, and then, finally, at me.
His former elation was gone. Now, the full weight of everything that had happened was in his gaze.
“I told you I’d see you again,” I said in a feeble attempt to lighten the tenseness of the situation.
“That you did.” He let out a short laugh. “And then you exploded all over me.”
A weird sense of shyness overtook me. Then again, I had exposed myself in the most extreme way possible by doing that, so perhaps it wasn’t so weird. Still, I tried to deflect. “It looked worse than it was. You saw your shape-shifter friend temporarily die when she let herself get decapitated by the council’s
executioner—”
“Stop,” he said shortly. “No more lies, half-truths, or omissions. At first, I thought you were a demon-possessed vampire because you could do magic by your will alone, something no vampire can do. Then I tasted your blood and thought you were demon-branded, like me. Thought it was Dagon who’d branded you and that’s why you wanted him dead, but now . . . I have no idea what you are. You’re right; I’ve seen demon-branded people ‘die’ before. They don’t spontaneously catch fire and explode. They also don’t rise from a pile of ashes that somehow poured from the same spot where you marked me, and their eyes don’t glow silver like yours did, so for the last time, what are you?”
I found myself wishing I was still drunk. It would be so much easier to admit to this next part if I had chemicals numbing my nervousness. “You know about the vampire half. The other half . . .” I gave a hapless shrug. “Depending on the culture or beliefs, there are different names. Demigod. Nephilim. Phoenix. Titan. Hellspawn—”
“Was one of your parents an angel, a demon, or a god?” he interrupted.
Only Tenoch had ever known the truth about me, and he’d exhorted me countless times to tell no one. All those long-ago warnings rang in my head as I said, “I once asked my father what he was because I couldn’t figure it out. He never answered me, and he’s not the type you press. You’ll see what I mean.”
His gaze narrowed. “What do you mean, I’ll see?”
My swipe encompassed the corpses strewn around the garage. “I couldn’t come to you immediately or you’d still be at the hotel with too many innocent people close by. I also couldn’t wait too long or they would’ve delivered you to Dagon. For that kind of precision, I had to make a suitably large offering. My father will be here soon to collect it.”
As if that had summoned him, half the garage suddenly turned into blackest darkness, and a ghostly boat sailed over a river that morphed out of nowhere. Ian screamed when he saw the figure at the boat’s helm, his pale skin turning dead white.
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