by Lee, Rachel
Jude snorted. “Virgin sacrifices aren’t difficult to find, even in today’s world. I’m not considering that a primary factor in this fixation.”
Yvonne’s head snapped up. “Who said I’m a virgin?”
Creed didn’t know how to respond to that. Jude evidently decided to leave it alone. Finally Terri spoke. “I gather from what Jude said that a virgin sacrifice is needed to bring this demon through. So, either you or some other young woman is headed for trouble. But Jude is also saying that since virgins aren’t difficult to find, it’s more likely Asmodai has a different interest in you, one that is of more importance or he wouldn’t be watching you all the time.”
“Oh.” Yvonne didn’t look at all comforted.
“Thank you for the translation,” Jude drawled. “I never, ever, speculate on the state of a lady’s, ah, experience.”
Terri laughed. “I love it when you slip back into your lord-of-the-manor airs.”
“Never a lord,” he reminded them.
“But to the manor born nonetheless,” Creed said. Finally he could restrain himself no longer. Grabbing the shreds of his self-control, he went to squat beside Yvonne. After a moment’s hesitation, he touched her knee lightly. “It would have to get through me, Yvonne. I won’t let it.”
She lifted her head and looked at him. “But how can you stop it?”
“Well, demons have a bit of trouble with vampires. And in Jude you’ve hired the best demon slayer around.”
“You can slay them?”
“No,” Jude answered, “but I can send them back to the pit of hell where they belong. Where the devil is Garner?”
Almost in answer to his question, Creed’s cell rang. He pulled it out and answered. “Yes, send him up, Gray. And you may as well add him to my list, as well.” He closed the phone, shrugging. “I can always remove Garner later.”
Jude snorted. “I doubt he’ll give you much trouble. He seems to avoid vampires other than me.”
“Curious, that,” Creed agreed. He squeezed Yvonne’s knee gently and then straightened.
Jude spoke. “You stay here with Yvonne while Terri and I go meet Garner and put him on the trail.” Then he scooped up all the things that had been in the envelope, tucking them back into its depths and stuffing the envelope into his pocket.
Terri turned to Creed, understanding in her blue eyes. She touched his arm. “Will you be all right?”
He knew exactly what she meant: could he maintain his control alone with Yvonne? He covered her hand with his briefly, enjoying her human warmth, the only warmth he could feel anymore. “Yes.”
She smiled gently and nodded, then followed Jude to the door.
Yes, he could handle it, although all the fear that Yvonne felt had perfumed the room like roses, adding to her enticing natural scent. It called to him, awakening an overpowering sexual tension, an overpowering thirst.
But of course he was alone in that.
Always alone.
“I’ll be in my room for a few minutes.”
At Creed’s words, Yvonne jerked upright. The fear that had been running icy fingers up and down her spine since Creed and Jude explained what they believed was happening, intensified. She didn’t want to be alone. “Why?”
Creed, once again a distance away, regarded her from eyes that had darkened. “I need to feed,” he said bluntly. “It helps me maintain my control. I doubt you want to see it.”
“Please. I don’t care. I’m more frightened of being alone right now.” She knew she was acting like a baby, but she couldn’t help it. The feeling of being watched had just been turned into the kind of threat she had only read about, a kind of threat she would have been happier believing didn’t exist. She had to handle that somehow, and being alone at this moment didn’t seem like a good way to go. Things that had haunted her in her apartment could find her here just as well. “What if it comes here?” That momentary feeling from a few short minutes ago seemed to return then whisper away.
He hesitated. Clearly he wanted to tell her it wouldn’t and just as clearly he could not make the promise. Her fear ratcheted up a notch. She wasn’t even prepared to consider what it meant that she felt safe with a vampire and not safe alone.
“All right. I just need to get a bag out of my room.”
She almost jumped up to follow him, but forced herself to remain on the sofa. Her hands clenched until her nails bit into her palms, yet she hardly felt it.
Thirty seconds later Creed reappeared with a bag in hand. She recognized it immediately. It was exactly the kind of bag they used when she made blood donations. He carried it into the kitchen, slit one corner with a knife and emptied it into a large glass.
Then, carrying the ruby liquid, he returned to the living room and the chair farthest from her. He raised the glass as if in toast, an odd twist to his mouth, and watched her as he took the first swallows.
Should she have been repelled? He seemed to expect it, but she felt nothing at all. Nothing except gratitude that he was so willing to do what he could to ease her fear.
Blood glistened on his lips, and he didn’t attempt to hide it. Maybe he was giving her the full treatment in an attempt to see if she would be shocked or horrified. She wasn’t. He was just eating. For him blood was food.
When he had drained half the glass, he seemed to believe that she wasn’t going to go ballistic on him. He sighed, rose, went to the kitchen where he got a paper napkin out of a drawer. After that, he dabbed his lips each time he sipped.
“How does it taste to you?” she asked, desperate to think about anything except demons.
“Awful, frankly. It’s full of anticoagulants, and it’s not quite…alive.”
Another word chosen to shock her, she was sure. “You must hate it.”
“I don’t love it, but while the alternative is so much more enjoyable, it sets me free from doing things I wouldn’t be proud of.”
A shiver ran through her.
“Do you need me to turn the heat up?” he asked instantly.
“No. No. I think, um, I don’t know what I think.”
“Too many shocks for one evening.”
She tried to smile. “And it’s still early.”
“Don’t remind me. I’m not sure either of us can handle any more shocks tonight.”
“So that Asmodai thing shocks you, too?”
“It appalls me. Horrifies me. I’d love to believe Jude is wrong. Unfortunately, he seldom is about these things.”
“Just who is he, really?”
“Asmodai? Also known as Asmodeus, Prince of Demons, sometimes confused with Satan who may have never really existed according to scholars.” He paused. “Sorry, the professor in me comes out without warning. To put it in the modern vernacular, he’s one bad dude.”
She managed a small laugh. “I think bad dude is a compliment in some circles.”
“I don’t keep up well enough. As the story goes, it took the Archangel Raphael to bind him.”
A shiver ran through her, cold and icky. “Then how is Jude supposed to do it?”
“Jude’s an experienced exorcist. I’m inclined to trust him.”
“That he’ll get rid of this thing?”
“Well, at least send it away. Of course, there’s never a guarantee.”
Of course there was no guarantee. She wouldn’t have believed him if had said there was. “Thank you,” she said finally.
“For what?”
“Protecting me.” Yvonne looked down, taking a moment to try to absorb more of the earthquake of events that had basically shredded reality. “I feel like I’m in a novel. Someone else’s.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s hard to accept all this.”
“How old are you? Really?”
“I’ve been a vampire for over a hundred years. And I was thirty-four when I was changed.”
She didn’t even try to imagine it; she knew there was no way she could.
She curled up again on the end of the couch, legs t
ucked beneath her, and closed her eyes, trying once again to absorb everything, to find a way to settle it down inside herself. But this evening she had experienced not one but two things that would leave her forever changed. Her whole world had been rattled because creatures of myth had become real. Nothing would ever look the same again. Nothing.
These things were only supposed to happen in books.
She opened her eyes again and looked at Creed. Despite what she had learned, she still felt attracted to him. Shouldn’t that be wrong?
But then she asked herself what was wrong with it. He might not be human, as he said himself, but to her he seemed human in all the ways that counted. And it was just attraction. Almost heady, actually, the kind of heart-racing pull she hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since the early days with Tommy, if even then.
She watched as he finished his drink or whatever he called it and went to the kitchen to wash the glass. He had just set it in the drain rack to dry when the bell rang again.
Taking it for granted, apparently, that he no longer had to pretend to be anything he wasn’t, he seemed to disappear from the kitchen and reappear at the door. He opened it and Garner burst in followed by Jude and then Terri.
“I am not hunting that thing,” Garner insisted.
Creed reappeared beside Yvonne. She felt the whisper of the air move and glanced up to see him standing almost protectively over her.
“It’s what you do,” Jude said firmly.
“Not Asmodai, I don’t. We’re talking here about the Prince of Demons. The very dangerous, very deadly kind.”
“When did you become concerned about danger?” Jude asked.
“Since now. Since it became more than just another demon. Do you think I want Asmodai to notice me? Cripes, Jude, I’m not demon-resistant like you vampires. I’m just a mortal, easy prey for something like that.”
“So you’re saying you can’t suss him out without being detected?”
Apparently Jude had said the right thing because Garner bridled. “I should be better than that.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I can’t be sure I’m better than that when it comes to a demon like Asmodai. He’s a little more omniscient than most. Isn’t he supposed to know the future?”
“I can anoint you, you know.”
Garner threw up his hands. “Yeah. What if it rubs off?”
“Are you going to run?”
Garner glared. “You’re always telling me to be sensible. Now that I am you’re telling me not to be?”
“I’m saying we have a serious demon problem going here, that at least one woman is at risk, maybe two since a sacrifice is needed to bring Asmodai through, and there are five other people who have been or are about to be possessed. You want to let that happen? You want to let him come through?”
Garner seemed to freeze. After a moment, his shoulders sagged. “All right, all right. I’ll look for the people who are possessed. I won’t promise to track Asmodai though. Not on purpose. If we can keep him from getting five people, he’s off the table anyway.”
“This time,” Jude said grimly.
Garner shook his head. “Just promise me one thing, Jude?”
“What’s that?”
“Finish training Creed. I don’t think one exorcist is going to be enough. Not by what I sensed in that apartment.”
“Fair enough. I figured I’d need help.”
Then Garner surprised Yvonne by approaching her. He stood there for a minute, closing his eyes. Then, “I sense he’s been around her, but he’s not here now. Not even a fingerprint. Whatever he wants with her, he hasn’t gotten to the point of taking it yet.” He opened his eyes and looked straight at Yvonne. “Don’t go back to your place. Absolutely do not. His presence is strong there. Too strong. I just don’t understand why he hasn’t touched you yet.”
Yvonne felt her heart stop. “Touched me?”
“I hope you never find out.” Then Garner stomped toward the door. “Creed, don’t leave her alone. Not for a minute.”
She looked up at Creed. “What did he mean, touch me?”
“I gather if Asmodai had touched you in any way, Garner would have detected it.”
“That’s right,” Jude agreed. “Those things leave fingerprints behind that Garner can always sense. And if he had managed to touch you, you’d have been changed in some way. This is good news.”
“How?” Yvonne demanded.
“He evidently can’t reach out yet. Not enough to touch you. And we need to keep it that way.”
Yvonne noticed that her fingers hurt, and she looked down to realize that she had knotted them together. With effort, she untangled them and stretched them. “So what now?” she asked.
“Dinner,” Terri said brightly. “I know of two humans who need to feed, even if you vampires don’t. Order in or go to a restaurant?” Jude looked at her and she laughed. “Somehow I thought that would be your reaction. Preferences, Yvonne?”
“I’m not sure I could eat right now.”
“It’s not whether you want to. I’m a doctor. Take it from me, you’ve had enough shocks tonight. You need to eat. So what’ll it be?”
“Whatever you want. I can’t decide.” She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Creed staring down at her, his face creased with concern. She wished she dared reach up and take his hand, but natural reticence held her back. He might not like it.
He squeezed her shoulder gently, then stepped away. “I’ll go get you some fresh clothes. Be right back.”
Yvonne watched him leave, invisible except when he paused to open the door.
All of a sudden she felt lonely indeed. And more scared than she had ever been in her life.
Chapter 5
“Here’s the thing,” Creed said to Yvonne after dinner when the others had left.
She looked at him. Food filled her stomach like lead. Something inside her seemed to have deadened. Her eyes felt hot, as if she were crying tearlessly. “Yes?”
“If I’m to keep you with me every minute, then we’ll have to share my bedroom. I don’t mind. You can have the bed. I won’t even notice that I’m on the floor since I’ll be dead. I can set you up to work in there. But will it bother you to spend a day locked in with me?”
“What difference will it make where I spend the day if you’re dead?” And how weird did that sound?
“I won’t be so dead that I can’t wake to deal with a serious threat. I just have to do it in a completely darkened room. Well, you can have a lamp on if you like.”
“If you’re dead, how can you wake?”
“I can for brief periods if necessary. It’s not an easy thing, but I can do it if I have to.”
“Okay.” God, even talking felt like too much of a strain.
Suddenly—he did everything suddenly it seemed now—he sat beside her on the sofa. “Do you mind?”
“Mind what?”
“Having me so close?”
She shook her head, hoping he couldn’t tell how her heart had leaped. Hoping he couldn’t read on her face just how much she wanted him close. “But it bothers you, evidently.”
“I can control myself. It’s hard especially with you, but I can do it.”
“What is it about me?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It just is. You nearly craze me, frankly. I want you. I want to taste you. I want to—” He broke off sharply. “Bad timing.”
“What does timing have to do with anything? Right now the timing of everything stinks.”
He held out his hand. Yvonne looked at it, noting its ineffable paleness. Was that from death or lack of sun?
But curiosity and longing both twinged deep within her, so she reached out and laid her hand in his. And discovered that he was cool, but not cold, and that his skin was amazingly smooth. His fingers closed gently around hers. “I thought you’d be cold,” she said.
“I assume room temperature when I sleep. The rest of the time, slightly war
mer. I have a heart that beats, blood that pumps. I’m not dead, just undead.”
“So that’s why you didn’t have the heat on? It doesn’t matter to you?”
“Not at all. I’m impervious to temperature. In fact, the only warmth I feel anymore is human warmth. Like the touch of your hand right now.”
She looked down at their twined hands and tried to wrap her mind around it. Nothing seemed to click, so she asked tentatively, “Do you miss being warm?”