Life Sentence (Paranormal Detectives Series Book 3)

by Lily Luchesi

  That was a strange concept. He was hers. When had she Claimed him? When she first bit him? When she had first healed him? How did he even know about the vampiric ritual of Claiming? It had to be from his memories of their life. Even better question, how did she Claim him without realizing it?

  Claiming was when a vampire marked another as their mate. Her mother had done that with her father, despite also being formally married in a human union. She had done the same when Danny was still Jonathan Price. When it was between two vampires, you drank from each other. It was similar between a vampire and a human, but the blood amounts were lessened so the human was not turned.

  Claiming, for vampires, was like sex for Catholics. You only Claimed your true love, just as the devout would only have sex with their legal spouse. It was not a thing to be taken lightly. Many vampires took so long to contemplate Claiming, decades could go by. Both times she had Claimed Danny, it had been very quickly without deliberation. Was that an act of recklessness on her part, or the passion of a true, deep love? It had to have been the latter. Why else would she have given him her blood so quickly?

  She let out a frustrated huff and got out of bed.

  She slipped a black robe on— she hoped he wouldn’t mind her temporary theft —and went to stand at the window and look at the brightly lit skyline. She had been everywhere in the world, but she would always say there were three things Chicago had that were the best: the food, the sports teams, and the skyline.

  These were not the thoughts that she needed occupying her mind. She had enemies to hunt, humans to protect, and a company to run. Thoughts about love and Claiming should have been the furthest things from her mind.

  She remembered how her mother had not fought against Vincent as hard as she should have when he had attacked her. She knew that Veronica Delarue was a powerful vampire who could have overpowered her husband. The reason she hadn’t was simple: she loved him too much and couldn’t bring herself to hurt him more than she already was.

  Angelica had watched, unable to do anything to help because she had been too weak then. She could remember every grisly detail as if it were happening right then.

  “Love makes you weak.”

  It was something she had said many times in her long life. She’d said it when she preferred staying by Jonathan’s side as he died instead of hunting after Fiona. She said it again when she had seen Danny get attacked by Vincent in that alleyway, and had chosen to save him instead of make sure that she caught up with and murdered her rogue father. She remembered that day clearly.

  ***

  When Angelica had seen the bodies piling up in the South Side of Chicago, she dared not believe that it was Vincent. She had lost him for nearly a century, before finding him in New York City a year ago. He had actually been apprehended by a mortal criminal psychologist. Angelica had been on her way to get him and take him back to Chicago for his execution (let’s be honest, she was going to torture him long and slow before he got the chance to go to Hell) when a mortal detective had decided to murder a human in some convoluted ploy to get the shrink to go out with him.

  Vincent had escaped, and Angelica had thought it would be another century before she could get another chance to catch him.

  She did not know for sure it was him when she saw the MO come up on the police blotter, but it certainly seemed similar to his style. Despite being a vampire, his murders were very humanlike. Serial killers from films and novels seemed to inspire him. After all, who would expect a vampire to commit a murder in the same way a human would? No one…except for Angelica. She had an intuition for this sort of thing, and she immediately recognized the pattern.

  One thing she shamefully did was wait for the CPD to get a bead on the killer, rather than waste her time searching for a criminal who might not have been the intended vamp. She listened in on the police radio, and had a werewolf informant in the station. It was the informant who got her the decent information to watch out for on the radio. She could still remember exactly what he’d said to her.

  “They have a Detective Mancini on the case.”

  She’d been at her desk, heeled boots on the surface and a Stephen King novel in her hands. “Alone? One man for a serial killer?”

  The wolf shrugged. “His partner is on maternity leave and there is a shortage of cops who can actually handle this kind of thing. I met Mancini. He’s a strange character. It seems like he has a sixth sense about what’s going to happen and his track record is amazing. Anyway, they’ll be sending him on stakeout soon, so keep your ears peeled to the radio.”

  She had kept her ears peeled, and as soon as she heard the command given, she hurried to the place they had given Mancini to go. She could not see him as he sat in his unmarked car, but she could feel him. His aura (and his expensive cologne) were impossible to miss. Somehow, she felt comforted by his warm aura.

  She watched from a nearby rooftop as Vincent appeared with a young woman, probably a prostitute. She heard the car door open and saw the back of the detective go and follow Vincent down the alley. If all went as she planned, he would confront Vincent and she could swoop in with her sword and give one clean slice to his neck. It would mean she wouldn’t be able to torture him, but still…it was better he be dead than risk his getting away again.

  She leapt to a closer rooftop, meaning she got to see the detective’s face as he quickly approached Vincent. It was then that she felt weak in the knees for the first time ever. It was him. Jonathan Price. Her Jonathan. He had promised he’d come back, but she had never believed in reincarnation. It looked like she needed to start believing, because there he was. No mistake. He had a new name and a new accent, but it was him. Back again. And still hunting.

  A million thoughts swirled in her mind as she stared at him. She tried out his new name on her tongue. Daniel Mancini. It kind of fit. It had a tough sound, exactly like a Chicago detective should be. It was sexy, and a little dangerous.

  She was still in the mindset to catch Vincent— it was difficult to get her out of it —but she allowed a part of herself to rejoice. He was back! Unfortunately, it now looked like he had no idea vampires existed anymore, as he tried to shoot Vincent with human bullets.

  Oh, you dumb bastard! she thought, looking in alarm that, because of his tendency to get ahead of himself, she might not be able to save him. Vincent had him in his thrall already, and Danny fell to the ground in a faint.

  Angelica dropped from the roof, startling Vincent away from Danny’s motionless body. She clashed her sword with his claws, breaking some of them off, and making him bleed.

  His speed beat hers, thanks to him having drank from her mother, and he managed to get around Danny’s neck, his Unearthly fangs bared. “One more step, Daughter, and another one of your precious mortals dies. Are you willing to sacrifice him to kill me?”

  While Vincent did not know who Danny was to her, he knew enough to know that Angelica would never risk a mortal life for Vincent.

  “Get away from him,” Angelica threatened. Her voice was low, danger edging the words. “Put him down!”

  “Your weapons first.” Vincent was never a stupid man. He knew she was always packing more than just a single falchion.

  Biting her lip, torn between her hatred for him, her hatred for herself for being so weak, and her love for Jonathan (Danny), she dropped her guns, knives, and falchion to the blood-soaked ground. “Go. Now. Or I will sacrifice him to cut your throat.” A bluff, but he didn’t know that. In a flash, he was gone, and she was alone in the alleyway.

  She didn’t bother checking the girl— she was dead. Quickly gathering her weapons, she bent down to see if Danny was okay. He seemed bruised, but alive. Thank God.

  She left his side, going back in search of her father. She did, however, leave Danny alone. When she realized he remembered nothing whatsoever about his past life, and believed vampires to be fictional creations, she did not go to him. He needed time, and maybe if he never got over this encounter, she would do
him the favor of leaving him alone.

  This time he could live a normal life, a long life.

  Things did not go that way, obviously…

  ***

  “What are you thinking about?” Danny came up behind Angelica, wrapping his arms around her waist. She felt his mortal warmth through the thin silk. He buried his face in her neck. “You always feel so warm after you’re with me.”

  “Because your blood is all I need,” she said, barely aware of the words coming from her mouth. Need. She had never needed anyone, and now she was saying she needed him? She was a disgrace to her former self. “And to answer your question, I was thinking about the first time I saw you again, in that alley with Vincent.”

  “Were you mesmerized with love and awe?” She felt him laugh against her skin.

  “That’s about right. I let Vincent go to rescue you,” she said. “Just like a damsel in distress.”

  He choked out a laugh. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended.”

  She didn’t respond. A storm was coming in from over Lake Michigan. The lightning was making her skin crackle. “Danny? Does that look…off to you?”

  “Hmm?” He peered over her shoulder. It was a thick black cloud, roiling like smoke. The lightning was fantastic, frightening and bright. The clouds weren’t widespread, like a storm. It was as if they had a mind of their own. “Angie? What is that?”

  “Demons.”

  “Demons? Really?” He quickly went to put on his clothes, wishing he had a little bit of that vampire speed so he could be as ready as Angelica was. She was pulling out her phone and had her weapons checked before he’d buckled his belt.

  “Brighton, are you ready for a fight?” she asked. “Wrigley Field. There’s a fucking demon invasion. Apparently the inhabitants of Hell are White Sox fans…it figures. See ya.”

  Danny grabbed his guns and said, “Reinforcements? Since when do we ever need backup?”

  Angelica’s dark eyes flashed. “You’ve never faced demons before. The only way two people can stand against that many is in the movies. Let’s go! I hope you don’t mind being carried: we can’t afford the time it will take to drive.”

  Carried? Oh, boy. Danny was certain that this was not going to be fun. “How are you going to…”

  She held up a hand, cutting him off. “Grab my waist as tight as you can. Don’t worry about hurting me because you can’t. Don’t let go, or you’ll die.”

  He held onto her as tight as he could and closed his eyes. He could feel wind lashing at him, threatening to disintegrate his skin at the velocity at which Angelica traveled. His stomach was rolling, feeling like he was on an uncontrollable roller coaster. When she came to a stop about twenty seconds later outside of the vast stadium, he immediately let her go, realized that the world was spinning, and promptly vomited bile onto the already dirty street.

  “Fuck it, I do that way too much since I’ve met you,” he commented, wiping his chin.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel good?” she asked, shaking her head.

  Danny didn’t respond. He was suddenly feeling very weak and lightheaded, and it was not from the vampire travel. It was the demons, all trying to feed off of him at once. They were draining him, and he tried to remember what Brighton had taught him about protecting his mind, not just from mental intrusions, but from energy suckers as well.

  “A poem or song is well and good, but that’s just for those who can see. For those who can steal, you need a five-star alarm. You need to fully stop your mental energies from feeding the Enemy. You need to think like a Neanderthal. No emotion. No vivid mental activity. Train your brain to turn itself off and let your body take over the running of things, leaving nothing for the demons to feed on.”

  Even doing that, even turning off his innermost thoughts and psychic powers, the demons were still giving him one Hell of a headache. The darkness and the malevolence of all these beings together was affecting the few civilians he saw in the same manner: they all looked sickly as the evil energy permeated the neighborhood.

  “Can you feel the energies?” Angelica asked. “They’ve possessed people inside the stadium. Workers or something. Usually I can’t feel them like you can, but they want me to feel them.”

  “You think this is Fiona’s doing?” Danny wondered.

  She shook her head. “No. She’d want to use her magic. This has Leander’s stink all over it. You know, your great-grandpa is kind of an ass.”

  “Oh, trust me, I know. How are we getting into this place? You scaling the walls like Count Dracula?” Danny asked. “And why are they sequestering themselves in there?”

  “Because they want us in a small space so we’re easier to kill. And I can’t climb walls. I mean, maybe I can with my new nails, but in this instance I don’t need to.” She walked to the service door they were standing near and took out a set of keys. Danny noticed that there were a lot of them. “I own part of the team.”

  Danny took a second to calculate exactly how much money that meant, and then remembered to turn his brain “off”. This was going to prove to be very difficult.

  Angelica easily swung the door open and they walked through the back area, where there didn’t seem to be any signs of life. The air was thicker inside the confines of the stadium, and Danny found it hard to catch his breath.

  As they turned a corner, a possessed worker turned to attack, but Angelica was quicker, sticking her blade into it, hoping to find the place where the demonic essence had settled. As Danny watched (because he couldn’t help her while they were in this narrow corridor), he noticed a black shape emitting energy waves on the thing’s side. Was that…?

  “Angie, it’s on the side, near the liver!” he said.

  If she was surprised by him knowing this, she didn’t show it as she stabbed her blade deep into the vessel’s side. Danny watched as the body convulsed, sparked with Hellfire from the inside, and then died, a small plume of black smoke dissipated in the air above the corpse.

  “How did you know where it was?” she asked sotto voce.

  “I could see it. Like in those old video games, where they’d tell you where to hit the boss characters in tutorials?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, okay. Good. Looks like you’re really going to come in handy.” She gave him a playful punch as she wiped the blood from her knife on to her black jeans. She walked ahead of him, face set and determined. He thought that she was more badass than any of those fictional female vampire killers he had seen in the movies. She was a hero, whether she wanted to believe it or not. She was someone that even he looked up to; she was the woman who walked into the lion’s den without a thought to her own safety, but determined to save others.

  When they reached the home team’s dugout, they saw that there was no one on the field or even hiding in the bullpen. Danny knew they were there, but where? His powers were useless if he couldn’t utilize them fully around their enemies!

  “They want us to go into the middle of the field, be living targets,” Angelica said. “They already know we’re here: they’re just biding their time and hunting us like animals.” She grinned, flashing those frightful fangs. “Let’s give ’em what they want.”

  “Angelica!” he cried, dumbfounded. Is she insane? Despite his questions about her mental stability, he followed her out to the pitcher’s mound, not wanting her to fight alone. When they hit the mound, he saw demons jump out from behind the bleachers, and some even came around from the corners, where the ivy obscured his view.

  “I wound them, you hit them where you see the essence,” she said quickly, whipping her blade across the throat of one demon. He quickly followed suit and stabbed it in the elbow, getting rid of the demon. They managed that way for about two minutes, but there were a lot of possessed vessels, and it looked like they were about to be overwhelmed. Indeed, Angelica seemed to be taken aback by the scent of the blood spilled around them alone.

  “Can you drink from the vessels?” he asked her, trying to b
at away the demons who were coming at them fast and vicious.

  “No clue. Better not to try,” she replied, and he cringed as her knife went through the eye of one vessel, popping it and making white goo mix with the blood running down its face. Danny heard the blade sink into the meat of the brain behind the eye with a wet squelch. The vessel wouldn’t die, because the demon was keeping it alive like a puppet.

  Suddenly, the air in the place changed and a blast of telekinetic energy sent a bunch of the demons flying out of the way, giving Danny and Angelica a second to breathe.

  “Looks like you could use a hand,” Brighton commented as he and Mark jumped down from the bleachers.

  “How did you do that?” Danny asked, surprised.

  “Not easily,” was the young Brit’s response. “Can you see the essences?”

  Danny nodded.

  “Good. Angelica, ready for round two?”

  “Hell yes.” She grinned, and they readied themselves for the next attack. “I’ll work with your boyfriend if you work with mine.”

  “Deal.” Brighton stood next to Danny as Mark took his place besides Angelica and she quickly told him their game plan. Danny had heard that Mark was not exactly the world’s best fighter, so he hoped that the former guard knew what he was doing.

  “Will a gun work to wound them?” Mark asked and Angelica nodded. He started shooting, hitting mostly headshots, but a few in the chest. Blood was splattering everywhere, darkening the bright green baseball field. Danny was surprised and impressed. Mark was almost as good with a gun as he was himself. He might not be able to fight, but his trigger finger was spot on.

  He followed Mark’s trail, and Brighton followed Angelica’s. The tall man was almost as athletic and graceful as Angelic was, slicing long arcs with short blades, spraying blood from arteries and not even affected when he got splattered in the face and his hair when one essence just happened to be over the vessel’s jugular.