by Misty Evans
I bolted up from the chair, unable to take any more. “I am not one of you. I despise your kind, and I would never, ever consider such a deal.”
All three vampires blanched. So did Yasmin and Kirill.
A muscle in Damon’s jaw jumped.
Oops.
Again, pain exploded inside my skull. Sit down and apologize.
I grabbed my head with both hands, practically falling into the chair. After a second, the pain subsided and I could think again. I cleared my throat, raised my face to the others. The lives of two humans were in my hands. “I’m sorry. Nudra’s blood has affected me in strange ways, my temper being one of them.” I forced a half-assed smile. “I’ve been saying and doing crazy things all night.”
Damon backed out of my head, turned to Juliana. “What benefit does the Prince of the Undead gain by allowing Kali to head the central region?”
“Ms. Sweet is a powerful demon who’s been alive longer than most of us and knows how to run a business. She has all of the qualifications we look for in a leader.” Juliana smiled at me, acting as if nothing was amiss. “Our sire seeks to strengthen the bonds between the Undead nation and the Bridge Council.”
Damon didn’t buy it, threw out his own theory. “The Noctifectors have devastated your numbers worldwide in recent years. By reopening the central corridor under Bridge-supported authority, you hope to duck under our protective umbrella. Am I right?”
Everyone in the room knew he was. If Juliana had been human, she would have blushed. Instead, she conceded with a tuck of her chin. “We lost over eleven-hundred of our race in the United States last year.”
Free of Damon’s crushing magic, my brain once again engaged. “I thought stupid humans were flocking to your doors after the recent popularity of vamp books and movies.”
“Ka-biff! We don’t touch the hype-outs.” Toel tried to look serious. Failed. “Against policy.”
Rafael played with his cigar, rolling it over and over in the ashtray. “In the past ten years, our numbers had been cut in have in North America. Even more in Europe.”
Color me impressed. And more than a little surprised. I had no idea the Noctifectors had grown so efficient in the vamp war. Hated to admit it, but I had to give them props.
“The Noctifectors are becoming increasingly problematic,” Damon said. “For a bunch of humans, they’re extremely competent at killing us off.”
Not all of them were human. At least not one-hundred-percent human DNA. Maybe they were more half-demons like Rad helping them out and that’s why their proficiency had doubled. A theory I should run by my boss and the other directors. But not until I had hard facts.
Lucky for me, Damon wasn’t listening to my thoughts at that moment. Juliana had leaned toward him and was giving him an earnest look. “A new alliance between our two camps would give you a stronger front against our common enemy while allowing us to rebuild our ranks.”
Damon rocked his chair in thought. “We provide specialized training to fight them, and you in turn provide soldiers to perform preemptive strikes?”
Juliana and Rafael nodded their heads. Damon smiled.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only getting thrown under the bus tonight. Wait ’til Cole found out he was going to be training vampires in Noctifector defense techniques.
I’d heard enough. My head still hurt from Damon’s mind invasion and my stomach hurt from being used. I wanted another shower, my Hello Kitty pjs and at least twelve straight hours of sleep. Plus, I had to figure out what to do about Rad and I had three new cases for Sweet Investigations sitting on my plate.
Rising, I pushed back the chair and adjusted the badge on my waist. “I’ll consider the offer, but just know, along with the Council’s demands, I’ll have my own set of conditions.”
I made it to the door before Damon spoke. “Wait for me in my office, Kali.”
Damn.
Without looking at him, I walked out.
Chapter Eleven
Inside Damon’s office once more, I kicked off my shoes and wiggled my toes in the plush carpeting. Then I paced.
Outside his huge window, it was still pitch dark over the lake. It would be a few more hours before sunrise. Normally by this time of night, I had my Bridge business done and was on to the next case for Sweet Investigations. I hadn’t done anything for SI since before my run-in with Nudra. Di would be up to her pretty goddess eyeballs soon if I didn’t get back to work.
Lying on top of Damon’s desk was the file he’d been pretending to read when I’d entered earlier. As I crossed back and forth from his red leather sofa at one end of the room to the towering bookcase filled with ancient tombs of demon literature at the other, my eyes kept staring at that file.
The laws of physics are clear and understandable to most of us. A body in motion tends to keep moving. A body at rest stays at rest. In my opinion, Einstein forgot one critical law of physics, though. An open file on your boss’s desk can’t be ignored.
A quick glance out the door showed the coast was clear. The Bridge Council and the vamps were still negotiating. I sat in Damon’s massive office chair, sighing as the cushioned seat wrapped around my butt and hips. The conference room chairs were hard and angular. Compared to those, Damon’s chair was bliss.
I was still mad at him for planting that kiss on me. For intruding on my thoughts and threatening the life of my blood slaves. For agreeing with the vamps to let me run the central region until they found Nudra’s replacement. For telling me how to wear my hair.
Grabbing the hair band off my wrist, I reinstated my ponytail. A small measure of control.
The file folder was one of those that held the papers by the top with metal prongs. The top pages had been flipped over, concealing the most important subject matter, but the name on the file tab made my heart skip a beat.
Kalina Dolce
The heading on the open page read, Familia, and the parchment paper it was written on was old. The ink on the page, faded.
Under the heading was a list of my family’s names, each accompanied by a birth and death date, cause of death, and miscellaneous facts about their jobs, hobbies, demonic activities. All of it was in Italian with a few notes in Damon’s tight handwriting scrawled in the margins in English.
No surprise Damon had a personal file on me. He had files on all Bridge employees, even outside contractors like Hone. Personnel files were computerized, but most of us had been around long before computers took over the world, and paper files still existed.
The parchment paper, faded ink and precisely written Italian made a rare, funny homesickness rise in my chest. But seeing the names of my family made my chest tighten uncomfortably.
The unwelcome but familiar image of their bloody bodies rose in my mind. Crucified and decapitated—even my four-year-old baby sister.
That Rad could be part of that was unthinkable. I’d hated him for nearly three hundred years for breaking my heart, but I would never in a million years have believed him to be so vindictive and malevolent.
He’d been a playboy his whole life, using his good looks and charm to cheat at cards and woo gullible girls like I’d been all those years ago into thinking he loved them. But kill people? Kill humans? The incongruity struck me as another law of physics. Rad was a musician. He created things. He didn’t destroy them.
Rad was not a murderer.
It wasn’t in him, not the human side or the demon one. Those of us who had that particular gene in our DNA, that particular seed for the ultimate violence, recognized it in others. Cole had it. Damon had it. I had it. Even Hone, if pushed far enough, had it.
Radison Beaumont didn’t.
But in order to be branded with the Noct tattoo, he had to have killed a demon.
I leafed through more pages of my file, fearing what I would read even though I’d lived it, but unable to resist the pull of the information. A second page caught and held my attention. The demon who’d written down the collection of facts about my life
had included a detailed sketch of my family at the scene of the Noctifector’s slaughter. A regular eighteenth-century crime scene investigator.
My stomach lurched and I flipped the pages closed. My memory was one thing. Seeing the drawing of my parents and dead sister, their bodies crucified to beams in our home, my sister nailed to the floor, their heads hacked from their necks, was more than I could handle. I’d been there in the aftermath and no drawing could capture the gut-wrenching devastation I’d felt. If I hadn’t been out searching for Rad, thinking there had to be some good reason he’d left me at the altar and all I had to do was find him and work it out, I would have been there to save my family.
Or more likely, I would have died too. Noctifectors were skilled assassins, but they were still human. They struck fast and hard and unexpectedly in large numbers, overwhelming most demons. My family was important to the Italian Court and Queen Maria, part demon herself. We were always careful about security, but that night, my parents had been most concerned about me. They’d let their guard down. I was to blame in more ways than one for their deaths.
The office door opened, startling me. Kirill gave me a bored look. “You’re staying here for the next forty-eight hours until the coronation. I’ll have Lainie make up a bed in the dorms for you.”
The Institute provided temporary housing for the kids who needed family placement and anyone in training. It also provided lodging for various Bridge members from other countries when they traveled to the States. The second floor contained twenty rooms and a cafeteria. Lainie, a low-level demon nanny, was like the house mother.
“Coronation?”
“If you’re going to be queen, even temporarily, you have to be crowned.”
Nudra had called himself King of Chicago, but I hadn’t realized he’d actually been king of Chicago. “You can’t be serious.”
“Serious as the nine levels of hell.”
So not wearing a crown. “Why do I have to stay here for the next forty-eight hours?”
“Because,” Damon burst in, unbuttoning his jacket and looking as tense as I felt. He motioned me to get out of his chair, not missing the fact I’d been ogling my file. “Until you’re crowned, your life is in danger.”
“From who?”
“Whom,” Kirill corrected, finding a spot on the red leather couch and spreading his portly body out on it. “Who, whom. Subject, object. Confuses a lot of people.”
Damon was standing next to the chair, towering over me and waiting for me to get up. I didn’t move. “Becoming queen puts me on someone’s kill radar?”
Brushing the sides of his jacket out of the way, he set his hands on his waistline. “There were Undead in line to take Nudra’s place. Vamps as underhanded and cutthroat as he was. They won’t like you usurping their rightful place, no matter what the regional managers and the Prince want.”
“So they’d start a war and go against their boss’s orders so they can take over Nudra’s spot. Are they stupid or just insane?”
“Greedy.” Kirill nodded his head. “I’d take you out, too, if I was them.”
Damon was still irritated I was in his chair. “Until you’re crowned, you’re fair game. Once you’re queen of the Central United States, they can’t touch you. It’s part of the blood oath. Once they’ve sworn allegiance and given you their blood offering, they can’t raise a hand against you.”
Blood offering? This just kept getting better and better. “Please tell me I don’t have to drink the blood of several thousand vamps.”
Kirill laughed like I was an idiot. “Not drink it. Bathe in it.”
So glad I asked. “I can’t do this queen thing. I get sick at the sight of blood and I absolutely hate vampires. No way in heaven, hell or purgatory I’m bathing in vamp blood or wearing a freakin’ crown.”
“You have to,” Damon said. “The Council’s already given its word.”
I shot up out of the chair and slapped him. Hard. His head barely moved to the side. My handprint showed red against his dark Spanish skin and he rotated his jaw slightly before meeting my eyes. “What the hell was that for?”
“That,” I said, practically growling with anger, “was for kissing me and planting your psychic seeds inside me so you could read my mind.”
Kirill sat up straighter. “You kissed her?”
Damon rubbed his cheek, lips curving in a smug smile. “You give my kiss more credit than is due.”
My hand stung and I wanted to shake it out, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing I’d hurt myself slapping him. “I lowered my defenses because of that kiss and you took advantage of me. And you wonder why I don’t trust you.”
“I only meant to heal you. My magic entered your body and now we share a link. I didn’t realize it would be a psychic one until we were in the conference room and you threatened me with your magic. My natural defenses picked up on it and opened the connection between our minds.”
Such. A. Liar.
Kirill chuckled. “How interesting.” There was an appalling excitement in his voice. As if Toel were behind his demon face saying, Hella cool, dude! “How close do you have to be to her for it to work?”
“I don’t know.” Damon was looking at me differently now. As if he were reconsidering the labels he’d pegged me with in his mind. “Over the next forty-eight hours, we’ll have to test it out.”
I was already connected to far too many people. Victoria, Arman, Rad. And now Damon. My skin itched.
I had friends, yes, and I felt a deep connection to them. But not like this. This was something else. Something invasive. Unnatural. As if everyone knew my secrets, could see into my soul, even though I technically didn’t have one. I’d never felt so exposed in all my life, except for the first time I’d slept with Rad and confessed my love for him.
“I’m not staying here.” I stepped around Damon, which wasn’t easy since he was blocking the way. “Let the vamps come after me. I’ll kill every one of them.”
I made it past the desk, past Kirill on the couch before Damon spoke. “You’ll be dead before sunset tonight.”
“Seems I’m not the only one with a lack of faith in this relationship.”
He removed his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair, then sat down. “Word will spread in the Undead community as fast as Kirill, here, spread plague in Europe.”
I glanced at Kirill. “You caused that? The Black Death?”
The demon grinned manically. “The Plague of Justinian in the sixth and seventh centuries as well. One of my best pieces of work.” He saw my consternation, the grin falling off his face. “That was before I changed sides, of course. Before I came to work for the Bridge Council.”
Remind me to stay on his good side.
Damon mentally replied. Kirill doesn’t have a good side.
“Stop that,” I said to him, rubbing my head where the sharp pain of his invasion radiated. “Stop raping my mind.”
He cocked his head at the term. “I insist you stay in the Institute until the coronation.”
“I have a job outside of being Bridge enforcer and I have a life, believe it or not, outside of this institute. I’ll be safe at my place. I know how to protect myself.”
“Like you did with Nudra?”
Score one for the Archdemon, damn him. “I got sloppy. It won’t happen again.”
Damon and I stared at each other, neither willing to give an inch. Finally he sighed. “This is against my better judgment, but I’ll allow it on one condition. Cole stays with you as bodyguard.”
That was easier than I expected. I didn’t need or want the warrior hanging around my place, but if that got Damon off my back and allowed me some freedom, I’d take it. Besides, Cole was fun to hang out with. “Deal.”
“No beating each other up.”
“What fun is that?”
Damon reached for the phone, shaking his head. Under his breath, he murmured, “Sadist.”
Chapter Twelve
Forty-eight h
ours. I had forty-eight hours to figure out how I was going to get out of becoming vamp queen of the entire Midwest.
What a freakin’ nightmare.
Cole and I walked out of the Institute, heading for my car. The grounds were secure with magical protection and warning systems as well as the latest high-tech human security system, but that didn’t keep him from taking his bodyguard job seriously. As he walked beside me, scanning the tops of buildings and even the trees in the park, his body hummed with tension. His nose was already healed, and in fact, looked straighter than before. “Safer to stay here, Kali. Safer and smarter. Easier for me to protect you here than at your church.”
“You know where I live?”
“Is it supposed to be a secret?”
“Actually, yes. There are, like, two people in the whole hell-damned world, outside of Damon, who know my address.”
He grinned, teeth flashing in the shadows as our footsteps echoed on the cold asphalt. “Make that three.”
Cocky, but in a cool way. Not like Damon. “I have two days to figure out how to stop the vamp’s coronation and still save a couple of humans in the process. I can’t do that here.”
“Is that also a secret?”
“Yes.”
We’d reached my car. Cole walked me to the driver’s side, held out a hand. “Give me the keys.”
I waggled my eyebrows at him. “You’re uber sexy when you take charge.”
He smiled, but it was strained with patience. “Come on, Kali. Give me the car keys.”
“Un, unh.” I shook my head and dangled the keys out of his reach. “Nobody drives the TT but me.”
“Bodyguards don’t ride shotgun.”
“You’re dying to get your hands on her, aren’t you?”
“That obvious, huh?”
I ran my hand over the top of the TT’s sleek side. “She’s a thing of beauty. Hard to resist.”
“I’ll let you beat me up any time you want. Just let me drive her this once.”
He was still scanning the area, giving me pleading glances in between. I sighed and held out the keys. “All right, but just this once.”