by Misty Evans
They exchanged a look, and while neither was going to let me zap them, they were both relieved at my return to normalness. Cole shook his head and motioned for me to follow him. “Come on, vengeance demon. Let’s go find you a target.”
I kissed Rad on the way out and practically skipped to the front door, snatching up my cape and putting it on. Such a simple thing could make a girl’s rotten day turn positively delightful. Like finding a twenty dollar bill you’d forgotten you’d tucked into your purse or uncovering your favorite candy bar behind a cereal box in the pantry.
He followed me to the door, grabbed my hand and pulled me around for another kiss. “What about Maria?” he said when we parted.
Fear for me filled his eyes. I touched the side of his face. If Maria was back, she’d love nothing better than to get her hands on him. She’d had a thing for Rad, and because he’d been in love with me, he’d blown her off repeatedly. She hated him as much as she hated me. “Whether it’s her or not, we need to act like it is and take precautions. Lay low and watch your back. Anything strange happens, call me or Damon.”
Strained impatience lined his face. He scrubbed a hand over his features. “Strange? I’m living three lives, every one of them strange. I’m losing my mind trying to keep all of them straight. One minute I’m performing on stage for thousands of people, the next I’m helping the Slayers wipe out a nest of Erinyes crones, and after that…” He ran his fingers over my cheek, down my neck. “I’m watching you glow like the Madonna underneath me.”
Was it the blood withdrawal talking or had Maria already infected him with her sins? Maybe he was just well and truly tired of being a rock god, Noctifector and my secret lover. “I know it’s hard to balance all three but we have to keep our relationship a secret, just like you have to keep your human fame and fortune separate from your Noctifector life.”
“It’s like Maria’s court all over again. Us hiding. Keeping secrets from those closest to us. Looking over our shoulders twenty-four-seven. Jumping at every shadow. I hate it. I want the world to know you’re mine. I want to protect you and show you off at the same time. Wipe out Maria and tell the Noctifectors to go to hell.”
I squeezed his arm. Hugged him. “When the time is right, maybe we can make that all happen. But not now, not tonight. For tonight, you stay here, work on your music and dream of me, okay?”
He blew out a heavy sigh. “The band and I are heading to New York tonight for the weekend. We’ve got some promo gigs—a Christmas concert at the Garden and a Today Show appearance. We’ll be back Monday night.”
The thought of him so far away made my stomach tight. Now I wondered when I’d become so clingy. “Can you go that long without feeding?”
“I’ve got a bottle of your blood stashed at my suite at the Blackstone. I’ll pace my drinking and do the best I can.”
“By Monday night, I’ll have this all figured out. Promise.”
His eyes darkened and he clutched my arm hard. “Don’t take Dru’s offer because of me. We’ll ride this blood thing out together, and worst case? You go down, I go with you. We face this together. Got it?”
The sentiment was generous, but I couldn’t condemn Rad or Arman to a death sentence because of my stubbornness. “I can handle Dru whether or not I take his blood.”
Rad searched my gaze. His eyes reflected thirst, hunger, but he was fighting it with sheer willpower. “How?”
Flicking on the stun gun, I aimed the buzzing, arching end at a nearby floor lamp and hit the button. A bright zigzag of silvery light danced across the open floor. The metal pole exploded in a display of blue fireworks and I laughed low in my throat. “Oh, I’ll think of something.”
Chapter Sixteen
Dalinda was first on my list of jobs. Thinking about the coming confrontation cleared my head and gave me a sense of purpose.
Leave it to Damon to spoil my fun. “You think it wise to spend the entire day at your home rather than the Institute under the circumstances?” he said on the car’s speaker phone as Cole drove me to Dalinda’s north Evanston house.
“I had a warrior demon, a Noctifector and a psychic one-man wrecking crew protecting me. Plus all the high-tech security I put in last month. I was entirely safe. So yes, I thought it was wise.”
“And yet it did not solve either of the pressing issues you face at the moment.”
“Tarrying at the Institute while Kirill performed a physical exam on me was unlikely to solve those issues either.”
Cole glanced at me, a half-smile on his face at my professional sounding tone and Damon-worthy choice of words.
“Alexandru believes you have less than forty-eight hours before the withdrawal impedes your ability to control your demon.”
“And he knows this how? He’s basing his statements on a couple of ancient legends about demon-vampire hybrids, and I’m guessing, his own interests. Manipulating a vengeance demon to get her under his thumb is a vampire’s wet dream. You can’t take what he says as gospel, Damon. Surely you know that.”
Damon’s voice rose ever so slightly. “The Undead’s coaptation with the Institute has been a huge success so far. Why would Alexandru jeopardize that?”
Huge success was stretching it. And it was because of me and my sacrifice to lower my standards to accept the role as vamp queen that produced the coaptation. What the hell kind of word was that, anyway? “Since when does an archdemon believe a vamp Master over his own kind?”
Silence met our ears. Cole shot me another look, this one saying I’d stepped in a pile as big as the Sears Tower. I rolled my eyes. “I want to believe Dru has my best interests at heart, boss, but I don’t. You of all people know me and how I handle things. If I have forty-eight hours, then I’ll be putting every one of them to good purpose to figure out what my options are. Meantime, I have a job to do. Several of them, in fact. I will check in with you later.”
I disconnected and slouched back in the leather seat. Outside, a new snow storm threatened, turning the dark sky above the city’s lights into a roiling mass of clouds.
Cole chuckled. “He’s so going to have my ass for not bringing you in.”
“What’s new?”
“One of these days, he’ll assign a new bodyguard to you. One who isn’t a pushover like me. Then what will you do?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Resign, probably.”
Dalinda’s house was a couple miles from Northwestern University. The neighborhoods morphed from college housing to private residences, all blanketed with the slick, wet snow falling from the clouds. Soft, welcoming lights beckoned from inside the houses on Dalinda’s block, but her house was dark.
On her front porch, I took off one glove and laid my hand on the house’s wooden shakes. A slight buzzing rose from the ground and sifted through the framing and insulation to answer my demon’s magic. No one was home but the place was warded with a spell.
A security system also sent off silent warnings to my hand. The smell of the plastic sensor panel inside the door gave me the impression the system was brand-spanking new.
“Ever known a succubus to have a mundane security system?” I asked Cole, who stood behind me watching the street and the neighboring houses.
His gun hung by his leg on the off chance he might need it. “Must be expecting human criminals.”
A succubus could handle any human with a simple touch. “She’s not here, and if she was, she’s a better security system than a mundane one. She must be using it to guard something else while she’s not here.”
“Something a human might steal?”
I shrugged even though he wasn’t looking at me. Whatever Dalinda was hiding wasn’t my problem.
Since I’m not a witch, disabling the magic wards was a touch trickier than dismantling the mundane security system, but I found the tail end of the spell after a minute of feeling my way around the house’s structure, gave it a zap and basically blew its fuse. Once that was taken care of, I sent another wave of magic through
the outside wall where the mundane system’s panel existed on the interior and overrode that electrical system as well.
On the street, the snow continued to fall with wild abandon, the neighbors tucked securely in their houses. I opened the front door after picking the deadbolt with my magic and let us inside.
The second we stepped over the threshold, I was hit with the human scent of sweat and sex. Dalinda’s smell—sickly sweet and reminding me of fruit flavored cough syrup—also assailed my nose. Cole made a low, nauseated sound in the back of his throat and I had to breathe through my cape’s collar to keep from choking.
The outside street lights threw filmy illumination on a living room with high ceilings and a brick fireplace. Eschewing the lights, I used my demon vision to see more clearly. I couldn’t tell for sure, but the room appeared to be a cacophony of raspberry colored everything. Curtains, couch, throw pillows, even the large area rug appeared to be a pinkish red color. Between the smells and the endless color, it was claustrophobic.
The human smell got stronger as I wove a path through the kitchen (also decorated in pinks and reds) and into a back bedroom. Layers of raspberry colored furniture and accessories? Check. Satin sheets on a king size bed? Check.
Human chained to the posts? Check.
Dalinda was hiding something all right. Her latest succubus treat was lying in the center of the bed, a blanket thrown over his splayed out body—and thank Satan for that. He slept with his head turned toward the single window in the room, the cheek I could see gaunt and sunken.
For a moment, I felt sad. I’d succumbed to a succubi’s magic once and I was a demon. Sure, I’d been an impressionable young female at the time, but at least I’d had the ability to overcome her magic eventually. A human couldn’t, no matter how strong they were, no matter how determined.
Don’t take this personally, I reminded myself. Don’t get emotional.
A vengeance demon’s creed.
Jeremy Stewart’s features matched the picture in the file at Sweet Investigations. The one his wife had given me when she’d hired me to take this job. In the picture, though, Mr. Stewart was the healthy all-American high school quarterback turned financial advisor. Now his body was wasting away from Dalinda feeding on him. His human life was a shambles. And according to Di, his wife had fallen under Dalinda’s spell as well.
But where was Mrs. Stewart? Where was Dalinda?
I called the Institute and requested a transfer for the man on the bed, all the while running various revenge scenarios through my mind. He’d be taken to a medical facility that would help him regain his health if not his mind. Again, I felt sadness and regret. If I’d gotten to Dalinda the previous night it probably wouldn’t have made any difference, but anger at Maria for getting the jump on me mixed with anger at myself for letting her keep me from my job.
After assuring ourselves Sara Stewart was not chained anywhere on the premises, Cole and I ventured back into the living room to wait for Dalinda. After an hour, I grew impatient, both for her return and for the Institute’s transporter. Impatience and anger don’t make me fidget, though. If anything, I become calm. A charged calm, filled with the quiet intensity of a cat waiting for its prey.
When I heard the distinctive sound of a garage door opening, I smiled.
The succubus was home.
My prey was within striking distance.
Dalinda blew in the door connecting the garage to the kitchen and flipped on the overhead light. I stood by the living room fireplace and saw her set down a handful of plastic shopping bags on the counter before she came into the room, unbuttoning her long, wool coat. The color? A bright pink raspberry.
Cole sat half-hidden in a lounge chair in the far dark corner, gun lying on one thigh. I made no attempt to hide, but Dalinda was in her own world, brushing snow from her hair as she crossed the living room to reset the security alarm. She was reaching for the keypad when she finally noticed the light was out.
“Shit,” she whispered under her breath and slowly turned around to face me.
Dalinda was no small female. She was taller than me by a good six inches and plump all over. I was feeling pretty pissy at this point and could have cared less about Damon’s insistence I always stay professional whether I was working for the Bridge Institute or Sweet Investigations. Bringing my fingers and thumbs together, I raised my protective magic, put my gloves back on. Then I took three steps forward, grabbed her around the neck and slammed her against the wall, right next to a cheap reproduction of Klimt’s lovers done in a mauve-tinged wash. “Dalinda Kroning, vengeance is mine.”
She clutched my extended arm, reached for my neck as I held her against her will and exerted pressure to her throat. This wasn’t the vengeance I had planned, but blowing off a little steam and roughing her up would make a point before I even got started. Even as she fought to free herself, she tried to turn her succubus charms on me. I batted her hand away from my neck, then my face. If she touched my skin, she could enchant me.
Or so she thought.
For an ordinary succubus to assume she could beguile me was laughable. My demon jeered. Volante, belted around my waist, pulsed, begging to be turned loose. I held Dalinda a moment longer, letting my demon stare her down, and witnessed the change in her demeanor. Her eyes widened and her body drew back from mine, as if she could compress all that plumpness into a smaller package. One that might be less noticeable.
I gave her a little shake and unleashed Volante with my free hand. “The Stewarts are no longer your playthings. Your love fest with them is over and if I catch you accosting either of them again, I will cut your hands off.”
“You…don’t…understand…” she gasped.
I released her neck and she slumped to the floor. Uncoiling Volante in an intimidating if harmless crack of the whip, I stepped back to let her stand. The gloved hand that had held her against the wall sizzled with her enthralling magic. Without the glove, it would have penetrated my skin and gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling. As it was, my palm itched and my fingers tingled as if they were asleep. “I understand quite well. You succubi are all alike. Only this time, you messed with the wrong human male, and even seduced his wife when she made trouble for you. But this ends here, tonight.”
Her hands splayed on the floor as she pushed herself into a sitting position. Her brows drew down in confusion. “You damaged the ward. How did you do that? The witch said it was impassable.”
Up until a few months ago, I didn’t care much about witches. Witches use magic and bend it to their will, but they’re human, not supernatural, and they rarely gave me trouble. Until Victoria, my witchy, bitchy blood slave, who raised Lilith from hell.
I cut Vicky’s tie to me by allowing Maddy to turn her into a vampire. That also cut Vicky’s magical tie to Lilith since it killed the human in her. Not my finest day for saving human life, but sacrificing Vicky allowed me to exorcise Lilith back to hell. A lot more humans would have died—all of them, in fact—if I hadn’t pulled that trigger.
Cole walked up beside me. “What witch?”
Dalinda’s plump body shook like Jell-O as she stared at me. “She said you’d tamper with it but you wouldn’t be able to break it. And as soon as you touched it, she would know.”
“Trap,” Cole murmured. He grabbed my elbow and started dragging me toward the back entrance. “Time for us to go.”
Yanking my arm from his strong grasp, I planted my feet. “What does the witch look like? Crazy, kinky hair or sparkly?”
“Sparkly?” Cole harrumphed. “Seriously?”
The succubus got a faraway look in her eye. “Long red hair…” She shivered and her Jell-O shakes looked like a tiny earthquake. “Cold. She was so cold.”
The Undead were ungodly cold. I couldn’t understand humans’ fixation with them. They felt like dead fish to me.
Ghosts were cold, too. The body Maria was ghost riding was a witch with long red hair. Was it too much to ask for a simple, straightforward answer? “W
hy did the witch want to trap me?”
Dalinda raised a hand, pointed toward the bedroom. “She made me do that to Jeremy. When you didn’t come right away, she forced me to seduce his wife as well. Said you’d have to come as enforcer of the Bridge Council.” Her eyes were wide and pleading. “I didn’t want to, I swear. It was her. Please don’t cut off my hands.”
“Did this witch have a name?” Cole again.
As the succubus shook her head, she seemed to draw further into herself. “She had the Mark of the Beast. Right here.” She touched her forehead with one hand. “I couldn’t see it until I touched her, and even then, her glamour was strong. I felt it more than saw it.”
Mark of the Beast? Hadn’t seen one of those since…
“Oh, hell, no.” I closed my eyes in frustration. Opened them again to Cole’s curious stare. “Did she mark you?” I said to Dalinda. “Anywhere?”
“No.” If anything, the succubus scrunched up even more, moving her body parts as far away from me as possible.
Which only made me suspect the opposite of her denial. “Prove it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cole stepped to the side of a nearby window and covertly glanced out at the falling snow and lawn. “I don’t care if she’s marked by every entity in heaven and hell both, we need to get the fuck out of here.”
True, that. But I couldn’t leave Dalinda behind if Maria had marked her in any way, shape or form. Letting my demon out for a stroll, I reached forward and laid my hand on her forehead. Sure as shit, an electrical charge jumped from her skin to my gloved hand. The soft leather did nothing to stop the white hot heat from searing my hand and racing up my arm. My demon arched her back and rode the current.
I snapped my eyes shut and on the inside of my eyelids, dozens of occult symbols and runes danced in a black and gray rainbow over images of hellish faces. Demons I had known, some I didn’t recognize. Their true faces, rarely shown on earth, bled into skulls and other monstrosities.