by Misty Evans
What a load of crap. “Kill anyone who tries to stop you,” I told Akimo. “Especially the Noctifectors. If they show up, kill them all.”
Chapter Thirteen
Blood, blood, blood. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get away from it.
Kirill poked and prodded at my vein as I tried to sit still on the examination table. I bit the inside of my lip and mentally cursed him in Italian and English.
“You need more practice,” I ground out, refusing to flinch as the needle missed the vein again and dug into to something else in my arm.
“I’m not a doctor.”
“Or a nurse, apparently, because the nurses I’ve known over the years are experts at blood draws. You suck at them.”
“I’d be better at this if I wasn’t contemplating my own demise.”
The inside of my elbow throbbed. “What are you talking about? I’m not going to kill you for missing the vein.” Although the thought had merit…
He struck gold and we both relaxed as the red liquid, minus the greenish tint, slowly flowed into the tube. “I have to find a way to get myself recruited back into Pestilence’s ranks. He’s more likely to torture and kill me than accept me back.”
Wah, wah, wah. “Scared, Kirill?”
No archdemon liked to be challenged. “Scared? Damn right, I’m scared. The Four Horsemen are nothing to mess with. But then what do you know about tangling with the devil?”
I chuckled. “I went toe-to-toe with Lucifer a few months ago. Lucifer, as in fallen angel. Prince of hell. The Four Horsemen don’t scare me.”
Kirill removed the tourniquet with a snap. “Then you’re a fool.”
Been accused of worse. “What about the other three Horsemen? You know any of them?”
The vial was full. He withdrew the needle from my arm. “Never met them.”
“Ever seen ’em?”
“Nope.”
Damn. “Do you know anything about the White Horseman in particular?”
He swabbed the insertion site and stuck a bandage on it. “Just that she’s not what everyone expects.”
“She?”
Capping off the vial, he marked it with a large K and took off his gloves. “Personally, I think it’s Oprah.”
I laughed, thinking he was making a joke. He wasn’t.
“Who has millions of followers all over the world and the power to sway everything from what they think to what they read?”
“Any number of famous people.” Including Rad. “But wouldn’t the antichrist be more like Jesus? Humble, lowly, possibly a carpenter?”
“In the twenty-first century?” He snorted. “Jesus would have to be more popular than Justin Bieber or the Kardashian sisters to get noticed these days.”
As far as I knew, the Bieb was one-hundred-percent human. The Kardashians…I wasn’t so sure. A hunch told me they had siren blood in their veins. Maybe vamp blood. But that wasn’t the point.
“Oprah. Wow.” I swung my legs, unconvinced. “So you honestly have no idea what the White Horseman looks like?”
Kirill narrowed his eyes. “What is it with you and the White Horseman?”
Nothing, I hope. “I just want to keep an eye out for him. Or her, as the case may be.”
“Oprah came to power right here in Chicago.” Kirill pointed at the floor, as if we stood on sacred ground. “Now Pest is here, too. Take my word for it, this is ground zero and we’re all going to die.”
He stomped off, the vial of my blood in hand. Cheery guy.
“Nice talking to you,” I called as he went through the door. Yeesh. I didn’t even get to ask him whether I needed to be hooked up to an IV again. My blood had looked normal. I felt good as new. Must be time to vacate the premises before he remembered the yellow goo. He or Damon would call me with the news about my blood and I had work to do.
I took the stairs two at a time to my temporary apartment upstairs. I wanted to talk to Rad before he headed to the lake.
My hand was on the doorknob when Damon opened his apartment’s door behind me. “Radison has already left. He said to tell you he’d call later, after he scopes out the lake. Also, he has some TV show appearance at eight a.m. I don’t believe he’s taking our predicament seriously.”
“Oh.” Funny how my chest twinged a bit that he’d left without saying goodbye. These days, we didn’t know when all hell would break loose and we’d never see each other again. And I had to agree with Damon. Putting his rock-star life above our predicament seemed wrong.
What could I do about it, though? “Um, well, I guess I’ll get to work then.”
“Kali.” Damon’s dark eyes bored into me. He opened the door to his apartment wider. “We need to talk.”
Talk? In his private quarters? A strange sensation took hold in my chest, and this time, it had nothing to do with Rad. I’d never been inside Damon’s apartment suite. As far as I could tell, no one ever had. “Sure. I’ll meet you in your office, boss.”
Reminding him of our working relationship did not have the desired effect. He stepped back and motioned me inside. “Please come in.”
Said the spider to the fly. Or in this case, the archdemon to the freak. A prickling awareness of magic skittered over my skin.
The room was straight out of the masculine edition of House Beautiful. A sprig of bay leaves was tucked over the top of the door frame. Other than that, there was little in the classy interior that denoted Damon’s Basque heritage. The three-room apartment dominated the top floor of the Institute and resembled an upscale hotel. Black hardwood floors, white leather chairs, modern artwork.
And a damn lot of old, powerful magic.
Seductive magic.
I covertly sniffed the air. A wood fire burned in a built-in, glass-fronted fireplace, but there was something else. Not burning wood…more like melting beeswax. “Is Salmad here?”
I stepped across the threshold, following the priest’s scent. Damon closed the door behind me. “We’d like to discuss a contingency plan with you.”
“Contingency plan?”
Like in I don’t survive?
Damon ushered me into his private study. Sal stood near a bookcase, arms crossed over his robe-clad chest. He gave me a serious nod and said to Damon. “You haven’t told her?”
“Told me what?”
“Sit.” Damon held the back of a chair. “This goes no farther than this room, Kali.”
Cloak and dagger wasn’t Damon’s style. Mine either. I stayed standing. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
Might have been my imagination, but I could’ve sworn Damon’s shoulders sagged a little. “No, enforcer, I’m afraid you’re not.”
Chapter Fourteen
A few minutes later, I stared at Damon in shock. “You want Sal and I to walk into Vatican City in plain sight and raid the Secret Vatican Archives for my father’s journals?”
“Yes.” Damon stood relaxed in front of the fireplace, one arm resting on the mantle. The fireplace was two-sided. I could see through the glass into the living area. No sounds met my ears except for the crackling of wood and the ticking of the clock on the wall. “Your Trojan Horse plan using Parker is fairly sound, but as usual, you’ve left out an important element to ensure its success…no team to extricate you once you have retrieved the documents we need.”
I hadn’t given further thought to my father’s journals. Well, I had, but other things had been more pressing. Now, I realized, nothing was more important than finding those journals and figuring out the key to stop all this madness.
The only light in the room came from a Tiffany desk lamp and the fire in the fireplace. I wondered if the suite was soundproof, since I had yet to hear anything from outside or below us. “I’ll be walking into the lion’s den. Things are going to get rough. No way am I jeopardizing anyone’s backside but my own.”
Sal remained seated near the desk. “I was a prefect of the Secret Archives up until last year when I came to Chicago in search of you. I’m well acqu
ainted with the Church’s libraries and documents held inside them—those available to the public and those hidden deep in the bowels of Vatican City that the Church denies exist.”
“You’ve seen my father’s journals?”
He shook his head, light reflecting off his short blond hair and visible skin beneath. “I have not, but I do believe they exist, and I have a fair idea where they may be located.”
The idea of passing the job off didn’t appeal to me, logical or not. “Why don’t you retrieve the documents on your own then?”
Damon regarded me with the faintest of smiles on his lips. He did like logic. “The secret archives are restricted, even to friends of The Church. Salmad cannot simply walk in and take the documents. He needs a distraction. A lengthy one that will give him time to enter the underground vault where the documents are hermetically stored.”
Salmad had the chronic look of exhaustion about him, as if the world rode heavy on his shoulders. “The Church appears to have embraced the idea of transparency in the past couple of years, allowing the public to view a hundred documents and other curiosities from the Archives, holding press conferences about leaks, and being very visible and interactive in mainstream media. Its hand was forced to do this since it’s been dealing with one public-relations disaster after another. This transparency is staged. With the advent of the Internet and the popularity of tell-all books, it seems the only way the Pope can maintain control of the Church’s image. An attempt for them to appear they have nothing to hide in this new age of social media. Behind the scenes, it’s politics as usual.”
The only nation that could compare with the politics of the Catholic Church was the Undead Nation. Even the relatively small group of vampires in Chicago did nothing but fight for power and prestige.
Sal sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees and staring at the luxurious carpet beneath our feet. “The information in your father’s journals is considered heresy by the Church. It was not destroyed when discovered, because like Galileo and Da Vinci, your father wove enough verifiable facts about demons and angels through his predictions, the Church considered the journals a valuable tool in the fight against evil at the end of days. Therefore these documents would have been buried deep in the archives, where I’m sure they still exist. But because of the secrecy and the extensive security system in place, it’ll take me time to locate the journals and smuggle them out.” He lifted his sad blue eyes to me. “That’s where you come in.”
“Playing side-kick isn’t my usual role.”
“I understand your personality does not lend itself well to being part of a team. You’ve made that quite clear with all of us vitiums.”
Heat rose in my cheeks. A spark of irritation flared to life in my gut. He spoke the truth, but I didn’t much care for it. “I opened my home to you and have done my best to keep you apprised of everything that’s going on in order for us—as a team—to fight Maria, the coming apocalypse, the Noctifectors, you name it. I even shared my tech manager with you.”
He nodded, solemn and patient. “Your experience, innate skills and magical enhancements will serve you well on this mission. But only if you have a partner to assist.”
No thank you, Kali. No we know you’re trying not to be an island. Not that I expected a pat on the back, but I couldn’t deny the urge to justify myself. “I’ve been a solo act for most of my three hundred years, Sal. I don’t play well with others and I don’t like them taking risks for me.”
The phone on Damon’s desk rang. He answered it, nodded at the incoming information and hung up. “Your blood is clear. Kirill says there is no lasting damage from the poison, although he’s still unsure as to what exactly the poison was.” Damon still had the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. “Back to the matter at hand, Salmad can hold his own. The two of you together will make an impressive team.”
“Oh yeah. The Dream Team, that’s us.” I blew out a breath, lifting my bangs as I set my hands on my hips. “What kind of distraction do you need?”
“We’ll discuss that en route.”
Damon left us, disappearing into the back room, where I guessed his bed and bath were located.
I tiptoed to the doorway and peered around the corner. Yep, master bedroom fit for a king. Or an archdemon. Big bed. Silk linens. Huge framed nude oil painting hanging over the headboard.
Damon emerged from a walk-in closet, a coat in one hand and a leather overnight bag in the other.
My gaze returned to the oil painting. If it was a reproduction, it was a damn good one. “A painting of Nyx? Is this the one done in 1883 by French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau?”
He nodded.
“That’s what you hang over your bed? Nyx?” I snickered at the archdemon’s version of pornography.
He stopped, stared at the painting. His aura—always so hard and demanding—softened. “Lovely, isn’t she?”
“Wait.” I followed his gaze, came back to his face. “Is this the original?”
“Yes, indeed.”
I bumped his shoulder with mine. “You dog. You stole this from a gallery?”
He looked momentarily confused. “The one in Paris is a reproduction. The original has always been mine. I commissioned it.”
Mamma mia. My boss was one hard-to-figure-out male. “The woman posing as Nyx, she was your lover?”
“The woman posing as Nyx is Nyx. And yes, she was my lover.”
My jaw hung open. “Get. Out.”
Damon faced me, smiled. “I had a life before this, you know. Before you and I met in Spain. There is much I would share with you if the occasion presented itself.”
His eyes were rock steady on mine. Magic danced in the air, sending a warm flush down my arms and legs. I was in my boss’s bedroom. Talking about his former lover. Watching his archdemon aura go all warm and sexy.
I needed air. And a change of subject. “How freakin’ old are you?”
His aura stopped oozing magic and sexual invitation. The slightest of chuckles escaped his lips. “Our plane is waiting. We should be off.”
“You’re going with us?”
“The Dream Team needs a coach, yes?”
Satan’s balls. I hated it when Damon tried to orchestrate my jobs. But since I was unclear exactly what my job was in this instance, and invading the Holy Roman Church might be my biggest one yet, wisdom dictated I make nice. Team player, that’s me. “Of course.”
Turning on my heel, I headed for the suite’s front door. “Let me make a few calls to let Rad and the others know where I’m go—”
Damon’s hand on my arm stopped me. “This mission is top secret. No one can know what we’re about to do.”
“But…” I glanced at him, then at Sal. Intuition blared loudly in my head. “That’s why we met here. So no one could overhear us in your office. Do we have a leak in the Institute?”
He released my arm. “Caution is our best weapon. Salmad will pose as he is, a priest who has captured the Noctifector’s most wanted demon and is returning to the fold. No need to chance that the Noctifectors might learn of our subterfuge and warn the Pope.”
“In other words, you don’t trust Rad. You think he’s still working for them.”
“There are many entities staying at the Institute these days, all with their private agendas. Logic dictates that the fewer entities aware of our mission, the safer you and Salmad will be.”
As safe as a demon could be walking into Vatican City. “Won’t they be suspicious when no one can find the three of us?”
Damon patted my shoulder. “I’ve taken care of everything, Kali. Trust me.”
Trust was a hard commodity to come by in my world and he knew it. Which made it easier for me to understand his position, even if I didn’t like it. “You’ve made a deal with the Pope to hand me over in exchange for absolution, haven’t you?”
That got a laugh out of him. A real laugh. The deep, resonant sound rippled over my skin, making me smile in response. As the generou
s sound faded away, he tipped his face down and put it close to mine. “Not even absolution would be worth giving up my favorite demon.”
A trickle of sweat ran down my spine. His aura was all warm again, only this time it had a new layer to it. A layer of protectiveness and…
No. Not from Damon. Sure, he loved me in that friend-to-friend way, but that’s all it was.
My throat tightened. My voice came out soft and breathy, even though my words had steel in them. “If things go bad, that’s exactly what I want you to do. Cut a deal with the Pope or the devil or God, if necessary, and leave me behind. The important thing is for you and Sal to get out safe. Stop the Horsemen and keep Armageddon from happening. We clear?”
His aura hardened. His eyes did too. “I will take care of Salmad. You have my promise.”
Tucked between those words was another message.
I’ll take care of you, too.
Chapter Fifteen
Two steps inside the private jet, I pulled up short. A certain War demon sat in a beige leather chair, his gun spread out in pieces on the table in front of him. “Cole?”
He dry fired the weapon, picked up a cloth and started cleaning the barrel. “Yep.”
I rounded on Damon. “You said this mission was top secret. That I couldn’t tell anyone.”
Damon pressed by me, choosing a seat across the aisle from Cole and taking off his coat. “Cole knows nothing about what we’re doing or where we’re going. I asked him to meet us here, and he is one of the few Bridge employees who performs his job without questioning my authority.”
Cole kept his head down and continued cleaning his gun, but I saw his lips tighten in a suppressed smile.
The plane engines kicked in, making me raise my voice. Sal stood patiently behind me, my bag and his in his hands. “Blind loyalty is a virtue.”
“Watch it,” Cole muttered just loud enough for me to hear. He hated being labeled virtuous.
Damon sat in the chair, pulled out a laptop and went to work, speaking to me at the same time. “You and Cole are my two most valuable employees, although you demonstrate your loyalty to the Bridge Council in different ways.”