Demon Night Read online

  Her nod was jerky, a touch of fear flickering deep. She followed close behind him, out of her apartment and into his. He didn’t have anything to collect but the cell phone charger plugged into the wall outlet.

  A thread of doubt colored her psychic scent. “Did you already get all of your stuff?”

  “There wasn’t nothing to get,” he said, and continued out to the balcony. He looked back, saw her standing in the living room, taking in the emptiness. “You ready?”

  She hurried out, stepped up close to him. Forming his wings pulled at the bullet still lodged in his back, but he was glad of the distraction when she wrapped her arms around his neck, when she gasped and laughed in startled delight as they caught air.

  This time, though he went straight up, he didn’t have to go so quickly. He slid his arm under her knees, shifted her weight. It was easier for him to maneuver—and more comfortable for Charlie—if he carried her cradled against his chest rather than hanging. Her breath puffed against his throat, formed a cloud of vapor that slid instantly away with the wind as they ascended.

  “Ethan.” His name vibrated through her chattering teeth. “Do you have my coat?”

  He didn’t need to gain any more altitude; they were high enough that no one looking up would see them. He hovered, his wings beating steadily. “You’ve got to hang on to me.”

  She nodded, her arms tightening and holding her face close to his. He slowly lowered her knees, let her take her own weight. Draping the coat around her shoulders was awkward, the wind threatening to rip it away, the wool flapping and twisting.

  Until Charlie wound her legs around his waist, held on with one arm, and stuck her other arm through the sleeve. She switched sides and quickly repeated the action before bringing her eyes even with his.

  Her hair was blowing against his face, caught in the seam of his lips. Her thighs tightened at the sides of his hips, and she lifted her hand to his mouth, dragging the strands away with a curl of her finger. “Thank you, Ethan.”

  He gave an abrupt nod. “It’s what I do.”

  Charlie regarded him steadily, but he didn’t dare sink into her emotions to discover if anything more than gratitude lay behind that expression. After a long moment, she sighed and laid her cheek on his shoulder. Her hand trailed over the frame of his wings on its journey back around his neck.

  Ethan pushed her legs down over his hips and slipped his arm beneath her knees before she felt how much he’d wanted her to lay her lips against his again.

  In gratitude, in awe—for any damn reason at all.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ethan had a heartbeat.

  Charlie wasn’t certain why that reassured her so much, but the deep sound and even rhythm of it did. After a few moments of listening, she braved her face and eyes to the freezing wind created by his flight. Seattle stretched out below them—then abruptly the city lights were gone, everything below them dark as they crossed Lake Washington.

  Giant residences lined the opposite shoreline. She knew of the area, though it had been a long time since she’d been invited to anyplace like it, and that hadn’t been in Seattle. Eastside was home to the billionaires of the tech industry or the likes of Senator Brandt.

  And, apparently, Ethan. Instead of heading farther inland, he skimmed above the placid water before landing on a wooden dock. She swayed in time with the lapping of the water against the floats until her knees adjusted to the motion. Moonlight whitewashed the stairs that led up the hill and gleamed in the windows of the lodge-style house. Tall firs broke the peaked line of the roof’s silhouette.

  Ethan was looking up at the large, rustic home with the same appreciation—and, she thought, a little bit of surprise. She saw him glance at the address placard tacked to the dock post, check it against a piece of paper that appeared in his hand, and shake his head.

  “You don’t own this?”

  “No.” His hand captured hers. The trees cast shadows across the upper half of the stairs, leaving it too dark for her to see—but he had no trouble navigating the steps and the flagstone path that led to the lakeside entrance. “Ramsdell Pharmaceuticals does. I just figured it’d be…fussy.”

  She blinked quickly. The job hadn’t been a lie? Did he live a normal life at the same time he fought vampires—and whatever he considered to be worse?

  “What was coming back there at the phone booth?”

  “A demon.” The door opened at his touch. Though he had them folded tight against his back, his wings brushed the sides and top of the door frame. He paused just inside, consulted the paper again, then moved to the security panel situated between a giant picture window and a framed landscape painting.

  A demon. She didn’t know much about them, only what she’d seen in movies and operas, but she had a good idea what the opposite of a demon was.

  Charlie stared up at his profile, then at the wings arching above his head. She’d touched them—soft down had covered a heavy frame of bone and muscle; the flight feathers had been like silk. And though she longed to run her hands over them again, now it struck her as shameful that she’d done it without permission…and possibly blasphemous that she’d touched them at all.

  And she wasn’t even sure what she was blaspheming.

  She tucked her hands into her coat pockets. More than touching—she’d stolen a kiss from him. Thought of doing things a lot less innocent than that.

  The alarm light switched from red to green. Ethan studied the security panel as if he expected it to give up a secret, then finally turned toward her.

  His eyes narrowed. “Whatever you’re thinking that put that fire in your cheeks, you unthink it. I got a pile of mattress stuffing on my back, but it don’t mean I’m wearing a halo.”

  His reading her so easily only made her embarrassment worse, but she said in the strongest voice she could muster, “Okay.”

  The sound in the room was strange; large and open, with vaulted ceilings lined with beams—their voices should have echoed, come back hollow. Instead the tones remained full without bouncing back. Perhaps the amount of wood and the thick rugs softened the echo, or they’d placed sound dampeners in the walls, like the shell of a concert hall.

  The furnishings were light in color and sparse; paintings filled the walls, but it was too dark to see details on the canvases.

  Ethan was looking, too, but whatever he saw on one wall made him smile a little. It turned into a grimace when his wings vanished. He cocked his right elbow and rotated his shoulder in a wide circle before holding out his hand to her again.

  “I’ve got to go back, Charlie, see what I can about the demon and anything he left behind.”

  Charlie swallowed hard. “All right.”

  His palm enfolded hers, and she realized how cold her hands were from the flight and the unheated house. “You’ll be fine here. Take a look at this.” He led her to the door, placed his fingers about halfway up the frame. “You see these markings?”

  It was dim enough in the room that she couldn’t see anything, but when she trailed her fingertips down the wood, she could feel the scratches on the smooth surface—and remembered how Ethan had scraped something into the phone booth. “So, these will keep vampires out—unless they’re invited in?”

  Had she accidentally invited one into the booth?

  “An invitation doesn’t mean anything,” Ethan said. He let go of her hand, and a dagger flashed in his. “It’s a spell. You put your blood on each one of these symbols—there’s three of them—from top to bottom, like this.” He stabbed the pad of his thumb, touched it to the frame three times.

  Charlie’s breath caught. The house had been quiet, but now it was silent; she hadn’t been listening to the lake, the wind, but she heard their absence better than she had their lapping and sighing.

  “This one’s on a main entrance, so it locks down the entire house. There ain’t nothing that can get in, not demon or vampire or human—and you’ve got nothing to worry about but an earthquake or fire.”

/>   “But—”

  Ethan wiped at the frame with his sleeve, and the sound slipped back in.

  Charlie’s lips parted in realization. “Oh.”

  His smile edged just a bit higher on the right side when he looked down at her. “I ought to have warned you.”

  She almost said, That’s okay, but then she remembered the vampire’s face and his fang-filled grin. “You should have,” she agreed, and watched him poke his thumb again. “Will my blood do that?”

  “Yes. But if your blood activates the spell, I can’t get back in. The spell will stay up for as long as a person’s alive inside—but only the one who cast it can go in and out. So if you go out while I’m gone, you’ll be able to get back in, but the spell won’t be around the house anymore—you got that?” At her nod, he continued, “You won’t be able to call anyone or communicate through the shield it creates. Nothing gets through; not television, not e-mail, not radio.”

  “Nothing at all?” Charlie frowned, wondering why that tripped a memory for her.

  Ethan shook his head. “I could stand outside the window and write a note on a paper, but you wouldn’t be able to read it. You’d see it, but couldn’t understand it.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s normal for me.” She gave up trying to remember what had pulled at her memory. Everything was coming at her too fast; she could feel herself withdrawing again, going numb, and he hadn’t even told her what he was. She took a deep breath and admitted, “I need some time to process all of this, Ethan.”

  “You’ll get time. If you like, you can claim a bed and sleep. I’ll be a good hour or so.”

  She looked back into the large, open room, the moonlit water outside the window, the distant sparkle of the city. “I think I’ll stay in here.”

  For a long moment, Ethan’s gaze was steady and firm on hers; then his brow furrowed like a man facing a puzzle. “I don’t see a single electric light switch, or I’d turn them on for you. I suspect they’re integrated into the computerized system that runs the house, but I neglected to ask the details—and I don’t want to go selecting the wrong button.”

  Charlie shrugged. “I like the dark.”

  “Yes, but you ought to have something—” He blinked. “Well, hell.”

  She turned as Ethan strode past her, the tails of his coat brushing her legs. There was no sign that his wings had penetrated the brown fabric, but it was marred by a small hole high on his back. Charlie frowned, followed him.

  The main part of the room had a sunken floor. Charlie stood at the edge of the two steps leading down; Ethan had her favorite lamp, the one that had been next to her bed, and was plugging it in and setting it on a small table. The stained-glass shade washed the room with soft blues, reds, and golds.

  It was comforting, familiar—and she had to admit, better than the dark. She folded her arms over her chest, and wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or start crying.

  Ethan came to stand in front of her, his left foot on the first step. “You’ll be all right, Miss Charlie.”

  She swallowed hard, nodded. “Are you okay? Did they shoot you?”

  “They got me, but it ain’t no trouble.” He showed her his thumb. “I heal quick.”

  The wounds he’d made with his dagger were already gone—not even a trace of pink remained. She held herself tighter to keep from touching his hand, raised her gaze to his face, let it settle on his lips. Her brows drew together. “But you have a scar.”

  His smile held a hint of teasing in it. “A souvenir from when I was human,” he said. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened. “I keep it because womenfolk can’t resist taking a better look; and once they’re in close, they’re like bears on honey.”

  Laughing relieved some of the pressure that had been building up in her chest, left her slightly light-headed. Ethan was watching her, grinning in full now, and Charlie could easily believe that any woman near those lips would be tempted.

  She was probably too close.

  Her laughter faded, her breath came hard. He didn’t move away when she leaned toward him. For an instant she was unbalanced, at too far an angle over the stairs—but she braced her palms on his wide shoulders and caught his upper lip between hers, a soft brush before simply holding her mouth against his.

  It was easy, so easy to stand there with his breath heating her bottom lip. But Charlie knew herself too well, and this felt too good. She wouldn’t be satisfied with a little taste—she’d want more.

  And although his lips moved under hers, Ethan wasn’t kissing her back; he just wasn’t smiling anymore.

  She pulled away, her hands falling to her sides.

  Ethan blinked his eyes open, and a vertical line formed between his eyebrows, as if he was surprised to see her standing a foot away.

  “Well, I’ll be going—” He shook his head, blinked again, and looked down at his hand. “You’ll be—” His jaw tightened, and he glanced up at her. “Son of a bitch.”

  Ethan simply straightened, shifting his weight forward and up, his left foot still on the first step but now he was towering over her. His fingers speared into the hair at her temples, his huge hands cupping her face and tilting her head back for the claim of his mouth.

  Heat surrounded her: his palms curving around her cold cheeks, his chest against hers. Her fingers slid beneath his jacket, across the softness of his shirt and the hard muscle it covered.

  Oh, Lord, and his mouth. Hot and wet, and he didn’t wait for her to recover from her surprise but used the insistent pressure of his lips to guide hers apart. He sipped, licked, and his warmth stole through her, sliding down to her belly and seeping into her blood like a sweet kiss of Drambuie, leaving her flushed and dizzy and all too ready for another drink.

  But this couldn’t be bad for her. The shuddering drag of her breath when his mouth left hers wasn’t harsh to her ears, but the most luscious sound she’d made in years, the emotions unmistakable. Need. Desire. Wonder.

  Ethan spoke roughly against her throat, and she didn’t hear the words clearly but her answer was yes. Her necklace loosened—disappeared. She thought of the scar, then banished it from her mind.

  Demons and vampires could never hurt her as badly as she’d hurt herself. And she’d done enough wrong in her life, fucked up so many times that she didn’t know how she deserved to be here now, with a man with wings and a laugh like whiskey and who kissed as if he wanted to swallow her down—but she’d be grateful for it every second of the rest of her life, even if she never encountered anything like him or anything miraculous again. And now she only wanted to crawl onto him, lean on him, and hold on to this wondrously alive feeling—

  Ethan froze. He lifted his head to stare down at her, his eyes like amber stone. His thumbs swept across her cheekbones—and then he abruptly let her go and turned away from her. “I’d best go.”

  His voice was as hard as his expression had been. Reeling from the change, she didn’t know what to say, tried to read his profile instead—but it was inscrutable. “Ethan?”

  A round-brimmed hat appeared in his hand and he jammed it on his head, shadowing his features. “Don’t rely on me, Charlie. I’ll keep you safe. But don’t be thinking it’s more than that, or that I’ll be anything more than someone who protects you.”

  But he’d wanted to be. A man didn’t kiss like that unless he craved it. Her chest tightened, and she struggled to understand the point behind his warning. “Because you’re unreliable?”

  Maybe there was a kindness in that—cautioning her that nothing would come of a relationship with him except disappointment. But Charlie wasn’t looking for anything permanent, and she’d never been idiot enough to think she could change someone.

  He drew in a long breath. “No. I’m steady enough—but you’ll throw yourself into relying on me.”

  She couldn’t comprehend it for a long moment, and just stood there, blinking stupidly. Then it hit her and she stepped back, wrapped her arms across her roiling stomach and curled in on h
erself a little, like a pill bug.

  He was right. But she hadn’t known he could see her so well…that all of her weaknesses were exposed to him, and so revolting that although he might want her enough to kiss her like he had, he didn’t want to want someone like her.

  “Charlie—” He lifted his hand, then let it drop back to his side. And that was only more devastating—that he could be sorry for hurting her, but he realized that if he softened the blow it’d just be worse in the end.

  “You’d best go, Ethan,” she rasped, and his fist tightened as if a response lay just beneath his skin—but he walked to the door without speaking a word.

  Though she’d seen him for the first time that night, already his shape and features were familiar, so easy to apply to the faceless man she’d known for two months.

  But she didn’t know him at all. Didn’t even know—“Should I be calling you Ethan? Or is your real name something else?”

  He didn’t turn around, but stood with his hand on the doorknob. His voice was quiet when he finally said, “They call me Drifter.”

  The door closed behind him; the house loomed silent and cold around her.

  But at least it wasn’t dark.

  The demon had drained her.

  Ethan studied the position of the female vampire’s body, unease twisting through him. The demon had left her on her back in an alley, her blank eyes staring up at the stars, her booted feet at an angle up against the brick wall, as if she’d just laid down and propped her feet up to watch the night sky.

  Ethan had told Charlie the only way to kill a vampire was cutting through its heart or taking its head, but that wasn’t quite right—it was just the other options weren’t so practical.

  They could be burned, but Ethan didn’t know many vampires who’d sit around while their flesh roasted. So those who died that way, it was usually accidental—in a house that caught fire while they were in their daysleep. A demon might trap and burn them alive, but it took a lot of effort to make certain they didn’t find another exit. Easier to just use a sword. More merciful, too.