Demon Night Read online

  But a demon wouldn’t care for that, and he certainly hadn’t been merciful with this one. Ethan wouldn’t have felt the least compunction against slaying her, but he’d never have considered something like this. Her neck had been opened down to her spine—but a vampire healed quick. Not as fast as a Guardian or demon, but enough to keep from bleeding out, even if an artery was severed. The demon must have kept slicing it open—taking a good five minutes to finish it.

  And he’d held her upside down, like an animal hung for slaughter. Bloody handprints circled her ankle. The back of her opposite boot had a bit of splatter, too, and her nails some flesh—Ethan reckoned she might have gotten a few good kicks in, but the blunt heels wouldn’t have done much damage and the demon would have barely felt the scratches.

  The rest of her blood was in a dark pool beneath her.

  It just didn’t make any kind of sense. A public place like this—she wouldn’t have been able to scream, but the demon had been taking an awful risk that someone might happen on them. And if torture had been on his mind, he’d have been better served carrying her to a different location and taking his time doing it.

  Unless he knew Ethan would be returning, and wanted the Guardian to find her this way.

  He could examine the body later, but it was best to record the scene. Michael or Lilith might recognize something about the demon—like serial killers, they often repeated their patterns.

  He snapped pictures, shaking his right hand out before repositioning the camera each time. His arm was going stiff—the bullet was working itself out, passing through a muscle that was tightening him up.

  Ethan was crouching for a shot of the spatter on the wall when the female’s body and blood disappeared from in front of him.

  Hell and damnation. He replaced the camera with his crossbow and palmed his sword in his left hand. Stepped back from the wall.

  He felt the demon an instant before it spoke.

  “I’m oddly impressed, Guardian. I thought Michael had whipped the killer out of all of you.”

  It perched on the edge of the roof, looking into the alley. Except for the membranous black wings that stretched behind him, he was in human form: a pretty-boy face, black hair and eyes—and wearing a fancy suit that Ethan reckoned had been bought for a hefty penny, instead of being made by the demon.

  Ethan couldn’t say he was all that surprised. “Samuels.”

  The demon’s eyes narrowed slightly. The psychic probe it sent toward Ethan was slick and powerful, but easily blocked.

  And it was nothing like the scaly psychic presence he’d felt earlier. Now that was unexpected, but Ethan didn’t let it show, just backed up another step to give himself a better angle with the crossbow. The bolt’s wooden shaft had been soaked in hellhound venom; even a small dose would paralyze a demon, and in trace quantities, it slowed them down right quick, made them easier to slay. The bolt was coated with more venom than a bullet would be—and with his arm gimped up, Ethan would need every advantage he could get.

  The demon’s lips curled into a smile. His teeth were human, too. “I prefer Sammael.”

  “I’ll make a note of it. I imagine Miss Jane might like to hear the truth of it, as well.”

  Well, now, that was interesting: mention of Jane got the demon’s eyes flaring, though his smile just widened. “You’re favoring your right side, Guardian. I wonder if you could even pull that trigger before I take your head.”

  “I reckon you might get a bit closer than normal, but whether I kill you where you are now or up at the end of my nose don’t matter much to me.” He paused as something changed in the demon’s psychic scent—an instant of recognition and anger—and then it was gone. Ethan dug at him again, looking for a repeat of the demon’s break in control. “And then I’ll just fly right on over to Miss Jane’s, maybe dandy myself up to look like you—”

  Sammael dove at him, his sword flashing. The bolt only nicked the demon’s shoulder, ripped through the sleeve of his suit. Bad aim, but Ethan was as proficient with his left hand as his right, and he blocked the demon’s first blow.

  Ethan smelled blood—the bolt had broken the demon’s skin. Then his own blood, as Sammael’s blade darted in and caught his sword arm, slicing into his wrist, through a tendon. Ethan’s weapon fell.

  Grinning again, the demon slithered back—but the venom must have slowed him down, because Ethan followed him quick and slammed his bleeding fist into the bastard’s smiling face. Bone crunched.

  Slowed…but Ethan didn’t get a chance to do it again. Hissing, the demon leapt back and up, perching once more at the edge of the roof, blood dripping over his mouth and chin.

  Within a moment, the dripping had stopped, and his nose began regaining its shape. Two pistols appeared in the demon’s hands, and Ethan eyed them warily. He didn’t want to have to scamper off like a rabbit. But they weren’t pointed at him yet, just spinning on the demon’s forefingers like he was a gunslinger showing off.

  “I smell Charlotte on you, Guardian. Have you put your hands on her?”

  “Shucks, no,” Ethan said, smiling. “Just my mouth.”

  He imagined if he’d said the same of Jane, he’d have a bullet in him now. But though the demon stiffened and disgust rippled through his scent, he didn’t stop spinning his weapons.

  “You know I will not kill Charlotte, but give her immortality.”

  “All well and good, if she asks for it. But I don’t figure your vampires were planning to give her the opportunity to refuse.”

  “Perhaps not.” But knowing the vampires would have broken the Rules obviously didn’t displease the demon. “Perhaps I ought to ask her very nicely: ‘Charlie, your worthless, pitiable, self-destructive existence sickens me. Why not donate your body to help protect my kind from those who would destroy us?’” Sammael’s eyes gleamed, black and human again. “I could offer her a choice—and with it, a purpose; but I doubt she is capable of understanding or accepting that. And so I must use the vampires.”

  “Five less than you used before.” Ethan’s wrist had healed up, but he didn’t yet reclaim his sword. He could pull in another from his cache, and Sammael might be bolder in his offense—and more careless—if he thought Ethan would depend on the ancient pistols holstered at his thighs. “Tell me: Did you leave Miss Jane home alone? I just might go calling on her.”

  The demon moved, but not into an attack. He stood and stared down at Ethan before saying, “I will not allow you contact with Jane.”

  “Considering that Charlie’s with me, and Jane will very likely want to see her sister in the near future…well, I sure do hope you attempt to deny Jane’s free will and try to stop her.” Ethan didn’t know what—if any—immediate consequences there were for a demon who hindered a human’s free will now that the Gates to Hell were closed and Lucifer locked behind them, but he figured something must have been keeping the demons from doing it the past year.

  The demon’s eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what you’re up against, Guardian—or who you are dealing with,” he said, and his grin was sharp and wide. He launched himself up into the sky with his teeth gleaming.

  Well now, that had finally been a response that Ethan could have predicted. Demons were masters of spouting lines that could have been straight from a penny dreadful.

  Ethan took another look at the alley floor, hoping the demon had left something behind, but it was clean. Mighty peculiar, that Sammael assumed Ethan had killed the female vampire. If Sammael was associated with the other demon, was communication at Legion breaking down? And if Sammael hadn’t known of the other demon, was it one of Lucifer’s demons coming in to give trouble to Belial’s?

  Odd to think that demons had loyalties, but the civil war in Hell had been raging for almost a millennium; it might be that—even with the Gates closed—Lucifer’s and Belial’s followers continued their struggles against one another.

  But Ethan wasn’t going to figure it out standing here. A look at the sky told him daw
n was coming in less than two hours—and he wouldn’t be able to speak with Savitri Murray once the sun rose.

  His phone was dead, but a mental search through Charlie’s things confirmed that hers was in the big embroidered bag that she carried around.

  He ought to have left more of her belongings with her—a single lamp wouldn’t bring much comfort while she was alone, and the terrible hurt he’d put on her wouldn’t have made the empty house easier to bear.

  Goddammit, he shouldn’t have kissed her back. If he’d just kept his hands off her, there wouldn’t have been any need to say what he had.

  “Drifter?”

  Even the bright sound of Savi’s voice didn’t lift the heavy weight in his gut—but it was joined by surprise. “How the blazes did you figure that?”

  “I’ve recently added ‘omnipotent’ to my growing list of superpowers,” she said. “That, and you’re calling from Charlotte Newcomb’s cell phone to my unregistered number—somehow I doubt that she dialed it by accident. And the security feed from inside the house went dead about forty-five minutes ago, sending up alerts all over the place, so I checked out the exterior video. Two entered, but only you left, and I know Charlotte isn’t calling me from inside the house. She makes a kick-ass margarita, by the way.”

  “Pours a mighty fine whiskey, as well—and Charlie also noticed that your fiancé can’t see how pretty he is.” Vampires could see their reflections, but a curse had robbed Colin of his.

  “Ah.” Savi went quiet for a second. Probably considering that, chewing on her lip, her eyes wide. “Sorry,” she finally said. “We weren’t very careful. Most people don’t pay attention, or they rationalize it away when they do.”

  Just as they did when they saw fangs, or a Guardian’s wings. “Well, it don’t matter much, since she knows more’n that now. We ran into a spot of trouble.”

  “I thought you might have. What do you need?”

  “I’ve had Jake working on Samuels’s data—”

  “But you want me to go deeper.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll try. Can you get me something from inside Legion? I haven’t been able to worm my way in. They’ve got a demon Brian Dorsett working for them, or something.”

  Ethan had no idea what that meant, but he gleaned that she hadn’t been able to hack into Legion’s computer network. “I’ll do what I can. It ain’t a matter of waltzing on in.”

  “Yeah, no shit. Anything else you need?”

  “There’s two more I want you to look at: Mark and William Brandt.”

  She confirmed the spelling, then said in some surprise, “The senator? What are you looking for—anything specific?”

  “Anything that don’t feel right.”

  The sound that came through the earpiece sounded an awful lot like a little girl muffling her giggles. After a second, she said, “Sorry. There’s probably going to be quite a bit that doesn’t feel right—he’s been in politics a long time.”

  Ethan smiled slightly. “They ain’t all demons.”

  “No, just the one who’s funding SI.” He could almost see her lips pursing in frustration as she referred to Rael, the demon congressman who had ties to both Special Investigations and Legion—and heard her sigh as she let it go. “Okay. Is that it? Because I’ve got a complaint to lodge against your pupil.”

  “Jake?” Since Hugh Castleford had taken over the novices’ training, Ethan wasn’t officially Jake’s mentor anymore, but everyone still went to Ethan whenever Jake pulled something stupid. “What’s he done?”

  “He kicked me out of the poker game tonight.”

  Ethan scowled. Though her shields were as good as his, Savi’s expression gave away her hand every single deal. She was a terrible player…and rich as a nabob. And whatever the novices won from her in the occasional game she sat in on, Ethan usually cleaned out from them within a week or two. Running Savi off was the most damn fool thing he’d ever heard. Unless—“Were you counting cards?”

  “Maybe.” There wasn’t a hint of apology in her voice. “I’ve dropped twenty thousand on that table in the past three months.”

  “And we surely do appreciate it, Miss Savi.”

  In the background, her partner Colin Ames-Beaumont sounded mighty amused.

  “Stop laughing, you ass,” she said. “Or I’ll use your money next time.” Then Ethan was the one chuckling as the vampire’s laughter pulled up lame. “Anyway, Drifter…I heard about your brother. I wanted to say I was sorry. Is there anything Colin and I can do?”

  Ethan’s throat closed up. Hit from the side, and he hadn’t been expecting it at all. It took him a second, but he finally managed, “I reckon not, Miss Savi.” Hell and damnation, his voice was about as hoarse as Charlie’s had been when she’d told him to go. He closed his eyes and pushed it away. “Aside from you telling me how to sweet-talk the computer running your house.”

  “Oh, god. Don’t tell me you couldn’t get the lights on before you left.”

  “All right.”

  Her laughter sounded again before she said, “It’s on the wall panel in every room—and there’s also a remote control. There’s a lighting menu, and the heat is under environmental control. Your temp is less than 106 degrees, so you won’t be electrocuted when you adjust the settings. And I wouldn’t move any of the paintings downstairs, although the ones upstairs are okay.” The humor suddenly dropped from her tone. “Drifter—if Charlotte saw Colin, knew what he was…did you get a chance to explain about the portraits?”

  “The port—?” His teeth snapped together, and he sucked in a sharp whistling breath between them. Son of a goddamn bitch.

  He was in the air less than a second later.

  CHAPTER 8

  She’d gone in search of a bathroom, but found a puzzle instead. In the master bedroom, silvery moonlight illuminated a life-sized painting of the gorgeous blond vampire.

  Charlie shivered inside her coat, her heart thumped madly in her chest, and her instincts screamed at her to run—but she stayed and tried to figure it out.

  Because the woman he’d come into Cole’s with was pictured there, too, and the expression on his face wasn’t anything like a vampire’s should have been. Not cruel or cold—there was something so tender in his eyes, in his smile, that it made Charlie’s heart ache just to see it, made her feel like an intruder on a moment that was beautiful…and private.

  And they were standing in the midst of what must have been Heaven.

  It was depicted on other canvases, too—in bright blues and whites, columns and temples of marble, so huge and perfect and impossibly lovely that it made her dizzy to look at them for too long.

  She unsteadily made her way downstairs to the living room, sat in the corner of a sofa and drew her legs up. The lake sparkled and the trees swayed, and slowly it came together.

  Ethan had moved in not long after the vampire couple had spoken with her at the bar, asking about her family. Ethan, who didn’t have anything in his apartment—he obviously didn’t live there. So she had been paranoid, but someone had been watching her…or watching over her.

  But why? How had he known she’d be attacked? She couldn’t think it had been random. The first time, maybe—but the second? And they’d known her name.

  She closed her eyes, ran it all through her mind in a quick, erratic rhythm, waiting for it to settle into a tempo that she could follow.

  Vampires who’d wanted to hurt her. A demon. Ethan, and his wings. Blood all over her hands, his face—but there were some vampires he didn’t kill, and apparently trusted. Vampires who’d asked so many questions about her family.

  Vampires. Ethan. Blood. Her family.

  Blood. Her sister.

  The click of the door shot through the silence of the house. Her eyes flew open; Ethan already stood in front of her, his hat and wings gone, his face tight and his gaze wary on hers.

  “It’s about Jane, isn’t it?” Her voice was loud—not to her ears, but from the inside, like she was
speaking underwater or holding her ear to check her key.

  His taut skin twitched a little around his eyebrows, his mouth. “Yes.”

  She slid off the sofa; her legs were solid beneath her now. “Is she safe? Can we go get her?”

  Ethan hesitated, then said, “She’s safe. There’s a shield around her house, too.”

  “Someone’s been watching her? Like you—oh, my God. Dylan.” Charlie’s relief didn’t last; her eyes widened and she laughed a hard, sour note. And to think she’d liked Dylan—liked how friendly and smart and fun he was, and how much he adored Jane. And Jane was crazy in love with him; if everything had been a lie, this would kill her. “I knew he was too fucking perfect. So he’s an angel like you, and in order to get close to her he—”

  “No. That’s not how it is, Charlie. He’s not a Guardian.” Ethan stood still as she stalked toward him. “That’s not how it is at all.”

  “No?” She pushed against his chest. The muscle under the heel of her hand might has well have been stone, and Ethan a mountain.

  “No.” His response was as firm as the rest of him.

  Firm enough that she believed it.

  “Well…well, fuck.” Her fists were curled. She’d wanted to get up in his face and scream at him, but now she just felt out of control. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets. “Then how is it? Do they want Jane to cure them?”

  “I don’t rightly know what they want from her, but I don’t reckon it’s a cure, because there isn’t one.” His voice deepened with something that sounded like weariness. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if the demons were telling them something of the sort, making promises so that the vampires fall in line with their plans.”

  “What plans?”

  “Hell if I know, Charlie.” He lifted his hand like he meant to rub it over his face, to make action match his tone, but he winced and let it drop back to his side. “Are you mad enough to cut me open?”

  “I’d rather punch you, actually.” No, not really. Just punch something. Ethan was simply a convenient target. “I don’t understand why Jane and I got pulled into this. Whatever this is.”