Demon Night Read online

  She looked into the barrel of the shotgun for half a second, then Old Matthew lowered it. “You all right?”

  The weak nod of her head didn’t seem sufficient, but she couldn’t yet move and didn’t want to walk, however briefly, into the darkness. “I’m okay,” she said. “I just really have to pee.”

  “You’d better come down first.” Old Matthew’s tone was the same he used with weepy drunks.

  Not weepy, not drunk—just numb.

  Belatedly, she realized her phone was still open. She clicked it shut. Twenty-one seconds.

  She forced herself to move slowly away from the safety the sight of Old Matthew’s and Vin’s familiar faces provided. She wouldn’t be dependent on it. She wouldn’t—

  What in the hell was that?

  Her legs weakened, and she had to brace her palm against the stairwell wall to steady herself. She shook her head, looked again.

  A long white feather lay on the black rooftop, only a yard from where she’d barreled into him. So clean and bright that it appeared to glow, though lit only by dim Christmas tree bulbs and the vapor-scattered streetlight.

  “Come on, Charlie girl.” Worry had crept into Old Matthew’s voice; she must have been out of his view for too long.

  She swept up the feather with shaking hands and ran down the stairs, through the dark. And it was crazy, stupid—but once the idea occurred to her, she couldn’t let it go.

  Perhaps the male hadn’t yelled a name, but a word.

  Guardian.

  CHAPTER 2

  When it rained, Charlie preferred the night. Liquid sunshine, gray daylight—they were nothing compared to the glitter caught in the arcs of the street lamps, that beaded against her balcony railing, her windows. The shine of brake lights slicked scarlet on black asphalt; tires lifted a wet spray and splashed through puddles—unremarkable and dirty during the day, but after sundown they became part of a brilliant play of color and sound, and her little enclosed balcony more like a private box at a ramshackle opera house.

  Even if the music remained in her head. Her neighbors probably wouldn’t have appreciated Bellini at midnight, and Charlie liked to play Norma at the volume it deserved.

  But the quiet was welcome, too. She tilted her head and listened when, from the adjoining balcony, a door scraped open rather than slid—inexpensive apartments, damp climate.

  She hadn’t known Ethan McCabe was home, but she was glad for the company. Glad for anything that might distract her from sharp teeth and crossbows and the ache in her cheek.

  The wood creaked under his weight. He was looking out over the railing, she realized. Not avoiding the wet, whereas she sat tucked up close to the door, sheltered beneath the roof, with her sweatshirt, flannel pajama pants, and fuzzy slippers as a ward against the cold. Hardly an attractive ensemble, but it hardly mattered.

  It was several moments before he said, “I thought you quit.”

  The tip of her cigarette glowed brightly with the depth of her inhalation. Ethan couldn’t see it through the wall that separated their balconies, but the scent would have been unmistakable.

  She sent a stream of smoke into the night air, smiled grimly up at the overhanging eaves. “It seemed like the kind of night to start again.”

  He didn’t immediately reply, but she hadn’t expected him to. In the two months he’d occupied the apartment next to hers—occasionally occupied it—she’d become accustomed to his silences.

  During their first conversation, as hidden from her sight as he was now and with only the lazy drawl in his voice to guide her, she’d thought he was slow. It hadn’t taken long to discover that “particular” fit him better.

  “Seems to me,” he finally said, “the only difference between this night and any other is that you’re home a mite early.”

  So did “indirect.” He wouldn’t ask what had happened, but give her an opening.

  And Charlie needed to say it aloud. She couldn’t to Jane; her sister knew her too well. She’d recognize that Charlie wasn’t joking. She hadn’t told the two police officers who’d taken a look at the gate and her statement, or Old Matthew when he’d driven the four blocks from Cole’s to her apartment.

  She’d seen shadows following them, slinking through the dark streets—most of them, she was certain, the product of her paranoia. Most of them.

  “I had an…incident down at Cole’s.” Though she’d tapped it off into a saucer before her last draw, the ash at the end of her cigarette was already a quarter-inch long. Not a leisurely smoke—she was sucking on it like a drowning woman might air. “Three vampires tried to attack me on the roof, but the Lone Ranger arrived and shot them with a crossbow. Or maybe the Rifleman. I couldn’t tell, and I don’t know my cowboys very well.”

  Ethan didn’t respond, not even with the slow Why, Miss Charlie, I do believe you are having me on he’d given her when, a month ago, she’d told him her voice was a mess because she’d traded it to a sea witch for a pair of legs, and that she lived in Seattle because it was so wet.

  He’d never seen the scar. She’d never seen him, but judging by the angle and projection of his voice, she thought he must be tall, with a chest to match.

  It was probably fortunate that a wall separated them, because she could have used a chest like that to lean against. Would have used it.

  So she used a plastic patio chair instead. Her crutches: a chair, a cigarette, and a white feather. It lay on her lap—stiff, but like silk to the touch. When she’d spoken with the police, she’d clung to it like Dumbo with his magic feather.

  “My hero had wings,” she added when his silence continued. Might as well make it as ridiculous as possible. “Like a guardian angel. And, for a second, I thought he was you.”

  Charlie knew from experience that almost anyone else who’d found themselves included in such a story would have said Me? with a bit of startled laughter.

  Ethan only said, “I’m no hero.”

  “Well, I didn’t take you for the type of guy to go flying around looking for vampires to shoot.”

  “No. Demons need shooting more than vampires do.”

  Humor had slipped into his tone. His quick answers were usually accompanied by it, and apparently he’d decided to play along. A tall tale to him, truth to her—but his response made it less frightening, easing her tension, and she laughed softly.

  It was one of the few noises she could make that wasn’t much different before the accident.

  Most of her life had revolved around voices. Studying them, perfecting hers. They could be as distinctive as a face, and when she’d heard the first Easy, Charlie, it had been familiar. Low, warmed by deep amber tones, and roughened with a hint of oak.

  “He sounded exactly like you. The pitch, the resonance. But he didn’t talk like you.”

  “No, Miss Charlie, I reckon he didn’t. Most flying men of my acquaintance are Easterners, and liable to talk like a book.” Ethan’s drawl thickened, and Charlie grinned, reaching forward to stab out the cigarette.

  “Anyway, that’s why I’m home early.” She ran the feather between her fingers. The quill’s surface was rounded and smooth, the end a blunt point. “Did you get in tonight?”

  “That I did.”

  “San Francisco again?”

  “Yes. And a handful of other cities.”

  She didn’t know exactly what Ethan did for Ramsdell Pharmaceuticals, but she couldn’t see why they’d relocate him to Seattle when he spent most of his time in California and the rest hopping around the country—but it wasn’t for her to decide, anyway. “Did you eat, or get to the store? Old Matthew sent me home with a box, but I wasn’t hungry. I could toss it over.”

  “I’m settled, Charlie.”

  “Okay.” She tickled the underside of her chin with the tip of the feather, looking at the wall and wishing—not for the first time—that she could see through it.

  But perhaps it was best she couldn’t. Not yet, not until she was steady. Strong.

  W
ith a long sigh, she stood and scooped the pack of smokes from the table. She’d gone through a quarter of them. “Will you do me a favor?” Without waiting for his answer, she held it over the wall. “Will you hide these at your place? I won’t buy more if I can get them for free next door.”

  He didn’t respond, but his fingers brushed hers as he took the pack. She closed her eyes. He was warm, as if he’d protected his hands in his pockets instead of exposing them to the cold night air, a feather in one and a cigarette in the other.

  “If you ask, should I give them back?”

  Her fingers trembled, and she pulled her hand away from his and tucked it against her side. “No. Make me come and get them.”

  “Well now, Charlie, I don’t know whether to hope that you resist, or to pray for an end to our Pyramus and Thisbe routine.”

  Her teeth clenched, and the frustration that rose up in her wasn’t unfamiliar: that feeling of ignorance, of being unable to share in a joke or discussion—or worse, the certainty that she had heard something before, but just couldn’t place it. “Hold on, Ethan. I’ll be right back.”

  She didn’t close the sliding door behind her. Her computer was on, and luckily the search engine offered up the correct spelling after she put in her mangled, phonetic version. Pyramus and Thisbe. Lovers parted by a family feud, whose only contact was speaking through a crack in a wall.

  Damn. She had seen this once, at a theater in New York—she’d probably been drunk off her ass, or halfway there.

  She grimaced as she scanned the rest of the story, then returned to the balcony. “That didn’t end well. Unless you think double suicide is romantic.”

  Ethan’s laughter broke and rolled like muted thunder—a fitting accompaniment to the lights and the weather. “No,” he said eventually. “That I don’t. Good night, Miss Charlie.”

  She smiled into the dark; this was a familiar routine. And she was feeling settled now, too—and safe. “Good night, Ethan.”

  Her smile lingered as she readied for bed, as she placed the feather on her nightstand. The drumming of the rain against the roof, the sighing of the breeze, the swish of the passing cars was a soft symphony lulling her to sleep.

  Long before it was silenced, she’d fallen deep.

  Charlie needed better locks.

  Ethan could have picked them open within seconds, but he didn’t require tools or time. He mentally tested the shape of the cylinder in the deadbolt, the simple pin tumbler in the knob, and unlocked them both with an effortless thrust of his Gift.

  Though she’d left no lights on, he easily avoided the bamboo trunk that served as a coffee table. Knitted throws in bright colors covered the sofa and the chair in front of her desk. Against one wall, her television was dwarfed by stereo speakers and encased by shelves stuffed with records and CDs. He could read the neatly arranged titles from across the darkened room, but he already knew that classical and opera dominated her collection: she played them often.

  It had been her way of introduction two months before, a throwaway comment from the balcony, underscored by Vivaldi: Tell me if my music is too loud.

  Loud or quiet, it wouldn’t have mattered; if he listened closely, Ethan could hear her heartbeat through the walls. The click of knitting needles. The distinctive slide of a feather over skin.

  He followed the sound of her deep, even breathing. The fragrance of apple shampoo and cocoa butter rose from the damp towel wadded in a laundry basket at the foot of her bed.

  Charlie lay on her stomach, her knee cocked. She’d kicked the blankets off. The left hem of her checkered flannel pajama pants had ridden up, revealing half the length of her sleek calf. The straps of her white top exposed more smooth skin at her shoulders and toned arms.

  Despite her ordeal on the roof, her psychic scent suggested that her dreams were soft and pleasant—so different from the tension surrounding her in her waking hours. So different from the neediness, the emotional instability.

  She didn’t outwardly reveal them, but Ethan often felt both, like a dark itching scab in her psyche. They repelled him almost as much as they aroused his protective instincts.

  She began to move restlessly, her wheat gold hair tousled over her pillow, her psychic scent altering, tinged by erotic heat.

  Ethan looked away, ignoring the tightening in his gut, his groin. He’d come in for a purpose, but lusting after a human who needed protecting wasn’t it.

  The feather sat beside her alarm clock; his attempt to vanish it into his cache failed.

  With a frown pulling at his mouth, he strode across the room and swept it up. Placing any object into his mental storage space required that he possess it, or obtain permission from the owner. Charlie had apparently formed such a strong attachment to the lost feather that he had to steal it back.

  This time, it went easily into his cache. Destroying evidence—and whatever comfort it had offered her.

  He couldn’t erase Charlie’s memories, or the bruise forming across her cheek. A Guardian with a Gift for healing could have taken care of the latter—and had Ethan been prepared for her bolt away from the wall, he could have avoided her slamming into him.

  As it was, he’d only managed to keep her from hitting his weapon. His elbow had done less damage, but there shouldn’t have been any damage at all.

  And there shouldn’t have been three vampires ready to do worse. Ethan stifled his simmering frustration. He should have caught them, but they’d evaded his pursuit by using the one lock his Gift couldn’t breach—a lock formed, not by steel or magnets, but by ancient symbols and magic. The shield it created was damned impossible to break through.

  For that reason, he’d use it to protect Charlie. To get to her, the vampires would have to burn down the apartment and flush her out—and Ethan didn’t figure they were that desperate.

  Yet.

  Silence. Surround. Lock. Ethan scraped the symbols into her front door frame, an inch above the cream carpeting. Charlie likely wouldn’t notice them or the drops of blood he used to activate the spell, and it would break when she left in the morning.

  Immediately, an unearthly quiet descended around the apartment. The symbols not only barred entrance to anyone whose blood didn’t key the spell, but prevented all communication. Neither sound, sign language, nor electronic methods of communication could penetrate the shield, from inside or out. Even his psychic senses were useless—a demon could stand on the other side of the door, and Ethan wouldn’t know it until he left the protected area. Which he did quickly enough, slipping out into the hall and locking up behind him.

  That psychic blindness made him uneasy—as did the symbols’ origins. A year ago, only Lucifer had known how to cast the spell. The tyrannical ruler kept his demons ignorant of the symbols’ power, so none would dare threaten his position on Hell’s throne.

  But one demon—Lilith, Lucifer’s daughter—inadvertently learned of the spell when she had dared to rebel against Lucifer. Ethan had fought in that confrontation, and when the dust had settled, Lucifer had been forced to return to Hell and close the Gates to that realm for five hundred years. Locked in there, as it were, embroiled in a war—and defending his throne against an army of rebels led by the demon Belial.

  Though Belial had promised his demons a return to Heaven and their former angelic status, a demon’s promises weren’t worth the air used to speak them, and Ethan would prefer to see Lucifer’s and Belial’s armies annihilate each other. Particularly as the Guardians’ own ranks had been reduced—not by war, but by an Ascension. A little over a decade before, thousands of Guardians had chosen to move on to their afterlives, leaving less than fifty Guardians in the corps. Five hundred years would hardly be enough time to rebuild the Guardian corps and prepare for the demons’ return through the Gates.

  As it was, before the Gates had closed, hundreds of demons had escaped Hell, guaranteeing the Guardians plenty of trouble. So much so that Michael, the Guardians’ leader, and Rael—one of Belial’s demons and a U.S. co
ngressman—had made arrangements with Homeland Security and developed a new law enforcement division, Special Investigations. Located in San Francisco, SI had but three directives: to train novice Guardians and act as an Earth-based center of operations for all other Guardians; to track and slay the rogue demons; and to conceal otherworldly activity from the general human population.

  Otherworldly activity, such as magic spells.

  And three months ago, only Guardians—and a few vampires recruited by Special Investigations—had known of the symbols. But a demon threat to the vampire population in San Francisco necessitated sharing knowledge of the spell with the vampires, and the use of it had quickly spread to other cities, other vampire communities—and to demons.

  Ethan suspected demons had been responsible for the attack on Charlie, but there was only one way to be certain. With luck, the vampires wouldn’t have dared leave the safety of their hidey-hole yet. But dawn arrived in less than three hours, and they’d succumb to the daysleep as soon as the sun rose. They’d have to poke their heads out eventually.

  Ethan would be waiting.

  Son of a bitch.

  Ethan clamped his jaw tight and took a cursory glance at the bakery’s interior. Excepting the window the vampires had broken to enter the building, nothing had been disturbed.

  The faint scent of vampire blood clung to the three symbols carved on the sill with splintered glass. The protective shield had fallen when they’d left, but Ethan dug the tip of his dagger through the shapes. The Seattle police might tie the vandalism here to the destruction of Cole’s gate two blocks distant—vampires still had fingerprints and DNA, after all—but Ethan wouldn’t leave evidence of the spell for them to find. They likely wouldn’t suppose it was something otherworldly, in any case.

  Peculiar, that Charlie did. In those rare instances humans spied a vampire’s teeth or a Guardian’s wings, they assumed it was a person dressed up in a costume. The feather she’d found hadn’t been reason enough for the fear and certainty lurking in her psychic scent when she’d passed off truth as exaggeration.