Beauty's Beasts (15 page)

“Azazel, aping Carson Connors is just going to piss me off even more. You have to know that he and I never got along,” Nick said. His hand rested inside his coat.

The man smiled, showing even white teeth. “I thought I would show a pleasing disposition. The woman, here, has never had the honor, after all.” He nodded to her.

A shiver ran down her back.
This is not my father
, she reminded herself. But now she knew where she recognized him from—Damian’s photo and from the mirror she looked in every day. Her father’s eyes were like her own except in color.

“You’ve raised the original six, Azazel. Your work here is done,” Nick said. “Why are you still here?”

“I knew you would stop by to see Natan. How else would I pick up your trail?” Azazel shrugged. But his gaze flickered toward Riley, and it seemed his eyes glowed hot and red just for a moment.

She shivered. Nick had been right all along. Azazel wanted her dead. That was his primary goal this time around. He wanted vengeance. Why had she even left the apartment? She had been safe there. She wasn’t ready for this. Nick was right, she was wrong, dammit.

Damian’s fingers curled around the back of her neck, under her hair. It was like a secret hug. Riley drew in a deep breath. And another. She felt calm return.

Lifting her eyes once more, she looked squarely at Azazel. She didn’t know if demons found a direct gaze challenging, but she hoped so. He wasn’t looking at her, but when her gaze fell upon his face, his glance swiveled to her as if he felt the weight of her look. He smiled. “I look forward to meeting you in the dark, little one.”

“Why wait?” she asked, reaching inside her coat for the hilt of her katana.

His smile broadened. “Your watchdogs would not permit it.”

“You mean, you’re too gutless to attempt it in daylight. Don’t bullshit me, Azazel.” She pulled out the sword.

Natan, behind her, gave a breathy little moan.

Azazel’s smile didn’t waver, but his eyes took on a flat, opaque look. “You have no idea what you are inviting, girl.” His voice was different. Thick.

“Yeah. I do,” she said.

“Tell her,” Azazel spat at Nick.

Nick shrugged. “If she wants a piece of you, I won’t stop her. Not this afternoon.”

“Nor I,” Damian added.

Riley couldn’t help smiling as she stepped out from between them. She flipped the katana up into the high ready position and waited for him, her senses ready.

In the distance, she heard a police siren, but ignored it. Sirens sounded all day long in Manhattan.

Azazel looked from one to the other again. His fury built higher. “She is untested! You would let her go up against me?”

“Yep,” Nick said, sounding astonishingly laid-back.

The sirens were drawing closer and Riley frowned. Were they coming here? There were a lot of them.

Azazel moved. He couldn’t move as fast as Nick and Damian, but he could move pretty damn fast anyway. He reached inside his denim jacket and pulled out a thick gun-shaped weapon and fired. Riley threw herself out of the way but even as she jumped she realized she wasn’t the target.

Damian was thrown backward by the impact. He lay clutching his stomach, gasping.

The sirens were right outside the building now and had halted there. Riley whirled to look at Natan, who held up a cell phone. “Text message,” he said sheepishly.

She scrambled backward to where Damian lay, watching Azazel. Azazel waved the thick gun in the air. “Gargoyle toxin pellets,” he pronounced. “There’s more than one way to defeat you, and most of them I don’t have to lay a finger on you to bring you to your knees. Try to cure your vampire lover of that, human.” The triumph in his face was awful to look at it.

The demon jerked his head up as the door to the studio was rattled by the police, turned and strode away around behind the half-completed gargoyle, and was gone.

Nicholas was kneeling over Damian, trying to lift his hands away so he could look at the wound. “Let me see,” he said, his voice low but even. “Damian, let go. Let me see.”

Damian’s hands fell away, revealing blood and an open wound that showed deep damage and horrible black track marks scoring his flesh, rippling under the surface of the skin. He was writhing as the black moved in all directions along his torso from the wound.

Nick made a breathless sound as he looked at it.

Riley put her sword away as the studio door shuddered under the pummeling of the police again.

“Open up! New York Police Department!”

“Help! Help me!” Natan screamed. “They’re armed!”

“Christos help us,” Nick muttered. He looked at Riley. “Find the hangar doors. Now.” His blue eyes were steady, relentless. He slid an arm under Damian’s shoulders and lifted him to his feet.

Riley ran for the other end of the studio, where the old hangar doors would most naturally be, dodging the lumps of rock and stone that were Natan’s natural carving materials. She found the doors where she thought they would be, but they had been welded shut.

“Here!” she called. “But they’re welded.”

Nicholas came up behind her, Damian draped over his shoulders. He looked at the welding. “It’s spot-welded. Not a problem. Here, hold Damian up.”

“I can’t—”

But Nicholas had already handed Damian to her and she staggered under the weight of Damian’s almost unconscious body. Damian tried to thrust a leg out to hold himself up, but she took most of his weight herself, her thighs shaking and her back screaming. She could feel his blood soaking into her shoulder and chest.

Behind them, she heard the shouts of the police.

“Hurry!” she begged Nicholas, as he studied the hangar doors. He braced one door with a hand, took a breath and kicked the other door. His face was implacable. It took three hard kicks before the spot welds gave way. The door shuddered aside and pale late afternoon sunlight fell in on them. Nicholas blinked and winced.

Then he took Damian from Riley, hoisted him back onto his shoulders once more and strode out into the daylight. He turned for the street, but Damian caught at his arm. “The roof,” he said weakly.

“I’ll get you home,” Nicholas said firmly.

“The roof. No time. You have to get Riley away.”

Nicholas closed his eyes. “No, damn it. We can get you home.”

“The roof, Nick. Do as I say.”

Nick looked like he was in pain. Riley didn’t understand what was happening, but her heart was hurting just from looking at Nick’s expression.

Without another word, Nick carried Damian over to the fire escape, pulled down the first floor stair and climbed it. Riley followed, pulling the stairs up behind her. The building was a four-floor apartment building and they reached the roof before the police boiled out of the busted-open hangar doors and raced around into the alley. Nick had strength to spare and carried Damian like he was a pillow.

They watched the police race to the street, looking for them.

Nick lay Damian down on the roof and pulled his coat away to look at the wound. The black had spread and was a solid mass across his abdomen and chest now. Damian was fighting hard to breathe. It came in little gasps. He barely moved.

Nick hung his head. “I can’t…Damian…I can’t.”

“You have to,” Damian whispered. “Riley needs you.”

Cold washed over Riley as she realized the truth. Damian was dying.
Really
dying. Gargoyle toxin was the only truly fatal substance for vampires.

Riley picked up his hand. “Can’t you fight it?” she asked, trying to hold back her tears. Tears wouldn’t help now.

“Too far gone,” Damian whispered. “Concentrated. Too fast.” His hand squeezed a little, then loosened and she realized that was all the strength he had. It frightened her that he had weakened so much, so quickly. She glanced at Nicholas. He knew what was happening to Damian’s body better than she did, but he was too wrapped up in his own misery.

She bit her lip. “Is there pain?” she asked Damian softly.

“Not now. Not…physical.” He swallowed. “Kiss me. Both of you.” His voice was thready. A breathy whisper.

Riley realized she was crying, then. When had the tears started? Who cared? She pushed them away with her hand and leaned down to kiss Damian. His lips were cold and already the gargoyle toxin had begun to work, for the softness was being stolen. She wanted to stay kissing him until the end, but Nicholas deserved more.

She stroked Damian’s cheek, then forced herself away from him. It felt like she was tearing herself from him. It actually hurt.

Nick stroked his brow. “I don’t know that I can stand this,” he murmured.

Riley hugged herself. The agony in Nick’s voice was so hard to listen to. How could she have wondered if there was anything human left in him? Here it was, naked on his face, raw and painful to see.

“You will,” Damian whispered. “I want you to.”

Nick nodded. “All right. If I must.” His face crumpled for a moment, then he got it under control again. “You want to go now?”

“I have to.”

Nick nodded. He leaned down and kissed Damian deeply and longingly. When he straightened, Damian’s eyes were closed.

Nick stood up. “Love you,” he whispered, so quietly that Riley thought she might have imagined it. He turned to her. His eyes were bleak in the failing afternoon light. “I’ll get you back to the apartment. Come.”

In three days, Nicholas barely moved from the sofa.

He wasn’t just mourning. He wasn’t moving at all. Stone statues showed more life. He needed neither food nor sleep, and was able to stay completely and utterly still. So he remained exactly where he sat for hours at a time, focused inward, not speaking.

Riley moved around the apartment, at times almost forgetting he was there, so motionless was he.

After three days of this, she became worried, though. She knew that Damian had forced Nick to agree not to do something stupid like end his own existence—did vampires even call it suicide? But this motionlessness was not living, either. Was she even being fair, though? Was three days enough to recover from the loss of a relationship that had lasted for centuries? How could she know?

Finally, she went with her gut. She just knew that she had seen the raw human emotions on Nick’s face when Damian lay dying, and now she did not. He was locking them away and that was not a good thing. Not even for a centuries old vampire who should know better.

But how could she possibly crack open his tough old shell, when he knew every strategy she could employ and would recognize it before she even began?

Finally, Riley stumbled over the answer when she sat at the table eating her lonely breakfast, as she watched Nicholas sitting motionless on the sofa, the blue eyes staring into nowhere.

The eyes.

Her heart jumped as she realized she had been staring at the solution all along. Moving casually, as she had been for the last three days, she made her preparations. She showered, dressed in Nick’s green silk robe and nothing else, put on her make-up and a light touch of scent.

Then she settled on the sofa next to him. Her heart, her entire body, was strumming with tension. With need.

She placed her hands on either side of his face and turned his head to look at her. He didn’t resist her touch, but his eyes looked right through her. She shivered at the touch of his gaze.

“Look at me, Nick,” she commanded.

The expression in his eyes didn’t change. Did he even hear her?

“I miss Damian, too, you know. Look at me, goddamn you.”

His eyes focused on her. She could almost feel the surprise and indignation there. But he remained silent. She kept her hands on his face in case he tried to look away and break the direct contact of her gaze, once he realized what she was doing. It was a futile gesture, really. He was so much stronger than her. But over the last three days he had proved that in some ways, she was the strong one.

His eyes stayed locked on hers and she realized with a start that she didn’t know when Nicholas had last fed, or when he needed to feed again. Did stress make him hungry? Was she baiting a thirsty vampire? Too late, far too late to reconsider the wisdom of what she was doing.

His eyes were so blue, she realized with a dazed mind. Mid-winter cloudless day blue. With a start, she realized it had begun. She was caught in his gaze. Drawn into him. Her heart was trying to climb through her chest.

“I can hear your blood pumping through your arteries,” Nick said. His voice was thin, croaky from not being used for three days.

Riley moaned. His fangs were descending. The direct gaze was a primary challenge that a vampire would first tackle by feeding upon the victim. They only subsumed it sexually to avoid the complications of being caught with a dead, drained body. Nick wouldn’t care about that in his current mood.

She licked her lips, trying to tamp down the beginning curlicues of fear. Nick wouldn’t hurt her, she tried to tell herself. “Nick, I need you,” she whispered helplessly. Truthfully. It was an appeal to his better nature. His human nature. And it was a gamble. He could choose to be offended by her need and her essential weakness.

Or he could respond to it, his male ego reaching out to her as she desperately wanted him to. She kept her gaze locked on his eyes. “Feed on me if you have to, Nick. I don’t care anymore. You’ll be doing me a favor.”

His eyes shifted. Focused on her face. His gaze moved down, to the base of her throat and the pulse there. His hand caught in her hair and her head was slowly, inexorably, pulled backward to expose her throat. The strength in his grip told her he could have easily snapped her head back and broken her neck, instead of bending her head back. She blinked up at the ceiling and felt his lips touch her throat. They slid around to rest over her carotid artery and she felt the brush of fangs.

Her heart was roaring inside its cage, banging against her ribs. She thought it might explode if it beat any harder. She could feel its throb in her temples.

“You don’t lie as well as I do,” Nick murmured, his lips brushing against her throat. “Your body gives you away.” He licked her throat. “You no more want to die than I do.” He dropped her onto the sofa on her back and kneeled over her. His fangs were fully extended. Fury made his expression thundery.