Beauty's Beasts (2 page)

It was the weirdest thing anyone had ever said. But once Sabrina had processed it, she nodded. “Okay then,” she said, clearly trying to hold her pride in place. She stepped out and shut the door.

The man turned back to her. “You have loyal friends.”

“Just the one.”

There was a tap on the apartment door.

“Finally,” the man said. “My friend.” He stood up. “May I let him in?”

“I suppose,” Riley said reluctantly, her heart a runaway train.

He looked down at her from his great height. “I meant what I said. You are quite safe with me, Riley Carson Connors.”

She drew in a shaky breath as he walked to the door. He moved smoothly and gracefully, which was unusual for such a large man. She wondered if he came by his grace naturally, or if it was the product of training. Then she realized she was trying to distract herself with trivial thoughts. She didn’t want to deal with the fact that there was someone else in the world who knew her full name. She didn’t give her second name out to anyone voluntarily. Not even Sabrina knew what the “C” stood for.

The man opened the door. “You’re late.” He whirled and came back to his chair.

The second man to step into her lounge room was simply gorgeous. He was over six feet, too, but an inch or two shorter than the first. Olive skin, black eyes and black hair falling in tangles around his shoulders. A strong nose and jaw. Long fingers that pushed his hair back impatiently as he stood up from dropping a heavy duffel bag on the floor next to the door. The duffel bag had United Airlines tags on it. Surplus army boots, pants and navy coat. Underneath he wore a black singlet.

“Fifteen minutes late, considering the distance I’ve travelled, is hardly—” He looked at her and stopped. His expression changed. His face was so mixed with emotions, Riley could barely read them all. Grief. Guilt. Shock. Horror. Even love. “Tally,” he murmured.

“
Damian
,” the other snapped.

He jumped, then glanced at the first, then at Riley. “Forgive me,” he said and she realized he had a slight accent. “You look so much like your mother, it was a shock.” He bent his head forward, like a formal nod. “I am Damian.”

“Riley,” she murmured. She looked at the other one. “And you?”

“Nicholas.”

She put the can of soda on the side table. It was dripping condensation beads into her lap. “So, now you’ve both come all this way, you’ve told me your names, you’ve both got over the shock of how much I apparently look like my mother. I’ve been polite. Now it’s your turn to tell me what this is all about.”

“You sound angry, Riley,” Nicholas said.

“That’s because I am.” She clenched her hands between her knees. “My mother died when I was barely a year old. So that was just over twenty-seven years ago. I grew up in the foster care system and no one—
no one—
has ever been able to tell me squat about my parents, my family, nothing. Now suddenly, you two guys pop up and start raving about how much I look like my mother. It’s clear you knew her well enough to get all misty-eyed about it. But no offence, you’re…what? Maybe forty at the outside, and that’s pushing it. That means you were ten at the
most
when you knew my parents. What the hell could you possibly know about them and how they died? You were kids back then.”

She clenched her fingers, as she felt the sweat between them. “If you think I don’t know a guy trying to pull a con job on me by now, you’re not nearly as smart as I took you for, and that disappoints me.”

Damian and Nicholas looked at each other. Damian shrugged. “You tell her. You’ll end up taking over the conversation anyway.” He dropped onto the piano stool as if he were weary.

Nicholas leaned toward her. “We don’t have time to be delicate and hedge around your human sensibilities, Riley. So I’m going to give this to you straight. I want you to just deal with it and move on. You are your mother’s daughter. You can handle it.”

She pushed herself up against the back of the armchair, alarmed. “What?”

“Nicholas…” Damian said warningly, from his perch on the stool.

Nicholas was staring at her, his blue eyes unwavering. He shot out his hand toward his “friend,” palm out.
Halt.
His eyes did not move from hers. She felt like he was measuring her. Testing her.

“Your mother, Riley, was one of the greatest demon hunters this world has ever seen. The gifts and expertise she had for hunting runs in her blood. She met and married another great demon hunter, Carson Connors, and their love for each other was the stuff of legend in the underworld.”

Riley could feel the questions bubbling up like a geyser, but Nicholas was not going to give her the luxury of questions.
We don’t have time
. She thrust them aside and opened herself up to absorb what he was saying.

“Your father, Riley, was killed on the day you were born by a gargoyle called Lirgon, the leader of a rogue clan of gargoyles your mother had been hunting down. Lirgon was the last of the clan left, and the strongest. Your father perished. Your mother spent the next fourteen months hunting down Lirgon and when she found him, she killed him. But Lirgon was too strong even for the great Natalia Connors and she died from the wounds Lirgon gave her.”

Damian muttered something and it wasn’t English. A prayer?

Nicholas rolled his eyes at Damian. “The reason I know this is because I was there, Riley. I was your mother’s partner and I helped her hunt down Lirgon after your father died.”

Riley swallowed. The math wasn’t adding up. She knew it and from the expression on his face, he knew it, too.

Nicholas nodded gently. “I know,” he said softly. “Brace yourself, Riley.” He reached for the soda can and handed it to her. Then he opened his mouth a little wider and two long white pointed teeth descended a half inch below the others. “We are vampire, Damian and I. A matter of thirty years is a blink of an eye for us, considering the centuries we have already seen.”

The teeth withdrew again.

Riley gripped the can, her breath coming in short, wheezy exhalations. Only Nicholas’s earlier assurances that she was safe with him kept her in her seat. That and the pure unreality of what he was saying. Except that she had seen his teeth descend.

Deal with it
, he had said.
There is no time
.

“Why are you telling me now?” she said. “Why seek me out?” Her voice was bodiless. Weak.

He nodded. “There has been a series of murders in New York City. Have you been following them?”

She shook her head. “I work, I study. That’s my life.”

“You like roast chicken, Riley?”

“I’m a vegetarian,” she said stiffly.

Damian laughed.

Nicholas smiled. “Very well. You know all those advertisements on TV for roast chicken. When they show someone tucking into a nice juicy chicken leg? They always bite into the rounded part first, hmmm?”

She nodded.

“Lirgon had a signature.” Nicholas sat back, watching her, forcing her to work it out.

“Chicken legs?” she asked blankly.

“He liked…human legs.”

The soda can crumpled under her fist. She moaned.

Nicholas lifted the can to her mouth. “Drink,” he encouraged softly.

She drank.

That was when it hit her. She had been sitting in this room with two men for five minutes and neither of them were drooling over her, or slobbering over her.

Well, they weren’t human in the proper sense of the term. But they were male. Could they even have sex with women? Human women? If the erotic literature was to be believed, they could. But this was reality, not fiction, so…

She brought herself up short again.
She was thinking about sex?
Now?

Riley looked up at Nicholas as she took another sip. He was waiting for her, trying not to show impatience, but that was the only emotion evident in his features.

She glanced at Damian. God damn, but that was one beautiful man. He sat like Nicholas, his forearms on his knees, leaning forward, fingers laced together. There were thin bands of leather around one strong wrist.

“If Nicholas was my mother’s partner, how did you know her?” she asked him.

“I was Nicholas’ lover then,” Damian said. He spoke flatly, without embarrassment, and in the past tense.

“Oh,” Riley said. She couldn’t think what else to say. “How long had you been together?” It felt like the polite thing to ask.

“Four hundred and thirty-two years.” Damian straightened and sat back, shoving his hands in his pockets. End of subject.

“Four…” Riley felt her eyes widening. She turned to Nicholas. “When did you break up?” she demanded, suddenly suspicious.

Nicholas’ face was like marble. “Damian left for Europe a week after your mother died. This is the first time he’s been back. I wasn’t sure he’d come.”

“You weren’t
sure?”
Damian stood up. “We swore an oath, Nick! I’m as bound as you!”

“We don’t have time for this,” Nicholas said coldly. He sat up straighter and looked at Riley. “You have your mother’s genes. You inherited her gifts. You are a demon hunter, Riley, though you have yet to learn this truth. Time will determine whether you are as great a hunter as Natalia Connors.” He got to his feet. “Something is killing people in New York City. I know it is Lirgon, for the thing is eating their legs, just as Lirgon once did. He has been resurrected, as your mother once feared he might be. Damian and I swore that if this day ever arrived we would protect you and do what we could to kill Lirgon once and for all.”

Riley stared at the two men ranged before her.

“We need you to come to New York City with us,” Damian told her. “And there we can show you more about your mother and father’s lives.”

“And while you are there I will train you to kill Lirgon,” Nicholas added.

Deal with it
became Riley’s mantra, because once she agreed to go with them to New York, Nick and Damian dropped their human façade and let her see their true natures. They kept their masks in place only long enough to let Riley convince Sabrina that she wasn’t totally out of her mind to leave with them.

Sabrina took a considerable amount of persuasion before she unhappily accepted Riley’s departure, but Riley refused to just leave without Sabrina’s blessing. Sabrina was the closest Riley had to family in the world. She was her best friend and they had known each other for nearly ten years. They had met when Riley had graduated high school in St. Louis, Missouri, shrugged off the last set of foster parents and become officially independent. She had found a job at Starbucks for the minimum wage and a second at McDonalds across the street. Sabrina had been working at both places as well and within two weeks they’d moved into an apartment together, and acquired two other roommates. They’d been sharing apartments and roommates ever since.

Sabrina had been persuaded by the same two facts that had forced Riley to agree to travel to New York with Damian and Nicholas herself. They knew things about Riley’s parents that Riley would give her eyeteeth to know and when they guaranteed her safety there was a flat sincerity in their tone that was more convincing that a bonded warrantee.

Sabrina had hugged Riley and bade her farewell with tears in her eyes…and had slipped her the can of mace she normally kept under her own pillow. The practical touch was both endearing and typically Sabrina.

Damian and Nicholas were both terrifying and fascinating at the same time. Riley’s first biggest shock was to learn the humbling fact that they considered her to be
“merely” human and quite unintelligent. Both had assumed they would have to make allowances for her lack of processing ability.

As they stuffed Damian’s and her hastily packed bags into the trunk of Nicholas’s beautiful blood-red S-type Jaguar, Damian offered her the passenger seat but Nicholas curtly told her to take the backseat. “You will need your sleep. You won’t sleep much once we arrive.”

“You just don’t want her sitting next to you,” Damian accused him as they settled into the car.

“I want her in prime condition for training when we get there.” Nicholas swerved the car into traffic with unconscious skill.

“You want her, is the primary condition,” Damian corrected.

“Unlike you, Damian, I rose above petty distractions long ago.”

“Tally wasn’t a petty distraction and you were just as devastated by her death as I was.”

“Hey, you
do
remember I’m sitting right here, don’t you?” Riley thumped the back of their seats.

Neither of them replied.

“You both sound like a couple of schoolgirls,” she told them. “You’re not going to fire potshots at each other all the way to New York, are you?”

After a long pause, Nicholas said, “Just go to sleep, Riley.”

“And what happens at sunrise?” she asked.

“Why?”

“I just want to know if I have to tuck you guys in or something.”

She saw Nicholas’ blue eyes in the rear view mirror look at her finally. She couldn’t tell if he was amused or not. “That’s just in stories,” he said softly. “Daylight weakens us, slows us down. We prefer to relax and rest. But we don’t burst into flames at the touch of sunlight.”

“Bet you don’t sparkle, either.”

Damian laughed. It sounded like it was derisive.

Nicholas was still looking at her in the mirror, glancing away from the highway they were now on with the assured confidence of a rally driver. “But we do have the keen sense of smell,” he said. “And I can smell you, Riley Connor.”

In one indrawn breath she grew aware of every sensation. Of the leather under her fingers as she gripped the edges of the seat on either side of her knees, of the slight smell of pine coming from the carpets on the floors and walls of the car, of the scent of musk and male from the two big men sitting in the seats before her—this surprised her the most, for she had thought it took a heartbeat and pulse and body heat to create human-type scents. Her body tightened, the tips of her breasts seemed to swell and she could feel them chafing gently against her bra.

Riley lay down on the seat and pretended to sleep, while her overloaded brain danced and her body zinged with new-found awareness. She wanted them. She wasn’t sure which of them she wanted the most.