Demon Blood (10 page)

Without a word, he held the drinking glass out to her, and she took it—again, comparing. Not just a large hand, but larg
er
. So capable of holding more than hers did.

“Thank you.” She opened the door wider, inviting him inside.

He began to shake his head, then stopped, as if something had caught his attention. Perhaps the monitors, she thought. Or he’d heard something from the audio surveillance. Green eyes narrowing, he came inside.

He hadn’t always moved so quietly, she knew. Boxing had lightened his feet, and, like the muscle, he’d carried it after his transformation. Despite that quietness, she didn’t know whether the surveillance equipment or the vampire looked more out of place among the blue-silk sofas, the delicate furniture, and the unused bed piled with white lace pillows. He wasn’t exactly a bull in a china shop, but the surroundings were so feminine, he overwhelmed them, made everything seem off balance.

Or maybe he just overwhelmed
her
.

At the balcony doors, the filmy white curtains stirred from a breeze. She closed the doors while Deacon examined the equipment. Theriault probably wasn’t listening, but at this time of night when few humans were awake, the people who were up seemed louder by comparison. She wouldn’t make it easy for the demon to hear them.

Deacon looked over when the latch closed. Studying her, perhaps trying to puzzle her out. Finally, he nodded toward the door. “A radio would help with that.”

Relief rushed through her. Yes, a radio would create background noise—and Deacon’s suggestion meant that he intended to have a conversation.

Progress.

Her computer had music. She turned it on low. High volume could completely cover their conversation, but it might draw attention, too.

“This is one hell of a setup.”

She glanced over her shoulder. He’d come to stand next to her. When she straightened, he leaned over the keyboard and tabbed through the computer screens. He paused on the infrared.

“From across the street?”

“Yes.” She crossed her arms, tucking her fingers into her elbows. She told herself that she should be looking at the screen, too, but his black trousers fit him well.
Very
well.

“You don’t need this kind of surveillance to kill him.”

“No.”

“Why bother, then?”

How many reasons did he want? She offered the simplest one. “I’m trying to find another demon through him.”

He straightened, and she felt how close he was again, how much bigger and taller. And if she’d been uncertain about how she’d decided to proceed before, it vanished when he said, “So you aren’t planning to kill him, but are looking for information. I’m not going to help you with that, sister. And if I get the chance, I’ll slay him, even if it means you don’t get what you need.”

She hadn’t said anything about help since he’d come in. So her request had been on his mind.

“I don’t need you for information,” she said. “I need you to kill Belial’s demons.”

The look Deacon gave her said she was a lunatic. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“Kill
different
demons. For now.”

“Why would I do that?”

She sighed. He’d taken the tone of a man who asked just because he wanted to hear the answer, not because there was any possibility that he might change his mind. “Because if
I
do it, they will have a reason to unite under a new lieutenant and move against the Guardians.”

“That’s not my problem, sister.”

“Then what of this one? The one who will lead them plans to destroy vampire communities and harvest their blood rather than protect them from the nephilim.”

“
My
community is already dead. The others can do a better job of protecting theirs.” But that one had gotten to him. He shook his head, turned away from her, and just as quickly turned back. “So that’s who you’re looking for.” He gestured at the infrared. “The one who will lead them.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll slay him?”

“Eventually. Yes.”

“But you want me to kill others before that.”

“Yes. And when the pieces are in place, we will kill them all.”

“All?” He stared at her. “How?”

She almost sighed again. He asked, but only to humor her. Or to humor himself.

“Trap them inside my Gift and blow them up.”

Probably. She hadn’t worked that through yet. Only the slaughter that came before—only the part where Belial’s demons slaughtered the nephilim. How to destroy the demons that remained, however? Without Michael, she didn’t know yet how she would slay so many at once—but she wouldn’t risk the other Guardians. And if all went well, Deacon would be far away, too.

Rosalia didn’t think she would be. She didn’t see
how
she could be, and still be certain that no demons escaped. And without Michael, she simply didn’t see any other way. But she hoped to God she found one.

“Don’t do that,” he said roughly.

Startled, she looked up at him. “What?”

“That sad little . . .” He broke off. Looked away. “I don’t know what you’ve got planned, sister, but leave me out of it. I’m not killing demons for
you
.”

No. On behalf of his community. “I’m not asking you to do it for me. But how many will you slay before one kills you? Ten? Fifteen? With me, you can see them all die.”

He shook his head. “That’s not the same.”

“You want them dead. Does it really matter if you do it with your sword or arrange it so that they all die at once?”

His fists clenched, as if he was feeling his weapons gripped within them. A deadly smile formed on his lips. “Yeah. It does.”

“So it feels better.” Crushing bones. Spilling blood. “That’s not revenge. That’s therapy.”

Deacon, when he smiled for real, had a slow, sexy smile. Her breath caught. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen it in ninety years. This was the first time it’d ever been aimed at her.

“Sister, there isn’t a shrink in this world who wouldn’t say therapy is exactly what I need.”

That was probably true. “But they wouldn’t suggest a form that will end up killing you.”

He wasn’t bothered by that. His smile didn’t fade. “No.” His gaze slipped down her form, then returned to her face, lingering on her mouth. “But the other type of therapy I’ve been getting hasn’t helped.”

With the women he’d been feeding from. She couldn’t offer him any better. Her sexual skills were limited, and she couldn’t judge herself with him. How would she react if he kissed her? She didn’t know. She couldn’t control her reactions with him as easily as she did around others. Already, her heart beat a little harder, just imagining.

But it was foolish, pointless. Even if she had experience, it wouldn’t compare to what he’d had with Eva and Petra. He’d been with them for sixty years. Judging by everything that Rosalia had observed, they’d been bighearted, fun-loving women. Partners even before they’d met Deacon, they’d loved each other in a way that their affection for Deacon hadn’t matched. But they’d all shared a deep friendship, and their love for one another was unmistakable, even to an outsider.

When Deacon had witnessed their deaths, it had ripped out a part of his heart. And she wondered if anyone had said they were sorry for his loss in the past six months. A pariah in the vampire community, no condolences were laid at his feet. Only blame.

“I haven’t said before, but . . . I am sorry, Deacon. About your community—and your partners.”

“Me, too.” His shoulders fell. He glanced at the balcony doors, as if they could see through them to Theriault’s apartment. Then anger seemed to slip into him again, straightening his back, hardening his face. “All right. Good luck with all this, sister.”

He was leaving. Rosalia fought her disappointment. She hadn’t expected differently, had she? But when he opened the door, he glanced back.

Hope spurred her on. The words tumbled out. “Deacon, I truly need your help. Please.”

He looked at her for a long second. Then he left, closing the door behind him.

The two vampires—one male, one female—lay facedown on the bed, their wrists chained together at the small of their backs. They’d both been sexually violated before their hearts had been cleaved through from behind.

Or perhaps the violation had been afterward. Taylor wasn’t certain. Perhaps the physical trauma was telling her, but she didn’t know enough about vampires and their rate of bruising, bleeding, and healing to make an educated guess. Not that those details mattered here—those were for the criminal investigation and the courts. And whoever had done this wouldn’t face either.

Even knowing that, Taylor still took in the details as she walked through the room. These vampires had led the London community, one of the largest vampire communities in the world, and it showed. The enormous carved bed looked like a prop in a castle from an Elizabethan television drama. The sheets had a designer label. An antique lamp lay in shards on the floor—the only indication that they’d fought their assailant. If they’d had any defensive wounds, those had already healed. But in the end, they hadn’t struggled; they’d turned their faces toward each other. To offer strength, to speak of love—Taylor didn’t know. But it was the detail that got to her. The one that made her stomach clench with anger and hate, the one that made her want to hunt the motherfucker down and make him pay, to bring these people just a little bit of justice.

“So what do you think?”

Taylor glanced toward the bedroom entrance, where Mariko stood with her shoulder braced against the door frame, her thumbs hooked in the pockets of her low-slung jeans. Dark, solemn eyes watched her from under heavy bangs, and the sharply angled cut of her hair—short at her nape, shoulder-length in front—better suited a comic book convention than a crime scene. Taylor had only met Mariko twenty minutes ago in San Francisco, just before they’d teleported here, and she hadn’t been able to shake the impression that a geeky sorority girl lived in that two-hundred-year-old Guardian body.

Two hundred years old. That was a hell of a lot more experience than Taylor had. “Why are you asking me?”

“You’re the detective.”

Once upon a time, Taylor had been. She didn’t know what she was now.

But she looked around, gathered her impressions. “It all happened in here. They’ve got a ton of furniture and breakables in the other rooms, but that lamp is the only thing out of place. They weren’t chased through the house. They just . . . didn’t have time to escape.”

Two vampires, the strongest in the community. If another vampire had done this—or even if there had been several others—there would have been more indications of a fight. So someone much faster and stronger had probably done this. Not a nosferatu, though, because there was too much blood, and the bodies weren’t torn apart.

Taylor had seen what nosferatu did to their victims. Investigating those murders was how she’d first become tangled up in all this crazy Guardian and vampire shit. God, that felt like forever ago, but it’d only been a little over two years. And she was still feeling her way around.

She glanced at Mariko. “A demon?”

“Even the rapes?”

Demons didn’t experience sexual arousal. They could fake it, though. “Rape isn’t always about sex.”

“Power, right? But that’s the problem here—if he was going for pain, to show them he was in charge, he could have done worse. A
lot
worse. And if it was about power, he’d probably have done it in front of their community.” Mariko paused, and her troubled gaze landed on the bed. “And I really hope you’ll poke holes in what I just said.”

Taylor couldn’t. And an all-too-familiar darkness seemed to be pushing its way up the back of her head, just under her skull. Sometimes the darkness screamed. Now it was just there, watching and waiting—and when Taylor glanced at the vampires on the bed again, it became coldly, coldly angry.

Her stomach churned. Mariko looked at her, the corners of her mouth suddenly tense.

Taylor knew what she saw. The obsidian eyes.

Not trusting her voice—not trusting that it would be
her
voice—she gestured to the door. When Mariko nodded, Taylor fled through the house, out the front. She stopped on the porch, gulping the cool pre-dawn air. Sinking to the steps, she clutched her stomach, trying not to puke all over the sidewalk.

He receded, but Taylor could still feel him. She could
always
feel him. And she hated that in six months, she’d become so accustomed to his presence that she only noticed when he pushed harder into her awareness, when he tried to take over. But always, he was there.

A weight in her hand made her look down. She’d called in a dagger. For an instant, she wanted to stab it into her thigh. Into her stomach. Let him drain out with her blood. If that didn’t do it, she could cut him out.

She’d tried that before, though. It didn’t work.

Vanishing the steel blade, she pushed her hands through her hair, tried to breathe steadily. Breathing was important. Michael never breathed unless he needed to talk. Too many times, she’d become aware of her breath and wondered how long it had been since she’d taken one. Aware of every little detail that said she was herself—that said the demon-spawned fucker hadn’t taken her over.

And the brutal thing was, before he’d tethered himself to her from Hell, she’d actually started to like him. Not much. As a big, dark, and scary type, Michael had never been someone she’d felt comfortable around. But he had a protective vibe going on, and she’d appreciated that. In her family, with her partner, when she’d been on the job, they watched each other’s backs. That was what she’d grown up with, a code that went down to her bones: You take care of your own people. Michael’s people were everybody—and he watched
everyone’s
back. That was something she could admire. And it didn’t hurt that he was easy on the eyes, and that when she’d been dying, he’d kissed her and the whole fucking world had exploded with light.