Demon Blood (11 page)

But when she’d woken up again, he’d been a dark scream echoing around inside her. Sometimes he was quiet. But when he wasn’t . . .

Feeling her gorge rise again, she stared out into the street, breathing deeply. A jogger ran by, ponytail bouncing. Farther down the block, a small car started up and pulled away from the curb. London woke up just like any other city, apparently. A man in a suit and carrying a briefcase poked at his phone as he walked toward the subway station.

No, not subway here. The underground, maybe, or the metro. Tube? Whatever the hell it was, she could feel the train clacking and rumbling beneath the street, could hear it shriek by, then squeal and brake. She’d been able to ignore most of the city’s background noise, but that one drilled into her head every time. God.

She lifted her hand to rub at her temple, and paused when she noticed the guy watching her from across the street and down the block a little way. A good-looking guy, tall and dark-haired, but since Michael hadn’t come tearing up through her head, not someone to worry about.

Not really someone she wanted to say hello to, either. That weird little noise in her mind that she’d begun associating with her psychic senses told her the man was curious—maybe wondering whose house the obviously screwed-up redhead had stumbled out of, and would he catch anything if he passed by too close?—but there was coldness there, too. It took a real piece of work to look at a woman hugging herself on a door-step across the street and not feel an ounce of concern.

He turned away, and she thought about flipping the bird after him, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

The underground train rumbled and squealed. She cupped her hands over her ears, sucked in a long breath, and caught a faint thread of scent—like hot metal, like dried blood.

Then
he
was in her, pushing apart pieces of her mind, overwhelming every thought. She gagged and tried to fight, had a flash of memory—
not hers, not hers
—of a pale hairless monster and long bloodied fangs. Nosferatu.

No. She yanked at her hair, trying to yank him out of her brain. Pain pushed him back, as if he wondered where it’d come from and whom he needed to fight, but it wasn’t enough. Shoving to her feet, she staggered her way back into the house, where the only scent was blood—fresh blood, vampire blood—and that cold, cold anger swept over her again.

Then he let go. Taylor braced her hands on her knees, her chest heaving. The vampires’ murders pissed him off, but she thought there was something more to it—that he had realized something else was going on here. Probably the same reason why Mariko had wanted her to poke holes in the “It’s not a demon” theory she’d been forming.

Something bad. Something that was going to kill more than just two people.

“Holy shit, Taylor. Are you okay?”

Taylor looked up. Mariko’s brow furrowed, concern sharpening her voice. Taylor nodded, forced herself to straighten.

Mariko’s gaze fell to her feet. “Where’d you lose your shoes?”

Oh, damn him. She didn’t want to see, but she could already feel the cool hardwood beneath her soles. She looked down. Her pale, narrow feet were bare.

Just like Michael’s always were.

Realization softened Mariko’s face. “Oh. Damn. Why does he do that?”

I don’t know
, Taylor thought, and she didn’t—but the words came out anyway, “Because even if you can’t see or hear them coming, you can feel them.”

Mariko tensed. “He thought something was coming?”

“Not coming. Just . . . somewhere.”

“What was it?”

Nosferatu.
But she didn’t get a chance to say it.

On a dark wave, Michael came screaming to the surface and took her away.

Had she thought persuading Deacon would be so easy?

Rosalia had known it wouldn’t be. She didn’t know why her failure bothered her so. She would convince him to help her, eventually. He’d already come further in one night than she’d expected him to.

And she didn’t know why she took his rejection as a personal, emotional blow, when nothing like that existed between them. Yet Rosalia couldn’t let it go. She’d spent the past few hours reviewing every word of their conversation in her hotel room, every nuance of his expression, wondering if she could have said anything differently—or if she’d said something better left unspoken. She replayed him closing that door over and over. And each time was a spike through the heart.

She shouldn’t do this to herself. Unfortunately, she didn’t have much else to do.

Clayton Conley had spent the morning exploring Prague with Nikki Waters, an American who’d moved with him when he’d transferred from Legion’s New York offices. Shadowing the couple through the streets of Old Town hadn’t been a hardship; Rosalia had always loved this city, the pastel buildings with their delicately ornamented façades; the smoky fragrance of grilled sausages that billowed from restaurant doors and lingered; the people at the sidewalk tables, whose conversations over beer or coffee often sounded both intense and lighthearted, all at once.

Not so Conley and his lover. As they sat for their lunch, Rosalia watched them from a café across the street and listened to their tense silence, broken now and again by her shrill complaints and his insulting replies.

Such had been the entire morning. Though Nikki’s continual whining irritated Rosalia, she could dredge up some sympathy for the homesick woman. Her primary complaint cited how often Conley left her on her own in the unfamiliar city; Rosalia could have pointed out dozens of other foreign women on the same street who had been getting by on just a little backbone and initiative, but she understood the loneliness behind the woman’s complaints.

Rosalia couldn’t feel sympathetic toward Conley. Every word he chose cut like the edge of a poisonous blade. He belittled his lover for her ignorance, made fun of the people around them, and treated the waiter like a servant. When he told Nikki to pass on dessert or risk turning into a fat cow, Rosalia began to hope that he
was
a demon, simply so that she’d have the pleasure of watching him die later.

And his behavior
did
resemble a demon’s. Unfortunately, many humans could be just as cruel.

So could vampires.

Only seven years before, she’d sat at a café table similar to this one, in the same city, listening to a young vampire beg Deacon to take him into his community and offer his protection. The vampire had been fleeing Rome after serving Lorenzo for only three of the twenty-five years required by the community contract, unable to withstand any more of her brother’s mental cruelties.

Many other community leaders would have refused to protect the vampire from Lorenzo. Before Rosalia had returned from Caelum, her brother had slain community leaders who’d harbored runaways, fearing that leniency would be interpreted as weakness. She’d managed to thwart him since her return, but by that time, vampires throughout Europe had become so terrified of him that few dared try to escape, and fewer communities would harbor those who did.

Deacon had known that Lorenzo would come for him, yet he’d still given the young vampire his protection, confirming every belief she’d had in his goodness and his courage, even in the face of a powerful opponent.

In ninety years, he’d confirmed it many times, so often choosing the right path over the easy or the safe one. She just needed to convince him that her path was just as important, just as right.

Always easier said than done.

A woman passing by Rosalia suddenly dropped into the chair to her left. Taken by surprise, Rosalia called in her bladed fan beneath the table and turned. When she saw Mariko’s familiar face framed by black hair cut into an angular fringe, she let out a breath.

“No Gifts,” Rosalia said. “No psychic senses.”

“I know. I’d heard you were hiding.” Mariko looked Rosalia up and down, taking in her jeans, sandals, and red T-shirt. “Not in your usual way.”

“No.” Because she wasn’t hiding. The exposure made her uncomfortable, but she wouldn’t be recognized. She’d spent two hundred years wearing other skins, except for when she’d been with Guardians and her vampires in Rome.

Mariko pointed to Rosalia’s plate, piled high with pastries. “Are those koláče?”

“Yes.” Sampling food from carts and cafés throughout the morning had been the best part of shadowing Conley. Knowing her friend’s dislike of anything that had once resembled a fruit, she said, “The ones at the bottom are filled with cheese.”

Mariko dug in and snagged two. Quick to laugh, quick to fight, the Guardian had trained in Caelum during the last twenty years that Rosalia had been a novice. Rather than being killed by her brother, Mariko had become a Guardian by saving hers. When Rosalia returned to Earth with the intention of helping Lorenzo, Mariko had been Rosalia’s staunchest supporter. By the time Mariko became a full-fledged Guardian, however, only her friendship with Rosalia prevented her from killing the vampire herself.

Rosalia wasn’t sorry she hadn’t given up on Lorenzo. And she was forever grateful that Mariko hadn’t slipped in and killed her brother behind Rosalia’s back, like hacking off a gangrenous limb. Mariko preferred to get the pain over quickly, to make clean breaks.

Rosalia admired that. She never managed to do it herself.

“How did you find me?”

“I called Gemma. Is that the one you’re looking at?”

“Yes.”

Knowing better than to say “demon” aloud, Mariko kept it simple. “Is he?”

“I don’t think so. Look at her wrist.”

She knew Mariko would immediately recognize the bruises in the shape of fingers on Nikki’s wrist.

Mariko whistled through her teeth. “Bastard.”

“And still alive,” Rosalia pointed out.

Demons couldn’t physically hurt humans. If they did and broke the Rules, a nephil would be called—teleporting to the demon’s location—to slay him. A demon might fight back, but the nephilim were stronger, faster, than demons. Even most Guardians couldn’t defeat a nephil alone.

Rosalia added, “But I’m not certain it was he who hurt her. So I wait.”

“And if he did and is human? You’re hiding, so you can’t pull your ‘I’m going to shape-shift into a scary bitch and frighten him straight’ routine.”

That routine never worked as well as it should, anyway. “Maybe something else.”

“This is why we all need dogs,” Mariko said, frowning. “We could sic them on the people we don’t like.”

“Hmm,” was Rosalia’s only response. She studied her friend. Mariko seemed edgy—making inane comments and picking at her pastry filling, but not yet taking a bite. Was she not doing her usual thing, either? Perhaps putting something off?

“Why would you call Gemma?”

Mariko took a deep breath. “The London community elders were slain last night and no one claimed their position,” she said, then crammed the pastry into her mouth.

Oh, God. The slaughter of the vampire communities in every other city had been preceded by the deaths of the communities’ leaders. Why the nephilim killed the elders first, no one knew—only that each massacre had those early deaths in common.

“How much time separated the others? How much time between the elders being killed and the entire city?” Rosalia had only heard the stories secondhand. She’d been beneath a church in Rome with a spike through her forehead when her brother had been killed—then a month later, her family. All slaughtered by the nephilim.

“The shortest was two weeks. The longest was three months.”

“In Seattle, they stopped the slaughter.” More than a year had passed since a Guardian had slain the nephil who’d killed the Seattle elders. That vampire community hadn’t been targeted again.

“And we’re going to try to stop it in London, too. I’m here to tell you that, although you wanted everyone to stay out of Europe, a few of us will be in London.” Mariko held up her hand, though Rosalia hadn’t been going to protest. She couldn’t look for the nephil in London, find Malkvial,
and
bring the vampire communities together under Deacon. “We’re talking about evacuation, but there isn’t another community that wants to risk taking them in and moving the target to their cities. So we might bring them here to Prague.”

Where many of the vampires’ homes and gathering places still lay empty after Caym had slaughtered Deacon’s community. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.

“So we have two weeks—maybe—until another city is slaughtered,” Rosalia said.

Mariko nodded.

London had two hundred and seventy-three vampires in their community. Rosalia knew their names and faces, their stories. And if the Guardians—Rosalia’s friends—were in London when the nephilim came, hoping to stop their attack . . . many would die.

Mariko read her face. “So whatever you have planned, Rosa—”

“I need to do it fast.”