Demon Blood (2 page)

Darkness settled over the household. Quiet and frightened, the girl and her brother went largely unnoticed by their father, except for when he subjected them to small torments for his amusement. They noticed him, however, watching his movements as mice will watch a cat until it has left the room, and they saw that he neither slept nor ate. In rare moments, they glimpsed the crimson glow of his eyes, the appearance of scales over his skin, and cloven hooves. They witnessed him move inhumanly fast and fly with bats’ wings; they saw him battle and behead a woman who wore wings of white feathers. They watched, and as the years passed, the children understood what their father had become.

The girl shielded her brother from their father when she could, and was relieved when the boy’s schooling took him from their home. Though the girl prayed for a similar escape through a good marriage, no happy fate awaited her; eager to form an alliance with a noble family, the demon arranged her wedding to an aged man known for his perversity. The girl fled and found sanctuary in an abbey whose prioress had once been a friend of her mother’s, and who pitied her. The girl’s father did not pursue her, and she realized that although he had power enough to kill an angel, he dared not cross the Church.

Five years passed. Protected and cloistered, the girl grew into a woman and took her solemn vows. Her brother rarely visited, but they corresponded often, and his missives brought her great joy. Over time, however, his infrequent journeys to the abbey stopped altogether. Dark and melancholy sentiments filled his letters, until they, too, stopped. She still wrote to him daily, begging him to visit her again. Five more years passed before he did, and he was in the company of her father.

They came at night. Despite the hour, she spoke with them in the convent parlor, through the grating that separated the cloister from the outside world. Even obscured by the grating, however, she could see the changes in her brother: his pale appearance, the hunger in his gaze, the teeth that would rival a wolf’s—but the greatest alteration was his manner, which had become cold and cruel. He looked upon her with disdain, and she could see no love in him. Alarmed, she began to retreat, but with a few words, her father halted her escape. He told her the abbey offered no protection from her brother and offered her a terrible choice: Either she would die by her brother’s hand, or all of her sisters would.

Believing that her brother would stay his hand at the ultimate moment, she chose her own death. Though no longer a girl, she could not help but remember the love she and her brother shared when they had been young, and how they had protected each other. He’d been corrupted by her father, his soul twisted, but she could not believe her brother would truly kill her.

She was wrong. He used his fangs to tear open her throat. As her lifeblood poured onto the floor, she watched her brother walk away from the abbey, leaving her for dead. She heard her father laughing.

He did not laugh long. Just as he had once slain an angel, another appeared in a flare of white light and struck the demon’s head from his shoulders. The angel lifted her from where she lay dying, told her he was named Michael, and he, too, offered her a choice: to become as he was, a protector who guarded humans against demons; or to die, and face what awaited her in the afterlife. She chose to live, was transformed and taken to Caelum, a shining realm of light and beauty. There, she learned they were not angels, but Guardians. She heard their story, and years later, she would tell it to children whom she called her own:

When the girl heard this she was overjoyed, for it meant that although her brother had become a vampire, he could still be saved. His transformation had not corrupted his soul; the demon had. She persuaded Michael not to slay her brother and allow her the chance to undo what the demon had done.

She could not immediately begin, however—first, she had to complete one hundred years of training in Caelum. Those years were filled with hope. Even the discovery of her Gift to manipulate darkness and shadows, so painful to use beneath Caelum’s sun-filled sky, did not diminish her happiness. After a century, she returned to Earth, her hope still bright within her chest.

It took almost two more centuries for her brother to kill that hope. Then he was killed, too.

And so the tale closes with the girl left alone and her hopes shattered, with no one to save—and the demon, though defeated, ultimately the victor. Unlike other stories, this does not have a happy ending.

Not yet.

The string quartet in the corner of the ballroom slipped from a sleepy minuet into a sleepy waltz. Rosalia lifted her champagne flute to her lips to cover her sigh. Thank God for the demons. If not for their conspiring, boredom would have killed her by now.

The small circle of humans she’d joined burst into laughter. Rosalia smiled vacuously in response. She hadn’t heard the joke, but no one at the gala would expect a reply, anyway. She’d changed her dark hair to a wispy, baby blond, donned a vapid expression over soft features, and paired them with an insubstantial pink dress for that very reason: She wouldn’t be expected to talk. She only needed to stand and look pretty. So she stood with humans she didn’t know in the center of a chateau ballroom, watching three of Belial’s demons solidify an alliance.

Others watched them, too. Some humans glanced in their direction; some stared. Rosalia could not blame them. Like every demon she’d known, they’d disguised themselves in sinfully handsome human forms—sensual lips and blade-straight noses, black hair glinting under the crystal chandeliers, as if they’d each used an advertisement in a men’s fashion magazine as a template. With a backdrop of priceless paintings mounted on gold-painted walls, they formed a would-be triumvirate with Bernard and Gavel as the base and Pierre Theriault at the top.

Of the three, Theriault ranked the highest in both Belial’s army and Legion Laboratories, the corporation that both concealed and supported their activities on Earth. Two years ago, when the Gates to Hell had closed, preventing Belial from overseeing the demons that remained on Earth, Legion began to serve as a communication network. Through it, one of Belial’s lieutenants issued orders and received reports—until he’d been slain by the Guardians. Now, with no clear successor to the lieutenant and no contact from Hell, Belial’s demons were maneuvering for his position, and all of them were arrogant enough to imagine themselves in the spot. But if Bernard and Gavel thought they’d ride the wake of Theriault’s ascent, they were as foolish as he was. Theriault’s particular brand of arrogance bordered on stupidity.

No, Rosalia amended. Not
bordering
stupidity. He’d flung himself over that line the second he’d begun discussing the alliance in a public room, and using English instead of the demonic language. Good Lord, the idiocy. Though the chateau was just north of Paris, perhaps fifteen people out of the hundreds in the ballroom didn’t understand at least rudimentary English.

Even if Theriault imagined that the string music floating over the room and the crowd’s chatter would conceal their voices from humans, he hadn’t made sure there weren’t any Guardians or other demons in the vicinity. Though strong enough for Rosalia to feel, Theriault’s psychic sweep hadn’t penetrated her mental shields. At that shallow depth, her mind would seem no different from a human’s.

Careless. Stupid. Rosalia had many reasons to slay the demons, but at this moment, making the consequences of that carelessness the last thing they ever saw was the most tempting reason to shove her swords through their eyes.

But she wouldn’t slay them. Not tonight. She’d come to the gala to observe Theriault, and to judge how much of a threat he’d be if he led Belial’s demons. Not much. But it hadn’t been a wasted trip. She’d overheard repeated mention of one demon standing in Theriault’s way, one he’d considered too powerful to take on alone: Malkvial.

She hadn’t yet learned who Malkvial was. Rosalia didn’t know many demons by their true name, only by the human identities they used. She needed to find this one out, soon, either by listening in on Theriault or by other means.

A soft crackle sounded in her ear, and her attention shifted. The noise indicated that Gemma had opened the microphone connecting the tiny receiver bud in Rosalia’s ear to the surveillance van outside the chateau. Rosalia couldn’t perform a psychic sweep without revealing herself to the demons, but she hadn’t gone in blind.