Demon Blood (24 page)

“I don’t care.”

She smiled and returned to the bed. “I do.”

He couldn’t argue with that. “This is your room.” He said it as flatly as possible. He wasn’t making assumptions. Not about her, not anymore.

“Yes.” In the space of a breath, she’d changed the sheets and replaced the bedding, then glanced up at him. “With Taylor here, I want you as close as possible.”

So she knew about Taylor’s darker side. “But you don’t sleep. Why would this be close?”

She moved back out into the corridor, opened the door opposite her bedchamber. “I’ll be in here.”

Though the smaller chamber had the same yellow walls and slate floor, there wasn’t any room for personal touches. File cabinets and racks of equipment crowded together at one side of the room, and several computers topped one long worktable. Five TV monitors hung from the walls, running the broadcasts from five twenty-four news stations at a low volume.

“Vincente calls it my War Room. If you want to check in on Theriault and review his tapes, the feed from Paris is there”—she pointed to a computer—“and the surveillance van feed is here.”

She moved to another computer and clicked a few buttons. The screen filled with an infrared image of a man sleeping. Another screen lit up and revealed a thirtysomething man in a narrow space, sitting with his chair tilted back and his feet propped up. A soccer game played on a small monitor behind him.

“That’s Vincente. Here’s the mic if something comes up and you need to be in contact with him.”

Deacon couldn’t imagine a single reason why he would. “All right.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be with Taylor. The bedroom is sealed against light; even if I open the door, no sunlight will fall on the bed. You’ll be safe sleeping there.”

She was worried about
his
safety? Jesus. “Michael’s dead. How in the hell can you trust me?”

Her brows drew together, as if for a moment she didn’t know what to make of his question. “I have to,” she said finally. “I have to trust that you’re the man I think you are, rather than the one Caym forced you to be.”

He wanted to be that, too. He didn’t know if he could.

“Why didn’t you throw this at me?” When he saw her confusion, he clarified, “Michael’s death. You were after me to help. You didn’t bring this up?”

“Why would I? You didn’t kill him.” Rosalia sighed and came closer, her eyes deep and unreadable. “Deacon, Belial’s lieutenant already
had
the information that Anaria used to make her portal to Chaos. He told you that. You were just someone to play with.”

And Rosalia knew that because she’d been in Prague, concealed in her shadows. She’d seen that the demon’s idea of “playing” meant killing everyone—except for Deacon. The demon had hoped that Irena would be the one to slay him, so that Deacon would die at the hands of his friend.

“He dragged you down and slaughtered everyone in your community
because he could
. Because that’s what demons do. He didn’t use you to help Anaria. He didn’t do it for any other reason than because it amused him, and because it was another blow to you.”

Not just him. “And to Irena.”

“Irena’s pain was a bonus. So was Michael. So if you’re looking for another reason why I want to kill all of Belial’s demons and take Anaria, too . . . Well, there it is. Michael is my reason. And so is everyone else who died in Anaria’s path, and in the path of Belial’s demons.”

The Guardian healer who Anaria had killed. Vampires in San Francisco . . . and his entire community. Yeah, he could get behind that reason.

“Maybe I’ll put that in my column, too.”

“No.” She shook her head, smiling again and backing toward the door. “Don’t tell me now. You aren’t supposed to tell me until tomorrow.”

Deacon watched her leave. Everything she’d said was true . . . but that still didn’t absolve him of his part in it. Grimly, he turned toward the computers.

He’d thought he wasn’t fit to kiss her? Truth was, he wasn’t even fit to kiss her goddamn feet.

Watching Theriault pretend to sleep from seven hundred miles away wasn’t any more interesting than standing outside the demon’s apartment and doing the same.

Restless, Deacon left the War Room and stood overlooking the courtyard. Moonlight silvered the trees and left a sparkling trail across the surface of the pool. Both Rosalia and Taylor floated motionless beneath the water. Rosalia’s long hair billowed like a dark pillow, and she’d exchanged her robe for a pale, thin sheath, which clung to her luscious curves. When he found himself staring at the dark shape of her nipples, he went back in.

The surveillance van’s monitor flipped on. “Mother, are you—” Vin broke off and peered at the screen. “Deacon?”

“Yes.”

The younger man laughed. “So she got her claws into you after all?”

Deacon reminded himself that this was Rosalia’s son and that he couldn’t pound his fist through the screen. “Do you need her?”

“Not if you’re there,” Vin said. “The garage watchman is heading into the john, so I’m off to tag our target’s car with a tracker. Can you keep an eye on his screen?”

Deacon glanced at the blob of infrared color on the monitor. “I can.”

So, now he watched two demons pretend to sleep. Rosalia had the right idea. Killing them was better.

He flipped through the folder next to the computer, got this one’s name: Nicholas St. Croix. Yeah, that sounded like a name a demon might make up.

Then the man got out of bed, and Deacon revised his opinion.

After a few minutes, the van door opened and slammed again. Vin’s face appeared in the monitor. “So he’s awake?”

“I don’t think he’s your guy. He took a piss.”

“If he knows he’s being watched, that doesn’t mean anything.” Vin unwrapped plastic from a take-out plate and shoved it into a tiny microwave, then rolled his chair back in front of the screen. “Mother once told me that she used to find demons just by listening to servant gossip. They’re all rich, and a hundred years ago and more they had the servants, the chambermaids. And when a maid started talking about how she never had to empty a pot, Mama would go hunting. So the smart demons think about little things like that if they know there’s any possibility the Guardians might be looking at them. And they fake it.”

“Fake pissing?” Deacon drank his meal every night and couldn’t shake out a drop if he tried.

“They fake it with something else. Before toilets, they used to vanish waste into their cache, and fill up the pot to fool the maid—but that isn’t convincing when they’re under real-time observation. One demon used his blood and a bulb syringe. He filled it up, squeezed it out. The sound is right, and even the infrared is fooled. And while sitting, he’d cut his dick off—that one managed to stump Mama for weeks.”

The microwave beeped. Vin pulled his plate out and dug in, his appetite apparently unaffected. Dinnertime conversation in this abbey must have been a far cry from Deacon’s home. Supper in the Knox home had been a serious affair, meat and potatoes and silence, with the Bible coming out afterward. He’d certainly never thought about whether any prophets or saints had taken a piss.

And he’d get along just fine if he never thought about it again. “You can’t rely on the infrared?”

“We can for vampires. But with demons, the core temperature isn’t so different from a human’s. Throw in variations like room temperature, and it’s easy for someone to read a few degrees hotter or cooler. On a cold night, with humans for comparison, we’d probably be able to pick a demon out. But basing it on a temperature determined through walls, when he’s alone? It’s best not to try.” Vin paused. “But I’m leaning toward human, too. Another day or two of observation won’t hurt, though, until we’re certain.”

Deacon tilted his chair back, and was wondering if Rosalia’s son would be so open to sharing if the topic turned a little more personal when Vin said, “What happened to her in Athens tonight?”

“What?”

“She called around midnight. She didn’t look so good.”

She hadn’t? A knot tightened in his stomach. But Deacon wasn’t going to answer to her son. Only to Rosalia.

“We took out Valeotes and Sardis. The vampire gave her some trouble.”

“Is she going in as a human?”

“Yes.”

Vin looked away from the monitor, his jaw hardening. “Sardis, Jesus. That fucking bastard.”

“You know him?”

“I know enough about him to imagine what happened. But I don’t know them all like Mother does.”

Deacon frowned. “All?”

“Every vampire in Europe. Their names, their history.”

He could believe that. She’d known his history, though few others did. “Every one?”

“Maybe she’s missed a dozen or two, but she can name every vampire in a community, tell you what he did as a human, all of the aliases he’s used and the partners he’s had.”

“Jesus.” That was about a thousand vampires.

Vin shrugged. “She overcompensates for her brother.”

“How’s that?”

“She couldn’t save him. So she wants to save everyone else—and their information is her tool.”

He looked at the cabinets behind him. “There’s a file somewhere?”

“No. She’s got it all up there.” Vin tapped his forehead. “You could find some info on the community leaders and a list of vampires within the communities, but everything else about them, she keeps as stories in her head.” He stopped to take another bite and swallow. “She tells them now and then. I grew up hearing about you and Camille moving groups of refugees out of Nazi-occupied territory. Her favorite is the night you razed through a battalion of Nazi soldiers.”

“She was there?”

“You didn’t see her, did you?” Vin seemed to enjoy that. “She set it all up and ran the whole thing with Camille and a few others.”

He struggled to keep his surprise from showing. He hadn’t known that. So even though Rosalia must already be acquainted with Camille—had run operations with her before—she’d asked Deacon to help her now. That couldn’t just be about Yves. What the hell could he do that Camille couldn’t?

“She set all of that up?” It hadn’t been enough; it could never have been enough—but everything they’d managed to accomplish had pulled through, beautifully.

Just like every demon kill she’d set up so far.

“Yes. Why do you think you were never discovered during the daytime?”

He’d always thought they’d just been lucky. He’d still been in his early years as a vampire—not even twenty years with fangs, and had only just begun to resent how Camille managed him. But now he saw how every person involved had always been in the perfect position, each according to his skill set. How everyone had the information they needed. And how they’d always had a backup plan, so that every human who’d come with them had made it through.

Realizing that Vin waited for an answer, he said, “Camille chose secure locations.”

The other man nodded. “Camille
is
good. Mother is better.”

Deacon was beginning to believe that.

The sun was rising when Taylor disappeared again. Hoping she’d found a little solace, Rosalia left the pool and flew upstairs. In her chambers, Deacon lay on the bed, a sheet draped over his hips, his bare chest unmoving. Even in sleep, his muscles retained their definition. The ridged plane of his abdomen seemed to call her fingers to explore.

She resisted the impulse, marveling instead that he was here. God, she couldn’t believe he’d returned,
willing
to help. For some reason, between Athens and Rome, he’d decided that destroying the nephilim and Belial’s demons mattered to him. Considering that he’d left Rosalia on the side of a road, that reason probably hadn’t anything to do with her . . . but she didn’t care. She didn’t know what had brought him back, but she thanked God with all of her heart that he’d come.

She watched him for a few moments before shaking herself and crossing into the War Room, where Vincente was still at it—and looking exhausted.