Demon Blood (30 page)

Deacon’s veins ran cold. He glanced back at Rosalia, at her wide eyes and suddenly pale face. She’d come to the same conclusion: St. Croix hadn’t caught a human. He had one of the nephilim.

Vampire blood weakened the creatures, made it revert to the human form it possessed. Though that form wasn’t as weak as a human, a vampire could defeat a nephil before it shape-shifted. But once it shifted into its demonic form, even a Guardian wasn’t as strong.

Icy sweat broke out over his skin. Jesus Christ, anyone in this house who wasn’t human was in serious trouble. “Are you still pumping the blood into him?”

If yes, they had a chance. Rosalia could get down there and kill the nephil before it shifted.

St. Croix shook his head. “Now that he’s in chains, they took the IV line out—”

Rosalia flung open the door. To save the vampires, Deacon guessed.

Too late. Before she could take another step, a scream ripped up the stairs and was cut short by the wet sound of tearing flesh.

Her swords at the ready, Rosalia backed away from the open door. She glanced over her shoulder at Deacon, then lifted her sword to point at the front of the house.

Her message was clear: Get the hell out of here.

Not a chance. Deacon knew she was staying on the thin possibility that the second vampire was still alive downstairs, and to slow the nephil down if it came up and went after him. Nephilim had a hard-on for killing vampires, but they’d also slay a Guardian to get to one. He wouldn’t let her stand in the way to save him. They were going to beat this fucker.

Her eyes turned pleading. She tilted her head toward Vin, standing at the edge of the open door, then pointed at the entrance again.

Not asking Deacon to save her son. A nephilim couldn’t hurt a human. She was begging him to take Vin outside so that her son wouldn’t see her die.

Goddammit. No one was dying here. He started for her, drawing his swords.

Before he could take two steps, the nephil filled the doorway. Huge, with red skin and feathered black wings that arched behind the height of the door frame, he held two swords, the blades already bloodied. His eyes glowed crimson.

Deacon saw Rosalia’s muscles tighten in preparation. An instant later, she was nothing but a dark blur of movement, so fast he couldn’t track her. They fought in a whirlwind of crimson and black at the head of the stairs. He heard the clash of metal. A broken sword flew across the room—Rosalia’s. Then everything seemed to slow as she skidded backward.

She’d slipped on her blood.

Her stomach lay open.

Deacon had barely been able to run two more steps in that time. She’d be dead before he could cross half the room.

Eight steps away.

She called in another sword. The nephil laughed—
laughed
, the fucking bastard, as if her determination amused him.

Good. The more the nephil dicked around, the more time he gave Deacon.

And enough time for Vin to register what was happening. Then her son was moving, too. Already standing next to the door, he only needed to take one step. One human step.

An eternity.

But Deacon was just six steps away.

The nephil played with Rosalia again. Their blades rang in a furious cacophony of steel. Blood spattered the walls—all hers. She lost another sword. The nephil caught her arm, wrenched it backward. Deacon heard her bones snap.

Just two more fucking steps
.

The nephil saw Deacon was almost on him and slapped her away. Rosalia crashed into wall, her crossbow splintering. The nephilim turn to Deacon and grinned, exposing long fangs.

Deacon braced himself. The creature liked to toy with his prey. Fine.

Anything that gave them a little more time.

The nephil’s swords sliced the air. Deacon felt his skin open, the slide of his blood. The blades had been so sharp and quick he hadn’t felt any pain. Not yet.

Rosalia cried out. She’d staggered to her feet. The nephil drew his hand back—he wasn’t fucking around with Deacon anymore. Not with a Guardian headed his way. The nephil stabbed his blade toward Deacon’s heart.

At the last moment, Deacon pivoted to the side. The nephil’s sword sliced deeply across his chest.

Vin’s hand closed around the creature’s crimson wrist.

The nephil froze. They only had an instant. That was enough.

Deacon brought his sword around, up through the nephil’s heart. Rosalia leapt, striking the back of its neck. The nephil’s head flew. Rosalia whipped around. Her boot smashed into its chest, sending the body flying back to crack against the wall.

Deacon’s senses swam, the room spinning dizzily. His legs wouldn’t hold. He sat before he collapsed into a heap.

Rosalia dropped to her knees beside him. She held her arm at an awkward angle, her gut still bleeding.

Her face blurred in front of him. His head felt light, empty. He looked down. Oh, Christ. He’d been butchered. His blood was everywhere, pumping from gashes in his chest, his thighs. The nephil had sliced his arteries open—not in one place, but several. His blood pooled on the parquet floor, spreading slowly outward, almost touching Rosalia’s knees.

Bleeding out weakened a vampire, slowed the healing—and if Deacon lost all of his blood, it’d kill him. He needed to feed, and soon.

Vin crouched next to Rosalia, his hand gently cupping her face. “Mama?”

She held his palm to her cheek, then glanced over her shoulder. Deacon couldn’t read the look she gave her son, but Vin apparently did. He nodded and stood.

The softness left his face as he turned toward St. Croix. “Let’s check on your people.”

They’d heard only one scream. Maybe the other vampire had made it.

Deacon didn’t think there was much hope of that.

Rosalia watched Vin escort St. Croix to the stairs. As soon as her son was out of sight, she clenched her teeth and gripped the wrist of her twisted arm in her opposite hand. She yanked it straight, then curled over, as if stifling a scream. She sat motionless for a few moments, her good arm wrapped around herself, before looking up and meeting Deacon’s eyes.

Her gaze turned to worry. Reaching out to him, she touched his neck, where two more cuts spilled blood onto the floor. The slices had been long and deep, and he wasn’t healing fast enough.

A plastic bag appeared in her hand—empty. She wouldn’t receive more blood until tomorrow, he remembered. The scent rose all around them, dark and luscious. He stopped breathing.

Determination set her face. She pointed to her neck.

Deacon laughed, though he could barely manage it. His vow not to drink from her wasn’t so easy to keep now. “No chance, sister.”

His voice sounded wet. He felt blood dripping down the back of his throat and coughed it up.

Her expression turned fierce. Grabbing his shirt, she hauled him closer.

He pulled back. Drinking from her was a risk he wouldn’t take. When he was this hungry, when he needed to feed this badly, the bloodlust would roar. One taste, and he’d lose control, fucking her in a lake of their blood. She’d have to fight him off with a broken arm and her gut split open.

He didn’t need living blood for strength. Any blood would do. So he had two choices: lick it up from the floor, or drink from the dead nephil.

At least the nephil was still warm.

“Not from you,” he told her.

Her hand dropped away. Her expression registered disbelief as he turned toward the nephil. A worried noise sounded from high in her throat.

He paused. A vampire’s blood weakened a nephil. Would a nephil’s blood harm a vampire? “Will it kill me?”

She lifted her hand, a clear gesture saying she didn’t know, before pointing at her neck again. Her eyes pled with him.

He’d had nosferatu blood before, and he’d taken demon blood. Neither had hurt. One had made him stronger. And even if the nephil blood did kill him, the alternative was unthinkable. Just the image of an injured Rosalia struggling under him while he was an animal at her throat, forcing her thighs open and stabbing into her . . .

He shook the image away, feeling sick. No question. He’d risk death.

He lifted the nephil’s wrist to his fangs. He pierced the skin and sucked until the lifeless blood flowed over his tongue. Tasteless, just like dead blood, but strong—stronger than a demon’s. Already, the lightness in his head began to clear.

Rosalia’s face became an unreadable mask, her eyes devoid of emotion. The blood pooled around them vanished. A clean change of clothes dropped to the floor beside him.

She struggled to her feet, looking away from him as if she couldn’t bear to watch, and limped toward the stairs.

The bowels of Lorenzo’s home were fashioned of crudely worked iron and dark wood. Centuries of blood had soaked the dirt floor, drying as hard as concrete. The air still smelled faintly of rot.

Rosalia had known both vampires. Sally Barrows and Gerald Winn had once been part of the London community, but they’d gone off her radar about three years before, only showing up as blips here and there. Strong and clever vampires, passionate about protecting each other and enforcing the community rules, she’d pegged them as future heads of their own group of vampires. That wouldn’t happen now.

After the nephil had broken free, he’d released his anger here. Sally had been slammed into the cell bars with such force that the iron had cut her into narrow strips. Gerald’s neck was a ragged stump, his limbs ripped off.

Vin and St. Croix were laying Sally next to Gerald when Rosalia came downstairs. St. Croix crouched beside the ravaged bodies, his face without expression. His psychic scent, anger layered over grief, gave him away. He felt these murders deeply. So deeply that although his mental shields were strong, he couldn’t conceal his emotions.

Hopefully, his lies would be just as easy to read when she questioned him.

Though her lungs had pieced back together and filled with air, they still felt too tender to speak. She should wait another five or ten minutes. She could let Vin handle it. He knew everything she’d want to ask, and was capable of handling an interrogation.

But she needed it to distract her from the pain in her arm, her stomach—and her heart. Deacon had risked the nephil’s blood rather than drink from her. She should have stopped him, but his decision had felt like another blow from the nephil’s fist, and she’d been too stunned to react. Then it had been too late. He’d taken the blood—and now, only her relief that she could hear him moving upstairs, putting on his clothes, was stronger than the ache of his rejection.

She studied St. Croix. Every picture she’d run across had shown him impeccably groomed, his clothes perfectly tailored, but he’d been willing to get his hands dirty. He’d discarded his jacket and rolled up his sleeves to help move the vampires’ bodies. Crimson streaked his forehead where he’d pushed his fingers through his black hair, either unaware of the blood on his fingers or too angry to care.

He’d been working for Legion, but she wouldn’t yet ask him why. She wanted to see what he’d give her first.

“Two vampires,” Rosalia said, coming to stand beside them. “Who were they?”

He glanced up at her, then stood. “Gerry Winn, and his wife, Sally. Both from London.”

So he offered the truth to her, then—and apparently
they
had trusted this man enough to offer it to him. She turned to Vin. “Will you bring two dust sheets from upstairs? They ought to be covered. They deserve that respect.”

St. Croix’s pale blue gaze followed Vin before returning to her face. “Thank you.”

“I am sorry we did not arrive earlier and warn them. Who managed to catch and restrain the demon?”

No need yet to call the creature a nephil. First she’d discover how much St. Croix knew. It couldn’t be much—and what he had was full of errors. He’d known enough to put a nephil down with vampire blood, but not enough to keep it that way.

“I did.” He nodded toward the stairs after Vin. “The same way he stopped the demon upstairs.”

By grabbing his arm. The nephil couldn’t shake off a human’s grasp; he had to follow the Rules.

Rosalia wasn’t certain she believed him, however. St. Croix looked at her as someone might a page full of fraudulent figures, calculating where to shift numbers so that the equations would balance—as if deciding what she wanted to hear and giving an explanation he thought she’d accept.

“Where did you capture him?”

“London.”

They’d brought him from London in those restraints? “When?”

“Monday.”

The day after the nephilim had slain the community elders. “Why bring him here?”

He glanced at the dank cell, his expression tightening. “I’d heard the dungeon was built to hold a demon.”

No, Lorenzo had built it to hold a Guardian. But the cell probably could have contained a demon for a short time—or a Guardian whose Gift hadn’t allowed her to escape. “You heard that from whom?”