Demon Blood (53 page)

“I’m willing to make that effort,” he managed.

“So am I.” She came to him, ran her fingers over the urn cradled in his arm. “We have both lost too many friends, Deacon. Let us not lose another.”

Speechless again, he could only watch her walk across the garage. She paused at the makeshift curtain they’d put on the wall, and turned.

“I should warn you that I’m more likely to punch friends.”

“I know.” Her fists had knocked out his teeth more than once.

She narrowed her eyes, as if considering. “Maybe next time.”

She passed through the wall, the curtain falling into place behind her. A moment later, he heard Rosalia’s soft inquiry, and Irena’s accented reply. He moved toward the curtain, and lifted heavy fabric aside.

In the painful flare of light, he saw Irena’s fiery hair, the brilliant color in the blooming garden, and Rosalia’s beautiful smile before his vision went dark.

A single moment that had been worth ten thousand times the pain.

As soon as Rosalia saw the wedding planner out, she returned to the garage. Immediately she spied the iron urn on the worktable, recognized the beauty of the sculpture on the lid. Tears stung her eyes. Irena was not always the barbarian, and Rosalia could not imagine how much that meant to him.

Deacon slid out from beneath the car on a little rolling plank, and she crouched beside him.

“We have tonight free, if you know of a place you’d like to take them.”

Shaking his head, he sat up. His voice was raw. All of him was raw, she realized, down to the core.

“I’ll do it after we’ve finished. And instead of making a promise to them, I can tell them it was done.”

“Okay. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, princess. Just fine.”

He wasn’t, but she let him have the lie. She touched his shoulder as she rose to her feet, and it was as if he broke. Turning toward her, he kneeled on the concrete and buried his face against her stomach, his arms wrapping around her waist. His body shuddered. She tried to sink to her knees, to hold him, but he didn’t let her come down to the floor. Her heart aching, she smoothed her hands over his hair, uncertain whether he wept from grief, relief, or a mixture of both.

Irena’s gesture had torn him open, exposing a need for forgiveness he hadn’t admitted—one he probably had not admitted even to himself. And Rosalia had never thought Irena, hard and unyielding, would give it. She’d never been more grateful to be wrong.

She brushed the wetness from his cheeks when he raised his head, his gaze searching her face.

“Two days,” he said hoarsely, then stood, sweeping Rosalia into the cradle of his arms. “Remind me why the hell we’re here instead of in your bed?”

Then his mouth was devouring hers, and she couldn’t remember, either.

Malkvial chose to use the catacombs beneath the church.

For an instant, Deacon was certain that the demon had found out about Rosalia. Had known that she’d been beneath the church for eighteen months, and a hollow dread filled his chest, as he thought that everything had gone wrong, that both he and Rosalia were fucked now.

But the demon didn’t look as smug as when he’d reminded Deacon of how he’d betrayed Irena in this same church. No. The bastard was wary, keeping a good span of aisle between him and Deacon. And Deacon realized the simple reason he’d chosen the catacombs: If Deacon didn’t have reason to leave, Malkvial could keep his eye on him throughout the night.

So it was a damn good thing that Rosalia had anticipated the possibility that he wouldn’t shake Malkvial until dawn. They could carry this whole thing off without once contacting each other.

Camille stood by in Paris with a chartered plane, the heads of twelve vampire communities, and a dozen bound-and-gagged human monsters. Deacon called her up and told her to haul ass to Rome.

The demons began to gather before the vampires arrived. A little over a hundred, by Deacon’s count. Malkvial must have told them to keep their hands off of the vampires, but a few got it in their heads to fuck with Deacon, a couple of hours of trying to shred his soul apart, strip him down to nothing. Deacon shut his ears to their whispers, knowing that any fear or weakness on his part would be pounced on, and then it’d all go to fuck. Rosalia was watching from an apartment next door, and he didn’t doubt that if she saw one sign that the demons were thinking of betraying Deacon, then she’d charge through a hundred demons trying to rescue him.

Camille arrived thirty minutes before dawn, as arranged. Deacon met the vampires outside to prepare them, but even telling them how many demons waited inside couldn’t halt their shock and terror. The demons ate it up, and Deacon led the vampires and the struggling, whimpering, angry humans down to the ossuary. The chamber was empty of everything but bones and a few of the cameras Rosalia had installed for Deacon’s first meeting with Malkvial, each neatly hidden within a skull’s staring eye socket. They didn’t need the additional cameras that Camille had brought with her, but they quickly placed them, anyway.

Deacon tied the humans to the thick stone columns supporting the ceiling, then removed their blindfolds. He couldn’t dredge up any sympathy for humans like these, but he offered them the tiny comfort of knowing they wouldn’t die.

Some of them might wish for it afterward.

He hardened his heart and ordered the vampires out of the catacombs, back upstairs. Tomás and Stefan led them; Camille and Deacon took the rear. The only words spoken on the way up came from Camille.

“My friend’s brother has a house nearby that we can all use to sleep through the day.”

So Rosalia was moving her stuff to Lorenzo’s place. That made a hell of a lot of sense. After the demons started breaking the Rules, then Deacon might be called along with them—and nothing in that little apartment next door would slow him down.

Lorenzo’s dungeon might.

They reached the main floor. The demons waited silently, each of them with glowing crimson eyes. All of them had taken on their real forms, red scales and leathery wings, horns curling back from their foreheads. At a word from Malkvial, they cleared a path in the aisle to let the vampires pass, and Deacon had to block his mind against the others’ terror, piercing his brains like a chorus of screams.

Finally, they were outside. Deacon locked the church doors behind him.

Lorenzo’s house wasn’t far. Rosalia was probably setting up the new feed in the basement dungeon. He ushered the vampires inside and directed them upstairs to the bedrooms—all of them were going to fall asleep in about three minutes. He got downstairs as quickly as possible, but slowed on the last step, managing his surprise.

St. Croix, he expected—after all, they were using his dungeon, and Rosalia had agreed to let him watch. The human stood near the monitors, his hands tucked casually in his trouser pockets, his psychic scent emitting an almost revolting eagerness. Taylor waited near the steps, nodding at Deacon as he came in. As she’d be the one bringing Anaria into the catacombs and getting the humans out, he’d expected her, too.

But not Irena and Alejandro. Rosalia wouldn’t have invited them here. Taylor must have made that call, and brought them. Or maybe Michael had.

They stood together, watching Rosalia connect the monitors to the feed from the catacombs. Rosalia’s soft lips had flattened into a thin line; her body was stiff. And as she flipped the power on, he saw her bow her head, as if offering a prayer.

Expecting to be rejected as soon as Irena and Alejandro saw what she’d done.

Irena looked at the screens as they came online. Through the speakers, sobbing filled the dungeon, soft wails, cries for help.

Aghast, Irena stepped back and turned to Rosalia. “Those are humans?”

“Yes,” she whispered. Then, stronger, “You should go. This is not something a Guardian should stand by and watch.”

“If a Guardian shouldn’t tolerate it, I will stop the demons, and then I will return for you.”

Rosalia faced her. “I won’t let you stop me.”

“Show them who the humans are,” Deacon told her quietly.

Rosalia called in their profiles from her cache. She held out the stack, her hands shaking.

Irena passed them to Alejandro, who opened the files. The crime photos were on the top page. The tall Guardian’s mouth tightened. He showed a picture to Irena.

She turned sharply toward Rosalia. “All of them have done this?”

“Yes.”

“Pig-fucking bastards,” Irena spat. “We should let them all be killed.”

Rosalia smiled, very slightly. “But we are Guardians.”

Irena snorted out a laugh. The two women looked at each other for a long moment, and when Rosalia glanced away, still smiling, Deacon thought they understood each other perfectly. Michael might not like what Rosalia had planned, but the four Guardians here stood in agreement—and they could live with their decision to put human monsters in the path of demonic ones.

St. Croix had been silently following the back and forth. Now he spoke up. “So that is what you are: a Guardian.”

“Yes.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that we have died saving people from demons. And we live again, to save more.” She watched the screen. The demons were filing into the ossuary chamber, Malkvial speaking to them in the demon language.

“Saving people from . . .” Sudden hope burst through St. Croix’s psychic scent. “You become a Guardian if you die while saving someone from a demon?”

Rosalia was no longer listening, her attention completely focused on the monitors. Alejandro answered for her.

“Yes,” he said.

“Fuck me.” St. Croix gave a strange, hoarse laugh. “Five years ago, there was a woman—Rachel Boyle. She became a Guardian?”

Alejandro exchanged a glance with Irena. “No.”

“But she
saved
me. Then she died in my arms, and she vanished. Her body vanished. She’s not a Guardian now?”

“I’m sorry. None of the novice Guardians was transformed at that time. I am certain of it.”

St. Croix ripped his hands through his hair, looking wildly at each of them. Then, like a pricked balloon, he suddenly deflated, his hands falling to his sides.

“They are all in the ossuary,” Rosalia murmured. “Several are blocking the entrance. None are left in the corridor. What has Malkvial told them?”

She looked to Taylor, who ticked off the demon’s instructions on her fingers. “Don’t let the nephilim escape. Don’t kill the humans. Don’t inflict permanent physical damage. Converge on the nephilim in groups of five.”

“Don’t kill,” Rosalia repeated, and let out a breath. “At least he adheres to that.”

“You have a few minutes,” Taylor added. “They are choosing which demon within each group will break the Rules.” She smiled thinly. “Apparently, they all want to.”

Rosalia nodded, then looked to Deacon. Long lengths of chain appeared in her hands. “You are ready?”

He backed up against the cell, pushing his arms between the iron bars and clasping his hands together. “I hope to God I am.”

Rosalia wrapped his wrists in the chain, then wound the steel links around his arms and through the bars. She used another to secure him across the neck, chest, and stomach. A final chain bound his feet and legs.

Irena watched her in astonishment. “What is this?”

“He drank the nephil’s blood.” Rosalia tightened the chains and locked them. “A few days ago, a demon broke the Rules, and Deacon was called. He couldn’t resist it. If it happens again—if it happens every time a demon breaks the Rules—he’ll be called continually until this is over.”

“And maybe I won’t,” he added. “But considering that the sun’s up and I’ll head straight for that church, I don’t want to take that chance.”

Irena’s lips parted and she glanced at Taylor. “Khavi did not think Rosalia’s plan would succeed because the balance between action and consequence is never lost. Is it
Deacon
who maintains the balance? Is it he who will enforce the Rules in the nephilim’s stead?”