Demon Night (25 page)

And it didn't help that she was starving.

She'd spent most of the last half hour not thinking of her sister's pain, but imagining ways of easing the burning need inside her: Pulling off at the next exit and taking a drink from a gas station attendant. From a waitress.

From Jane.

They passed a blue road sign advertising food and lodging. Jane sat up, wiped at her face. “Why don't we pull off here?”

Woodland. A small town, but it was right off the highway, so there'd probably be something open.

“Okay,” Charlie said. “Are you hungry?”

“No. Are you?”

“Yes.” Charlie bared her fangs, clicked her teeth lightly together a few times, but couldn't quite hide the truth behind it. “We should pick up a few things first. Food for you tomorrow. A book, because there won't be any TV.”

“What will you do?”

Ethan had said something about daysleep. “I think I'll sleep. But I don't know what that means.”

“If you're hungry, will you attack me while you're unconscious?”

“I don't know.” Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Maybe I'll lock myself in the bathroom.”

Jane was silent for a tense moment. “Why don't you just take some of my blood—”

“No.”

“I don't care. And if you can heal me, it's no big deal—”

It burst from her. “Except I'll end up screwing you!”

They stared at each other, until Jane clapped her hands over her eyes and bent forward. “Oh,
Jesus,
Charlie!” Her amusement was light and sweet, like the trill of a piccolo; her laughter was much heavier, deep and rolling.

Charlie grinned, turned back to the road. “Shut up.”

“I guess I don't love you
that
much!”

“Fuck you. Yes, you do.”

That only made Jane laugh harder, but by then Charlie was having a difficult time controlling her laughter, too.

Yet a sour note lay beneath it, and not until they'd shielded themselves in the little motel room did Charlie realize what it was: desperation. They'd needed the laugh, but the edge of hysteria lingered longer than the amusement did.

The bed frame sat on the floor, with no room beneath it. The small closet had no door. If she locked herself in the bathroom, Jane wouldn't be able to use it.

And Charlie wanted nothing more than to sit down and cry.

Nothing more than to suck someone dry.

At least Ethan had called. His message had been brief; he hadn't said how he was doing.

But he was alive. Her phone hadn't recorded the incoming number to return the call, but she thought if she hadn't heard from him, she probably
would
be sobbing by now, not just feeling like it.

“Take the bed, Charlie,” Jane said, closing the drapes. She'd had four messages from Sammael on Charlie's phone; Charlie had had to convince her not to listen to them. Now resignation and grief hung around Jane, tinged by uncertainty and fear. “I won't be able to sleep, anyway. And it's almost dawn.”

“But what if—”

“Do you think that flimsy little door will stop you?” Jane waved at the bathroom.

Charlie shook her head, and shoved her hands into her sweatshirt pouch. Ethan's feather slid between her fingers.

A tingling began at the back of her neck. Instinct drove her to the bed, and she dug under the blankets, making certain she was covered. The sun. She had
felt
the sun coming up, and now it was dragging her down.

Clutching the feather to her chest, hunger burning in her fangs and cramping in her stomach, she fell into sleep.

And kept falling, into dreams that were stained with crimson: Jane's blood, Ethan's blood, and a demon's red, red eyes.

Just about everyone at SI was watching him careful, talking gently as if they expected him to start bawling at the least little upset. After Becca rolled up her usual snarky tone and asked him quiet-like if he was doing all right, and she'd heard about his brother, and was there anything they could do to help him locate Charlie, Ethan began to look forward to the bite Lilith's dog was sure to take out of his hindquarters.

Except when he walked into Castleford and Lilith's office, both she and Sir Pup grinned at him. Her three-headed hellhound had just as many sets of wickedly sharp teeth, but it was Lilith's gleaming smile that had him pausing, suddenly wary.

Ethan caught Castleford's eyes. “Should I turn tail?”

“That will depend on what you have to tell us.” Castleford closed the book he'd been holding and dropped it to his desk. “But as of this moment, no.”

Lilith slung her leg over the arm of her chair and leaned back, still grinning. “A winged man landing on top of a moving vehicle on a busy street. A man in a duster crawling around the top of said vehicle, shooting at the tires. A man sliding down the front of the hood, disappearing underneath the vehicle, and then—by all accounts—lifting it and tossing it over the side of a bridge. And, somehow, that same vehicle, which disappeared from the scene at the bridge, being involved in an arson fire at the home of a wealthy medical researcher.” She extended her leg, glanced down at the toe of her boot. “This should be a mile up your ass right now, but I haven't had to come up with so many lies so quickly in decades. So I'm having far too much fun.”

“
Far
too much,” Castleford echoed dryly. “She's had the novices claiming to be eyewitnesses, and they're feeding bloggers, reporters, and the investigators so many conflicting accounts that no one will be able to piece together the truth of what happened. Fortunately, we've only seen one photo so far, taken from a cell phone—you on top of the SUV, but no wings or guns.”

“You look ridiculous,” Lilith said. “Like something out of a bad action movie, so we're playing that angle, too—kids making a home video, an unauthorized film shoot—though it would have been better if you'd been wearing a hat. And we'll buy costume wings, toss them into the lake. Maybe a hang glider, too, because we've been running with that on the personal blogs. And speaking of movies…”

She trailed off and looked at Castleford, who crossed the room and sat against the front of her desk. Ethan had difficulty seeing the young, monkish Guardian he'd known in the human man before him, but the patience in Castleford's gaze and the deliberation which underpinned Castleford's every movement were as familiar to Ethan as the weight of his holsters, the heft of his wings.

Michael had transformed Ethan, but this man had made him a Guardian.

And the concern he read in Castleford's psychic scent worried him more than Lilith's grin. One, that it was there—and two, that Castleford was letting him read it.

Castleford held Ethan's gaze and asked, “How is Charlotte Newcomb?”

“She's adjusting. But she's a vampire, and she'd rather not be,” Ethan said quietly.

Lilith sat up, turning her computer monitor to face him. “Savi called us directly before dawn, told us she'd just taken a look at this video, then sent it to us by e-mail. It's copied to you, so it'll be in your inbox, as well.”

The images were from the security feed from the front of the lake house. Jane's car arriving, the vampire streaking out of the shadows. The angle changing as Savi chose the feed from another camera, and Charlie was trying to crawl past Sammael into the house, then being forced toward the SUV.

Castleford slid on his glasses, tilting his head as he studied the monitor. “She chooses her hits well—going for the least expected and the most impact in vulnerable points—and she learns quickly what doesn't work.” He paused. “Did she fight all the way?”

“Yes.” Ethan watched with his hands clenched, his jaw set. When it looped back to Jane's car driving in, he managed to say, “Fought the vampire, leastwise. She chose the transformation at the end, but only because she didn't want to die.”

Castleford frowned, glanced at the video again. “When the choice is between life and death, it's a fine line between free will and force. Sammael must have known that she'd choose the change, that she'd force herself to drink.”

“He was good: the setup, the vampire,” Lilith said, then turned off the monitor. “But it shouldn't have happened.”

“No,” Ethan said, his voice rough.

Castleford turned to Ethan. “Lilith and I can speak with Jake, or you can.”

Ethan's brows drew together, and he glanced between them. “You're putting this on
Jake
?”

“No.” Lilith frowned, and laid her hand on Sir Pup's neck when the dog lifted one of his giant heads from his forepaws. “Newcomb was yours. We're putting it on you—all of it, including Jake.”

“And everything we have to say to him would be more meaningful coming from you,” Castleford said.

Well, damn. Ethan pulled the sides of his jacket back, hooked his thumbs in his suspenders, and studied their faces. “Does this mean I'm mentoring him again?”

Lilith offered a demure smile that Ethan figured was pure evil. “Only demons Punish their own kind. Guardians are too good at punishing themselves when they fuck up. Any attempt to top that guilt is an exercise in futility.”

Castleford slanted her a wry look before glancing back at Ethan. “He's been training for forty years. We need more Guardians active and can't wait the usual century before getting them there. Jake is skilled; he just hasn't had to use it.”

That was where Castleford's troubled feeling was coming from, then: partnering the novices up and putting them out would teach them quicker than just training, but it'd also put them at a greater risk. But it was also true that their Guardian numbers were too low, and a change had to be made.

And Jake's teleporting Gift would protect him somewhat; if he got in serious trouble, he could get out of it easier than most novices. For the same reason, Selah was often the one who accompanied Michael when he needed a Guardian to assist him with something he couldn't handle alone.

Ethan nodded slowly. “All right then. I'll have him split his time between training here and working out there with me. Once he's mastered his Gift, it'll be easy enough for him to do both.”

“Teleportation,” Lilith said, pursing her lips. “I was sure his Gift would be making rainbows or something equally useless. Now, Drifter—” Her eyes narrowed, and Sir Pup got to his feet. “You've felt us out, seen where we're at. You've got two seconds to start talking.”

That was two more seconds than she'd given him last time; she must have heard about Caleb, and was going easy on him for it. “You got any inkling of where Michael is?”

Castleford and Lilith exchanged a glance.

“It's that bad?” Lilith asked.

“I don't rightly know,” Ethan said. “But I ran into something that looked an awful lot like him, but with crimson skin. And it teleported in.”

Castleford's brows pulled in tight, and he said with a slight shake of his head, “Like Michael? Took his form?”

“No, though they were roughly the same size. I'm speaking of the wings, and before they went red, the eyes.”

Lilith's expression didn't change, but beside her, Sir Pup whined softly and licked her hand with his left head. “Black?”

“Yes.”

Castleford half-turned to look at her, then picked up her phone. “Selah hasn't been able to anchor to Michael for a day now,” he told Ethan as he dialed. “We'll try again.”

Ethan nodded. If Michael had his psychic shields up full, Selah couldn't locate him and teleport to his location. Lilith sat quietly, stroking one of Sir Pup's heads while Castleford spoke with Selah. It didn't take long to get the same answer.

“She still can't,” Castleford said, and his gaze was curious as it ran over Lilith's face. “You've heard of something like this before?”

“Heard, yes. I have no idea how much of it was lies, or exaggeration.”

“You heard it from demons?” Ethan guessed.

A smile tilted her lips. “Yes, from one of Belial's demons not long after I became a halfling. And it was an old story then.”

Ethan frowned. Lilith had been transformed into a demon over two thousand years before, about the same amount of time Guardian history had been recorded in the Scrolls. “What was it, then?”

“The only other beings I've heard of having the black wings are the nephilim,” she said, and a flicker of recognition crossed Castleford's face. “Another one of Lucifer's experiments—the nephilim were the offspring of demons and humans.”

“I remember reading something of them in the Scrolls several hundred years ago, but I'm certain there was no mention that they'd been born of humans,” Castleford said slowly. “And demons aren't fertile—was it done through a ritual?”

Lilith shrugged. “I never got the details. I don't even know that the demon who told me had the details, or was just passing it on.”

“How could he not know?” Ethan asked. “Demons have been around since The First Battle, and I ain't ever met one with a faulty memory.”

Lilith arched her brows. “Three weeks ago, you tracked down a demon living in Toronto and slew her.
You
—a Guardian with little more than a century of training—killed an ageless demon. And I don't know for certain, but I can guess the reason why has a lot to do with Lucifer.”

Ethan figured most everything in Hell had to do with Lucifer. “How is that?”

“Every demon was once an angel,” Lilith said. “But only Lucifer has any real knowledge of the symbols, and how to use the magic. If
He
didn't take the rebelling angels' knowledge when He transformed them into demons, then Lucifer must have been the one to take it from them.”

Ethan nodded. “To keep them under control.”

“Yes. He always removed anything that might threaten his throne.” Lilith's fingers were drawing blissful sighs from Sir Pup; half of his fur had become scales, reminding Ethan that Lucifer experiments had created hellhounds, too. Creating another form of demon wouldn't be all that different. “And perhaps he took the demons' memories, too,” Lilith added, “or at least blocked them. If he did, I suspect he has altered them more than once. Lucifer wouldn't have wanted anyone to remember his failures, and the nephilim must have been one of those.”

“If it was a nephilim, it was almighty powerful,” Ethan said. “I ain't sure I'd consider it a failure.”

“If it was
one
, it was a nephil. And according to the demon who told me about them, they were an enormous failure,” Lilith said, her lips curving. “Apparently, the nephilim rose up against Lucifer, and it took the combined efforts of Belial's followers and Lucifer's to stop them.”

Castleford leaned forward a bit, shaking his head. “Belial and Lucifer have only been at war these eight hundred years. How far back does their rivalry go?”

“As far as anyone remembers.” Her gaze turned inward, and she rose from her desk to retrieve a bottle of water from a small refrigerated cupboard. She tossed another to Castleford, then a chunk of meat to the hellhound. “Which, again, tells me that Lucifer took something from the demons. How can they not know when it started? Yet to listen to a demon, it would seem that Belial has always wanted to return to Grace, rebelling against Lucifer's rule—but at one point, Belial must have been one of Lucifer's followers, too.”

She returned to her seat. “And that is why I don't know how much of the story is propaganda—I was one of Lucifer's halflings, and it would have served Belial's demons to spread rumors about Lucifer's weaknesses and make us doubt his power. Because doubt was akin to betrayal, and a halfling's betrayal inevitably sent them to the field.”

The frozen field suspended between Hell and Chaos. Ethan hadn't ever seen it, except for images that Selah had once shown him—and judging by the way Lilith's face tightened at its mention, her hellhound's whining growls, Ethan reckoned he was lucky he never had experienced it firsthand.

Castleford was watching her as well. “What was the story he told you?” he asked quietly.

Lilith seemed to shake herself and then shrugged. “That the nephilim were the second of Lucifer's experiments. The first, the grigori, were destroyed.” She looked between Ethan and Castleford. “He didn't say why or how, except that they didn't please Lucifer. The nephilim did please him, however—for a time.”

“That time must have been until they stopped serving him,” Ethan guessed. With Lucifer, some things were that simple.

“Yes. And although the nephilim's numbers were small, they brought Lucifer's forces to their knees…until Belial stepped in to assist him.” Lilith's mouth twisted in a wry smile, and she glanced at Castleford. “Whether Belial truly stepped in or was forced into service…? Considering the source, it's difficult to say.”