Demon Night (3 page)

A few minutes remained before Charlie's break ended, but she might as well head back and give Old Matthew a hand.

She walked to the stairwell, hoping Stevens and friends had left—or at least migrated to the restaurant—and hoping that the newcomers wouldn't offer their own variety of condescending bullshit and a pseudo-intellectual discussion of the film over cocktails.

But two steps down, still enshrouded by darkness, Charlie froze. Thoughts of annoying customers fled. She stared through the gate at the wet asphalt in the alley, her heart hammering in her chest.

For an instant, the shadowy diamond pattern at the bottom of the stairs had thickened and congealed into a human shape.

Around her, the soft pattering of rain steadily increased. From Broadway, the rumble of a bus engine was followed by the gassy release of its brakes.

No voices. No footsteps.

It could have been nothing. Someone using the alley as a shortcut. A person who'd just left the bus, or taken in the movie. Someone in the kitchens bringing a bag of trash out to the Dumpster, and she just hadn't heard the door open and close.

But it had been so
fast
. Furtive. And though she hadn't seen anyone cross in front of the gate, the light source was close to the stairs. For someone to have cast a shadow, the person had to have been near as well.

Silently, she edged back up to the landing. It might be nothing, and in a moment she'd call herself an idiot—but better than being mugged or raped in a dark alley.

She looked over the back wall, and her breath caught. A man in black stood directly beneath her. Though the halogen light illuminated his long blue black hair and whitened the skin at his hairline, hands, and the tops of his ears, the depth of the shadow pooled around his feet seemed to enfold him in darkness.

Stopping for a smoke in the rain? Charlie tried to convince herself of it, but he didn't reach into his trench coat pockets for a cigarette. And he was too still—almost expectant. Waiting.

For what?

So absolute was his stillness, Charlie nearly jumped when he leaned away from the wall, turning his head as if searching for someone. His shadow slid like oil, a dark slick spreading the width of the alley.

Charlie looked in time to see a man and a woman melt out of the darkness beyond Cole's street-side corner. Gooseflesh prickled her arms. Their steps seemed sped up, like the cartoonish pace of old black-and-white newsreels.

But there was nothing jerky in their predatory glide, nothing comedic. It was too smooth, too quick, too…

Inhuman.

A shiver raced down her spine, drew the skin tight across the nape of her neck. Her breath skimmed in between her lips.

As if he'd heard that soft sound, the figure below tipped his pale face up. His mouth was half-open in a smile. Sharp teeth gleamed.

Long
sharp teeth.

Charlie jerked away from the wall and dropped into a crouch. Her legs trembled. Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Had he seen her?

Had
she
just seen fangs?

She was crazy. Fucking crazy. One strange incident two months ago, and now she was imagining vampires.

She squeezed her eyes closed, willing away the vision of his teeth, hoping her blindness might be his, too. They flew open again when the singsongy voice drifted up the stairwell.

“Charlotte…”

She was suddenly light-headed, dizzy. Her inhalations were too fast, too shallow.
Hyperventilating
. She was going to pass out if she didn't get ahold of herself.

She forced her breathing to slow, forced herself to think. Had she been panicking like this from the time she'd seen the first shadow?

If so, that might explain why they'd seemed to move so quickly. Her perception could have been distorted.

But he'd said her
name
. How could he know her name?

She hadn't gotten a good look at the other two. Her job put her in contact with a lot of people, and she was on a first-name basis with many of them. Had anyone mentioned a costume party? A rave at a Goth club?

But a casual acquaintance wouldn't know to find her up here, and would only use her nickname.

Still shaking, her breaths ragged, Charlie half-rose from her crouch. She moved quietly to the head of the stairs and peeked around the stairwell housing.

No array of diamond shadows. The stairs were completely dark, the light blocked by the three figures staring up at her through the gate.

Though she could barely see the outline of their features, she was instantly certain she didn't know any of them.

Was instantly certain those smiles weren't friendly.

Oh, God. She turned and flattened her back against the brick wall, frantically searching her coat pocket for her cell. The rough corrugated stone dug into her spine.

An eerie screech tore through the air. She realized what it was at the same time the first ring sounded in her ear.

Cold wrought iron,
bending
.

A hard-edged feminine laugh accompanied another metallic squeal, and Charlie's throat tightened. It wouldn't do any good to shout or scream. She couldn't attain any volume, and nothing pitched higher than a middle C would ever come from her scarred vocal cords.
Come on, comeoncomeoncomeon
—

“Cole's—”

“Old Matthew! There's someone in the alley—”

And now deep male laughter, as if they were relishing her fear.

“Charlie?”

“—trying to get up here, hurry hurry—”

Through the earpiece, she heard Old Matthew calling Vin's name and the crash of the phone to the counter. They'd be out within seconds.

To face these things? Old Matthew was huge, intimidating, and Vin strong and quick, but she hadn't warned them that whatever they were running to confront might be much, much stronger—

A familiar flat clang almost stopped her heart, her breath. The Dumpster. Someone had jumped on top of the lid. And the rough scraping could only be boots against brick.

One of them was climbing the wall.

Charlie shot to her feet, prepared to run. But where? There was no access to street level except the stairs. She whirled in a circle, looking for a place to hide. Nowhere was safe.

The lights from the Heritage penetrated the gray haze of fear clouding her vision. It was only a twenty-foot drop or so. Better to risk broken legs and go over at the front of the building than wait around here for…

Her mind shut off before she could contemplate
that
.

Blindly, she sprinted away from the wall and slammed into another. Pain exploded over her cheek. The impact spun her around, she almost fell, but something wrapped around her chest and pulled her back up tight against a surface as hard as the brick, but warm.

What—?

Not a wall. One of them had gotten upstairs.

It was no use, but she tried to yell, kicking her heels against his shins, elbowing his stomach and chest. Her struggles were as ineffectual as her screams, and she hated the desperate whistling noises she made almost as much as she hated this
thing
for scaring her.

“Easy, Charlie. Easy.” A male voice. A soft rumble in her ear. “I'll take care of them.”

It cut through her panic, and she had a heartbeat's time to see the arm extended over her shoulder, and the crossbow in a large, capable hand. A heartbeat's time to see the dark form launch onto the roof and the shock on his pale face before the bolt thunked into his forehead and he tumbled back over the side.

The female shrieked, a piercing note of surprise and terror. One of the males—probably not the one with an arrow through his brain, Charlie realized—cried a name like a warning.
Gideon?
And then running footsteps, boots against pavement, echoing in the alley…so fast. Prestissimo agitato, and the tempo of her heart not much slower.

“Can you stand, Charlie?”

She didn't know. She couldn't think of her legs when her entire existence narrowed down to a stranger's arm and his weapon. The rain beaded on his sleeve, then soaked into the rough weave. There weren't many dark spots on the material, as if he'd donned the coat in the past minute or two.

“Charlie?”

She blinked. “Yes,” she rasped, and then he was setting her feet down and running silently past her, a tall form in a long brown duster, the split coattails flaring out behind him. A round-brimmed hat shadowed the side of his face as he jumped atop the wall and went over.

Her stomach quaking, Charlie raced to the edge, looked down.

All of them, gone.

Vertigo struck. The world swam dizzily, and Charlie shook her head.
Not real. Not real.

She was trying to convince herself of that as Old Matthew and Vin burst through the kitchen door. A shotgun glinted dully in Old Matthew's grip. They rounded the Dumpster.

“Charlie?” Shock hoarsened the older man's voice and twisted his face when he saw the gate. He lifted the weapon to his shoulder, turned in a long sweep of the alley.

It took her two attempts to moisten her tongue enough to reply, to stop the chattering of her teeth. “Up here.” It was little more than a whisper, so she added a wave.

She looked into the barrel of the shotgun for half a second, then Old Matthew lowered it. “You all right?”

The weak nod of her head didn't seem sufficient, but she couldn't yet move and didn't want to walk, however briefly, into the darkness. “I'm okay,” she said. “I just really have to pee.”

“You'd better come down first.” Old Matthew's tone was the same he used with weepy drunks.

Not weepy, not drunk—just numb.

Belatedly, she realized her phone was still open. She clicked it shut. Twenty-one seconds.

She forced herself to move slowly away from the safety the sight of Old Matthew's and Vin's familiar faces provided. She wouldn't be dependent on it. She wouldn't—

What in the hell was
that
?

Her legs weakened, and she had to brace her palm against the stairwell wall to steady herself. She shook her head, looked again.

A long white feather lay on the black rooftop, only a yard from where she'd barreled into him. So clean and bright that it appeared to glow, though lit only by dim Christmas tree bulbs and the vapor-scattered streetlight.

“Come on, Charlie girl.” Worry had crept into Old Matthew's voice; she must have been out of his view for too long.

She swept up the feather with shaking hands and ran down the stairs, through the dark. And it was crazy, stupid—but once the idea occurred to her, she couldn't let it go.

Perhaps the male hadn't yelled a name, but a word.

Guardian.

When it rained, Charlie preferred the night. Liquid sunshine, gray daylight—they were nothing compared to the glitter caught in the arcs of the street lamps, that beaded against her balcony railing, her windows. The shine of brake lights slicked scarlet on black asphalt; tires lifted a wet spray and splashed through puddles—unremarkable and dirty during the day, but after sundown they became part of a brilliant play of color and sound, and her little enclosed balcony more like a private box at a ramshackle opera house.

Even if the music remained in her head. Her neighbors probably wouldn't have appreciated Bellini at midnight, and Charlie liked to play
Norma
at the volume it deserved.

But the quiet was welcome, too. She tilted her head and listened when, from the adjoining balcony, a door scraped open rather than slid—inexpensive apartments, damp climate.

She hadn't known Ethan McCabe was home, but she was glad for the company. Glad for anything that might distract her from sharp teeth and crossbows and the ache in her cheek.

The wood creaked under his weight. He was looking out over the railing, she realized. Not avoiding the wet, whereas she sat tucked up close to the door, sheltered beneath the roof, with her sweatshirt, flannel pajama pants, and fuzzy slippers as a ward against the cold. Hardly an attractive ensemble, but it hardly mattered.

It was several moments before he said, “I thought you quit.”

The tip of her cigarette glowed brightly with the depth of her inhalation. Ethan couldn't see it through the wall that separated their balconies, but the scent would have been unmistakable.

She sent a stream of smoke into the night air, smiled grimly up at the overhanging eaves. “It seemed like the kind of night to start again.”

He didn't immediately reply, but she hadn't expected him to. In the two months he'd occupied the apartment next to hers—
occasionally
occupied it—she'd become accustomed to his silences.

During their first conversation, as hidden from her sight as he was now and with only the lazy drawl in his voice to guide her, she'd thought he was slow. It hadn't taken long to discover that “particular” fit him better.

“Seems to me,” he finally said, “the only difference between this night and any other is that you're home a mite early.”

So did “indirect.” He wouldn't ask what had happened, but give her an opening.

And Charlie needed to say it aloud. She couldn't to Jane; her sister knew her too well. She'd recognize that Charlie wasn't joking. She hadn't told the two police officers who'd taken a look at the gate and her statement, or Old Matthew when he'd driven the four blocks from Cole's to her apartment.

She'd seen shadows following them, slinking through the dark streets—most of them, she was certain, the product of her paranoia. Most of them.

“I had an…incident down at Cole's.” Though she'd tapped it off into a saucer before her last draw, the ash at the end of her cigarette was already a quarter-inch long. Not a leisurely smoke—she was sucking on it like a drowning woman might air. “Three vampires tried to attack me on the roof, but the Lone Ranger arrived and shot them with a crossbow. Or maybe the Rifleman. I couldn't tell, and I don't know my cowboys very well.”

Ethan didn't respond, not even with the slow
Why, Miss Charlie, I do believe you are having me on
he'd given her when, a month ago, she'd told him her voice was a mess because she'd traded it to a sea witch for a pair of legs, and that she lived in Seattle because it was so wet.

He'd never seen the scar. She'd never seen him, but judging by the angle and projection of his voice, she thought he must be tall, with a chest to match.

It was probably fortunate that a wall separated them, because she could have used a chest like that to lean against. Would have
used
it.

So she used a plastic patio chair instead. Her crutches: a chair, a cigarette, and a white feather. It lay on her lap—stiff, but like silk to the touch. When she'd spoken with the police, she'd clung to it like Dumbo with his magic feather.

“My hero had wings,” she added when his silence continued. Might as well make it as ridiculous as possible. “Like a guardian angel. And, for a second, I thought he was you.”

Charlie knew from experience that almost anyone else who'd found themselves included in such a story would have said
Me?
with a bit of startled laughter.

Ethan only said, “I'm no hero.”

“Well, I didn't take you for the type of guy to go flying around looking for vampires to shoot.”

“No. Demons need shooting more than vampires do.”

Humor had slipped into his tone. His quick answers were usually accompanied by it, and apparently he'd decided to play along. A tall tale to him, truth to her—but his response made it less frightening, easing her tension, and she laughed softly.

It was one of the few noises she could make that wasn't much different before the accident.

Most of her life had revolved around voices. Studying them, perfecting hers. They could be as distinctive as a face, and when she'd heard the first
Easy, Charlie
, it had been familiar. Low, warmed by deep amber tones, and roughened with a hint of oak.

“He sounded exactly like you. The pitch, the resonance. But he didn't talk like you.”

“No, Miss Charlie, I reckon he didn't. Most flying men of my acquaintance are Easterners, and liable to talk like a book.” Ethan's drawl thickened, and Charlie grinned, reaching forward to stab out the cigarette.

“Anyway, that's why I'm home early.” She ran the feather between her fingers. The quill's surface was rounded and smooth, the end a blunt point. “Did you get in tonight?”

“That I did.”

“San Francisco again?”

“Yes. And a handful of other cities.”

She didn't know exactly what Ethan did for Ramsdell Pharmaceuticals, but she couldn't see why they'd relocate him to Seattle when he spent most of his time in California and the rest hopping around the country—but it wasn't for her to decide, anyway. “Did you eat, or get to the store? Old Matthew sent me home with a box, but I wasn't hungry. I could toss it over.”

“I'm settled, Charlie.”

“Okay.” She tickled the underside of her chin with the tip of the feather, looking at the wall and wishing—not for the first time—that she could see through it.

But perhaps it was best she couldn't. Not yet, not until she was steady. Strong.

With a long sigh, she stood and scooped the pack of smokes from the table. She'd gone through a quarter of them. “Will you do me a favor?” Without waiting for his answer, she held it over the wall. “Will you hide these at your place? I won't buy more if I can get them for free next door.”

He didn't respond, but his fingers brushed hers as he took the pack. She closed her eyes. He was warm, as if he'd protected his hands in his pockets instead of exposing them to the cold night air, a feather in one and a cigarette in the other.

“If you ask, should I give them back?”

Her fingers trembled, and she pulled her hand away from his and tucked it against her side. “No. Make me come and get them.”

“Well now, Charlie, I don't know whether to hope that you resist, or to pray for an end to our Pyramus and Thisbe routine.”

Her teeth clenched, and the frustration that rose up in her wasn't unfamiliar: that feeling of ignorance, of being unable to share in a joke or discussion—or worse, the certainty that she had heard something before, but just couldn't place it. “Hold on, Ethan. I'll be right back.”

She didn't close the sliding door behind her. Her computer was on, and luckily the search engine offered up the correct spelling after she put in her mangled, phonetic version. Pyramus and Thisbe. Lovers parted by a family feud, whose only contact was speaking through a crack in a wall.

Damn. She
had
seen this once, at a theater in New York—she'd probably been drunk off her ass, or halfway there.

She grimaced as she scanned the rest of the story, then returned to the balcony. “That didn't end well. Unless you think double suicide is romantic.”

Ethan's laughter broke and rolled like muted thunder—a fitting accompaniment to the lights and the weather. “No,” he said eventually. “That I don't. Good night, Miss Charlie.”

She smiled into the dark; this was a familiar routine. And she was feeling settled now, too—and safe. “Good night, Ethan.”

Her smile lingered as she readied for bed, as she placed the feather on her nightstand. The drumming of the rain against the roof, the sighing of the breeze, the swish of the passing cars was a soft symphony lulling her to sleep.

Long before it was silenced, she'd fallen deep.

 

Charlie needed better locks.

Ethan could have picked them open within seconds, but he didn't require tools or time. He mentally tested the shape of the cylinder in the deadbolt, the simple pin tumbler in the knob, and unlocked them both with an effortless thrust of his Gift.

Though she'd left no lights on, he easily avoided the bamboo trunk that served as a coffee table. Knitted throws in bright colors covered the sofa and the chair in front of her desk. Against one wall, her television was dwarfed by stereo speakers and encased by shelves stuffed with records and CDs. He could read the neatly arranged titles from across the darkened room, but he already knew that classical and opera dominated her collection: she played them often.

It had been her way of introduction two months before, a throwaway comment from the balcony, underscored by Vivaldi:
Tell me if my music is too loud.

Loud or quiet, it wouldn't have mattered; if he listened closely, Ethan could hear her heartbeat through the walls. The click of knitting needles. The distinctive slide of a feather over skin.

He followed the sound of her deep, even breathing. The fragrance of apple shampoo and cocoa butter rose from the damp towel wadded in a laundry basket at the foot of her bed.

Charlie lay on her stomach, her knee cocked. She'd kicked the blankets off. The left hem of her checkered flannel pajama pants had ridden up, revealing half the length of her sleek calf. The straps of her white top exposed more smooth skin at her shoulders and toned arms.

Despite her ordeal on the roof, her psychic scent suggested that her dreams were soft and pleasant—so different from the tension surrounding her in her waking hours. So different from the neediness, the emotional instability.

She didn't outwardly reveal them, but Ethan often felt both, like a dark itching scab in her psyche. They repelled him almost as much as they aroused his protective instincts.

She began to move restlessly, her wheat gold hair tousled over her pillow, her psychic scent altering, tinged by erotic heat.

Ethan looked away, ignoring the tightening in his gut, his groin. He'd come in for a purpose, but lusting after a human who needed protecting wasn't it.

The feather sat beside her alarm clock; his attempt to vanish it into his cache failed.

With a frown pulling at his mouth, he strode across the room and swept it up. Placing any object into his mental storage space required that he possess it, or obtain permission from the owner. Charlie had apparently formed such a strong attachment to the lost feather that he had to steal it back.

This time, it went easily into his cache. Destroying evidence—and whatever comfort it had offered her.

He couldn't erase Charlie's memories, or the bruise forming across her cheek. A Guardian with a Gift for healing could have taken care of the latter—and had Ethan been prepared for her bolt away from the wall, he could have avoided her slamming into him.

As it was, he'd only managed to keep her from hitting his weapon. His elbow had done less damage, but there shouldn't have been any damage at all.

And there shouldn't have been three vampires ready to do worse. Ethan stifled his simmering frustration. He
should
have caught them, but they'd evaded his pursuit by using the one lock his Gift couldn't breach—a lock formed, not by steel or magnets, but by ancient symbols and magic. The shield it created was damned impossible to break through.

For that reason, he'd use it to protect Charlie. To get to her, the vampires would have to burn down the apartment and flush her out—and Ethan didn't figure they were that desperate.

Yet.

Silence. Surround. Lock.
Ethan scraped the symbols into her front door frame, an inch above the cream carpeting. Charlie likely wouldn't notice them or the drops of blood he used to activate the spell, and it would break when she left in the morning.

Immediately, an unearthly quiet descended around the apartment. The symbols not only barred entrance to anyone whose blood didn't key the spell, but prevented all communication. Neither sound, sign language, nor electronic methods of communication could penetrate the shield, from inside or out. Even his psychic senses were useless—a demon could stand on the other side of the door, and Ethan wouldn't know it until he left the protected area. Which he did quickly enough, slipping out into the hall and locking up behind him.