Demon Night (49 page)

“I have need of you both,” Michael said softly, and Charlie had to fight the weakness in her knees, the urge to sink to the grass and let that sound wash over her.

Ethan glanced at her in concern, and she shook her head. “I'm all right,” she said. “I just wasn't ready for that.”

Michael's response was heavy with apology. “You will need to prepare yourself for more, and you must do it quickly. I have cleared the way for us, but if we delay too long, we risk the demons discovering those I have slain.”

Sudden tension paled the scar on Ethan's lip. “Where are you planning on taking us?”

“I have found the nephilim's prison.” Obsidian swirled around Michael's golden irises. “But I cannot break through the shield surrounding it.”

“Oh, God,” Charlie whispered in numb realization.

Hell.

Ethan took her hand, held her steady. She clung to him, fighting the brain-deadening fear that washed through her, dimly aware that Ethan was signing a blazingly fast exchange with the Doyen. Ethan's fingers curled into a fist at the end of it, and he looked down at her.

“It'll be quick, all right?” He glanced at the Doyen. “Michael will make you up some heavier clothes, a jacket to ward you against the heat. You close your eyes, try not to look. And it'll smell something terrible, so try not to breathe.”

“And not to listen,” Michael added quietly.

Ethan's hand shook, and a look at his face confirmed that it wasn't in fear, but in fury. But he didn't round on the Doyen, and simply held her gaze as he said, “You just hang on to me real tight.”

She did, but still the heat ripped the breath from her lungs, seemed to scorch her cheeks. She buried her face against his chest as quickly as she could, but the glimpse she saw was enough: they stood in an enormous cave, and directly in front of her a large black building carved with symbols was set into a foundation of rippling, moving flesh. People or things surrounded them, on the floor and the walls of the cavern, crawling, screaming, and everything was red and the stench of burning blood sank into her even though she hadn't drawn air.

“Charlie,” Ethan said, and she wasn't sure if she heard his voice over the horrifying cacophony or if she just felt her name from his lips. His Gift slammed into her, and she bit the bare skin at his neck.

No no no,
she screamed, because it was huge and beautiful and the most terrifying sound she'd ever heard, and she couldn't hold on to it, couldn't get her head around it.

Ethan fell to his knees on the soft wet floor, his grip slackening, his blood warm against her cheek. She fell with him, and then Michael's voice was there, lifting her, helping her fight the overwhelming need to sink into the dark miasma of that sound, to just let go, to give up.

Michael's hands were against her back. She felt the punch of a different Gift as it healed Ethan, and his arms tightened around her again.

“It's Lucifer's blood, Charlie,” Michael said. “Don't attempt to hold it or replicate it. Let it run through you, then let me into your mind, and I'll sing it.”

She felt the touch of him like a bright golden light, followed by Ethan's amazement.

And then nothing except the soaring voice that sang the dark and terrible sound that had been filling her, hitting each note, all of them at once, an impossible chorus from a single tongue. A hush fell around them in expanding waves, as if all of Hell stopped to listen to that voice, and it continued on, swelling far longer than any human could have sung it, longer than any lungs could have held air.

And he altered it, singing the same notes but transforming them somehow, so that she didn't want to cringe away from it and give up, but reach out and hold it to her.

She began crying when it faded, and when she found the courage to look, the carved doors were open. Michael strode through them into the yawning darkness, his wings as black as the stone. Ethan wiped her cheeks and she wiped his, and then the screaming started again.

Michael returned, his steps heavy, his sword stained with blood. “All of them,” he said. “He let all but one go.”

Ethan abruptly stood, hauled her up against him. His crossbow appeared in his free hand. He squinted, and when Charlie turned, she had only a glimpse of a brilliant, blindingly beautiful form before Ethan covered her eyes. “Don't look, Miss Charlie.”

Michael's footsteps did not halt, even when an unfamiliar voice spoke, similar in resonance to the Doyen's. “You should have foreseen this, Michael. I taught you to think as Lucifer does.”

“If I think as he does, Belial, then all will be lost.” The Doyen's response held a dry note of humor. “Demons may even begin speaking in English.”

“They ought to know of the prophecy. The nephilim's release—”

“Predestination precludes free will,” Michael said, his tone sharp. “You may take your prophecy, and let it determine your way; I choose another path—and I will not have it chosen for me.”

Charlie felt Michael's hand against hers, and then the nauseating spin of teleportation. Ethan held her as her feet touched solid ground again, as she shuddered and heaved.

“Will this location do?”

“It's as good as any,” Ethan said, and Charlie lifted her head. Cool clean air washed her face, the familiar rush of city traffic hummed in her ears. Her old apartment—the balcony. The stench of Hell clung to them, so she breathed in through her mouth as deep as she could.

Michael looked out over the railing before facing them again. His gaze narrowed on Charlie. “Thank you for your assistance. And I am sorry for the pain it caused you.”

“It was kind of a trade-off,” she said thickly. She couldn't hold on to the song he'd created, but she would always remember its effect, the profound experience of it. That was almost enough.

Michael smiled, and he lifted his gaze. “I shall speak with you soon, Ethan.”

Ethan nodded shortly. “We'll have words.”

As soon as Michael disappeared, Ethan began stripping her stinking clothes away, tossing them into a pile in the corner of the balcony. Charlie helped him with slow, trembling fingers.

He met her eyes, but couldn't seem to hold the smile that kicked up at the corners of his mouth. She touched the wan curve with her fingertips.

“I've got this for you,” he said, slipping a clean shirt around her shoulders, then backing away to unbutton his own. “Too big, but it'll do until we get home. I can't figure why he brought us here, but it ain't no—”

“It was probably me.”

His gaze skipped quickly over her face, as if searching for any indication of the emotions hidden behind it. “How's that?”

She swallowed, forcing the muscles in her throat to work. “I need something.”

His mouth softened. “You know you only have to ask, Miss Charlie.”

That was the problem. She couldn't ask—she needed it too much, and knew herself too well. And so she simply continued, trying to explain, praying it would come out right. “When Michael showed up earlier, I was thinking of asking you to bring me back here. I still have a week or two left before my rental notice runs out.”

She saw his hands curl into fists at his thighs, and she closed her eyes. “Charlie,” he said, and his voice was rough. “What are you saying? If you feel like you're leeching off Savi and Colin by staying at the lake—”

“That's not it. But your assignment's over, you don't need to protect me now, and there's no reason to be there.”

“You can stay at the lake until I find us another place. Something similar, as I know how you've taken to that house.”

She had, but this was going in a direction she didn't want it to, and this wasn't about where she slept. She looked up at him, felt her stomach clench. His face was a bleak mask.

She blinked back the burning behind her eyes. “Why do you want to do that?”

Please say you love me, you need me.

“You need me, Charlie. And I'll do anything to provide—” He cut himself off, his jaw clamping shut. After a second, he added hoarsely, “You love me.”

“Desperately.” Her head suddenly seemed too heavy for her neck muscles to support it, everything in her weak and tired, but she didn't let her gaze waver from his. “I made arrangements with Jane. She's going to send me some of Sammael's blood every day.”

He paled. “And I heard the reasons you gave to her. Are you telling me now it's something different?”

“Yes—”

His eyes began glowing, and anger pushed color beneath his skin.
“You don't need his blood.”

“I know,” she whispered, and almost couldn't get the rest out. “I don't need it. That's why I'm going to use it. With your blood, everything's mixed up. I need to un-mix it.”

He stared at her, his throat working before he closed his eyes. “Why?”

“Because everything you've given me has been wonderful, amazing—but you haven't given me the one thing I need more than anything else. And I think that providing for me has gotten in the way of it.”

Ethan flinched, his entire body flexing as if she'd hit him, and she had to cover her mouth to hold in everything she wanted to scream, to beg from him.

He glanced up in that moment, and the stark pain on his features was frozen in place as he looked at her. She watched him study her wet cheeks, the hand she'd slapped over her lips.

Slowly, his brows drew together. He clasped her fingers in his warm grip, pulled them away from her mouth, and asked softly, “What do you need, Miss Charlie?”

She hadn't known how to say it without
asking
for it. She hadn't known until he'd looked at her as he would a puzzle. But now it was easy. She threaded her fingers through his, and said, “I need you to figure me out.”

He'd thought for certain she was chewing her arm off to escape, ripping out her heart—and his—in the process. But that apparently wasn't it at all.

It sure as hell didn't bode well that he'd started out by jumping to the wrong conclusion, and Ethan was quiet as he followed her into the apartment, working it through.

Whatever she needed had swelled up in her so hard that she'd had to physically force herself to hold it in. And whatever it was, she wasn't going to name it or ask for it.

She'd said once she was real easy to figure out.
Just imagine me needy, then imagine me afraid of it.

Ethan pondered that, but it didn't help him for shit. He couldn't imagine her needy, as he once had. Couldn't imagine her clinging and begging for affection, so emotionally dependent that she couldn't function without constant reassurance, asking him to coddle and soothe her every fear, until nothing existed between them but her need.

That wasn't Charlie. She'd likely still be standing on her feet long after the sun shriveled and the Earth stopped turning.

Well, all right then. He'd known this wouldn't be easy—and he'd take it slow, so as not to misstep. And if that didn't work, he'd start throwing everything in the world at her feet until he stumbled on the correct thing.

Or do both at once. Because he had his own powerful need, to simply be with her, and the sooner they each had what they wanted, the better off they'd both be.

And Charlie didn't appear too steady. Clutching his big shirt tightly around her body, she stood in her dining room, blinking as she looked around her. Her cheeks were still pink from Hell's heat, but her disorientation didn't seem to be left over from their trip. Her eyes were bright, but not glassy. Surprised, then, as if she'd forgotten the apartment was empty.

Now, that was interesting. When she'd laid this on him out on the balcony, it had seemed as if she'd thought all of this through. But her decision to return to the apartment must have been an impulsive one, and made not long before Michael had shown up at the Brandts'—she hadn't arranged for her return or brought any of her things over.

“When exactly was it that you decided to un-mix?”

Charlie glanced at him, and pushed her tangled hair back from her forehead. Her gaze slid down, landed somewhere beyond his feet. “When you said you'd piss yourself, and asked if I was all right.”

And she'd been holding on to Jane. “How was that different from any other time I've done the same?”

“Well,” she said, sweeping past him to pick up the potted cactus from the floor, then moving into the small kitchen to water it. Keeping her hands busy, he realized, so she wouldn't give in to whatever other need was pulling at her. “Just before that, I went from ‘kind of sure' about something to ‘ninety-nine percent sure.' It gave me a little more courage—because otherwise, I'd never take this risk.”

Courage, but her fingers were trembling. The ceramic pot rattled when she set it on the counter. His chest tightened. “But you're afraid you might lose.”

She looked at him, her eyes dark, haunted. “There's that one percent.”

 

He left Charlie soon after pulling in all of her belongings that he still carried in his cache, and insisting she take his big bed. Ethan wouldn't be using it, and hers had been smashed and bloodied when they'd fallen out of the sky.

He stopped in Caelum for a couple of hours, but it wasn't any use trying to drift. He'd best be figuring her out soon, or there wouldn't be many thoughts in his head that weren't fuzzed up.

And he couldn't risk losing, either.

Halfway to San Francisco, he determined that there wasn't any reason he couldn't start throwing things at her feet right away, and the first ought to be the house. He was certain that wasn't what she was after, but maybe it'd bring her a smile.

It wasn't yet dawn when he arrived in the city, so he went directly to the big, fussy Victorian mansion crowded in among the rows of other fussy houses. Colin Ames-Beaumont arched a brow when he opened the door, but politely invited Ethan inside. There just wasn't something quite right about any man who looked a picture of elegance at five thirty in the morning, and Ethan wished he'd dirtied himself up a little before knocking, just so it all balanced out a bit more.

“I have heard that congratulations are in order,” Colin said as he led Ethan into a room that wasn't much different from parlors he'd known in Boston as a young boy. “And that vampire blood has suddenly become a valuable commodity.”

“You've heard correctly,” Ethan said, but declined a seat on one of the spindly little chairs. “But that ain't what I'm here for.”

“I hope not,” Colin said. “To hear it all again would make for a frightfully boring conversation.”

“I think it sounds exciting,” Savi said as she entered the room, and when she stopped beside him Ethan obediently bent for her kiss to his cheek. Her cool lips brushed his skin, then she sat next to Colin, curling her legs up beneath her. “Sword fights, stray bullets, a humiliated demon. All good fun.”

“A regular shindig,” Ethan said dryly. Dawn wasn't far off, and Savi looked to be in her pajamas, so he went straight to the point. “I'd be much obliged if you'd consider selling your place up in Seattle.”

He'd surprised them, but they both were nothing if not quick. They glanced at each other, and Savi bit her lip as if she was about to put something delicately.

It was likely about the money. Ethan said, “I'd need a price. I've got cash—”

“Twenty thousand?” Colin said, but his teasing grin was for Savi.

“Yes. I can turn it into something more right quick. A lot more, if that's what it takes, but I'd like to have an idea of what you'd be asking, and if you'd be willing to part with it.”

Colin stood and tucked his hands in his trouser pockets. “I'm afraid we cannot, McCabe. Just this evening, we've entered into another agreement regarding that property.”

Disappointment might have hit Ethan harder if Savi's eyes hadn't been shining so brightly, and she wasn't biting her tongue to hold in her laughter.

“A one-hundred-year lease,” she said. “With a newbie vamp who has already given notice at her current residence, and who we've decided would be a fantastic manager for the Heritage theater.”

Ethan looked down at his boots, and his grin just about busted his cheeks. By God, Charlie sure was something.

But she sure as hell wasn't slow.

 

By ten thirty, Charlie stopped glancing at the door every time it opened, hoping it would be Ethan. She was just going to make herself crazy, so she went through the motions of pouring drinks and conversation.

A few minutes before closing, when she looked up from the cash register and met a pair of amber eyes in the mirror, her heart let her know that it was still alive by thumping a furious beat.

Her smile showed her fangs, but his body would block most people from seeing them—and it was difficult to care, anyway.

“You came,” she said, and leaned her forearms on the bar. His face was the most wonderful thing she'd ever seen.

“That I did. And if it's agreeable to you, I'll stay a spell.”

She nodded. “It is.”

Ethan relaxed into his seat, his gaze slipping over her features. “Word is, you've been busy.”

“A little.” She poured his whiskey, slid it across the counter. “I didn't have much to do last night after you left, so I walked here and got my computer.”

“And chatted with Savi a bit.”

“Well,” she said, “I had been thinking about what you'd said about keeping me on retainer, and compensation for that. The only thing I really want but can't afford is that house.”

“You want it,” he said softly.

“Yes.”

“But you don't need it.”

She touched his hand, squeezed lightly. “No.”

He took a long breath, and a longer drink—but only, she thought, so he had time to think that over. “And the theater?” he asked after a moment.

She shrugged. “I'm already familiar with the stage, and they'll be paying for the remaining business classes and training I need before it opens. I'll miss Cole's, but it's right across the street—and I'll keep helping Old Matthew with the office stuff until he kicks me out of the nest.”

He smiled at that. “You're doing all right, then.”

“Mostly.” Her voice was rough.

His gaze dropped to his drink. “You wake up early again?”

“Right after sunset.”

“That's real good.” He fell silent for a long second. “And did Sammael provide you—” He bit it off, and a muscle in his jaw flexed. “Did you get fed?”

“Yes. Jane brought it—”

Ethan's mouth was on hers before she could finish, his lips gentle and warm despite the frustration she felt boiling through him. His tongue slipped over her teeth, pausing at the tips of her fangs. She shook. The bloodlust rose up fast. He just had to push, and bleed, and she'd be lost—but he groaned low in his throat and pulled away.

Charlie blinked; the span of the kiss had been almost the same. A blink, and then over—she didn't think anyone had even noticed.

And she was trembling with need, excitement. There was no doubt he'd been tempted to push; he hadn't forced it on her, but he'd wanted to, badly.

“All right, then,” he said. His fist was clenched on the bar. “You don't need me for feeding. But you could have it from me. I'd make certain nothing got mixed up.”

“Yes, it would.” She covered his hand with her palm, lightly massaged his tight knuckles with her thumb. “I don't need your blood, Ethan, but I need
you
. So if I fed from you it would get completely mixed up.”

His eyes closed. When he opened them again, a wry smile touched his mouth, and his hand turned to hold hers. “I ain't sorry for stealing that kiss.”

She dipped her head to hide her grin. “I'm not, either.”

“There's that, at least.” He sipped at his drink, watching her. “Will you be needing a ride home?”

She nodded and held his gaze. “I made arrangements with Old Matthew, but I'd rather go with you.”

His smile widened. “And you're all right to get back here for work tomorrow?”

This time, regret deepened her reply. “Jane will be picking me up, since she'll be bringing over the…” She trailed off, not wanting to mention the blood again.

But if it stung him, Ethan didn't show it. “All right.”

She had to move away to fill an order, and when she returned she said, “Jane also told me that Legion might be forming something similar to SI here in Seattle. Not the investigations, but training demons and vampires so they are prepared to fight the nephilim.”

“Vampires against the nephilim?” Ethan whistled softly between his teeth. “Demon blood would be a powerful incentive though, wouldn't it? That'd be sure to cause some problems in the community here. Few other communities, too.”

“It seems easier just to drain us dry and store the blood. Or have us donate, rather than train.”

“It sure does. Maybe it's something to do with that prophecy. Not knowing whether they need the vampires alive.” He shook his head, met her gaze. “I sure don't know about that prophecy myself—but knowing what Legion is planning is useful.”

“Unless they're feeding Jane bad information.”

He nodded, smiling slightly. “There is that,” he said, but then his humor faded, his gaze sharpened. “Until we see which way Legion is headed, you make sure you sleep with the spell up. Sammael can't hurt you, but there may be others looking to shake things up here.”

“I can't. If I put it up, you can't come for me if we're needed to break through the shield.”

He frowned. “Jake will likely be teleporting soon, so it won't be any trouble for me to go back and forth to San Francisco. If my being in the house is acceptable to you, I can use my blood to cast it after you've fallen into your sleep.”

“It's more than acceptable,” she said, and it suddenly struck her why he'd come in so late. By minimizing their time together, he wouldn't fuzz up as quickly. She hesitated only an instant before adding, “And there's no reason you can't continue using the house for training, or as your base if you happen to be working in Seattle—or, I guess, anywhere in the Northwest. It's convenient for you, and I'll be sleeping. And then you can drift, too.”

His eyebrows twitched, but the rest of his face was still. “In with you?”

“Yes.”

“Before I figure you out?”

“Yes. It might take you longer if you're fuzzy, and you said you need me to drift.”

“I do.” Ethan sat back in his chair, staring at her. “All right then.”