The Bite Before Christmas (15 page)

Eleven

W
e flew him onto the roof of a taller building for more privacy. There, Ian and I forced the demon to sit and then tied him to a metal air-conditioning vent. Being in direct sunlight would weaken the demon. Plus, the ropes were entwined with rock salt, so if our new friend had the ability to dematerialize, this would mute it. It would also discourage struggling. The ropes were over his clothes now, but squirming would bring them in direct contact with the demon's exposed neck, and he wouldn't like the results.

“We have questions,” Ian said once we'd finished. “Answer them without lying, and you'll walk away safe and sound.”

The demon glanced at the knife again and whistled. “Bone of the brethren. Aren't
you
the naughty pair for having that? Still, the knife is only good for killing and I can't answer questions if I'm dead. You'd get me to talk faster by offering me cash.”

He wanted us to bribe him? “I saw a church a few blocks up. Maybe I'll grab some holy water and
then
we'll chat,” I snapped.

The demon laughed. “That stuff does nothing to my kind. You watch too many movies.”

Not the first time I'd been accused of that, but it would be really helpful if the movies got things right for once. Of course, that didn't mean I was out of scare-tactic options.

I pulled out two salt shakers I'd packed into my jacket where my silver knives used to go. Different creatures required different weapons, after all.

“Now how about we get serious? Vampire by the name of Wraith made a deal with one of your kind. I want to know who.”

The demon scoffed. “How should I know? It wasn't me, that's all I can say.”

I threw a handful of salt onto his face. It bubbled his skin up like it was acid, but I knelt and clapped my hand over his mouth to silence his scream. “Don't toy with me, I am so not in the mood,” I hissed in his ear.

Muffled grunts sounded against my hand. Cautiously, I lifted it, but he didn't scream again. He spit out some salt before glaring at me.

“We're demons, not Amway. It's not like I can pick up a phone and find out who's got a deal out on your vamp.”

“You're supposed to have the power to grant just about any request, yet you expect me to believe you can't find a name?”

I wagged the salt shakers threateningly as I spoke. The demon sighed. “Keep seasoning me all you want, but I still can't tell you who has the deal on that vamp. It's not like we update a worldwide Excel sheet every time we contract a soul.”

“But you're demons!” I burst out. “Scary, powerful, soul-snatching scourges of the underworld! How can you
not
do something as simple as keep in touch about who you brand?”

A shrug. “We're independent contractors. Don't like it? Complain to management. Maybe dialing 666 will get you someone.”

I wanted to fling the rest of the salt on him out of sheer frustration, but his words held the ring of truth. I guess it had been too much to hope that snagging one demon would mean we'd find out who'd branded Wraith. Over a week later, and we still had nothing to show for our efforts. Despair coursed through me until I felt like I was choking on it. The demon's head lolled back and he inhaled.

“Mmm, smells delicious. If you're determined to find the demon's name, there's a way to bypass all that pesky hunting.”

I wrestled back my gloom enough to let out a bark of laughter. “Let me guess: it involves dealing away my soul?”

He lifted his head. “Again, I don't make the rules. I just play by them, and the rules say I can't tap into wish-granting without the right form of deposit.”

Yeah, I felt desperate and tired and scared shitless about what might be happening to Bones, but that wasn't the answer. I'd find another way.

“No deal,” I said coldly. “And since you're not able to tell us anything useful . . .”

I put down the salt to grab the bone knife again, but Ian shook his head. “We agreed to let him go if he told us the truth, and I believe he did.”

“If we let him go, he's going to keep
damning
people,” I pointed out, in case he'd somehow forgotten that.

Ian waved his hand. “Both of us act according to our natures. I drink blood. He collects souls. Just because we have different methodologies doesn't mean I'm going to dishonor our agreement.”

Only Ian could so casually describe what a demon did as a methodology. The demon wagged his finger at me. “You were going to kill me despite your promise. Liar, liar, pants on fire! Heh, takes me back to my days in the pit. Everyone's pants were on fire there.”

He laughed at his own joke. Unbelievably, Ian joined in. I stared at the two, wishing I could stab at least one of them and not being sure who I wanted it to be at the moment.

“Since there's nothing more to talk about, I'm leaving,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. They could keep chortling away if they wanted, but I had better things to do. Like figure out how we were going to find one demon amidst thousands.

Ian cut the bonds from the demon and he stood, cracking his back as though relieving a kink. Then, to my amazement, Ian pulled out a large wad of cash from his coat and peeled off several bills.

“This is for your silence about what we discussed,” he said, holding out the money. The demon pocketed it in a blink.

Not only were we letting the demon go free, we were paying him for telling us absolutely nothing. I gave a last disgusted shake of my head and turned around, heading for the exit.

I was about to yank open the door to the roof when the demon said, “You know, there is
one
other way you might be able to narrow down your search.”

I froze before slowly turning around. Ian's brow arched, but the demon said nothing else. Instead, he stared at the lump of folded bills Ian was about to put back in his coat.

Ian snorted and peeled off another few. “This is all you get on good faith. Impress me, and you'll get more.”

The demon pocketed the money before glancing around, as if fearing other demons would ascend from the floor of the roof. Then he lowered his voice.

“I'm not supposed to consort with vampires, but I like your style—and your money—so bring me one of the spelled vamps, and I'll tell you the power required to conjure that sort of enchantment. You'll know then if the demon who branded your boy is medium-level, a higher up, or one of the original Fallen.”

Ian pulled off a thick stack of bills. The demon's eyes bugged, but before he could snatch it, Ian held it out of reach.

“If you're truly able to determine the power level of Wraith's brander,
and
help us find him or her, I'll give you triple this. My word on it.”

The demon pulled out a piece of paper and pen, then scribbled on it. I came close enough to see that it was a series of symbols followed by the word “Balchezek.”

“My true name,” he said, holding it out to Ian. “Draw this in unsoiled blood, say my name three times, and I'll appear.”

“Don't you just have a cell phone number you can give us?” Demons and their love of bloody rituals.

He slid a jaded glance my way. “I'm guessing when you call, you'll be pressed for time, so I'm giving you the no-waiting-required method. Besides, you never need to worry about coverage bars or dropped calls with this.”

Good point, but I had one more question. “By unsoiled blood, do you mean freshly shed instead of bagged plasma?”

Balchezek exchanged a glance with Ian, who rolled his eyes. “Times like this I feel old,” Ian muttered, to a grunt of agreement from the demon. “He means virgin's blood.”

I bristled. “Are you trying to say that if a chick gives it up, she's considered
soiled
? What kind of sexist bullshit is—”

“It can be male blood, too,” Balchezek said, winking at me. “Whatever turns you on.”

Twelve

I
an and I had just made it back to our hotel room when Fabian appeared without so much as a chill in the air to warn of his presence.

“Where have you been? I've been waiting for hours!”

“Sorry I'm late for curfew, Mom,” I mocked, then stilled at his expression. “What happened?”

The ghost looked so stricken I thought my knees might buckle. Was it Bones? Oh God, if something happened to him. . .

“Cat, you have been disowned,” Fabian said.

I waited a beat, but he didn't follow that up with anything else. Amidst my overwhelming relief that no one was dead, I was confused. Especially when Ian muttered, “Bugger,” the same way someone else would say “fuck.”

“Um, I haven't talked to my mother in two weeks, but we left things on good terms, and though my uncle and I aren't speaking at the moment, I don't think—”

“He means Crispin cut you off from his line,” Ian interrupted, shooting me a look filled with grimness and pity.

That jelly-kneed feeling returned with a vengeance. I sat down, trying to absorb the information without doing anything ridiculous, like crying.

It wasn't fear that made my emotions reel with this news, though Bones cutting me off from his line was considered a worse punishment than execution, in the vampire world. It left me on the lowest level of undead society, fair game for anyone who wanted to mete out cruelty without chance of repercussions. No, that's not what upset me the most. It was the knowledge that this was the closest Bones could come to divorcing me. Under vampire law, we would be married until one of us was all the way dead, but this was his public statement that I meant less than nothing to him. Hell, Mencheres hadn't even cut off his former wife, Patra, before she died, and she'd been trying to kill him.

“You know this isn't Crispin,” Ian said. He sat next to me and patted my leg in a kindly fashion. “Wraith should hope we find the demon who branded him. He'd die easier under that bloke's hand than under Crispin's when he's back to himself and hears of this.”

“I know.” My voice was thick, because I did know that, but the knowledge that Wraith's spell could force Bones to do this meant it truly had taken over every part of him. What if we couldn't reverse the spell to get him back? That question was more terrifying than any danger this proclamation put me in.

Fabian fluttered over, doing his own version of a sympathetic pat by brushing his hands through my shoulders.

“I'm afraid there's more. After he declared you to be cut off, he designated Wraith to assume Mastership of his line should anything befall him.”

I bolted up so fast that my upper body was briefly sheathed inside the ghost. “Sonofabitch! We've been wondering why Wraith would go through all this trouble to bewitch everyone, but the fucker must be doing it for power! If Bones dies, then Wraith slides into his place, ruling not only Bones's line, but co-ruling one of the largest and strongest lines in the vampire nation with Mencheres.”

Oh, the slippery bastard! Wraith could never get in a position of such power through force. Bones would crush him in a fight, not to mention if he didn't, Mencheres would. But put the demonic whammy on both men's minds, plus on the closest members of their inner circle, and Wraith would be sitting pretty just as soon as Bones had a lethal accident.

Which, I had no doubt, Wraith intended to happen soon.

“This changes who we need to bring to Balchezek,” I said, pacing. “It's gotta be Bones.”

We'd originally decided to snatch Annette. With her lower power level and lack of a spouse to watch over her, she would've been easier to rescue—or kidnap, as she wouldn't want to go. But though Bones was stronger than me or Ian, I couldn't sit back and hope Wraith would wait for us to outmaneuver him before he killed Bones to put the last piece of his plan into place.

Ian sighed. “And here I was really looking forward to it being Annette.”

“Don't chicken out now,” I warned him.

He shot me a measured look as he stood. “I told you once before: Crispin is one of the few people I'd fight to keep from harm, even at the cost of my own life. Tomorrow, I'll prove it.”

I stared at him, noting the hard line of his jaw and the uncompromising gleam in his vibrant turquoise gaze.

“You do that, and I take back every nasty thing I've ever said about you.”

He grinned, his mood changing from serious to wicked in an instant. “Why? I'm all those things and more.”

I shook my head. Ian was more proud of his depravity than anyone I'd met, but if he helped me pull Bones out from under four bespelled vampires and one demonically-enhanced vamp, I'd shower him with prostitutes and porn while swearing he was an angel.

However, Mencheres could decapitate us with his mind, and on my best day I couldn't take Bones in a fight, so neither of us might live through tomorrow. We were going up against our friends and loved ones, which made us operate under the constraint of not killing anyone. It didn't take a crystal ball to know that with Wraith's spell pulling their strings, we wouldn't be shown the same consideration.

Oh well. Time to ante up on that “ 'til death do us part” section of my vows. Living forever sounded boring anyway.

I
strode up the gravel road that led to my house. Bare tree limbs swayed in the breeze and the air was crisp enough to see my breath, if I had any. Today was aptly referred to as Black Friday, when malls and Walmarts became bargain war zones for holiday shoppers hunting for the best deals. My war zone consisted of a steep wooded hill with two picturesque cabins at the top of it; my coveted prize the brown-haired vampire who'd publicly disowned me.

I knew when my presence was detected by the sudden hush of conversation in the main house above. Fine. Wraith's voice had been grating on my nerves anyhow.

“Honey, I'm home!” I called out loudly, quickening my pace.

By the time I reached the top of the hill, the front door was open and Wraith stood framed in it. My face stretched into a smile that felt more like a sneer. No need to pretend I was under his demonic thrall anymore.

“Well, hi there, bro. Couldja send the hubby on out?”

“You are not welcome here, Cat,” he said, as if
he
owned the place.

“
Au contraire,
my good man. Cut off or not, I'm still Bones's legal wife, and vampire law states that wherever one spouse is, the other automatically has an invitation, too. So either send Bones out, or I'm coming in.”

The bottom of my black jacket rustled in the cold wind, but not the top. That was too weighted down with weapons. Wraith had either heard enough about my reputation to guess that, or he could tell from my expression that “no” wasn't an acceptable answer to me. He disappeared inside the house, and seconds later, another vampire came out, but not the one I was here for.

Mencheres stood in the doorway, his Egyptian features schooled into hard, unreadable planes. It only took one look into his eyes to know that Wraith had ordered him to kill me.