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
IAN 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.
Thirteen
THE SUDDEN OVERWHELMING pressure on my neck came before I could even attempt to run, not that running would have done any good. Mencheres didn’t need me to stand still to rip my head off.
But just as quickly as that awful squeezing started, it stopped. A red dot appeared on Mencheres’s forehead, darker gore spattering the doorway behind him. He dropped to his knees, the strangest look on his face as he slowly pitched forward.
“Nice shot, Ian,” I muttered, and then ran toward the door. The single silver bullet wouldn’t kill Mencheres, but silver took much longer to heal, buying us precious time until his brains unscrambled and he regained consciousness.
And once that happened, if we were still here, we’d be toast.
Someone crashed into me right as I cleared the threshold. It happened so fast I didn’t see who it was, but the softer flesh made my attacker either Annette or Kira. Her momentum propelled us into the nearest wall and pain thudded through me from blows I made no move to defend against. Blond hair caught my eye as my attacker bent to rip her fangs through my shoulder, missing my neck because I twisted away at the last second.
Kira, then. She wasn’t armed, though, so while this hurt, it wouldn’t kill me. I let her tear into my skin and pummel me while I reached around to grab the Glock from the back of my jeans. Then I whipped the gun up and shot her through the head.
Her instant flaccidity was replaced with a larger, harder form barreling into us next. Kira’s bloody head pressed against my face, blinding me from seeing my latest assailant. But brutal punches that snapped my ribs and reverberated through my body in fiery waves told me who this was. Only one person hit that hard.
Bones.
“Now!” I screamed, wedging Kira’s limp form out from between us.
Glass shattered in rapid succession as Ian shot the percussion grenades through the downstairs windows. The subsequent explosions felt like bombs going off in my brain, but I’d packed enough wax into my ears to take the edge off the worst of the effects. The other vampires, with their supersensitive hearing, weren’t as lucky. Bones stopped pureeing my insides to clutch his head, blood leaking out from his ears. Behind his bent form, I saw Spade, Annette, and Wraith doing the same thing. Denise wasn’t down here. Fabian had snuck into her room last night to warn her to stay away from the main floor once the action started.
I used that second of distraction to plug a bullet into Wraith’s head next, watching with extreme satisfaction as crimson exploded onto his long, blond locks. If only I could finish the job with the bone
knife, but I needed the spell reversed, so Wraith had to stay alive.
Bones lifted his head. Blood still stained his ears, but he’d recovered from the debilitating effect of the percussion grenades. Green sizzled from his gaze, and his mouth opened in a snarl as he launched himself at me. Over his shoulder, I saw that Spade and Annette were also shaking off the effects and coming at me with murderous expressions.
I raised the gun, but before I could pull the trigger, the Glock was wrenched from my hand with a snap of power that broke my wrist. Goddamn it, Bones was using his fledgling telekinesis against me! I could only hope he didn’t have enough of it to take off my head, or shooting Mencheres would have been a waste of time. That concern cleared out of my mind when Bones vaulted upward the instant before he was about to crash into me. I’d braced for the impact of his tall, muscled frame flattening me against the wall, but instead got a kick to the face that snapped my neck and filled my vision with red.
Agony flared from every facial nerve ending, combined with sickening crunching noises that confirmed my bones had shattered as thoroughly as the glass from the front windows. I resisted the instinctive urge to protect myself from further injury, knowing Bones would move in for the kill. Instead, I flung myself forward, smacking my face against a rock-hard chest. The contact shot more fireworks of pain into my skull, but tucked me under the deadly arm that had been arcing toward my neck.
My vision might be bloody and my face in ruins, but my legs worked fine, and Bones had made an unusual mistake by widening his stance when he tried to wrest my head off. I took advantage of that and slammed my knee upward, using all my supernatural strength to make merciless contact with his groin. That brought him to his knees, but before I could pull out my other gun, something hard slammed into my still-healing face.
Amidst another blast of pain and crunching sounds that I never wanted to hear again, I caught a glimpse of Spade winding up for a second blow. I ducked, his pale hand smashing through the wall behind me instead, but then twin sledgehammers connected with my sides. Bones had recovered from my nutcracker kick and was back on the offensive.