If he were like every other mature Seminus demon on the planet, the deception wouldn’t bother him. Thanks for the human DNA, mommy dearest. The human part of him hated being unable to have sex in his true form, hated having to resort to tricks to get a female to lay with him. The demon part of him required it.
“Hold up.” Wraith had been petting Mickey, but now he froze, his hand hovering over the weasel’s spine. “There’s a catch, isn’t there? There’s always a catch.”
E nodded. Stalled. Finally blurted, “She’s human.”
Wraith rocked backward, earning a sharp scold from Mickey. “No.”
“Wraith—”
“I said, no!” He swore, robustly, in several languages. “What kind of fucked-up charm-release spell requires sex?” Unless… oh, shit. “She’s a virgin, isn’t she? Damn it to Hades, she’s a fucking virgin.” E said nothing, which was confirmation enough. Wraith shoved to his feet. “Not only no, but fuck no. In fact, let me count the ways I can say no.” He started to tick off his fingers, but Shade stood, slowly, as if he was afraid sudden movement would make Wraith bolt.
“Bro. Chill. It’s no big deal. Once it’s done, you’ll be charmed, and the Seminus Council won’t be able to punish you. Even if they could, it’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad? It took E a full day to recover after he popped that hippie chick’s cherry.”
Deflowering humans was forbidden for most species of demons, and E had accidentally taken a woman’s virginity nearly fifty years ago. Guardian angels were serious tattletales, and E had been forced to endure a severe flaying by Seminus Council members.
Wraith’s reluctance to take a virgin had little to do with the punishment, and both his brothers knew it. “I swore I would never screw a human again, let alone a virgin—”
“I know,” E interrupted. “But this is life or death.”
Flashes of the past blinked in his head, the years he’d spent in a cage, held there by his own evil mother. Innocent female humans had been stripped and tossed into his cage after their virginity had been taken—brutally—by the vampires who had brought them to him. Vamps, since they were technically human, weren’t subject to the can’t-deflower-virgins rule. So they’d gotten off on waiting until Wraith was nearly mad with lust, and then they’d raped the females in front of him, tossed them in the cage, and sat back to watch and wait.
Even now, eighty years later, he still broke out in a cold sweat when he thought about it. Going through the s’genesis was supposed to have made him forget. Not care. No such luck.
“Who is this chick? Why is she charmed?” Wraith paced, trying desperately to outrace his nervous energy. “And how did you find her?”
E closed the book he’d been reading. “Long story. But between Gem, Reaver, and Tayla’s Aegis connections, we were able to get a bead on Serena.”
Mickey nuzzled Wraith’s ear, as though trying to comfort him. “I wouldn’t think information like that would be available to Aegis grunts.”
“Tay isn’t exactly a grunt.” E leaned back in his desk chair, looking annoyed.
No, Tayla was definitely more than a grunt. She headed up the New York City cell of slayers, and since taking command, the demon body count had gone down, and so had demon-on-human violence. A fragile truce had been declared between the New York cell and peaceful demons, which left the slayers more time to concentrate on taking out the harmful species. In addition, the friendly demons were more willing to give up intel. The symbiotic relationship had worked well so far, but with the unrest in the demon underworld lately, Guardian-demon relations were once again on shaky ground.
Wraith rubbed his palm over his face. “I don’t like this. I need to think about it.”
“You don’t have time,” E said. “And there’s something else you need to know.” He trailed his finger along the gold-embossed spine of the book in front of him. “She was bitten by a Mara before she was charmed. After you take her, the disease will progress rapidly, and she’ll die.”
Wraith paused mid-step. “What?” He looked at Shade. Then E. Then Shade again. “This is such bullshit. I’m not doing this.”
“You have to—”
“No!”
E stood, knocking his chair into the wall and startling Mange to his feet. “Then you doom the hospital.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Eidolon planted his fists on the desk and leaned forward, nailing Wraith to the wall with the intensity of his gaze. “We built it with our blood, sweat, and tears.”
Literally. When the foundation had been laid, each of them had given up one of the elements in order to make the hospital strong, enchanted, and undetectable to humans. Wraith had given his blood. E, tears. Shade, sweat.
“Yeah, and?”
Shade scrubbed a hand over his face. “I can’t believe we didn’t see this coming.”
“See what?” Wraith snapped, at the end of his patience.
“Our life forces are bound to the hospital,” E said softly. “You’re dying.…”
Ah, fuck. Wraith exhaled slowly. “So the hospital is dying. That’s why strange shit is happening there.”
“Yeah.”
Nausea rolled through him. “Is that also why it’s running half-staffed?”
E shook his head. “Whatever is shaking up the underworld is shaking up the staff. They aren’t showing up for shifts. Quitting. They’re terrified. Things are a mess. And, oddly enough, it all coincides with the charmed human’s appearance on the scene.”
“Dammit,” Wraith breathed. He might not give a crap about much, but the hospital had given him a purpose in life, at a time when he’d been directionless and self-destructive. Not that he wasn’t those things now, but he’d mellowed a lot. He was probably still alive only because of his brothers and the hospital.
More important, it meant the world to E and Shade. More than anything except their mates and Shade’s offspring. Wraith might not give a shit about his own life, but he couldn’t let the hospital die just because he didn’t want to bang and kill a human.
He was really a piss-poor excuse for a demon.
It was time to let that particular childhood trauma go. If he didn’t, his mother would win. She’d wanted him dead from the moment he was born, thanks to the horror his father had inflicted on her. Not that Wraith could blame her—she’d been a human on the verge of turning into a vampire when his father had raped her, then kept her just this side of alive with the same gift Shade possessed. For nine months he’d kept her in a horrible stasis, raping and abusing her until she gave birth.
Not surprisingly, she’d gone insane. His father had taken off after he was born, as all unmated Seminus demons did—although usually they abandoned the female immediately after sex and conception.
His mother had completed her transformation into a vampire, becoming vicious as well as insane, and had taken out her anger on Wraith. He’d fought to live, and though he’d done some incredibly stupid things to get himself killed as an adult, something deep inside always kept fighting.
So fuck it. He was going to live. He was going to find the charmed human, take what he needed, and rock on.
And once he was nicely charmed and invincible, he was going to start taking out vampires in a way he’d wanted to do since he’d broken free of his cage. Starting with the Vamp Council.
Oh, yeah. Let the good times roll.
Wraith’s plan to find and seduce the human woman hit a roadblock right away
The fancy shmancy New Haven mansion where she lived was warded against demons.
For hours, Wraith was forced to lurk in the woods that hugged the expansive and well-tended grounds, but when a middle-aged man came out, loaded his Mercedes with luggage, and climbed behind the wheel, Wraith struck.
He tore across the paved drive and slipped into the back seat.
“What the—” The man’s breath cut off as Wraith’s arm went around his neck. The guy flailed, landing a blow on Wraith??
?s chin before Wraith wrenched his head between his palms. A second later, Wraith was using his Seminus gift to get inside the dude’s mind and do a little probing.
The man, Valeriu, possessed some impressive mental blocks that hindered Wraith, but not for long. Soon, he learned that Serena had left for Egypt the night before, and that she was supposed to collect some sort of key from a man named Josh in… shit, an hour.
Quickly, Wraith filled Valeriu’s head with new memories, ones that would cover up the fact that he’d been attacked on his own grounds. Once he was done, he put the guy to sleep, so although Valeriu might wonder why he’d fallen asleep behind the wheel, he wouldn’t remember.
Wraith slipped out of the car and sprinted to the nearest Harrowgate. He had to get to that Josh guy. Now he knew that the key to the treasure Serena was hunting was also the key to her.
Serena had always liked Egypt, and Alexandria was her favorite of all Egyptian cities. Known as The Pearl of the Mediterranean, it boasted beautiful residential districts, elegant gardens, and a Mediterranean, rather than Middle Eastern, atmosphere
She’d spent the day trying to locate the first of the two objects she’d come for in an ancient vault beneath the city. Just as the sun began to set, she found it. Its resting place, anyway. Unfortunately, Kom El-Shuqafa’s visiting hours forced her to give up for the day. Val had managed to finagle special access to off-limits areas of the catacombs, but apparently visiting hours were not negotiable.
Besides, if Val was right, she’d need a key to access the vault, and she was already late to meet Josh at her hotel.
She caught a cab, but as usual traffic was a tangle of cars, donkey carts, bikes, and pedestrians. The narrow streets, minor accidents, and non-functioning traffic lights made for extremely slow progress. Ancient Egyptians could have built an entire pyramid in the time it took her taxi to go a single block.
Fed up, starving, and a nervous wreck after watching several pedestrians nearly get run over, she scrambled out of the cab several blocks from her hotel, figuring she could walk faster than the cab could get her there.
Dressed conservatively in tan cargoes and a long-sleeved, white cotton blouse, she didn’t draw much attention, although her blond hair and blue eyes screamed “foreigner.” No woman should walk alone on these streets, but Serena was safer than if she’d been traveling with an entire army of guards.
The uneven, cracked sidewalks posed no problem for her as she walked, caressed by a light breeze off the harbor. All around, shopkeepers and restaurant owners hawked their goods, which ranged from clothing to fresh vegetables to roast pigeon that scented the air with spice as Serena passed.
Ahead, a man approached, his flowing brown dishdasha flapping around his ankles, his white, bucketlike taqiya cap soaking up the evening shadows and the pale lights from the nearby buildings. He walked with his head down, but when he stepped in front of Serena his head came up, and she drew in a startled breath. The man was beautiful. So beautiful it hurt to look at him. He radiated a glow as fierce as the sun’s reflection off the gold dome of the mosque of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin, and his features were so perfect he could have been drawn with a camel-hair brush.
“Serena.”
She didn’t stop to think how he knew her name, because his musically lilted voice had mesmerized her. She didn’t recognize the accent, but it sounded familiar in an ancient sort of way.
“Yes,” she breathed, and his lips curved in a smile that turned her brain to mush.
He cast a furtive glance around them, and it was then that she noticed the normally bustling street was deserted. Her self-preservation and survival instincts were rusty from disuse, but now they stirred, as though awakening from a deep, dark sleep. The sensation was strange, but she recognized it for what it was—danger.
Still, she wasn’t afraid. Nothing could touch her. Even so, she automatically brushed her fingers over the pendant beneath her blouse. It was a stupid habit, but one she couldn’t break any more than she could break the enchanted chain from which it hung. Oddly, the necklace felt hot against her skin.
“Hey.”
Another deep male voice came from behind her, and she turned to the newcomer, a man casually dressed in faded jeans and a Guinness T-shirt, with a backpack draped over his shoulder. He was tall, close to six and a half feet, with blond hair that fell nearly to his shoulders and a tattoo that extended from the fingers of his right arm all the way up to his face, where the swirling black pattern stretched from his jawline to his temple.
It struck her that this man was the source of the danger vibes. She could feel it in the way her body flushed with warmth, the way her skin tingled, the way her pulse leaped.
“Y-yes?” Dolt. Not only had she stammered, but she’d sounded all breathless, like a Renfield meeting her first vampire.
The dishdasha guy turned to the other man. “Leave us.” His commanding tone made her jump, but the T-shirted guy merely held up his hands.
“Hey, dude, I’m supposed to be here. What’s your deal?”
She eyed the blond. “Josh?”
“Yup. I was just heading to the hotel to meet you.” He gave Dishdasha a pointed look, and wow, Val could have mentioned that his buddy was movie-star hot and bore the physical confidence of a freaking Navy SEAL. “This asshole bothering you?”
“Uh…” Yet another intelligent response. God, she was lame.
The air seemed to shimmer with aggression, and there was that danger sensation again, making her skin tingle and her heart race. Something was going on here, but what, she didn’t know. All she knew was that two impossibly gorgeous men were staring each other down like rival tomcats, and she was in the middle of it all.
Something primal and feminine in her got excited, overriding her brain, which screamed that there was no way anything so abnormal could be good. After a long, tense moment, the man wearing the dishdasha bowed his head and turned to Serena.
“My name is Byzam al-Majid. Val sent me to assist you in your search.”
Josh snorted. “You gonna to buy that? Because this guy has scam written all over his strangely smooth forehead.”
The situation was weird; she couldn’t deny that, and she knew damned good and well that if Val was going to send someone other than Josh, he would have contacted her.
Smiling politely, she clutched her knapsack closer to her body. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. al-Majid, but you understand that I’ll need to contact Val about this.”
“Of course.” He bowed and backed away. “I’ll be in touch.”
She felt a strange sense of relief as he melted away into the night… until she realized she was now alone with the other man, the one who emanated erotic strength and fierce sensuality.
Swallowing, she looked up as he towered over her, one corner of his lush mouth tilted in the cockiest grin she’d ever seen. She dropped her gaze to broad shoulders that tested the limits of his tee’s elasticity, let herself admire his deep chest and narrow waist, made for a woman to wrap her legs around.
Val had said Josh was an ex-Guardian, and she could imagine him making the most of his warrior build to battle demons and satisfy a woman’s needs in bed.
He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.…
Normally she’d take the opportunity to flirt, to let her wild side have a little fun. But just standing next to him brought the sensation of danger flaring to life within her. She had no doubt that he was dangerous in a lethal, animal way… and that the true menace was to everything that made her a woman. Especially her virginity.
Oh, yes, this man was scary, in more ways than she could count, or probably imagine.
Five
Wraith allowed himself a moment to revel in his victory but he didn’t get cocky. This wasn’t over yet. Still, the evidence of Serena’s attraction surrounded him: a faint, musky aroma of arousal mixed with her own clean, vanilla-almond scent. Oh, yeah, she wanted him.
So much for not getting cocky. But hey, were-leopards couldn’
t change their spots, right?
Shadows had swallowed up Byzam—what a bullshit name—but Wraith kept his eyes peeled. “We should go before he comes back. Something about him wasn’t right.”
Serena narrowed her gaze at him, but her tone was teasing when she said, “How do I know you’re any safer?”
Winking, he turned on the charm. “You don’t.”
“Well, at least you’re honest.”
“Not nearly as often as I should be.”
She cocked a blond eyebrow. “Good to know. I’ll keep my guard up, even if you are a friend of Val’s and an ex-Guardian.”
Guardian. Yeah, that had been an interesting revelation. He’d had to leave Val too quickly to extract much detail from his mind, but once he got to Josh in his hotel room, he’d spent a little extra time learning what the guy’s deal was. Then he’d made Josh believe he’d already met with Serena and needed to head home. Hopefully, the real Josh was already checked out of the hotel and on a plane bound for Italy.
Serena would be all his.
Wraith’s eyes went to the V of her blouse, which was buttoned too conservatively for his taste, and then down, to her tiny waist that flared into hips she probably thought were too wide but which excited both the primal male and the horny incubus in him. Her body was made to buffer a male’s lust, and for carrying his offspring.
The former would happen, the latter would not. He could sense fertility in any female, and Serena wasn’t ovulating. Besides, no self-respecting Seminus impregnated a human. Offspring born of other demon species would be purebred Seminus demons; those born to human women would be half-breeds, and of no use when it came to carrying on the Seminus breed.
Wraith reluctantly dragged his gaze back up to her face and tried to forget she was human. “Honey, as hot as you are, you shouldn’t trust any man.”