A Perfect Blood With Bonus Material

  Gasping, Rachel pulled her fingers back. A dull crack echoed through the room, and his attention jumped to the mirror. A silver line now marred its perfection. “What happened?” he asked, a hand on her armrest as he leaned over her shoulder to see it. He froze as the scent of her hair met him. It was touching his cheek, tickling him.

  I can’t afford this, he thought, but he didn’t move, watching her finger trace the new line. “He cracked my mirror,” she said, clearly angry. “He doesn’t think it’s me. He thought I was one of his buddies, messing with him.” He froze when she glanced at him, accepting his nearness—or not noticing it. “Give me a sec,” she added, bending her attention down.

  Trent straightened. She’d gone flippant. Not good. Nervous, he touched her shoulder to caution her, but his words died at the pressure imbalance between them. Good God, the woman was packing! “Ah, Rachel?”

  She shrugged his hand away in annoyance. Peeved, he came around the chair. She was talking to Algaliarept. He could tell. The emotions were cascading over her, so clear he could almost hear her in his thoughts.

  And then her bravado vanished, chilling him.

  “Help me up?” she said as she lifted her fingers and set the mirror beside her in the chair. “He’s coming. Get behind me.”

  Excitement and alarm sifted through him as he cupped her elbow. His charms. He had almost nothing. The woman was crazy. Trust? Trust was going to keep Algaliarept calm? “Where’s behind you?” he said as he scanned the ever-after. “He could come in anywhere.”

  Rachel bobbled in his grip as she kicked her chair out of the line. “Then just stay close.”

  The texture of the line seemed to richen about him as her hair began to float; she’d only now just brought her second sight into play. What had he been thinking? The woman was recovering from a gunshot, and he agrees to a demon parlay? In his office?

  “Rachel Mariana Morgan . . .” intoned a hard, elegant voice, and Rachel gasped, both of them spinning to look behind them. It was Algaliarept, and Trent stiffened, his hatred and fear crashing over him at the sight of the ruddy-faced, dark-haired man leaning against a rock in the ever-after. Trent’s mutilated hand twitched, and he made a fist.

  The scent of burnt amber grew, then vanished under the meadow scent that he identified with Rachel. She was worried. She only smelled like that when she thought she was in trouble. “Hi, Al,” she said, her voice quavering as she fussed with her sweats—the demon was frowning at them in disapproval.

  Hi? Trent thought. Had she really said hi? He should have insisted they make a circle. He should have called to have his charms brought up.

  “Hey, you look good,” she added when Algaliarept remained silent.

  The demon didn’t move, accessing them standing together to make Trent nervous. Algaliarept had blue-tinted glasses to counter the red sun and hide his goat-slitted eyes. His crushed velvet coat with tails was taking on an orange haze in the gritty wind. The hat made him look overdone and stuffy. If it was anyone other than a demon, Trent would’ve believed the finery was to hide an insecurity complex that needed constant reassurance. The knit gloves cinched his opinion. Gloves were for sissies.

  “I look good?” Algaliarept said, his voice dripping sarcasm as he stood up from the rock.

  Trent’s eye twitched, agreeing that had been a stupid thing to have said.

  “I look good!” he shouted, taking three steps toward them, his hand coming out as if to grab Rachel. “I’m broke and living in squalor!”

  Rachel’s face was creased as she begged for clemency, but the demon was coming at them. Was she going to do nothing? Alarmed, Trent pulled hard on the line, collecting it in his fist. He didn’t have time to harness it with a spell, and he threw it raw at the demon. It wouldn’t down him, but it might slow him up.

  “Hey!” Rachel shouted, and snarling, Algaliarept flung out a hand, deflecting Trent’s gold and red tinted energy. Trent ducked as it pinged into a new direction, cringing when it hit his fish tank. With a sharp crack, it exploded. Water flowed out in an awe-inspiring sight, carrying everything with it.

  “Stop it, Trent!” Rachel exclaimed, and Trent stumbled when she shoved him. “You promised!”

  Stunned, Trent stared at his fish flopping on the floor. “No, I didn’t,” he said grimly, as he gathered up the force of the line again. The demon had stopped, not because of the energy, but to stare at the fish dying on his carpet. Blast it to the Turn and back, he’d had some of them for over a decade. Ticked, Trent threw another ball of energy while the demon was distracted.

  His eyes never lifting from the gasping fish, Algaliarept casually deflected it as well. It ricocheted into the vid screen, exploding it in a shower of sparks. Damn it all to hell, he was destroying his office with his own magic!

  The demon was looking at them when they turned back around. “I’m paying Ku’Sox blackmail to keep him quiet about your leaking ley line,” Algaliarept said, his anger obvious. “The elves are breeding true, and everyone’s blaming me!” he added, his square face red. “And you think I look good!”

  Rachel took a deep breath. “Yes, I do!” she shouted right back, and the demon reached for her. Panicked, Trent yanked Rachel backward, stepping them both out of the line. Reality flashed entirely back into existence, and his feet suddenly felt twice as soggy. His fish flopped, making little splashing sounds. Damn it all to hell, his fish.

  “Hey! What are you doing!” Rachel barked at him, and Trent ran for the nearest, scooping it up and tossing it into the few inches of remaining water.

  “Keeping you out of the ever-after,” he almost snarled as he caught another. Not the tang. Maybe I’m in time. He ran to his lionfish, stymied as he hovered over it, watching it die. He couldn’t touch it. The thing had toxic spines.

  “Well, stop it!” Rachel said as she pushed her chair in anger, then winced as all her weight hit her bad leg. “If you want to help, give me my crutch.”

  Trent looked up from the gasping, colorful fish. He couldn’t save it. Maybe he couldn’t save Rachel, either.

  “Give me my crutch!” she demanded, her gaze darting to the line and the waiting demon. “I can’t reach it from here.”

  With a last look at the doomed fish, Trent stomped to her chair, little splashes coming from the soggy carpet. Fingers fumbling, he undid the clasps and stomped back to her. Water had reached the hall, and there were whispers behind the door. “Your crutch,” he said dryly as he extended it to her.

  His fingers burned as she snatched it away in anger. How could he help her if she was not willing to even listen to him, accept his help? Frustrated, he debated if he should walk out the door and leave her to her fate when she wedged the crutch under her arm, pulling him to look at her. Her back was to the line, to her demon.

  “Please help me,” she whispered, her eyes frightened. “I can’t do this alone.”

  Understanding crashed over him, and he forced his expression to remain unchanged as he flicked a look at the line behind her. God, he was a fool! Her anger and bluster were a front. If she showed weakness in front of Algaliarept, he would take her. Maybe she did need him.

  Shamed for his misunderstanding, he gave her a nod, then turned to the door. Someone was pounding on it. “I’m fine! I want my old tank brought up out of storage!” he shouted, and then his eyes came back to Rachel’s. “Please,” he added, and her eyes welled up in relief. In that poised moment, something in him shifted, a possibility cascading over him so new that it hurt. What am I doing? I . . . I can’t allow myself to . . . to even think it!

  Heart pounding, he shoved his feelings away with a measured practice. He could not fall in love, and not with a demon, and not in the middle of a conflict! This was adrenaline. This was the excitement of playing with fire. She was able to do the things he wanted to do. He was projecting. That’s it. It was nothing real.

  But his heart
pounded as he took her elbow to help her hide her weakness. Together they squished across the wet carpet. They stepped into the line without pause, and the tingle of their shared magics went through him as they both brought up their second sights. Trent scanned the line, surprised to find Algaliarept simply waiting. Listening. Maybe she was right. Or maybe he knew once the sun went down, all the magic in the world wouldn’t save her. “I don’t think I like this plan,” he whispered, his lips among her hair, and he breathed her in, taunting himself.

  “Promise me this time,” she said, her breath quick from the pain. “Promise!”

  “I promise,” he said immediately, and then frowned at the demon laughing at him.

  With a slow motion, Algaliarept shifted his posture, becoming sly and weighty. “Explain yourself . . . student,” he muttered, his eyes on the defunct bracelet on the carpet. Perhaps they could reason with him after all.

  “I’ve been hiding,” she said quickly, and they both stiffened when Algaliarept pushed up from the rock he’d been leaning against.

  “You’re mistaken if you think your elf can save you. He’s less effective than that witch of yours, though Newt did pay me a handsome sum for him.”

  He was getting close, and Trent tugged at Rachel’s elbow to get her closer to the edge of the line. She wouldn’t move, and when she grunted in pain, his hand sprang from her elbow. Damn it, if the woman wouldn’t take steps to protect herself, then he’d have to do it for her.

  “Her elf is going to do just that,” he said as he moved to stand between Rachel and the demon. “I did not work this hard at getting her to accept who she is to let you take your spoiled brat of a little boy temper tantrum out on her. She stays on my side of the lines.”

  Head tilting, Algaliarept sent the full force of his attention to Trent. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut. “You put that putrid elf shackle on her?” Algaliarept said, his anger returning. “You robbed her of the lines with your lies!”

  Resolute, he lifted his chin. He hadn’t wanted to say this in front of her, but maybe Rachel needed to hear it as well. “She needed to know what she would lose before she would ever accept their cost. Now she does.”

  The demon’s expression became ugly. “You will never enslave us again, and not through Rachel!” he said. In a blindingly fast motion, something sped from him.

  Agony stabbed through Trent, and he dropped to a knee before her demon, unable to breathe. It was as if his spine was being pulled from him, and he stifled a scream, eyes wide.

  “Stop it! Stop it, both of you!” Rachel shouted, but it sounded far away and distant. Her hand on him was shaking, sending sparkles of more pain through him. Oh God, he was a fool.

  “Al, he has the cure for the demons!” Rachel said, and he managed to look up, see her panic, panic for him. “You really want to kill him? I could have taken it off whenever I wanted. He’s not enslaving me, he’s trying to help, and I was not listening! I’m a demon, damn it! Knock it off!”

  Suddenly, the pain was gone. Gasping, he almost fell prostrate. His hands gripping the soggy carpet eased, and he took another breath, then a third. Slowly he stood, his knees wet and his hands shaking. Algaliarept was standing a distance away, the knee-high grass waving about his feet. What had saved him? That she’d admitted she was a demon? Did he still breathe because he’d gotten her to admit that she was a demon when all of Algaliarept’s attempts had failed? He could work from that. Perhaps survive.

  “You okay?” she said as she bent over him. Her voice trembled, and the demon’s eyes narrowed at her concern.

  Realizing she was holding him up, he pulled himself straight. “This is a stupid idea, Rachel,” he said sourly. “Let’s trust a demon to be reasonable. Brilliant!”

  The demon’s chuckle was not pleasant, but it was clear he agreed. “You lied to me,” Algaliarept said, and Rachel lifted her chin defiantly. “Ran away. Shacked up with . . . an elf?”

  Startled, Trent pulled himself up. The demon was concerned they’d become close?

  “I took a sick day,” Rachel said boldly. “I lost my aura in the lines while cursing Ku’Sox. If Trent hadn’t put my soul in a bottle till it healed, I’d be dead. Sorry about sending Ku’Sox to you, by the way. Are you okay?”

  My God, she’s really concerned about him, he decided. What the devil had been going on during those weekly lessons of hers in the ever-after? But what truly shook him was when Algaliarept’s angry smile faltered at her question, as if what she felt about him mattered. By all that was holy, the demon liked her?

  Stunned, Trent’s thinking radically shifting to one of fear. What had Rachel become that a demon cared whether she lived or died, that he would suffer on her behalf, that he would . . . Damn it, Rachel had done it to himself as well. She had them both dancing to keep her safe. No wonder she’d made him promise not to hurt Algaliarept.

  “I’m broke and paying him blackmail!” the demon raged, but it was obvious now to Trent that he’d never hurt her, and if she’d been right about that, she was probably right about a lot of things. He’d been working with bad information. No, just not believing what he’d been given. There was a difference.

  “Now that you’re alive to take the blame for unbalancing the ever-after, I’ll give you the honor of paying him instead,” Algaliarept finished, and Rachel gripping his arm. Trent felt himself pale. With that breathless look on her face, anything could come out of her mouth.

  “Trent knows the cure for the demons’ genome,” she said, and panic iced through him.

  But she’d turned away, pleading with the demon. “Al, you don’t have to keep going on like this. You can move on if you let it.”

  Stop! But another part of him wondered what he was willing to sacrifice to save her, and it scared him he didn’t know the answer.

  Goat-slitted eyes met his when he looked up, the quirk to the demon’s lips making him wonder if the demon knew exactly what was going through his mind. “You ask me to trust an elf,” the demon said as if testing the waters. “You ask too much.”

  Licking her lips, Rachel stepped forward, pulling Trent along with her. “Al, I think I know what you looked like. Originally, I mean.”

  “This is why you came out of hiding? To tell me that?” Algaliarept nearly snarled, but his anger was a front to hide his desire to know. Truth after truth was falling on Trent, changing his entire world. Algaliarept was hurt that she’d left him. Hell’s bells.

  “No,” she said, and Algaliarept’s glare became suspicious.

  “You’re in trouble?” he asked dryly, looking at her leg. “I can fix that.”

  Again a white glove reached, and Trent drew Rachel away, pulling her back to his front. He hadn’t liked the possessive glint to Algaliarept’s eye. The demon’s expression became ugly, and Rachel took an annoyed sounding breath. But she didn’t push from Trent, and his hold became more decisive.

  “No! I’m not leaving with you,” she said, annoyed when Algaliarept came even closer. “Listen to me.”

  Once more the demon reached, and Trent circled her middle with his arm. Breathing in the scent of her hair, he exhaled as he tapped a line and whispered, “So ma eva, shardona.” Rachel made a small sound as the spell took hold, and his face warmed. He had joined their auras was all, a simple task when knowing her neural pattern so intimately, first when he’d protected her soul when her aura had been scraped off battling Ku’Sox, and then today, feeling hers chime through him when he kindled her chi back to life. The demon would see it, know it for what it meant. Algaliarept wasn’t the only one who would see Rachel safe.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel breathed, clearly feeling something.

  “It’s not a circle,” Trent said, his breath in her hair. “I didn’t break my promise.” No, it wasn’t a circle, but the demon would understand that he’d have to fight to take her, and with their auras blended, it would be mess
y and probably make Rachel mad at him.

  Sure enough, Algaliarept’s eyes narrowed and his white-gloved hand dropped, inches from touching her. Trent exhaled as he drew back. “Curious,” was all that the demon said, but he backed up another, and then a third. Rachel had become positively pliant in his arms, and he wondered if perhaps he should stop.

  Flicking a look at Trent, the demon slumped. “I’m broke, Rachel,” he said, clearly embarrassed to be admitting it. “Tales of an elven cure will get me nothing! You will come back to the ever-after and prove you’re alive so you can tap into the funds that have been accruing in your name and I can buy some damned groceries!”

  He was playing on her sympathy, and Trent’s hold on her strengthened until her breath came in a gasp.

  “No,” she said, and then to Trent, “Can you stop that, please?”

  Immediately he let go of both the line and her. “Sorry. It’s not supposed to hurt.”

  “It didn’t,” she said, her face reddening when Algaliarept sniggered.

  The air was chill between them where there’d just been warmth, and Trent flushed when she edged away from him. “I’m a demon,” she said, and Algaliarept flicked a sour look at him. “I admit it, the world knows it, but I belong here, in reality. I’m not going back to the ever-after under duress.”

  “I beg to differ, Rachel Mariana Morgan,” the demon said.

  “You can beg all you want,” she said matter-of-factly. “Trent’s been working to get legislation through to make me a citizen again with rights and responsibilities. If I’m lucky, I’m going to have to pay taxes next year, right Trent?”

  “Ah . . .” he hedged, but clearly that had piqued the demon’s interest.

  Algaliarept ran his gaze up and down her, his attention lingering on her leg. “Why did you break that bracelet? To fix your leg?”