Demon Blood (Vampire in the City Book 5) (9 page)

Chapter Eleven

“How could that happen?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s happened to all of us.”

“What do you mean all of you?”

David was pacing the living room floor as he answered. “All of us as in all the werewolves in the entire city.”

“Do you mean the pack in Brooklyn?” I asked. “What were you doing there?”

“I’m still not in with them, if that’s what you’re asking. But I have been trying to keep track of their comings and goings, and this month I decided to see what they were up to during the full moon.”

“When exactly did you become un-wolfed? De-wolfed? Wolf-less?”

“The moon didn’t rise until a few hours ago, but I was hidden in the perimeter of the field in Prospect Park where they usually all gather while they’re waiting for the change to happen. The second or two it takes us to change, there is a bit of disorientation, but when we get through that, we’re wolves. This time, I felt the change coming on, but then I realized I was still human, and what’s more, I couldn’t change even when I tried to.”

“Did the other werewolves look surprised?” I asked.

“You bet they did. They were weirded out and started to look for what could have caused it,” David said. “That’s why it took me so long to get home. If I just ran away, they probably would have noticed me.”

“You don’t remember anything at all?” I asked, standing up. 

I started to walk into the kitchen and David followed me. “Nope. I started to turn, and then nothing.”

I held up the piece of paper. “Does this symbol look at all familiar to you?”

“Not at all,” David said. “Is it astrology? Because I’m a Sagittarius.”

“I think it’s a sigil of an archangel or demon. At least according to the online database I found.”

I realized then that David hadn’t been kept up-to-date with the information we had, so I briefly told him about what we had discovered while Alex had me under hypnosis. 

“What do we think this man was? An agent of some angel or demon?” David asked. 

I shrugged. “No idea, but I just thought of a person who may know.”

After we had both had a few hours of much-needed sleep, I showered, dressed, and met David in the kitchen, where he was rummaging around in the refrigerator. 

“There’s no food in here,” he said. “Let’s go to Starbucks for some coffee and bagels.”

A friend of David’s was working, so once again I was able to eat a free breakfast. I checked my cell phone, as it was already past eleven, and I technically should have been in the office, but there were no messages yelling at me for being late. I wondered if it was because Alex had alerted someone from OmniPlus that I was no longer to work in the office. 

That, of course, led me to wonder who exactly his connection was. The only person I knew for sure had even met him was the receptionist, whose name I didn’t even know. Then there was Marianne, who was cold and impersonal, and seemed like just the kind of person Alex would pick as a confidant. 

“Are we sure this is the right house?” David asked, pulling me out of my musings. 

The house in front of us, which I was reasonably sure was Diana’s, had a
For Sale
sign on the lawn. 

“It’s hard to forget a place where you almost got decapitated,” I said. 

We walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Nothing happened for a long while.

“Do you think she’s even here?” David asked. 

“There’s a car in the driveway.” I bent down to try to get a look through the curtains, but they were too long and opaque to be able to see anything inside. 

Just as I was crouched there, the door opened a few inches and a face peeked out. 

I quickly straightened up. “Hi, Diana. It’s Emma.”

Diana’s eyes widened and she tried to slam the door closed again, but David threw his weight against it and pushed it open. 

“Who are you?” she asked him. 

“David,” he said. “Former werewolf.”

“And I’m no longer a vampire,” I said, stating the obvious. “We just want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk,” she said. “Go away. I’m busy.”

That’s when I realized we could get the door open if we worked together, so I helped David push on it. Immediately, it slammed all the way open, and we walked into the house before Diana could get her bearings back. 

The sign outside appeared to be genuine, as most of Diana’s belongings were in boxes. 

“Why are you moving?” I asked. 

“I got laid off. I’m going to stay with my parents in Florida until I decide what to do.” Her eyes were red from crying, lack of sleep, or both. Still, I wasn’t feeling too sympathetic. 

“Have you told your daughter?” I asked. “Because she didn’t mention anything about this.”

“No.” She looked at the floor and simultaneously collapsed into an armchair. “Can you? I haven’t really talked to her since....”

Her voice trailed off, but I finished for her. “Since she drained your powers. And now my vampire nature and witch potential are gone too, as is David’s werewolf nature, and I know for a fact she didn’t do it, but I have a feeling you know who did.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” came her soft reply. She didn’t even look up at me. 

I took the paper with the drawing on it out of my bag and thrust it in front of her face. “I think you do know what I’m talking about. And I also think you know what this means.”

“I’m sorry,” she said weakly.

“Sorry because you won’t tell us?” I asked.

“Sorry,” she repeated, sobbing.

“Emma,” David said, “I don’t know if we’re going to get anything out of her.”

“She knows something. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be this upset.” I turned back to the former witch. “Diana, I’m sure you know that witches have been losing their powers all over New York City. And werewolves are losing their ability to wolf out. And I lost both my witch potential and vampire powers. And it was all after I met a man who had a tattoo of this symbol. What do you know about him?”

She suddenly stopped sobbing and gasped up at me, with her mouth hanging open. “You met him? He’s here and loose in the city?”

“Yes, who is he?” I asked. “He’s about, oh, so high, thin, blond hair, the most amazing eyes….” I trailed off as Diana jumped up and started going around the room, throwing random items into her purse. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve got to get out of here,” she mumbled, putting the television remote into her bag. “He’ll be after me, I know it. After what I did, and now I have no power left to fight him. If only that little bitch hadn’t done this to me.”

I stepped in front of her as she picked up a catnip toy. I hadn’t even known she had a cat. “Wait a minute. Did you just call your daughter a bitch?”

“Yes.” Now she seemed angry rather than afraid. “After all the plans I had for her. I should have known better than to let her get this old and this far out of control. And I had even let myself get somewhat attached to her, despite knowing exactly what she is.”

Now I was really confused. “What is she?”

She stopped at stared at me. “She’s the daughter of that thing, that demon.”

I shook my head. “Wait, what? Her father is a demon? Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’m the one that summoned him seventeen years ago.”

David suddenly asked, “You had sex with a demon?”

“I made out with a demon?” I asked nobody in particular. Then another, more disturbing thought occurred to me. “I drank the blood of a demon? That can’t be good.”

“Yes,” Diana said, which actually managed to answer all our questions. “And now, someone has brought him back, somehow, and let him loose on the city. And not a one of us will be safe.”

“Why is that?” I asked. “Other than taking the magic out of witches and werewolves, what will he do?”

“He’s a demon of great magic. He can collect it and store it. That’s his nature,” Diana explained. “But very rarely, he can be coerced to give some of that magic away.”

“Like when you got pregnant with Amy?” David asked.

She looked at him. “Yes.”

“But why would you want to have a demon child?” I asked.

“Power,” Diana said. “You of all people should know. You’ve seen what she can do. She drained me of all my magic. That’s the same thing her father can do.”

“Yes, I get that,” I said. “But why did you think that having her would give you any power?”

“No, you’re misunderstanding. I didn’t think having a demon spawn would give me power.”

“Then what are you trying to say?” I asked.

“You thought sacrificing a demon spawn would give you power,” David said. “Am I right?”

I gasped at him, but Diana didn’t seem affected.

“Yes,” she mumbled, at least having the decency to look down.

“You were going to kill your own child?” I yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t think it would turn out to be a baby,” Diana said. “I thought it would be some kind of hell-beast or a deformed monster. That’s why I didn’t tell anyone I was pregnant.”

“Is this when you left the Silver Leaf coven?”

“Left?” she snorted, sounding very witch-like. “Did they tell you I left? I didn’t leave—they threw me out.”

“Let me guess—was it for summoning demons and performing child sacrifice rituals?” I asked.

“No, because they are all afraid of me and any other witch who is capable of performing any real magic. They just want to have their esoteric knitting circles and their family-friendly pagan picnics. They don’t know what it’s like to have any real power.”

I couldn’t help myself, and said, “Which I guess you don’t have any more either.”

“Look who’s talking,” she yelled back at me, finally throwing the cat toy into her purse. “I’m glad he sucked you, and those other bitches, dry!”

I wanted to curse back at her, but a thought stopped me in my tracks. “What will he do to Amy?”

“He can have her,” Diana continued on her rant. “If that little brat hadn’t been so cute when she was born, I would have plunged a dagger into her heart that very day, and all that power would have been mine. But I was weak. When I saw how human she looked, I thought I was mistaken, and perhaps someone else had been her father. I thought it might have been Gregor, but….”

“But she looks nothing like you or Gregor,” I continued for her. “But she does look exactly like her father, the demon.”

Diana sighed and seemed to be contemplating a stray sock that she had picked up off the floor. “Yes, and when he finally does get around to consuming her, I’m afraid of how much power he’ll have.”

“What do you think he’ll do?” I asked.

“With that much energy, he could rip a hole through the dimensions, and create a hell on earth,” she answered.

“What can we do to stop him?”

“Not a thing,” Diana said. “As you saw, anyone that gets close to him will have their powers drained.”

“But seventeen years ago, when you first summoned him, how did he not get all out of control like this?”

“I trapped him in a summoning circle, and didn’t release him to his own plain of existence until I was done with him,” she said. “However he got here this time, whatever idiot summoned him, they didn’t take the proper precautions. When the world ends, it will all be their fault.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” was all I could say.

Chapter Twelve

Both David and Diana stared at me.

“What are you saying?” Diana asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “We need to leave, and let you get back to your running away.” I turned to walk toward the door before she could say anything else.

Fortunately, neither of them tried to stop me, and I opened the door and walked outside. David followed a few seconds later.

“Okay, what the hell was that last bit about?” he asked. “Do you mean to tell me that you’re responsible for all this?”

“I didn’t mean to summon a demon. Amy asked me to help her with a spell to find her father.”

“And of course you guys would have no way of knowing that she’s half demon.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Except, you know, now that I think about it, she does seem to have powers that go way beyond those of other witches.”

“Right, like when she drained all the witch power out of her mother. Why did she do that again?”

“She was saving me,” I reminded him. “Her mom wanted to use me to take control of the vampires in New York.”

“Hmmm, that’s right.”

“What?” I asked. 

“Nothing,” David paused. “It’s just from what I know about Amy from having lived with her the past few weeks, she doesn’t seem like the most selfless person.”

“What exactly are you saying?”

“Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, she has been acting fairly demon-like for as long as we’ve known her,” he said. “I’m not saying she didn’t want to save you, but she might not have been so quick to do so if it wasn’t also in her best interests.”

Suddenly I remembered something. “A few months ago, she said that she ate an entire coven of witches. I wonder if that meant she drained them of their powers?”

“You didn’t think to ask any follow-up questions?”

“Nope. At that moment all I was thinking was ‘Zombies!’”

“Oh, right.” David said. “So what should we do? Neither one of us has any power to speak of. How are we going to stop a demon and his teenage daughter from wreaking havoc on the city?”

“Maybe we should just try talking to her about it. As far as she knows now, her spell didn’t even work.”

“We’ll see.”

By then it was afternoon, and Amy was home from school. She was in her usual spot on the sofa and gasped at David when we came in.

“What happened to you?” she asked him.

“I’m no longer a werewolf. It’s almost as if all the magic has been sucked out of me.” He paused, and then said, “Now where have I heard that before?”

“Dunno.” Amy shrugged, turning back to the TV.

David stood in front of the screen and said, “Don’t tell me you find this carpet cleaner commercial more interesting than the fact that everyone in the city who’s magical is having their abilities taken from them.”

She sighed and stared down at the remote, pressing a few buttons for good measure. “Of course not. I just had a bad day.”

“Why? Because there wasn’t anyone left whose powers you could eat?”

I grabbed David’s arm. “Stop it. She doesn’t know what’s happening.”

David’s eyes glared into mine, and I was suddenly happy he could no longer shift into a werewolf. “Oh, she knows.”

“No, she doesn’t.” I continued my hold on his arm, because he looked like he wanted to smack the girl.

“Yes, I do,” Amy said, so softly that it took a moment to register.

“What?” I gasped at her, letting go of David.

“I told you!” he yelled. He started to walk toward her in a somewhat menacing fashion.

Amy shook her head at him. “Please, what are you going to do? Nibble me to death? Scratch me with a hangnail?”

She had a point, and David stopped in his tracks and crossed his arms over his chest instead. “What do you know, exactly?”

I was starting to find this whole human thing wearying, and sat down on the sofa next to Amy.

The girl looked at me and asked, “You’re not mad at me too, are you?”

“That depends. Did you knowingly ask me to summon a demon with you?”

“No, well yes, well sort of. I didn’t know for sure, but I had some suspicions.”

“When did you get these suspicions?” I asked. “And what were they exactly?”

“Well, obviously I’m a more powerful witch than anyone else I’ve ever met.”

I nodded. While it sounded obnoxious for her to say it, it was the absolute truth. 

“My mother was probably second to me, so for a while I thought that if my dad were to also be a witch, it would explain my powers. And for a little while I did think that Gregor might be my dad, but obviously I had to get my looks from somewhere.”

I nodded a second time. Like Gregor, Diana was very tall and solidly built, with dark hair and eyes. Neither one was short, delicate, and fair with light eyes, like Amy. And like the man I had met in the club. 

“But obviously what really did it was when I looked into my mom’s brain and saw everything.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “When was this?”

“You don’t remember? You were there too, but you were in your boyfriend’s brain.”

“Oh, right.” 

That I remembered. Amy and I had needed to go into their minds to sever a psychic connection without damaging them. That was when I had discovered that a centuries-old vampire has even more baggage than I do, but Amy had never told me what her own cranial excursion had revealed. I did vaguely remember her uttering some manner of menacing threat, though. 

“What did you see?” I asked. 

“Enough,” she said. “From what I was able to see, she wanted power so much that she summoned a demon and had a baby with him. And also that she was willing to sacrifice that baby to get what she wanted.”

“But she didn’t go through with it.” I stated the obvious. “That’s something, right?”

“Only because I look human enough to make her doubt who my father is. So maybe she wasn’t enough of a bitch to kill me at birth, but by now I bet she wishes she had.”

“He looks just like you, actually,” I said. 

Amy smiled, just a bit. “He does? No cloven hooves or horns?”

“Not that I could see,” I agreed. 

David had been so silent I almost forgot he was there, but now he spoke up and said, “It looks like we’re all on the same page with what’s happened so far, but what I want to know is, if you had strong suspicious as to who your father was, why did you let this demon loose in the city?”

Amy jumped up and stood in front of David with her fists clenched. “He’s not some random demon—he’s my dad! And I didn’t intend for this to happen. I used my blood in the spell to call him to me. I just wanted to meet my dad!”

As the teen was yelling, her expression changed and she slowly turned and faced me. “You!”

“Me, what?” I asked. 

“I let you drink my blood before we did that spell. That must have been what confused him! That’s why he went to you instead of me!”

“Umm, sorry.” I thought back to the night I had been turned back into a human. Although the details were as fuzzy as ever, I vaguely remembered the man I had met asking me if we knew each other. “He’s probably looking for you right now.”

“I should do another spell to find him,” Amy said. “And this time I’ll do it by myself!”

Had she forgotten that she was the one who asked me for help? “Sure,” I said agreeably. “That sounds great.”

“Are you sure that’s the best idea?” David asked.  “Look at what happened the first time you summoned this demon.”

“I told you to stop calling him that!”

“What is his name anyway?” I asked. “Does it have anything to do with the symbol we showed you?”

“Yeah, right!” Amy yelled. “Like I’m going to tell you anything! I’ll just deal with this myself!”

With that, the girl abruptly turned and stormed out the front door. 

“What did I say?” I asked David. 

“Dunno,” David said. “But one thing I can tell is she’s at least half a teenage girl.”

“And where is she going?” I asked of no one in particular. 

He ignored my question and said, “I told you she knows everything.”

We could her Tammy’s voice from just outside and then a shrill scream from Amy. 

Before either of us could react, Tammy came into the room. “What’s her problem? I didn’t even get to tell her that we found out what the symbol means.”

After we filled Tammy in on what we had learned from Diana, she said, “It’s good that that brat drained her magic I guess. And also that the coven kicked her out. Modern witches don’t really go for the child sacrifices, you know?”

“That’s good to know,” I said. “But what does that symbol mean?”

“Oh, right. It’s the demon’s name written in runic symbols.”

“And what is his name?” I asked. 

“We’re still looking into that,” Tammy said. “In fact, the coven is coming over tonight for a research party, if you’d like to join us.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler just to beat it out of that little witch or her witch mother?” David asked. 

Tammy narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t use the word ‘witch’ like it’s a derogatory term.”

“He has a point though,” I said. 

“Let’s go with one night of research before we start beating anyone,” Tammy said. “Are you guys joining us?”

“No,” we both said simultaneously. 

“Why not?” she asked. “David, you’re not a werewolf anymore.”

“I have a shift at Starbucks tonight,” he said, which may or may not have been the truth. 

Tammy shook her head at him, and then turned to me. “What about you, Em? We would welcome your help doing research even though you’re not a witch anymore.”

“I just don’t really like the people in your coven,” I admitted.

She frowned at me. “It’s your coven too, you know.”

“But you just said I’m not a witch anymore!”

“That doesn’t mean you’re out. We don’t discriminate against those who lack magical potential when it comes to participation in celebratory activates. Like of course you should still come to the May Day event that Silver Leaf is doing in Washington Square Park.”

“Right. I’m on the mailing list. But it still doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like your coven. I mean, our coven. Max and Nina have that annoying dog, and also he stabbed me with a sword that one time. And those twins are just too hard to deal with. And Gregor….” I trailed off.

Tammy had put her hands on her hips, and I noticed David had stealthy left the room. “Yes? What have you got to say about my boyfriend?”

“Well, he kind of tried to decapitate me,” I said, somehow with less conviction than I intended.

“He thought you were running around killing people. Besides, you’re human now. You have nothing to worry about.”

“I guess,” I said. “But maybe there’s something else I could do that’s more helpful. Something that’s elsewhere.”

“Em, remember ninth grade? We’ve been in this situation before where we don’t like each other’s boyfriends. We only got through that by breaking up with both of them, and I’m just not willing to do that again. You’ll have to get used to Gregor, even if you don’t like him.”

I stared at Tammy for a few minutes, until she realized what she had said. Her expression softened at the same time I felt my eyes well up with tears. As a human, I had always been quick to cry, and it seemed like that unfortunate ability had come back to me.

“Oh, I didn’t mean…I’m sure everything will work out with Alex.”

Not wanting to hear her talk about it anymore, much less run into the coven members, I turned and ran out the front door. Behind me, I heard my best friend call my name, but perhaps she had forgotten I no longer had my vampire strength, because she didn’t try to stop me as I ran out of the yard and down the block.