Demon's Hunger (17 page)

Somehow, between her house burning to the ground and getting slapped with the knowledge that part of the world was populated by sorcerers and demons, she'd been treated to a double dose of the fact that she'd been slowly slipping away over the span of months.

Her little problem wasn't going away. It was getting worse. The terrifying truth was that she'd zoned out two nights past for twelve hours, and again yesterday while Dain had been gone. The hours before midnight were a complete blank for her. She'd come back to herself in the foyer of his loft, with the front door wide open and that long deep scratch on her arm. Her bare feet had been ice cold, as though she'd gone trekking through the snow barefoot.

And she'd felt like she was going to sift away again on the terrace, after Dain had… after she'd gone off like a well-shaken soda tin.

Whatever was wrong with her, the episodes were coming fast and hard.

She glanced at Dain. Should she tell him? When she'd called her mother last night, half out of daughterly duty—the obligation to tell her about the fire—and half out of daughterly desperation, she had so needed to talk to someone. But, as usual, Araminta had been distant, reserved. She supposed that in her heart, she hadn't really expected anything different.

But, somehow, she felt that Dain would understand.

She didn't just need to talk with
someone;
she needed to talk with
him
.

"Any… magic in your family?" he asked unexpectedly.

"Excuse me?" A snort of startled laughter burst free. Magic? Well, her mother was a witch, but she didn't think that was what he'd meant. "Um… no."

He frowned. "Are you adopted?"

"Adopted?" Vivien laughed again, taken aback by the question. "Where did that come from?"

"Curiosity."

"Well, no. No, I'm not adopted." She paused. "Are you?"

What an odd conversation.

His brows rose. Well, what had he expected with such a left-field question? What was good for the goose…

"No."

Vivien cocked her head. "Do sorcerers have parents?"

"No, we hatch from eggs dropped to earth by passing meteorites." He shot her a look. "Of course we have parents."

"Scientists are taught never to assume," she protested, stung.

He looked at her again, his gaze lingering, sliding from her face to her neck and lower.

"That sweater really looks great on you," he said huskily, and looked back to the road.

Vivien glanced down, realizing that she still wore no bra, and the soft cloth made no secret of that. And now that he'd made her think about it, the cashmere felt sinfully good against her skin, against her nipples.

Her eyes met his for an instant, and then they both quickly looked away.

Taking his hand from the gearshift, Dain flicked on the stereo. Vivaldi drifted out to fill the space. Beautiful, but Vivien couldn't handle it right now. She wanted something raw and pounding, something that would drown out her feelings and worries and fears. Drown out the pounding of her pulse.

She was glad when Dain hit the third button, cranked the volume, and the raunchy sound of "Highway to Hell" filled the car.

Vivien gave a short laugh, darkly pleased by the coincidence, because damn if she didn't feel like she was driving fast and hard straight to hell.

Amy Lassiter curled her fingers around the paper cup of her tall non fat caramel macchiato and glanced around the interior of Starbucks. The place was practically empty. Only one table was taken, near the back, four women chatting and laughing, the sound grating on Amy's nerves. It made her feel all the more alone.

Last night had been a killer. She felt exhausted, drained. Lousy. And she couldn't shake the memories of that guy…

She closed both hands around the paper cup, lifted her coffee, and blew on it while she stared morosely out the front window at the busy street. A shiver chased down her spine, and she wondered where the draft was coming from. God, she was so cold. Lately, she was always so goddamned cold.

She sipped on her coffee, barely tasting it, wishing it would warm her.

Staring out the window at the slushy street and the bundled pedestrians, she thought that she really should have gone to Mexico, despite Vivien refusing to go with her. She should have gone alone. But at the last minute, with her suitcase all packed and ready and the cab waiting at the curb, she'd backed out, decided she just couldn't do it.

Maybe because of what had happened the last time. Maybe that was the reason she hadn't wanted to go alone. Memories, especially dark ones, were a bitch.

A yellow Ferrari pulled up to an open spot at the curb a few stores down. The guy who climbed out piqued Amy's interest. Definitely hot. Dark hair, amazing build, angular features. His movements were all male grace and power, and there was an energy about him, an impression of… She shook her head, at a loss to pinpoint exactly what it was about him that was so riveting.

He rounded the car, opened the passenger door, leaned in, and spoke to his companion. Amy caught a fleeting glimpse of the woman in the passenger seat, blinked, looked again. She almost choked on a sip of coffee.

Vivien?

No, the hair was wrong, too short, and Vivien rarely came downtown anymore unless it was work related. She said she disliked crowds and that lately being around too many people made her uncomfortable. That was one of the reasons she'd given Amy for not wanting to go to Mexico. The crowds in the airport, the plane, the restaurants, the clubs.

The stunning guy nodded, closed the door, sauntered toward the coffee shop. Amy shivered. She was mesmerized by the way he moved, so in control, confident. Something swelled inside her, a secret urge, powerful and frightening. Not lust. Something darker. It made her want to suck away that masculine confidence, pare it down to nothing.

Swiveling on her stool, she watched him hold the door to let an older lady in before him. His gaze slid over Amy, impersonal, then skidded back, sharp, alert. Like he
saw
her. Not just the outside but
inside
, to the harsh part of her soul that was growing stronger every day, the part she was starting to be afraid of. The part that wasn't quite
hum—

With a little gasp, she dropped her gaze, told herself she was imagining it. After a second, he moved to the counter, ordered one coffee and one tea. On his way back to the door, he paused to add milk to the tea. She noticed that he left the coffee black.

Vivien took her coffee black.

Yeah, and so did a million other people.

The older lady was having trouble fitting the lid on her coffee, her hand shaking. With a few quiet words, the guy opened a conversation, taking the lid from the old lady's hands.

Amy's gaze flicked back to the Ferrari. The passenger door swung open, and the woman climbed out, paused, her face visible to Amy in a three-quarter view. In that instant, any hope that Amy had harbored about mistaken identity vanished. She'd thought the hair was too short, but now she had no doubt. It
was
Vivien with a chic new cut and some über-expensive clothes, black slacks, hunter-green coat.

Incredulity surged, followed by hurt.

Vivien had ditched her for a guy.

Fisting her hands at her sides, Amy tried to control her rapid gasps, aware that her reaction was overblown, even frightening, but she was helpless to change the way she felt. How high school was this?

But Vivien hadn't even mentioned this guy, hadn't shared her reason for declining the trip. She'd deserted Amy right when she'd needed her most.

Tears stung Amy's eyes. There was so much going on, so many frightening changes, and she would give anything to be able to confide in her friend. She was in a mess so deep that she didn't know how to claw her way out—wasn't even sure she wanted to.

Right now, she knew her emotions were about as predictable as an earthquake, only she didn't know why, couldn't figure out what exactly was going on with her. Massive mood swings. Crazy dreams. Sleepless nights.

She was way too young for menopause and way too old for teenaged hormones. Which left what? Anger-management issues?

Vivien had ditched her for a guy.

A sharp slap of fury made her stiffen.

Heart pounding with snarling indignation, she grabbed her purse—how darkly poetic that it was one Vivien had given her—left her coffee behind, and darted through the door. She slid through the slush, unmindful of the dirty gray spray she kicked up, staining her jeans, or the harsh expletive hurled at her as she shoved a teenaged boy to the side.

Rage and an ugly sense of betrayal spurred her forward until she skidded to a stop some ten feet away, frozen, quivering like a dog on a hunt. Indecision rocked her, and she slid sideways into a recessed doorway, her rage deflated. Should she confront Vivien? And say what? That she was jealous?

Or should she slink into the shadows?

The old Amy would definitely have slunk, but the new Amy…

She watched as Vivien started forward in the opposite direction, her gait odd, as though she was sleepwalking. Staring straight ahead, moving at a slow, jerky pace, Vivien headed for a boarded-up building three doors down. And then she did the strangest thing. She eased her shoulder through a broken window, then her head, then the rest of her body, and disappeared inside.

Oookay
. That was weird.

Turning, Amy glanced back at the Starbucks just as Ferrari Guy came through the door. He took one step, two, and suddenly his whole body went on alert. He splinted to the car, yanked the door open, swore when he found it empty. Cold fury shimmered from him in waves; she could feel it even from this distance.

Wrapping her arms tightly across her belly, Amy took a step farther back into the shadows. Her head was so messed up. Part of her was furious at Vivien. Part of her was worried. What the hell was she doing in that deserted building?

His body language vigilant, the guy turned right, left, scanning the vicinity, looking for Vivien, and at least that eased Amy's conscience. Then he looked straight at her, narrowed his eyes, and she
knew
he could see her, despite the wall and the awning and all the people passing between them. She knew he could tell what she'd become, what was inside her.

His gaze was arctic cold. Scary.
Dangerous
.

Amy slid her hand into her purse to touch her good-luck charm, the one she'd picked up a couple of years back on that last trip to Mexico. The soft velvet of the charm bag warmed in her hand, and her confidence surged.

Because she could be dangerous, too.

Dain felt an undulation, a shift in the
continuum
, a gong of warning.
Hybrids
. They were close, and there was more than one.

Where the hell was Vivien?

Coming at him from opposite directions, he sensed two distinct auras that bore her signature, a faint one coming from the shadowed doorway of a nearby store and a stronger one leading to a half-boarded-up broken window of a deserted building. He stared at the shadows, pinning his full attention on the figure who huddled there. Not Vivien, but someone who knew her, who carried something that had once belonged to her…

A woman in a puffy black jacket scuttled from the recessed doorway and hurried down the street, away from him.

Wariness surged, a dark slither through his veins. Something was wrong here, very wrong, but right now his priority had to be finding Vivien.

He focused on the
hybrids
, funneling his magic to his senses until he could pinpoint exactly where they were, where Vivien was.

The boarded-up building.

Taking off at a dead run, he refracted light, veiling himself from human sight. He grabbed hold of the
continuum
and transported himself inside. The place was dim, littered with refuse from demolished walls and shattered light fixtures. At the far end was a staircase, precariously listing to one side. He took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, skidding to a dead stop when he hit the landing.

Vivien stood in the middle of the empty space, surrounded by ribbons of sunlight that cut through the cracks in the boards nailed across the windows. Dust particles danced in the light and disappeared in the shadows.

"Vivien!" he called.

She didn't move, didn't turn, just stood there, her eyes closed, her body shaking, her face tipped into a beam of sunlight. Christ. What was she doing in here?

Dain looked around, tasting the flow of dark magic. Brimstone stained the air.

Hybrids
. Four of them.

The shadows in the corners shifted, separated into four menacing figures, muscled, tall. They prowled toward him, toward Vivien.

"Go," he snarled. "I offer you one chance. Take it."

Unlike demons and their minions, sorcerers were not indiscriminate killers. He presented the
hybrids
with an escape clause: run like hell. If they didn't choose to take it, they were dead.

In that instant, Vivien's eyes flipped open, locking onto his, and he reared back, stunned. Her eyes were white and gold, a swirling pearlescent haze, like an opal or a vast field of snow in bright sunlight.

His heart slammed against his ribs.

What the hell was this?

No time to think. The
hybrids
came at him as one, creeping forward with knives at the ready; their dark glowing blades were demon weapons, beyond what a
hybrid's
limited power would normally summon.

Dain called his acacia staff, his one perfect weapon, just as a
hybrid
lunged, not at him but at Vivien. The need to keep her safe slashed at him, stark and defined. He leapt into the creature's path, bringing his staff up to knock the
hybrid
back. It shrieked like a howler monkey and spun away.

Whirling, Dain hit low and hard, sweeping a second
hybrid's
legs out from beneath it.
Vivien. Nothing mattered but Vivien
. And she stood in the ray of sunlight, opalescent eyes open, seeing nothing.

His gut twisted and churned, a slurry of worry and violent anger funneling through his veins. Had they done that to her? Cast some dark magic?

In a millennium of battling demons and
hybrids
, he had never seen the like. Its unfamiliarity made him doubly alarmed.

Feeling the spill of his own magic gliding along every nerve, he punched and kicked and parried, aiming to keep his own body between Vivien and the stinking
hybrids
.

Dust swirled around them, kicked up by their feet, carrying the scent of mildew and rat shit from the rotting boards. Skirting to the right, he avoided a particularly nasty spot where the rot had worn right through, leaving a gaping hole, but the hybrid that sprang at him was not so nimble. It howled as its foot slid into the hole, cloth and skin scraped away by the ragged edges of the wood.

That howl fed Dain's fury, made it blaze and roar.

Again, creatures of darkness hunted one he cared for.

Again, they threatened a mortal life, a life of special value to him.

They'd been offered their reprieve, and they'd declined.

So he would offer them the only alternative—death.

A
hybrid
caught Vivien's wrist and tried to drag her toward the stairs as its companions came at Dain from opposite sides.

He battled his rage, willed his temper under control. Calling up the wall of calm that was his facade, he willed himself to
believe
in that calm, because to let the hate and fury overtake him right now was to risk Vivien's life. He needed rationality and strategy, not mindless anger. He needed the safety of the wall he'd built around his emotions.

So why was it so hard to summon? Why did the cool veneer fail to heed his summons?

Because this was Vivien in danger. Vivien whose life was at risk.

Fuck.

He raised his staff, blocking a killing blow; then he spun into the hit, using his body to throw the
hybrid
off balance. The creature stumbled and fell, and Dain brought the end of his staff down with enough force to crush its windpipe. The acrid smell of bubbling flesh told him the
hybrid
was dead, disintegrating, but he had already turned away to face the next as it struck.

A glowing blade hacked at him, cutting his forearm to the bone. The pain spurred him to action, a reminder that he was the only thing standing between Vivien and these disgusting things.

With his blood roaring in his ears, Dain sprinted forward, into the path of the
hybrid
that had Vivien in its grasp. She wasn't struggling, wasn't fighting; she just
stood
there, her eyes wide and blank.