Demon's Hunger (26 page)

There was a sharp twinge of pain as he took form, refracting light, and he was inside, the hum of conversation buzzing in his ears, along with the whir of the espresso machine, the scrape of chairs. Pressing his back against the wall, he stood beside Vivien's friend Amy, veiled from sight, his entire body pinging with flickers of pain.

Dain took a second to breathe through it, waiting until the discomfort passed. Materializing from one place to the next hadn't hurt like that since he'd first come into his power. If there was a gas gauge for magic, his empty light would be flashing.

He looked through the glass windows to the street. He couldn't see it, but he could sense that whatever had raised his hackles was close. Dark magic was in this coffee shop, around it, above it, a cloudy aura twisting and weaving like smoke.

As Vivien approached, Amy tipped her head to watch her and slid one of two paper coffee cups across the table.

Trusting no one, Dain quickly assessed the coffee and found it untainted by drugs or poison. And found Amy smeared with demon magic. Not coming from her, but around her.

"I got you a coffee. Black," Amy said, her voice raw, as though she'd been yelling for hours, or crying. She was obviously strung tight, and she looked blatantly relieved as Vivien slid onto the upholstered bench across from her.

She looked as though Vivien had brought her hope.

He understood Vivien's need to go to a friend in distress, and he respected it. He
got
the big picture here: brotherhood—or in this case, he supposed it was sisterhood. The whole loyalty thing, through good or bad.

He just wasn't certain he believed anyone was capable of total honesty and loyalty.

"Thanks for the coffee." Vivien unbuttoned Dain's shearling coat, slid it off her shoulders and let it pool on the bench.

Taking a deep breath, she slid her hand across the table, took Amy's hand, and just held on. Amy swallowed, her fingers first tensing, then relaxing beneath Vivien's touch.

"Oh, my God, Vivien," Amy whispered. "I'm in so much trouble."

Slowly, she reached up with her free hand and pulled the sunglasses off.

Vivien gasped. "Amy! Your cheek! Your eye…"

Rage scoured Dain as he stared at the woman's battered face. Someone had hit her. She'd been on the street yesterday when the
hybrids
had attacked Vivien. Had she been part of that? Was that how she'd been injured?

Stiffening, Vivien sat a little straighter, looked around. Her gaze flitted over the place Dain stood, moved on, slid back. A frown creased her forehead.

She could sense him, he realized. Maybe even see him despite the light refraction. That shocked him. Humans couldn't see veiled sorcerers. Guess succubi could, though.

"Who did this? When?" Vivien jerked her gaze back to Amy, continuing to sandwich her friend's hand with both of her own. "We need to call the police."

"No," Amy gasped, and shoved the glasses back on. "No police." She shook her head. "That would definitely be worse than getting punched."

"Amy—"

"No! Vivien, I need you to listen, just listen. Please."

Vivien nodded, looking as though she was about to cry.

"I'm into some bad shit. Really bad." Amy dropped her head, dragged her hand free of Vivien's, and toyed with her coffee cup, turning it round and round. "I've changed into… something I don't recognize. Something I'm afraid of."

She lifted her head once more and wet her lips. "That dead guy, Gavin Johnston. I was… with him."

"Gavin Johnston," Vivien repeated, frowning. Then she sucked in a sharp breath. "Oh, my God. He's one of the guys who was killed. Some… friends were talking about him yesterday. I thought I ought to recognize that name, but I wasn't certain why." She shuddered, clearly distressed. "I suppose I must have read it in the paper."

Dain's body thrummed with abrupt tension. What the hell was this? Vivien recognized the name of one of the murder victims—a name that hadn't been in the newspaper. But what she said was true. He and Darqun had mentioned the victims yesterday within her earshot. He just hadn't thought she'd been listening.

But what of Amy? She'd just admitted that she'd been with Gavin Johnston. And she'd been on the goddamned street when Vivien was in the building with the
hybrids
. He couldn't get his head around the suspicions that pumped through him. Christ. Was Amy the killer? Was Vivien in danger here?

His hackles rose, and every cell in his body went on alert.

Hands shaking, Vivien lifted her coffee, stared into the cup, and set it down untouched. "When were you with Gavin Johnston, Amy?"

"The night he died. He paid me," Amy whispered.

Well, that was interesting.

Dain studied Amy, the dark glasses, the bundled coat, the way her restless hands fluttered around her coffee cup. He opened his senses, trying to determine if she was supernatural, because no mortal had done those murders. The killer's smear of dark magic was all over the bodies.

Pretty much like the smear that was all over Amy, only it was superficial, not strong enough to brand her as the guilty party. Focusing, Dain reached out, trying to decipher exactly what he sensed. Amy had two streams of magic hovering around her but not within—one was dark, and one was light, sorcerer magic, weak and small. A blighted seed.

Had she been hunted? Attacked? Demons viewed mortals touched with magic as a gourmet feast.

"Paid you?" Vivien asked, her tone devoid of accusation or judgment.

"Lab techs just don't make a whole lot of money, and I had so much debt." Amy pressed her lips together, then blew out a breath as Vivien nodded in empathy. "A mountain of it. My student loans. The credit card bills my ex-boyfriend racked up. Mom's home hospice care and all the meds she needed. It would have taken a lifetime to pay them off, and I was so tired of being poor."

"Amy," Vivien said, her voice rough with emotion. Reaching out, she grasped her friend's hand once more, and held on, a solid, reassuring touch.

"Oh, God," Amy whispered. The fingers of her free hand slid aimlessly back and forth across the tabletop.

Dain felt a pang of empathy. Amy was suffering, and from the look on Vivien's face—her tight brow and the pinched look of her eyes—she was suffering right along with her. Which made him want to fix whatever was troubling Amy so Vivien could smile the way she'd smiled outside, with her dimple peeking and her eyes sparkling.

Only, Vivien wasn't the sort of woman who would quietly let someone else fix all her problems, all her worries. Just one more thing about her that he admired.

"It started when I went to Mexico two years ago," Amy said. "After Mom died."

"I remember when you went on that trip." Vivien's gaze slid back to where Dain stood, and she narrowed her eyes, then jerked her gaze back to Amy.
Yeah
, she could definitely sense his presence. "I was just beginning my testimony at the Roger Pape trial. I couldn't go with you."

Amy gave a bitter laugh. "You wouldn't have wanted to. I stayed in the ultimate dump—cockroaches the size of skateboards. I couldn't afford anything else." She sucked in a breath, shook her head. "At least, not until the last day. See, the afternoon before I left, I found this." Dragging her purse forward along the tabletop, Amy rummaged through it and hauled out a red velvet pouch. She slid the gris-gris bag toward Vivien.

Dain jerked as he felt the slap of dark magic radiating from the bag, far stronger than any of the others. He stiffened against the lure, the ache to suck in that malevolent power, take it as his own. Christ, he was so depleted, he was starving for it, ready to absorb whatever dregs of magic he could claim in order to replenish himself. Light. Dark. He was almost hungry enough that it didn't matter.

Jesus. Was this emptiness, this gnawing ache what Vivien felt when she needed to feed?
Jesus
,

"I found it in this little stall in Chihuahua, and I got it for you because I remembered seeing one like it on your shelf," Amy said, pushing the bag a little closer to Vivien. "But then I kept it because… well, because it was my good-luck charm. I felt different around it, like I had a surge of energy."

Vivien reached out as though to touch the velvet, then frowned and drew away. She felt it, Dain thought, the smear of malevolence. The darkness.

And she didn't like it.

One more bit of evidence that just because she was a succubus didn't mean she was weighing in on the dark side. Which was just fine by Dain. He'd like to keep collecting bits of proof like that.

"Finding this charm bag was a turning point for me. Right away, everything started to change," Amy continued, her voice soft, sad. "I met a guy, a rich guy, that night, and he took me back to his suite, and"—she shivered—"and that was the night I opened my eyes and started to see the possibilities. He didn't want sex. He wanted me to hit him. Just stand there in a pair of black stiletto heels, my black tank top, and a thong, and tie him up with a couple of silk scarves and hit him with his belt." She snorted. "He gave me a thousand dollars for that.
A thousand goddamned dollars
."

"Oh, my God, Amy. What have you gotten yourself into?" Vivien leaned closer, her voice dropping. "That's why your fortunes changed after that trip. Nice clothes. The racy little sports car. The new house. You've been paying for it by, what? Working as a… a dominatrix?"

"That about sums it up," Amy said derisively. "It was so easy to do it again. They paid me, and you know what? In a way, I liked it. Liked the power. The danger. Definitely liked the money. I've got this great little setup over at Jarvis and Maitland. I call it 'the dungeon.'"

Vivien drew a deep breath, held it, set it free.

Reaching up, Amy pulled the sunglasses off once more, and her eyes met Vivien's, the puffy purple bruise around her left eye an ugly reminder that she wasn't kidding when she talked about danger.

"Am I shocking you, Vivien? Scaring you?" She swallowed and whispered, "Disgusting you?"

They'd been friends for a long time; Dain could see that. He knew it from the pictures of Amy he'd seen while cleaning up Vivien's photos last night. Vivien was too loyal, too honorable, to judge her friend on any level. She cared about Amy so much that she'd been willing to put herself in danger just by coming here.

"Yes, you're scaring me," Vivien whispered. "But not for the reasons you think. I'm your friend, Amy. I love you no matter what, though I can't say I understand the choices you've made. You're scaring me because I have a feeling there's more to this story, that the part you're about to tell me is scaring
you
,"

Amy shoved the red charm bag the rest of the way across the table. "Take it." She blew out a soft huff of air. "No matter what I thought before, I know it isn't any kind of good-luck charm for me. And I don't want you to keep it. Get rid of it for me, Vivien. It feels… dark. Evil."

Clasping her hands in her lap, Vivien made no move to take the bag.

"And now there's something dark inside of me," Amy said. "Something awful. Yesterday, when I saw your boyfriend—"

Boyfriend
? Dain thumped the sharp surge of jealousy into submission and shook his head.

"—get out of that yellow Ferrari—"

With a start, he realized Amy meant
him
.

Vivien leaned forward. "Amy, I don't—"

"I saw him!" Amy cut her off. "I thought he was so sexy, so hot. So in control." She pressed her fists together and ground them hard against her forehead. "I had this crazy thought that I wanted to suck away his confidence, his power. It was like I hated that confidence. Like I hated
him
."

"But, why?" Vivien whispered, clearly horrified.

"I don't know. Maybe because I've barely seen you lately, and I was jealous. I felt like you ditched our trip to be with him."

"No, I hadn't even met him when I told you I wouldn't go."

Amy sighed. "Maybe because of what Glenn Stewart did to me all those years ago. Maybe because he dominated me, abused me. Sometimes, I feel like I want to pay back the entire male gender for what that bastard did when I was fifteen. Kind of fits with my chosen profession, huh?" She gave a horrible, raw laugh. "Maybe I'm just really screwed in the head."

"Amy…" Vivien whispered.

Vivien's sadness, her heartbreak, was there in her posture and her tone and the look in her eyes. Dain wanted to draw her close and take it away. Fix the whole mess and get it gone. Which broke every personal rule, every rule of the
Pact
.

"When I told her what he'd done to me, your mom said I needed to move past it, needed to find a way to work it out of my system." Amy gave a watery smile. "Maybe I took her advice a little too much to heart."

"My mom?" Vivien blurted. "Good Lord! When did you talk to the Ice Queen about this?"

Their conversation dropped to murmurs, reminiscences. Sad laughter.

Dain glanced about, tensing as he felt the
continuum
twist and writhe.
Hybrids
on the move, drawing closer. His gaze flicked to the street, his body on alert, a part of him focused on the potential threat while another part mulled over all he'd learned.