Descended from Dragons: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 1) (9 page)

"Yummy," Liliana cooed.

I didn't like her perving on him. Vale wasn't mine but she was a succubus. I wouldn't have wanted to see any friend of mine unfairly influenced by her. Still, her power was what had pulled him out of his gargoyle form, so I couldn't exactly throw a fit.

"Come along, darling." Liliana hummed approval as Vale, head slightly down, moved closer. "As I said, Anne, this is only temporary. I have the power to call out the man from within the gargoyle, but he's still bound to the form. His nature will want to revert to that, especially with the curse on him."

"Will he turn to stone when the sun comes up?" Melanie asked worriedly.

"He's a gargoyle. It's what he does. I can do nothing for you after that."

Watching Vale closely, I asked, "And the demon?"

"Oh, it's still there." I detected a touch of distaste in Liliana's voice. "He's possessed by it, which is why I'm able to do this. He doesn't have the strength to fight both me
and
the demon at the same time. He's just powerful enough to keep the demon suppressed. But the clock is ticking, darling. Not even a deliciously strong gargoyle like this one can keep this up for much longer."

We had until sunrise, so maybe ten hours. As Vale's face came into view and I saw how hard he tried to resist Liliana only to fail because he was weakened from his struggle against the demon, I vowed to banish the demon inside him if it was the last thing I did. This was breaking Vale's pride. I wanted it to stop.

He came to a stop before us. His hands curled and uncurled by his sides, expressing his inner battle against the demon.

"I've pulled you out," Liliana purred at him. "Are you alright to stand on your own two feet now?"

"Yes," he gritted out. He sounded better than he had in my head, his voice warmer and deeper. He took a deep breath. His scowl cleared. "Thank you."

"Oh, it's my pleasure…though not my complete pleasure."

Vale eyed her warily, which pleased me. Most guys would be groveling at her feet for a chance to polish her shoes with their tongues, much like the club manager had.

"You're not putting your hands on him, Lili," I said, which earned me Vale's guarded approval.

She shrugged, unrepentant. "I have an addiction. What am I to do?"

Melanie snorted and then laughed.

"Are you okay to walk to our car?" I asked Vale.

Though our discussion while he'd been trapped in his gargoyle form had been G-rated, I felt self-conscious now, like I was meeting a stranger with whom I'd been talking dirty to over the phone.

He narrowed his eyes at me. "I'm not a child."

I guessed he'd reached his limit of being pushed around.

I held up both hands. "It was just a question." I turned to Liliana. "Thank you for your help, Lili."

"I owe you, Anne. This won't pay off my debt, but it's a start, hmm?"

I nodded, ignoring Melanie, who was giving me a questioning look. My history with Liliana was a story for a day that didn't involve cursed gargoyles and demon possessions.

Liliana's grin was blinding. "Ta-ta, darlings. I hope you get your pesky demon sorted. You two make a luscious couple."

Cheeks hot, I began walking in the direction of Melanie's car. She hurried to fall into step with me.

"I'll tell you later," I said, warding off her curiosity.

"You'd better!" She glanced back at Vale. "He seems a little ungrateful, don't you think?"

"I guess I can't blame him. What have we done for him, really? He's out of his gargoyle form but so what? He's still possessed."

"But Orlaton may be able to help him."

"Hopefully." I was learning not to expect too much anymore.

I looked back over my shoulder to see if Vale was still following. The shadows seemed to love him, curling around his body like tailored garments. An effect of being a gargoyle? Or of being possessed by a demon?

"Someone named Christian did this to you," I told him as we walked. "Do you know him?"

Vale stopped in his tracks, pulling Melanie and me up short, too.

"Christian did this?" Vale rubbed at his forehead as if a headache was building. "That doesn't make sense."

"Who is he to you?" Melanie asked.

"A friend." But Vale sounded as though he were currently questioning that status thanks to our revelation.

"You sure about that?" I said, just to get a reaction out of him.

"He's my best friend," Vale said fiercely, dropping his hand to glare at me. "He would never have done this to me."

Best friend? That put a new twist on things.

"Lili—my friend you met back there—said Christian smelled of brimstone."

"How would she know that?"

I pulled out my phone. "She sensed it from this. Christian inputted his phone number."

He snatched it from my hand so quickly I realized that had he wanted to hurt me, he could have done so at any time. It sobered me. He might have been helpless while he was trapped, but he wasn't helpless now.

"What is this?" he asked after he'd pulled up Christian's entry.

I made a face, unable to stop myself. "Well, I thought he was giving me his number—"

"It's a code," Vale cut me off.

"Numerology!" Melanie blurted. She gave me a sheepish-looking smile. "I was sort of thinking it might be that but I was afraid to say anything in case it sounded dumb."

"Dork, you should have said something." I was excited now. "What does it mean?" I asked Vale.

"It's not numerology," he muttered. "I need to use this."

I watched him close out the phone book. "You're not going to text Europe are you? Because my plan won't cover that."

He accessed the browser and the search engine. "Christian's hobby is writing cipher codes. He uses it to write insulting Facebook posts without offending the person he's insulting."

I only just stopped myself from laughing. Maybe I was giving Christian an unfairly bad rap.

"He might have written this for me," Vale went on. "But if he did, he would've made it simple enough for me to figure out." He glanced up from beneath his fringe and shot me a crooked smile. "I'll still need help."

I nodded, being cool, not letting him know my heart was beating a million miles a minute thanks to that little smile. Melanie elbowed me, though, and smirked. She could see right through me.

"Here we go." Melanie and I crowded around Vale as he accessed a website called Cyber Sleuthing. There was a form field consisting of two text boxes. You entered text in one side and it came out encrypted in the other. And vice versa, which was the function we needed. "Each number represents a letter in the alphabet."

Melanie scrunched up her nose. "What do you mean? I don't get it."

"The number one equals the letter A. Two equals the letter B and so on," I explained. "But obviously you have to try a couple of variants when you've got two numbers together that could form letters both separately and together, like this one and a four, which could also be foureen."

Vale nodded, already punching in numbers and clicking the 'encrypt' button. A bunch of gibberish appeared in the second box. He tried another variant and this one worked.

"Diana," Melanie read aloud. "Why would he encrypt that?"

"He must have thought someone might follow him to you," Vale said. "Diana is his mother's name."

"Your best friend's mother cursed you? Yikes, some friend," I said.

"Or he's telling me that she'll be able to help me."

Vale ran a hand across his eyes. I noticed that his fingers trembled. It worried me. Liliana's magick would keep him from reverting to his gargoyle form until sunrise, but would he be able to hold off the demon for that long? Signs weren't looking so hot.

"Why don't you try calling him?" I suggested.

He pursed his lips, as if inwardly berating himself for not thinking of that first. I knew
exactly
how he felt. But like me, he found no success when he dialed the number from memory.

"His phone is off or is out of range, which makes no sense." He handed me mine back. "Something's wrong."

This was turning into a mystery, and I wasn't a big fan of them. They tended to make me feel stupid.

"Do you know where he lives?" I asked, because I had to admit: I was curious to see what kind of pool a water fey in Las Vegas rocked. I pictured a waterpark that sported an underwater Atlantis and a family of dolphins that Christian addressed individually by name.

"Yes. I'll need your car." Vale held out his hand for the keys, his expression stern.

I was just barely able to contain my laughter.

"Look, you're not going to ditch us after all we've gone through to try to help you. If Christian left his message with me, that meant he expected me to free you. He
wanted
me to get involved." I thought about that for a second. "Why would he think to bring you to me? He doesn't even know me."

"He knows of your family," Vale muttered, glancing away.

"Ah." Just like Vale, who knew about my parents' accident. "That's…interesting."

"You have an interesting family."

"I'll have to take your word for it," I said, a bit testily.

"I'm not letting you get more involved in this, Moody." He glared at me with those dark eyes of his. They were potent, those eyes, but unfortunately for him I'd built up a resistance to pretty boys like him.

"Sorry," I told him, "but I get killed on self-employment taxes every year, which means you must not be the boss of me. If this Diana woman—or Christian, for that matter—turns out to be less than happy to see you, you're going to need us."

"A monkey shifter and a sorceress who wields a deadly dragon." He sounded anything but thrilled.

"Against a merman and his mom," I retorted.

Something like amusement softened his gaze. "He's not a merman."

"Close enough."

Shaking his head, he said, "You're pretty tough."

"Of course I am. I used to wait tables."

I had to look away when he began to smile, which left me looking at some shady guys who were standing at a street corner, staring at us.

"We were attacked," I blurted. Liliana's and Vale's appearances had made me forget about the fight in the alley. "Those two guys knew we were bringing you here. How do they fit into this?"

"And they were warlocks," Vale added darkly, "which means someone from our community sent them. It wouldn't have been Christian or his mother, so someone else is involved. Someone who's likely responsible for what was done to me. Christian encrypted his message because of them."

"We need to go." We'd been lollygagging like we had all the time in the world and didn't have magickal goons ready to pounce on us. Only when we were back in Melanie's car did I feel safer. I turned in my seat.

"First, tell Melanie how to get to Christian's place."

Vale didn't look too pleased by my ordering him around, but he obligingly gave her an address which she punched into her phone's GPS.

As we pulled off Industrial Road and onto the 95 freeway, I said to Vale, "The obvious question is: do you have any enemies?"

His sliver of a smile hinted at stories best untold. "I'm a gargoyle. I doubt I'm universally appreciated."

Recalling what Orlaton had warned us about gargoyles normally being inhabited by demons, I could understand why.

"Anyone specific come to mind?" I pressed.

Vale looked away out the side window. I watched the pulse beat in the strong curve of his neck. I found it interesting that he had stubble. For some reason I couldn't picture a gargoyle with a beard.

"I've had run-ins with a fringe group that claims they work in the best interests of all shifting creatures…as long as you aren't a cold-blooded one with three forms." He met my gaze again. "But I dealt with them. They're no longer a threat to me."

That could be interpreted in a variety of ways, but of course I pictured all the worst and most violent options. Maybe I was completely off-base. Maybe Vale had merely arranged for a restraining order.

And maybe Lucky was actually a dragonfly.

"But someone obviously doesn't like you," Melanie insisted as she glanced in the rearview mirror at him. "I mean, you say you have no idea who could want to do this to you, but possessing someone with a demon sounds like too much hard work to waste on a stranger. You
have
to have an enemy somewhere. You just have to!"

Vale narrowed his eyes at her. He didn't like what she'd said, which meant what she'd said was probably true. He
did
have enemies that he didn't want to talk about.

"We're all on the same team here, right?" I asked, uneasy. My gut told me someone was toying with the idea of becoming a free agent.

Vale settled slowly against the backseat, all suppressed energy. His restraint was impressive for someone racing against time to exorcise a demon before the sun came up.