Personal Demon (3 page)

“You’re no beauty yourself,” he told her.

Ivy tossed her head and got wet hair in her face for her trouble. Strands of hair stuck against her cheek. “I am, too. This is my drowned-cat look.”

“Not fetching on you.”

“You’re wearing a leather coat. You smell of dead cow.”

“That’s not the worst dead thing I’ve smelled of.”

Ivy finally realized how strange this conversation was and fought to get back to the point. “Why are you holding me?”

A wide grin appeared out of the dark. “You’re enjoying it, aren’t you?”

Oh, Goddess, no! He thought he was being charming. At least he wasn’t smiling with any sort of fang showing. She’d never actually seen a strigoi in hunting mask, but she’d had mating fangs flashed at her. Which was not happening now.

Being around a vampire didn’t normally make her think of mating, but then she’d never been quite so close to one, hip to hip, thigh to thigh.

“Why were you following that vampire?”

Ivy barely heard the question as a sense of dread made her burst out, “Are you a strig?”

His eyes glowed a sudden, furious red.

His voice drilled into her head, very sharp and precise.
If by strig you mean an unaffiliated vampire—no, I am not a strig.

Well, excuse me for living,
she thought, and hoped he didn’t overhear that very stupid bit of sarcasm.

You are excused. For now.

Her heart hammered hard against her chest. She realized she’d been holding her breath when she had to gasp for air. He’d scared her. He was relishing making her show that he’d scared her. The knowledge squirmed through her. A tiny part of her that lodged in the primitive reptile part of her brain rubbed its scaly paws together, hoping that the bloodsucker would make her angry—really angry.

“Why were you following the vampire?” He was back to that.

She found her bravado again. “Why did you drag me down the street?”

“You said you were doing your job. What does your job have to do with my kind, human?”

Instead of grasping her tightly around her arms, his hands had shifted—one had drifted higher up her side. His other
hand was pressed flat against the base of her spine. How had he managed to get past her raincoat and under her sweatshirt?

She didn’t think he’d even noticed doing it, but—

“I’ve noticed. Glad you finally have.”

Ivy refused to be impressed by the press of his skin against hers. Tried not to be. He was a vampire, for crying out loud!

But he wasn’t trying to psychically seduce her. She’d know if he was, wouldn’t she? The only thing he was doing to her was being a big, strong male.
These pheromones are not the ones you’re looking for,
Ivy told herself.

“You like nice men, I take it?”

“Hush!” Ivy ordered. “Just hush. You’re not from around here, so I’ll tell you how it is, then you’re going to let me go.”

He didn’t argue any more, or demand, or continue the odd combination of tease and threat. He stood still as death, big, and strong enough to crush the spine and ribs where his hands rested. Ivy worked very hard not to be afraid of him. Or stimulated by him in any other way.

“The strigoi I was following is looking for a companion. His attentions have glommed on to a woman who doesn’t know he exists. He’s been following her, stalking her. Fantasizing about her. And trying to worm his way into her dreams.”

“How could you possibly know about dream walking?”

“We Yanks call it dream riding, and it’s against the rules.” She made out that his wide mouth was pressed in a thin, angry line, but still added, “It’s a form of rape.”

“Rules?”

She noticed he didn’t dispute the rape charge.

“Don’t interrupt. We have rules in Chicago. Rules about how vampires and mortals interact with each other. This is
Selena’s town. Those of us who work with her enforce rules to protect humans from your kind. It’s about time somebody did.”

His hands tightened on her.

She gasped in pain.

He sneered. “You’re a stinking little vampire hunter.”

“Yes.” She feared he would crush her right then, but he waited for her to go on. “Not the traditional kind of hunter.”

She knew how to kill a vampire, in theory if not practice. And would kill if she had to, but that would start a war. She didn’t want to be responsible for that. She didn’t want innocents to get hurt, even innocent vampires if such creatures existed.

Ivy went on carefully. “Some mortals are working with the Chicago area nests to keep things ethical.” The rules were known as the Covenant—vampires liked fancy wording. “We don’t deny that vampires crave companions, but those companions have to be willing lovers.”

“That isn’t how it works.”

“We have the tacit cooperation of the Enforcer of the City.”

At least Ariel had left them alone so far. Ariel was Selena’s problem. This big English vampire holding her tightly, out of sight of any witnesses, was her problem. Maybe she would be feeling safer if she’d lied to him, but she was naturally honest. This was one of the traits that broke the hearts of some members of her family, on both sides.

“I was following that vampire because he was following the woman he wants. He won’t be allowed to force her into an unwanted relationship.”

“You were only doing surveillance, is that it?”

Ivy didn’t appreciate the word
only
, but didn’t dispute it. “Surveillance,” she agreed.

“I see. The vampire followed the girl, you followed the vampire.” His hands were suddenly clasping her face. He
leaned close, until their eyelashes were almost touching. Their lips were very close.

“And you were following me.” When she spoke, she felt like they were sharing breath.

“Wrong,” he whispered. His lips brushed hers. “I was following the one who was following you.”

A
nd then what happened?” Aunt Cate asked. She leaned forward in her deep easy chair, eyes bright with interest. “Did he kiss you?”

“Oh, Goddess, no!” Ivy answered.

At least she didn’t think so. She didn’t remember. She hoped her aunt was just being a romantic rather than her having revealed too much detail about the encounter the night before.

“What I do remember is somehow finding a cab in the rain—”

“If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is,” her cousin Paloma cut in.

“I got in the cab, and I went home,” Ivy finished. “I had a cup of tea, took a hot shower, and went to bed.”

“Tea?” Aunt Cate asked. She chuckled, and sipped from a delicate china cup of Earl Grey. “That’s definitely a sign you were hypnotized by an English vampire.”

Ivy was gathered in Aunt Cate’s living room with a group
of hunters, most of them relatives. There was one vampire among those present in the apartment above her aunt’s store. His name was Lawrence, and Ivy supposed she should count him as family because he and Aunt Cate had lived together for years. Cate wasn’t his companion. Certainly not his slave.

Caetlyn Bailey was the most powerful witch in the city. Maybe in the country. Practitioners of the light, dark, and in-between occult arts came to her magic shop, and Web site, from all over the world and several dimensions of reality—knowing that her stuff was the real deal. She also told fortunes, but that was mostly a nod to the old family con-artist sideline. Not that she didn’t actually see the future—sometimes—but that wasn’t for the tourist trade.

The Baileys had always practiced magic, along with the other members of their Traveler familia, the McCoys, Crawfords, and such. A lot of the time they got it right. Not everyone who picked up a spell book did, or could. Magic was an inborn ability to manipulate energy. It was not a blessing. More of an allergy, really. A kink in the DNA. And it frequently drew unwanted attention—from vampires and others.

Lawrence looked worriedly at Ivy. “English? Are you sure? Maybe he was Australian or Irish?”

Ivy watched a lot of PBS and BBC America. “English,” she said. “He had a northern English accent.”

“There are no English vampires,” Lawrence said.

“You’re kidding,” Paloma said. Lawrence shook his head. Paloma looked at Ivy. “This guy really did do a number in your head, didn’t he?”

Ivy didn’t think her mind had been messed with that much, but then, she wouldn’t, would she? “Bastard,” she muttered. “I think he might have really tried to get into my brain if a cop car hadn’t come by and shined a light—
hmmm, wonder why I just now remembered that detail? All this telepathy and crap really sucks.”

There were nods from people all around the room. All of them were psychic to some extent.

“You need to practice more to grow stronger,” Aunt Cate said.

Ivy didn’t know if her aunt was talking to her, or admonishing everyone in the room. It was always nagging to work, practice, perfect with Aunt Cate, the magical world’s own top drill sergeant. There was some squirming. Nobody answered.

“What do you mean there are no British vampires?” Paloma asked after silence reigned for a moment. “What about Mina Harker? No, she’s not a vampire. It was her friend that Dracula turned, the rich bitch everyone was in love with.”

Aunt Cate cleared her throat. “You’re talking about
Dracula
, Paloma. That’s a work of fiction.”

“But it’s English literature.”

“I wouldn’t call it literature,” Uncle Crispin sniffed. He taught high-school English.

Paloma ignored this. “If the most famous vampire book
ever
was written by an Englishman, then there have to be vampires in England—a source for the guy that wrote its research.”

Ivy didn’t understand Paloma’s logic, but one rarely did at first. Paloma had a twisted way of getting at things, but much of the time, her conclusions turned out to be profound. Which probably wasn’t so in this case.

“Wasn’t Bram Stoker Irish?” Ivy asked. “Or was that Conan Doyle?”

Uncle Crispin sighed loudly.

“It doesn’t really matter,” Lawrence said. “And don’t ask me why there aren’t English strigoi; I don’t know the details.
I was only informed I couldn’t travel to England, even as a tourist.”

“Maybe you should ask your new friend about the English strigoi, Ivy. There’s so much we don’t know about how they live in the rest of the world,” Aunt Cate said.

“Planning on slipping him some truth serum, Cate?” Lawrence asked.

She smiled. “Maybe you should bring him by for a cup of tea, Ivy.”

“Or coffee,” Lawrence said.

Strigoi generally did prefer coffee. Ivy remembered Lawrence once saying, “Forget this blood-is-the-life crap, I’d rather have Starbucks.”

Being around Lawrence could almost make one like and trust vampires, but even he would warn against that kind of response to his kind, and him. He’d been a bad bloodsucking motherfucker plenty of times, and would be again. At the moment, he happened to be on the side of the angels, or at least the better class of demons. He’d had a run-in with really evil strigoi a few years back that left him questioning his whole purpose in life—undeath—and grateful to Selena and the rest of the Bailey Traveler familia. He’d also ended up losing an arm to a chain saw. It was growing back, but slowly, and he was in constant pain.

“The point is,” Ivy said, getting back on subject, “an unknown strigoi interrupted my assignment last night. And he said someone was following me. What the hell is going on here?”

Everyone there knew that Ivy did not invoke the name of hell lightly. The conversation turned serious.

C
hristopher’s day had not been productive even though the hotel bed had been quite luxurious. He liked to
pursue his day work in comfort. The plan had been to spread his consciousness wide while his body was paralyzed by the light. Come the dawn, he’d closed his eyes with the intention to seek, find, then absorb the mental smells, tastes, colors, sounds of the strangeness he’d encountered the night before. Perhaps even insinuate himself into an unknowing mortal mind to act as his daylight eyes and ears.

Instead, he’d—slept.

He hadn’t been lost in the dreamless blackness that covered the young in daylight; he had some control after spending over a hundred years as strigoi. His dreams had been vivid, but they’d been just that, dreams. Although the vampire hunter he’d saved figured prominently in his subconscious scenarios.

Had he saved her? In real world or dreams?

Christopher yawned and stretched. He obviously wasn’t fully awake yet if he couldn’t recall which was which.

Had he saved her from monsters? Why would he have saved her? Monsters needed to eat, too. She had been quite satisfyingly grateful at the time.

That bit was definitely only a pleasant dream. One that left him hard as iron.

Vampires didn’t usually come out of the daytime paralysis with erections. At least he didn’t. What others did was no business of his as long as no Laws were broken.

His consciousness was switched back on, but his brain was still full of cobwebs. His body was full of—well, he’d been celibate for a while, hadn’t he?

Jet lag was the problem, he decided.

He didn’t like to fly, it wasn’t the safest mode of transportation for vampires. He loved trains, ships, ferries, automobiles, a good long run through the night, or even a bicycle ride, but airplanes were dangerous. Of course, he did take the occasional short hop on a plane in the event of an
emergency. The flight that had brought him to Chicago was the longest period of time he’d ever spent in the air.

Ah, why couldn’t vampires really fly?

At least the journey to the center of America had been on board a private jet. Better than flapping bat wings all the way across the Atlantic. Security and luxury, not a bad combination.

Christopher opened his eyes to the welcome darkness of the strange but secure room in a country far from home. Not that he could call his own country home, but his villa in Portugal was certainly a lovely place to spend most of his time.

He became aware of a small warm breeze blowing down from the ceiling, and the white-noise hum of a heating system. November in Chicago. He missed Portugal already, but this was the place where he’d chosen to begin. He could have gone anywhere in this huge country. The logical place to investigate would be Washington, D.C. It must be warmer than this city at this time of year, but here he was.