Personal Demon (6 page)

Christopher conjured up every word the woman had spoken to him the night before, the tone of her voice, the certainty of her beliefs. Righteous. The girl had been bloody righteous, so very sure of her noble purpose. Her firm muscles and female heat added sharp seasoning to his memory.

Well, he wasn’t dead, just a bit different. It was perfectly healthy to enjoy the charms of a healthy young woman.

But back to duty.

Her purpose made no sense to Christopher. The unchangeable rules of behavior between strigoi and mortals had been set for thousands of years. The rules favored his kind, as they should. The woman gave the impression that she was only one of a group of psychic mortals fighting against those rules.
Rebelling
might be the correct term.

We can’t have that, now, can we?

Any normal mortal was potential cattle, but psychic mortals formed the small pool of cherished beings chosen as slaves, companions, future vampires.

There seemed to be a group of those psychics in Chicago, all too aware of their fate and struggling against their inevitable future.

Just what did the Enforcer of the City know about this cabal? Was he, perhaps, allowing a mortal rebellion? To what purpose? It was a dangerous game if his plan was to allow those mortals to think they were winning for a time before casually striking them down.

Strange, very, very strange.

But then, investigating the strange was Christopher Bell’s profession, his avocation, and his hobby. Curiosity was his greatest strength.

While speculation raced around in his head, Christopher swam through the coffee steam, waiting for the flower scent to put in an appearance. He knew it would if he didn’t try to push for it. And, eventually, a thin line of rose and jasmine came up before him. He finished the last drops of espresso and went back out into the night.

T
he scent led to a two-story building in a neighborhood with a mixture of flats and upmarket stores. And then the scent abruptly disappeared. He focused on the ground floor of a building occupied by a small shop, still open when Christopher arrived. She was in there.

He didn’t try to follow his prey inside. Magic pulsed within and without the building. He saw rippling auras in coruscating shades surrounding the place, layers of color, scents, ripples of blue-and-green electricity. With those wards up, there was no entry for one of his kind without permission from the owner. The place was a magical fortress.

“Very pretty, too,” he said, and made a long leap to the roof of the building on the other side of the street.

He took a seat and crossed his arms. He waited, watched, sensed, and listened, hoping something interesting happened before it grew close to dawn.

He didn’t try to probe the magical shielding across the way. He didn’t want to take the chance of being noticed. He studied the neighborhood. Traffic was thin on the road, fewer and fewer cars going by as the night progressed. A pizzeria on one corner was busy with foot traffic, people going in and out. It smelled wonderful.

He watched several customers with fragrant pizza boxes walk by below. All of them crossed to his side of the street instead of passing directly by the shop. They didn’t know they did it. Even if the majority of people didn’t respond to direct magic, most could be influenced a little if a psychic field was strong enough. This field said
stay away
, and the pedestrians complied.

Curiouser and curiouser, and all that.

A little after nine o’clock, lights in the buildings on either side of the magical establishment quickly began to go out. Christopher read a wave of sleepiness coming over the people in the neighboring flats. A natural reaction of mortals to night, nothing magical about it.

A woman came out of the shop, looked carefully up and down the street. She almost looked his way, but Christopher hid behind his own mental shielding. Instead of looking up, the woman began to whisper and make circular gestures that left a trail of invisible silver light in the air, sealing the building completely from psychic interference. Once the shield was in place, she stepped back inside and closed the door. It faded from view. Now, the building didn’t exist at all even though Christopher knew it was there.

It was over two hours before Christopher felt anything more from the place. In the meantime, he’d jumped to the street and brought a ham, pineapple, and black olive deep-dish pizza back to his roof perch. It tasted as good as it smelled.

What he sensed the instant the thickest layer of protection disappeared from around the building was very bad. Gray smoke shrank in on itself, winding around a hot copper spot of blood, exhaling a rank breath of sulphur. The magic was over and done, the building cleansed. The faint evidence he grabbed at quickly dissipated. There wasn’t enough left for him to identify or analyze, but that was the point. Whoever had cast the spell was very good indeed.

He’d had no idea there was so much magic in Chicago.

The local strigoi ought to be fat and happy from draining all the energy from the witches in town. Why weren’t they?

It was time to investigate further.

His quarry came out of the shop as he was considering a check on the city’s Enforcer.

“First things first,” he said.

She turned her back on the street and was looking at the door she’d just closed when he jumped down silently behind her.

She was too upset to notice him immediately anyway, surprising considering the amount of garlic that had been in the pizza sauce.

He leaned close to speak to her, absorbed her sharp reaction, but put his hand over her mouth before she could speak or scream. This wasn’t the time or place for a long chat, so Christopher scooped her up and began to run.

I
vy was freezing by the time the vampire stopped running. He’d held her tightly close to his body as he ran, but that didn’t help much with keeping the cold rushing air from chilling her to the bone. It did keep her from screaming, or at least muffled any sound if she did.

The bastard sure could run. Holding her seemed no effort.

His tight grip warned her not to struggle if she didn’t want to lose a limb, so she stayed still as he carried her where he willed. As they traveled deep into the night, she tried to decide whether it would be better to reach for her cell phone or the obsidian dagger as soon as he let her loose. Assuming he was going to let her live long enough to grab hold of anything when he finally stopped.

When the vampire did finally come to a halt, it was inside an abandoned building. He put her down, a slow slide along
the length of his long body, which was intimate despite the layers of clothing between their skins.

She was still cold all the way through even if her insides suddenly warmed.

“You couldn’t pick somewhere with central heating?” she complained.

Might as well go on the offensive since she was likely to have her neck snapped or spine broken or her heart ripped out, if he was the old-fashioned sort. Showing fear wasn’t going to do any good. So show some bitchiness.

“Sorry,” he answered. “Should have thought of that. Don’t feel the cold the way your sort do.”

Not what she’d expected him to say. Maybe it was an English thing, being polite and understated.

She hated being in the dark like this. She hated knowing he saw her clearly while all she had was the shadowy impression of his big body and long face. He was mysterious and intriguing, but she wanted to get a good look at this vampire.

Maybe she could search for him in the database that was being so carefully built up to aid the fight against his kind. Maybe she could somehow get a photo of him with her iPhone to add to the data.

Get out of here alive,
she reminded herself.
Then worry about fighting the good fight.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Why have you been following me?”

“I’ll ask the questions.”

The last thing she needed at present was another vampire in her life. She needed to forget about vampires for the moment, even nosy, arrogant, British ones.

She’d just been given a job she didn’t want, didn’t know how to do, and was totally terrified by, one that was so likely
to get her destroyed—and her own family was putting her up to it! What was she going to—?

The vampire passed a hand in front of her face, a moving shadow in the darkness. Ivy jumped and managed to get out of his grasp.

“Pay attention,” he said.

She was shivering. “Can I sit down?” she asked. “And hand me your coat. I’m freezing.”

“You could wait for me to offer, to be the chivalrous sort.”

He sounded so annoyed she almost smiled, but her teeth were chattering. She’d probably bite her lips if she tried to move them, and the last thing she wanted was the scent of her blood free on the air. He wouldn’t like the taste if he bit her, but why tempt him even a little?

She heard the creak of leather as he moved. The coat he draped over her shoulders was heavy, long enough to nearly hang to her knees, and warm from his body heat. He was a big guy, tall with wide shoulders. At first she appreciated the warmth of him left within the garment, but she quickly realized it was another form of intimacy. She was struck by the smell of leather, and of him. She started to drop the coat, or hand it back, but couldn’t bear to give up an extra layer blocking the cold.

He took her by the hand. “Come on.”

His hand was huge and long-fingered. It enveloped hers. She’d noticed his hands the night before—well, they’d certainly been all over her, now hadn’t they? Not that he’d actually taken liberties, but she couldn’t forget that he’d come close. So close that maybe a little part of her regretted things hadn’t—

What the hell was the matter with her? She was alone with him. It was not a good thing, not a safe thing.

He led her across a rubble-littered room, up a wobbling
staircase, and into a room lit by a streetlight just outside the tall, cracked window.

He took a seat on the floor and tugged her down beside him. He put one long arm around her shoulders. There was no getting away from his iron-hard grasp, as nonthreatening as it seemed.

“Much better,” he said cheerfully. “Let’s have a look at you.”

“You can see in the dark,” she reminded him.

“It’s not the same as regular vision; seeing in the light shows its own sorts of details.” He brushed a finger over her cheek and touched her nose. “Pert,” he said, and shook his head disapprovingly. “Blond and pert. Well, the hair’s not really blond, is it? Brown eyes.”

“Hazel,” she said. What was wrong with having pert features? Not that she thought of herself that way, exactly. Genetics had made her cute and pretty, totally lacking the exotic beauty of, say, her cousin Paloma, or the statuesque warrior-maiden look of her cousin Selena, or the— Well, the point was, you took what you were given and worked with it. Until you could afford plastic surgery if you were so inclined.

“Let’s have a look at you,” she countered. He obligingly leaned into the light, and, for the first time, she actually studied his features. She refused to be afraid to look in his eyes. “Blue eyes.”

His hair was worn far too short to be of any help disguising ears that stuck out a bit from the side of his head. His features were large, chin and nose both too long and sharp. High, angular cheekbones added to the skull-like appearance of his features. His was a stark, minimalist, powerful face. She’d already guessed that this strigoi was no beauty last night, but this guy was really ugl—

“That’s me,” he said. “Ugly as sin. But not exactly Nosferatu.”

Then he smiled.

She had to smile back. That’s how infectious his grin was. She was the vampire’s prisoner, totally in his power. She was scared even though she fought not to show it. But when he smiled, it conveyed joy that was absolutely overwhelming, that was absolutely necessary to respond to.

Ivy sighed, shook her head, forced herself to turn her head. This was magic, wasn’t it? How stupid of her not to realize it instantly. She’d had enough magic pulled on her already that night. How dare this—vampire—try to fool her?

“Don’t try to use me,” she said. “You won’t like the results.”

“Brave. Foolhardy.”

“That’s me,” she said. But not bluffing. Exactly.

She didn’t know when he’d taken her purse from her, but now he held it up. He tipped it upside down, and her belongings began to rain onto the floor.

“Hey!” she yelled. And was ignored, of course.

The vampire flipped open her wallet, read out the stats on her driver’s license. “Ivy McCoy.”

So not her real name. Well, her father’s name was McCoy, but it wasn’t as if he and her mother were married. Certainly not her real address, either. Her Traveler clan didn’t much like having anything to do with authorities and things official. Law-abiding citizen for the most part, she might be, but it was just wrong for one of the familia to comply completely with government authorities.

Of course, her cousin Selena Crawford really was a police detective, but that didn’t stop her from putting family first when she had to. Speaking of cousin Selena, Ivy needed to talk to her for so many reasons, her vampire captor being only one of them.

The vampire looked at her, back at the license, at her. He
was obviously not believing the fake ID. “Is any woman actually named Ivy in the twenty-first century?”

“Poison Ivy,” she said.

“A description of your personality?”

“A fall into a patch of poison ivy when I was a kid. Totally ruined the picnic for me.” She was startled at revealing this bit of her history to a very dangerous stranger.

She’d been sick for months. Her family teased her as well as comforted her. They’d nicknamed her Ivy. After a lot of tears and hurt over the teasing, she’d realized the way to handle it was to own the name. She’d survived the poison ivy, beaten it, and took its name.

Besides, she was used to it after all these years. The nickname was better than the jolt she’d gotten hearing her secret name earlier that evening. And why was it she always thought of the name her mother had given her as a secret name?