Demon Marked: Book 1 of the Venandi Chronicles ( An Urban Paranormal Romance Series)

by Sara Snow

  When she landed on me, Imogen knocked me to the ground. The breath left my body. I gasped for air while she thrashed on top of me, screeching in pain and rage. Her wings flopped limply at her sides, useless to her now. As soon as I could breathe again, I gave a mighty shove and pushed her off me. I rolled her over onto her back.

  Her pale blue eyes rolled back in her head. Blood trickled from a wound below her left collarbone where my blade had landed.

  My aim had been off. This half-vampire, half-demon wouldn’t die from a minor flesh wound like that. She would bleed, and she would hurt. She would be benched for a while, unable to hunt or kill. But she wouldn’t die—not unless I finished her here and now.

  Those leathery wings looked pathetic now, like an old umbrella with broken spokes. Imogen’s fingers clutched at the blade. With a grunt, she pulled it out of her chest. She snarled at me, wielding the blade in my direction. Then, her eyes closed and her hand sank back to the ground.

  “Always have to have the last word, don’t you?” I chuckled.

  Lying there unconscious, she looked like the vampire I remembered. We hadn’t had much of an emotional connection, but we had shared a lot of hot sex and a few pints of blood.

  Somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to kill her, not even for Jose.

  I peeled her clenched fingers off the blade one by one. Damn, she was stubborn. I had always admired that trait in her. I pulled my blade from her hand, wiped off her blood with the edge of her red dress, and slid the blade back into my pocket.

  Half of me hated myself for leaving Imogen alive. Probably the human half.

  I had one more task to accomplish before I could go back to the warehouse and face Jose. Imogen’s target was still lying in the middle of the alley. He was starting to come around, holding the back of his head and moaning.

  “What the fuck?” he mumbled. If he was lucky, he’d have amnesia now. Otherwise, his nightmares would land him in a mental institution after tonight.

  “Hey, bud. It’s your taxi driver. I’m here to take you home.”

  His hand flopped to his hip, and I realized he was feeling for his wallet.

  “Don’t worry about money. Tonight’s ride is on me.”

  I peeled him off the concrete, holding him upright with my right arm. He was able to walk, even though his knees kept buckling. I half-dragged him to my car and threw him in the back. Then, I walked around to the driver’s seat, put the key in the ignition, and headed for the nearest emergency room. Not the nicest place to wake up, but it was better than a police station or a morgue.

  “Just do me a favor, guy,” I said over my shoulder as I pulled onto the street. “Don’t puke in my car.”

  12

  Georgia

  I joined the Venandi for dinner in a room that looked like it was straight out of the Middle Ages, with an endless table lined with steaming plates and glasses of wine. The hearty food—rack of lamb, roasted potatoes, and a thick vegetable soup—warmed my belly. I had eaten better in the last twenty-four hours at the training center than I had in the past year.

  Candlelight from the wall sconces shed a subtle glow over the table. I sipped red wine and giggled at Olympia’s stories about her romantic conquests. It turned out that she really was a witch, especially when it came to men. She had spells for all kinds of male troubles, from infidelity to erectile dysfunction.

  “Viagra is nothing compared to my recipe for limp-dick salve,” she boasted. “I’m thinking about selling the formula to Pfizer and retiring on the proceeds. Of course, sometimes I get the recipe wrong and it’s too potent. One night, I rubbed some of the extra-strength formula on a guy, and he ended up with a hard-on that lasted for three days.”

  “I suppose you dumped him after those three days were over,” Eli remarked wryly.

  “Of course! I told him I was too exhausted to date him anymore.”

  Everyone at the table burst into raucous laughter, except Carter. He stared glumly at his plate as he speared his lamb with a fork.

  “This meat is overdone, Kingston,” he said. “I like my lamb to have a palpable pulse.”

  The laughter died away. The table fell silent.

  “I think it’s delicious,” I piped up.

  “Of course you do. You’re a regular Little Mary Sunshine,” Carter sneered.

  I was glad he was sitting at the other end of the table, too far away to see my fiery cheeks. I had never thought of myself as the kind of girl who gave off positive vibrations, not with my dark past. Carter’s comment stung.

  “Hey, asshole. Keep your bad attitude to yourself,” Olympia shot back.

  “You’re right.” Carter gave a short bow to Kingston, then to me. The gesture was sardonic. “I apologize. I had a rough go of it last night. The meal was fine.”

  “He did have a hard time sleeping,” Jose offered. “I woke him up with one of my nightmares.”

  “That’s no excuse. If I acted like a jackass every time I had a hard night, you’d be feeding me hay instead of rack of lamb.” Olympia tossed her golden curls over her shoulder.

  “I would think a hard night would leave you refreshed and rejuvenated,” I said. “That’s how I always feel when I get laid.”

  Everyone went quiet. I was sure I had screwed everything up with one snarky remark. Then, Olympia reached out and slapped me on the arm.

  “Right on, little sister. You do have a mouth on you!”

  I blushed again, this time with pride. I had never had a sense of belonging anywhere before. Sure, I’d had a couple of foster placements in cozy homes where the parents were kind to me and tried to make me feel welcome. But ultimately, I was always left on the outside looking in. And I was never adopted.

  After dinner, I went to the library to catch up on my research. I was sitting in front of one of Kingston’s giant tomes, a cup of tea on the table beside me, when Carter walked in.

  “I’m sorry I was so moody at dinner,” he said.

  “You were more than moody. You were downright insulting.” I turned a page with my fingertip and took a swig of my tea, not bothering to look at him.

  “You’re right. Again, I’m sorry. I don’t suppose you’d like to train again tonight?”

  I gulped, remembering the iron blade slicing my breast open. “Eli offered to train me. He’s a martial arts expert. And a master swordsman. Eli is a real gentleman. I’m sure he’d never cut me with one of his swords.”

  Carter sighed and sat down beside me at the reading table. This time he maintained a courteous distance.

  “I’m sorry about that, too. I got carried away.”

  “You sure did. You’re lucky I heal so fast. And so am I. The last thing I need is one more scar.” I pointed to the white line on my temple.

  “You make a good point. And Eli is an excellent trainer. But he’s not as good at slaying demons as I am, and that’s what you need to learn to protect yourself.”

  I closed the book and sat up straight. “Okay, I’ll train with you tonight. On two conditions.”

  “What are they?”

  “One, I would like to know what you were doing last night that put you in such a pissy mood. And two, I want to practice with the iron blade—only this time I want to be the one to hold it.”

  “Fine. I can satisfy both of those conditions. One, I had to leave in the middle of the night to slay a vampire who turned out to be half-demon. And two, I will let you practice with the blade this time. Do we have a deal?”

  I hadn’t expected Carter to agree so quickly. I thought we’d wrangle a little, like before. I was starting to enjoy those verbal tussles. My hopes were deflated when he gave in so easily.

  “If slaying demons puts you in such a bad mood, maybe I don’t want to do it,” I said.

  “At this point, you don’t have a choice.” He glowered at me. “You have demons all around you. When I drove back to the warehouse last night, I saw three of them huddled on the doorstep. They were minor succubi, no serious threat. But they’r
e just the beginning. The word has gotten out, so to speak, and your powers are in demand.”

  A bolt of fear shot up my spine. “What do they want from me? If the world is full of demons hanging around behind the scenes, why are so many of them looking for me?”

  “You have more power than you think. The telekinesis, the rapid healing—they’re early signs that your gifts are developing. It’s the spiritual equivalent of pubescence.”

  “I’m becoming a full-blown freak, in other words.”

  “No. You’re gaining strength, stepping into your role as a member of the supernatural realm. That’s a delicate time for you. You could go either way, towards good or towards evil. The Venandi want you to follow the side of good—that’s why we’re supporting you here. Those demons outside want you to align with them.”

  “So, they’re trying to recruit me? Like the military?”

  Carter smiled, but his face held no humor. “Like the military, yes. They are an army. But I wouldn’t call it recruitment. They will engulf you, ensnare you. They will deceive you into thinking that they want the best for you by appealing to your weaknesses. Once you’re in their thrall, they will hold you in their service for the rest of your life.”

  I tilted my head and studied him. I had never heard Carter sound so gruff. I had to admit, he did look haggard. His eyes and cheeks were sunken, and I noticed a dark bruise along his jaw. Whoever or whatever he had been fighting had almost gotten the best of him.

  “Then we’d better get started with the training,” I said.

  Carter followed through on his promise to let me hold the iron blade. As I held it in my hands, I could swear I felt a surge of energy coursing through the metal, as if it had been charged with electricity.

  “Did you use this blade last night?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  Carter shot me a look that told me not to push my luck.

  Instead of offering himself as a victim for me to practice on, Carter pulled out a burlap dummy stuffed with straw. A red X marked the place on the dummy that would have held a human heart. The dummy also had X’s for eyes, but no other features to make it more relatable. Somehow, this crude replica creeped me out more than a life-like mannequin would have. The burlap man looked like an effigy that might have been burned in sacrifice thousands of years ago at some pagan ceremony.

  Carter held the body out in front of him like a shield. “I’ll hold the dummy. You follow me and try to track its heart with the blade. Stab the red X, and you win a prize.”

  “What prize?” I was going for flirty with that little query, but it didn’t work.

  “You get to live.”

  I thought it would be easy to pierce the twelve-inch blade through Straw Man’s heart, but the way Carter bobbed and wove and feinted, I couldn’t get close to it. He was quicker and more agile than I expected him to be after a long and exhausting night.

  “Faster!” he barked. “You’re not keeping up. Don’t look away from the X, or you might as well be dead!”

  I decided that the smartest approach would be to let Carter wear himself out bouncing around with that creepy thing, then grab it away from him, throw it to the ground, and jab it in the heart.

  Finally, Carter backed off, letting the dummy sag. He took a moment to catch his breath. That’s when I made a leap for Straw Man.

  But Carter did something that shocked the hell out of me—he rose from the floor and hovered about a foot above the ground. I saw him pull back, and I jumped out of the way just before he threw the dummy in my direction. It landed on the padded floor like a sack of potatoes. The thing was heavier than it looked—it could have hurt me.

  “What the fuck?” I was pissed. Carter seemed intent on trying to injure me in one way or another, and I couldn’t figure out why. Was he still trying to test my healing powers, or was he just being a jerk? Maybe a little of both. “Here you go. Take that, bastard!”

  I jumped on Straw Man, clutched his torso between my thighs, and jabbed the red X with all my strength. It felt so good to sink that iron rod into his chest that I stabbed him again and again, until shreds of his straw innards littered the floor. His featureless face became every male who had ever hurt me, physically or emotionally. I saw a string of foster dads, uncaring social workers, and romantic con artists. I saw Adam showing up at the hospital to offer me a ride so that I wouldn’t find out he’d been fucking my roommate while I was in a coma.

  “Enough! That’s enough!” Carter shouted. The blood had drained from his face, leaving his cheeks a chalky gray.

  Sweaty and wild, I glared at him. “You told me to kill it. I thought that was the point.”

  “I told you to stab the red X, not eviscerate the thing!”

  I threw the blade down on the floor, got up, and brushed the straw off my legs. “You told me to kill it, and I did.”

  Something about my violence towards the dummy had shaken him to the core. “No! You were completely out of control. You can never lose control around a demon! You’d call down a whole host of them with an attack like that!” He kicked at the loose straw on the floor. “And you made a mess in the process. Look at all this shit.”

  “Fine. I’ll go get a broom. I’m sure Olympia will have one I can use, if she’s not out flying around on it.”

  I stalked away from Carter, leaving him to his tantrum. I’d had enough of training and enough of his moodiness. Last night, he had been a debonair flirt—tonight, he was apparently in full man-o-pause.

  As I left the room, a pair of swords flew off the wall. Their blades clanged as they met in mid-air before clattering to the ground. A rack of dumbbells toppled over. The knotted ropes swung wildly. The whole scene was disturbing, but deeply satisfying.

  For once in my life, I had released the pressure valve on my rage.

  And for once, I did not feel like a freak.

  “I don’t know what Carter’s problem is. Just take my advice: never work too hard to get into a man’s head. It’s like kicking your way into a closet and finding nothing but mothballs and a couple of old porn magazines.”

  Our hysterical laughter rang through the industrial-sized kitchen. Olympia poured another slug of cognac into my tumbler. We had already knocked off over half of a two-hundred-year-old bottle of the stuff, and I was ready for more. As the whiskey burned its way down my throat, the liquor burned away the hurt that I felt after Carter shouted at me.

  “So, is that straw dummy a family treasure or something? The way Carter pitched a fit over that thing, I thought I might have destroyed a priceless heirloom of the Venandi tribe.”

  “Not that I know of. I’ve never seen it. Of course, I wasn’t trained like the others. I don’t do martial arts. My specialties are poisons, spells, and power charms. Of course, if I have to, I can turn into a guinea pig, but I only do that in dire emergencies.”

  We laughed again, this time so hard that we both started crying.

  “What do you really think of all this supernatural shit that the Venandi do?” I asked when we had finally calmed down. “Are their powers a bunch of random testosterone? Or are they real?”

  Olympia was suddenly sober—or sober enough to stop laughing. “Real enough to save my life.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. That’s how I ended up on the team. I had a familiar, a black dog named Ceres, whom I loved with all my heart. He was a monster of a dog, a huge, slobbery beast who would do anything I asked. Whenever anyone threatened me, he would turn into a dragon from hell.”

  “What happened to him?” I felt sober now, too. I hated any kind of animal cruelty, and I didn’t know if I could bear to hear that Ceres had been hurt.

  “A succubus took over his soul. She hated me, but more than that, she wanted Ceres. Demons as well as witches highly value loyal familiars. One day, I came home and found my loyal familiar crouched on a rug in the kitchen. He was frothing at the mouth and his eyes had turned a furious red, like two fireballs. He was growling deep in his throat, an
d I knew he was going to jump me.”

  “What stopped him?”

  “Eli and Carter. Eli isn’t psychic, but he knew something was going to go down when he stopped by my house to drop off a flier from the gym where he worked. Ceres met him at the door and almost disemboweled him. On the day Ceres tried to attack me, Eli sensed that I was in danger. He brought Carter with him for supernatural backup.”

  “What happened to the dog?”

  “They turned him into a beautiful red mist,” Olympia said gently. “It had to happen, Georgia. The succubus had taken over his body and soul. The dog I loved was never going to come back.”

  “How did you know Eli and Carter?”

  “I had met Eli a few months before when he was teaching self-defense classes at the YMCA. I wanted to learn a few techniques that I could use on handsy guys at bars, so I took a class from him. We went on a couple of dates, but we knew it wasn’t going to work out. I love Eli like a brother, but I wasn’t going to commit to him as a boyfriend. I just wanted his smokin’ hot bod.”

  We shrieked with laughter again.

  “Hey there, girls. Whatever is in those glasses must be totally hilarious.”

  Eli appeared at the refrigerator. He rummaged through its shelves and drawers, searching for a snack. Olympia held the bottle of cognac aloft.

  “Cheers,” she said. “You know, I just told Georgia that you weren’t psychic, and here you are turning me into a liar.”

  “My ears were burning,” Eli said. He emerged from the fridge with an armful of cold cuts, cheese, and veggies.

  “If you had a little hair on your head, you wouldn’t have felt it,” Olympia said.

  Eli ran his palm across his clean-shaven skull. “I agree. But I wouldn’t be as sexy with hair. Girls like bald men, as long as it comes from a razor and not from male pattern baldness.”

  Olympia and I wailed with laughter again. Eli joined us, but not at such a hysterical pitch.