Personal Demon

by Susan Sizemore

  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.

  chapter six

  Ivy 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?

  “You’re a witch,” he said. He picked up the sheathed athame.

  Ivy flinched, and knew he felt it. His arm tightened a bit. She had the odd impression of comfort, when she knew it had to be a threat.

  “Does it hurt you for anyone but you to hold it? Are you bound to the blade?”

  “Please put that down. I don’t want it to get broken,” she said. “And it’s not mine. I don’t know how it got into my bag.”

  He tilted his head as he studied her. “Not a lie. Not exactly the truth, either.”

  “I have no reason to tell you anything,” she told him.

  “You really weren’t aware of being followed last night, were you? By someone else, that is. Someone meant you harm last night. Other than me, that is. I don’t much like vampire hunters,” he added, almost apologetically. “I do not approve of amateurs, you see. You think you know what you’re doing, but it always leads to heartbreak.”

  “Usually not vampires’ hearts?”

  “Precisely. You mortals need to leave enforcement to the professionals.”

  Ivy laughed harshly. “Oh, yes, I know all about your Laws of the Blood.”

  “Not all about them, I’m sure.”

  “I know that they protect vampires, not humans. And will you please put that knife down? It’s not silver. It’s not meant to kill vampires.”

  “You’re very well educated, aren’t you?”

  He’d been drawing her out to discover how much she knew. And she’d just babbled dangerous knowledge to him. Dangerous for a mortal to know, about the Laws, about how to fight his kind. When had she gotten so stupid, so easy?

  “Just how deep inside my mind have you managed to squirm?” she demanded.

  “Don’t scream rape,” he answered. “You’re babbling because I’ve snatched you, scared you, and chilled you, putting you at a psychological disadvantage. Your psychic defenses are quite strong.”

  Crazy as it was, she took some pleasure in his compliment. Yep, he was so messing with her mind.

  “Why would anyone be following me?”

  Then she thought about it, and the answer made her sick. Literally. She began to retch as she remembered those kids murdered out in DeKalb.

  The vampire took his arm away. She bent over, her arms wrapped over her stomach. She shook with dread but did manage not to throw up even though her throat and mouth filled with bile.

  “I take it you figured out who that man was?”

  Damn, the vampire sounded smug! She was tempted to tell him. But what business was it of some out-of-town vampire if her magical community was under attack? That two innocents were already dead? If he’d spotted someone coming after her, that was fine. Maybe he had saved her from a witch murderer. That was yesterday. Now it was her responsibility to track down that killer, to lure him out, get him to come after her again.

  That was what the obsidian blade was for. The memory of everything said and done during the hag-blade ceremony rushed back, like the blade itself stabbing into her brain.

  She gasped.

  He held her face in his hands. “Yes?” There was concern in his voice when she would have preferred sarcasm from this strigoi.

  She’d been tasked with taking out this threat. What she must do wasn’t any of this stranger’s business. For once, the danger to psychic mortals didn’t come from vampires. She wasn’t going to reveal that her people were being stalked by some hidden force. She wasn’t going to reveal that they were more vulnerable to this force than to mortals’ usual enemy.

  And there was a chance he was somehow involved, even if he was a vampire. Had he really saved her? Or was it part of a game? Was he involved in the deaths, using a mortal slave to gather in her people, and using the victims as sacrifices for a black spell? Every now and then, vampires did get into that kind of nefarious crap. Maybe this wasn’t what Aunt Cate thought it was. Was this foreign strigoi hungry for a new source of companions and using her to try to get to the rest of her familia? Or did he want them all drained and dead? They’d certainly make tasty victims and be a huge energy source for whatever he was conjuring.

  “You’re thinking so much you’re making me dizzy. Looking at you is like watching a disco ball. Aren’t you dizzy?”

  He was right about that. Ivy tried to work back to the beginning.

  “What are you doing in Chicago? Does Ariel know who you are?” she asked him.

  He smiled. It wasn’t the bone-melting grin but an insincere quirk of his wide mouth. “I am a simple tourist.”

  She laughed. “Nobody’s a tourist this time of year.”

  “Point taken. The weather is miserable, yet here I am. And I believe I said I was the one asking the questions.”

  Ivy lifted her chin defiantly. “Well, ask something.”

  He got up and looked at the window before turning back to her. Ivy considered making a run for it while there was some distance between them.

  Then he asked, “What would you like for breakfast?”

  chapter seven

  When they had first met, all those long years ago, the Master demon had not worn a human body. The Master had first appeared to his nineteenth-century self as a vague human shape made of fire and smoke. The Master came to him first as a voice calling out of a pub’s fireplace. Despite this different time, this different body he wore, he had no trouble remembering the very moment the Master had first called upon him. He was sitting in a house in Chicago and remembering that wonderful night in a London slum.

  He’d managed to find a thin slice of room at the end of a bench nearest the pub’s fireplace. The room had been so, so crowded. All those people got on his nerves. The smell of spilled beer and unwashed bodies, usually unnoticed, was suddenly sharp and disgusting in the back of his throat. The loud babbling of voices—Polish, Yiddish, mostly English, thick with the accents of London, Wales, Ireland. Whitechapel’s residents congregated in the pubs and on the streets because they were too poor to have any choice but to mix, but they all hated each other. They were
all strangers, and all suspicious. But he remembered there had been laughter that night. Lots of it, from all over the crowded taproom. He didn’t look for sources of the merriment. What if they were laughing at him? He kept his head down, his attention on his watery pint.

  Then the voice whispered, just at his left elbow. But there was no one between him and the fire when he looked to his left.

  A log cracked, fell to ash on the hearth, gave out a final, pulsing glow before it faded. Maybe that was the source of the noise. But then the fire looked at him; there was no mistaking that it wanted his attention.

  The fire spoke for a very long time, and he listened.

  No one else heard or saw anything. Not surprising, of course. No one ever noticed him, which was just the way he’d always wanted it. It was also the way the fire wanted him to be. A shadow. A ghost. It made him smile to know that the fire understood.

  When the fire said, Take me home, no one noticed him lean over the hearth and scoop all the ashes he could into his workman’s apron. No one noticed him leave.

  They found a woman with her throat cut later that night, but no one noticed him.

  He spilled the woman’s blood on the ashes in the apron; this offering set the demon purring. It told him to call him Master. The Master made promises, then gave hope. He taught, the demon master taught him oh so much! Life, death, how magic and transformation required both. The greater the transformation to be, the darker the sacrifice needed. He and the demon master changed and grew closer with each surge of energy brought by the fear, the pain, and the death.

  Newspapers and gossip on the street said all the gruesome death was about sex. He was offended, but the Master laughed and said let them think that—sexual titillation and sexual terror make the dark magic stronger. So he made every murder more sexually gruesome, slicing away breasts, ripping out vaginas.