by Diana Graves
The sun shone bright and gold through the yellow window. It made the statue of Apollo look magnificent, and I fell hard to my knees. It was done. It was over. Admetus wouldn’t kill again, but Alcestis’s ashes fell from the cage like soft warm grey snow. I’d failed her.
“It’s done,” Damon said with great relief washing over him.
I looked up at him as the flames died down slowly, leaving me cold and naked. I wasn’t relieved. My life was still forfeit. I’d just traded death by immortal for death by demon.
“We should go now,” Damon said, looking down at me.
Tristan grabbed a hand full of ash, and then let it fall to the floor, creating a small billow of ash at his feet. “I can’t believe you killed him.”
“Enough of that,” Damon said, probably just as annoyed with Tristan as I was. “Take your shirt off, and give it to your sister.”
Tristan did, and the blood from his shoulder wound lay cold against my hot skin. I was lucky that he was so very tall, tall enough that his black shirt was more like a dress to me, going almost all the way down to my knees.
Damon carried the boy, and Tristan and I leaned on each other as we made our way out of the house.
Like Tristan said, the place was full of police officers. We passed some on the way out of the house. They stopped us only long enough to see that we were injured good guys. Outside there were five police cars and two ambulances. The two maids were in the back of one police car, and other people I didn’t recognize were in the back of other police cars or sitting on the grass handcuffed, and being questioned. Some of them had to be the people Tristan put to sleep. They should thank him, but something told me they had no gratitude for my brother.
Damon handed the boy to a paramedic. Another paramedic guided Tristan to one of the ambulances.
“Come with me, Miss,” said a paramedic.
“One moment, please,” I said with a finger in the air. I didn’t wait for her response. I walked toward the van, and knocked on the side door. I knew I needed to get looked over by a paramedic, and fill out police reports, but I needed to see Mato first. I just needed to.
“Open it slowly,” said an unfamiliar voice.
I found Mato and Michael in the far corner, hiding in the darkness. And, EI detective, Sloppy was sitting across from them. With reports in hand he left before I crawled in.
“I’m going to need you to fill out one of these too, Miss. Kirkland,” he said in parting. I just shut the door in his face. Rude? Yup. Give a shit? Nope.
“Raina,” Mato said with a sigh of relief.
I crawled over to him, and wrapped my arms around him. He hugged me back, squeezing my chest against his. That’s why I came in here, a much needed hug. I nestled my head against his neck, and looked at my brother. He was smiling, and it made me smile. I didn’t think I’d do that for a long time, but there I was, grinning.
“I can’t believe you made it out of there, sis,” Michael said with a tired voice. He was up way past his bed time, poor vampire. “Did you save that demon’s wife?” he asked. And, there went my smile. I shook my head. “What are you going to do about it?”
I hugged Mato tighter, and he hugged me back just as tightly. Tristan’s shirt was riding up. I wasn’t shy about my nakedness. That’s a human thing, and I wasn’t human.
“Kill a demon.”
♦
Sneak Peek at Book 2
MORTAL SENTRY: CHAPTER ONE
BASTION FATAL NEVER looked more beautiful, or more menacing than it did that night, but all I could think about was how literally dead I would be if Raphael caught me out and about. However, the only friend I had left in the world said it was ‘imperative’ that I meet with him, so there I was, on a casual stroll with an endangered species, Damon, a shape-shifting barguest. He made little sound as he walked beside me. His skin, nails, eyes, hair, everything save for his teeth were black. He was in his element in the dark, a living shadow. The meager lighting of the parking lot alone kept him from complete obscurity. My eyes shifted to the guards that were a constant presence at Bastion Fatal. The Bastion was Tacoma’s strongest vampire collective and it had a lot of guards. They watched us from behind masks of pleasantly lazy smiles and thick eye-liner.
“You look nice,” he said, his voice so deep and masculine it was almost off-putting. It was the first thing he said to me since I met him at the entrance of the Bastion.
I looked down at myself, and I knew he was just making small talk. I didn’t look very nice at all. I threw on the first thing I touched in the dark; a pair of faded jeans and a worn blue top. The night wasn’t as cold as I had expected, so my knitted sweater was tied tightly around my waist, creating an awkward bulk. I wore no makeup and no jewelry. Yeah, I looked real nice. Even so I said, “Thanks.”
We rounded the corner and were greeted by an amazing view of Commencement Bay. The water was black, night waters. If it weren’t for the city lights the stars might have been reflected in the water to make a second sky. Pity.
We stopped walking and I looked up at him with tired eyes. It was one in the morning and my hair was still wet from the shower I had taken before I went to bed. “I put my life on the line to come out tonight, so what’s the emergency? Where’s the fire?”
“Do you remember Thomas?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. I felt my eyes widen. Thomas’s entire family was massacred. They were torn to pieces and their bodies were piled high in an elegant ballroom. I knew this because I was there, afterward at least. There were hundreds of them, several generations, old and young; all dead, all rotting, save for one. I pulled little Thomas Press out of that pile, alive and screaming for his mother. I still had nightmares about it. In them I could still hear him screaming, but instead of pulling him out of the rancid pit; I fell in to join him.
Damon’s posture became softer somehow. “I kept tabs on him. He was supposed to be placed in child services, but they found lycanthropy in his blood. It appears that the werewolf that killed his family infected him.”
“Damn it.”
“It goes without saying that he couldn’t be placed into foster care, and no orphanage would take him. There are facilities that deal with unwanted non-human children, but they’re little more than prisons.”
“He’s just a boy. Hasn’t he been through enough?”
“I thought so, that’s why I adopted him.”
I couldn’t keep the surprise off of my face. Damon was a daddy? I never thought of him that way. Heck, I’d seen him rip a man’s stomach out with his teeth. I’d seen him slash a man to bloody ribbons with his hands. Could someone capable of so much violence be a good father? I didn’t know. — But, on second thought, Damon was an extremely well educated psychiatrist. He was loyal and caring and my closest friend. He was more than capable of protecting the boy and helping him deal with his tragic past.
“I don’t think Thomas could have asked for a better father, but is the Bastion the best place to raise a child?”
“The vampires of Bastion Fatal may be morally deprived, but children are off limits. It’s the law, our law.”
“Well, that’s good to hear,” I said with a smile, but Damon looked grim, and my smile faltered. “What’s wrong?”
“Raphael,” he spat. The tension in his shoulders grew heavy and my heart skipped a beat. Raphael was once the angel of healing, but now he was a demon out for my blood. I didn’t know why he fell from grace, but he was hunting me because I failed him. He told me to save his human wife, and I couldn’t, and that meant my life was forfeit. Since then I’ve been protected behind my aunt’s walls. I had her property blessed by my coven. It seemed the sensible thing to do. “He came to me tonight and spoke of a deal, one that would save your life.”
“What does this deal entail?” I was suspicious. If I had a list of things I never wanted to do in my life, making a deal with a demon would be very close to the top of that list; right behind juggling spiders and bungee-jumping.
“The deal is—if you take in Thomas and raise him as if he was your own child, he will spare you.”
“Are you kidding? You can’t be serious.”
Damon took a deep breath. “He was married to Thomas’s late grandmother. He’s his family and he wants a say in who raises him, and he picks you.”
“I can’t take care of a kid. I can’t even take care of myself.” I felt a little dizzy. Too many thoughts were running through my mind at once. “Why on earth would he want that? Thomas is in a good home. Why mess that up? Why toss a kid into the arms of a woman whose life is shit? I don’t have a job or a place of my own. I can’t do this.”
A guard passed by us and I gave him a look of contempt, nosy jerk. His smile never slipped as he brought a thin cell phone to his mouth and spoke into it.
“Your life isn’t shit, Raina,” Damon said. I looked at him. “And, it’s not our decision. Through marriage, Raphael is his last remaining kin.”
“This is such crap!” I yelled and I didn’t care that the guards were staring at us. “I’m having a hard enough time just being me. I can’t be a mommy too, I can’t.”
Damon placed his hands on my shoulders, “Raphael gave us a week to sort things out. We’ll figure something out, trust me.”
“Oh, an entire week! Why not three days, or two minutes? I’d be just as prepared!” I tried taking slow, calming breaths. I looked down. “I don’t know if I can do this, Damon.”
He cupped my chin in his hand and brought my face up. It was times like those that I wished he had a face that could tell me what he was feeling just by looking at it. His darkness gave away nothing. But, I had another way to know what he was feeling, maybe even thinking. I’d always been a little empathic, but after a brutal vampire attack I became a living vampire, not dead, but not undead. Thanks to the vampire blood running through my veins, my natural talent as an empath was greatly enhanced. It wasn’t something I practiced, because mind reading/controlling felt too much like a violation. Even so, I looked into Damon’s mind and heart, and I felt his pain. It was so much deeper than mine. He loved Thomas, I mean, really loved him like a son, and now his child was being ripped from his arms by a demon.
“I’m sorry, Damon,” I said, not looking at him. “I didn’t realize. You love Thomas so much and here I am drowning in self-pity.”
“Don’t read me, Raina,” he said, and his anger lashed out through my mind. The heat of it made me flinch. He gave me his back. I was going to apologize, I swear I was, but we were interrupted.
“Excuse me, Miss,” said a tall guard. His pale eyes were thickly outlined in black eye liner. “Are you Raina Annabella Kirkland?”
I considered lying, but I said, “Yes, I am.”
Damon turned back around and placed his hands on my shoulders protectively. I was glad to know that even if he was mad at me he’d still be there for me.
The guard was smiling but it didn’t reach his eyes. No, they were glaring down at me, massive blue eyes made bigger for the makeup he wore. “Master Alistair demands your immediate presence in his throne room.”
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