“Let me go, Bishop.” His eyes had to be blazing red from rage.
Rourke’s gaze rebounded around the room. All the humans were on the ground. Demetrius was perched on top of Stryke, pinning him down. Terrance sprawled on the floor, his head at an awkward angel, while a red hole bloomed in the middle of Gail’s forehead.
“You bastard.” Rourke strained against Bishop’s hold, but his words were for Stryke.
The demon remained lax under Demetrius, like he didn’t have a care in the world. “I’m sorry, did you need to talk to them?” He spoke with supreme effort despite his relaxed expression.
“Without Terrance, he can’t stay in the human.” Demetrius gave the demon a little shake.
Rourke finally freed himself from Bishop and dropped to his knees by Stryke’s head. Demetrius watched them both warily.
The smirk faded from the human’s face as Rourke clutched the man’s chin. “How do we release her?” He squeezed so hard, the human’s face went pale from the pain. The demon might be able to tolerate a lot, but the host couldn’t. “How?”
“Is that why you’re here? They actually succeeded getting Bita into a host?” He fell silent, his breathing growing more labored. The demon was trying not to fall off the figurative cliff that led to Hell, hanging onto his host for dear life. “I’m sorry, Rourke. I truly am, but I couldn’t have these humans spilling our secrets. Not until I get what I want.”
“And what is that?” Demetrius asked, his pale green eyes blazing.
A lazy smile spread across the host’s face. “Not a what, and nothing to do with what you’re fighting. It’s my business alone. Terrance and his wife can no longer answer your question. I’m afraid you’ll have to go back home and read between the lines.”
Rourke ripped his hand off the man’s face in disgust. Demetrius fisted the collar of the human’s dime store shirt and lifted him.
“What are we supposed to find?” His friend made one last attempt to extract information.
They were too late. Blackness drained from the male’s eyes, revealing confused blue orbs that rolled back into the man’s head before he passed out.
With a snort of disgust, Demetrius dropped his load.
“Sirens,” Bishop announced. “The gunshot did not go unnoticed in this neighborhood.”
Demetrius straightened. “Collect everything you can and flash back.”
Rourke didn’t plan to waste time. He flung open the window and removed the screen. “I found some items in the basement. I’ll meet you back there.”
He jumped, landing easily on the grass in the backyard. Demetrius and Bishop didn’t touch the ground, flashing as soon as they had jumped.
People searched the neighborhood from their windows, he could sense it. They heard the gunshot, but didn’t know if it was a car that backfired, kids messing around, or an actual gunshot. His sensitive sight picked out the humans living across the street watching this house. Most likely the ones who called the cops. The couple Stryke killed must’ve raised some red flags amongst their neighbors with various people coming and going at all hours of the night. Little did they know it wasn’t a meth house in their midst. It was much worse and more dangerous.
He wrestled the items out of the deep window well and flashed back to the compound.
Chapter Sixteen
Rourke pressed his phone to his ear while he was crowded into Calli’s office with Demetrius and Bishop. Papers still littered the floor, only now all the items Rourke had stolen lined the tables.
Calli sat hunched over the tome, making curt, frustrated noises as she flicked each page over. Any more force, and she’d rip the heavy parchment that constructed the book.
They’d found nothing to help Grace, and they all felt the pressure. How much more corruption was she exposed the longer it took to rid her of the evil?
“She’s demanding to talk to you.” Creed’s voice filtered through the line.
Rourke wanted to crush…everything around him. “She can wait.”
Creed had called when the demoness Bita took over and demanded to speak to Rourke. From the insults being spewed, Bita only sought to provoke him into hating Grace. Grace’s voice screamed through the speakers Creed used to listen in on the holding area. Pathetic blood whore. Simple-minded vampire trash.
Rourke disconnected after she shouted, “Your parents should’ve sold you as soon as you were born!” After Bita’s rants, exposing his past wasn’t limited to Demetrius and Bishop.
He wasn’t stupid. The demon was trying to incite his hatred for Grace and dam any willingness to help save Grace.
Bita was wrong. He didn’t hate Grace. He was disappointed in her. And that was much worse. His brother he hated. His parents he had grown to hate. All had disappointed him initially. The loss of trust in Rourke’s world severed the ties of a relationship, any relationship.
“Rourke,” a husky voice attached to a tiny vampire said.
He glanced up. Ophelia was in the doorway, measuring the tension in the room. Her sharp mind would piece together the answers to all her unspoken questions.
“I have news on the primes we’ve been looking for.” She held out her own phone.
Those damn phones were almost more important than their guns. The display showed a clear shot of a bald man with the same gingerbread brown eyes Rourke used to love gazing into before they could turn black like oil.
He snatched the device and thumbed through Ophelia’s surveillance photos.
Her parents were fucking grocery shopping. With a young male, about five years of age. An odd errand for a well to-do family.
It actually made sense. If they lost their last child when the babysitters got slaughtered, they probably didn’t go anywhere without their young.
The boy resembled Grace. He’d be surprised if this wasn’t her birth family. Her features were a perfect blend of the male and female in the photo.
“It’s daylight. I came back to show you this. They’ll be okay until tonight. D?” Ophelia’s glittering gaze landed on Demetrius.
Demetrius grunted to let her know he was listening while he was bent over Calli’s shoulder.
“Bring the Blanchettes in or watch them for another night?”
“I only know the name,” Demetrius muttered. “That’s a good sign.”
“Exactly.” The name echoed in Rourke’s head.
A fine prime name. The lack of familiarity was a good sign. It meant the Blanchettes didn’t frequent the social club where Rourke and his team had to ferret out information. They weren’t involved in any problems Demetrius had been called to take care of. They were likely a good family.
A good prime family. No wonder Grace turned on him.
Demetrius rubbed his chin and straightened. “Go out as early as you can tolerate and bring them in. Tell them they’re in danger, and you’ll tell them why when they arrive here, blah, blah, blah.”
“You want to be the one to spill the secret their long lost daughter is still alive but she’s possessed. Got it.” Ophelia perched on top of a long table. Confetti from Grace’s last visit fluttered to the floor. She gave a low whistle. “Your honey did a bang up job in here, Rourke.”
Automatically on the defense, he snapped, “It was Bita.”
A perfectly formed eyebrow arched on her delicate face, but she turned her attention to Calli. “Good thing we scanned and backed up the files of all that shit last week, huh?”
“Very good.” Calli’s face had been scrunched in a perpetual frown all night. She sat back with a huff and massaged her temples. “I don’t get what this thing is hiding. It gives us all kinds of details about conjuring demons. The various levels of demons and the Circle of Thirteen.”
She slammed the book shut and slumped back in her chair. Demetrius’ fingers kneaded her shoulders, his expression troubled he couldn’t help his mate.
As Rourke’s gaze lingered on them, a flare of jealousy ignited. It was nothing new. The ember of envy was what had gotten him
into a fight with D in the first place all those years ago. Every so often it sparked because, dammit, Demetrius was the male Rourke wished he’d been born as.
Shaking off the self-pity and extinguishing the spark of emotion, Rourke turned his attention to their problem.
“It’s like the diabolic creatures crafted the book so if it ever fell into the wrong hands, it would be full of conjuring information but not how to undo any of it. The tome is a shovel for us to dig a big ol’ hole with.”
“Run through what we do know.” Ophelia picked at her nails. The female always appeared to be oblivious to her surroundings. It was pure deception, a second nature skill for her.
Calli opened the cover and flipped pages as she spoke. “The beginning is a who’s who of the underworld, starting with the Circle. Like it says Bita is a nightmare demon and Malachim, the one who possessed my father, is the second in command in the Circle. They can inhabit a host, but don’t ever use the bond to cross because what dies on earth stays on earth. Then there’s the second tier demons like Draken…” Her lip curled in disgust and she shuddered. “…who can possess with limited access to their powers. Or, if the bond is strong enough, they can cross in their own forms. And they’re humanoid, they blend. Inhumanly tall, horned, with atrocious fangs, Malachim would most definitely not have blended.”
Demetrius filled in the rest. “The rest of the book is incantations to summon each demon. The ceremony to bond a host. All of it’s useful, but not even the journals from Calli’s mother mentioned an undoing.”
Ophelia snorted as she filed her trim nails. “At least your mama wrote fluently and not the halting way the tome is written.”
Rourke hadn’t touched much of Calli’s research. She had passed on what was important, and he had carried out the duties. But they were struggling, running into walls. He’d have to step up, no matter how inferior he felt compared to the other minds in the room.
He threw his few brain cells into the ring. “Did they have a different language or was it translated recently? Is that the reason for the odd writing?”
“No one knows,” Calli answered. “It’s like they weren’t used to constructing paragraphs.”
“Maybe they read differently.” Rourke spoke before his good sense kicked in. He couldn’t compete with Calli’s intellect.
Calli’s lips pursed and she scowled at the tome. Instantly, insecurity pierced Rourke.
Ophelia cocked her head, ruminating over Rourke’s statement. “It’s not like every society reads the way we do.”
Calli slowly turned the pages until she reached the one with the bonding ritual. “The demon you called Stryke said ‘read between the lines.’ Perhaps he didn’t mean it literally, but figuratively to read outside of the box. Although I still don’t trust why he’s helping us.”
“They’re tricky bastards.” Demetrius peered over her shoulder. “He could be using us to betray the Circle, gain power, or some shit.”
Rourke had been thinking on that since Stryke… “Stryke has to have an alternate method to gain access to this realm. If it were one of us, and you sent us to do a job, D, we wouldn’t burn our only route to get it done.”
Demetrius dipped his head in agreement. “The thought also crossed my mind.”
“Chinese characters are read down and to the left. I’m not getting anything off that.” Calli tilted her head. “Diagonally…nothing. Wait! There’s a word.”
Demetrius squinted at the letters, his head canted the same direction as Calli’s. “How?”
Ophelia hopped down from the table and inched closer with Rourke, both of them unable to help themselves.
“Exactly opposite,” Calli answered. “Up and to the right.”
With her eyes glued on the page, her hand patted the desk, looking for a notepad and pen. She scrawled out each word as she interpreted the passage.
Rourke wasn’t as familiar with the mating passage as Demetrius and Calli, obviously. Mated couples reported just knowing the phrase when they intended to carry out the ritual. It wasn’t something widely shared. Nothing scared a single vampire more than being accidently mated. They were sexual beings, and while many secretly yearned to settle with their true mate, spending eternity with just one person terrified many of them.
It spurred the creation of the vampire version of the little blue pill. Circumvent the bond so they could have sex outside of the union. Have the urge to drink from another without symptoms of nausea.
While some could anyway, Rourke recalled his experience with Demetrius and tapping a vein that wasn’t from Grace.
Apparently, his ability to bond wasn’t as broken as Bita claimed.
“Rourke.” Demetrius’ voice busted through his retrospection.
Tearing his thoughts away from Grace wasn’t easy. His mind was hung up on the bond and Grace.
His mind had to get the fuck over it.
“Before we evict Bita from Grace’s body, go down and find out what she’ll reveal.”
Rourke’s expression remained stoic, but a groan hovered at the base of his throat. It was a special kind of torture facing the demon in Grace’s body. “Got it, D.”
The long walk down to the holding cell took forever, but was much too fast for Rourke’s taste. He stopped at Creed’s man cave and knocked on the door.
“’Bout time.” Creed sat on his ergonomic exercise ball chair. Keeps the abs tight, he argued when Rourke had spotted him carting it through the hallway.
It went with Creed’s personality is what it did. Like the acceptable recyclable materials flyer he had made for all of them to hang above their trash cans. If he ever showed up to a fight in Birkenstocks, Demetrius had threated to ship his blond ass off to Seattle.
An empty threat since Creed had five pairs.
“Rourke.” the demon screamed in a ragged voice.
Grace’s heightened awareness to his presence must’ve tipped Bita off.
“And she’s back.” Creed glanced at Rourke. “After you hung up on me, she screamed for a minute and then slunk back. Safe to say, Grace has a sore throat after all that yelling. Bita, though. That demon has some creative insults.”
“They were accurate.” Rourke got that out of the way, and he was actually comfortable confirming the demon’s claims to Creed.
Of all his team, the male would understand being an outcast compared to the primes. Rourke didn’t know the whole story, just that Creed was estranged from his parents.
“Yeah. I was gonna joke I’d trade childhoods with you, but I’ll pass. You win.” Creed swiveled back to the chess game on his tablet. “Go on in. D texted before you got here to have me record everything. So don’t gush about the favorite lingerie you like on Grace.”
The image of Grace’s curvy body wearing nothing but lace and straps slammed into him. Lust flamed through his body, an arousal so forceful he was nearly driven to his knees. He spun out of the office, but didn’t enter the holding room. The inferno inside of him would give him an instant disadvantage.
Steady breaths, the reminder of Grace’s secret meetings with his brother, and Rourke was composed enough to enter.
“Weeelll,” drawled Bita.
A name aided in separating Grace from the demon. Rourke should be grateful, but it was easier to distance himself from the female he’d allowed past his personal walls when he didn’t know Bita’s name. The line between Grace’s victim status and betrayer stamp was clearer.
“You asked for me?” He held his gaze impassive.
Bita reclined back, a nasty smile on Grace’s lush lips. “Was that a snarky comment from you? What more proof do I need that this weak female got under your skin?”
It was true. No reason to hide it anymore. If he didn’t try, then it couldn’t be used against him. Grace had affected him. Deeply. It didn’t mean he was going to act the besotted male and become a target for the demon’s machinations. Or his brother’s.
Yet, his expression was a poster for boredom. “What’d you want.”
By the way, demon hag, prepare to go back to Hell.
Her stare turned calculating. “We’re mates.”
A snort of derision escaped him. “You’re a demon, and wasn’t it you who claimed my bonding sense was broken?”
“This Grace seems to feel for you.” White fangs glinted past Grace’s lips, her pink tongue flicked against them.
“You’re hungry?”
She shrugged. “This female’s tolerance for continuous healing is low.”
Rourke scanned Grace’s curvy body, keeping it clinical. Recovering from the fight with him and Demetrius, then Bita’s epic tantrums, had taxed Grace. Dark circles ringed under her eyes and there was a slump to her shoulders that normally wasn’t there. It was possible the constant internal battle drained her energy, required a higher level of replenishment than a natural bond.
He raised his gaze to meet her black one. “And you need my blood.”
“I would think you’d want to keep your mate healthy.”
“You said a prime daughter like Grace wanted nothing to do with me.”
A mischievous smile twisted her lips. “She wouldn’t if she was smart, but she seems to have a…thing…for you.” Bita spit the word like any positive affection was weakness.
Rourke would agree with her. “You also said she betrayed me for my brother.”
“You two can share her. I don’t mind.”
A shudder vibrated its way down Rourke’s spine.
Bita let out a caustic laugh. “Your sexual stamina and his money. Together, you two are the perfect male.”
Except for the circumstances of their birth. Less worth than commoners.
Regardless, he didn’t know when Demetrius would arrive and he hadn’t gleaned any information from the tricky demon.
“What happens to the underworld when its ruling body roams the earth?” He chose the route of picking at Bita’s pride. “Trading one power zone for another?”
Rourke (New Vampire Disorder Book 2) Page 17
