Master of the Night

by Angela Knight

  "I suspect the idea will grow on her." Parker smirked. "Champion's got a way with women."

  "Assuming he cooperates."

  "Oh, he'll cooperate. Once we get him locked up, he won't have a choice."

  "Yeah, right." He snorted. "So why have I got this mental image of myself on CNN, saying, 'I'm sorry, Senator, I do not recall.'"

  Parker shrugged. "One way or another, Avery, we've both got our orders." Suddenly he lifted his head, an arrested expression crossing his face. "And I think that's my cue."

  "What's your cue?" Avery demanded as the FBI agent swung open the driver's door and got out. "Parker, what the hell are you doing?"

  Reece cradled Erin in his arms, licking delicately at the small wounds he'd left in her throat. Now that he'd finished drinking from her, healing agents flooded his saliva, giving it a brassy taste. By morning, the marks of his fangs would have faded until she'd probably mistake them for mosquito bites.

  He just needed to keep her away from mirrors in the meantime.

  She moaned and stirred against him, a limp, warm weight in his arms. He'd taken no more than a cup from her, not enough for her to even notice. Still, he could sense she felt dazed and weak from the intensity of their passion.

  So did he.

  "Oh, God," Erin groaned softly against his chest. "You're lucky the word hasn't gotten around about you."

  He stiffened. "Oh?"

  She coiled her arms around him. "Yeah," she said sleepily. "Women would be raping you in the street."

  Reece grinned and cuddled her, enjoying the way she lay over him like a sleepy kitten. "Glad you approve, milady."

  "Approve? You could say that." She yawned. "You could also say Hurricane Hugo was a storm. It's true, but the term doesn't quite capture the full effect."

  He laughed, thinking again how damn much he liked her. Her wit and intelligence were every bit as appealing as that lush little body.

  It was a damn shame he'd never see her again.

  Maybe he could mention her to the Majae's Council. She'd make a worthy addition to the ranks. And then he could…

  Suddenly the wind shifted. Reece stiffened at the scent it carried before pushing Erin off him and onto the comforter. Naked, a snarl curling his lips, he sprang to his feet.

  "Whoa, there, big guy." A man stepped from the shadows of a hedge. As Reece whirled on him and prepared to leap, he flipped open a badge case. "Steven Parker, FBI."

  As Reece stopped short, a tall black man hurried up to join the blond, his expression harried. "Parker, what the hell are you doing?" The hissed whisper carried clearly to Reece's vampire ears.

  Parker jerked a thumb at the other man. "Agent James Avery with the Office of Foreign Analysis."

  The Outfit Reece's frown deepened. He'd heard of it. A very small counter-terrorist agency loosely connected to the FBI, specializing in black ops.

  But what the hell were they doing here?

  Quickly he stooped to pick up his pants, aware that Erin had flipped the comforter over herself and was trying to dress under its concealment. He could almost feel the heat of her furious embarrassment from where he stood. "This isn't a good time, gentleman. What do you want?"

  "Just trying to confirm a theory," Parker said, smiling easily as he strolled across the lawn toward them. "Even though you were wearing protection, I could feel the power stirring in Agent Grayson."

  "Agent Grayson?" He repeated, and frowned as the second part of the agent's sentence sank in. "What power?"

  "Parker!" the black agent hissed.

  "Didn't she mention it?" The blond smiled pleasantly. "She's Outfit, too. And a Latent, unless I miss my guess. We thought she might be."

  Reece stared at him in shock, his mind working frantically. Jesus, who'd told them about Latents? This was a major security breech. The High Council was going to have a mass stroke.

  As he struggled to work through the implications, Erin scrambled to her feet, dressed again in her snug red gown. Fighting with her zipper, she snapped, "Avery, who the hell is this guy? What are you doing here?"

  Parker smiled at her pleasantly, clapping a hand on the big man's shoulder as he reached into his lapel with one hand. "Actually, he's getting ready to die."

  Before even Reece could react, the blond jerked out a knife and plunged it between his partner's ribs. Avery choked out a gasp, his eyes going wide. He toppled.

  Erin's scream rang across the garden. "Avery!"

  Reece didn't look back as he shot toward the two like an arrow from a bow, intent on taking Parker down. He'd crossed the twenty feet separating them and was reaching for the blond when the agent threw up both bands.

  Reece glimpsed a violent flash of manifesting magic just before he slammed into an invisible wall. The impact drove the air from his lungs. Before he could suck in another breath, something closed around his body and snatched him off his feet.

  "What the hell?" He struggled to free himself, but the spell held him suspended like an ant in honey. Instinctively he started to look around for the Maja who'd caught him.

  And glimpsed Parker's hands. Hands surrounded by a familiar magical nimbus.

  Impossible! Reece thought, shocked. Men don't become Majae.

  Then he remembered his conversation with Lance and Grace earlier in the night: the Council's conviction that the Death Cultists were using magic without a Maja's involvement.

  Oh, hell, Reece thought as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. This isn't good.

  The grin on Parker's face was wide and white and not entirely sane. "God, what a buzz. I get a power spike from any killing, but nothing gives quite the same charge as murdering somebody who trusts you. I feel like I could light up Atlanta."

  "Geirolf!" Erin spat furiously. "It's you, isn't it, you son of a bitch?"

  Reece twisted around in the spell until he was able to catch a glimpse of her from the corner of one eye. She hovered three feet off the ground, caught in the same kind of mystical power field that had trapped him.

  Her expression was contorted with rage as she sneered, "So you've given up the demon scam in favor of passing yourself off as FBI?"

  Parker laughed. "Actually, I'm not Geirolf. Though I'm flattered you'd think I was. And he's not a demon." His eyes glinted. "He's a god."

  "You're also not FBI," Reece growled. "What the hell are you?"

  "Oh, to the contrary, I'm definitely FBI," Parker said, strolling closer. "In fact, I work for Mike Richards."

  Reece's counterintelligence contact. The light dawned. "You're the mole."

  "And you would have made me the minute you laid eyes on me in Mike's office," Parker agreed cheerfully. He looked at Erin. "Almost as fast as they made you when you joined Death's Sabbat. The disguise was good, baby, but you can't fool a god."

  "Geirolf's not a god," Erin gritted, her voice rough with exertion as she fought to escape the spell. "He's a con artist with a collection of hallucinogens."

  Parker sneered. "You think a hallucination's holding you three feet off the ground? Idiot. It's magic. Mageverse physics manifesting itself in our universe—with a little starter fuel provided by your dead friend's life force." He stepped closer to her, looking up into her face. "And you still don't believe me. Then again, you didn't even recognize a vampire when he had his dick in your twat and his fangs in your throat." He gave her a contemptuous smile. "So much for that keen, investigative intellect."

  Erin's heart pounded in long, jarring beats. It was happening again. Just like the night David died. Things that could not possibly be were happening again, and another man was dead.

  All the shrinks had sworn she'd been under the influence of some kind of hallucinogen, but this felt no more like a delusion than that night had.

  But it must be. Because if it wasn't…

  Erin sneered at Parker, even as her instincts shrieked all this was horribly, impossibly real. "So now you want me to believe Reece Champion is a vampire. Yeah, right. Do you seriously think you can sucker me with
this bullshit?" Her mouth was dry as sand. "If you're going to kill me, get it over with and quit insulting my intelligence." She almost wished he would. Better to die than discover it had all been real.

  Better to die than learn a demon really had killed the man she loved.

  "We have no intention of killing you, sweetheart." Parker's grin took on a chilling cast. "At least, not until Count 007 over there has had his fun. But I think I'll let my master explain it to you."

  He took a step back and closed his eyes. Again, the mysterious nimbus appeared around his hands, snapping and fizzling like a Fourth of July sparkler.

  Even frustrated, furious, and terrified, Erin felt a niggle of curiosity. How was he doing that?

  As she watched, the FBI mole lifted both hands, rising onto his toes as he threw his head back, his face contorting with effort.

  "I wonder what it is about working magic that gives them all that melodramatic streak?" Champion muttered. "I've never met a Maja yet that could resist striking a pose."

  What the hell's a Maja? Erin thought.

  Before she could ask, a rolling crack of thunder made her jump in her invisible bonds. A blast of wind blew into her face, hot and smelling faintly of sulfur.

  And a man simply popped into existence inches from her nose. She jolted, swallowing a scream.

  "Why, hello there, Erin." He grinned at her, his smile wide and white, his eyes as pale as a wolf's—and just as feral. His hair fell in a gleaming black curtain around his T-shirt-clad shoulders, and black jeans hugged his thighs.

  She might have found him attractive if she hadn't seen him kill David.

  "Geirolf," Erin spat. "You sick fuck. Still scamming the suckers with the demon act?" God, please let it be a scam. It couldn't be real.

  He laughed, a deep, sensual boom. "Darling, it's not an act." Geirolf turned away from her, strolling up to Champion as he hung in midair, his big body straining as he fought to escape whatever it was that held them.

  No. This isn't happening, she told herself desperately. There was no magical forcefield holding them trapped and levitating. Somehow Parker had drugged them without their knowledge, with something that made them both susceptible to suggestion. Then the magician hit them up with a couple of stage tricks while they were too out of it to question what was happening. It was the same scam the shrinks swore he'd pulled on Erin and David a year ago, with such fatal results.

  But why? That was the one thing the psychologists had never been able to explain. What was the point? Why not just shoot them and get it over with?

  "So, you're one of Merlin's vampires," Geirolf said, looking up at Reece. "He always was a whimsical bastard."

  "Vampires?" Erin interrupted. It was the same line of trash Parker had used. She made herself sneer. "Funny—I didn't notice any bat wings."

  Parker sneered back. "You really need to wake up and smell the Bloody Marys, sweetheart. Or hadn't you noticed the fang marks in your throat?"

  Fang marks? She licked her lips, suddenly aware of the faint ache and pulse in her neck. There was something sticky on her skin, something that felt almost like…

  No. It was whatever they'd used to make her hallucinate all this. There was no such thing as vampires.

  Or demons.

  Suddenly she realized Geirolf was watching her with a fixed and ugly gleam. "Oh," he said softly, "this is going to be such fun. I'm going to enjoy blowing all your cool little assumptions all to hell and back."

  "Who are you?" Champion demanded impatiently. "What's this all about?"

  "Geirolf here is a con man and a murderer," Erin told him, glaring at their captors. "He uses drugs to make his victims more susceptible to his parlor tricks, then he gets them to commit his crimes for him. Primarily murder."

  "She thinks I'm Charles Manson," Geirolf told Champion, his tone confidential. "I'd be offended if it weren't so damn funny."

  "I repeat," Champion said steadily. "What are you?"

  "I'd think that would be obvious, vampire. I'm a god."

  "Of course you are," Champion said, without a flicker of emotion.

  Geirolf sighed and said to Parker, "It's so sad to be forgotten."

  "I could kill them now if you want," Parker said, turning a glittering stare on Erin.

  She curled a lip at him despite the chilling hunger in his eyes. Damned if she'd show these assholes fear. No matter what they were.

  "No, boy, they're perfect." Geirolf started walking around Champion, looking up at him in calculation. "A Latent and the young vampire who could transform her—all magical potential, yet without enough real power yet to be a pain in my ass." He grinned. "The perfect blood sacrifice."

  Oh, hell.

  Reece stared at the being who stalked around him. Whatever Geirolf and his flunky were, they weren't Magekind. And he had an ugly feeling they weren't mad, either, despite all the babbling about gods and demons.

  But they were powerful as hell, and they worked death magic—using the energy released in a murder as a conduit to Mageverse energies.

  An act strictly forbidden to Magekind.

  "What sort of spell are we talking about here?" Reece asked, trying to sound as if he didn't give a damn.

  Geirolf grinned. "You honestly think I'll tell you?"

  "Unless I miss my guess, you feed on terror. Death, too, of course, but definitely terror. So yeah, you'll tell me, if only to scare the hell out of us."

  The grin widened. Every tooth in the demon's head was pointed. "You're right."

  "So what exactly does this spell do?"

  "Kill every last vampire and witch in the Mageverse."

  Reece stared, feeling all the blood drain from his face. "That's not possible. Even if you sacrificed us both, the power it would take would be immense."

  "Well, yes," the demon said, then spread his hands. "But after all, I'm not your average witch."

  "But why?"

  The thing bared those razor teeth. "You're in the way."

  "Of what?" Reece demanded.

  "Of the rebirth of paradise." The demon clasped his hands behind his back and looked up at the stars. "Or hell, I suppose. Depends on your point of view."

  "What are you talking about, you lunatic?" Erin snapped.

  He glanced at her. "I'm going to bring back the good old days when my people came to this rock. Humans called us names like Set and Baal then, and a hundred others they've forgotten now." His razored smile was chilling. "I'm going to remind them of every single one."

  Each time Reece took a step, this mess just got deeper. "You passed yourself off as a god."

  Geirolf shrugged. "Or a devil. Depended on my mood. Either way, they gave us sacrifices. Blood, pain, and all the life force we could drink." His expression hardened. "Then Merlin, Nimue, and the rest of their sanctimonious kind arrived to declare war on us all."

  Reece smiled coldly as Geirolf's account at last began to make sense. "The Fae were more powerful than you."

  The demon snarled. "They drove my people from this world and set up dimensional wards to keep us away. But Merlin particularly hated me because I'd almost managed to wipe them all out. He was afraid to leave me free, afraid I'd find a way to destroy the wards."

  "It was never smart to piss off Merlin."

  "Merlin?" Erin said. "As in the Round Table?"

  The demon ignored her. "He sealed me in a cell on Mageverse Earth. It provided for my every physical need—except freedom. And it was impervious to magic. Without sacrifices, I grew weak. So weak, it took me a millennia and a half just to chip out a chink big enough to send a dream through."

  "And yet, you're back."

  Geirolf shrugged. "I found Gary Evans, who had just enough talent to see me in his dreams. After I convinced him to sacrifice a dozen or so coeds so I could feed on their deaths, I managed to escape."

  "He used drugs and tricks to make Evans believe he was a god," Erin interrupted. Reece craned his neck so he could look back at the bitter fury on her face. "And Gary, the sick f
uck, was happy to believe him."

  "Until our luscious Erin and her partner blew poor Gary's head off in the middle of a sacrifice," the demon added. "Fortunately that last death gave me just enough power to break free. I've been rebuilding my strength ever since."

  Erin jerked at her invisible bonds. "And suckering gullible cultists into committing new crimes."

  "I can hardly commit my own," Geirolf said. "Using too much magic would attract Majae attention, and I don't care to have a few thousand pissed-off vampires and witches banging at my door." He smiled. "Not just yet, anyway."

  "I can see how that would be inconvenient," Reece said.

  "Indeed. So you've all got to go. Luckily, I've got the perfect spell. But to make it work, I need a Magekind couple as a sacrifice."

  "But the minute you captured a Maja, she'd send a message to the rest."

  "And I'd be back where I started," Geirolf agreed. "But if I had a vampire and one newly turned Maja who didn't quite know how to handle her powers yet… Now, that would work."

  "Good plan. Except, much as it grieves me to point out, you're assuming I'm going to cooperate." Reece bared his teeth savagely. "And I'm not."

  The demon smiled. "Well, not willingly, anyway. Then, of course, there's the problem of that magical energy burst when a Maja Turns."

  "Oh, take a chance."

  "And have the entire Round Table and a coven of witches down around my horns? I don't think so. No, what's needed is a magic-tight cage that would keep the Majae's Court from detecting the girl's Change. Luckily, I've got one."

  Reece's heart sank. "The cell Merlin locked you up in."

  "Exactly. I did some damage to it, but it should still hold you and your pretty girlfriend." Geirolf shrugged. "Of course, I won't be able to sense when she Turns, so I'll have to check in periodically. But once I have, and once you're dead…"

  Reece swore silently. With the Magekind eliminated, Geirolf could set himself up as a god, tormenting and killing until he plunged the planet into another Dark Age.

  "Oooh, yesss," the demon purred. "You know, it isn't all that easy to scare the hell out of a vampire. And I just have." His laughter rolled, reverberating like thunder. "Fear's got the most delicious taste. Not quite as good as death, but close. Makes a good appetizer."