Releasing the Demons (The Order of the Senary)

by L. D. Rose

  Rome laughed. “I welcome interruption. Especially if it involves pissing JJ off.”

  Blaze heard a rustle as Rome got up to track JJ. Their suites were pretty close to one another, so it wouldn’t be long. “I’ll be there in a bit,” he said. “And I’m bringing Valerie with me.”

  He could almost feel Rome’s smile through the line. “I know you are.”

  “You need to stop doing that shit.”

  “What shit?”

  “Getting up in my head.”

  “I can’t help it, B. You’re broadcasting like a fucking musical, singing it from the proverbial rooftops. All that joy and happiness is making me want to hurl.”

  Blaze’s lips twitched. “You’re a dick.”

  Rome chuckled. “I’m glad for you, man. Just be careful, all right?”

  His brother referred to the Order’s confidentiality, and in turn, their safety. Rome hadn’t always trusted Blaze’s judgment and he had every right not to. But the fact his brother did now meant a lot to Blaze, and he never wanted to lose that trust again.

  Valerie would uphold their secrets. Otherwise they wouldn’t be having this conversation.

  “Yeah, I will,” he assured Rome.

  “Good. Hey, JJ,” Rome shouted. A groggy, angry groan responded. “JJ, wake up, Blaze wants to have a chit-chat.”

  Oh yeah, great way to rouse a slumbering vampire.

  “A what?” It was obvious JJ was completely disoriented. “Who?”

  Rome laughed and Blaze couldn’t stop grinning. He could imagine what JJ looked like in the morning. “Blaze, that’s who.” Blaze heard a slap that sounded like the back of JJ’s head. Or his face. “Open those pretty eyes, sleeping beauty.”

  “Fuck you,” JJ snarled with the promise of death and retribution as the phone exchanged hands. His voice hit the line; loud, clear, and definitely pissed. “What?”

  “Morning, sweetheart.”

  A growl rumbled like thunder. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Your help. And I need you awake when I get back. So don’t visit la-la land yet, you got me?”

  JJ sighed sharply. “Can this wait?”

  “No, not really. You want in, you stay awake.”

  “This better be fucking good, B,” JJ threatened but his bark lacked any real bite. He couldn’t resist a mission even if it required he surrender one of his nuts.

  “Oh trust me, JJ, you’ll like this. I’ll be there in an hour. I want you waiting for me with a bottle of JW Blue and your sexiest lingerie.”

  Another thunderclap. “Blow me.”

  The line went dead. Blaze glanced at the phone, still grinning. Fucking JJ, the fledgling bloodsucker with a functional superego.

  Blaze pushed the phone back in his pocket and pulled out a fresh pack of Marlboros. He ripped off the top, removed a cigarette, and rolled it between his fingers. The tube of tobacco beckoned him to light up. On a good day, he would be on his second; bad, probably fourth or fifth. And most days weren’t good.

  But today was.

  He stared at it for a moment, outlined by the sun, before returning it to the pack. And just as he did, Valerie opened the screen and stepped out into the sunlight, radiant as ever. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and thrown on a pair of gym shorts. He fought the desire to pout at the skin she’d covered up.

  She smiled as she parked next to him, a newspaper in hand. “You made The New York Times.”

  He shoved the cigarettes back in his pocket. “You’d be surprised how often I make The New York Times,” he muttered.

  “Actually, I’m not.” She read, “‘Unidentified male kills vampire in broad daylight as pandemonium breaks out in Harlem.’”

  Unidentified male. Prison escapee. Government assassin. Big, scary tattooed guy. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Nope, no one. They try to describe you from eyewitness accounts but they’re not very accurate. They detail the Mustang, but a black Mustang with tinted windows isn’t uncommon. No one tagged the license plate either, which is expected, considering the circumstances. No one would be thinking of that with a vampire frying under the sun.”

  “It’s about time we get rid of the ‘stangs anyway.”

  “Get rid of them? You mean exchange them?” She set the paper down on the ground.

  “Yeah, we exchange them yearly.” Blaze slipped his arm beneath her knees and scooped up her legs, splaying them across his lap. “Keeps it harder to pinpoint us.”

  “Makes sense.” Valerie relaxed against the armrest as he massaged her knees. She took a deep breath of air. “It’s beautiful today.”

  “Mmm,” he replied. “How come you never told me about your father?”

  She stilled, caught off-guard by the question, but she quickly recovered, lips curving. “Would it have made a difference?”

  He shrugged. “I would’ve stopped smoking around you.”

  “That doesn’t bother me, Blaze. My father smoked around me for my entire life. I’m used to it. You don’t have to change who you are or what you do. Besides, you’re obviously trained enough to direct it away from people.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, you can thank Kasen for that. He despises it. Veronica tries to get me to visit the ICU all the time.”

  She laughed. “I’m not surprised. But I’ve learned you can’t make someone quit. They have to want it for themselves. After a lifetime of begging my father to stop, he never did. Even when he got sick . . .” She faltered, looked away. He squeezed her knee in reassurance, feeling a dull ache in his chest. It was still difficult for her. “He just never stopped,” she added quietly. “But that didn’t keep me from loving him, regardless of his self-destruction.”

  “What did your father do for work?” Blaze changed the subject since he couldn’t stand the look on her face and the grip on his heart. Self-destruction. Shit, he’d been destroying himself for as long as he could remember.

  “He was a Naval engineer in C4ISR. He didn’t talk about it much, but he was a brilliant weapons designer.”

  “What about your mom?”

  “She was a social worker.”

  Was. “Not anymore?”

  “No.” Valerie paused, her body stiffening. Blaze waited patiently, giving her all the time she needed. Then she let out a nervous laugh. “I should start from the beginning.”

  He smiled. “I’m listening.”

  She took his hand. He was gloveless and exposed, but she clutched it like a lifeline, staring at it, focusing on it, feathering her thumb over the scarred skin. “It all started with my sister, Elise. Because of my dad’s work, we all became targets. Vampires haunted us for as long as I could remember, night after night.” She took a steadying breath, swallowed a lump of emotion, her entire body wrought with tension.

  Blaze continued to massage her knee, trying to take some of it away, as she murmured, “They got to Elise. Only eight years old. Slaughtered in the backyard.”

  A spark ignited inside him, setting his teeth on edge. A kid. A goddamn kid. “How old were you?”

  “Ten. We shared a room. I didn’t hear her leave. She opened the window and she was gone.”

  Christ. He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her hand, trying to give her some measure of comfort. He’d never been good at it but he hoped it was enough. Most people didn’t want to hear, ‘I’m sorry,’ or, ‘It’s not your fault.’ She’d probably had enough of that. She needed someone to listen, to understand.

  And he gladly would.

  “My dad installed locks on the outside of the windows, but it had been warm, so they were open all day. He forgot to secure them before nightfall. Even though the inside locks were in place, we knew how to open them. Under a vampire’s thrall, it would’ve been hopeless. People said I was lucky, but I
didn’t feel that way.” Her foot started to shake, a nervous tic, her eyes brimming with grief. “My dad blamed himself, started to drink a lot, then upped the smoking. Three or four packs a day. And my mom deteriorated psychologically. It began with depression, anxiety, then it spiraled into psychosis. They called her ‘schizoaffective.’” Valerie chuckled humorlessly. “Sounds clinical, doesn’t it?”

  Blaze nodded while she spoke faster, letting it all spill out of the well of turmoil inside her. “She turned on us, me and my father. Said we killed her baby. She would try to run away at night, searching for Elise, as if she were still alive. She’d go into these . . . fits. Sometimes she’d scream and cry as if she were dying inside and I realized she was. We all were.” Valerie shuddered, gripped in memory.

  “I couldn’t deal with it. Her rants, her breakdowns, her madness. I distanced myself from her, and indirectly, my father. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t know what to do. I was just a teenager.” She pitched a sigh. “God, he was a saint. He understood. And no matter what my mother did to him, to us, he held on, took care of her, protected her.”

  “He must’ve loved her very much.”

  Valerie smiled sadly. “He did. Maybe too much. When he got sick, I came back. He needed me, and so did she, no matter how much she didn’t want my help. No matter how much she spat and cussed and hissed at me. I had just started at the precinct, fresh out of the academy, brand new rookie in one of the worst sectors in the Bronx. It was hard. While my father was in the hospital, she stayed with me, and I stuck it out. I put up with it like he had. Except mine only lasted two years, a fraction compared to his. When he passed, she got worse. I felt so lost without him.” Her voice broke.

  Blaze would’ve scooped her up in his arms, but she cleared her throat, composing herself, winning the battle against her tears. She wasn’t ready to drop that wall of stringency she’d barricaded around her. God only knew how long it had taken her to build it.

  If he was going to knock it down, he needed to do it piece-by-piece.

  “Eventually things came to a head and I couldn’t do it anymore. I set her up with a community assisted-living program up north in Mt. Kisco. She committed suicide three weeks later, stabbing herself in the neck with a pen during a group therapy session, screaming that she wanted to bleed like her baby. By the time they got her to a hospital, she was dead.”

  Blaze’s jaw went slack, unable to form the words to respond. Jesus, he had no idea she’d been through so much.

  Valerie’s eyes filled as she stared at their joined hands. “I buried her near Elise. I knew she would’ve wanted that, and my dad’s there too. I’ve accepted that I couldn’t control her, that no matter what I did, she would’ve taken her life anyway. But it still hurts, you know? Knowing I’d abandoned her, knowing I’d given her the courage to act by leaving her.”

  Blaze released her hand and caressed the side of her face, brushing his thumb over her cheek. “You are incredibly strong to live through that.”

  She leaned into his touch, gazing at him with wide, shimmering eyes. “Do you think I’m a bad person? To leave her like that?”

  He gave her a definitive head-shake. “She left you no choice. Seems to me no matter what you did, it would never be enough. She wanted you to surrender your life.”

  “Like my father,” she murmured.

  “Like your father. You made the right decision. A hard decision, but the right one. You were trying to help her and you did the best you could with what you were given. She made her choice. The only person who could’ve stopped her was herself.”

  And as someone who’d hovered over a similar ledge, he knew that for certain.

  Valerie sighed as she took his hand from her face and kissed the center of his palm. Heat curled inside him, warming his heart and stirring his blood, even if he couldn’t feel her lips on his skin. She intertwined her fingers in his and managed a smile.

  “Sorry for the downer. I had to get that off my chest.”

  “Don’t apologize. I wanted to know. And thank you for telling me. It couldn’t have been easy.”

  “What about your family? Your brothers?”

  Blaze formed a slow grin. “If you hurry up and get ready, you can meet them.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” He scooped her into his arms as he stood, carrying her like a bride over the threshold of their new home. She gasped in surprise and let out a laugh as she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on tightly. “They’re expecting us soon,” he added.

  She grinned at him in excitement, her sadness vanishing, and he was happy to see it go. “All of your brothers?”

  “All of them. Even Kasen will be there.”

  Valerie opened the screen for him. “And you’re going to show me where you live?”

  He nodded. “And if you don’t keep it a secret, I’ll have to kill you.”

  She cocked a brow, her irresistible spunk returning with a vengeance. “You don’t have the balls.”

  Blaze nearly choked on his saliva as he laughed out loud. “I think you know just how much balls I really have.”

  He set her down on the kitchen floor and she lifted on her tiptoes to kiss him. It was short, sweet, and chaste, but it tightened his body and quickened his pulse as if she’d kissed other parts of his anatomy. When she pulled away, she radiated happiness.

  “Don’t worry, my lips are sealed.”

  He opened his mouth, ready to twist that comment in so many ways, but she pushed a finger against his lips to hush him. She gave him another quick kiss before she turned and ran off, casting a sly look over her shoulder.

  Blaze watched her go as he leaned against the kitchen island, marveling at how he’d ended up with her in his life. She uncovered feelings in him he hadn’t exposed in a very long time, brought them out in the open where they once would’ve made him weak and vulnerable. But with her by his side, he felt stronger, more powerful. More alive.

  He’d never imagined he could find someone who would fill the holes in his soul, or at least attempt to.

  And here she was, doing just that, without even realizing it.

  “Should I bring my gun?” she called from the bedroom, half-joking.

  He laughed. “Yeah. Bring everything you’ve got. Those boys can get real rowdy.”

  “Rowdy, huh?” She peeked out into the hallway and grinned. “I would’ve never guessed.”

  “You have no idea.”

  FOURTEEN

  Blaze lived in a monster mansion. Bruce Wayne to the max.

  Valerie had lost track of their location after all the winding roads, tunnels, and security obstacles they’d gone through, but she guessed they were somewhere in New Rochelle. When they’d come upon a massive marble wall complete with wrought iron gates, security prompt, and cameras, she knew she was in for something outrageous.

  He pulled the Cadillac behind a familiar black Mustang, parking on a rotary that surrounded a huge fountain pool.

  The mansion was a Roman-era behemoth, complete with pillars, domes, and arches. The property seemed to stretch out for miles, surrounded by thick forest. Blaze led her up the marble stairs that poured out of the building, long and wide as if they weren’t made for human legs.

  A portico sheltered them from the sun as they approached a pair of gigantic mahogany doors, studded and accented with wrought iron rings the size of her head. Blaze grabbed one of the rings and pulled the thick door open with remarkable ease. Cool air rolled out from within as he gestured into the foyer.

  “After you.”

  Valerie gawked at him. “Are you serious? This is your place?”

  He shrugged, lips curving. “Not just mine. It’s an old remodeled and expanded country club, and it’s a bitch to clean.”

  She let out a bark of lau
ghter. “No shit,” she said, baffled as she walked into the foyer. She stopped short, her eyes nearly bulging out of her head as her jaw dropped.

  The Roman deco ran all the way to the mansion’s core. The foyer, an enormously wide-open space, boasted double staircases that arched up to a balcony. Blood red carpets coursed down the center of the stairs, brilliant color splashed against pale marble. A cathedral’s dome covered them in the distance, sans images of Christianity. All of it was marble, accented in gold leaf and elegant architecture.

  Ornate crystal chandeliers hung from golden chains, casting prisms of color all over the room as morning light spilled in from the tall windows. Various works of art, sculptures, and flora scattered the periphery along with connecting archways to adjacent rooms. A huge spherical mosaic stretched out across the floor, and Valerie immediately recognized the image as being the exact symbol tattooed on Blaze’s left bicep.

  Their Coat of Arms.

  “Oh my God, Blaze.” Valerie moved farther into the room, stepping on the mosaic, looking up, around, everywhere. “This is absolutely unreal.”

  He came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder. He smelled so good, like her body wash spiced with man. “You’ll get used to it,” he murmured in her ear and she turned to look at him, dumbfounded. “C’mon.” He took her hand and dragged her toward the closest staircase. “I’ll give you a tour later. I need to check up on Shaul.”