“Did my mother send you?” She wouldn’t put it past her mother to have tried more than one way of keeping her under watchful eyes.
“No.” He looked at her with a curious expression. “I sent myself.”
She glanced back at the house. It was a crime scene waiting to happen. Something in the distance sounded suspiciously like a gun shot. Maybe her mother wasn’t all wrong. It wasn’t a bad idea to have company in this neighborhood, at this time of night. She usually could defend herself against just about anybody, especially if they didn’t have magic talent. But her magic was off, and she didn’t feel quite like herself. The memory of the demon attack lived in the forefront of her mind. He was out here, somewhere. The tracer inside her neck pushed against her shields, a reminder that she couldn’t use magic out here without attracting attention from the demon. It would be nice to have backup. Just this once.
“Fine. We’ll check it together then.” She turned and marched up the steps. She heard his footsteps crunch on the cement, and a tingle went up her back at the thought of him watching her.
A hint of residual magic leaked out through the walls of the house in front of her, faint but noticeable. She knocked and waited. No lights flared, no footsteps hurried for the door.
Daric joined her, standing a little closer than he needed to. She felt the heat from his breath down the back of her neck. Tingles. She knocked again. A dog next door barked, the sound loud and deep against the backdrop of distant sirens and city traffic.
She tried the doorknob and found it turned easily. They must have forgotten to lock up. Odd, in this neighborhood.
The front door opened into a small living area, which connected to a tiny kitchen. Torn wallpaper with gaudy yellow flowers lined the walls. Dilapidated steps coated with stained carpet led to the second floor. Stale beer stench coated the air. The whole place felt dejected. The American Dream, gone to hell.
“They lived here?” Tarian couldn’t believe a rat lived in this place, much less people. She kicked a few empty beer bottles out of the way.
“I wouldn’t call it ‘living.’” Daric pushed a broken chair aside, but nothing was behind it but a thick layer of dirt. He sneezed, three times in quick succession.
Tarian moved into the kitchen. “Squalid” was an understatement. She wrinkled her nose at the filth and smell of sweat, beer, and old stinky feet, but followed the trail of magic that tickled the hairs on her arms. It led to a narrow door. Steep stairs behind it led down into black nothing. She tried the light switch but, of course, in this dump it didn’t work.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a light, would you?”
“There’s probably something we can use as a glow rod. Hang on.”
Daric moved off into the front room, then returned a few minutes later with an old Popsicle stick. Holding it in one hand, he focused on it. The Popsicle stick lit up and cast a diffused light around them. He handed it to her. Her fingers brushed his as she took the offered light, sending a tiny thrill up her arm. Hormones. She really didn’t need them tonight.
“Ready?” She glanced at Daric. He nodded, and she held the stick high as she led the way down the steps.
Tarian tested the air at each step for any trace of another living human or magic. The dank smell of mold permeated everything. The residual magic grew stronger and settled on her, but she felt no other presence, human or otherwise. The basement was empty. There weren’t even any boxes or cast off bits of furniture. Odd.
Daric scouted around the corners of the room while she concentrated on the middle. Something had happened here. The magic felt like it had in the Cellar, but there was less of it. And as far as she could tell in the dim light, it wasn’t red. Then again, it was so dark, all color faded into shades of gray.
Daric stood in the middle of the empty space. From the expression on his face, his frustration mirrored her own. “Can you track the people who were in this room? I hear you’re good at that sort of thing.”
“And you aren’t?”
“It’s not a common gift.”
“So what’s yours?”
Daric raised his eyebrows. “Can you track them or not?”
“I doubt it. There’s a reason they came down to this basement. The earth and walls help block the signal. But I suppose it’s worth a shot.”
Tarian placed the glowing Popsicle stick on a beam that ran along the ceiling where it could cast light over most of the basement, then sat down in the middle of the floor and put her hands on the filthy concrete.
“You going to clean the floor now?” Daric looked down at her, amusement playing around the corner of his eyes.
“Sure. I do housekeeping on the side for extra money.” She pointed at the corner. “Go stand over there.”
“Don’t trust me?” He moved to the indicated corner, a full grin turned up the corners of his mouth and caused a dimple on one side. Cute.
“I don’t need you messing with the signal.” She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Magic focused in the center of her forehead and chest, the hairs in her nose twitched, and her neck thumped. She tried to ignore the ache which settled immediately at the top of her spine, but her pull on magic out here beyond the protection of the House of Xannon and the Dolphin Throne seemed to excite the tracer, even behind the shields she still maintained.
She shook her head, trying to clear the fear that gathered in the pit of her stomach.
“Are you okay?” Daric knelt down where he stood. In the dim light he formed a dark lump with glittering eyes.
For a moment, panic flared through her. Here she was, a demon tracer inside her, in a dark basement permeated by foreign magic, in the middle of the worst district Philly had to offer, with a stranger. Not smart. Not smart at all.
She didn’t feel any movement toward her from Daric or any gathering of energy. He seemed a lot like Alex, actually. Concerned and helpful, with a heavy dose of sexy. Plus, she didn’t have a lot of options right now.
She took more deep breaths, then added a meditation chant for good measure. Calm surrounded her, and from within it she extended her focus out into the stifled basement air in search of any left over signatures.
The tracer jiggled, and lurched as something external tugged on it. She rubbed at it with one hand and tried to ignore it, but heat descended over her body, as if she suddenly had a high fever. She gasped and pulled her magic back into herself. Something grabbed the other end of her magic stream and tugged, as if a rope extended between them and this was a game of tug-of-war. If she hadn’t been sitting, she’d have fallen.
Damn him! The demon could feel her, and he was pulling on her power. Determined, she tried to follow the invisible rope. If he could find her, she could find him.
Her power hit a wall and rebounded back at her so hard she cursed out loud. A hand gripped her shoulder. She punched out at the owner, just missing him.
“Tarian. Snap out of it, dammit.” Daric shook her shoulders.
She opened her eyes and found Daric was on his knees in front of her. She hadn’t heard him move.
“What happened?” His grip tightened on her shoulders.
“I can’t track him.” Even to herself, she sounded frantic. “They were right. I can’t track him.”
Chapter 16
It wasn’t possible. She’d always been able to track people. Always. If she had any connection with the person at all, they couldn’t hide from her. She’d won a lot of hide-and-seek games as a child that way.
Yet when she tried to use it against the demon, she couldn’t. He could track her, but she couldn’t return the favor. How the hell was she going to find him if she couldn’t use her strongest ability? How was she going to stop him when every time she used magic at all, he stole it away? She panted with the effort to control her panic.
Daric’s grip on her shoulders grew so tight she nearly cried out in protest. “You have a tracer, don’t you? Are you crazy? You shouldn’t be here.”
He picked her up of
f the floor, anger palpable in the feel of his hands on her and in the depths of his eyes. She shoved back at him.
“The only way to be free of him is to find him. You told me yourself. I have a week. Less, maybe. I can’t hunt him from home.”
“Why didn’t they remove the tracer?” He kept his arms by his side, but his hands twitched as if they’d like to throttle her.
“Why do you care?” She glared at him.
“Tarian.” His voice was a soft growl.
“They’re working on it.” She shifted her feet. Her muscles ached from her tug of war with the demon. She felt drained, weak and vulnerable. It wasn’t pleasant.
“You mean they don’t know how.”
“Do you?” Her eyes challenged his.
His silence told her everything she needed to know. She glanced down, breaking the eye contact, then let out the breath she hadn’t realized she held.
“Something happened in this basement. Whoever did it was bound to have touched something.”
“This is the last thing you should be doing.”
“I have a mother, Daric.” She turned her back on him. “If I use the demon’s own tracer to track him, he’ll just drain me faster. I need something else. They couldn’t spend that much time down here and not touch something. A button. A light switch. Something.”
“This place is scrubbed.” Daric stood still for a moment, his face set. She stared at him until he walked over to the corner, and got down on hands and knees to check the floor.
Tarian started in the center of the room and worked outward in circles. The two of them crawled over the filth, an inch at a time, in silence. Every inch was like a vise around her heart, making it difficult to breathe.
“This might be something.” Daric brushed his hands over the dirt in the far corner of the room.
Tarian joined him. As Daric swept away the dirt, she saw it in the dim blue glow of the popsicle light. Neat, red handwriting spelled out the word Scion.
“Shit.” She sat back on her heels. The bastard was taunting her. With fantastic penmanship.
“Can you use it?”
“I doubt it.”
“You’ve tried before?”
She nodded. “He left something like this in the Cellar. I didn’t get anything from it.”
Daric’s mouth formed a line, but he went back to his search.
“Hey.” Daric scraped his fingers on the floor and held out something fuzzy. “What about this?”
Tarian scooted over on her knees to join him. “Is that hair?”
“Yes. Can you use it?”
She took the hair from him and shuddered at the thought of what or who it might have come from, not to mention where. But if it was all they had, she’d work with it. She folded it into her hand and glanced at Daric.
“Where’s the trust?”
“Just go stand in the other corner, and don’t gather any magic.”
He complied, but his expression was unreadable. Was that concern? Or irritation? She seemed to have that effect on people. She didn’t want to explain that his personal signature intoxicated her and created a distraction she just didn’t need. She closed her eyes and focused on the hair in her hand. She’d never used hair to track anyone before. It might not work.
She sent a light touch of magic along the hair and out into the air. Not tracking, simply reading the residual left-overs or imprints left. Her neck twitched, and tugged, but nothing overwhelmed her like it had before.
A few seconds later, her head filled with the image of a girl, larger than life, with her eyes so wide open the whites glowed. Cold. Horror. Pain. Incredible pain. She gasped and dropped the hair.
“Holy shit.”
“What happened?” Daric crossed over to her. His hands reached out toward her, maybe to comfort her or shake her again—she wasn’t sure—then stopped.
“The hair belonged to a young black girl, with a mole high on her left cheek and a small scar near her chin. She’s…dead. Like Chester.” Tarian shivered. The image had been so vivid, and the emotional impact of death so real. She might as well have been standing there when it happened. Tears formed in her eyes. That poor girl.
“Chester is dead? How?” Daric put a hand on her shoulder. This time she didn’t push him away. The shock of seeing that girl’s face in what was probably the last moment of her life ran too deep. She’d never felt anything like that. The girl’s horror ran through her bones. The bit of human contact Daric offered provided welcome relief.
“He was ripped apart. In the Cellar.”
Daric’s hand tightened. “Can you track who killed the girl from that hair?”
Tarian shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. I need something he’s touched. I mean, really touched. I don’t think yanking hair out counts. I can’t just track thin air, there’s too many signals. I have to know which is his. I have to have some connection to the person.” Her voice shook. Emotion flooded through her. Horror, for the girl. Panic, at her situation.
Did the demon do this? The girl had been alive when it happened. The thought of being alive to experience an arm ripped from your body, or your heart torn out, was almost too much. She’d tracked petty thieves and drunks before as favors for the Sentinels, but never something like this. It struck her just how protected and cloistered she’d been all these years. Couldn’t risk the Scion, after all.
“You okay?” Daric’s tone was soft and low. He pulled her in close and wrapped his arms around her.
Tarian started to push him away, then instead let the warmth of his arms permeate the cold that had slammed into her along with the image of the girl. She squeezed Daric in silent gratitude, relishing the contact for a moment before moving away slowly to stand on her own.
Daric traced his hand down her arm as she stepped away. “That’s the girl I was hired to find. I thought Kevin might have snatched her. Now I know, and I can tell her family. It’s something.”
Tarian glanced around. She didn’t want to admit to herself just how much she needed there to be more in this basement than the hair of a dead girl.
“You shouldn’t be here. Don’t you have a reception to get to?” Daric’s eyes glinted in the flickering glow of the Popsicle stick.
“Don’t you have a family to visit?”
“You know, we could work together on this.” Daric held out his hands as if in truce. “We’re on the same team.”
“I’m not a team player.” At least, not anymore. Now that the demon had entered her life, she didn’t need one more person at risk by being around her.
“When are you going to admit that you need help?”
Anger flared in her, mixed with fear. “I have plenty of people trying to help me. But I’m not going to sit around and let others fight the battle for me. I’m not going to let them get hurt because I got tangled up in something I should have avoided.”
“You really think you could have avoided this? You don’t seem the type.”
“What type is that?”
“Martyr.”
She glared at him.
“If someone is willing to risk their life to take yours, there’s not a whole lot you can do. Besides stop them. Now that you know about it, you can plan. But you couldn’t have known before that alley, so stop beating yourself up over it and start planning the solution.”
He was right, but it didn’t soothe her temper any to admit it, even to herself. “Don’t you think I’m trying to come up with a plan? Why else would I be here?”
“Seems to me you’re trying to run from your friends.” Daric shook his head. “Don’t you think it’s odd that after all these years as Scion you’re suddenly a target?”
“I think it’s odd that you keep turning up wherever I happen to be. Exactly why are you here, Daric?”
“Exactly what are you trying to say?” Daric’s head jerked on the words, his irritation obvious.
“Why were you there, so conveniently close by, when I got attacked?” She crossed her arms
. It wasn’t rational, and she knew it. But if this was what it took to get this guy to back off and go away, so be it.
“You’re way off.”
“You found what you came for. I think your official business is done here. It’s time for you to go.”
“You first.”
“What, so you can follow me again?”
“So I can make sure you don’t do something stupid.”
“Excuse me?” Disbelief and anger overrode any gratitude she’d felt from his comfort earlier. Had he just called her stupid?
They stared at each other in silence. Their stand-off lasted until the dust and mold in the basement tickled her nose, and she sneezed.
Daric muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “stubborn.”
“I don’t get it. Why are you so angry? I’m the one with the problem here.”
“You say you have a problem, but you don’t really believe it. You have no idea how high the stakes are. You haven’t faced facts. You’re running around without any help, without a plan. It makes me angry. The people around you care about you more than you care about yourself.”
She was dumbfounded. His words left her mouth hanging open in disbelief. “You don’t even know me.”
“What if I said I’d like the chance to get to know you, before some demon takes over your body or worse, rips you to shreds? You’re making it damn near impossible.”
“I’m not the one who caused all this. That demon is. You act like I did this on purpose.” She was nearly out of breath, her words tumbled out so fast.
“You take foolish risks. Like now. If every use of magic speeds up the process, why the hell are you here, using your magic?”
“I’m the only one who can track him, dammit.” Her voice broke with frustration. “I’m the only one with the ability. What am I supposed to do, sit there and wait until he wins?”
“I thought you said you couldn’t track him.” Daric’s voice was steely, quiet.
He was right. She couldn’t use her tracking. At least, not the way she normally would. “There has to be some way. I’ll figure it out.”
Demons & Djinn: Nine Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Novels Featuring Demons, Djinn, and other Bad Boys of the Underworld Page 122
