by Parker Blue
“Where is he now?” Micah asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Is he in New Mexico?” Micah probed.
“I don’t know.”
Helpful. Not.
“How long has Emmanuel been leading you?” Austin asked.
“About eight years.” Jorge swayed on his feet and looked as though he was about to pass out.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked Micah.
“He has refused all food and drink.” He shrugged. “He must be pretty weak. His way of committing suicide, I guess.”
Why were they all so intent on killing themselves?
MAYBE IT’S ANOTHER FORM OF PENANCE FOR GETTING CAUGHT, Fang suggested.
That made a weird kind of sense. Annoyed, I said, “Jorge, sit down.”
He sat down on the mattress but didn’t look any better. I saw now that he had a full plate of food sitting, probably untouched, on the floor next to the bed, next to a glass of water. “Eat and drink,” I told him. “Eat everything on your plate.” I didn’t want another demon hunter killing himself on our watch.
As Jorge ate, Micah asked Austin, “Do you know of any vampires who can control people from a distance with their blood?”
“No.”
Micah sighed. “Maybe there’s something about this sort of thing in the encyclopedia,” he suggested. “After all, it has information about vampires and hellhounds. It might mention this, too, whatever it is.”
“Good point. I’ll put Shade on it.”
“Okay. I’ll question Jorge later.”
That wouldn’t work—he was only answering now because Lola forced him to.
Use me, Dina’s crystal whispered.
Why not? “You can’t compel him to respond, but I can. If I use the amulet, I can tell him to answer any questions for you in the future.”
“Not a good idea,” Austin said.
And Micah just flat said, “No.” Then he added, “If we need to question him more, we’ll bring you back.”
“Sounds inconvenient,” I muttered. The amulet would be far easier.
AND A HECK OF A LOT MORE TROUBLE, Fang said. YOU REALLY OUGHT TO GET RID OF THAT THING.
Nope. Not while it might still help.
Ignore them. Use me anyway. They’ll never know.
I was seriously tempted, but Fang, at least, would know I’d done it. I fought against the temptation and won, but my frustration was more to do with them not recognizing that we were abandoning a perfectly good tool than because they had some sort of irrational phobia about it.
Fang muttered something too low for me to hear, and I didn’t ask him to repeat it.
With the help of the bartenders, we got Andrew and the shadow demons back to the penthouse without incident. Luckily, we’d lost Mood somewhere along the way. I don’t know if it was because Micah didn’t think Shade needed her babysitting his attitude anymore, or if Mood herself had gotten sulky and gone walkabout. Whichever one it was, I was glad of it.
JEALOUS MUCH?
No—just annoyed by her attitude, I told the smart-aleck hellhound.
YEAH, BABE. JUST KEEP TELLING YOURSELF THAT.
Ignoring him, I told Shade and Sharra what we’d learned from Jorge. “Apparently, he started this cult or whatever it is eight years ago. You were in New Mexico then, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Sharra said, petting her little dog. “But I don’t remember anything like this. Then again, we were pretty remote and not really dialed in to what was happening in the Underground then. You could ask Kathryn.”
“It would help if we knew what he was,” I said.
“I vaguely remember something from the encyclopedia,” Shade said. “Hold on and I’ll look it up.”
It only took him a few moments of rapidly turning the pages until he found what he was looking for. “Here it is. A blood demon.”
A demon? Crap. I really didn’t like messing with politics or religion, and this had holy water stamped all over it. “What’s a blood demon?”
“According to the book, a blood demon can heal others who ingest his blood. Unfortunately, he can control them with it as well. The stronger he is, the longer the control will last. Their adoration makes him stronger. He . . . feeds on it,” Shade said in disgust.
Tailor-made to rope in a group like the Penitentes. “Does it say anything there about making them stronger and faster?” I asked.
“No, but that doesn’t mean that isn’t one of his abilities. The encyclopedia is sketchy in many places. But, depending on how much demon blood he has in him, he might be able to pass on some of his own abilities.”
So a half or a quarter demon would be able to do it easier than someone like me who was only one-eighth demon.
I asked Austin, “If Emmanuel is part demon, and someone injected Josef with his blood, why didn’t that make Josef go crazy like the others who drank it? Because it was injected instead?”
Austin frowned. “I doubt it. That shouldn’t make a difference.”
Fang, who was now sitting on Shade’s foot, said, SHADE HAS A THOUGHT ABOUT WHY THAT MIGHT BE.
I looked at Shade, but he looked annoyed and didn’t really seem to appreciate Fang’s “help.” “What’s your thought?” I asked him.
“According to what I’ve read, it’s the combination of the human, demon, and vampire blood that causes insanity. Take the human out of the equation and you have—”
He broke off and glanced at Sharra, who looked horrified.
“You have what?” I demanded.
“A full demon,” Sharra whispered.
Okay, I got why that was bad, but not as bad as the expression on the twins’ faces made it look. What was up with that?
DON’T YOU GET IT? Fang said.
Evidently not.
THIS DEMON STARTED HIS CULT EIGHT YEARS AGO. THAT’S WHEN THEIR FATHER ACCIDENTALLY BROUGHT A FULL DEMON INTO THIS WORLD.
Stunned, I asked, “You think this is the full demon your father brought from the other dimension?”
Sharra looked away. “Dad said he looked for the demon, but never found him.” She covered her mouth. “Has this nightmare come back to haunt us?”
I’M AFRAID SO.
There was a lot I still didn’t understand. “So, your father brought him through. So what? Why does Emmanuel want to kill you for that? I thought demons wanted to be in this dimension.”
“They do,” Austin confirmed. “But think about it. Shadow demons are also the only ones who can send him back.”
WELL, YEAH, Fang quipped. I SEE WHY HE’S AFTER THEIR BUTTS NOW. HE DOESN’T WANT TO GO HOME. EVER.
Chapter Twenty-One
Val
UNFORTUNATELY, I think Fang had hit the reason right on the nose. “But why has Emmanuel waited so long to search for shadow demons? Why now? Why not eight years ago?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Sharra said. “The Denver Demon Underground said there have been some suspicious characters looking for me there the past few days, too. Why now?”
“Probably because he just learned of your existence,” Austin drawled. “And most likely from someone in New Mexico. Who there knew?”
Sharra shrugged. “Everyone who was at the judgment ritual that condemned our father. And everyone they told. Could be a lot of people.”
“Yes,” Shade said. “But not everyone knew where we went. Kathryn did.”
Sharra frowned. “I can’t believe she’d reveal that. Not unless she was coerced.”
“We just talked to her,” I reminded them. “I think she would have mentioned it if she’d given up your location, even accidentally.”
“Did anyone else know where you’d gone?” Austin asked.
Shade and Sharra looked at each other and
, in unison, said, “Diesel.”
“Diesel?” I repeated. “The Paladin? I know you don’t like him, but do you really think he’d do this to you?” Paladins were chosen precisely because they wouldn’t do this sort of thing.
“Not intentionally,” Austin said. “Remember, they said he was missing?”
Oh, that’s right. Didn’t bode well for the Albuquerque Paladin.
“Yes,” Shade said. “And I bet a full demon would be able to control even a Paladin.”
I’d never fought a full demon before. They had to be far more powerful than anyone I’d ever messed with. What the heck was I supposed to do? “Oh, crap. I just realized . . . Emmanuel must be here in San Antonio.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, Andrew, Josef and Cyndi must have been injected here. And I doubt Emmanuel’s followers could force him to do what Emmanuel wants. He’s the blood demon, not them.”
“That’s right,” Austin mused. “We really need to find out what Andrew knows. And Josef.”
“They’re both still in the lab,” Austin said. “I’ll ask Vincent to bring them up.”
It wasn’t long before Vincent had Josef and Andrew in the living room.
“Vincent heads up our lab downstairs,” Austin explained. “Tell us what you’ve learned, Vincent.”
I’d met the Jason Alexander lookalike before, but didn’t realize he was a scientist. He didn’t look like one.
WHAT? Fang asked. YOU THINK HE SHOULD BE WEARING A WHITE LAB COAT, OVERSIZED GOGGLES, AND RUBBER GLOVES AND BOOTS, LIKE THE MAD SCIENTIST IN DR. HORRIBLE’S SINGALONG BLOG?
Not really. He looked nothing at all like Neil Patrick Harris’s character Dr. Horrible. I don’t know what I expected, I said. I knew I sounded sulky, but I didn’t care. My assumptions were stupid, I know, but did he always have to call me on them like some politically correct Jiminy Cricket?
SOMEONE HAS TO.
I felt like sticking my tongue out at him, but that seemed a tad childish.
“We don’t know a lot,” Vincent said. “But we did find injection sites on both of them.” He nodded at Josef and Andrew. “The effects have worn off now.”
“What do you remember?” Austin asked Josef.
The vamp frowned. “The last thing I remember is someone requesting a private room to donate blood.” He slanted a glance at me. “We always accommodate such requests.”
Of course they did. It meant they could get their blood “donation” directly from the source, instead of having to drink it out of a plastic bag. And, in return, they could give the donor one heck of a warm, fuzzy memory.
I nodded to let him know I understood. I tried not to judge. After all, the New Blood Movement made all donations voluntary, instead of the forced fang to neck kind the unaffiliated bloodsuckers were fond of.
Josef grimaced. “But the donor caught me off guard and stabbed a needle into me.”
“What did the donor look like?” I asked. “Bearded? Intense eyes? Long hair?”
“No. He was an older man, Hispanic. Short, dark hair.”
Not Emmanuel himself then.
“What happened after that?” Austin asked.
Josef frowned. “It isn’t very clear, but I vaguely remember another man in the room, whispering to me, making my blood bubble through my veins.”
“Was he bearded?” Shade asked.
“Maybe. Yes. I don’t know. It’s not really clear.”
“What do you remember?” I asked.
Josef shook his head. “I remember wanting to do anything he asked of me, believing anything he told me.” He paused, then frowned and added, “It was very disturbing, yet at the time it seemed completely reasonable.”
“How long ago was that?” Austin asked.
“About three or four hours ago, maybe more.”
Shade bumped Andrew with his shoulder. “Did you have the same experience?”
The red-headed fire demon shrugged. “Kind of. They grabbed me on my way into the club. I was on my way to meet Tessa. Some guys grabbed me, shot me with something, and told me what to do. I-I don’t really remember much, except coming to and Tessa saying I’d planted a bomb.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t remember doing it. And if I did, it’s ’cause they forced me to.”
“We know,” I soothed. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Vincent added, “Andrew’s fugue seemed to last about five or six hours, almost twice as long as Josef’s.”
“Why the difference?” Shade asked. “They’re both about the same weight.”
Vincent nodded. “The dosage could have been different, but I believe it’s because Josef is fully vampire and will metabolize the magical component faster while Andrew is only part demon. The effects will probably last even longer for a full human.”
That explained why the guy in the cell had taken longer to recover.
“What about Diesel?” Shade asked. “Shouldn’t his have worn off, too?”
“Yes,” Vincent said. “Unless they keep repeating the dosage.”
“Or he’s dead,” Austin said.
Whoa. Trust Austin to cut to the heart of the matter. His conversational bomb silenced everyone as they stared at him in dawning horror.
Austin’s phone rang in the quiet and he answered it, then held a low-voiced conversation on the far side of the room. He looked grim, so we pretty much all tried to eavesdrop. I don’t know about the others, but I wasn’t successful. And I wasn’t too proud to ask after he hung up. “What was that about?”
“We sent out a warning to all the blood banks, and one of them caught a donor with a syringe. He tried to commit suicide, but they knew what to look for, so stopped him.” He glanced at me. “Alejandro is asking if you can come interrogate him.”
“Sure,” I said. “But if he’s being controlled by Emmanuel’s blood, it won’t work until that wears off.”
“Let’s try it anyway.”
“Okay.”
We left Vincent to follow up on the blood to see what they could learn, and Shade and Sharra stayed to see what they could find out about Emmanuel. I even let Austin drive. Not because I was getting mellow, but because it was raining outside, and getting soaked in January on my Valkyrie was not my idea of fun. Fang elected to stay out of the rain and spend time with his kids.
We endured the ride in silence. Austin seemed lost in his own dark little world, and I didn’t want to disturb his thoughts. Besides, I didn’t know what to say to him. Fang’s comment had set me to thinking, and I found myself mentally comparing Austin against Shade . . . with Shade coming up wanting.
Disturbing. Then again, Shade was under a lot of stress, what with being hunted, his sister reappearing and regaining his lost memories. Once things settled down, maybe he’d get back to his old self. I hoped so, anyway.
Austin is under a lot of stress, too, and look how he handles it.
No, I didn’t want to think about that. Luckily, we’d arrived at the blood bank. Austin thoughtfully popped open an umbrella for me, and we splashed through the puddles from the luxury sedan to the hotel-turned-blood-bank.
Tessa let us in to see the prisoner, who was held in a locked room that was devoid of anything he could use to kill himself.
Another Hispanic male, but this one looked surly and was restrained by zip ties and had a black eye. I bet he had scars on his back and a dagger/cross tattoo, too. Another Penitente, no doubt.
Austin and I entered alone. “Can you reach him?” Austin asked.
Lola was able to enter the man’s chakras easily. “Yes,” I said. Then, using Lola, I surged into the man, and he was mine. I thought about what I wanted to ask him. But first, I needed to make sure he gave us what we needed. “Answer our questions fully and completely—and in English. Do you wo
rk for Emmanuel?”
“It is my privilege to serve Emmanuel.”
Ooookay. At least, this one seemed a little more talkative. “Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he in San Antonio?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know where?” I asked incredulously. “Why not?”
“He comes to me when he needs me. It is not for me to question the actions of the holy one. And if I don’t know, I can’t tell.”
Well, that made sense. What else did we need to know? “Why is he targeting vamps, demons, and shadow demons in particular?”
“Because they are evil and must be purged from this world.”
I’d hoped I might get a different answer this time, but no such luck. At least this one’s English seemed to be better.
“May I ask a question?” Austin said.
“Sure.”
“Once Emmanuel gets rid of all the ‘evil’ ones, what are his plans?”
The questioning went on for several loooong minutes, slow and painful as pulling a vampire’s fangs, but we questioned him until a picture emerged. Emmanuel had placed people all around the Southwest to inject his blood into key religious leaders to make them believe Emmanuel was holy. He was building his following one city at a time, in hopes of eventually controlling the entire world.
“Why do you follow this megalomaniac?” I asked.
“His blood makes us strong, powerful, healed of all disease. He is a saint.”
“But when the blood wears off, don’t the people he’s controlled change their minds?”
“No, they have seen the light and are converted.”
Austin interpreted. “If they want to believe, they will, especially after a ‘holy’ experience.”
Yeah, his insight was probably valid. There must be some hypnotic component in the blood as well. “But why does he want to rule the world?”
“Just as he provides us with healing and strength, our worship provides him with the sustenance he needs. The more who worship him, the more good he can do.”
Yeah, right. But it confirmed what the encyclopedia said about him feeding on adoration. “How many cities is he in?”
