by Misty Evans
In other words, we were the worst kind of druggies, needing endless hits to feel even a tenth of the high we constantly craved.
We also enjoyed destroying humans. Reducing them to dust. Demons considered themselves the indigenous population. Humans were the invaders, the ones trying to take over our world even though they didn’t believe that was true. They considered earth to be their domain and hell to be ours. Thus, the Noctifectors, Catholic Church and others were always trying to send us “back” to hell. Demons considered earth an extension of hell, not a separate existence.
Damnat quod non intelligunt. They condemn what they do not understand. For us, that meant a constant fight to stay topside.
Lucky for us, humans were easy to infect with sin. Easy to manipulate. Easy to kill. And yet, they continued to survive.
Not just survive, thrive.
Unlike my fellow demons, I admired that tenacity, but the evil monster inside me wanted human blood, human sacrifice. I had to redirect that hunger to Toel and his minions.
They were banging on the doors now. Clawing at the windows. “Get the human and succubus down below,” I growled at Cole, holding my breath against the smell of Jeremy Stewart nearby. Fortunately, Dalinda had left little of his human essence intact. To my demon, he resembled a piece of dry leather rather than a juicy raw steak.
Cole picked up Mr. Stewart, flung him over his shoulder. “Dalinda’s a lost cause. I’ll put him downstairs and come back.”
There was no guarantee I wouldn’t lose control again and kill everyone inside that house, vampire, demon or human. “Stay down there with him or risk your life.”
My bodyguard grinned. “And miss you bringing it all over their punk asses?”
He disappeared and I heard the pounding of his booted feet on a set of wooden stairs. My senses were going crazy. The smell of old blood and grave dirt assaulted me as the doors and windows gave out under the minions’ attacks. My stomach roiled, cramping hard, but I rode the pain, accepting it instead of fighting it.
Raising one of my bleeding wrists to my nose, I inhaled the scent of my blood. I closed my eyes and concentrated, drawing out the individual elemental traces of the minerals and the blended magics. I hadn’t noticed it before, but with Toel close by, I could now detect the hint of his stench inside me as well as outside the house. The dead seaweed tang of his magic, the ancient odor of his blood.
What I’d assumed before was the smell of Nudra’s blood mixed with mine, I now recognized was the heady tang of Toel’s bloodline. He and Dru had different mothers but shared Vlad’s Undead DNA. Like an expensive vampire perfume, the top notes were diverse, but the base and middle notes matched.
I sicced my demon on that smell. I promised her she could have her fill of humans after she wiped out the enemies wanting to hurt her.
A lie of course, but one that worked.
Toel’s minions burst through the house in a flurry of snow, leather and fangs, and I slid the cherry wood stake under a pillow. Their nostrils flared as they smelled my blood. In my ears, the shishing sound of my heartbeat grew louder. Toel was close.
I sat on the bed and bowed my head, Volante humming around my waist and my demon waiting with edgy anticipation. We were all ready for a fight.
Toel knew my fighting style so I needed the element of surprise. When his minions swarmed the bedroom, I stayed on the bed, hands up and head bowed in subjugation. My version of waving a white flag as they closed ranks on me, making sure I didn’t escape.
I sensed Vicky before Toel, her magic confident but uneven as she entered the bedroom, her long cloak making a sweeping noise as it brushed the wooden floor. “It worked! My protection spell nailed your demon ass. I bet you thought it was for Dalinda, didn’t you?” Her flippant laughter grated on my nerves. “You thought you’d seen the last of me after the party, but guess what?”
She stopped in front of me and had the cajones to reach out and grab my chin with her cold Undead fingers. Jerking my head up, she forced me to look in her in the eye. Her fangs were bared and her eyes glittered with manic light. “Witch or vampire, doesn’t matter. I’m more powerful than you’ll ever be, and I’m taking over as queen of Chicago’s vampires.”
The fact she would touch me pissed me off. The idea she thought she could usurp my position made me laugh. A part of me would have gladly handed off my duties as queen, but not to Vicky.
Blood pulsed in my head, and her admission to being one to set the alarm confused me. How did Maria fit in the picture?
My chest rose and fell with rage. Tamping down the urge to snap Vicky’s neck, I held my body motionless. My dislike of her was entirely personal. My response would be, too, when the time was right. First, I needed information. “Did you raise Maria’s ghost?”
The question caught her off guard. She wasn’t the brightest vamp in the nest, but once she switched gears, her lips curved in a knowing smile. “I want you to suffer like you’ve made me suffer. You took Lilith away from me, so I brought Maria back to haunt you. Brilliant if I do say so myself.”
I had to give her credit. She wasn’t smart, but she was devious and wired like a demon. I assumed when she’d raised Lilith, she had demon blood somewhere in her family. Her magical abilities were a throwback. Mix in the blood she’d drank from me and now her vampire skills, and she was more than a dangerous weapon.
She was Toel’s dangerous weapon.
But she was still a vampire.
And one who’d been marked by Maria. That’s how she’d passed on Maria’s violent signature to Dalinda.
Lightning fast, I grabbed the wrist of the hand holding my chin. “I can’t thank you enough.”
She flinched, but still clinging to the idea she had the upper hand, she narrowed her eyes and gave me a challenging look. “For what? Making your life miserable?”
I stabbed my thumb and forefinger into the spots between her wrist bones, smiled as she cried out and fell to her knees in front of me. Her face morphed into fear and the vamp minions shifted forward as if to stop me. “For giving me an excuse to kill you once and for all.”
Before the Undead soldiers could move, I seized her by the neck with my free hand. At that moment, Toel walked in, flooding the room with his power-hungry magic. I held Vicky suspended, let him take a good look at her, and then I released her neck and her wrist. She toppled to the floor at his flip-flop encased feet.
Wet snow flattened his blond hair. His eyes were hard but his grin was all surfer boy charm. “Kal-i-for-ni-a. I’ve missed you.”
My hand automatically started to form a rude gesture, but I caught myself. I’d gone head to head with Toel before. This time, a new trick was in order.
Going down on my knees, I shoved a choking Victoria out of the way and bowed my head. “My liege. How can I be of service?”
Chapter Eighteen
His surprise was as genuine as Vicky’s had been a minute before. My surprise at sounding sincere was genuine too. I was amazed I could bring myself to bow at his feet rather than stake him in the heart. In my opinion, the whole my liege stuff was Emmy-worthy.
In his opinion, I was a touch too close. He retreated a step, changed his mind—because let’s face it, showing fear over a submissive demon was ridiculous—and advanced again. But he must have motioned at the minions to pull me back a few steps since that’s exactly what they did.
I played possum, letting their cold hands jerk me a suitable distance away and then hold onto me. Toel was playing things safe.
Or so he thought.
“Why the change of heart, dude?” He planted his feet wide and crossed his arms. As usual, his speech was loaded with surfing slang. “Last time I saw you, you tried to murk me. Totally pulling a kali.” He snickered and winked. “Get it? Pulling a Kali?”
Pulling a kali is surfer slang for doing something stupid. If he thought trying to kill him was stupid, wait until he saw what I had in mind for him now. “You’re right, I was stupid.” The words burned my tongue.
“Once I ingested your blood at the party, I realized that.”
Much like Vicky, Toel wasn’t the smartest vamp around. He was shrewd and calculating—weren’t they all—but far from intelligent. So it took several seconds for understanding to dawn. When it did, his lips curved in a mock smile. His eyes glittered with sly canniness. “No way. You’re my slave.”
“What?” Vicky’s voice was hoarse. Her disbelief still came through loud and clear. She’d gained her feet and was rubbing her throat. “That can’t be.”
“It’s true,” I said, giving Toel a seductive look. “I’m all yours, King Toel. I need your blood.”
His body relaxed a notch, and a wave of pure lust mixed with the magic in the air, raced over my skin as his gaze dropped from my face to my breasts and lower to my legs. His fangs descended and he nodded at the minions holding my arms. “Put her on the bed.”
“No!” Vicky screamed. “You can’t. She’s a demon.”
As the vamps lifted me none too gently and tossed me onto the bed, Toel snarled at Victoria. “Get out if you don’t want to watch.”
She dropped her hand from her throat, eyes livid with rage. “She tried to kill you.”
Toel stepped up to her, shoved her toward the door. “And now she’s my slave. The blood link won’t allow her to kill me.”
In most cases, that was true. A blood slave was beholden to his or her creator and couldn’t turn against him. The link could only be broken if the vampire sire or blood slave died.
But I’d killed Nudra shortly after he poisoned me with his blood. A fact Toel seemed to have forgotten.
Maybe Nudra’s blood hadn’t had enough time to tame my demon DNA before I’d staked him. Or maybe a demon’s base nature couldn’t be wholly subjugated by vamp blood. There were no medical tests or field tests to support either theory, and although supernatural genetics weren’t difficult to understand, outliers existed. Mutations and crossbreeding created a variety of abnormal creatures, and abnormal creatures did abnormal things.
But who was I to bring up that little issue? “Master, please,” I moaned and writhed on the bed, drawing Toel’s and Vicky’s attention.
His eyes flashed red—it had been awhile since he’d eaten. All the better for my plan. Vicky, on the other hand, glared at me with intense black eyes. Her fangs descended farther, but out of pure hatred rather than lust.
Around my waist, Volante pulsed. Inside my chest, my demon itched with her personal brand of lust. She wanted to blind Vicky for daring to look at me like that, and tear out her throat so her voice would quit grating on my nerves.
Mentally, I stroked her and Volante. Soon, my pets. Soon.
“Remove yourself,” Toel said to Vicky in a voice that sounded like the king vamp he was. The minions in the room shuddered at the commanding tone and she wobbled, fighting against his magical will. In their hierarchy, no one in that room could disobey him. They were all under his power and unable to disconnect from his authority. Resistance was useless.
That didn’t mean Vicky didn’t try. Stubborn, that one.
Fighting the connection Toel held over her, she reached out and hit him, screeching her displeasure. In turn, he defended himself, and a second later, they were in an all-out cat fight.
Annoyed and running out of patience with this game, I reached under the pillow, brought out the stake, and before the two minions on either side of the bed realized what I was doing, I nailed them both in the chest. They went poof and turned into two separate piles of ash.
Toel and Vicky didn’t notice, but the other two minions did, jumping forward and lunging for me. Vampires are fast, but demons are faster. The smaller of the two got within an inch of my face with his claws but froze when I shoved the bloody stake under his ribcage and buried it in his heart. Before he dissolved, the bigger one charged forward, grabbed my ankles and yanked me off the bed.
My back hit the floor with a hard whack that rattled my teeth and knocked the breath out of me. My demon laughed. She liked pain with her entertainment.
As the big guy brought a fist down straight at my heart, I kicked up and smashed his face with my steel-toed boot. His eyes rolled up into his head and he fell on top of me. I hugged him tight as I rolled over, then I sat up, raised the stake above my head and sunk it hard and deep into his heart.
My ass hit the floor a second later when he went poof like the rest of them.
In my peripheral vision, Toel wrestled with Vicky in the doorway, their bodies shifting in and out of the room. Like me, she was an outlier. Witch, vamp, demon…whatever the hell was in her DNA, she had some serious supernatural mojo. She craved power and could use magic to do almost anything she wanted, including rebelling against the son of Vlad the Impaler and King of the West Coast vamps.
“You just want to fuck her,” she screamed, slapping Toel upside his head. “That’s all you’ve ever wanted. What about everything we’ve worked for? You’d throw it all away for her?”
A loud growl rose from Toel’s throat, feral and pissed. Oh, yeah, he was in full vampire mode. This was going to be fun.
I snuck over to the dresser, put my back against the wall, allowing me to listen to their fight but stay out of sight in case one or both of them noticed I’d offed the robot squad. Outside, the storm continued to rage, the street lights reflecting off the snow. The whole neighborhood looked like a winter wonderland in the blizzard and I stared at the beauty of it.
And then, out of nowhere, lightning flashed. It was there and gone so fast, I blinked a couple of times, wondering if I was seeing things, but even when I closed my eyes, I saw the fractured light on the back of my eyelids.
Chicago sometimes has thundersnow as it’s referred to. Snowstorms and blizzards often produce it, and Satan knows, we have plenty of those most winters. This lightning was different, magical I was betting, and I wondered what convergence of elements had come together to create it.
I didn’t have time to contemplate it further. Vicky flew through the air, across the room and hit the far wall hard enough to make the house shudder. Toel stepped through the door, saw the leftovers of his minions on the floor and me standing less than a foot away with a stake in my hand. His magic morphed from aggressive to smug and his face mirrored it. To say he looked hostile was an understatement. In surf slang, he was amped.
A pugnacious smile lifted the corners of his mouth, his elongated teeth growing by the second. “Gnarlacious, dude.” He bent his knees like a boxer, held up a hand and made a bring it on gesture. “Let’s dance. And just so you know? When we’re done, I’m going to bodyboard you all the way to hell.”
“Good luck with that.” I switched the stake to my left hand and released Volante with my right. “Because the only one going to hell tonight is you.”
And then I pulled a kali and went for his heart.
Chapter Nineteen
In my three hundred years, I’ve rarely faced an opponent twice.
As enforcer for the Bridge Council and the most highly skilled vengeance demon on earth, if you and I tangle, odds are you’ll lose.
I’m not bragging, it’s just fact. If I weren’t at the top of my game, I’d be dead.
But here I was, facing Toel a second time. Our first fight back in November had been interrupted by Rad and his Slayer friends. The fight lasted long enough, however, to tell me what I needed to know about my enemy.
You can be street savvy, well-trained and a smart fighter and still end up dead if you don’t understand your opponent’s weakness. You can be inexperienced and a lousy fighter and still bring down the biggest, baddest Goliath out there if you do.
Sun Tzu advises in The Art of War to know your enemy. I say, know your enemy’s biggest weakness. Find his Achilles’ heel.
Consider Toel Chase. Direct descendent of Vlad the Impaler.
Arrogant? Check.
King of the West Coast Undead.
Pretentious? Check.
Killed his father in order to take over as leader of t
he Undead Nation.
Power-hungry? Check.
Impersonates a surfer.
Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? Check.
Of course, simply being a vampire meant his basic nature embraced all of these attributes, but the ultra-rank of his vampness intensified each of them to a level I could use against him.
He believed he was better than me. Smarter, faster, more dominant. His cockiness was obvious. From the confident look on his face to his casual fighting stance, he screamed overconfidence and attitude. Two sure chinks in his armor I was happy to take advantage of.
Toel always shoots for dominance. Because of his standing in the Undead community, he rarely encounters resistance. When he does, this causes rage. Another weakness.
From our previous encounters, I’d witnessed how his emotions fueled his fighting. The more enraged he became, the more violent he became. But violence fosters stupidity. A fighter who gives into rage also gives into weakness. Especially in the supernatural world where our magic and emotions are tied together.
Sun Tzo devotes a chapter in The Art of War to discussing the opportunities that arise when you understand your opponent’s weaknesses. I’ve found through the years that this chapter and this philosophy are more important than the rest of Tzo’s advice. One of the reasons an enemy has a weakness is because they don’t recognize it—a detail Damon has often drilled into my head. If they don’t identify their weakness and take steps to protect it, they leave themselves open to you.
As Toel and I circled each other in the small bedroom, I knew what I had to do. What my demon had to do.
Don’t get emotional.
