"Go find out."
Dez crossed the empty dance floor and slid the large steel deadbolt back to allow the door to open. She cracked the door and cautiously peered through the small open space. Almost immediately, she flung the door open and squealed excitedly. Kade stood in front of the open door flanked by a small crowd, all of whom wore a mix of exactly two reactions: some were smiling because they knew Dez and weren't terribly surprised by her odd behavior, others were staring at her with raised eyebrows, not sure if she was insane or not.
"Kade!" Dez exclaimed, jumping toward him.
"Hey, Dez," he replied, picking her up and pulling her into a bear hug. “Glad to have you back.” He set her down and turned to Michael. “You look better, man.”
“Thanks,” he said, pulling Kade into a hug, “You could say I got my head right. Are you all ready to eat?" As a group, they all responded with nods or murmurs in the affirmative.
"Well," Dez said, "Come on in."
A short while later, the whole crowd, including the Onyx staff, was seated around the makeshift long table. They ate, they talked, they laughed. Michael watched Dez. She seemed more content than he could ever remember seeing her. There was a glow to her when she smiled. The tension had eased from her shoulders. The dark cloud which had started to form a few days before the gateway was opened had completely left her as well. He looked on as she carried on a conversation with some of the people from Kade's coven. She was asking about their lives and where they were from. She listened intently as they each told a brief version of their life story.
He realized right then that Dez would have made an excellent replacement for Cassandra as the leader of the Brujani coven. Her demon heritage would never allow that to happen, of course. There was too much fear of the demons among the vampires and witches. It was absolutely justified, but it would prevent her from ever being able to step into a role of power. Furthermore, Michael was pretty sure Dez wasn't interested anyway.
Michael shifted his attention to Kade. He noticed for the first time how focused the vampire was on Danni. The beautiful bartender was flirting mercilessly and she had Kade in the palm of her hand. That's an interesting development. He wouldn't say anything. They were both adults. Granted, one of them was a much older adult. He wasn't sure if Danni even knew Kade was a vampire, but if she kept going the way she was, his eyes would be lit up before long and she'd figure it out.
''Alright, people," Jack yelled as he glanced at his watch. "The doors open in about fifteen minutes. If you have anything you need to take care of, now is the time to do it." The staff got to their feet and scattered in different directions. Dez turned toward Michael and leaned in close.
"You're quiet tonight," she whispered. He leaned in and lightly kissed her forehead.
"Just enjoying the evening," he promised.
Dez got up from her seat and quickly informed him that she was running to grab the books from the office. After being gone so long, she wanted to see how the accounting was looking.
The remainder of the dinner party started to get the table cleaned up. Michael invited Kade and his people to stay for a few drinks. A few obliged, others had to leave. Kade was one of the small crowd who chose to stay. Rather than commandeer more of the club's space, they moved some of the tables back to their original positions and kept three of the small square tables lumped together.
The club goers and resident brand of trendy alcoholics started to trickle in, and before long, there was a line of people down the block and around the corner, all waiting for their chance to get waved in by the two impressively-sized bouncers. The regulars were alright, for the most part, but the college-age kids and tourists were the ones who always managed to cause trouble.
It was Michael’s first time being able to see the muscle Jack had employed to keep an eye on things. He had to admit, their appearance would be off-putting if he wasn’t sure he could take care of himself in a fight. However, he could definitely see why the average bar fly wouldn’t dream of screwing around with these guys on the lookout. Both looked like they could be cover models for some sort of henchmen-for-hire mail catalog.
They wore black suits, cut perfectly, with a white shirt and accompanying black pin tie. Neat and orderly in an expensive suit gave off a cold and efficient vibe, and when combined with their size, both well over six feet tall with hard, lean muscle to match, they looked deadly. Dez was lucky to have guys like that at the door. Not only would they keep trouble out, but patrons would assume any place with security like that had to be a good place to go party.
“You got a man crush going on over there, or what?” Dez’s sarcastic question made him realize he had been staring at the two bouncers while assessing them. He laughed and replied to set the record straight, as the case may be.
“Not a man crush,” he answered with a small laugh. “They’re impressive. Good muscle, and they can also help draw a crowd.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know if it’s the bouncers or not, but something has certainly been drawing a crowd. The profits are all way up, and only four incident reports the entire time I was gone. The lowest I have ever seen was nine in a month.” She grabbed the books off the table and opened one on her lap. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to the bottom right-hand corner of the page. “This is the profit and loss report for last month. That’s my profit for last month.”
He looked at the dollar figure. They’d never really spoken about the business end of Onyx before. He just assumed the place had been doing pretty well. Even if the extremely high number perched just above the tip of her finger was a four hundred percent improvement, the bar had been doing much better than he had ever guessed.
“Wow,” he finally replied. “Dez, no wonder you’ve hung onto this place for so long. I mean, it’s a great place, but I didn’t realize it made you so much money.”
She smiled a big, proud smile.
“I love this place. Even if I just broke even every month, I’d probably still keep it.” She closed the book and stood, clutching the stack to her chest. “I am going to go put these back in the safe, then I am heading up to the roof for a bit. Want to join me?”
“Sure,” he said, climbing to his feet.
“When we come back down, you’re going to dance with me.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dez
“What the actual fuck is that?”
Dez quickly pulled the slide back to make sure there was a bullet ready in the chamber. They were standing in the mouth of a dark alley. The fifth alley, actually, that they had tried to corner one particular demon in so far that night. Every time they thought they had it, it managed to get away. Whomever the demon had taken, in life they had to have been heavily involved with gymnastics or martial arts of some kind. He bounced from one dumpster to the next, flinging himself through the air, catching a low-hanging fire escape, and swinging around to catapult himself skyward. The demon only paused long enough to catch brief glimpses of her between deft maneuvers. No matter how fast she moved or smoked out, she couldn't get a lock on it. They'd been chasing the thing for close to two hours, and the demon didn't appear to be flagging at all.
"Getting bored now," she snarled.
The demon vaulted off of a rusted metal landing, flipped backwards through the air, and landed gracefully on the pavement twenty feet in front of her. The second his feet made contact with the ground, he was off and running again. Dez growled in frustration. She didn’t want to waste the special bullets all because a demon decided to take up residence inside a Jackie Chan wannabe.
“Just keep your gun up,” Vegas answered. “I think we can safely say the demons are able to retain the memories of their human victims.”
“Obviously,” she hissed. “Did you see where it went?” The creature had disappeared into the darkness of the back of the alley. She was hesitant to advance any further without knowing exactly where it was. “Keep an eye on the—“
A loud creaking above them caused an instant rea
ction and both of them turned, aiming their weapons at its source.
“Fire!” Vegas shouted the command and they pulled their triggers simultaneously.
They missed their mark as the demon shot through the air from his concealed spot above them and crashed onto a landing of the fire escape on the opposite side of the alley. It swung down to the next landing, and the next, until it finally landed just a few feet away from Dez. Immediately, it took off at a sprint.
“Will you please just stop moving for one second?” Dez begged.
To her utter surprise, the demon did exactly as she asked. For one full second, it just stopped. It stood absolutely still in the middle of the alley, and for that brief moment, it looked as stunned as she was. Then, as if it had never paused, the demon took off running again.
Dez decided to experiment. “Stop!”
Either the demon had done what she had asked, or this was the first foot soldier she had found which was capable of sarcasm. The demon came to a complete halt and turned slowly to face her. The anger pouring off of him was palpable as he glared daggers at Dez. She advanced slowly, taking one careful step at a time, never dropping her gun. She knew if the demon started to take off again, she could put a bullet in its head the second it started to move. Her curiosity was piqued.
“Are you going to kill it?” Vegas asked, his gun still aimed at the demon’s head.
“Of course, but look at this. It’s not moving.”
“I see that. It makes me wonder what it’s planning.”
“I don’t think it’s that,” Dez replied. “I said ‘stop’ and it did.” She came to a rest just a few feet away from the creature. “You can’t move, can you?” The demon hissed in response. “On your knees.” The demon complied. “Bend over backwards.” Again, the demon complied, folding itself backward at an unnatural angle. “Back up on your knees.” The demon growled as it did as she commanded. “No fucking way!” Dez yelled excitedly.
“Break your own neck,” Vegas said. The demon replied by turning to the vampire, opening its mouth, and released and awful sound somewhere between a rage-filled cry and a blood-curdling scream.
“Doesn’t work if I do it,” he said, eyeing Dez curiously.
She understood. He was trying to see if she or the demon was the cause of this anomaly, and it appeared it wasn’t a new kind of demon. She faced the demon and gave the same command Vegas had. The thing reached up and gave a violent twist to its head. The sickening crunching sound and the horrible angle of the thing’s head told Dez the neck was, in fact, broken. Of course, it wasn’t dead, but it had followed her order to the letter.
“Do you have any idea how much time I could have saved if I had known I just had to ask you assholes to sit still?” She fired a shot into the demon’s head and turned to walk away, shaking her head.
“Seriously?”
She was looking over at Vegas as they made their way back out of the alley. The question was rhetorical, but her frustration was very real. She had spent months running on hardly any sleep, hunting these things down. When she found one, it usually resulted in a further exhausting chase, and occasionally she got the shit kicked out of her in the process.
“That’s an unexpected development,” Vegas noted.
“No shit,” she agreed, “but we don’t even know if it’s a thing. We need to find another demon so we can test it out.”
It took a little over an hour, but they finally found one. After a brief chase, they cornered it in an underground parking garage. With one barked command, the demon dropped to its knees and awaited judgment. She cautiously approached the demon, circling around to see its face. Staring into its glossy black eyes, she idly wondered what color the human’s eyes had been before the demon came in and snuffed the life out of them. Going by the mop of blonde hair atop the man’s head, odds were on blue. The cold, dead black was such a far cry from anything human, it amazed her that the demons could ever pass for human.
“You can’t move, can you?” A low growl rumbled in the demon’s chest. He was clearly not happy, and by the way his hate-filled eyes were fixed on her every move, he badly wanted to rip her throat out. “I want you to reach up and slowly gauge your eyes out. I want you to feel every bit of it as the hands of the man you murdered rob you of your dignity. I want to hear you scream as his finger nails painstakingly rip and tear at the flesh of your eye sockets.” The demon stared at Dez as if waiting for further instructions. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the creature’s hands twitch, then begin to rise toward its face.
“Dez?”
Vegas was at her side now, his hand on her shoulder. She had allowed herself to lose track of the world around her. Her temper was getting the better of her and she knew it. Rage began to boil inside until she finally blew.
“Six fucking months!” she yelled, throwing her hands in the air. She leaned down, bringing her face within an inch of the demon’s face. “I spent half a year alone, miserable, and on the run, constantly looking over my shoulder wondering if the guy I love is waiting around the next corner to put a bullet in my skull. Half a year of sleeping in my car and fleabag motels, and that was only when I could sleep.”
She slowly shook her head in disgust, thinking back to the night the gateway was opened. I could have stopped all of them by screaming one word. Once again, she saw red. Without another thought, she put the barrel of her gun to the man’s temple and loosed a bullet from the chamber. The ring of the gunshot echoed off the cement floors and walls, followed by a vacuous silence. Her heart racing, Dez fought the urge to punch the nearest concrete wall knowing all it would accomplish is bruised and bloody, if not broken, knuckles. If she hadn’t been so pissed off, she would have cried out of self-pity.
“Dez.” His voice was a gruff whisper as he tried to pull her into his arms.
“No,” she barked, flinching away. “Don’t you get it? I am turning into one of them. Every day, some new ability shows itself. I keep inching closer and closer to losing myself. Small things set me off and make me want to murder puppies. I am so angry all the time now. Even when absolutely nothing is going wrong, something pisses me off, and I find myself fantasizing about killing… anything.”
“You’re not turning into one of them,” Vegas said matter-of-factly.
“Really?” she said, the snide attitude dripping from the word. “Where exactly is your evidence of that? I have a shit ton of evidence to prove the opposite.”
Vegas sighed. He leaned against the nearest concrete column and folded his arms over his chest.
“Look,” he said, irritation making it into his voice. “I know it’s been a few hundred years, but I find it really hard to believe you may have actually forgotten I was once a human. Do you think it was easy turning and dealing with what I had become? That was long before vampires were a relatively normal thing in our world. Most people, yours truly among them, still thought of vampires as predatory killing machines. I struggled with horrible visions of the countless number of people I would have to kill just to make sure I survived. The first time I was able to think straight after I was turned, I was disgusted with myself. I didn't really have time to stop and deal with what I was. There was no time for an existentialism-fueled panic attack. I got thrown right into the melee of the war with the full-blooded demons. I cut a bloody path through their numbers and I reveled in every second of it. I went from struggling with a murderous blood lust one day to basking in it the next. Truth be told, I never walked away from it. Just look at what I do for a living. At the end of the day, I never crossed the line and did something I couldn't come back from, and neither will you. You may be part demon, but at your core, you'll always be Deziree. You'll never lose your balance."
''What if do? What if I fall?" Tears were quietly streaming down her cheeks. Vegas stepped forward, gently took her face in his hands and wiped the salty streams with his thumbs.
"I'll be there to catch you." As if to punctuate his statement, he touched his lips to hers before
she could utter another word of argument. Vegas pulled away and looked into Dez's eyes, his thumbs lightly stroking her cheeks.
“What if Catalina is right about me?” she asked. “I don’t want to believe I am turning into one of them, but the evidence is piling up.” She gazed into his eyes, desperately hoping there was something he could say to make everything alright.
''Isn't that sweet?" The familiar feminine voice startled them both and Dez spun around, her gun aimed at its source.
“Speak of the devil,” Dez mumbled.
"Oh, really. Do put that thing down. It will prove completely useless if used against me."
"Are you seeing this?" Dez asked without turning to face Vegas.
"Yeah, I see her,” he replied, an edge of irritation in his voice. “Catalina, time has been kind to you."
"Michael," she replied flatly. Her tone didn't betray so much as a hint of surprise. "How have you not ended up on the business end of a stake after all these years?"
"Eh, you know me," he answered coolly. "I'm a survivor."
"You two know each other?"
"I was turned right before she killed herself. Except it appears she didn't actually kill herself. How are you here?"
"That's a story for another day. Right now, I have more pressing matters to attend to."
Catalina raised her hands above her head. Out of nowhere, a warm wind started whipping around them. Dez's hair flew in her face, the black tangles making it very difficult to see. An eerie chanting filled the space around them. Dez was straining so hard to make out what the voices were saying, she wasn't prepared when a bolt of bright blue electricity streaked through the air accompanied by an ear-splitting crack. Another flash of blinding light and a thunderous boom left Dez disoriented. Combined with the brute force of the now violent wind, she found it hard to maintain her footing.
One more flash of light and everything around Dez went silent, the ringing in her ears the only discernible sound. The wind still raged around her, pulling at her hair, and the lightning had been replaced by a steadily growing blue glow emanating from behind Catalina, but the cacophony was just gone. Dez chanced a glance in Vegas’s direction, and that was the first time she noticed he was gone. But not just him. The whole parking garage. Dez was standing in a void similar to the ether but full of the pulsing blue glow. On the defensive, she inhaled sharply, preparing herself to shift into smoke.
Speak of the Devil Page 12
