Hot Blooded

by Amanda Carlson

  “You can’t bind me without my consent.”

  “Your own blood has made the binding already.”

  I gasped. “What?”

  “You left your blood on the imp. You shouldn’t be so careless. In the future, I would advise against it.”

  “That’s impossible,” Rourke interjected for the first time. “I don’t know a lot about your race, but I know words have power to you guys. She has to agree, verbally, to what you are saying. You can’t sweep her off to the Underworld without verbal consent. A deal has to be brokered between the two of you.”

  “Not correct.” It waved its finger at us, looking like a possessed anchorman with its snakelike eyes. It was a creature with very little humanness. This demon couldn’t possibly function in our world without being noticed even though it was doing its best to glamour itself into what it thought was a proper human form. “When crimes are committed, the magic shifts. Our world has branded her a criminal. We have her blood and her full name. That is enough to place her in our Book. Once it is written there, her future is sealed.”

  I had to think fast. I wasn’t a criminal and power was power. If this Demon Lord wanted to take me, and what it was saying was true, it could’ve already taking me. Why hadn’t it just whooshed me away? Why is it sitting here debating me? Something is up. I cleared my throat. “If I’m in your powerful Book, why didn’t I just instantly materialize to your plane?” I paused. “It’s because my court date isn’t today. Right? And you can’t take me against my will ahead of time unless I agree to go with you,” I said. “The only way you can is if you manage to trick me into agreeing, which is what demons live for.”

  Its façade glimmered for a second. Behind the human mask was more ugliness. Sharp, bony features shadowed by an exaggerated brow. I was pissing it off.

  It energized me. “I’m right! You can’t, can you?” I shot at it. “You were allowed to cross over to get Selene and nothing more. Finding me still here was a bonus, and now you’re trying to trick me into believing I will die if I don’t go to your court. Well, it’s not going happen. Even though I’m a new, I wasn’t born without a brain.”

  Its eyes flicked. Did it just blink a clear eyelid? “I will see that you pay for your indiscretions here today. If you had come with me of your own volition, things might have been easier for you.” Its perfectly white teeth snapped tightly. “I will personally see that you suffer.” Its mouth opened again, and instead of glamoured white, there was a row of sharp yellowed stubs. The Demon Lord was losing it fast. “You have earned an eternity of pain and agony, the likes of which you have never witnessed.”

  “That sounds lovely,” I replied. “But for right now, I need to recover from a hard day killing a goddess. So why don’t you run along. And don’t forget to take her with you. I’m sure the two of you can swap plans about my imminent demise over noon tea, but honestly, I’m not interested in hearing about it anymore.”

  The walls shook so hard, I thought the mountain was going to tumble down on top of our heads. Rocks and stones flew around the room as suffocating power shoved us all to our knees. The sulfur was so strong I wanted to rip my nose off my face so I could breathe again. I now knew why Rourke had used sulfur to cover our smell in the creek before. With the cloistering smell of rotten eggs in my nostrils, I couldn’t even begin to scent anything else. It burned all the way down my esophagus.

  The demon’s voice boomed around the enclosed space, but we couldn’t see him anymore. “You will answer for your crimes, Jessica Ann McClain. I look forward to our reunion.”

  “Um, can you give me a time frame for that?” I coughed, gagging on the putrescence. My wolf forced power into my vocal cords, trying to channel pure air into our lungs, and gold immediately wound through them like a protective netting. “I’d like to get it on the calendar. I’ve got a date with a Vampire Queen soon that I can’t miss, so it will have to be sometime after that.” A few days to them could mean months or years to us, if my limited understanding of the Underworld was correct. I’d bet money Aunt Tally knew the rules. I’d have to set up a meeting once we arrived home.

  And the information wouldn’t come cheap.

  “Sooner than you think” was all it said before a ring of power echoed in the room.

  Then everything fell blessedly quiet. The sulfur smell started to diffuse and we could all breathe again.

  “So that’s what a Demon Lord looks like up close? I thought they’d be taller.” Danny coughed as he stood up, his sheet hanging at a precarious angle. His hair was disheveled, but he looked great, because he was alive. We were all alive.

  “Selene’s gone,” my brother said, directing our attention to where she had just been. “She vanished with the demon.”

  I glanced over. The Demon Lord had indeed taken her, which was the real reason why he’d come. Likely a goddess warranted a Lord to pick her up. “She won’t stay dead in the Underworld, but her new normal will be ugly. I hope we never meet up with her again.”

  “You’re not going there if I can help it,” Rourke growled, warm hands encircling me. “I know some about the Underworld, but we’ll have to learn more. I believe they have to serve you papers of some kind. The Demon Sect is carefully controlled by the Coalition. You can see what happens when they’re in this plane. It’s an explosion of power.” Rourke pulled me close. His touch electrified me. Is that always going to happen? I asked my wolf. She gave a happy bark. I licked my lips.

  There were just a few more things we needed to do and we could leave this wretched cave forever. “Where’s Ray?” I asked Naomi. She had retrieved the cross, which meant she’d found Eamon. I didn’t really want to know the answer, but it was time.

  Naomi walked over to the spot where Selene had just been. She bent over and picked up something by its edges, surprise on her features as she turned toward us. “The cross must not be able to travel to the Underworld or it would be gone.” She placed it into her pocket. Then she turned to face me. “I did not see your human. I encountered Eamon coming back in one of the tunnels.” Her voice was hard. “He did not survive our reunion.”

  I wasn’t sad to hear that Eamon had found his end, but I was sad to know his sister had had to mete it out. There was no way that was any fun. I would never be able to kill Tyler. “Did he say anything about Ray?”

  She shook her head. “He had no time to… speak.”

  “Then there’s a chance he might be alive, right?” I know my face held hope, even though my heart didn’t believe it. “Do you think Eamon drank him dry?”

  Naomi bowed her head. “There is very little chance the human survived their encounter. Eamon was not in his right mind. It would’ve been… a brutal feeding.”

  “I have to find him before we leave,” I said. “Which way was the tunnel?” Sulfur still clung to the air, making it impossible for me to scent anything.

  She pointed back behind the dais. “There is a small opening in the corner. Follow the tunnel for a few meters. You should be able to scent him there.”

  I looked at the group. Danny lowered his gaze and Tyler set himself onto an old wooden chair that had somehow survived the carnage of the room. I took a step forward and Rourke made a move to follow me. “No,” I said, reaching back to place my hand on his warm chest. All I wanted to do was crawl into his arms. But that would have to wait. “I just need to say goodbye. He was a thorn in my side, but he was a decent guy in the end, however misguided.”

  I crossed the room and entered the tunnel.

  It was no more than a crack in the wall at the beginning, easily missed from the wrong direction. I stepped over Eamon’s bones at the entry point. The only thing left was a skeleton wrapped in his clothes. The bones were old and rotted looking. Vampires must degenerate to their actual age, because those bones looked five hundred years old.

  “Ray?” I called. I knew he wouldn’t answer, but it made me feel good to think he might. I moved through the tunnel slowly. As I walked, it opened up. There were bo
ulders jutting out from each side, closing the circumference considerably in places and making it more like a maze than a tunnel. As I paced farther in, I began to scent blood. The sulfur smell was less concentrated in here, and my nose was clearing.

  It was Ray’s blood.

  There was no mistaking it. I came along the edge of a shallow boulder and closed my eyes. He was behind it. His scent was all over the place. I didn’t really want to see. He was human, and therefore his weakness had always been a liability. This was the probable outcome of the journey. I’d known it going in—not that he would be eaten by a vampire, but that his chances of surviving this were slim to none. I had no idea how he’d found his way in with Tyler and Danny. I’d have to ask them. My best guess was that Naomi must have inadvertently dropped him by a backdoor entrance and they had met up in the maze of tunnels. This mountain clearly had many.

  If he’d stayed on top of the mountain like we’d instructed him to, he’d be alive right now, complaining about how long it had taken us to get back. But, in the end, he’d done his best to help me. “Ray, can you hear me?” I called. There was no answer. Of course.

  I stepped slowly around the boulder.

  His broken body lay on the ground. His neck had been ripped open in several places, savaged and mutilated. Even his hands were bloody and torn. He’d tried to fight. Eamon’s persuasion, a vampire’s automatic defense, must not have worked. I didn’t doubt it, because Eamon had become unhinged in the end. His love for a goddess who had tortured him had been his undoing.

  But Persuasion had never worked on Ray as long as he’d lived, and if Eamon had used it, Ray would’ve hated every minute of it. I grinned in spite of the situation, enjoying the fact that it must’ve pissed Eamon off as this human fought for his life.

  I drew closer and knelt. “Oh, Ray,” I said on a small breath as I crouched down by his side. “I’m so sorry it had to end like this. If you can believe it, I was actually beginning to like you.” I placed my hands carefully on his broken body and cocked my head. His heart had just given one single, strangled beat. “What are you doing, Ray? Trying to survive at all odds?” I smiled. “You are one stubborn mother. I’ll give you that.” I lowered my head to his sternum. There wasn’t another beat for several long seconds. I lifted my head. “Ray, I can’t fix this.” I swallowed, angling my face up toward the ceiling in frustration, trying to clear the ball in my throat. “Even if you’re holding on as hard as you can, I can’t help you.” I forced myself to look down at him again. He was ravaged beyond repair, the wounds deep and deadly. “You’re human, and this kind of damage can’t be fixed even by the most skilled doctor in the world, even one of our own. There is nothing I can do. I’m so sorry. I really am.”

  “I can fix it,” a voice said behind me. “If you’ll allow it, Ma Reine.”

  28

  “What the—” Tyler slammed on the brakes. The ridiculous canary-yellow Humvee skidded to a stop right in front of my office building, tires jacked halfway up the curb, rocking us all on our seats.

  It was three a.m.

  Every light in my office building was ablaze.

  My head shot off Rourke’s lap, his growl of displeasure reverberating around the truck. I squinted out the window, rubbing my eyes. “Damn, what’s going on? Did anyone call us?”

  We’d left Selene’s lair, tired and bedraggled, without Naomi or Ray. I had no idea if Ray would survive the transformation into a vamp or not, but there was nothing more we could do. We’d been in the truck for eighteen hours straight, stopping only for gas and a shower at a local YMCA at my insistence.

  “My phone is dead,” Danny said. “I didn’t remember to pack the bloody charger.”

  I sat up straighter while Tyler evened out the beast. I reached for my cell phone in my backpack. I’d spoken briefly with my father on the sat phone once we’d emerged from the mountain, and told him we were on our way home. “I don’t have any messages and nobody’s called since I talked to Dad.”

  “This looks like it happened recently,” Tyler said as he shut off the engine. “Likely no one knows what’s happening yet. It’s the middle of the night. I’m going to look around. Stay here.” I was tired enough to let him figure it out.

  “There are no other visual disturbances,” Danny said, scanning the building. “Does Nick usually work this late?”

  “No,” I said. “Something’s definitely happening. Every light is on. In the entire building. To do that, someone had to access the main housing. Or they spelled the entire thing. Looks like they were trying to find something. Or someone.” Likely me—who was I kidding?

  Rourke opened the door. “I’ll go too,” he called to my brother, who had gotten out already. As he got out, he leaned over to kiss me first, lingering for a long moment.

  “Bloody hell, do we have to stand witness to every single kiss?” Danny grumbled. “I’m surprised your lips haven’t melded together yet with all that snogging.”

  I broke first, chuckling.

  Rourke’s eyes seared me, sparking emerald. He gave me a wicked grin before slamming the door. I was starved for him. As in, if I-didn’t-get-him-soon-I-might-die kind of starved. But we hadn’t had two seconds of freedom since we’d all trudged out of the mountains. By the look in Rourke’s eyes, if we didn’t find some privacy soon things were going to happen whether anyone liked it or not. My wolf licked her lips. We are ladies; we can wait. She growled. In all honesty, I was with Jezebel on this one. My wolf wasn’t the only one who wasn’t going to care if anyone was around.

  “Danny, if you’d had a chance, you would’ve ridden horizontal on top of the coolers in the back with Naomi. Don’t even pretend you wouldn’t have. I saw all the flirting going on. You don’t offer to save a woman’s life if you’re not interested.” Wolves had very little modesty when it came to sexuality. They liked sex. End of story.

  “Damn right I would’ve, but that’s not the blasted point.” His tone held a note of remorse. A vamp and a wolf would be a hard pairing, even if their personalities seemed well suited for each other. “I still don’t want to witness all your lovemaking. I’m of a delicate nature, and seeing it makes me cranky.”

  I chuckled as I turned back to the window and focused on Rourke, watching him move around my building wearing Tyler’s T-shirt, which was stretched to a comical degree over his huge body. He moved gracefully, like a predator. My wolf growled. Yes, we get to taste him soon. “We’re going to see Naomi soon, you know,” I said, glancing at Danny. “Maybe you can ask her on a date.”

  Danny let out a strangled sound before he answered. “Yes, I just might just do that.”

  I peered at him, curious about the reaction, but he had turned away from me.

  We’d arranged to meet Naomi at Rourke’s cabin in the Ozarks in a week’s time, it being the only secluded place to rendezvous that we could come up with on short notice. If Ray survived the transition, Naomi said he would need space away from any humans. It might be risky to return there, but it’s where they least expected us to be, so it was a unanimous decision.

  I leaned forward in my seat. “Look, someone just walked into my office.” My office was situated on the corner nearest to where we were parked. The figure started rummaging through my desk. “Hey! What is she doing?” I peered closer. “At least I think that’s a woman.” I edged up to the window. “Seems too delicate for a guy, right? Could be a kid.” It was hard to tell because the figure was short, no more than five feet tall, and had a black skull cap pulled down low over their face. “There’s Nick!” Before I knew it, I’d opened the door and shot out of the truck so fast I couldn’t hear any protests. The brief thought skittered through my brain that I really shouldn’t be racing through the night toward an obvious problem not knowing who or what this threat was, but my body didn’t seem to care. That was my best friend in there. My wolf growled in agreement, urging me on.

  I skidded to a stop just outside the building door, an arm catching me around the middle before
I bounded inside. “Jess,” Rourke purred into my ears. “Taking it a tiny bit slower might be a good idea. Wouldn’t hurt to use a little more caution.” I turned around in his arms. He was grinning and his scent washed over me for the millionth time. My wolf yipped in delight.

  “Someone’s in my office with Nick and we need to get in there,” I argued, facing him. “Whoever’s in there is having a party with my files. There can’t be that much danger if Nick’s up walking around and not tied up in the back room.”

  “Whoever’s in there with him is extremely powerful. I smell witch and a very strong one at that.”

  “Witch?” I inhaled, forcing air over my tongue. It prickled with the residual power left in the air from a recent spell, likely the one that had opened all the locks and blasted on all the lights. I also scented heavy rosemary and herbs, similar to Marcy’s signature, but not exact. I tilted my head up at him, since he was almost a foot taller than I was. “I think we might have a problem. Nothing feels very dangerous to me. I taste the power, but it doesn’t seem to register. I feel no urgency and very little fear.” My wolf yawned to accentuate the point. “I’m sure the witch in there is extremely powerful, but it’s not sparking my warning bells.”

  Rourke growled. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel a threat. You still can’t take risks that could get you killed. I rarely feel any real threat from any supe, but you learn to be cautious all the time no matter what. They can still be tricky.”

  Tyler and Danny rushed up behind us. “What’s going on?” Tyler asked. “There’s a big signature out here.”

  “I smell a witch,” Danny said, turning in a circle. “And it smells a bit familiar.”

  “It smells like Marcy,” I said grimly. “And that can mean only one thing.”

  “There’s a blood relation inside,” Rourke said, releasing his arm reluctantly from around my waist.