Demon Night (16 page)

“Enough to wage another war against the angels. Only this time Lucifer had creatures from Chaos, a dragon and demon dogs and such, and they just about slaughtered the seraphim—that's the angels—until humans began fighting with them. I felt it there, Charlie.”

“Yeah, I found it.” She bit her lip and held her breath as she carefully dragged the tweezers against the bullet, searching for the edge. “So the demons started killing people, too?” She made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “It's slippery.”

“You'll get it.” Her probing must have been hurting him; his thumbs were working circles on his thighs, though the rest of him was still. “Demons can't kill humans—it's against the Rules. No killing or hurting them, no denying them free will.”

“Why?”

“Used to be, they got dragged back to Hell by Lucifer, then Punished or destroyed.”

“Used to be?”

“The Gates are closed now. But that's another story, Charlie, and not nearly so old. This one, the men who joined in the battle turned the victory back the angels' way.”

“How?”

“One of them—Michael—killed the dragon.”

“Got it,” she breathed, and slowly began to draw the bullet out. She lost it, and fished back in, trying to work under it instead of squeezing this time. “Damn. It's going to take a second, though. And then what?”

“And then the angels gave Caelum—their home—to Michael, gave him a Guardians' powers, and left him to recruit others.”

“When did all of this—Oh, shit, here it is.”

The slug landed with a plop in her cupped hand, and she held it over his shoulder, grinning.

Ethan whistled low and picked up the mushroomed bullet between his thumb and forefinger. “A forty-four hollow-point—unfortunately, only the light cartridge behind it. If they'd used a Magnum round, it'd likely have punched right on through, made it all a bit easier for me.” The slug vanished, and he slanted a glance up at her. “Thank you kindly, Miss Charlie.”

The darkness of his lashes only made the impact of his amber eyes more intense, knocking the wind out of her. She swallowed, forced a reply. “Sure thing. Just give me another minute, and I'll get you cleaned up.”

Herself, too. Blood covered her fingers, pooled in her palm. She didn't want to look down and see how much was on her shoes and pants.

“It ain't necessary, Charlie. I can…” The rest of it was lost beneath the sound of the faucet, and by the time she'd soaked a towel with warm water and lathered soap into it, he'd apparently decided to let her help.

His elbows were resting on the seat back, his posture easy, his booted feet flat against the floor. He tensed beneath the first swipe of the towel over his skin. His right boot slid back a couple of inches, his heel lifting, and she paused, remembering how he'd reacted on the first cut. But the incision had healed; only a four-inch pink line remained against his tan, and that was fading quickly.

The triumphant haze of getting through the operation without fainting was fading, too.

“That didn't hurt, did it?” It wasn't really a question. And now she recalled how he'd vanished the blood from her hands in the booth.

“Not a bit. I suspect there's more hurting to come, though.”

She wasn't so slow that she couldn't interpret
that
. “Yet you're still sitting here,” she said, and wiped another section of skin clean. Efficiently, though she was tempted to take her time, to make that hurt just a little worse—maybe even bad enough he'd want to relieve it.

“Well, Charlie, I just ain't man enough to walk away when a pretty woman offers a warm bath.”

A dark emotion grabbed at her throat. She'd been pretty enough to kiss, too. And apparently pretty enough to get his dick hard, but she'd bet that if she walked around the chair and took any of that for herself, he'd push her away and tell her it was for her own good.

She let the towel drop to the floor. “But I don't think I'm woman enough to keep nurturing a man who doesn't need it.”

She backed up to the island, lifted herself up onto the wooden surface, and kept her hands clenched on the edge of the counter. Her fingers were screaming to do something, and she'd have done just about anything for a cigarette—anything but ask Ethan for one.

Even something as innocent as asking for her knitting seemed too much a giveaway of her hurt, so she just squeezed the wood instead.

Ethan's gaze lifted from her hands to her face. “Charlie—”

“So you can fly, and you heal fast,” she interrupted, because she sure as hell didn't want to talk about anything else. Didn't want to hear him say again that she was needy, or to think about how easily he saw into her.

Didn't want to think about how simply knowing that she'd aroused him had created an ache that centered much lower—and was much warmer—than the one in her throat.

She was good at wanting things that she shouldn't…and equally good at denying herself them.

Ethan watched her carefully as he stood. A blue cotton shirt appeared in his hands. “Yes. I can run quick enough a human can't see it, lift a city bus if it needs to be lifted.”

A thin scar bisected his navel horizontally, rippled across the left side of his abdomen. She swung her legs out so that she had something to stare at besides his stomach. Her shoes were spotless; so were her pants. Considering how much blood had spilled, and how close she'd been to him, that was impossible. “And you make stuff disappear.”

“If I can get my head around it, I can store it. Blood doesn't feel good, though.” He slid into his shirt, frowned at the length of the sleeves. He met her eyes again as he rolled up the cuffs. “If I have the opportunity, I choose to clean it off in the normal way.”

She didn't know if that was an apology or an explanation, or just an excuse—but it helped that he offered one. “Do you drink blood?”

“No. Don't eat, don't drink, don't sleep.”

“That must be nice,” she said.

“What's that?”

“Not to need anything. Then it wouldn't hurt so much when you didn't have it.” Or when you had to give it up.

His lips tightened. “Well, the lack of sleep is more difficult than the others. Close your eyes, Charlie—I'm about to make new britches, and I don't always get it right the first time.”

She did, but an image of his body appeared behind her eyes anyway. “Where'd you get that other scar?” Not as a Guardian—he'd said the one on his lip was from when he was human.

“Which?”

How many did he have? “Here.” She lifted the hem of her shirt a couple of inches and ran her finger in a quick line over her stomach.

She heard him swear lightly and fabric rip before he said, “A saloon in Cheyenne. I'd tracked…hell if I remember his name, but he'd swindled a nice bundle out of some society matron in New York. A little dude, and I never expected he'd pull a—Now, Charlie, what about that is so almighty funny?”

It took her a second to stop laughing, but she finally managed, “Dude?”

His voice suggested that he was smiling again. “Ah, well, a ‘dude' back in my day was a fancy man who had no business being out west. And I'm decent now.”

Indigo denim jeans—not formfitting, but falling straight from his hips, like the old-fashioned Levi's she'd seen miners wearing in pictures. His suspenders looped the length of his thighs, and Ethan had his head bent, working a metal button on his waistband through the end of the leather strap. His shirt was still unfastened, exposing a wide swath of skin. Dark hair roughened his chest, arrowed down the center of his stomach.

Nothing about that visual was decent; it embodied some kinky fantasy Charlie hadn't even known she'd had. She picked up her makeup bag, began digging through it to distract herself.

“You tracked him—you were a cop?” Old Matthew hadn't been wrong, after all.

He shook his head. “I was employed by a detective agency.”

“Like…like…” Dammit. “It starts with ‘P.'”

“Pinkerton's?” He glanced up from his buttons, and she nodded. “Similar to it, yes. I worked with Pinkerton's for a spell, but they mostly wanted thugs to hassle unionizing workers. So I moved on to a smaller agency where I could be put to better use.”

She leaned to the side and turned on the faucet in the middle of the island, rinsing her tweezers. “You're big enough to be useful as a thug.”

“But I'm more useful thinking like a thief and murderer.” His eyes narrowed. “What's it with you and letters? ‘Starts with “P.” '”

“I remember the sound I associate with the thing easier than I do the actual word or name.” She kept her focus on her hands as she dried the tweezers and replaced them in the makeup bag. Hopefully, the threat of a unibrow would overpower the memory of where they'd been. “They teach you that in conservatory—mnemonic devices so that you don't forget the lyrics, or where to come in. Except words don't pull so easily for me. Not unless you set them to music.” She pursed her lips, finally glanced up at him, and was glad he wasn't staring at her throat. “I can't spell, either.”

“Hell, Charlie, ‘reckon' and ‘ain't' trip off my tongue like I was born saying them, but the truth is, my ma would have whupped me something fierce if she'd ever heard me speak like this.” He smiled when she laughed, and it softened his face, as if mention of his mother had struck a sweet memory. His fingers began working up his shirtfront. “But it served me well to start, and I don't figure I'll stop anytime soon. My ma ain't going to protest, at any rate—and I can sum up my human life by saying that I was born on Beacon Hill in 1854, where I learned to talk a certain way, but by the time I died thirty-two years later in a no-account Arizona town, I had speaking habits that would make my parents roll in their graves.”

That didn't add up to as little as he claimed, but though she was curious, Charlie let it go. She didn't like to talk about the details of her life, either. And when she did, she just twisted them up into barely believable stories.

Ethan had already heard several of them.

She waited a beat, then said, “There's a painting up in one of the bedrooms.”

His hands stilled in the middle of tucking in his shirt, and then he finished it and slowly drew his suspenders up. “I figured you'd seen the one in the living room. Savi at the poker table with the novices—and me.”

Charlie slid off the island. “I missed that one.” Of course, by the time she'd come back downstairs she hadn't been seeing much at all.

She heard the pad of his feet as he followed after her; in the hallway, it changed to the tread of boots. “I'd have told you, Charlie, but—”

“I wouldn't have believed you.”

She looked over her shoulder in time to see the quirk of his lips. “For that reason, too,” he said. “But mostly we don't tell anyone unless it's necessary. And I'd hoped we'd clear all of this up without it ever coming to the point where I had to tell you.”

“But you'll show Jane and Dylan what you are tomorrow—in case they need evidence?”

The painting was huge, but in shadow—her lamp was across the room, and one of the wooden posts that divided the living areas blocked the light. Charlie stopped in front of it, and realized that Ethan hadn't yet responded.

She looked around for him, saw him at the wall panel. She had to blink at the sudden illumination; his features were grim as he made his way to her side.

“You do plan on telling them?” If he didn't, Charlie would. She just didn't know if she could convince them.

“We'll show Jane,” he finally said. “In the morning I'll drive us on over, and we'll talk to her.”

“Okay.” The tension drained from her. “Drive in what?”

“I've got that truck stored away. Haven't used it in a decade or so, but it should run.” It took her a second to realize he meant
stored
in that place he vanished things to, not somewhere in the city—but before she could wrap her head around the concept of it, he began to point out the participants in the painting. “You've seen Savi. Jake's to her left—you'll meet him tomorrow—and Becca, Mackenzie, Pim, and Randall on the other side.”

Ethan was depicted at the far left, leaning back in his chair, his long legs in an easy sprawl and his thumbs hooked into his suspenders just above his waist. Though his expression didn't show it, everything about his posture suggested that he was heartily enjoying himself.

She made herself study the others. The small, dark woman from Cole's had been caught in a laughing pose, and her fangs gleamed. No one else had his mouth open, though a couple were smiling. There weren't any drinks on the table—or any snacks. “Are they all vampires?”

“Just Savi and Mackenzie. The others are novices—Guardians in their first hundred years of training. Used to be, they were taught in Caelum, but now a human man is overseeing their training so we've moved the novices to San Francisco. This is only a handful, though.”