Demon's Kiss (7 page)

Her cage opened once more. If she'd had the energy, she would have shifted again and tried to escape. But she was so tired.

She opened her eyes, saw Jack come closer. He was hesitant, as if he were approaching an animal that might bite, which was probably wise of him, because that was what she was. His gaze kept lowering, sliding down her nude body, but he seemed to be trying to keep it from doing so. She didn't feel any shame about her form, or any shyness. It was just a body, after all.

He had a blanket and pillow under one arm, and a glass of red liquid in his free hand. He held the glass out.

She took it, noting how quickly he jerked his hand back. Sniffing, she wrinkled her nose, but drank, too hungry to be fussy. Then she handed the glass back to him, and he gave her the pillow and blanket. She tucked the pillow under her head, spread the blanket over her and curled onto her side.

“You're welcome,” he said, an odd tone in his voice.

She frowned and lifted her head to look at him.

“When someone does something nice for you, Foxy, it's customary to say thank-you. And then they say, ‘you're welcome.'”

“Oh. And you consider bringing me this blanket and pillow and that blood, to be
nice?
”

“Well, yeah.”

“I'm being kept prisoner in a cage against my will. If you want to be nice, let me go.”

He lowered his head. “Man, I can't do that. Gregor would have my hide.”

“Then don't expect my thanks.”

He shrugged, turned slowly and started to walk out of her cage, but then he stopped. “If you'd escaped tonight, you would have died, you know.”

She frowned and looked up at him.

“You're a vampire now. It's almost daylight. If you go outside in the sun, it'll burn you alive. We can't tolerate it, Foxy.”

She blinked three times, weighing his words. “Are you saying this so that I'll be too afraid to try to run away again?”

“Why would you be? You'd just try it by night.”

“Are you forgetting that I'm in this place where I can't tell day from night?”

“Sure you can. When day comes, you fall asleep. It's irresistible. You feel that coming on, you know it's almost morning. When you wake again, it's just past sundown. Understand?”

Tilting her head to one side, she said, “Why are you helping me?”

One corner of his mouth pulled into a half smile. “I have a weakness for pretty women. And you are a—Well, hell, you're a fox.”

She frowned at him, unsure why he was stating the obvious, but he just touched his forehead as if it were a way of saying goodbye and turned to leave her alone. He locked her cage again on his way out, though, the bastard.

“T
his thing is going to get us noticed—and probably killed—before we get within a dozen miles of Gregor's band,” Reaper said, eyeing the vehicle Roxy had pulled out of her garage—where it had been, understandably, hidden—and parked in front of her house. He wore a look of distaste mingled with utter horror.

The customized conversion van was something to behold, and while Seth believed Reaper was a miserable curmudgeon about a lot of matters, he totally agreed with him on this one.

“No,” Reaper said. “Absolutely not.”

Roxy glanced at Seth, as if seeking a second opinion.

“Well, it's not exactly…inconspicuous.” He wondered for just a second if he would be just as tactful if she wasn't such a hotty, then wondered why it mattered. She certainly didn't seem to care.

Shirley—and that was the van's name, as its custom license plates attested—was yellow.
Canary
yellow. Its—her?—sides sported murals depicting fields full of sunflowers, and the rear window was decorated with a translucent sunset.

“She's just what we need,” Roxy said. “Look, we can rent a car or something for short trips once we get where we're going. But for getting there, and for emergencies, she's freakin' damn near perfect. Just look here.” She pulled open the side door. There were four rows of seats, all sporting black seat covers with giant sunflowers in the center of each one. They matched the floor mats.

Of course they did.

Seth managed not to groan aloud as he poked his head in, then stepped up. The van was tall. Most people would be able to stand up in it, though for Seth and Reaper it required significant stooping.

“There are only three of us,” Seth said. “Why do we need all this room?”

“Never mind
that,
” Roxy said quickly. “Take a look at
this.
” She went around to the back, opened the two rear doors, climbed in and pushed a button. The rearmost seats folded forward and down, then lower, tucking themselves neatly into the floor. Then Roxy lifted a piece of floor mat, tugged a handle hidden beneath it and the floor folded up, revealing a nearly full-sized bed underneath.

She met Seth's eyes and grinned. “Built-in coffins. This baby can sleep three vampires under the floor, well hidden. And we could close the floor over them, and put three more on top, because the windows tint all the way to black at the touch of a button.”

Seth glanced at Reaper and saw that the man was impressed in spite of himself. There was a slight edge of approval nudging its way into his grimace.

“There's a minifridge,” Roxy said with a nod, “so we can take a supply of that Kool-Aid you guys love so much. Her sides are reinforced steel. Bullet-proof. She's got a Hemi under the hood, and all-wheel drive so we don't get stuck. Big ground clearance for a van. She gets terrible gas mileage, but let me tell you, Shirley will fly. And to top it all off…” She moved to the center of the van, gripped a handle mounted to the inside of the sliding side door and lifted.

The inner panel of the door slid upward, revealing a cache of weapons stored behind it. Shotguns, rifles, handguns and several odd-looking little weapons that looked like dart guns. Boxes of ammo lined a number of small built-in shelves, and holsters and clips hung every which way.

“What are those little ones?” Seth asked.

“I call 'em Noisy Crickets,” she told him.

Seth laughed out loud, shaking his head, and muttering, “Good one, Roxy,” between chuckles. He was just getting it under control when he noticed that Reaper hadn't so much as cracked a smile. “That was a reference to
Men in Black,
” he told the sour-faced vamp. “The movie? You know, Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones?” No reaction. “Hell, don't you see movies at all?”

“No.”

Roxy handed one of the tiny weapons to Seth and took a second one off the wall for herself. “These shoot tranquilizer darts. I have a supply in the fridge, measured, loaded and ready to go. Seth, the only way Reaper will agree to let us come with him is if I can convince him that you and I will be perfectly safe. And the only way I can think of to do that is to give him our word that we will each carry one of these with us at all times. It needs to be loaded, and we need to carry spare ammo on hand.”

Seth took the tiny weapon and turned it this way and that, looking it over. It seemed pretty simple and straightforward. “Why do we need tranquilizer darts? You guys expecting to run into a herd of angry elephants or something?”

“Those darts aren't for animals, Seth,” Roxy explained. “They're for vamps. They're doped with the only tranquilizer that will work on you guys. The only one
I
know of, at least.”

Seth frowned, then nodded. “I guess we could use it against the rogue vampires if we had to. Yeah. Not a bad idea.” He looked at Reaper again. The man was oddly silent. “Don't you want to carry one, Reap?”

“The tranquilizer isn't to protect you from the rogues, Seth. It's to protect you from me.”

Seth started to laugh, thinking the miserable fuck had actually made a joke. But there was a grimness in his tone, a darkness in his eyes, that had the laugh dying in Seth's throat before it was even born. His smile faded, and he searched Reaper's face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Reaper lowered his gaze. “I'm not going to go into detail or bare my soul or my history or my flaws to you, Seth. This is not up for discussion. It's my personal business, and it's off-limits. I will only say that if I should ever turn on you in an apparently mindless burst of violent rage, you will need to act and act fast, or die. If it happens—if it even looks like it's happening—use the tranquilizer. Don't hesitate.”

Seth opened his mouth, then closed it again as question after question tried to get out. Why would Reaper turn on him? What the hell was he talking about? Did he have some kind of split personality-Jekyll-and-Hyde thing going on, or a brain tumor or what? But Reaper wasn't going to tell him any more. He'd made that clear. So Seth settled on one question, the only one he thought might elicit an answer.

“Can the tranq do you any lasting harm?”

Reaper looked at Roxy for the answer.

“No,” she said, and she said it firmly, with a shake of her head that had all that long hair swinging. “It'll knock him cold, and he'll wake up with a hell of a hangover. That's all.”

Seth nodded and faced Reaper again. The guy looked really miserable. As if even broaching this subject was ripping into his guts, and Seth hated that. He needed to lighten things up. “Okay, then. I got it. I just need you to make me one promise.”

“And what would that be?” Reaper asked.

“If I misread you and shoot you by mistake when you weren't
actually
intending to eat me for lunch, you can't be mad at me when you wake up.”

Reaper scowled at him.

“Dude, I'm serious here. If I have to worry about being wrong and pissing you off, I'll hesitate, and you'll have time to rip me a new one before I pull the trigger. So you have to promise.”

Eyes narrowed, Reaper nodded. “All right. I promise.”

Seth grinned. “Man, this is great. You so much as look at me funny, I get to pop you with the Noisy Cricket. And you can't even get mad about it. You are
so
gonna regret this.”

“Seth.”
It was a warning, Reaper's tone dangerous.

“Whoa, that sounded menacing. Did it sound menacing to you, Roxy?” Seth glanced at the gun in his hand. “Maybe I should shoot him now.”

Reaper glared at him.

Seth lowered the weapon and wiped the grin off his face. As usual, his attempts at humor were hitting a brick wall. “Hey, come on. I was kidding. I'm not gonna pop you with this thing. Come on, man, don't look like that.”

Sighing, not saying a single word to Seth, Reaper climbed into the van and took a seat all the way in the rear. “Let's get going, Roxy. We need to see this Topaz woman before we can go any farther.”

Roxy handed Seth a holster. She was already wearing one of her own, with a tranq gun tucked into it. Then she closed the weapon door and climbed up into the driver's seat. Seth took the one beside her.

As she backed the van out of the driveway, Seth glanced at her and whispered, “I was kidding.”

“Hey, I thought it was funny as hell.”

He smiled, relieved. “Does he
ever
lighten up, Roxy?”

“Not that I've ever seen. But I'll tell you one thing.”

“What's that?”

“You're good for him. Real good.”

“Hell, he can barely stand me.”

“Trust me, I know these things.”

Reaper sat up straighter in his far backseat and said, “People, I
am
a vampire. I
have
preternatural hearing. I could listen to your entire conversation from a half mile away. From here, it's as if you're on a loudspeaker.”

Roxy looked over her shoulder at him and said, “Fuck you, Raphael.” Then she grinned and sent Seth a wink. “Yep, you're gonna be good for him.”

 

Topaz had packed several bags and dressed to kill. She wore a short skintight black dress, with a chain-link belt draped around her hips, black thigh-high stockings with seams up the back and lace on the top, and open-toed spike heels with straps that criss-crossed once, encircled her leg just above the ankle and buckled there. They had twenty-four-karat gold heart charms dangling from their straps. Her hair was sleek and smooth, and her makeup perfect.

She looked so good that Jack would probably weep when he saw her.

Bastard.

She was stacking her bags near the mansion's front door when she felt the presence of another vampire—no, two of them—nearby.

And one of the Chosen, as well.

Instinctively, she ducked to one side of the door, to get out of plain sight, and peered out the window. Yes, three people, two men and a woman, were standing near the end of her curving white gravel drive, just waiting there.

She squinted, and spoke with her mind.
Come any closer and you'll regret it.

The reply came immediately, from a man she didn't know.
We only want to talk to you. It won't take long, and we're no threat.

And I'm supposed to take your word for that?
Any vampire who trusted unmet, undead strangers was asking for trouble, Topaz thought. And she was not stupid.
I wasn't transformed yesterday, you know.

We need to ask a few questions, that's all. It's about a man who calls himself Jack of Hearts.

Her reaction was so instinctive that she couldn't hide it. A surge of emotions—passion, pain, desire, anger—all twisted up into one ball of feeling, just welled up and burst from her, and she wasn't quick enough or disciplined enough to hide it in time. She knew they'd felt it. Damn. She tried to pretend it hadn't happened, tried to move quickly past it, but she knew she wasn't fooling them.

Why do you want to know about him?

Because I'm looking for the leader of the rogue gang he's rumored to be running with. They're dangerous, Topaz. Deadly, to humans and vampires alike. They're even hostile toward the Chosen, or at least that's what the rumors claim. I need to know all I can about them before I get too close.

She swallowed the sudden dryness in her throat and looked at her bags. She'd been just about to go storming into the midst of a rogue gang? A murderous rogue gang who killed their own kind?
Jack
was running with a rogue gang?

That was
so
not Jack. And damn, from what she knew about rogue vampires, she was pretty sure she could have gotten herself killed tonight.

Sighing, she opened the front doors and stood between them, staring down the driveway at the three who waited there. “Come in, then,” she called. “Since you may have just saved my life, I suppose I owe you a favor.”

 

Seth saw the woman standing in between the open doors. She was backlit, and the total effect was as if some kind of goddess had just flung open the doors to heaven and invited them in. Her shape was willowy, slender, graceful. Long arms and legs, long neck, long hair. Gorgeous. And yet his first reaction to seeing her there was one of almost crippling disappointment.

She wasn't the woman he'd been searching for.

He could have wept, but instead, he lifted his chin, determined to press on. The sense that he was closer to her than ever, and still on the right path, was the most comfort he was going to get right now. So he clung to that and got on with the business at hand.

They trooped up the driveway, and he was finally able to see more than just her silhouette. She was of medium height, with the youthful face of a prom queen. Her hair was long, perfectly straight, satiny smooth and the color of melted milk chocolate—the same color as her eyes. She had Cupid's bow lips, high cheekbones and a dimple in her chin.