Sex and the Single Vamp (10 page)

Cici had no idea how long she’d been out, but she came back to the embassy party with a jolt, her body surging upward as she bolted out of her unconscious state. Deacon held her close as he barked out orders to everyone swirling around them and she sagged against his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck, grateful to feel his strength.

He stood suddenly, sweeping her up in his arms, and she gasped, inhaling sharply as her world tilted on its axis. Her breath caught in her throat and she began to cough, eyes watering as she cleared her throat.

And then it hit her.

She was breathing. A steady intake and outtake of oxygen into lungs that hadn’t worked for over two hundred years. For something that should have been an autopilot function, her brain strained to follow the rhythm, coughing and choking as her inhale and exhale stuttered like an amateur.

Fuck.

She released a hold on his neck and ran trembling fingers over the skin of her left breast, until she found what she was looking for. A heartbeat. Steady and true.

When she looked up, Deacon stared down at her, his eyes wide with shock. “Cici?”

“Deacon,” she croaked out, swallowing hard to remove the thick, hot lump of fear lodged in her throat. “I’m alive.”

Chapter Thirteen

Deacon hadn’t wanted to kill something so much in decades.

He wanted to reach across the table in the small, smelly interrogation room of the police station, grab Beatrice Park, and take her apart piece by piece until she resembled a macabre jigsaw puzzle. The only thing standing between the witch and a slow, painful death was her knowledge of who the leader of FAR might be and his firm belief that he could get her to talk.

He just needed Ramirez to leave him alone with her for a few minutes.

“Forget it, Deacon. I’m not leaving,” Ramirez said from where he leaned on the door. “I shouldn’t have let you in here to begin with, and if you hurt the suspect, my ass will be in a sling.”

“They’ll never know you had anything to do with it. We already hacked in and looped the video surveillance feed in the building. No one even has to know we were in here,” he said as he paced along his side of the table. The woman looked so ordinary, suburban…nice. She’d walked up and he’d didn’t suspect anything until she’d started in with all the ooga booga witchcraft. And by then it had been too fucking late.

“You hacked into the surveillance system? How?” Ramirez asked.

“I did the hacking, actually,” Andy said from the other side of the room. “And you’re better off not knowing.”

“Jesus,” Ramirez huffed out as he ran a big hand over his face, his eyes grim and troubled. “I’m so fucked. I can kiss that nice retirement good-bye.”

“You can come work for me,” Deacon said, his patience already ten miles past the breaking point. Even with the hack job, it would only be a matter of time before somebody came looking for Ramirez and the cold bitch eyeballing him across the expanse of scratched Formica tabletop.

The beast, dangerous and violent, coiled beneath the surface of the veneer cast by the tuxedo and civilized behavior. This woman was going to tell him what she knew and then he’d make her regret ever putting her hands on Cici.

Deacon stalked around the table, grabbed Beatrice by the arms, and wrenched her up from her chair, which teetered back and crashed to the ground. He’d jerked her so violently that her head snapped to the side, but all she did was smile up at him, the malevolence of it rivaling any enemy he’d faced on a battlefield. Some people were crazy—this bitch was just mean.

“Deacon.” Ramirez stepped forward.

“Back. The. Fuck. Up,” Deacon growled, never breaking eye contact with Beatrice. He waited for the sound of Ramirez moving back to his original position before continuing. “Who do you work for?”

She smiled wider and the crazy dancing through her eyes made him queasy. Maybe he’d underestimated just how on the edge she was. “You already know the answer. Why are you wasting your time with stupid questions?”

“Fine. Let me clarify. I want the name and everything you know about the person who told you to do this. Don’t leave anything out that might piss me off and make me come back to get you.”

“I don’t know his name. We met in several locations.” She tossed her head back with a shrug. “I know what he is, how much he despises our kind. I wouldn’t have met him in a private location.”

“So why? Why help someone who hates what you are?”

“The money.” She laughed as if he were the dumbest fuck on the planet. “He paid me a shitload of money to kill the Trent woman. Do you like all your clients, Mr. Deacon?”

“But you didn’t kill her. She’s living and breathing right now and getting checked over by a doctor.” He shoved her back, enjoying her stumbling lurch until she caught herself with her handcuffed hands. “How’s your employer going to feel about your failure?”

“I didn’t fail.” She tossed her head to get the hair out of her face; his manhandling had finally made a dent in the iron-bitch defense she wore and the small, mean part of him was inordinately pleased to see her disheveled and off-kilter. “I did kill her. Slowly. Day by day. She’s dying a little with every breath and one day the end will come. It could be fast like a car wreck, but I’m hoping it’s slow, painful, and agonizing as her body betrays her with a ravaging disease. Being human will do that to you.”

Deacon moved before the impulse even registered with his brain. He wrapped his fingers around Beatrice’s neck and slammed her against the wall, her legs kicking out as she struggled against him. Her fingers scrabbled against his hand, awkward and useless with the zip-tie cuffs binding her wrists together.

He watched her gasp for air, eyes bulging as the panic rose in her and fed the beast in him. He’d killed before, people he didn’t know and with whom he had no personal grudge; it was the job of being a soldier. He slept fine at night, never haunted by the ones he’d dispatched to hell without a backward glance. He wasn’t wired that way and had long ago stopped worrying about what it said about his soul. But this bitch was personal.

Her words played over and over in his mind as the rage burned hotter and hotter. He needed to let it consume him, to eradicate the arctic cold knot that bloomed in his chest with the truth of her words. His Cici was mortal and he was now faced with a future where he would sit by helpless as age or disease ravaged her body and her mind. And one day—a day chosen by the fickle fates—she would leave him to face the rest of his existence without her.

It scared him shitless, and he could barely remain on his feet under the avalanche of icy cold fear barreling down on him. For a man who’d been convinced he’d never need another person so much, the realization that he’d been lying to himself for so many years was mind-blowing.

His voice when he spoke was steadier than he thought possible. “I’m going to let you breathe so you can tell me how to reverse the curse. Nod if you understand.”

She nodded as best she could with his fingers clamped down around her neck, but he got the message.

“If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I
will
snap your neck.” He drew in close, fangs bared on a growl that caused her to whimper. She cast anxious glances in Ramirez’s direction, but quickly snapped them back to him when he tightened his grip. “I don’t give a fuck about the police or any of their rules so don’t think that’s going to stop me. They can’t do anything to me. I know it. They know it. I’m un-fucking-touchable”—he leaned in close enough to kiss her—“but you’re not.”

“I can’t reverse the curse.”

“Bullshit. You better tell me or I see a painful but non-fatal injury in your immediate future.”

“I don’t.” She licked her lips, tears squeezing out of the corner of her eyes and running down her cheeks. The perfectly applied makeup began to run and her ravaged appearance told him she wasn’t as young as she appeared at the party. “He had another witch prepare the incantation. I can’t reverse what I didn’t create.”

“Who is the other witch?”

“I don’t know.”

Fuck. He’d known the answer before he’d asked it. This asshole was smart and he’d made sure that undoing the damage wouldn’t be so easy. It was something Deacon would have done, and he would have admired the guy’s strategy at any other time.

“Well, you’re proving to be less than useful so far,” he growled into her face. “Any chance you know who this guy is?”

“No,” she wheezed out, her lips turning blue with the lack of oxygen getting to her extremities. “He’s human. Descended from a long line of FAR leaders. He paid me in cash.” She gasped, clutching at his lapel in a silent plea to let go of her. “He hates you.”

“Explain,” Deacon said, letting up a little so that she could explain herself.

“He hates you. Something you did…he’s”—she swallowed hard, her voice harsh and low with the effort to speak—“he’s avenging them.”

Fuck.
He shook his head. There was no way this was really about him. All this crap started with Cici’s business before he was brought into the picture. And while he didn’t conceal his past with her, it wasn’t public knowledge.

“Yes. He knows all about you, your past. He sent me to hurt her in order to hurt you.” She shuddered as his hand slackened at her throat, as her words sunk in. “Something you did brought this on her head.
You
killed her.”

Deacon stepped back from her and watched as she slid to the ground, a crumpled mess of designer gown, wild hair, and smeared makeup. She clutched at her throat, gasping to suck air into lungs that were now in hyperdrive. He could hear her heartbeat, rapid with fear, and it reminded him of Cici.

Mortal. Vulnerable. Human.

“I’m done with this worthless piece of shit, Ramirez.” He turned swiftly, long strides taking him to the door, which he opened with a doorjamb-cracking yank. “Whatever you find out from her, just put it in the police files and I’ll get it from there.”

“You’re an arrogant bastard,” Ramirez called after him.

“I’ve been called worse.” Deacon stomped down the hallway of the station, pushing past wide-eyed officers and slack-jawed prisoners to get the hell out of the place. It stank of piss, body odor, reams of moldy paper, and fear.

Andy was close on his heels, phone to his ear as he talked to someone with his usual economy of words. As he took the stairs to the main floor two at a time, Deacon ran over the events of the evening, wondering where he’d gone wrong, what he’d missed.

They’d had the party sealed up like a supermax prison and had triple-checked every guest on the list. But it hadn’t mattered. Cici had been hurt while he’d stood by in a goddamn monkey suit. He’d failed her. For the second time. And once again he’d cradled her in his arms, helplessly watching her life drain away.

Deacon burst through the front doors, ripping his jacket off as he approached his Suburban in the parking lot. He fished his keys out of his pocket, palming the remote entry fob, fingers fumbling as he attempted several times to unlock the doors. Once. Twice. Three times.

“Goddamn it!” He kicked the side of the truck, the sound of metal crunching and glass shattering echoing throughout the mostly empty parking lot. The alarm went off, the shrill sound adding to the cacophony of thoughts already clanging around in his skull.

“Deacon.” Andy grabbed his arm and Deacon turned to swing at him, his frustration needing an outlet. His friend ducked and swerved, avoiding most of Deacon’s blows and delivering a few of his own. The growl that rose from Andy’s chest was all Were, and Deacon knew he’d pissed him off.

The sound of cops coming out the front of the building, yelling for them to “break it up,” distracted him enough for Andy to get the upper hand with an uppercut to the jaw that brought him back to the current time and place with an agonizing sting.

Andy slammed him against the truck, pinning him with an arm across the throat. “Did you get that shit out of your system? Can we move on now, because I’m gonna need you to be on this with me. One hundred percent.”

Deacon nodded, all his useless excess energy spent like a match—quickly lit, blazing hot, and then guttering out. He shoved at Andy’s chest and slid down the car until his ass hit the filthy, damp asphalt. His friend joined him, his heavy breathing loud in the air of the early morning, but it wasn’t enough to drown out the thoughts yelling like banshees in his head.

“I failed her again,” he spat out. “First I let her almost get murdered when she was human and then I sucked at preventing her from becoming human again tonight.”

“Don’t listen to what that bitch said. Don’t let her get in your head.” Andy nudged him with an elbow in the ribs, hard and painful in order to make his point.

“How do I ignore my part in this?” he asked, his anger rising again. He was mad at himself and it spilled out in a torrent. “Somewhere in all of this I missed the whole point of this attacker and that left me with a huge blind spot. And now Cici is paying the price.”

Andy sighed. “Fine, wallow. Beat yourself up. Just show up with your game face and make it right.”

“I
have
to make it right.”

“Good. I like the attitude. We find a cure, and you and Cici get to keep doing the horizontal mambo until you’ve tried every position in the
Modern Guide to the Kama Sutra
I gave you for Christmas last year.”

“Stay out of my love life.”

“I didn’t say anything about
love
.”

“Fuck off.” Deacon clamped his mouth shut, realizing that his rapid response and his tone gave away more than he even realized or wanted to think about.

“I’m not the one who used the L-word, my friend,” Andy said even when a man with half a brain would know not to fuck with him when he was on the edge like this. His friend knew how far he could push Deacon’s buttons and he loved to play that game, but when he spoke his voice was somber. “Do you love her, Deacon?”

“Damn it, Andy.” He clunked his head back on the truck, feeling the door give a little more under his force. Another dent to add to the rest.

“It’s a fair question. You two have a history and only a blind man could miss what’s been going on the last few days.”

“Love is…Jesus, I don’t know what it is. Never had it. Never wanted it.”

“Okay, then, is what you feel for her what a normal, non-asshole would call love? Because if it isn’t, you’ve got to consider how you’re treating this woman. She’s pretty damn awesome and for now she’s only got one more life to live. Most normal people want to have someone to love. So if you don’t, let her go.”

Deacon closed his eyes as an image of Cici with another man flashed through his mind. Marrying that random guy, having his kids—she could do that if she stayed human—growing old together. Losing each other to death. This was what other people wanted, and Deacon had only ever wanted that with one woman—Cici.

But even then he’d planned for them to be together for centuries, as long as immortals existed. He couldn’t face the idea of losing her after one measly lifetime. Deacon wasn’t a coward, but the thought of her fading away, returning to the earth with nothing to mark her existence, made him want to tear things apart with his bare hands.

It all came down to one thing: he couldn’t love her because then he might have to lose her, and
that
was unbearable. The sucking hollow in his chest was clawing at his insides and he rubbed a hand over the area until the sensation passed.