Demon Marked (31 page)

Slowly, carefully, she held the gun out to her side and let it drop with a clatter onto the floor. The sound made Anthony jump and, for a moment, she feared he'd shoot her anyway. Her breath caught in her chest as his finger twitched against the trigger, but then Douglas, Little Francis's assistant, appeared behind him. After a nervous glance over his shoulder, Anthony lowered the gun a few degrees, aiming the barrel at her hips rather than her heart.

For some reason, Emma wasn't surprised to learn that Douglas was on the wrong side. Considering the way he'd scampered and fetched for Little Francis, it would have been more surprising to find him loyal to the true Conti leader.

Douglas peered over Anthony's shoulder, brown eyes widening when he saw José. “Oh my god. Did she shoot him?”

Anthony's eyes flicked to the floor and then back to Emma. “Doesn't look like it. There's no blood, no wound.”

“But he's dead, right?” Douglas eased around Anthony, being careful to stay out of the way of the gun he still held in front of him.

“Sure seems that way.”

“So cool.” Douglas giggled but quickly slapped a guilty hand over his mouth. When the hand returned to his side, Emma was shocked to see a little smile on his face. “Sorry, I mean, it's not cool. But you know, it's cool. Did you kill him with the demons? Do they come when you call them? Like ... pets or something?”

Emma sighed, for once hating the fact that her instincts were dead-on. It would have been nice not to have to worry about the demonic implications of a dangerous situation. “I don't know what you're talking about. This guy was dead when I got here.”

“Oh, come on, Emma. We know about your powers. I have to admit, I didn't think—”

Anthony silenced him with a raised hand, then pressed two fingers to his ear. “We've got an ETA of ten minutes on the book.”

The spell book.
Shit.
Andre wasn't picking it up, after all. Then why had Francis sent him uptown to the safe house? Just to get him out of the way? Silently, Emma sent out a prayer that Andre was even more out of the way than Francis assumed. She hoped he'd gotten her message before he'd reached the people waiting for him and found someplace safe to hide out for a few hours.

“They need her upstairs,” Anthony said, moving to hold the bathroom door open, careful to keep his gun trained in her direction. It was as if he was scared she was going to put the life-sucking demon whammy on him from across the room.

Which ... she probably
could
... if she used one of the spells she'd been working on translating for the past few months. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see the ancient words she needed floating in front of her. There was a good chance she could recall the spell she needed by memory ... but did she dare?

Allowing the darkness to feed with impunity for the first time had made it so much harder to tamp down. If she cast from the demon grimoire, if she deliberately turned the hunger inside of her out onto other people with the intent to destroy, would she ever regain control? Or would the line between her human self and the demonic presence inside her be wiped away forever?

Hunger humming along the surface of her skin every waking moment of every day would drive her insane. And then there was the danger that she would physically transform and become some sort of hybrid creature like her older brother. It was the memory of his face, so human, but covered with scales and dripping liquid horror, that made her bite her lip and swallow the words tickling along her tongue. She couldn't take the chance, not now, not yet. ...

Inside her, the hunger writhed. She could practically hear its screech of disappointment. That alien sound only confirmed that she'd made the right call. Anything that made the darkness happy was a very bad idea.

“Okay! Come on, right this way.” Douglas gestured for her to precede him through the door and out into the hall. “I can't wait to see how all this works.”

He pulled his own small revolver from the pocket of his suit coat as Emma passed by, but he didn't seem to be genuinely afraid. Emma stored the information away, hoping she might be able to use it to her advantage.

“Just head straight back toward the elevator,” Douglas chirped. “Everyone's waiting on the second floor. I didn't even know we had a second floor, did you? You need a special key to make the elevator go up instead of down. Apparently only the family was allowed up there before. But then, I guess you probably knew that, didn't you?”

She heard the smirk in his voice and wondered at its source, but not enough to speak to Douglas. Her past had taught her a few things about dealing with people who assumed they were in control. The less she engaged, the better. It was best if they realized up front that she wouldn't be cooperating. She wasn't going to talk, she wasn't going to bargain, and she certainly wasn't going to help out with whatever demon magic they had in mind.

Besides, why bother talking when she'd have the answers to her questions the second she got her hands on the skinny little bastard bounding into the elevator behind her? Douglas wasn't any bigger than she was. If she got him alone, she could physically overpower him and let the blue light do the rest. She'd taken down two men at once earlier in the day, and even the emaciated Stewart was taller and stronger than Little Francis's terrieresque assistant.

Two men
... There were only two men in the elevator. Sure, there were guns, too, but in such close quarters—

“Don't move.” A sharp click bounced off the elevator walls as Anthony rolled a bullet into the chamber of his weapon. “Put your hands in your pits. In your armpits. Do it!”

Emma obeyed with a slight frown. Either half the Conti men were mind readers or she'd been telegraphing her intentions more than usual today.
Shit.
She had to get her game face on. She had to calm down and focus. Despite the guns and gang members and trained bounty hunters with intentions to shoot to kill if she didn't behave, she'd been in worse situations.

The box that housed the aura demons that had marked her as a child was lost forever, its demons banished from the earthly plane. No matter what Little Francis wanted her to do, it couldn't be as bad as what Ezra had wanted. Without the box, there was no way to bring about the rule of the invisible demons and the infestation of humanity. Even if Francis captured Sam or another person with a demon bond; that could never happen.

The thought gave her comfort as the elevator doors opened and Anthony tapped her between the shoulder blades with his loaded weapon, urging her out into a lushly carpeted hall that looked more like an upscale hotel than a place where demon hunters did business.

All she had to do was refuse to cast, and everything would be okay. The worst they could do was kill her. She'd always thought that death would be preferable to a life ruled by her mark. Now it was time to put her money where her mouth was.

“Did Andre ever take you here?” Douglas asked, gaping at one of the beautifully furnished rooms on the right side of the hall. Emma pressed her lips together and pretended she hadn't heard him. “This is gorgeous. I can't believe I never knew about this.”

Anthony's earbud beeped softly, and he spoke to someone on the other end. “We're in the hall. Keep your pants on.”

Douglas laughed. “You are funny.” He wagged a finger at Anthony before hurrying ahead to open a heavy wooden door at the end of the hall.

Emma got the joke as soon as she stepped into the giant conference room, where a shining oak table had been shoved against one wall and all its chairs stacked on top, clearing the space for the twenty or so Conti Bounty and Death Ministry men staggered throughout the room. All of whom were wearing
nothing
but underwear and a smile.

Actually, most of them hadn't bothered with the smile but were absurdly serious considering they were nearly naked in a room full of other nearly naked men. In spite of the danger and the gun still trained on her back, Emma normally would have laughed her ass off as soon as she stepped in the room.

Whatever or whoever had been schooling these losers in demon magic was a complete fraud. Anyone with real knowledge of aura demons knew nudity wasn't required to work demon magic. That was as much a myth as garlic repelling vampires. Real vampires—demon-marked people who fed on human blood and life force—couldn't care less if their victims took baths in the stuff.

But the smile teasing at the edges of her lips faded before it got started. There was nothing funny about seeing Andre—the only man in the room still fully clothed—tied to a chair with a gag stuffed into his mouth.

Her stomach cramped, and every hopeful, comforting thought she'd had on the walk into the room shriveled in the acid bath of panic soaking her brain. Little Francis was more perceptive and diabolical than she'd given him credit for. She was willing to lose her own life before she'd work demon magic.

But was she willing to let Andre die?

The second his sharp brown gaze met hers, communicating disappointment and fear and love and regret and a hundred other things she never would have understood in the eyes of anyone but the man she loved, she had her answer.

“L
et him go and I'll cast whatever spell you want,” she said, the words alone enough to make her soul shrivel, even as the demonic hunger buzzed through her bones, sending messages of pleasure to some ancient part of her brain. It was like being overheated and freezing at the same time. Her nerves screamed in protest and her stomach heaved, but she forced herself to speak. “But you have to let him go first.”

“Hmm. Interesting offer.” Little Francis stood at the opposite end of the room, smiling like a butcher's dog. “But you don't even know what kind of spell we're looking for.”

“I don't care.” Emma's eyes slid to Andre's for a split second before she sucked in a deep breath and turned back to Francis.

She couldn't look at him, couldn't focus on how helpless he appeared, tied and gagged. She was going to lose it. She'd never felt so powerless, so at another's mercy. Even the darkness inside her had never ruled her so completely. But the feelings she had for Andre ... they made her rib cage feel like it was about to implode. She would do whatever it took to gain his freedom, anything, even kill again, even risk becoming something less than human.

“Well, that will make things a lot easier.” Francis laughed. He wore nothing but a pair of gold and black striped boxer shorts and his Conti family watch, his rounded stomach out of place on his otherwise proportional body, his torso covered in enough hair to knit a small scarf. He should have been ridiculous, but the look in his eyes was too frightening. The man didn't care whether Andre lived or died, but he knew that she did.

Maybe he'd had someone following them, reporting back on how close she and his cousin had grown in the past few hours, or maybe her emotions were still as pathetically obvious as they'd been all day. Maybe the fact that she loved Andre was etched on her face. Either way, Francis knew he held all the cards. She didn't even have a place at the table.

“But I think we're going to have to keep my cousin tied up for a little longer,” he said, strutting across the room on bare feet. Also hairy, she observed. She'd like to pull out every hair on his body until he bled and screamed. “We might need human blood to make that circle to cast the—”

“You don't need human blood. Animal blood will work,” she said, deliberately keeping her tone low and even. She couldn't let him know how much the thought of Andre being bled to create a circle for black magic terrified her. “Demon blood would be even better if you have it.”

“I don't know.” Francis made a big show of pondering her words, but she could see the smile tugging at his lips. He was enjoying this, getting off on lording his power over her. “Douglas here was saying—”

“You're listening to Douglas?” She didn't bother hiding how ridiculous she found the decision.

“I have an undergraduate degree in demon studies.” Douglas—who was undressing down to his own boxers—paused to shoot her a nasty look. He crossed his arms and stuck out his hip. “And I'm the one who thought of having the Death Ministry guys kidnap Ginger to get all the party pooper Contis out of town.”

“So there are no cult members,” Emma said, a statement, not a question.

Douglas rolled his eyes. “Of course not. Duh. All those people are still in jail or too old to kidnap anybody. Reggie just had a couple of new recruits do the job and say they were cult members so no one would connect them to us if they were caught. They were going to earn their first kill scar for the job.”