Demon Moon (9 page)

Savitri
. He compelled the words from his frozen tongue. “Savi ingested hellhound venom and nosferatu blood. She's taken fever.”

Colin closed the phone and dropped it, then slapped his hand against the wall. The panel sprang open.

Savi slid from his lap. Even in this state, she must have realized he needed to move.

“Stay here.”

She nodded, and rubbed her face to rouse herself.

He selected two swords and rose to his feet. A dark form streaked across the dance floor, headed directly toward them.

Icy fear splintered in his gut, cut through the numbness.

A wyrmwolf. Scales and exposed flesh. Not as large as a hellhound, with only one head, but almost as deadly. Sweat broke over his skin. How could it be here?
It couldn't be here;
no Gate led from Earth to Chaos, no portal. The only anchor to that realm was in Colin's blood, and the only access through him.

Had he brought it back? Could he never escape it? Did he have to pay for one foolish mistake for eternity?

A vampire tried to stop the wyrmwolf, and lost his arm to a quick tear from its jaws.

Screams echoed through the club.

“Bloody fucking hell,” Colin muttered, and ran to intercept it.

Savi had never seen anything like the battle that followed—
couldn't
see most of it. Only a flash of swords, then two figures blurring as they moved. An instant in which they paused, caught in a violent tableau of blades and fangs.

She looked away once, toward those watching with her. The vampires' expressions were easy to interpret: horror and awe. They could see what was happening. Why didn't they help him?

But Colin didn't need it. He stopped suddenly, angling his left sword up like a batsman after smashing a cricket ball, his chest heaving and his face glistening with sweat.

The creature's head hit the wall and thudded to the floor.

The strength left her body at the same time, and she slipped down, laid her cheek against the sofa cushion. The heat burned through her, but she couldn't feel it anymore. Only tired, so tired.

Through half-closed eyes, she saw Colin return to her side, his gaze fierce upon her. Blood spread over one ivory sleeve, and from a slash on his thigh.

He lifted her from the sofa and began walking toward his suite. Her head swam.

“They have five seconds,” he said softly.

Who? Before what? She couldn't make the effort to form the questions. Jet lag? A strange time for it, when she was flying, flying.

Colin's arms tightened around her, and he shuddered. “Castleford. Michael.” His voice was flat. “And as usual, you've arrived too bloody late.”

Savi sighed and scooped more noodles from the take-out box. With her left hand, she drew a circle around the first ad. Nani would be horrified that Savi had even glanced at the matrimonials, but at least she would know Savi was trying to keep her promise. In any case, her grandmother had probably begun inquiries in the Indian communities in the Bay Area and with relatives in Mumbai. There would be plenty of potential grooms for Savi to meet.

And a software engineer would be okay; better than a doctor. She'd have more in common with a techie. She frowned and chewed. On the other hand, a doctor would be absent more often. Social obligations might be greater, though; when her parents hadn't been at work, they were usually at some function.

She glanced around the small, dark office with its glowing computer screens and felt a spark of hope. A techie might be gone just as often. She was never home, that was certain.

Of course, over the past eight months that absence had had little to do with her job and more to do with a vain vampire and his frequent visits to Hugh and Lilith. His presence hadn't been a factor in the month since her return from India, but she'd still kept as far from home as possible.

Running. She was such a coward.

She wouldn't run from this promise, though.
Pls respond with photo
. Perhaps she could digitally alter a picture, and when she met the prospective groom in person claim she'd lost most of her hair in a fire.

In a fire, saving a kitten.

“How long did you think you could avoid me?”

Savi's cardboard-box table shook as her foot slipped, and she whirled on her stool. Lilith stood in the doorway, Sir Pup at her heels. She must have come from home; she wore loose cargo pants, a T-shirt, and a fitted leather jacket.

Lilith's appearance was a bit more striking when she was at work. Not that she was ever less than stunning with a face like that.

Right now, a stunning and frighteningly triumphant I've-got-you smile sat on Lilith's lips.

Savi swallowed and managed, “I was hoping for at least another week. I should be out of here by then. You apparently got the info I sent about the nosferatu. How did you know it was me?” She glared at Sir Pup. The hellhound must have led Lilith to this office, followed Savi's scent.

He grinned at her, his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth.

“Considering everything else Hugh and I have discovered in the last couple of weeks, it could only have been you.” Lilith's dark gaze skimmed over the room. Not much to see; a few monitors, server racks, boxes. “What's taking you so long? I'd have thought if you wanted to go, you could go.”

“The connections in the new place. The current ones can't handle the data transfer. And there's a security issue.” Apparently here, too, but no security system would stop someone like Lilith. Savi shrugged and studied the other woman's long black hair. Too much curl.

Her eyes narrowing, Lilith said, “What is it?”

“I was thinking of making a wig.” Savi gestured to a small love seat, where she often took naps when the information she needed was long in coming. “I imagine you're going to stay and interrogate me. Pad thai?”

“I ate.” Instead of sitting in the deep cushions, Lilith lowered herself onto the arm and pulled her right foot up to rest on the seat. “It's been two weeks since you left the hospital; Hugh and I have seen you a total of three times. He's worried.”

Guilt tightened Savi's belly. She set the food on the table, and tried to remember whom she was speaking with: Lilith, a master of manipulation. Savi adored her, but knew Lilith wouldn't hesitate to lie if it served her purpose. “You're here for him? He knows what I do. How do you think he found you and Colin so easily last May? He asked me to get your info.”

Sir Pup sniffed at the box of noodles; Savi dropped it to the floor and let him go at it. He'd shifted into his public form, a large Labrador with only one head. Did his other heads resent it when only one got a treat?

“I found Hugh last May, standing over Ian Rafferty's body,” Lilith said. “Who wouldn't have been dead if not for DemonSlayer.”

Savi's lips parted on a painful gasp, and she fought the tears that sprang to her eyes. “Jesus, Lilith. Why don't you just fucking rip my lungs out?”

Regret slipped across Lilith's expression before her features hardened. “Because you always act without thinking of the consequences. You had good intentions when you translated and printed Hugh's book, but you did it without asking him, and without knowing the dangers of it. And you created the DemonSlayer card game based on the book, again without asking. At least you talked to him when you developed and licensed the video game, but that was a bit late. You're brilliant, Savi, but you do the stupidest things with it.”

Savi clenched her hands to conceal their shaking, though there was no point in hiding; Lilith would see the gesture and know the reason behind it. Both she and Hugh always saw too much.

“Are you talking about the flight, the nosferatu? Because I was right, and you know it. We would have all been dead. Ten minutes later, Nani and I would have been at the bottom of the Atlantic. Michael and Selah were too late, and Hugh told me the nosferatu confirmed its plan had been to destroy us.”

Savi didn't want to know how the nosferatu had been convinced to talk. There were places her curiosity didn't extend.

“No. I'm talking about this.” Lilith waved her hand at the computers. “Sir Pup, can I have Savi's file?” A thin manila folder appeared on the cushion beside Lilith's boot. She picked it up. “There's very little in here.”

Savi didn't reply, and Lilith sighed. “
Too
little. The ruse with Selah taking your approximate form and place in the airplane's bathroom last month worked—for the most part. We still had to go in and remove physical evidence, the passenger lists and airport video surveillance, change your flight date to the day before in the airline database and credit card records—”

“And your guy left his fingerprints all over the place,” Savi said. No reason not to tell her; obviously Lilith had figured most of it out. “I had to go back in and clean them up.”

“I know.” Lilith tapped the file against her palm. “But that's not my point. Your data doesn't have any blocks, but there's nothing there. Not a single connection to Auntie, or to Hugh. And I wasn't the only one looking. It's not necessarily a problem, because it serves our purpose for the investigators to find what they
think
they're looking for—”

Savi's brow creased. “What does that mean?”

“It means that Special Investigations is too new and our responsibilities too undefined for anyone to be certain of us. Most of those looking at the data are accepting appearances: that a terrorist who looks a hell of a lot like you duplicated your info and tried to bring down a flight, but failed and was caught in New York. And Selah's escape from maximum security two days later only confirms it for them: a powerful organization pulling strings. But the other half sees your lack of data and reaches the same conclusions I did: you're already working under an agency—probably Homeland Security. So they'll assume that the assassination on board was to stop the flight from going down, and everything else is a cover-up. There's enough conflicting evidence that they'll believe whatever they want to believe.” Lilith pursed her lips. “All that really matters is that the public bought the capture and escape story, because it makes the DHS look like fucktards and the focus is away from SI.”

Savi rubbed her forehead, laughing a little. It was all too convoluted for her taste; she concealed by making appearances very simple and straightforward. “So you know what I do here, or you don't? And what
is
your point?”

“Your juvie record is missing, but I know you have one. Hugh mentioned it once—that you'd created fake IDs for your friends when you were all still underage. Good IDs. That you got into the state Vital Records, Social Security, and DMV. But you were caught.”

She met Lilith's gaze, and said evenly, “They offered me a job.”

“Did you take it?”

“Yes.”

“You're lying,” Hugh said from behind her. After closing the door, he strode silently across the room and stood next to Lilith.

“That was unfair,” Savi said, rising to her feet. “You shouldn't use superpowers against me.”

Hugh laughed and shook his head. “I didn't need to read the truth to know it for a lie.” Short, dark mahogany hair, a powerful form—beautiful, though he didn't take her breath away. He did Lilith's. When they were together, it was like being in a statically charged atmosphere.

He'd changed since Lilith had come back into his life; though always intense, he had been tightly contained, focused on academia and books. Now he had a darker edge—the eight-hundred-year-old warrior who no longer denied his nature.

Lilith hadn't created that edge; she'd only torn away the layers that had hidden it. A strange couple: the woman who lied and the man who saw truth. Yet they were absolutely and completely devoted to each other.

Savi fought the urge to cover the matrimonials; concealment would draw their attention more quickly than openness. “So what is it?” she asked instead, and wrapped her arms around her middle. “You want to know what I do? It's pretty simple; I get a list of transactions—credit cards, bank accounts, plane tickets, phone records, property acquisitions, whatever—and I have to change them. I don't even know what they are from. Most of them are probably from ordinary citizens, to keep me from guessing.”

And the others were the government's way of protecting its agents and covering their movements. A credit card purchase for a pair of sunglasses twenty minutes after a political assassination in the Middle East? She didn't want to know about it, she just transformed it into a baguette in Paris. Savi wasn't the only one in the network; she imagined there were many others across the country in dark little offices, doing exactly the same thing. Changing transactions that she'd changed, just to make the layers deeper.

“That isn't our concern, Savi,” Hugh said. “You don't do it for the money; you have more than enough from your parents' trust and from DemonSlayer. And you aren't capable of holding a job like this.”

Savi pressed her lips together before she said, “You think I'm unreliable?”

“No. But only because you don't commit to anything you can't follow through on. You wouldn't have accepted this job and stayed for so long except under duress. Your interests change too quickly.”

Lilith smiled thinly. “And it really, really upsets me when people I care for serve against their will. Sir Pup, may I have Auntie's file?”

A much thicker folder appeared in Lilith's upturned palm.

Her heart pounding, Savi looked from Hugh's face to Lilith's. “What's the point of this? I can't lie to you. You're trapping me into something—if you'd just tell me the reason, this would be a lot easier. You don't have to do this to me. Not you two.” Her voice thickened. “Of all people, not you two.”

Lilith turned her face away for a moment, but Hugh didn't flinch. “Of all people, you should have come to us. We're doing it this way because you didn't.” His gaze softened. “Auntie's resident alien status was revoked just after you turned eighteen. We can see that in her file. Also, that her applications for reinstatement were denied. Then she's given citizenship, though she never took the test or fulfilled the preliminary requirements. You did that? Or they did?”

“They did,” Savi said tightly. “I'd have never left the rest incomplete.”

“It was a different administration then; Homeland Security didn't even exist,” Hugh said. “Why didn't you try to get out?”

“Because I brought it on myself with those fake IDs, and I
have
to consider these consequences. They might let me go; I don't know. For all I know it was a demon who forced the issue eight years ago because of my connection to you. We've learned enough about Lucifer's foray into different federal agencies to know that one of his demons might have had that power—it's probable they did. But I'm not going to risk it by asking them to let me go.” She leveled a dark look at Lilith. “You understand that.”

“Making a bargain with Lucifer is completely different than working covertly for the government,” Lilith said.

Silence fell for a moment, then Hugh lowered his face into his hands and his shoulders began shaking. Unable to contain her own laughter, Savi sat down and bent forward, holding her sides.