Hot Demon in the City (Latter Day Demons Book 1) (6 page)

"What the hell were you doing at that bar," he demanded.

"Farin," I whispered. "Rick is her brother. She was worried that he and Mike would get hurt at the bar. She begged me to convince him to leave. I had to ask Anita to go with me, because I sure as hell didn't want to go by myself."

"Why didn't you call him?" Kory still wasn't happy with my explanation.

"We tried. He wasn't answering."

"Fuck."

"Yeah. I hear that, all right." I closed my eyes, hoping that would help with the pounding inside my skull. "If Vann hears that Mike tried to go around him to get the bar story," I didn't finish.

"Maybe Vann needs to hear exactly that. Mike could have gotten you killed, tonight."

"Mike could have gotten himself killed, and Rick, too."

"I don't give a damn about Mike or Rick."

Silence fell after that statement, and somewhere between the Golden Gate Bridge and Aunt Bree's house, I fell asleep.

I dreamed about Kory carrying me into the house, while someone else opened the back door for him.

Everything was hazy, after that. I just remembered falling into a deeper sleep when the pain went away.

Chapter 4

Kordevik

I worried that Li'Neruh Rath would be angry that I sent mindspeech, or that he'd ignore me altogether, but he didn't. After I carried Lexsi to her bedroom, he took away her headache with gentle fingers.

They hit her harder than she thought
, he sent afterward.
It's taken care of. Go home. She doesn't need to find you here in the morning
.

I know
. I hung my head. Things were supposed to be so different, yet here we were.

Woo her. Carefully. You're not a caveman, you know
.

Li'Neruh disappeared. That's when I figured out why he'd placed me on Earth to start with. So I could win my intended, instead of expecting her to be handed to me outright.

I was still so angry with her about going to that fucking bar, though, while she was injured and in pain. I almost touched her, too, while she slept. I only wanted to run a finger down her cheek; I knew her skin would be velvety soft beneath my hand. Tearing myself away from that thought, I walked back through the house and made sure everything was locked up before driving the van back to the station. Little Miss Lexsi occupied my thoughts the entire time.

* * *

Lexsi

The headache was gloriously absent when I woke, and upon my examination of the bruises and black eye in the bathroom mirror, I found both looked fainter and my eye had actually opened all the way.

Still, feeling as if six more hours of sleep would be the greatest gift ever, I showered, dressed, filled a mug with coffee and shut myself in the TinyCar to drive to work.

Farin wore a guilty expression when I walked in. She wanted to say something and worried I was upset with her. "I'm not mad at you," I said, heading for my tiny cubicle. "Is Mike coming to work today?"

"Oh, uh," Farin looked extremely uncomfortable for a moment.

"Mike's looking for a new job," Vann snapped as he walked along the hall toward Farin and me. I'd known Vann was a camera hog, but firing Mike because he'd acted foolishly and was nearly killed for his efforts sounded a bit extreme to me.

"I have something for you," Farin took my arm and led me away from Vann, who was headed for the coffee machine.

"What's that?" I asked, once we'd reached my cubicle.

"Rick says thanks," she whispered. "He doesn't remember much, just that you and Anita got them out of the bar before things went boom."

"What will Mike do?" I asked.

"I think Rick will put in a word with his station; Mike won't be unemployed long. Everybody knows how difficult Vann can be to work for."

"Farin, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but you should tell your brother to stay away from that bar if it happens to pop up somewhere else. Let the police handle this, all right? It's dangerous."

"I think he got the message last night, but I'll tell him." She started to walk away, then turned back to me. "He likes you. He says you're gorgeous, even with a black eye."

"Oh. Uh, tell him thanks, I guess. You ought to thank Kory, too, for driving them home last night."

"That ought to be fun," she grimaced.

"Maybe I'll send him a bottle of something," I said. "He had to be awake most of the night to get all of us back where we should be."

"I owe you," Farin said. "Dinner, sometime, at my place? I'm a decent cook."

"That sounds like a deal," I said. "Thanks."

"Silver," Vann appeared as Farin walked away, "I want to go back to what's left of that bar. I intend to get to the bottom of this, if it takes the rest of my life to do it."

* * *

Kordevik

The look on Lexsi's face as she followed Vann and his crew out of the station told me exactly where we were going—to the burned remains of a bar, where a mysterious explosion happened the night before.

She was pissed about it; Jessie and Chet weren't looking forward to it, either. It made me want to turn my smaller Thifilathi loose on Vann, but that couldn't happen. Instead, I drove us to Clawdia's—or what remained of it.

* * *

Lexsi

Vann waved his copy of the police report from the explosion the night before, and referred to the bar fight before that. "While the police say it is too early to link these two incidents, it certainly looks suspicious," he preened before the camera.

"Our requests for an interview with the bar owner have been refused; her assistant referred us to the police investigation unit, and gave their phone number. When we pointed out that we'd already spoken to them, he hung up."

Half a block away, Kory stood with his cell phone in his hand, texting someone. At least he could walk away and not pay attention to Vann; his job was to drive us and nothing else.

I held Vann's notes and brushed hair from my face—a breeze was blowing off the bay, stirring ash in the bombed building behind us. We'd had to set up across the street; crime scene tape was still strung up everywhere and a grumpy security guard eyed us with a mixture of disgust and malevolence from his nearby post.

At least the owner had thought to protect what remained of the bar; looters would probably be all over it if she hadn't.

Besides, it was probably hazardous to walk through the rubble without thick boots on—broken glass from liquor bottles was everywhere.

"How long is he going to babble?" Kory appeared at my elbow.

"As long as he wants—he's the boss."

"Gee, that's too bad," Kory rumbled.

"What do you like to drink?" I asked. "I'll buy a bottle to say thanks for getting all of us home last night."

"Crown works."

"All right. I'll see what I can do."

"Do you drink?" he asked.

"Not often. A glass of wine with dinner, sometimes."

"Wimp."

"I fought three guys in a parking lot. You think that's wimpy?" My temper was beginning to rise.

"Not that way," he held up a hand. "Just in your drinking habits."

"I'll get your bottle of Crown," I said and stalked away from him.

* * *

Kordevik

Way to go, Weth
, I chastised myself as she walked away. I needed to remind myself of how young she was. Yes, she was extremely mature, which likely prompted my lack of propriety.

Or maybe I'd just been hanging around males too long. My father would be ashamed of me. My mother, too.

"Look, I didn't mean it that way," I strode after her. "I think I've just had too much male company for a while, and tossing back a few drinks is what we do."

"Should I buy them a bottle, too?" She turned to look at me. Her eyes betrayed her anger; her words merely conveyed sarcasm.

"Really. I didn't mean it," I repeated.

"Fine." I watched as her shoulders slumped. At that moment, she appeared lost. Alone.

As she was. I wondered if any of her family knew where and when she'd landed. I hadn't taken the time to consider what Lexsi's disappearance had done to them—or to Kifirin's reigning King and Queen.

Lexsi was related to royalty, after all. I didn't even want to consider her paternal grandmother, who was also a Queen, Or one of her uncles, who was a King. Another uncle was the founder of the Campiaan Alliance, for fuck's sake.

Damn
. I'd just been so angry I'd burned down a bar and was sent here as punishment by Li'Neruh Rath.

Fuck
. He'd sent me here to protect her, and I was too stupid to see it.

Except she didn't want my protection—as far as I could see.

Well, she didn't know who I was. If she did, she'd get away from me as fast as she could. I had to work around that and—according to Li'Neruh Rath—woo her at the same time.

He'd planned my punishment perfectly, by placing me in a situation I had no idea how to deal with. The biggest problem I faced, of course, was that Miss Lexsi didn't want protection. I'd seen that firsthand when she'd waltzed into a supe bar to haul two humans out of it.

That's when it hit me. I had a temporarily out-of-work werewolf and a vamp staying at my house. Lexsi had a house far too big for only one person; Mason and Watson could help protect her. There had to be a solution she'd accept, I merely hadn't thought of it, yet.

* * *

Lexsi

By the time Vann wound down, cut the recording and waited for us to pack the equipment in the van, I was ready to strangle him. For some reason, Kory chose to make things worse by calling me a wimp.

For not drinking
.

Go figure.

I knew Vann could still draw unwanted attention with the interest he was paying to this; he'd referred to it in his monologue as a cover-up—by the police and the bar's owner.

Difik
.

If he'd bothered to talk to Mike before arbitrarily firing him, he'd at least be forewarned about some of the dangers related to the bar and its destruction.

While we were on our way back to the station, Vann got a call from Lee, his producer. Someone had already hired Mike. Not only had they hired him, he was doing the noon news, describing what he recalled from the evening before—and the bar's subsequent destruction.

He even showed images of his car, which had been parked close-by. It looked as if it had been hurled into a building by an angry giant.

Vann had been upstaged by his former employee and he wasn't happy about that. I didn't intend to tell Vann that Anita and I'd pulled Mike and Rick out of the bar to save their lives; he was too busy cursing Mike and threatening to ruin him at the same time.

Farin looked guilty when we trooped into the station; I knew then that Mike was working at Eighty-Two. Rick had likely gone to a producer there, who'd listened to his and Mike's story and hired Mike on the spot to report on it. After all, they got their scoop in first, leaving Vann to do cleanup.

Vann was furious as he stomped toward the editing room. He was determined to make his report better than the one Mike had hastily put together for a rival station.

To me, none of that mattered. What did matter was the fact that they were making the bar fight and subsequent explosion into a turf war, and I worried that the vamps involved would certainly take notice.

Unwelcome notice.

"Farin," I grabbed her arm and led her toward the ladies' room.

"I didn't know this was going to happen," she began the moment the restroom door was shut and we'd checked for anyone else inside.

"Farin, you need to warn your brother—and Mike if you can. I know this is turning into a testosterone war, but there are bigger things out there that may not like the attention."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she muttered, struggling not to cry.

"Hey," I pulled her into a hug. "It's not worth your tears. Mike should be the one needing tissues. If Anita and I hadn't pulled his ass out of that bar—Rick's too—they could be toast right now instead of fighting with Vann from another news station."

"But people deserve the truth," she leaned away from me.

"Trust me on this one," I begged. "Somebody doesn't want this truth told, and they'll do whatever it takes to make sure of it."

How could I tell her that Mike and Rick could end up dead or under compulsion? Vann, too, for that matter. They'd investigated a simple bar fight and taken it much too far. Vamps and werewolves were still hidden and didn't take kindly to threats of exposure.

I wasn't even including the others that belonged to Anita's race, or what they were capable of doing. The dead seals in the bay could attest to their playful fetishes.

An intern found me after Farin and I left the restroom. I had a message from Gerta Britt. She wanted to know what, if anything, we were doing with the information she'd given. She was also asking why Mike now worked for News Eighty-Two.

I wanted to curse—I held it back.

"Tell her I'll call back when I have more information," I said. "I have to ask Vann if he's planning a follow-up on that story."

"I will." He grinned and loped toward the intern's shared cubicle.

"Farin?" I turned back to her.

"What?"

"Where's the nearest sporting goods store?"

* * *

I ended up buying three hunting knives; I couldn't decide which might be best to defend my life if it became necessary. A gym might be the next item on my list—I really hadn't exercised since my arrival, so that needed to be rectified. Sure—sleeping later in the morning was a gift—and one I'd have to give up, it appeared.

Uncle Sal would be disappointed in me for letting things go for so long. The threat against Mike's life in a supe bar, as Anita called it, brought that home in a hurry. Those vamps had seen Mike and Rick, I knew that much. Vamps also had long memories. They'd know who I was if they ever saw—or scented—me again.

Yes, I could fight off three human men. Six vamps? Likely another story. For a moment, I wished for my mother's talent, before squashing that thought. It had never manifested in me—or any of my sisters.