Personal Demon (23 page)

“I wonder how you see me,” she said. “Am I rippling in green panic? Smelling like ice-cream hysteria?”

He looked her over for a moment. Tilted his head to one side. “You’re a disco ball. Very pretty. A cracked porcelain disco ball, ready to shatter. Let’s work some of that off, shall we?”

“Some of what—?”

He kissed her, and she was glad he’d shut her up.

His hands moved over her, totally exciting even though she felt his touch through her coat and layers of clothes.

Keep an open mind,
his voice floated into her head.

Open.

And they were naked together. Inside each other, thoughts as real as need. Hands and mouths on skin hot with—

Ivy pulled abruptly away, out of the explosive pleasure, mentally and physically. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

They were fooling around in a churchyard. He was a vampire. She was—confused. But one thing she wasn’t was staying there and desecrating a house of worship with lewd and lascivious behavior. It might not be her religion, but you had to respect sacred spaces.

Christopher stood up and looked around. “I completely agree with you, Ivy,” he said, without her having to explain to him.

They hurried back to Ariel’s. And this time she didn’t mind that he sped her along with his hand tightly around her wrist.

T
hey went up to the second floor and fell onto the bed in the first bedroom they found. Coats and shoes came off quickly, then they slowed down and savored undressing each other. Ivy took a moment to turn on a bedside lamp. She wanted to see Christopher, and she couldn’t see in the dark.

“Are you sure you can’t see in the dark?” he asked when he caught the thought.

“I never have before.”

“I’m not much to look at.”

“From the neck up,” she said, unbuttoning his shirt, kissing his chest as she did so. She ran her hands over his chest and down his hard, flat stomach. “I like what I see.”

“Ditto.”

“Ditto? Good god, man! This ain’t no Patrick Swayze ghost movie!”

He laughed as he caressed her breast, teased a nipple until he got a whimper of need out of her. “You do realize most people take sex with vampires very seriously, don’t you?”

“That isn’t seriousness, darlin’, that’s frozen with terror.”

“No respect. None at all.”

B
ut there was fear in her. She chose to make love with him, to take the risks. Her bravery moved him, added depth to his passion for her.

“Most people don’t know what they’re getting into with my kind.”

“Most don’t have a choice.”

None did, as far as he knew. “That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

Just because she’d decided she wanted him as much as he wanted her didn’t mean he wouldn’t have brought her to his bed no matter what. He loved her acceptance, but it didn’t mean she had a choice.

Ah, but this was Chicago. Where the rules were different.

“Luckily, I’m not from around here.”

He pulled her down, turned her onto her back. His mouth came down on one beautiful, pale bare breast, fangs exposed. Just as the cell phone in her purse rang.

Oh, no,
he thought when she pushed against his shoulders.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

The phone kept ringing.

“People are being murdered,” Ivy reminded him. “Black magic’s building all around us. Don’t you feel it?”

He lifted his head, grinned as she blinked wide, surprised eyes at his fangs. Yes, they were impressive.

“That’s Selena’s ringtone,” Ivy said. “If I don’t answer, she’ll be over here with a couple of officers toting flamethrowers and chain saws.”

Chain saws?

Christopher remembered the one-armed vampire in the magic shop.

“That spoils the romantic mood,” he complained. But he rolled away from Ivy, letting her get up to fetch her purse.

Y
our timing sucks,” Ivy said when she answered the call.

“So does your boyfriend,” Selena replied cheerfully. “When are you going to rip out his heart and come home to your family?”

“You do know he can hear you?”

“I’m counting on it. Vegas!” she shouted. Ivy held the phone away from her ear. “You, get out of my town. Leave my cousin alone. You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

“I do,” Christopher answered calmly. “I’ve met her grandfather.”

“He’s not the dangerous one of that pair.”

“I shall charm the dear old lady with bouquets of mandrake and deadly nightshade,” Christopher said.

“She prefers cash. Ivy, sweetie, I have some info for you. Do you remember Ian Doherty?”

Ivy sighed sadly at hearing the name. “We went to school together.”

Magic school, lessons on raising and controlling power from the familia elders. Spell books and mental exercises. Ian was an empath, and far too sensitive to the emotions of others. He had too much talent, and never was able to shield it properly. Eventually, he’d been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Heavy doses of medication and a lot of psychiatric supervision were the only things that helped him cope.

“Magic ruined him,” Ivy said. “I lost track of him when he moved into a group home. I shouldn’t have.”

Ian had always had a crush on her, but her emotions always caused him a lot of discomfort.

“None of us should have lost track, but we did. I checked with his parents. They said he’d been doing okay. He’s been living on his own for a while, holding down an office job, but he dropped out of sight a couple of weeks ago.”

Ivy’s heart sank. “The demon picked him up? Possessed him?”

“I don’t know anything yet. But—Ian surfaced at a suburban police station a couple of hours ago. Not in trouble, but bailing out a crazy who had been picked up wandering by the Des Plaines River. He gave a story about their living in a group home together. The local cops couldn’t hold the trespasser, but he spooked them with talk about John Wayne Gacy. That’s not a name anybody wants to hear. Especially not in that neighborhood.”

“And not with people being murdered like— Holy shit!”

Ivy dropped the phone and sat down hard on the bed. She’d gotten it. Her grandfather’s rambling rolled around in her head, burst out of her lips.

“Knife clown. Strangling clown. Raping clown.”

“What?” Selena shouted out of the phone on the floor.

Christopher picked up the phone. “Why is she on about clowns?”

Selena said, “Gacy was an amateur clown. He entertained local kiddies.”

“John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer in Chicago back in the seventies,” Ivy explained to Christopher. “Some of his victims’ bodies were found in the Des Plaines River.”

“Only one, I think,” Selena added. “The one that got him caught? I’ll have to look it up. It’s long before my time.”

Christopher handed the phone to Ivy and sat down beside her. “The demon has made his slaves think that they are specific serial killers rather than simply sending them out to kill?”

“Yes.”

Ivy was so certain of this that the word floated in the air around her, multiplying many times before fading away.

He had seen and done many terrible things, as a mortal military officer, and as an immortal vampire hunter of other vampires. But this demon was—

“Sick,” he said. “Horribly inventive. Cruel.”

And Ivy was supposed to hunt this creature down? He ran his hand up and down her bare back, comforting, possessive.

“I won’t have it,” he said. “You are to stop this nonsense immediately.” Yes, he sounded like a Victorian husband, and that was exactly how he meant it. He was master here.

She didn’t notice.

“Jack the Ripper,” she said. Her gaze turned to his, her green-brown eyes full of hope. “You killed Jack the Ripper. That’s why you’re here.”

“What?” Selena demanded.

Christopher shut off the phone before tossing it across the room. “I didn’t come here to help you,” he said. “It’s a coincidence.”

“We both know there’s no such thing in our world. You came for Jack the Ripper whether you knew it or not.”

She was so very sure. Why had he chosen Chicago to begin his investigation? Because it was the center of a land that was such alien territory to old-world strigoi? To speak to a brother in blood he hoped was trustworthy? To meet Ivy, his fated companion?

He didn’t believe in destiny. But she was right, their kind didn’t encounter simple coincidences.

He smiled at her. She took this as a good sign.

“We don’t know that one of these poor murdering bastards thinks he’s Jack the Ripper,” he said. “Besides, I didn’t set out to rid the world of Jack the Ripper that night. I wasn’t a hero then.”

Not a hero now,
he added to himself.

“I disposed of him to save myself,” he told Ivy. “I murdered him. Plain, simple truth. I murdered the murderer because what he did was driving
me
insane. I was a freak then as much as I’m a freak now. Only I couldn’t control it as well back then. When I killed that little madman, I wasn’t defending Queen and Country and maidenly virtues.”

“Self-defense,” she said.

“Believe that if you like.”

“You saved lives. Protected—”

“Vampires don’t protect mortals.”

“They should. They should be good shepherds of their blood flock even if they aren’t being altruistic. And what about your Legacy lady? Didn’t you meet her because she was stalking Jack the Ripper herself?”

“She is the self-appointed protector of England. She always has been.”

“Good for her. You’re her blood child. Don’t you have her noble blood in your veins?”

“She was born a slave woman in her mortal life, a Briton peasant.”

“Aristocracy isn’t the type of nobility I meant—and you know it.”

Christopher had had more than enough of this discussion. “We are going to have sex now,” he said.

Hardly a romantic declaration, but certainly the truth. He expected an argument. Perhaps even the possibility of bringing out his handcuffs.

She said, “Not until I go to the bathroom first.”

“Fine.”

He wondered why she took her purse, but as long as she wasn’t putting up an argument, he let her do whatever she wished in the loo. Birth control, perhaps? Not necessary for a normal mortal and a vampire, but she was more Roma than she was demon. Roma and strigoi had been known to—very rarely—reproduce. The resulting offspring,
dhampirs
, were so dangerous to vampires it was against the Laws of the Blood to allow them to be born.

The Laws of the Blood don’t allow a lot of fun things, do they?

The thought was his own. But everyone had blasphemous notions now and again. He wasn’t planning on arresting himself for it.

He stopped thinking about anything but wanting Ivy when she walked out of the bathroom, gloriously naked. Well, she was wearing some fetching bright pink lipstick. He told her so as she came to the bed.

She held out her hands. He took them and pulled her onto him as he leaned back, bringing her slowly up the length of his body. He kissed her throat and moved slowly down to her breast.

“Where were we?” he asked. He teased her taut nipples between his fingertips. She moaned and arched against him. “Oh, yes,” he recalled.

Christopher bit her.

Her blood was unexpectedly sweet on his tongue. He’d expected sharp and bitter. He’d been happily anticipating the taste of vinegar, only to be caught unawares as bubbles of sweet wine burst through his senses.

One drink of her would never be enough.

Ivy came the moment his sharp teeth pricked her skin. The orgasm roared through her and didn’t stop. Lost in riding the tidal wave, she didn’t know when the screaming started. Until pain slashed into her head, she didn’t know she wasn’t the one screaming.

She had to push the pain away, crawl out of the pleasure. She got back into the world, into her body, into the room, onto the bed. The screaming continued.

She sat up. Saw the naked body writhing on the floor.

“Christopher!”

His head came up at the sound of his name. It wasn’t Christopher. It wasn’t anything human. It wasn’t anything like a man. Not a face, but a muzzle. A muzzle full of fangs. Animal eyes glowing red, full of animal insanity. Claws. Huge, horrible claws. Reaching out for her.

Ivy ran.

She was up and out of the room faster than she knew she could move. Screams and howls followed her, but Christopher didn’t move from the bedroom.

Oh, Goddess! He couldn’t! He was sick, pain ran through him. It banged against her shielding. Urged her to run back to him, to hold him.

But what help would that be?

He was under attack, somehow.

What the hell was the matter—

“Shit! Hell! Damnation!”

Ivy ran for the nearest telephone.

Lawrence answered the phone in Aunt Cate’s apartment.

“I need you here now!” Ivy shouted. “I need a vampire! And Aunt Cate. I poisoned him. Goddess damn it, I poisoned him! I need a healer. Here. Right now. Poisoned vampire!”

“A vampire drank your blood,” Lawrence said calmly. “Of course you poisoned him.”

“I don’t want him poisoned, damn it! Get over here! We’re at Ariel’s!” she added. “Can’t you hear him screaming? Please come quick!”

But the line had already gone dead.
Beep, beep, beep
filled one ear. Christopher’s distant pain filled the other.

Ivy sank to her knees, crying. Let them be on the way! Please let them be on their way!

T
his is all my fault,” Ivy told the witch and vampire when they found her outside the bedroom door.

She barely remembered making her way up the stairs to crouch as close as she dared get to the monster. She didn’t know how long she listened to him whimpering and groaning until she tried to reach him.

She crawled inside the room, moving slowly and carefully, trying to get to him. He’d crawled toward her and sank claws into her calf. She’d managed to kick him hard enough to get away, to get out the door, and slam it. She was surprised that he hadn’t followed and deeply afraid that he was too weak to.

“You’re covered in blood,” Aunt Cate said.

“It’s hers,” Lawrence said. “And it smells bad. Wrong.”