Wicked Pleasure

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

WICKED NIGHTS
WICKED PLEASURE

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2006 by Nina Bangs.

 

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Bangs, Nina.

p. cm.

ISBN : 978-1-101-53965-1

1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Fiction. 3. Amusement parks—Fiction. I. Title.

 

PS3602.A636W54 2006

813'.6—dc22

2006003159

 

 

Throbthrobthrob.
“You can vibrate all night, Fo, but I don't feeeeel you.” Kim ignored the frantic pulsing going on in her jacket pocket and concentrated on the Castle of Dark Dreams.

The castle was definitely male. Sensory ripples of overpowering sexuality, danger, and frightening secrets glided over her exposed skin. She smiled. Perfect for a castle, but everything she
didn't
want in a man.

Kim still couldn't believe she'd gotten the job. Her family would go ballistic if they found out she'd broken her promise, but a little sneakiness and lots of creative lying should guarantee they'd never find out. They thought she'd come here to hunt demons. She was really here to live her dream.

Kim pulled the collar of her jacket over her ears. Galveston might not be freezing in March, but a drizzly night could still be miserable and chilly.

“Take me out, Kimmie. I'm your partner, your electronic identifier of all things demonic.”

Kim glanced at her pocket. Fo could express any emotion that suited her annoying little self, and right now she was into an irritating mix of wheedling and whiny.

“Uh-uh. Isn't going to happen. Your success rate in fingering demons is in single digits, Fo. Remember the White House? The president? Can we say humiliating? Our nation's commander in chief
wasn't
amused. Don't think we'll be getting an invite to the Oval Office anytime soon.”

Kim continued to admire the castle's exterior. She had the gut feeling that the Castle of Dark Dreams only came alive when night shadows enveloped it. Words like
threatening
and
brooding
came to mind. Even though spotlights bathed it in a brilliant glow, she'd bet its heart still lived in darkness.

Threatening, brooding
. Suddenly she felt uneasy. Nothing physical. Just a faint tap on the door of her consciousness, a warning that anger and desperation waited outside. More disturbing was the darkly erotic flow of something she sensed hiding behind these emotions. An uninvited visitor.

Erotic flow? Okay, so she hadn't been with a man for a while, but this didn't feel like a playful, gotta-have-some-great-lovin' moment. This wasn't ordinary need. It was a compulsion. Not something she'd feel or
want
to feel. Angry and desperate? Nooo. Sure Dad ticked her off by assuming she'd want to spend the rest of her life in the family business, but that didn't come anywhere near desperate.

Kim took a deep breath. She was probably way too deep into the castle's mood. A few in her family were still intuitive to a certain degree, not enough to recognize demons as their ancestors did, but enough to
sense
things. And yeah, she had a vivid imagination. Still, she'd never experienced this kind of feeling before. For once, she was relieved when Fo spoke.

“Fine, so I made one little mistake. The president forgave you. Besides, all of those cameras and mikes confused my sensors. But this time I'm right. I detect all kinds of supernatural activity here. You need me.” Fo sounded positive about that.

Right. Like she needed a big fat wart on her nose. Kim had passed up the more technologically advanced versions of the Vaughn family's demon detectors exactly because they, well, detected demons. She hated the family business, so she'd chosen Fo, short for First One, specifically because Fo couldn't find a demon even if the devil drop-kicked her into hell. This was a good thing. The fewer demons detected, the less demon destroying Kim had to do. And Kim was all about avoiding her destiny.

A brief pause for conscience-appeasing justifications. Unlike the rest of her family, she hadn't swallowed whole the belief that every entity identified by her ancestors as evil was a demon. Back when her family used their enhanced sensitivity to root out demonic beings, the Vaughns hadn't always come down on the side of goodness and light.

She'd found proof in the family's record books that the accused “demon” was sometimes a very human enemy destroyed under the guise of ridding mankind of evil. Besides, in ancient times all entities painted with the name “demon” weren't considered wicked or minions of Satan. Her family chose to ignore that fact.

“Kimmie, I sense demons dead ahead. Umm, if you take me out right now I can be ready to destroy the soul-sucking slime buckets with no muss and no fuss. Then you can just kick their ashes into the grass.”

“Not now, Fo.” Lately, a disturbing trend in the demon-hunting business had further alienated her from her family and relatives. Family heads had decided that the current crop of detectors was behind the curve, that some demons had found a way to circumvent their sensors. The more dedicated hunters hated the safety feature that made it impossible to destroy anything the detectors didn't identify as demonic. Fail-safe devices were a pain in the butt.

“The demons are really close, Kimmie. I bet they're close enough for you to smell their disgusting sulfur breath. What are you going to do?”

“Give them a breath mint.” And so, a few of the far-flung members of the demon-hunting Vaughn family had decided to destroy “evil entities” in the old way, by lopping off their heads with a sword, even if the detectors didn't agree.

Now this is where things got sticky. If the demon was manifesting in its true form, no problem. But if the demon had possessed a human, then lopping off a head sort of did permanent damage to the innocent vessel. Some of the Vaughns, though, had no patience with drawn-out exorcisms. What the hey, it was worth some collateral damage to rid the world of evil entities. It was all good to the fanatical few.

“You'll be sorry you didn't take me out, Kimmie. While they're kicking your sorry behind all over the courtyard, I'll be stuck in your pocket.”

“Uh-huh. Then you'll be able to lay an I-told-you-so on me as I eat dirt.” Kim wasn't a destroyer. She was a builder. If she came across something truly evil, and she had proof that it was a malevolent spirit, she'd destroy it. But she wouldn't make demon destroying the driving force in her life. There were enough obsessed hunters in her family to more than make up for her lack of enthusiasm. Besides, she intended to have a husband and children someday. She refused to put them in danger from a bunch of ticked-off malevolent spirits.

“Just take me out for a minute so I can see everything. How would you like it if someone stuck
you
in their pocket and forgot about you?” Fo knew how to play the guilt card.

The only flaw in Fo's reasoning was that she
never
let Kim forget about her. Surrendering to the inevitable, Kim reached into her pocket, pulled Fo out, and flipped her open. To anyone who didn't know better, Fo looked like a camera phone. Only Kim knew that Fo's true function in life was to be a little pain in the butt.

Fo's small screen lit up, and her huge purple eyes outlined in neon pink blinked open. Fo was
not
into subtle.

“You know, the whole goal in demon hunting is to sneak up on the demons. We're talking low-key here. Cell phones don't have eyes.” Kim had allowed Fo to have eyes and choose her own eye color. Fine, so she'd said okay to the eyes because she felt conflicted about her demon detector.

The rest of Kim's family treated their detectors as necessary pieces of technology like their computers. No angst over the true nature of
their
demon-hunting tools. But Kim had to constantly hum loudly over an inner voice that tried to whisper “AI” in her ear.

Everyone in her family had cracked up the one time she'd mentioned the words “artificial intelligence” in relation to Fo. They'd agreed between guffaws that, yeah, Fo was AI all right—Absolutely Ineffectual. Offended for Fo—who of course had no feelings to hurt, who was just the creation of an inept programmer—Kim had never again voiced any doubts about the detector to her family.

“Forget it, Kimmie. I like my eyes.” Fo paused almost as though she was actually . . . thinking.

Kim rushed to assure herself that Fo wasn't thinking. Any pause was due to the detector's flawed innards.

“Look at it from my point of view. I don't have a body. I don't have one single physical thing that can express my personality, my
individuality
. Just my eyes. So purple and pink is who I am.”