Raised in Fire (Fire and Ice Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “What was the first crime scene?” Callie asked.

  “I’ll explain later. C’mon.” I ushered them along as the first policemen walked through the door. More than a few people rushed out the back door with us.

  “What now?” Callie asked as we hurried along the alleyway.

  “Tonight we need to get back to the hotel, but tomorrow we’ll find one or more of the mages responsible for summoning the demon and squeeze the information out of him or her. I’m tired of playing this game. These last two days have seemed like a week. It’s time to end it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I stepped out of the shower and glanced through the opened sliding doors at the windows. Blackness still coated the sky, barely allowing a few points of light for tenacious stars that would not be conquered.

  I crossed into the bed area. The clock read 4:53. Soon streaks of light would cut through the night, warning of the approach of daylight.

  A bottle of whiskey sat on the small table near the couch at the front of the suite. Darius must’ve brought it in while I was in the shower. The note said, Get as drunk as you need to.

  I smiled. He was a vampire, which implied a certain level of selfishness, but when he let himself, he was a damned good guy as well. One who paid attention, and remembered the little things.

  “Careful, Reagan,” I said softly, tying the towel above the swell of my breasts. If anywhere on a mostly flat chest could be called a swell. “This is how it always starts. They’re wily, these vampires. They’ve had hundreds of years to charm their way into bloodstreams.”

  I poured myself some whiskey and closed my eyes after it hit my taste buds. Darius always bought the best.

  I checked my phone as I thought about my options for pajamas. They were sparse, since I mostly slept in one overworked and under-washed tank top and my undies. I did have some yoga pants and a loose T-shirt, so I supposed those would have to do. This wasn’t the right kind of battle for leather.

  I’d missed a text from J.M. earlier, asking how it was going. I thought about replying, since it was kind of nice that someone was checking in with me, but a glance at the clock had me putting the phone down. If he was like most people and kept the phone near his bed, and it was on, I might wake him. I doubt he cared about my day that much.

  I brushed my hair, glancing at the window again. A part of me wanted to wait until dawn approached in the hopes Darius would take what he needed and go right to sleep. I knew vampires treated the days like most humans treated the nights, though. They needed sleep, but as long as the sun didn’t touch them, they didn’t have to sleep. Darius could stay up all day if he was closing in on a kill.

  Me, sexually speaking.

  I blew out another breath as my stomach flipped.

  The days and nights with that other vampire surfaced in my memory. It was still the most enjoyable thing I’d ever experienced. The very best. Nothing could quite compare. As soon as their saliva hit your bloodstream, that was it. Your body was no longer your own. Suddenly it was a pleasure cruise taking you away, and in the past, I’d wanted nothing more than to ride that boat all the way out to sea.

  Granted, my mom had just died at the time. Really, I’d wanted a seat on any boat leaving the harbor because I was not stable. Instead of resorting to drugs, I had found a vampire.

  I was a different person now, though. An experienced, knowledgeable person who was mostly stable. It would be absurd to assume a vampire could still affect me the same way…

  After another sip of whiskey, I dried my hair in a towel and stared at the closed door dividing Darius’s room from mine. He’d closed it after delivering the whiskey. When I went over to him was completely up to me. Despite all his talk about chasing and hunting, he was giving me the control.

  He probably knew that if I didn’t have it, I’d tell him to get lost.

  “Oh, this is a terrible idea,” I said as another wave of butterflies surged through my stomach. “A terrible, bad idea.” The whiskey went down a little quicker that time.

  “But really, what’s the worst that can happen?” I asked myself, needing to hear a voice, even my own. “I should call Callie.”

  I shook my head. Another terrible idea. She’d start plotting Darius’s death immediately. She didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. And if I tried to explain, she’d tell me how stupid I was for having promised such an asinine thing.

  “I am stupid. Oh my God, I am so stupid.” Another gulp of whiskey. “But again, what’s the worst that can happen?” I thought about it for a second. “The absolute worst would be if I fall into a trance and start worshipping the ground he walks on. If I lose myself to him.”

  That wasn’t helping. I shouldn’t think of the worst.

  “What’s the best that can happen?” I asked myself as I shrugged into my T-shirt. “If I stick out my neck, give him the blood he needs, and he absolutely hates the taste, maybe it’ll break the spell I somehow have over him.”

  I nodded. Yes. That was the best thing. I needed to hope for that thing.

  My yoga pants went on, and I took another shot of whiskey, summoning my courage.

  This was worse than slowly creeping around someone’s house waiting for them to pop out like a jack-in-the-box. Horror movies should be made of what I was about to do.

  Oh wait, they were. And for good reason.

  I closed the sun-proof drapery and faced that door again. It was time. I couldn’t stall any longer.

  I felt like dead Reagan walking.

  When I reached the door, I hesitated, then ran back for another shot. In times like these, I wished I had a normal person’s alcohol tolerance. As it was, the alcohol was just taking the fine edge off. I still had a lot of stress and anxiety. A lot of stress and anxiety.

  Back at the door, I lifted my hand to knock. Then realized it was technically my door.

  After opening it, I sucked in a breath.

  All of the available raised surfaces were covered in lit candles, radiating warm, flickering light. Rose petals littered the floor and the made bed. Darius sat on his sofa, dressed in a tailored suit and swirling a glass of something brown in a snifter.

  As I walked in on wooden legs, he inhaled the contents of his glass before taking a sip. He turned his gaze to me. “I miss a good cognac.”

  “I…should change…” It wasn’t quite a question, but was definitely leaning in that direction.

  “Of course not. You look as beautiful as ever.” He stood gracefully and waved his hand toward the bottle of cognac on the coffee table in front of him. “Please, would you care for a glass? Or perhaps you’d rather bring in the whiskey? I can also ring for anything you’d like. Name it. Are you hungry?”

  I’d called for room service shortly after our return to the hotel—and proceeded to eat more than a starving pig. Otherwise I would’ve said yes. One thing I did love about my dad’s heritage—I could eat all day without gaining a pound. That part definitely wasn’t human. My mom used to curse me for it.

  “I’ll get the whiskey.”

  “Of course. Or I can grab it, if you’d like to sit down?”

  “Yes, please,” I responded meekly. I suddenly felt very out of place. I knew I should act like a lady, but I had no idea how ladies typically acted.

  “Please.” He held out his hand.

  I avoided it like he carried the plague. Lady or not, touching him needed to wait. I contorted my body expertly enough to win a game of Twister to get around him without making contact, then sat down on the chair adjacent to the couch. He turned on the jets, zoomed into my room, and was back a moment later and pouring me a drink.

  I took it with a nervous smile. He sat into his original seat and resumed swirling his cognac.

  “What do you think of the events of today?” he asked pleasantly.

  I cleared my throat, trying to dislodge the flurry of butterflies still flapping around my middle. “I think the Mages’ Guild is suffocating this town.” I crossed my legs a
t the knee. Then uncrossed them and recrossed them at the ankle.

  “Reagan, please. Don’t be nervous.”

  “I am extremely nervous. I don’t know how not to be extremely nervous.”

  He smiled. “I realize I am asking a lot of you. That you are honor-bound to follow through. So in that vein, I’ll share a troubled spot of my past with you, if you’d like?”

  I crossed my leg at the thigh this time. It felt the most comfortable, while not feeling comfortable at all.

  Why did this feel like I was losing my virginity?

  “Sure,” I said.

  He smiled again, disarmingly. Like he knew my skin felt too tight and my legs were trembling.

  “I think you know that I am very old. The last time I was human was in William the Conqueror’s time.” My eyes widened. That meant he was nearly a thousand years old. “You are surprised. Yes, it is hard for someone of your youth to comprehend living that long. And believe me, not many immortals can sustain their life to do so. The human world has always been turbulent. Their ways violent. It was as such when I was human, and it is so now. Magical people are the same. To make it so long is difficult. It requires skill and finesse, not just the ability.”

  “But…I thought you were in the French Revolution?”

  “As a vampire, yes. I lived a great many of my years in France before I had the means to make my home wherever I chose.” He paused, but when I left it at that, he continued. “You once asked if someone had ever tried to trap me. Tried to get me to a certain location in order to kill me.”

  I squinted in thought. That sounded like me, but I couldn’t recall saying it. Of course, I rarely recalled what I’d said a few minutes before, so that was no surprise.

  As if he could tell I needed prompting, he said, “It was when we were on the way to the unicorn paddock. You were giving me your thoughts as to why someone would wipe away their footprints. You said—”

  “Right, yes,” I said as the memory flooded back. I’d warned him our mark might be trying to trap us. “I remember.”

  “I was a landowner as a human, born to wealth. I’d lost my parents early, sadly, and at first had a hard time shouldering the responsibility. I nearly lost my fortune to gambling and mismanagement. It wasn’t until I was twenty-one, an age much further into manhood at that time than it is now, that I had everything turned around. My vast estate was once again prosperous, and I was living the life meant for me. It was then I opened my eyes to taking a wife and producing an heir. There were many I could choose from who would solidify my holdings and birth strong, plump babies.”

  “Wow,” I muttered.

  “But for all the prudent choices, there was one of lesser status, a bad match, who had always caught my eye. A man’s undoing is always a woman, is it not?” His smile was sad and directed downward, at his snifter. “She was as bright as the sun. As beautiful as a blooming spring flower. Her wit and charisma drew me in from the moment I met her.”

  He paused, and swirled the brown liquid around his glass. Candlelight glittered off the surface.

  “I did not love her, but I was not far from it. I needed only a push. But even still, I would’ve done anything for her. As wrong as the match was, she was my beloved. Many remember their first sexual experience. Me, I remember her, even now. Her rosy lips, plump and supple. Her laugh, so hearty and rich despite her delicate features. The demure way she would look up at me through her lashes.” He took a sip of his cognac, his eyes faraway. “I was eager to call her my wife. Promised to bathe her in jewels. Elevate her status. Little did I know that she was on a mission. I embodied sin, in her eyes. I did not worship every Sunday, sometimes choosing business matters instead. I did not bow my head when grace was said. Small things. More importantly, various relics she found around my castle suggested to her that I was a vampire. It was a somewhat predominant fear at the time, and if the pain wasn’t still so acute, I would find that humorous, since it is what I became.” His smile turned brittle. “I did not know of her fears at the time. I did not know she was a religious fanatic who imagined me akin to the devil. I let her lure me to a lovers’ rendezvous, ignoring how poorly her behavior fit with her religion. I was blinded by her beauty. By her charm. Like a fool.”

  Silence rained down between us as he stared at nothing, lost to the memories.

  After some time, he took a breath, and it was only then I’d realized he hadn’t been breathing. That I hadn’t been, either.

  “She’d arranged for me to meet her at a carriage for an afternoon in the countryside. I arrived early, but there was no sign of her. At first I assumed she was on her way, or that she’d gotten caught trying to sneak out alone, but I was set upon by a gang of men. I was tall for the time, broad. Strong. I defended myself as best I could, but there were too many. Near the end, one of them attempted to drive a stake through my heart. It was a paltry attempt, much too high and shallow, but the damages from the beating would’ve ended me. The blood loss alone might have killed me.

  “As I lay there, bleeding, I heard the carriage finally approach. Her sweet voice rang out. I thought I was saved.” He gave a sardonic laugh. “She’d hired the miscreants. Paid them as they left. She assumed me dead—and she was happy about it. It was only then that I realized my grave error. And also…that she did not care for me. Worse, she loathed me. How blind I’d been. I blame that on youth, of course. If only blame made it any less painful.”

  “But you didn’t die,” I said softly.

  “No. I lay there, waiting for death to take me under. To stop the pain. That was when Vlad happened upon me.”

  I sat forward. “Vlad made you?”

  “Yes. He wasn’t even fully middle tier at the time, but he had a cunning insight, even then. He recognized what he saw, lying there in the mud. He carried me to his quarters below ground and kept me alive until he could turn me. I reclaimed my fortune.”

  “And what about the girl?”

  Darius’s face turned away. “I could not kill her. I could not. It wasn’t in me.”

  “I’m sensing a pattern. Except the part where I sic a gang of people on you.”

  Oh wait, I was thinking of doing that with Callie and Dizzy if he didn’t bugger off.

  My gulp interrupted the silence.

  Like a soft breeze, I barely heard his next words. “I didn’t feel a fraction for her what I feel for you. That should not be possible in my status of immortality.”

  “It was a long time ago. I’m sure the memory has faded.”

  “If there is one thing that hasn’t faded, it is the memory of that betraying witch.”

  “Yikes. I stand corrected. Sore subject, clearly.”

  “Yes. I haven’t spoken of it to anyone but Vlad, and that was directly after he’d changed me.”

  “Dizzy said something about someone accusing you of being a vampire and trying to ram a stake through your heart.”

  “Yes. What he spoke of was a misunderstanding. A friend of mine had drunk too much. Desmond has no idea of the true story. Of the depth of the pain that first betrayal has caused me.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think Dizzy was talking about a girl.”

  “It is always about a girl.” His sad smile made another appearance. “Our folly always has to do with a girl in one way or another.”

  “That’s because men are dependent and can’t do anything on their own. You think you run the world, and then you get sick and everything stops while you mope and whine. Let this be your warning. Quit stalking me. Nothing good can possibly come of it.” I sobered for a moment. “I’m actually serious. Nothing good can come from hanging around me. I plan on killing every demon I see. If that’s going to piss off your daddy, you better walk away now.”

  His expression darkened.

  It was probably the daddy comment.

  “Would you knowingly trap me to kill me, Reagan?” he asked, his eyes delving into mine.

  I shook my head and shrugged at the same time, all the possible scenari
os of how that might play out running through my head. “Maybe. I don’t know. If I need to get clear of you and can’t, sure. I might have to kill you. Like I said, you’ve been warned.”

  Unbelievably, a smile graced his lips. “There, you see?”

  I felt my eyebrows crawling up my forehead. “No…?”

  “You are genuine. You are a fighter. A survivor. You would not play nice to my face and then stab me in the back. You are much too honest.”

  “I really don’t think you should hang your hat on that conclusion.”

  “There is something special about you, Reagan. Something…otherworldly.”

  “Underworldly, you mean.”

  “Yes.” He leaned his head on the back of the couch and looked up at the ceiling. His ankle crossed over his leg. “I did not elaborate on a vampire’s ability to kill demons.”

  I yawned and glanced at the clock. Nearly six in the morning. The sun would be up by now, probably. Or if it wasn’t, it would be soon. We needed to get the show on the road.

  “Only an elder can handle the fifth level, like I said,” he continued. “But a middle-level vampire can handle lesser-powered demons, like you might expect.”

  “I can do that math, yes. Listen, do you need blood? We can chat about sabotage and fights to the death anytime.”

  “You wouldn’t sabotage me,” he said toward the ceiling.

  “That line of thinking nearly got you killed the last time. You need to learn your lesson. But seriously, let’s get those fangs in my neck, yes? I want to hit the hay.”

  His head turned toward me slowly. Hunger flashed in his honeyed eyes. “Are you sure you’re ready?”

  “Yep. Let’s do it.” I stood, because I didn’t want to be too comfortable. “Where, over here?” I backed toward the wall next to the door dividing our suites because it was available wall space and also a good exit plan.

  Chapter Twenty-Three