Much Ado About Vampires do-10 Read online

  It took Alec a minute to work through all of that. “English Satan dude? A demon lord, you mean? Which one? ”

  “Um . . . Dean? No, Dale.”

  “Bael? ”

  “Yes, that’s the guy.”

  “Christ,” he swore.

  “I gather he’s the head bad guy.”

  “Very much so.” He eyed me with speculation. “What did Ulfur do to bring down Bael’s wrath on him, and by extension you and the husband-stealer?”

  “He stole some gold thing. Oh, and this.” I dug into my pocket and pulled out the broken bits of stone and twisted gold.

  “Christ,” he repeated, staring at it in horror. “That’s one of the Tools.”

  “It’s called the Oculus of Lucifer, I think.”

  “Occio di Lucifer . . .” His gaze snapped up to mine, a sense of disbelief and wonder and amazement all rolling around inside him. “The Tool has been destroyed.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t do it, though, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He lifted up my hand that he still held. “You’re glowing.”

  “Well, I can’t see it on myself, but I did see Ulfur with a glow. How come you don’t glow? I mean, shouldn’t you, since you were sent here, too?”

  He looked confused for a second before shaking his head. “Cora, you’re not glowing because you were sent to the Akasha. You’re glowing because somehow you’ve become infused with the power of the Occio di Lucifer. For all intents and purposes, you are the Tool now.”

  “Hey! I am not a tool!” I said before what he had said filtered through the dim recesses of my mind. I gasped and grabbed his arm. “Oh my god, you don’t mean that! Tell me you don’t mean what I think you mean! You do, don’t you? You mean it! I’m Satan’s eyeball! I’m evil!”

  “Calm down, you’re not evil. You’re simply . . . well, I don’t know what you are. The personification of the Occio, assumedly, although I don’t have a lot of experience in that sort of thing. Still, I would guess—”

  I never did find out what he guessed, because at that moment he grabbed me around the waist and literally threw me aside. I smashed into a particularly pointy boulder the size of a small pony, cracking my head against it painfully.

  “I am really not having a good day,” I groaned as I rolled off the boulder to glare at Alec. Or started to glare, but when I realized that he hadn’t just gone mad and thrown me aside because I was now the personification of evil, and had, instead, protected me, I snatched up a couple of rocks and got painfully to my feet.

  The woman who had appeared before the English demon lord was now stalking toward Alec, a wickedlooking sword in her hand, pointed directly at his heart. “I have no quarrel with you, Dark One. Cease interfering and you will not be harmed.”

  Alec, who stood with his back to me, balanced to spring forward, gave a dry little laugh. “I’ve lived in perpetual torment for the last six hundred years. I have no soul, my Beloved was killed almost before my eyes, I tried to destroy my best friend, was banished to the Akasha by my own people, and the woman sent to drive me insane makes me hard just looking at her. There is nothing you can do that will make my existence any more miserable than it already is, demon.”

  I make you hard when you look at me?

  Now is not the time for this discussion.

  The woman smiled a particularly creepy smile. I moved closer to Alec.

  Stay back, querida.

  You’re unarmed. And she has a herkin’ big sword.

  It’s not me she wishes to harm. Stay behind me.

  “Move, Dark One,” the woman commanded.

  I bent to pick up a couple more rocks. OK, you get a little inner squeal for the “hard” comment, and more importantly bonus points for wanting to protect me, but I’m not some delicate little flower who can’t protect herself.

  “Give it up, demon. You won’t get her.” You’re not up to battling a wrath demon. This woman is second-in-command to Bael. She wields more power than you know.

  And you think you’re going to fight her unarmed?

  I have no choice.

  “Do you know who I am?” she snarled.

  “I don’t particularly care,” Alec said, shifting his weight as if he were bored with the conversation. “You’re wasting your time. Go back to Bael and tell him he will not have this woman.”

  Alec truly felt he had no choice but to fight the demon; that I knew. He carefully nursed anger inside him, using its strength to focus his attention on the woman, his intentions quite clear even to me—he would die trying to protect me.

  I didn’t ask myself why a man who a few minutes ago walked away from me, not to mention so callously killed others in the past, would risk his own life to protect me, a stranger; I just accepted that he felt that way, and started frantically looking around for something he could use as a weapon.

  Thank you for not arguing with me.

  Hey, I may not be comfortable with taking down Satan’s BFF, but I’m not stupid. You have a whole lot more experience fighting people like that woman than I do.

  “She is your Beloved? ” the demon asked, speculation rife in her eyes as she tried to look around him to see me.

  Alec hesitated for two heartbeats before answering, “Yes. Bael will not have her.”

  I held my breath for a moment, gently feeling around the edges of his mind, relaxing when I realized that he believed he was lying.

  “That she is bound to you will make your destruction that much sweeter, but it means little else to Lord Bael. If you wish to amuse me for a few minutes before I take her, then I will indulge you.”

  Her blade flashed, causing Alec to leap back. I felt the sting of pain in his mind, and knew the demon’s sword had slashed him. How bad did she hurt you?

  Not badly. Stay back.

  Alec, you can’t fight her. You don’t have a weapon. She’ll just carve you up like a rotisserie chicken.

  I would thank you for your faith in my abilities to protect you, but I’m a little busy at the moment.

  I searched desperately for something that he could use for fighting her. I’m sorry. All I can find are rocks.

  The demon laughed as her sword danced around Alec. He moved steadily backward as he dodged the worst of the sword cuts, shielding me with his body. I could feel the pain each time the sword struck true, driving my own level of frustration sky-high.

  I don’t need rocks. Just stay behind me, out of her reach.

  Without warning, the woman suddenly lunged forward, the sword she wielded piercing clean through his body, popping out his back.

  “No!” I screamed, flinging my handful of rocks at her head as I jumped forward.

  “Stay back!” Alec yelled, twisting to catch me as I tried to fling myself on the woman.

  She snarled words that hurt my insides, tearing away something within me. My inner devil screamed in agony, and as Alec’s hands closed around my waist, reality seemed to shift and refocus itself, a buzzing sound like that of a thousand hissing voices filling my ears, and I froze, locked in position, as the buzzing grew louder and louder until it burst out of me.

  A high, horrible scream tore through the air, followed by the metallic clang of an object hitting the ground. The buzzing in my head faded to nothing, leaving me reeling against Alec, staring in stupefaction at the sword lying on the rocky ground before us.

  The woman was gone, a faint black whiff of smoke slowly curling around itself the only indicator of her presence.

  “What . . . what happened? ” I asked, instinctively clinging to Alec as he bent to pick up the sword. He looked at it curiously for a moment, then turned his head to consider me.

  “I believe we just received confirmation of our suspicions. You destroyed Bael’s wrath demon.”

  “I did? How? I was just standing here—”

  “I think . . . I think I used you.” He looked back at the sword in his hand. “Just as if you were a Tool of Bael, I used the power you harness to destroy the demon’s f
orm and send it back to Abaddon.”

  “Are you saying I’ve got some sort of demonic powers ? Because I may be a lapsed Catholic, but that’s going to definitely send me screaming to the nearest priest.”

  “No, you don’t have the power itself,” he said, now examining his stomach.

  “Aieee!” I screamed at the blood that soaked the lower half of his shirt. “Oh my god! Lie down! No, don’t move! I’ll get a . . . a . . .” I spun around, searching for something I could use to stanch the flow of blood. “Good lord, what sort of place is this that they don’t have a first aid kit?”

  “I’m all right. The bleeding has stopped.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, coming to a swift decision. I took him by the arm and gently but firmly guided him over to the nearest butt-height rock. “You were skewered clean through. Those sorts of wounds simply do not stop bleeding. Now, you sit here, and I’ll go find someone to help you. Try not to move around.”

  He dug in his heels midway to the rock, his expression alternating between incredulity and annoyance. “You don’t want to listen to me, do you?”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I said, tugging on him as gently as I could. “You’re in shock. You don’t know what you’re saying. I’m simply doing what’s best for you.”

  A little ripple of surprise claimed him. You’re . . . tending me?

  If you want to call it that.

  No one has ever done that. No one has cared.

  Well, sheesh, you’re hurt, badly hurt, and although I may not want to have sex with you again—

  You do, though. I can feel your interest in me just as you can feel mine in you.

  —although I may not want to have sex with you again, I’m not so callous that I’ll let you die here. Or come close to dying again.

  Why not? You think I’m a murderer and abuser of women.

  “I never said you abused a woman. I just said you killed one.”

  “One day we will discuss why you had a vision of my past, but for now, allow me to relieve your anxiety by showing you this.” He pulled open his shirt.

  Instinctively I flinched at the blood on his belly, but then I realized that, rather than looking at a great big gaping hole, I was seeing blood and nothing more.

  “You . . . I saw the sword. What . . . ?” I touched the spot on his stomach where the sword had pierced him. There was an ugly red line there, hot to the touch, with dried blood flaking off around it, but no open wound.

  “Dark Ones have regenerative powers.”

  I spread my fingers out over the wound, noticing that his eyes lightened a little in color from a dark forest green to jade. “You’re hungry again.”

  “I lost blood. That happens.”

  “You should feed—”

  “No. You’ve given me too much blood already.”

  “I feel fine now,” I said, waving my arms around in the air as if that proved my point.

  Querida, as you found out, to a Dark One, the act of feeding can be highly arousing. Do you really wish for me to bury myself in your body again?

  The words, spoken with such intimacy, caused my body to go up in flames. For a few seconds, I was about to tell him to go ahead; then the good part of my brain, the smart part, shoved the inner devil aside and took over. “I’m happy to give you more blood if you need it, but there will be no more sex, Alec. That was an aberration, nothing more.”

  He said nothing, but I could feel him thinking plenty. He just didn’t let me see what it was he was thinking.

  I walked along beside him as he rebuttoned his shirt, heading once again to the north. “So, about this Tool thing. I don’t like being evil. How do I make it stop?”

  “You’re not evil; you’re simply a conduit to Bael’s strength. That’s all the Tools are—they have no abilities of their own; they simply allow others to tap into his power.”

  “So you used me to access the English dude’s power to destroy his own demon?”

  Alec’s expression was bleak, surprisingly so, considering that he had just defeated someone who I assumed was going to make mincemeat of us both. “Yes.”

  “Why aren’t you happy about this?” I asked, nudging him in the side. He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me up next to him. I ignored, for the moment, the fact that I felt extremely secure snuggled against him. “This is a good thing, isn’t it? I’m not evil. You got rid of that mean chick, although why she wanted to hurt me is totally beyond me. Assuming she wanted to hurt me. Maybe she wanted to take me out of the Akasha?”

  “She’s Bael’s right hand. I can assure you that for whatever reason Bael desires your presence—and I assume it’s because he put two and two together, and realizes what happened to the Tools—it is not going to be something you want to experience.”

  I shivered at the dark images in his head. “That doesn’t explain why you’re not happy about taking down his evil henchman.”

  Alec sighed again. He seemed to be doing a lot of that.

  “I can’t help it. My life has suddenly become fraught with things to sigh over,” he said, his grip around my waist tightening. “I’m not happy because if you are now effectively the Occio di Lucifer, it means every being with half a brain is going to want you.”

  I stopped and glared at him. “Just because we had sex half an hour after I first saw you doesn’t mean I’m a raving nymphomaniac!”

  “Want you to use you, Cora,” he interrupted, pulling me back up against him. “Or, more properly, to use Bael’s power.”

  Horror skittered along my flesh as I understood what it was he meant. I had a vision of evil being after evil being lining up to use me as some sort of a demonic power source, blasting the world with innumerable cruelties. “Oh, shit.”

  “And lucky me,” he added, his voice as grim as his expression. “It appears you have chosen me to protect you from them all.”

  Chapter Six

  “You know, this doesn’t look like hell.”

  “That’s because it’s not Abaddon. It’s the Akasha.” Alec strolled beside me as we walked down a long hallway, our footsteps echoing slightly along the smooth walls and stone floor.

  “Yeah, but that greeter person told Diamond and me that this was a place of perpetual torment, and that sounds like hell to me. However, this”—I waved a hand around at our surroundings—“this just looks like any old office building. I don’t see anything tormentish about it.”

  “Try opening one of the doors,” he said, nodding to one as we passed it.

  I paused. “Why? Is something ghoulish going on in there? Are people being dismembered? Tortured? Eaten by fire ants?”

  He crossed his arms and nodded toward the nearest door. “Open it and see.”

  “All right, but if it’s something gross, I’m aiming at you when I barf up my breakfast.” I opened the door and looked in, braced for the worst.

  A group of a half-dozen people sat around a long table, papers scattered across its surface, which was also littered with half-empty bottles of water, and a rainbow of highlighters. Crumpled paper spilled off the table onto the floor, leading in a trail to a whiteboard covered in several different styles of handwriting.

  “We are agreed, then, are we not,” said a man in a business suit at the head of the table, “that examining the cost savings that will accrue from our cutback on the performance-related functions will make good any and all productivity shortfalls we experience this quarter ? ”

  A woman shook her head and tapped at the table with one of the highlighters. “I believe that if we realign our organizational aims to better benefit the enterprise, we can absolve our office of the clearly unsustainable redundancy of not only the expense claims, but of the external consultants, which I think we all agree will lead to the downfall of this and other management teams within the venture.”

  “No, no, no!” a third man said, hoisting his pants up over his beer belly as he rose to his feet. “If we form a task force to investigate the benefits of a me
ntor program—”

  “Good god,” I said softly, closing the door. “It’s worse than I thought.”

  Alec nodded. “Middle-management committees. Still think this isn’t a bad place?”

  I shuddered. “We have to get out of here.”

  He slid me a look as he took my hand, making me hurry to keep up with his long-legged stride. “I’m glad you’re including me in your escape plans, although I regret to inform you that there is no way to get out of the Akasha short of being summoned out.”

  “Then we’ll just have to arrange for that,” I said, feeling a bit mulish. I didn’t plan on spending the rest of my life dodging committee meetings.

  “And just how do you expect to pull that off when we’re stuck in here with no way to communicate to the outside? ”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure as shooting not going to sit around here waiting for people to use me for who knows what bad—Diamond!”

  A familiar face turned as I called out her name. She was standing with two other people, but smiled when I almost dragged Alec up to her, her eyes moving from me to him, widening when she took in all his manly glory.

  You are making far too much of my appearance, querida.

  Oh, don’t tell me you don’t like it, because I can feel just how much you enjoy overhearing my inadvertently and wholly insincere smutty thoughts about you. I bet you just love it when women go gaga over you, pandering to your insatiable ego, inflating your head until it’s approximately the size of Montana . I’m equally sure you love it when women look at you like Diamond is looking at you, which honestly I have to say is way out of line, considering she has a husband she claims she loves, not to mention the fact that she stole him from me.

  I thought you no longer wanted him?

  I don’t, but no woman likes to have a man stolen out from under her nose, and if Diamond thinks she’s going to pull that again with you, she’s going to be in a whole world of hurt.

  Now who’s jealous?

  I transferred my glare from Diamond to Alec. “I really don’t like you,” I told him.

  “And just when I was beginning to think otherwise of you,” he almost purred into my ear.