A male vampire with long dark hair and lined eyes swung the door open and held it while another passed through. He glanced at Deacon, then looked again before stopping his friend in the entrance. The friend caught sight of Deacon. His lips drew back over his fangs.
No doubt they’d recognized him. So leaving Rosalia out here alone wasn’t an option anymore.
“Just keep on walking, traitor.” The first vampire’s gaze ran over Rosalia. Snakelike, he slid his tongue between his fangs and licked his upper lip. “She can stay.”
Any other time, that would have been enough for Deacon to take him down. But a demon waited inside, and Deacon didn’t want to reveal the one advantage he had—his speed—while teaching this pissant a lesson. And if he started a fight out here, he might not make it into the club.
And these vampires might talk about fighting, but they wouldn’t make a move against him without Tomás’s permission. Gripping Rosalia’s hand, Deacon pushed past them and through the door.
The two vampires followed, flanking them. Rosalia looked up at Deacon with a smile.
Wouldn’t a human be showing a little more fear? But she was pretending that having him at her side filled her with confidence. Shit. Even knowing she was acting, that felt damn good.
Inside, the setup was more like a gentleman’s club than the dance club preferred by a few other vampire communities. Amber pendant lights hung from a high ceiling, casting warm light on the paneled walls and wooden floors. Two billiard tables sat on the right side of the large, open room. Multiple groupings of velvet sofas and leather chairs encouraged pockets of conversation. The smaller tables ringing the floor held laptops or hosted several varieties of poker games.
One by one, the vampires quieted and turned to look at them.
From a table at the back of the room, Tomás frowned and rose to his feet, a big man with blond hair pulled back into a queue and a bushy yellow beard. Rosalia hadn’t given Deacon a description of Benedek Farkas, but the demon wasn’t hard to spot. Dark-haired and slick, he’d shape-shifted into a good-looking bastard, like they all did. Seated on a sofa in the middle of the club, he was the only one not giving Deacon the evil eye. He looked amused, even. And he was the only man who hadn’t looked Rosalia over twice.
Maybe she had a good reason for wearing that dress and her current form, and it wasn’t just so Deacon would be thinking of sucking her dry. She could walk through the club naked, and a demon wouldn’t get hot.
Couldn’t
get hot. A demon only faked it.
Farkas wasn’t even bothering to do that.
Deacon led her to a small table on the left, a location that would offer him a direct line to Tomás, with Farkas in the middle. The click of her heels echoed in the silent room, and beneath it came the pounding of the vampires’ hearts. Almost fifty, by his count. He heard the rustle of clothes as vampires got to their feet. Oh, yeah, they wanted to fight. He felt their psychic probes, aimed at him, aimed at Rosalia.
He got Rosalia into a seat. She smiled at him, a sweet curve of her lips that could have sent a man off to war with steel in his spine, not just heading out to slay one demon.
Deacon turned. Vampires, male and female, faced him with fangs exposed. Farkas just seemed to be smiling. Deacon looked over the demon’s head at Tomás.
“This isn’t much of a welcome, old friend.”
“Just turn around, Deacon.” Tall, with a chest to match, Tomás’s deep voice carried easily across the club. “Take your human and get out.”
Deacon lifted his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I just want to talk bloodsharing until my woman can—”
“Get
out
.”
Fuck. Tomás must be thinking that Deacon was here to kill him, was gunning for his position. So he probably wasn’t going to invite Deacon over to his table, fearing that once Deacon got in close he’d try to take Tomás out.
All right. Deacon didn’t need to be invited over there. He could do this another way.
One thing about vampire communities: no one interfered if a leader was challenged. Deacon reached back and drew his swords.
Tomás quickly retrieved his own weapons. The vampire kicked aside his table, giving himself room to fight—but as Deacon anticipated, Tomás stayed where he was. A reinforced steel wall lay at Tomás’s back; he wouldn’t give that protection up.
Deacon stalked closer, his gaze fixed on Tomás. His path took him behind Farkas’s sofa.
The demon made it too easy, rising up in his seat so that he could watch the showdown. Obviously, he never once considered Deacon a threat. As Deacon passed him, Farkas turned his head to follow his progress, facing the opposite direction and leaving his neck exposed above the level of the sofa’s back.
Deacon struck, fast and hard. His blade cut cleanly through the demon’s neck. Shock ripped through the vampires’ psychic scents, holding them silent.
Until Farkas’s head fell over the back of the sofa, thudding to the floor. Blood spurted. The female sitting next to him shrieked, scrambling back.
With an enraged roar, Tomás charged. Deacon stepped back from the spreading pool of blood. He’d expected this attack. The vampire had remained near the wall when his own life was threatened, but Tomás wouldn’t stand for anyone killing his people.
“Listen, Tom—!” Deacon’s shout was cut short by the swing of Tomás’s sword.
All right. Stop Tomás now. Explain later.
Deacon dodged Tomás’s blade and led with a right hook to the vampire’s bearded jaw. Blood and spit flew. Tomás staggered. A hammering blow to his chin laid him out. Not unconscious, just stunned. Shaking out the pain in his hand, Deacon placed his boot on the vampire’s neck and held him down.
He looked back at Rosalia. Her fingers of her left hand were clenched on the table’s edge, her knuckles white. Beneath the table, he saw the glint of steel clutched in her right hand. “Rosie, get over here.”
She vanished her weapon and hurried forward, threading through vampires who bared their fangs at her passing. Several abruptly stopped, glancing at Deacon, as if they’d just realized that they might have a new community leader in about ten seconds.
They could rest easy there. Even if he’d killed Tomás, Deacon wouldn’t have taken that on.
“Pick his head up,” he said as Rosalia passed the demon’s sofa.
Gingerly, she grabbed Farkas’s severed head by the hair.
“Put it on the floor in front of Tomás’s face.” He waited until she did, then took her hand and drew her behind him. “Now breathe deep. And tell me what you smell.”
He heard the vampire’s inhalation and felt the uneasy realization in Tomás’s psychic scent. Murmurs of “demon” hummed through the crowd. The others smelled it, too. The scent of Farkas’s blood saturated the air.
“He was sent to kill you and to take over your community. I’ve got no plans to do the same. I’m done here.”
Deacon eased his foot off and waited a second, just to make sure Tomás wouldn’t leap up. Holding Rosalia’s hand, he began backing toward the exit. The vampires moved out of their path.
Tomás rose to his knees and picked up the demon’s head. Not much time had passed; Farkas’s skin would still be hotter than a human’s. As he pressed his thumbs against the demon’s fangs, disbelief worked through Tomás’s expression. Yeah, the vampire sure hadn’t seen that one coming.
Deacon turned for the door. Rosalia slipped her hand into his elbow, and that soft grip felt a little too good for his liking. He shrugged her off.
Outside, the air surrounded him like a heated blanket. His shirt front and jacket sleeves were splattered with blood. He’d planned to ditch Rosalia the second they were done, but now he had to return to the hotel and clean off before going anywhere. No train or plane would take him back to Paris in this state.
He didn’t realize how fast he was walking until he noticed Rosalia was running to keep up with him.
He slowed to a human’s pace. Not for her sake. Drawing attention never boded well. People weren’t blind or stupid.
Vampires weren’t supposed to be blind and stupid, either.
It was one thing for a demon to impersonate a human. But although a demon could form fangs and look like a vampire, the fuckers had hot skin. And Farkas might have shared blood, but his bite wouldn’t have felt anything like the pleasure of a vampire’s. Did
no one
in that community notice that? And if Farkas had tried to explain it away, what idiot would believe him?
“How could Tomás not know? How could he not
see
?”
Rosalia didn’t have to ask what he meant. Perhaps she’d been wondering the same, but she came up with a kinder answer than he would have.
“He didn’t have the benefit of the friends that you did.”
That was true enough. From the very first, Camille had warned him about demons and taught him about vampires. She’d taught him about fighting in ways that didn’t use his fists. Then Irena had taught him more.
Rosalia caught him off guard by adding, “Thank you, Deacon.”
For what? The demon had made slaying him too easy to get much satisfaction out of it. “Yeah. Now you can show your thanks by buying me a ticket back to Paris.”
His gruff response didn’t put her off. She smiled up at him, instead. He couldn’t figure out why she seemed to like him despite the shit he threw at her. It bothered him. Like she knew something he didn’t, because he couldn’t imagine why she wasn’t slugging him into next week.
“No need to buy one.” She glanced at his shirt, and he felt the sticky wet blood vanish into her cache. Nice trick. “I already have a flight scheduled.”
Of course she did. A pair of big, white wings. “You?”
“Yes.” She laughed and skipped ahead for a few steps before twirling around to face him. “And you should stay in my hotel room.” Before he could say anything, she added, “You can watch Theriault, you can listen to the surveillance tapes, and it’s air-conditioned.”
He stopped. So she thought it would be that easy? Just fall in with her once, and he was her puppet? No chance.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Her smile wavered. “Failing miserably?”
“Yeah.” He started walking again. “So haul off, sister. I’ll find my own way back.”
He didn’t want to owe her a goddamn thing. Not that he would have anyway, since she’d forced him into a position where he
had
to find his way back.
He passed her still form. She’d wrapped her arms tight around herself again. A few moments later, she called after him, “What you did here matters, Deacon. It will make a difference to this community, to everyone.”
Maybe so. He didn’t care. How many ways could he tell her before she accepted that? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have much left.
And when he was down to nothing, he only had one response. “Fuck off, Rosie.”
Damn him, though, if he didn’t look back when he reached the end of the street. Yet she wasn’t standing there looking forlorn, looking sad. The sidewalk lay empty. So she’d finally taken the hint and gone.
It didn’t feel like he’d won.
CHAPTER
7
Rosalia hadn’t witnessed the battle that had made Deacon the leader of the Prague community. She’d only heard the story later that night, coaxing it from a vampire who’d still been shivering in the corner of the club where the fight had been waged.
Much of the city still lay in rubble after the American bombing earlier that year. The war had devastated both human and vampire communities; Deacon and Camille—friendly, but already distant—had traveled from city to city, helping rebuild. Taking over a community of vampires hadn’t been on his agenda, and he might have been surprised to find himself in that position. Once she’d heard
how
it had come about, however, Rosalia hadn’t been surprised at all.
A vampire female had come to beg help from Marco, the community head. New to the city, her husband had been killed in the bombings, leaving her without a partner to feed from . . . and the infant that she and her husband had transformed twenty years before.
The vampire recounting the story had wept as he’d described the baby boy the female had brought with her: curly-haired, fanged, blue eyes shining with the intelligence of a young man. Rosalia had listened, sick to her heart.
The bloodlust created a powerful sexual drive, even in children—and the reality of feeding them was too horrifying for almost any vampire to contemplate. Every community had rules forbidding their transformation, but Rosalia still knew of a few children who’d been changed. Almost all had been sickly as humans, whose parents couldn’t bear to lose them. And although their minds eventually matured, their forms never did—and anyone who desired that form could never be an admirable life partner. Rosalia had pitied both parents and children, and had done what she could to help them . . . but there wasn’t much that could be done.
Marco hadn’t agreed. Something
could
be done. And when she held the infant out to him, imploring him to help, his solution had been to strike the boy’s head from his shoulders.
The woman had still been screaming when Deacon had challenged the older vampire. She’d screamed while their swords had clashed, as their blood fell slick on the floor, Deacon the weaker of the two but driven by fury. She’d been screaming when Deacon had stood over Marco, the vampire’s heart in his hand.
Deacon could have chosen to leave the community to someone else. Camille had asked him to; when she finally led a city of vampires, she hadn’t wanted that city to be Prague. But he’d chosen the community over her, and his decision had finalized the break between them—a decision that had ended up being better for the both of them.
But Rosalia didn’t think he’d planned it that way. No, if she had learned anything about him in those years between the wars, it was that Deacon acted in the moment. Not thoughtlessly, and usually with full understanding of the consequences, he decisively handled each problem as it came his way. If his people were threatened, he’d faced the threat and neutralized it. And if his people—or any other vampire— stepped over the community rules, he enforced them. But he didn’t manipulate his people or maneuver them; he didn’t sweeten them up or cajole them. Always straightforward, he told them how something should be, and then he backed up his words.