Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 (51 page)

Some were funny, some more serious, but all of it done with an air of reverence and respect.

Several years ago, my family had begun a tradition of hosting a parade, one the villagers had taken to almost immediately. It was our own spin on things and a way to encourage the locals to come and stop by our carnival for even greater theatrics. Everything was themed, and we were all in costume. It was a lot of fun and for a celebration that honored both pagan and Christian influences, pretty much fit right in.

I’d smeared my face with a thick coating of white, painted on a black skull and then drawn intricate roses and vines through it. I’d pulled out my simplest black lace gown (straight from the Victorian era) with the thirty smoky-gray pearl buttons that went straight up my back to my neck. Every inch of me was covered, either in paint or in lace. With my long black hair hanging loose, I could have passed for
La Llorona’s
sister.

The cement-block pathways bisecting the city square had been transformed into gardens of art. Images were drawn everywhere of saints and crucifixes, skulls, and other symbols of death. It was all macabrely beautiful.

My black granny boots clicked clacked across the hard tile as I headed toward the
Mercado
and the start of our Mardi Gras inspired parade.

Every year we designed five floats, bringing in mariachi bands from all parts of the region. We’d set up booths full of food and the best tequilas and
Mezcal
. All our paperwork was in order and bribes had been made to make sure that this night and the next went off without a hitch.

Asher had disappeared before I’d even woken this morning. I knew he was headed to Grace. Right before falling asleep, he’d asked me again to go with him, but for now I was content to have him as my middle man.

Plus I was still royally confused and needed time to think through things without His Hotness constantly touching me, or looking at me and making me forget every bit of common sense I’d ever been born with.

I was an old Neph, not because I was brighter than most, but because in a lot of ways I was lucky and had always had an uncanny ability to understand what was real and what was fake.

It was part of what was bothering me so much about Grace. Never once had I pegged her as false—it’s why her betrayal had been so painful. But if Asher was right and Grace was actually not against me, then that would mean my instincts had been right all along. Which would also mean my instinct concerning my priest was spot-on.

Shaking my head, I growled at the convoluted mess my thoughts were becoming. Regardless if Grace was actually for me, there was still the issue that she’d ensured I kill Kemen.

Man, I was in a crappy mood. It would have been nice if the weather had mirrored it, but no, the sky was a beautiful, perfect blue, the type you might see in a painting. I wanted to stew and get my hate on and just allow myself to sulk, but the electric mood made that next to impossible.

For a second I caught a glimpse of Vyxen as she ran behind a stall, looking flustered and aggravated, red-faced as she barked at Bubba before running off again.

Discovering Luc had been making the nasty with Vyxen for so long might have devastated me in the past, but now with Asher…

I could see it had needed to happen. It needed to be someone else who finally drove that spike through us, because neither one of us was ever going to work up cojones enough to get it done. And now that it was, it was like someone had taken the weight of the world off my shoulders. I was Atlas and I was free.

I reluctantly smiled.

“What you smiling for, Dora?” Bubba’s country twang hijacked my thoughts as I neared his stand.

Glancing up, I noticed the big brute standing behind a cinnamon-toasted-almond stand. Dressed in a black mariachi suit with red-and-gold lapels and the skull face paint paired with his ruby-red eyes, he was stunning and immediately forced mortals to wonder whether those eyes could possibly be real.

“Because it’s a nice day, that a crime?”

“Couldn’t convince me of that after last night. You and Luc ever figure out what the hell all that was about?”

Luc had decided after our stint in South Dakota to not let slip too many details of what’d gone down that night. The family knew Kemen had died and they knew I’d been sucked into some giant Molech conspiracy/vampire ring.

What they didn’t know was that the Order had sabotaged us. Demons aren’t the most even-keeled on a good day; if they learned the organization we’d trusted to have our back had basically stabbed a giant knife in it, they’d flip, turn wild and rabid for blood and vengeance. And until we knew for sure just how deep the betrayal went, whether it was middle-management rank or went all the way up to the top brass, we weren’t taking the chance that the Order would decide to stop being secretive about their plans and just send monsters en masse to snuff us out for daring to blink at them wrong.

The Order might give us our marching orders, but everyone involved knew they held us by a leash only because we allowed it. Centuries ago, we’d been at war with the Order, and while they might know how to kill us, we knew how to kill them too.

Resting my hip against the stall, I shook my head. “Still no clue. We’re following up with Grace to try to see what, if anything, she might know. You burn all the bodies?”

“Yeah.” He poured a fifty-pound bag of raw almonds into the kettle and flipped the switch to begin the roasting process.

“How many humans died?”

“None.”

My brows dipped. Kneeling, he rummaged around for something heavy, yanking sacks of ground cinnamon and sugar out with a grunt before depositing them on the counter.

“I don’t understand, I thought I saw them getting—”

Flipping open a pocketknife, he ripped down the burlap. “Yeah, there were a few in the mix. At first I assumed they were getting hell like we were, but after I rounded up the humans and tranced them, I noticed that apart from a couple of scratches and scrapes, they’d been pretty much left alone.” Glittering red eyes drilled me. “The hive was clearly after us.”

I scratched my jaw. “That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”

Planting his hands on the counter, he nodded. “I buried Lynx behind the old water well. Thought you should know.”

“Thanks.” I tapped the wood and was just getting ready to turn when a muscular forearm was draped over my shoulder.

Asher’s fingers toyed on the sleeve of my gown. “Hot, little demon,” he whispered in my ear, making my heart and stomach jolt because he was a death priest and he was all over me. I immediately jumped and wrapped my arms around his neck, running on the pure instinctual need to protect him from a Neph’s blind hatred of death priests.

Asher laughed and rubbed my back. “Pandora, relax.”

That’s when I remembered he no longer had the silver hair. With just that one change, you’d never know he was anything other than human. Death priests, I’d learned, emitted no tingling wavelength like the rest of us monsters.

All monster kind broadcast a sort of low-wave frequency of power that was like a beacon to anyone who could pick up on it. But not the priests—it was part of what made them so dangerous. If you didn’t know the predator was around, you had no chance in hell of protecting yourself against it.

Nothing about Asher screamed anything other than pathetic human. He was dressed in dark slacks, a gray shirt, and a crimson-red tie. Honestly, he looked like he belonged in a boardroom, not in the middle of a dusty town square.

Giving him angry eyes, I swatted his chest and then turned back to a frowning Bubba, who was eyeing me, then Asher, then me again.

“And you are?” The menacing growl in his tone was hard to miss.

Sticking out his hand, Asher showed his dimple. Bubba stared at the hand like he wasn’t sure whether to eat it or just ignore it.

Recognizing Bubba had no intention of taking it, Asher curled his fingers back to his side. “Asher.”

“He’s my…”

“I’m her sex toy,” he said, finishing my sentence with a mischievous smirk.

I swallowed a laugh.

“Oh, one of those, eh?” Bubba snorted, then twitched his brows at me in such a way as if to imply
poor fool
. “Just stay out of my way, mortal. I promise you don’t want to be anywhere near me. I’ve not been fed today.”

Asher’s lips twitched and I couldn’t believe Bubba said that to him, but then again, he probably assumed I had my
mortal
tranced and ready to fulfill my every smutty desire and that once I was done, he’d have no memory of our time together.

Grabbing Asher by the wrist, I yanked him away from Bubba’s booth and waved an apologetic good-bye. I hissed at him the moment we were out of earshot.

“I don’t think you should go around trying to make friends with my family, Ash. They don’t know you, and if they”—I leaned in close and whispered beneath my breath—“were to ever find out who you really are, things would not end well.”

“For any of them.” He glowered over his shoulder at the Norseman and I smacked his arm. “What?” He looked back at me.

“Don’t threaten my family.”

“They started it.”

I laughed. “God, you’re such an ass. I don’t remember you being so—”

Snatching the finger I was wagging under his nose, he gently nipped the tip until I had to remind myself to breathe and not let my eyes go all freaky glowy lavender in the midst of this crowd. It was one thing to let the demon out within the confines of a carnival where everyone’s minds were scrubbed upon exiting, quite another to do it in a location where keeping our secret under wraps was much harder. Bubba was so lucky that his eye color never changed.

“What? Sexy? Divine? Mysterious?”

He stepped into me, and the air that’d been so balmy a mere second ago now felt stifling and hot and charged with volts of pure, raw lust.

“Or how about…” He dragged his hands down my arms until he could thread his fingers through mine. “Yours.”

His lips were less than an inch from mine. He was bending over me, staring at me like he was dying of thirst and I was his water. I gulped, completely lost to the moment.

“Get a room.” Vyxen’s voice was like the grating of nails on a chalkboard, setting my teeth instantly on edge.

Her hands were on Asher’s shoulder and she shoved him harder than necessary.

Today she wasn’t dressed like an anime cartoon on acid, instead she wore a creamy lace dress that fell to her knees and looked almost moth ridden, but done in such a way as to be ghoul-sexy instead of ghoul-scary. She also wasn’t wearing a wig or seven-inch heels, rather she wore a large red rose tucked into her ear and her face was the painted skull of everyone else, but done in a type of stained-glass mosaic. She looked gorgeous.

“Who are you?” She asked the same question Bubba had, but instead of it dripping scorn, there was a purr in it. She stepped in close, almost knocking me out with the overpowering scent of orange-blossom perfume she’d obviously bathed herself in. Batting fake eyelashes at him, she pursed her lips, full-on giving him the green-light signal that she’d be up for a little game of slap and tickle. She’d completely forgotten all about me.

But when she reached out to yank on the end of his tie, I couldn’t stop my reaction. “Touch him and you die,” I whispered ever so sweetly.

As if hearing me finally made her aware of my presence, Vyxen slowly turned her head. “Oh, Pandora, so I see we’re right back to where we started? But you know I know things about you now, things that…” She scrunched her nose, gave Asher droopy sex eyes (which looked as ridiculous as it sounds), and then shrugged. “You really don’t want to make an enemy of me. Just saying, sweets.”

She grabbed his tie then and yanked it hard. Visions of me slamming her to the ground as I let loose years of pent-up anger flooded me, and just as I was ready to pounce, Asher stepped in front of me and pulled his tie back from her.

“I don’t think you’re hearing my woman…”

Holy. Shit. He’d just marked me, out in the open. Claimed me. I was so shocked all I could do was stand there and blink like an idiot, but I was very much enjoying the show.

“…touch me again, Envy, and I swear to you, you’ll regret it.”

Her green eyes flashed. “How do you know what I am?” She hissed, then looked and pointed at me with a red-tipped nail. “You know the rules, whore, no talking to the mortals.”

Grabbing her shoulders, Asher gave her a firm shake. “Who said I was human?” There was no dimple in his smile now, nothing but teeth and cruel intentions, and man did that get my blood humming. “Now step away.”

Visibly rattled and clearly not sure how to handle the fact that Asher hadn’t acted the tiniest bit intimidated by her, Vyxen took a stutter-step back. “Get back to work!” She pointed and then twirled dramatically so that her dress flapped around her legs, heading directly and unerringly toward a corner booth, which if I had to guess, was where Luc was at.

The kitten was gonna tattle on me.

“Asher, what part of keeping yourself on the down-low do you not understand?” I whirled on him, refusing to let him know for even a second how much of a turn-on that’d been for me.

His eyes narrowed as he brushed at his tie several times. “I will do a lot of things for you, Pandora, but letting Envy ever think she can talk to me or you that way goes beyond what I can tolerate.” His lips curled as he studied his tie like it’d been vomited on.

I snickered. “God, I like you.”

I could sit and banter with him all day, but there really was work to be done.

He jogged to keep up with me as I headed to the graveyard. The culmination point of the parade was there, where there’d be dancing, drinking, and whatever other pleasures one might desire that weren’t necessarily lawful.

“What’d you find out at Grace’s?” I asked as I walked through the white wrought-iron fence.

“She wants us to head back to the desert tonight. She’s been hearing rumors that something big is planned. Wants us to check it out.”

I snorted. “Fat chance in hell. That sounds a lot like what she told me last time too, and we both know how that turned out.”