My eyes darted to her, and my mouth went dry.
I didn’t think it was just Nina anymore.
She’d rolled to her feet, hands still holding that staff as she hunched into a ball and bared her teeth at the surface demons still shaking off the fall. Her eyes flicked to Trent and me, and I shuddered as I recognized the second presence smothering her psyche. It was Felix. And it had happened far too fast.
In a smooth, unhurried motion, Nina rose, her feet placed wide to bind the skirt about her knees. An almost visible charismatic power spilled from her in the new dark. Black eyes glinting, she whirled the staff in a dangerous arc, making it smack into the earth in a clear threat.
Anger tightened my resolve, and I pulled myself straight. Nina had lied. She had outright lied to Ivy, telling her she’d made a break from Felix. There was no way the master vampire would’ve known she was in danger if she hadn’t already had him in her, balancing her emotions and soaking in her thoughts of sunlight and love.
From the darkness, a surface demon hissed.
Trent spun, his shoes grinding the grit as his magic tugged at my energies. The smaller demon was running at her, Nina screaming at it, egging it on, whirling the staff again as if it were a sword.
But it never reached her as that second, larger surface demon plowed into the first.
“Look out!” I cried, pulling Trent back as the demons rolled in the dirt, grappling, hissing and howling, clawing at the tatters of their clothes and gouging each other’s eyes.
“Get back!” Trent said when, with a scream of outrage, the larger demon finally beat the first away. Standing between Nina and the darkness, the tall surface demon raised his hands to the sky, howling as if making a claim. His cry echoed against the flat spaces, dying away to leave the demon staring at us, his chest moving up and down as he panted, thin hands clenched.
Trent’s fingers tightened in mine, his uninvoked charm hovering just under his skin. “Wait,” I said as the surface demon spun to Nina. “No, wait!” I demanded as the silence was broken by the soft clicks of rock and the whisper of dead grass as the surrounding surface demons skulked back, leaving us. “I think he drove the rest off.”
With a high-pitched whine, the tall surface demon fell prostrate before Nina, burbling and groaning, the tattered remnants of its aura smearing the dust to leave patterns. Nina/Felix stared, inching backward.
“What is it doing?” I whispered as the demon closed the new gap, his wizened arm black with age or disease, stretched out as if wanting to touch her but afraid to.
Bis popped in, winging up for altitude when he saw the surface demon writhing at her feet, gibbering like a monkey. I’d never seen anything like it, and the noise it made crawled up my spine like ice.
“Go away, you putrid thing,” Nina threatened, her voice dropping into the lower ranges. It was Nina, but not, and I started when Bis landed on my shoulder to wrap his tail around my back and under my arm for balance. He wouldn’t dare jump her out. Hell, I think he was scared to touch her, much less share mental space with her.
But the surface demon cowered like a beaten dog as it couldn’t move forward, couldn’t move back, snatching glances at Nina and the blood dripping from a scratch under her eye. I’d never been this close to one before and not been fighting for my life. It was almost as if I was looking at him through a fog. His features were indistinct, but gaunt, as if starved. The tattered remnants of his clothes gave no indication of color, and as soon as I looked away, I couldn’t remember if his hair was long or short. Again, I was struck by the feeling that he was there, but not, and I shuddered at the memory of how it had felt when I had pulled it off her.
“I said, go!” Nina/Felix shouted, and the surface demon scuttled back at her swinging foot. Feet spread in a way no woman in a skirt ever would, Nina threw the staff after it to clatter into the dust.
My circle was long gone, but it didn’t matter. The surface demons had left, even the ones at the outskirts. I exhaled, relieved. But another part of me was seething in anger. Felix had taken Nina over far too easily. The woman had been lying to Ivy, lying for three whole months. The worst part was, I think Ivy knew it.
“I ought to leave you here to rot,” I said, talking to Felix, but if I did, Nina would be the one to suffer.
Nina stiffened, her lip curling to show tiny pointed canines. She wouldn’t get the extended fangs until she died, which—if I got my way—would be tomorrow.
“Rachel,” Bis whispered as his feet pinched my shoulder in worry. Trent, too, wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. Not yet. The son of a bastard was playing Ivy for a fool.
“Get out of Nina,” I said, shaking off Trent’s hand and moving a step closer.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nina said, foolishly trying to hide the fact that it really was Felix, but young women in dress suits do not tug their sleeves down in agitation.
“Do we have to do this right now?” Trent said, eyes on the darkening shadows.
“Yes,” I said, coming another step closer. “Felix, get out of Nina. Get out and don’t come back. Right now, or I’m telling Ivy.”
The woman bared her teeth, dark eyes going darker. “Ivy? She doesn’t matter!”
“Maybe not to you,” I said shaking from the spent adrenaline. “But if Ivy knows, she might give up on Nina.”
“That’s fine with me.” Nina’s eyes narrowed, making the woman look dead already in the last of the light.
“Me too,” I said, heartsick for Ivy even as I hated Felix. “But if she does, Nina is going to find the balls to kick you out for good.”
Beside me, Trent made a sound of understanding. Nina’s expression twisted up in a snarl, hearing the truth of it.
“Love is funny like that,” I added.
Nina’s expression darkened, anger bubbling up until she was as ugly as the monster seeing the world through her eyes, wallowing in Ivy’s love as if it was his to have. My chin lifted, and seeing my determination, he suddenly left her.
Nina staggered, collapsing like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Sobbing, she huddled on the ground, exhausted and hyped up on the hormones Felix had pulled into her blood system. She touched her face, shocked at the blood, and my heart just about broke for Ivy. God, I hated the master vampires.
He might be gone, but the flash of evil intent that had crossed her left me shaking.
He’d be back.
Chapter 4
The coffee smell coming from the wax-coated cup was nauseatingly familiar, and I held it listlessly as I sat in the chair I’d pulled into the carpeted hallway. The oil-like sheen on the surface caught the fluorescent lights, showing the shake in my hand. I’d managed a few fitful hours of sleep after Ivy had come out of surgery, and though the beds in Trent’s surgical suites were comfortable, I’d been too worried to do more than doze. Besides, the smell of antiseptic and stainless steel kept waking me up.