Raven Cursed

Ignoring the fact that there had been an uncomfortable space between the hand being offered and taken, I took Leo’s. “It has been brought to my attention,” he said, “that I needlessly contributed to your difficulties on this parley, my Enforcer.”

Oh crap. Enforcer. I had to deal with that, still. “Ummm, hunh?” I asked. I could have kicked myself for that scintillating comeback.

“When I banished Evangelina from my city, I did not know she had spelled my primo, George, and perhaps even me.” Having nothing to say to that, I glanced at Bruiser, the aforementioned primo. When I didn’t reply, Leo’s lips quirked and he released my hand. “That was an apology, Jane

Realization dawned. “Oh! Yeah, sure. Um, thanks. No problem.” I glanced at Bruiser again. He was laughing at me silently. Great. I’d acted the socially inept idiot I really was.

To my side, at the front of the hotel, pink light poured through the night-black windows. It was Evangelina, responding to my lure of Leo, who was not supposed to be here yet. “Crap! Weapons!” I shouted. Knowing Derek would get the vamps under cover, I raced to the front doors, throwing myself to the side and peering out. Evangelina stood in the circular drive in the open door of her sports car, the convertible top down, and behind the antivamp protestors. Over them a huge, misty, black bird flapped its wings. The protestors moved forward, a man out front, leading. They each held small pots and splashed something on the drive with every step.

In the backseat of her convertible sat Lincoln Shaddock and a slumped form I couldn’t identify. I wasn’t sure if either of them was alive.

“Freaking dang Murphy and his freaking dang laws,” I muttered, possible scenarios racing through my mind. “Brandon! Brian!” I shouted. “We got a Delta seven! Wrassler! I need my Benelli!” I needed the firepower of the shotgun, back in my room. I drew my puny .380 and checked the load.

CHAPTER THIRTY The Blood-Diamond

To the desk I shouted, “Lockdown. You are under attack.” When no one moved, I screamed, “Lockdown! You are under attack!”

The little uniformed girl found her head and raced to the phone. Civilians. Can’t live with them, can’t let them get slaughtered. A news van rolled to a stop and a cameraman jumped out, already filming. Especially can’t let them get killed in front of TV cameras. “Son of a freaking goat,” I whispered.

Out front, a bellboy decided to be a hero and shouted something to the protestors. The bird overhead beat its wings and called, a sawing sound. It attacked. The bellboy disappeared inside the winged black cloud. A primal scream of pain echoed against the building, cut off as if with a blade. When the shadow withdrew, the only thing left was blood splatter and a lower leg.

The protestors stopped as if petrified, their eyes on the leg and foot. It was still wearing a shoe. The leader’s mouth worked but no sound came out. Evangelina pointed at the doors and shouted, “The vampires did it! They killed the boy! Get them!”

The demon overhead called again, a softer rumbling note with three soft tocks afterward, a satisfied chirp. The leader of the humans swiveled back to the hotel. His face contorted, full of fury. He charged, flinging blood before him with stained fingers. His supporters followed. Just before they reached the entrance, Derek slammed the metal rod into place, securing the door with a metal bar and deadbolt. He turned a key in the deadbolt lock and the metal tongue schnicked into place just as the protestors fell against the door with a hollow thud. “How long?” I demanded.

Derek said, “Twenty-eight seconds until they’re in place.”

A window shattered. A rock bounced across the lobby, sparkling glass shards catching the pink glow from outside. “As soon as the protestors are down, have the men draw back. That black thing is a demon.”

“What thing?”

“He cannot see it, me sha.” I rotated my upper body at the familiar French tones. “He is fully human,” Leo said. Outside, the demon cast no shadow. He wasn’t fully here. Yet.

The master of the southeastern vamps, and arguably one of the most powerful vamps in the U.S., shrugged negligently. He was wearing a tuxedo with a black silk shirt, white cummerbund, and bowtie. He looked beautiful. And deadly. His black eyes sparkled as if he knew what I had thought, and he reached out to smooth my hair back from my face, along my shoulder and spine, in a sleek caress. Beside him stood Grégoire, a slight figure in midnight blue tux with a blue silk shirt the color of his eyes. The vamps looked gorgeous together.

I put my weapon on safety, holstered it, and pulled them back from the door. “Go back to your rooms.” They looked at each other, turned to the windows, and smiled, fangs clicking down. It wasn’t charming. More like two feral creatures staring at prey. I got a bad feeling.

“It has been many years since we have been to battle,” Grégoire said. “Our servants are restrained.”

I scanned behind me. Ignored the rock that exploded into the room only feet away. Bruiser and the twins were sitting on the couches in front of the fireplace. Staring at nothing. I raced over and saw my weapons on the floor at the twins’ feet. Wrassler was asleep on the rug. “Let them go,” I snarled, weaponing up, strapping on blades, checking the M4. “I need them.” The shotgun was loaded for vamp with silver fléchette rounds. I was hoping silver worked on demons, and I was the only one with silver. Leo’s decision. A dumb one. I could lay blame later, if I lived. I took Leo’s arm. “Please. Let the servants go.”

“No. The little witch is ours,” Grégoire said. He vamped out fully, his pupils growing wide as quarters in blood red sclera. “You have done well, bringing her to me.”

He had ordered me to bring him Evangelina so he could kill her. Crap.

“And we must liberate Shaddock.” Leo freed his arm from my fingers with a small shake that jarred my bones, peering out the window into the growing dark and increasing reddish glare of Evangelina’s magics. Lincoln’s head was still silhouetted in the pink energies. “Shaddock’s master, Dufresnee, is sworn to me, and I to him. I have drunk from him. Shaddock is mine.”

“Shaddock is a barbarian, but he is our barbarian,” Grégoire agreed, sounding eager.

“Shall we?” Leo asked him.

Grégoire drew a sword from a sheath I hadn’t noted, hanging at his side. “Forgive me if I precede you, my master.” With a firm pop of air, like a drumhead hit hard, he disappeared.

“He is always first on a battlefield,” Leo said, aggrieved. He vamped out faster than I could process the change and disappeared with a puff of air that moved my hair with its passage. Both men reappeared outside. It looked magical, but the movement of air and falling glass indicated that they had gone out through the broken windows. They faced off against Evangelina.

I swore succinctly and gathered myself to follow. Derek caught my arm. “You’re not wearing a vest, Legs,” he said.

“They don’t have guns,” I replied. “Time?”

“They’re in place. On my order, I’ve instructed the men to target the humans and the witch on first volley. Where is this demon?”

“Your two o’clock. About ten feet off the ground. I have silver ammo,” I said. “It might work on the demon.”

His eyes promised me retribution for not telling him about the silver. “Go,” he said.

Time had done that slow-down thing, where every sight is sharpened, each sound is clear, crisp, and slow. Outside I heard the sound of firing, a boom-boom-boom of overlapping shotgun fire. Humans fell fast, downed by fat, non-lethal, antiriot beanbags fired at point blank range by figures dressed in night-combat black. Then they were shot by tranquilizer darts, to keep them down. But nothing hit Evangelina. She stood tall in the red car, behind a red ward, a hedge of thorns so strong, the concrete blackened and cracked where it intersected the ground outside of the tires. The ward sizzled a smutty black, like charcoal and flames, her arms out to her sides as she gathered power. Her scarlet hair flew to the sides, a wind buffeting her slender form,