Demon Marked

from a sense of betrayal. His mother had forsaken him. Madelyn hadn’t even attempted to stop him from leaving England, and he’d wanted her to regret that, and to regret every careless or razor-edged remark she’d ever made.

After months of talking to Leslie, he’d recognized exactly why he’d wanted revenge so badly: He’d wanted Madelyn to feel sorry, dammit. He’d wanted her to notice her son, to acknowledge the pain she’d caused him.

Within a year, he no longer cared whether Madelyn regretted anything, but he hadn’t lost the desire to ruin her. Recounting every detail of his childhood to Leslie had shown him that his mother wasn’t just thoughtless and neglectful—he’d realized that she was a sadistic, evil bitch who’d destroyed his father and tried to do the same to him. He’d been determined to destroy her in return by taking away the only thing she’d ever nurtured: her business. Nicholas had formed Reticle with that single goal in mind, putting Wells-Down and his mother in the crosshairs, and he hadn’t let anyone stand in his way.

Then he’d discovered that Madelyn was a demon, that she’d likely killed his true mother and murdered Rachel, and everything had changed. He’d been driven by revenge before, but that was nothing compared to the need to destroy Madelyn now.

“And in twenty years, your therapist hasn’t tried to redirect your hostility?”

“She tried. It didn’t take. Now she just keeps me honest about what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.”

“You don’t lie to her, then? You don’t avoid her questions?”

At Ash’s narrowed look, Nicholas couldn’t stop his laugh. So that did irritate her. But as much as the demon wanted answers from him, she was also easily distracted by new information. “I tell her everything.”

“Then I want to be your therapist.” She huffed out a breath. “You even told her that Madelyn is a demon?”

“Yes.”

“And she believed you?”

“No. But I don’t pay her to believe me. I pay her to treat me, to force me to acknowledge my motivations and to challenge my assumptions. So far, I’ve met every challenge to my satisfaction—and although she might think I’m delusional, I know I’m not.”

Ash didn’t respond, but her brows lifted and a smile quickly touched her mouth.

“Why is that funny?” Nothing else had amused her, but that did?

“Not funny. It just finally makes sense. I wondered if you were lying about the therapist because you’re too arrogant and certain of yourself to have one. But now that I hear ‘I met every challenge’ and ‘I know I’m not crazy,’ it finally fits what I already knew of you.”

Nicholas wished that something about her would fit. Her assessment of his personality was spot on, but he couldn’t hear any judgment in it. A man as driven as he was required a certain level of self-confidence, but usually people who called him “arrogant” used the word like a curse . . . and followed it up with “son of a bitch.” Ash didn’t, and it threw him off.

“I focus on what I want,” he said. “And I don’t allow anything to get in my way.”

“I noticed. And in any case, you didn’t have a psychotic break. Rachel and Madelyn did disappear. How?”

Back around to that, then? So she allowed distractions, but was tenacious about following through. He’d remember that. She could be diverted from her course for only a short time.

“A demon can make some things vanish—I think that’s what happened to Rachel’s body. Madelyn took it, and then ran off so quickly that it appeared as if she’d vanished, too.”

“I can make things vanish?”

Distracted again, but not unfocused. She chased after stray bits of information like . . . like he did. But Nicholas was trying to discover everything, just in case the knowledge was useful later. He was trying to form an impression of her that he could understand and anticipate. Ash wouldn’t have the same reasons.

Was she just that curious about everything?

“Everything goes into a psychic storage of some kind.” Nicholas didn’t know much more than that. “Demons and Guardians both have one. They call it a cache.”

“A cache . . . like a pocket universe? Something small on the outside, big on the inside—and we put stuff in there, somehow?” She glanced at him, as if searching for the answer in his face. Nicholas didn’t have one for her. “Like a TARDIS?”

Her references for understanding a demon’s abilities were based on Doctor Who and Schwarzenegger movies? God. “I don’t know if it’s science or magic. You can’t put living things in there, though.”

“Why?” When Nicholas couldn’t answer that, she wondered, “Is that where my clothes go?”

“When I gave you the electric shock? Probably.”

“And the other times?”

Other times? Nicholas fought not to grin. “Do they disappear often?”

“Somewhat often. Then people start laughing, and the clothes come back. Ah, and see? You’re laughing now, too.”

So he was. He could almost picture it . . . Ah, hell. He could picture it. All too easily. When her clothes had disappeared earlier and he’d still believed she might be Madelyn, he hadn’t really looked at her. Now his memory filled in the little he’d seen in delicious detail: the changing shadows beneath her knees as her skin had faded from crimson to tanned; the shallow depression of her navel, which demons didn’t possess in their true forms; the silken fall of blond hair across soft breasts. Glimpses, impressions, because he hadn’t been looking at her sexually . . . and made him wish now that he’d looked a little harder.

He wouldn’t have been averse to her clothes disappearing. And if they did, Nicholas didn’t think he’d be laughing. No, he’d be enjoying the view.

How screwed up was that? He’d ask Leslie when he saw her next. Did sexual attraction to a gorgeous demon suggest that he was even more fucked up than he’d thought, or was it healthier than planning to slay one?

He tried to imagine Leslie’s reaction and couldn’t help being amused. One of these days, she was going to have him institutionalized.

“No living things,” Ash said softly, cutting into his amusement. “But Madelyn vanished the body—so that means Rachel had to be dead. Did Madelyn vanish the evidence, too?”

God. The memory of Rachel’s bloodied chest replaced Ash’s perfect breasts. The memory of his shock and utter helplessness as she died.

And it was exactly the slap that Nicholas had needed. Gorgeous demon or not, he couldn’t cultivate that physical attraction. Sex complicated everything. Allowing anyone that close meant he lowered his emotional shields and exposed more of himself than he wanted to. Taking that risk with a demon . . . Hell, he might as well put a gun to his head and pull the trigger now.

A dead man couldn’t pursue revenge. That was all that mattered. This demon didn’t matter, and neither did his screwed-up attraction.

“Madelyn took everything with her,” he said. “The gun, the bullets, the blood. And so, like I said, I spent money. I hired investigators to look for murders where the body and evidence had gone missing despite witnesses, to track down anyone with a similar story to mine. After a while, they found commonalities, but no answers. Not until about four years ago, when one investigator ran across Sally Barrows.”

“Another demon?”

“No. A vampire.”

“A vampire,” she echoed flatly. “Is that like a dragon?”

Nicholas couldn’t see her eyeteeth behind her compressed lips, but he guessed she had fangs again. “Yes,” he said. “Because I’m not lying about vampires or dragons.”

She didn’t respond. Either struggling to believe him, he realized, or flat-out refusing to. Fuck. Never did he imagine trying to prove to a demon that vampires existed.

He damn well wasn’t going to start now. Let her believe what she wanted. “That’s when I began spending a lot more money. For the right price, Sally and her husband agreed to help me find Madelyn, and told me what they