Demon Marked (23 page)

Emma had nothing to make her feel safe. Her only family was out of town, her apartment was wrecked, and someone was trying to kidnap her because she'd been marked by a demon when she was a baby. He shouldn't have been teasing her or demanding another fuck session; he should have been offering her comfort and reassurance.

Andre cursed his own lack of sensitivity and headed toward the bathroom. “Emma? Are you ready?” he asked. When his words were met by silence, he wracked his brain for something that might make her feel better. “I thought you might want to try to call Ginger again. To see if we can make sure she's safe.” More silence. Damn it. Being reminded her roommate could be in mortal danger probably wasn't the best call.

“And we could call Sam, too,” he added, leaning his forehead against the cool wooden door, willing her to hear the concern in his voice. “I'm sure she'll want to know that you were attacked. She's safe with Jace, but she should know that there's another nut job out there looking for someone with a demon mark.”

Still nothing. Even the mention of her sister hadn't provoked a positive response.

He was going to have to go in there and look her in the eye. He'd apologize for pressuring her and make sure she knew that he was going to back off and give her some space. But not too much space ... He didn't want her to doubt his interest.

Damn it, why did relationships have to be so complicated? And why did he suddenly have to decide he wanted a
relationship
with a girl who didn't trust him as far as she could throw him?

If Emma had trusted him, even a little bit, he wouldn't be opening the door into an empty room or an open window with its pale pink linen curtain waving tauntingly in the slight breeze. She was gone. Again. And this time he had no clue where she'd gone or why she'd run. He knew only that the thought of losing her made him ill.

T
hank god for fire escapes.

Emma was through the third-story window, down the curling metal steps, and dropping to the ground into the narrow space between Sam's building and the restaurant next door in less than a minute—making her second bathroom-based escape in less than four hours. By the time Andre came to check on her, she hoped to be far, far away.

She had to get out of Southie. Hell, she had to get out of New York City. The watch on Andre's arm had confirmed there was no one she could trust. No one except Sam, and she was a million miles away.

Emma didn't have the cash for a plane, but she might be able to afford a train ticket. She could head up to Penn Station, get on the first train headed west, and find a way to contact her sister along the way. Hopefully, she could meet Sam and Jace between the two coasts.

Assuming she could trust Jace. He
was
Andre's cousin, after all.

Andre, whose memories evidently
hadn't
shown her everything she needed to know about the state of his soul. She couldn't believe that he was the man in the suit she'd seen in the minds of the pair who'd attacked her, that
Andre
was the leader who'd made Death Ministry thugs cower and Stewart cry. But then, she hadn't
wanted
to see something like that in Andre.

She'd wanted to believe that he was a good guy, a man worthy of the stupid crush she'd developed, a man she wouldn't mind remembering as her first ... maybe her only. She must have simply tricked herself into seeing only the not-so-bad in Mr. Conti, because there was no doubt Andre was the one she'd seen ordering Stewart's beating.

The gold watch on his wrist was
exactly
the same, down to the gaudy diamonds on the band and the gold and black
C
etched into the face. There was even a slight crack in the glass ... probably from where he'd backhanded the Death Ministry thug.

Emma's heart raced and her stomach punched at her lungs until she had to pause for a moment to swallow the bagel rising in her throat. She leaned against the cool stone of the building on her right, sucking in deep, calming breaths, refusing to lose what little sustenance she'd managed to ingest.

She didn't have time to get sick or to think about what Andre might really want from her. If he was the man behind all this and had ordered the trashing of her apartment, then he had to be after the spell book. Which meant he'd been playing with her all along, worming his way into her confidence in order to steal what his thugs hadn't been able to find.

It was ... sickening.

Emma's gut pitched, but she shoved away from the wall and started running again anyway, weaving her way through the tangle of streets surrounding Sam's building, heading in the general direction of the barricade's exit. If only the city allowed people to cross over into Manhattan on foot, she could be at Penn Station within an hour. Instead, she'd be stuck in a taxi for half the afternoon, a sitting duck for any of Andre's minions who might be looking for her.

For the first time since moving to Southie, she felt trapped by the walls surrounding her, the hunted instead of the hunter. Andre had done that. He'd betrayed her and let her down, just like everyone else she'd ever trusted.

She couldn't believe she'd slept with him, or felt so guilty for losing control of her demon mark. She was a fool, a dumb, horny fool. Just the memory of how Andre had made her call his name as he pushed inside her made her face hot with shame. What had she been thinking? How could she have gotten naked with a man she didn't even like?

But then, if she hadn't gotten him naked, she never would have seen that watch. It was usually tucked up beneath the sleeve of his coat. Why he would pay so much money for a status symbol and then hide it under his jacket was a mystery to her, but so was just about everything else about Andre.

Everything he'd told her was a lie.
Everything.
After all she'd seen in the minds of evil, deceptive people, he'd still managed to fool her.

He was an excellent actor. For a few hours, she'd actually believed he cared. He'd seemed so genuinely affected by what they'd done. The way he'd put his arm around her and just ... held her ... She'd actually started to think they might have a future together: the sex addict and the energy vampire. What a combo that would have been.

Emma was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't realize she'd missed her second left until the cramped alley opened onto a dilapidated courtyard. She slowed, surveying her surroundings, the nasty feeling in her stomach getting even nastier.

Small, twisted trees and thick vines sprung from the ruined concrete yard, creeping toward the rays of sun that shot through the hollowed-out wreckage of the building across the way. The pavement beneath her feet was buckled in several places—as if some giant worm had passed this way before her—and the smell of demon waste baking in the summer heat drifted through the air.

Oh shit. This was bad. This was very bad.

Even before Emma saw the scaly alien form crouched in the wreckage of the old Spanish-style fountain dominating the yard, Emma knew she'd made a very serious error in judgment. Wandering into the ruins was a dumb call on a good day—when you'd had a good night's sleep and a solid breakfast and didn't feel like your stomach was going to leap out of your mouth if you opened too wide.

On a day like today—when her heart ached and her head spun with Andre's betrayal and her body burned with shame and fear—a stroll through the ruins might just be the death of her.

As Emma turned to run—boot sliding in a pile of demon shit she'd missed on the way in—she wondered whether Andre would find her corpse before it was too late. If he caught her before the demon ate her, he might still be able to use her body to work whatever spell he was hoping to cast. Some of the grimoire's spells called for the blood or flesh of a demon-marked human, not the human's aid in working the magic.

The thought made her run faster, legs pumping hard as the click of claws on concrete sounded behind her. That bastard had already used her body once. She'd be damned if she'd let him use it again. She was going to make it out of here alive. Demons were strong, but most of them weren't particularly fast. If she kept her head on her shoulders and ran straight back toward the more populated streets, then—

The second demon seemed to emerge from the ground in front of her, rising like smoke from a steaming manhole.

Striker demons. Like Ju Du demons, the lizardlike creatures could change the color and texture of their scales to blend in with their surroundings. Unlike most other demons, however, they hunted in packs. Still, you didn't hear many stories about Strikers killing off tourists. They were about the size of your average five-year-old, with short, stunted forearms and only a handful of teeth in their small mouths.

But if there were enough of them, they could kill a thin woman. Especially if that thin woman was suddenly dizzy and ill, her forearms shimmering with the telltale hint of gold dust.

No! She was sparking. Again! How the hell had this happened?

Stewart's shimmering neck floated across her mind's eye, and the truth cracked like a whip through her clouded thoughts. The Hamma claws. She'd pulled the claw venom into her body when she'd fed on Stewart and the Strong Man. She should have realized the truth sooner! Greg hadn't slipped Hamma into his tequila; he'd had it in his bloodstream and she'd sucked in a contact high.

The same thing had happened once, years ago. One of her victims had been tripping on Inuago pellets at a rave. After she'd fed, she'd gone back inside and danced until she threw up, then fed on one of the women who bent to help her up off the bathroom floor. It was the only time she'd ever danced—or fed—in public. She'd suspected she was as high as a kite. She should have learned her lesson and kept her hands off anyone who might have touched demon drugs. More important, she should have fucking understood what was happening this morning from the get-go.

Most important, she should stop wasting time beating herself up. She had to get out of here and find a suitable human snack before she ended up passed out on the concrete, Striker demons nibbling her flesh from her body while she was still alive.

Emma grunted as she darted to her right, narrowly avoiding the snapping teeth of the second demon, but she didn't dare cry out for help. She wasn't going to find help in this part of Southie. All she'd find were more demons or bounty hunters who might very well be working for the man she was trying to avoid.

She just had to stay quiet and move quickly. If there were only two of the Strikers, she would be okay. There was another alley on the opposite side of the courtyard. It had to lead to somewhere better than where she was now. If she just kept moving, she would—

The third demon was crouched on the opposite side of the fountain, waiting for the other two to herd their prey in the right direction. Out of the corner of her eye, Emma spied a flash of gray but barely had time to turn her head before the third Striker was on her, knocking her to the ground.

If she'd been steadier on her feet, she wouldn't have fallen. But she wasn't, and so she did, crashing into the concrete shoulder first. Her head came next, pain shooting from the back of her skull to slam between her eyes. The agony was so intense that it took several seconds for her to regain awareness of the body still attached to her throbbing head, to feel the hot noses snuffling at her stomach as the three Strikers scrambled on top of her, each searching for soft flesh to bite.

Emma sobbed and pushed at the wriggling bodies, but the Strikers didn't even bother to snap at her trembling fingers. They could tell she was weak, easy prey. There was no need to fight her when they'd be eating her in a few more moments. She tried to turn over, to protect her vulnerable stomach, but her writhing only seemed to excite the creatures.

She'd nearly accepted the fact that she was going to die when a sharp blast of stun fire crackled through the air, and one of the Strikers screamed and fell heavily on top of her.

The other two scattered like cockroaches in a newly lit room, scuttling away across the courtyard as the stun gun continued to fire. Emma thought she heard one of them fall but couldn't be sure. Her pulse was pounding too loudly in her ears, her heart struggling to overcome the trauma of her close call and the drugging effects of the Hamma claws.

Still, it didn't take her long to guess who had shot the gun that had saved her life. Even before his face appeared above her, lit from behind like some dark angel come to earth, she knew it was Andre. He'd found her, and now he was going to scoop her up and drag her back to that cage near the shelter.