Demon Marked (24 page)

The thought made her pause, but only for a second. Andre needed the book and knew her well enough to realize she wouldn't let him anywhere near it if she suspected he was going to use it for some evil scheme. That must have been why he'd let her roam free for so long. But now that he knew she was onto him, that she'd run from him the same way she'd run from the doctor and Little Francis, he—

“Is Little Francis in on it, too?” she asked, shoving at Andre's hands when he flung the limp demon off her stomach and tried to help her into a seated position.

“In on what?” he asked, angrier than she'd ever seen him. He looked like he wanted to shake her teeth loose. Finally, she was seeing the real Andre, and she didn't like what she saw one bit. “What the fuck are you talking about? Why did you run from me?”

“You know why.” She tensed as he grabbed her arms and hauled her onto his lap. He swiped at the gold on her skin with a rattled sigh.

“You needed a fix? Is that it? You had to go get—”

“Give it a rest. You know I don't use drugs,” she said, energized by the anger coursing through her veins. She managed to sit up a little straighter. She couldn't quite stand, but there was no way she was going to lean against his shoulder. “Why don't you tell me why you're after the book?”

He froze, a look of genuine confusion marring his face. He was good; no doubt about it. “The spell book? What are you—”

“Don't lie to me. Not again,” she said, cutting him off before he could. “I know, Andre, so you might as well tell me the truth.”

“You're out of your mind,” he said, angry again, his fingers digging into her hip with a contained violence that would have been scary if she hadn't just nearly been eaten alive.

“Tell me,” she said, ignoring the heaving of her stomach as the Hamma venom worked its way deeper into her bloodstream.

“I told you, I—”

“Fine, then I'll find it myself.” With the last of her strength, Emma drove her hands into Andre's hair, fingers digging into the pressure points at the base of his skull. She expected him to fight her, to rip her arms away and haul her body to her feet and off to whatever holding facility he deemed fit. Instead, he sat completely still, only flinching slightly as her fingers dug deep into his skin.

After a moment, his lips parted and his face muscles relaxed; then, she was inside his mind. Frantic and enraged, she rifled through his memories, throwing pieces of him in the air as she hunted for the proof she sought.

She watched him running through the ruins, desperate, looking for her; she saw herself through his eyes as he kissed the curve of her breast; she saw her own smile as they walked down the street, the sun glinting on the gold in her hair. Emma pushed the pretty images aside, probing deeper, shoving into every corner of Andre's mind, scattering memories of beautiful women and childhood hurts and Katie in her wake.

For what seemed like hours she scoured the contents of his soul, finding every little sin he'd ever confessed into the quiet booth at Saint Mary's and a few dozen he'd been too ashamed to tell anyone. But nowhere in those secret shames did she find anything about Death Ministry connections or Stewart or great plans involving demon spell books and supernatural evil.

She did, however, find a hazy memory of the watch on his wrist, the one his Uncle Francis had given all the male cousins for their twenty-first birthdays, the special watch designed just for the Contis. Andre had cracked the face a few months ago when he'd dropped it on the marble floor of his bathroom. He'd been hiding it under his suit jacket until he had a chance to get it fixed, knowing how important the watch was to his uncle.

That meant at least five men had this exact same watch. It also meant that—if his memories were to be believed—Andre was innocent. Unfortunately ... one of his cousins was not. One of the Contis was up to his eyeballs in shady drug connections and big, bad plans of the demon-spell variety. One of the Contis wanted her in that cage, and she had a pretty good idea who that man was.

But she couldn't tell Andre, not until she had some kind of proof. He'd never believe that one of his family members had tried to hurt her, especially not now, when he assumed she'd run away from him to get high only hours after nearly overdosing.

Emma pulled her hands from Andre's hair. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“Can you really see inside my mind when you do that?” he asked, for once his tone more curious than disbelieving.

“I can.” Emma took a deep breath, fighting another wave of nausea. She was going to have to find someone to feed on, quickly, or she wouldn't be investigating anything except the inside of the nearest toilet. “But I didn't find ... what I thought I'd find.”

“You really thought I was the one after your book?” he asked, having evidently put two and two together and figured out what she was raving about. The hurt in his eyes made her wince.

“I had reasons to believe you were,” she said.

He shook his head, his disappointment making the air even harder to breathe. “You had more reasons to believe I wasn't.”

And ... he was right.
Completely
right. He'd given her no reason to doubt him. He was angry and hurt, and he had every right to be. She'd been horrible to him.

But then, she was horrible to everyone ... sooner or later. She could blame it on her childhood, she could blame it on her time locked away in a madman's basement, she could blame it on the dark craving and every life it had driven her to steal from the time she was too little to tie her shoes ... but it didn't really matter
why
she was the way she was. It only mattered that she was broken, useless to other, normal people. She'd tried to warn Andre that she was bad news, but he hadn't listened. It was his fault that he felt like his favorite puppy had pissed in his shoes.

Too bad blaming him didn't make her feel any better. Nothing she could do would make either of them feel better. ...

Unless ...

Andre had said he wanted to try. Had he meant it? Could he really care about her enough to give her his trust? And could she put aside all her bullshit, all her issues, all the fear that she'd never be able to have a normal, human relationship, long enough to give him that same chance?

She didn't know. But she suddenly realized how much she'd meant those words in her sister's shop. She did want to try. With Andre. And there was no better time than the present.

“I've never been on Hamma claws.”

Andre sighed. “Emma, I—”

“I think I sucked the drugs into my body when I was feeding on Greg this morning and then again with Stewart. Right before the Striker demons attacked, I ... I had a memory of a time when the same thing happened,” she said, watching Andre's face for some sign that he thought she was lying or crazy or both. Instead, he was quiet, waiting for her to go on, for her to give him a reason to believe. “That time it was Inuago pellets. They made me sick, and I had to feed again to get the drugs out of my system, the same way I had to feed this morning.”

She told him about Dr. Finch, about what she'd seen in his mind, how she'd pulled his energy inside her to banish the torture of the venom and antivenom warring it out in her body. She shared everything she'd seen in the Strong Man and Stewart's memories, even the things she couldn't make sense of yet. It was only when she got to the part about the watch that her voice faltered and the words didn't come so easily. She was ashamed of how she'd reacted. So ashamed.

Now Andre would know that—even for a few minutes—she'd suspected he was a truly evil man.

Andre shook his head as she trailed off and swallowed hard. The strained silence stretched on and on, broken only by the scuffling of tiny claws somewhere in the shadows around the courtyard.

Squat demons, most likely, or something equally harmless. Still, they should get out of here before something bigger came along or the Striker demons decided to come back for their stunned friend. Not to mention the fact that Emma needed to feed. Now. But she couldn't seem to say any of those things to Andre. She couldn't say a word, not until she knew if he could at least
try
to believe her.

“What about all the other bad guys you've fed on? Why hasn't this happened more than once before?” Andre asked, shocking her with his choice of questions. Of all the things she'd told him, she'd assumed he'd be more interested in the fact that someone in his family was working with the Death Ministry. “Weren't a lot of those people on demon drugs?”

“Not where I grew up. People in our town were too poor to afford fancy drugs. We had to stick to alcohol and cigarettes and the occasional bowl.” She winced as another cramp hit her stomach but forced herself to talk through the pain. “But you'd be surprised—a lot of the really bad guys, and girls, don't do drugs.”

“Too dedicated to their evil work to cloud their mind with toxins?”

“Something like that,” she said, searching his shuttered face again for some sign that he'd heard and understood the implications of the watch she'd seen in the men's minds. “I think, for most of them, violence is its own drug.”

“Kind of like sex.” He laughed a humorless laugh and shoved a damp clump of hair off his forehead.

His words made her think. Sex and violence—two extreme human emotions, one capable of creating life, the other all too often dedicated to destroying it. She'd always known that she could feed on anger and evil, but apparently she could feed on sex, as well. Father Paul had never mentioned such a thing, but he
was
a priest and hardly an expert on sexual energy.

But just because she
could
feed on sex didn't make it okay. As far as she knew, the consequences of her feeding would still be the same for her victims, and she certainly didn't want to make victims of her lovers. Especially
this
lover.

God, was there a chance they really could be lovers? Could he forgive her? Could she find a way to control her demon mark and make sure he was safe in her arms? She hoped so, hoped so hard it made her ache all over.

“My money's on Little Francis,” Andre finally said, proving he'd understood what that watch meant for the Conti family. He stood with her in his arms as if she weighed no more than the small demon lying stunned on the concrete a few feet away. “I think his eagerness to work a deal with the Death Ministry must have been a cover for his real agenda.”

“Dealing drugs? But why would he want the spell book if this is all about drugs? Why try to kidnap me?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you think your uncle knows? Do you think—”

“I doubt it, but I can't be sure. And we can't go back to the offices or to your sister's shop or anywhere else Francis will think to look for us until we know who's turned traitor and who hasn't. We're going to have to find someplace else where you can rest and—”

“I know somewhere we can go,” she said, seizing on the first idea to float through her spinning head. She didn't need rest; she needed food, damn it. Whether Andre believed that part of her story or not, she knew it was the truth. “You know the strip club behind Yang's Curiosity Shop?”

“Boudreaux's?”

“Yeah. Jeremiah, the manager. He has rooms for rent,” she said. “No one will look for us there.”

Emma held her breath, hoping he'd agree that Boudreaux's was a good choice. The manager, Jeremiah, would perfectly suit her current needs. He'd raped at least three of the strippers at the club since Emma had moved into the area last spring.

Ginger volunteered at the rape victims hotline and had warned Emma against getting anywhere near Boudreaux's. She'd even insisted on accompanying Emma to buy her miniflamethrowers since the back room of Yang's shared an alley with the front entrance to Boudreaux's. Ginger, for all her faults and flightiness, was a good person and a very good friend.

Emma had to find some way to contact her and make sure she was safe and—hopefully—still had the spell book in her possession. Thank god she'd run from Little Francis and his people. If anyone could be trusted with a demon grimoire, it was Ginger. She had no lust for supernatural power; she just wanted to expand her boot collection and find a guy who wasn't a complete scumbag or married or both.

“Please, Andre. It's not far and—”

“I know where it is, and I can guess what you want there,” he said, turning right into a narrow street that ran alongside the main road. “What exactly did you see in Dr. Finch again—what was he doing?”

Emma closed her eyes, pulling up the memory of the dark room and Dr. Finch's hands deep in the insides of a man with a bloated stomach. She swallowed hard, eyes flying open to meet Andre's. “Organ harvesting, I think. Definitely illegal surgery of some kind, and he didn't care whether the man on his table lived or died. He wasn't even wearing gloves when he reached inside his—”

“Sh.” Andre hugged her tighter to his chest. “You're going to make us both sick.”

“I'm probably going to be sick, anyway.”

“No, you're not,” Andre said. “We're going to get you what you need. I promise.”

“So you believe me? You really do? About all of it?” She was almost afraid to hope, but there was no doubt he was headed toward Boudreaux's and away from the Conti family offices.

“I do. I just wish I'd believed you sooner. Then maybe you would have believed in me.”