Demon Marked (37 page)

“Then I'll walk in the field! Just give me some room.” Ginger was much stronger and saner than she'd been when they arrived, but Michael was still extremely protective.

“Fine! But if you pass out, don't expect me to come carry you back to the house.”

“Fine!” Ginger yelled.

“Fine!” Mikey yelled back before spinning on his heel and storming back into the house. Ginger stared after him for a second, regret in her big blue eyes, before she turned back to Emma. “I'll be back in twenty minutes. Save me a glass of that, will you?”

“Sure.” Emma watched Ginger turn and head into the gently waving grass. Beside her, Andre laughed beneath his breath. “What's so funny?” Emma asked, turning back to him, marveling again at how handsome he looked in jeans and a slightly wrinkled white button-up with rolled-up sleeves.

He was beautiful, perfect, and he was hers. Tonight he'd sleep in her bed, make love to her until she was sure she'd never come down from the high of being with him. And then they'd fall asleep tangled up in each other. They'd wake up just as tangled, and the first thing he'd do was smile, a grin so bright and full of hope that she knew he felt the same way she did: that his life had become a beautiful dream and he didn't ever,
ever
want to wake up.

“I think they've got a thing for each other,” Andre said, nodding toward Ginger. “Her and Mikey.”

Emma cocked her head, skeptical. “Really? They seem . . . mutually annoyed.”

“First sign of infatuation.”

“Really?” Emma smiled around the edge of her glass as she took another sip of liquid deliciousness. Andre was right; wine was way better than beer.

“Pretty soon he'll be telling her that her nails are filthy,” he said, nearly making Emma snort her drink through her nose. “And she'll be telling him he's a vain asshole with an eyebrow-waxing obsession. Next thing you know ... they'll be engaged.”

“Is that how it works?” she asked, laughing as he brought their joined hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to each of her not-quite-as-filthy nails.

“Yes.” Andre squeezed her hand, a promise that his kisses would continue at length as soon as they were alone. “Just wait and see.”

Emma turned back to the field. Ginger had caught up with Sam and Jace. The three of them stood at the far edge of the property, where the hill sloped down and the valley opened up in a view Emma wished her sister could see. Still, Sam didn't seem to need anything else to make her happy—even sight. She had Jace, and she had a secret of her own, one she hadn't told anyone but Emma. Emma had promised she wouldn't tell anyone, but surely “anyone” didn't include her future husband.

“I have secret knowledge, too, you know.” Emma leaned in to whisper her next words near Andre's ear. “Sam thinks she's knocked up.”

“Knocked up?”

“Pregnant.” Emma rolled her eyes.

“I know what it means,” he said with a laugh, “but you don't call it ‘knocked up' when the man and woman are married.”

“Sure you do. It sounds sexier that way.” Emma leaned back in her chair, smiling. It felt like all she did was smile these days. But it was hard not to. She'd never been so happy, couldn't believe this was her life and she was going to spend the rest of it with the best friend she'd ever had. A best friend who was also an amazing lover and maybe, one day, would be the father of her own children. The thought made her smile grow even wider. “When I'm pregnant I'm going to tell everyone that my old man knocked me up.”

He snorted. “Sounds like I beat you.”

“Does not. It's nice.”

“You're crazy.”

“I'm awesome,” she said, pleased when he laughed even louder and pulled her into his lap. “You're just too old-fashioned.”

“If I were that old-fashioned, you'd be sleeping alone, little girl.” He nuzzled his face into her neck, kissing her bare skin, making her shiver.

“If Father Paul catches you sneaking into my room, I still might be, old man.” She turned and kissed him, licking the buttery sweetness of the wine from his lips until he moaned.

“I love you,” he whispered against her mouth.

“I love you, too. Want to go for a walk in the woods?”

“But everyone else is walking in the field,” he said, pulling back to gaze up into her eyes.

“Exactly.” She winked, and he smiled, and in minutes they were racing each other to the trees, eager to continue conquering their demons together.

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Anna J. Evans's Demon Bound series!

 

 

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S
amantha Quinn wasn't afraid of the dark.

Even when she was walking the edge of the ruins, where the demonic infestation had transformed New York City's Greenwich Village into a maze of rubble inhabited by bloodthirsty predators, the darkness could be an unexpected ally.

The scary things got cocky in the shadows. Careless. They made noise—claws on the concrete, rough skin scraping along crumbling brick, eager breath rasping through thickly scaled lips—things even sighted people could hear if they were really listening.

To a woman who'd been legally blind since the age of six, the sounds of an approaching demon were like gunshots—impossible not to notice, and easy to avoid if you had practice ducking and covering. Which she did. A girl couldn't grow up on the south end of the island without learning how to run and hide.

Or when to pay attention to the feeling that something bad was going to happen.

“I'll be there in ten, fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Wonderful! We can't wait to—”

“Gotta hang up. Bye.” Sam tapped the bud clipped to her ear, ending the phone call without waiting for Mrs. Choe to say her good-byes.

Ellen and her husband, Chang-su, had lived in the neighborhood for forty years and had raised four children in the wake of the infestation twenty years before—when demons emerging from caves beneath the Atlantic Ocean had found the densely populated, burrowlike habitats they sought in the cities of New York and Boston. The Choes knew there were times when safety dictated the rude termination of a phone call. But they wouldn't be worried. Demons were easy to avoid if you stuck to the main streets and made a run for it on the rare occasions when the creatures prowled too near to the edge of the ruins.

The descendants of the ancient dinosaurs—monsters that had escaped from caves near the earth's core during a series of massive worldwide earthquakes near the end of the past century—weren't particularly quick. They had to rely on their prey being careless and letting them get close enough to employ the demons' various deadly natural weapons. Sam wouldn't let them get close. She had these streets memorized, and her ability to distinguish areas of light and dark kept her from running into any large obstacles. Sure, she had her share of spills, but she felt confident she could take care of herself, even on the city streets.

Ah, Stephen. Brother, friend, voice of doom. Why was it always
his
voice that got going in her head at night, when she was trying to pull off the “brave New Yorker” thing?

Sam did her best to banish her brother's voice, focusing on where she was going, not where she'd been, increasing her speed until her sandals made tiny scraping noises against the concrete as they chased the white cane tapping ahead. She was on her own now. She had her own place, her own life, and she didn't need anyone taking care of her, no matter what her brother thought.

The Choes hadn't been surprised to hear she'd finally gotten her own apartment. But then, they'd never treated her like an invalid or an oddity. To them, she was just another girl from the neighborhood, and the only florist they wanted to handle their daughter's wedding. Sam was gradually making a name for herself above the demon barricade, but Hand Picked was already the hottest thing going below Fourteenth Street. Arranging flowers based solely on smell and texture created some fairly fantastic-looking combinations.

Obviously Sam had never seen any of her own arrangements, aside from the occasional silhouette when the sun shone brightly through her shop window, but she took her clients' word for it that they were stunning. Old friends or not, the Choes wouldn't hire less than the best for their daughter. They'd finally gotten Sin Moon hooked up with a nice Korean boy who owned a house in the suburbs, far from the dangerous community where they'd been trapped when property values plummeted in the wake of the infestation. They meant to stage a wedding celebration worthy of such an event.
And
they wanted to approve every last detail months in advance.

Hence the centerpiece Sam was presently cradling with her left arm. She'd promised to bring the sample arrangement over as soon as she finished cleaning up the shop for the day, no matter what the hour.

But as the pungent smell of fresh demon waste mingled with the scents of lavender and wild roses, she began to doubt the wisdom of journeying out alone after seven o'clock. Demonic attacks had been on the rise in recent months. Attacks always increased in the spring, when the warmer temperatures brought certain breeds out of their winter hibernation, but this year it was worse than usual.

Somewhere, deep in the ruins, a young girl screamed, startling Sam and nearly making her drop the flowers she'd worked on all afternoon.

“Damn it.” She stumbled to the side, regaining her grip on the basket, but clocking her shoulder on something big, hard, and foul-smelling in the process.

A Dumpster, but one that wasn't used much. The stink wasn't fresh, but more the lingering sourness of ancient vegetables mixed with rotted meat and coffee grounds. Gross, but it was probably the best hiding place she was going to find around here.

After using her cane to check the area behind the Dumpster—grateful for once for the smaller demons that had all but eliminated the city's rat problem south of the barricade—Sam set the centerpiece on the ground and turned back to the ruins. She'd never ventured inside by herself and had dared take the shortcut between her apartment and her brother's bar only when accompanied by half a dozen of his biggest, burliest friends, but for some reason she
had
to follow to its source the cold, slippery energy oozing across her skin.

The scream hadn't come again, but the smell was stronger than ever, as was the certainty that something horrible was happening. A woman had screamed in her dream and there had been blood, so much blood. She'd felt it as if she were in the woman's skin. It had oozed down her face, hot and wet, slipping between her lips before she could think to shut her mouth.

She'd had her share of portentous dreams, but never anything so violent. She was positive that if she didn't find the woman who'd screamed before whatever hunted her did, that blood would be spilled and an innocent person would die. For once, she had a chance to do something to prevent the awful thing she'd seen from happening. There was no way she could live with herself if she didn't at least try.

Still, the rational part of her mind argued that she should call for one of the many demon-control patrols always a scream away in this part of Manhattan. It was their job to keep the streets safe, to make sure the thousands of tourists who came to New York to see the demonic urban habitat didn't get themselves killed trying to get a picture of some of the more fantastic species.

New York City and Boston were the only two infested cities on the East Coast, and Boston's habitat wasn't nearly as visitor-friendly. The Beantown officials had hesitated to blast closed the subway tunnels and allowed the demons to infest a larger portion of the city. So New York pulled the majority of the tourists from Canada and the United States, of which there were thousands every week.

Even decades after the initial emergence, people were still fascinated by the dangerous, extraordinary-looking creatures. And as long as they stayed in their tour bus, demons weren't usually a threat—at least, no more so than lions observed from a jeep trundling through the African savanna. The barriers erected in the collapsed subway tunnels and the Fourteenth Street barricade kept the demons contained, and the demon-control patrols took down the rare beast that dared to leave the burrowlike habitat they had created during the destruction of the initial infestation. Demon control also dealt with the homeless and the drunks, and looked into the reports of concerned citizens.