Fallen Stars (The Demon Accords) (16 page)

“I think you’re looking at this the wrong way, Ned,” Cooper began, but stopped when he saw rage flash across Granger’s face.  “At least tell me if you found the book?”

“What book would that be, Sam?  And how do you know of it?”

“Listen, you’re angry, Ned. I get that.  You have good reason, but that book is dangerous!  If you’ve found it, you need to get it into the hands of someone who can properly contain it.”

“Like you contained the secret that this house was a magical trap that would trigger with the right circumstances?  I think we’ll stick with the guy that not only reversed the damage but sealed the portal. 
If
we find a book, we’ll let Mr. Gordon handle it.  But for now, I think it would be best if you both left, along with any guests you may have brought with you.”

Cooper looked like he might say something more, but he snapped his mouth shut at the last second.  Turning to the crowd, he raised his hand to a plain-looking young woman who had blended into the crowd.  She looked rattled by the heated exchange as she followed Cooper out. 

A slender young man appearing to be in his late twenties moved out of the crowd to take

Cercia’s arm.  He looked like he could be her relation.

Cercia turned to me as the young warlock moved to her side.  “I’m curious about the shape of the armor you shield yourself with, Mr. Gordon.  Actually about a great many things, but the armor seems familiar?”

“It’s a copy of Iron Man’s armor, Grandmother.  You know, the comic book turned into a movie?” her grandson explained.  Perhaps the ability to see aura was genetic.

“Oh, that’s more than a bit puerile, isn’t it?  But tell me, Mr. Gordon, just what are you?”

“Hungry and hoping that dinner is soon!” I said with a glance at the Grangers.  The tense crowd laughed, but from the corner of my eye, I caught the dark look that flashed over both witches’ faces.  As one, they turned and left the party.

“My apologies!” Ned said to the group at large.  “Chris, dinner will be served quite soon.  In the meantime, the young lady behind you has some hors d’oeuvres.” 

Vrana reclaimed his attention as I turned to look behind me.  The young waitress standing with a tray of bacon wrapped scallops was brown-haired and brown-eyed, looking to be about seventeen or eighteen.  She was also a vampire, and I knew her.

“Katrina?  What are you doing here?” I asked, my hands helping themselves to four bundles of bacon goodness despite my surprise.

“Checking up on you.  Tell me, Chris, are you tapping that?  You banging the blonde bitch?  Have you gone over to the furry side?” she asked smoothly, her tone snarky, her eyes serious.

I gulped down the scallops and focused my gaze on her.  “Katrina, did you just travel seven hundred miles and take a temp job as a waitress to piss me off?  Were you looking to move your age up?  Because I’d be happy to blast you into, oh, say, about sixty-five or so.”

Katrina was one of Tanya’s oldest friends, one of the Outsiders who lived in the sewers that surround Citadel.  She had been turned at the age of twelve, despite all the vampire conventions against it.  Stuck in a preteen body for over a hundred years, she had grown bitter and violent by the time I first met her.  Predictably, she had lashed out at me, and I had stunned her with a blast of aura.  Knocked back to human for three days, she had aged physically from twelve to fifteen.  Tanya had convinced me to zap her again, which had left her looking like a college kid.  That episode should have been a clue to me that my aura could be lethal to ancient vampires, aging them to dust in minutes, but I hadn’t added two and two to get four.

Now she studied me carefully, her nostrils flaring as she blatantly sniffed me.

“Just checking.  Tanya is a might… distraught at your absence, particularly as you are traveling with the furry bitch over there,” she said, her eyes flicking in the direction of Stacia, who was in conversation with Kral and Janek.

“She’s a friend.  She’s had my back without fail, which makes her part of a very, very small group of people.  But why are you here and not Tanya?  Why can’t she come herself?”

“Is that so hard to work out?  I know you’re young and not overly bright, but surely you can understand.  If she leaves the Coven now, the faction that is calling for your death will be unopposed.  You have scared the Coven badly.  Most of the older vampires left as soon as the Conclave was concluded, scurrying back to fortify their homes.  Now even the younger ones are terrified of you. Tanya sent me because I won’t be missed and I don’t buy into the crap that’s getting slung all around.  If she had left New York and come herself, there would be contracts on your life within minutes.”

“How is she?”

“How do you think?  She’s separated from her Chosen and fighting a political campaign for his life.  Then, to top it off, she hears that you’re travelling with little miss werewolf over there.”

“I told you, she’s a friend.”

“I heard you, but did she?  You think she views you as just a friend?”

I didn’t answer right away, which was answer enough. 

“Yeah, so you know that much at least,” Katrina said.

“I’ve been gone, what?  Three days?  She said I had to leave and it turns out that I was really, really needed down here.  Stacia was picked by the Malleks to go with me, and you know what?  She’s been a really good friend, nothing more, and she’s doing the job her bosses expect her to.  Yeah, she wants more, but I told her that wasn’t going to happen.”

She tilted her head and studied me for a moment.

“I heard something to the effect that you saved the Alphas’ children and stoppered up some kind of Hell hole or something?”

“It was the first case of multiple possession that I’ve ever heard of.  And there was a dimensional portal to Hell that allowed Demons in physical form to cross over to our world.”

“Bad?”

“Big Bad.  Like a breach of the Accord between Heaven and Hell.  It almost killed me. 'Sos, Stacia, and the Pack Second protected me while I closed it down.”

“So it’s not a problem anymore?”

“This one isn’t.  But the rip was caused by a witch’s spell, and the grimoire that holds that spell is still around.”

“Can’t you destroy it?”

“It resists casual destruction.  I need a trustworthy witch or a handy ocean, neither of which is close by.”

“A book like that has value.  Considerable value.  You have it with you?” she asked.

I knew that Tanya trusted her, but I’ve never warmed up to Katrina.  A century of embittered exile from society of any kind wasn’t a good recipe for mental stability in my book.

“No.  It’s hidden away.”

“Good.  I would suggest that there is no such thing as a trustworthy witch when it comes to a book that powerful.”

I nodded slowly.  “That’s my thought as well.”

“Well, Chris.  I better get back to work, but I’ll be around, keeping an eye on things.  I’m making wicked tips!” she said with a smirk.

I grabbed the rest of the scallops off her tray, wrapping them in a cocktail napkin.  She arched one eyebrow, then nodded behind me.  “Gonna share those with
him?”

The crowd behind us was parting to let Awasos through.  He is literally smarter than most humans, but he can’t speak words.  Nonetheless, I’ve learned to read his body language to the point where he can convey complex ideas.  He was very pleased with himself.  The crowd around us watched and listened closely as he came up to me.

“Did you pee on his car?” I asked.  “No?  So what did you do?”

His eyes gleamed with self-satisfaction as a hunch occurred to me.

“You didn’t?” I asked, impressed at the idea. “You did!”

‘What? What did he do, Chris?” Ned asked.  The whole group hung on my next words.

“I think he answered an age-old question, Ned.  It turns out that bears don’t, in fact, shit in the woods—they shit on Sam Cooper’s car!”

Chapter 17

It took a little over four minutes before someone at our end of the table asked about the portal.  The seating order had been set up earlier and we were down on the very end, farthest from the Grangers and Vranas.  That was fine with me, but from the glances we were getting from that end of the table, I could tell some people were frustrated with our placement.

Stacia was across from me, 'Sos on the floor beside the table, gnawing on a beef haunch that Ned had requested special for him.  On my right sat Coreena, the firefighter, and across from her was a very nervous vampire named John.  About eighty years old in vampire years, John was thin and bookish looking and apparently knew exactly who I was.  He sat frozen in place much of the time, which is typical for a disturbed vampire.  Coreena, on the other hand, had been friendly to both Stacia and I, and it was she who asked the first question.

“So there was really a gateway to Hell upstairs?” she asked as Katrina set an appetizer in front of me.  John warily watched the older female vampire, who looked like a college freshman.  Katrina had apparently taken over waiting our end of the table.

“Ah yes,” I said to Coreena before turning to Katrina.  “What’s this?”

“Grilled ostrich with sautéed mushrooms,” she said with a wink.

“And you closed it?  The gate or door or whatever?” Coreena pressed.  The rest of the table on our end had stopped talking and was listening in.

“Yeah, we did,” I said with a nod to both Awasos and Stacia. 

Rose’s nephew, Malcolm, was seated next to Coreena, and across from him was John’s date, a twenty-something-looking girl who had only been a vampire for about ten years, I guessed. Her name was Deena and she was much less nervous about me than her date, but she kept quiet and shot curious glances at John.

Malcolm couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer.  “Did you find the book?”

Stacia glared at him, but he either missed it or ignored it.  “You’d probably want to talk to Jep about that,” I said, trying to convey that it wasn’t a good topic.  “But you should have seen some of the monsters that came through, right, Stacia?” I said.

She caught on fast. “Yeah, that tentacle thing will give me nightmares for years.”

Malcolm didn’t look like he was ready to give up on the book, but Coreena leaned forward, blocking him from my view.

“Tentacle thing?  I thought demons would be red tails and pitchforks?” she asked, looking between Stacia and me.  Even John looked interested, relaxing enough to sip his goblet of O negative.

“Well, apparently no one told the demons that because they came in all kinds of shapes and forms,” Stacia said, leaning forward herself.  Malcolm’s face blanked as the angle on Stacia's low-cut cocktail dress shifted downward, which appeared to cause a corresponding drop in his I.Q.

“There were things with claws and pinchers, poisoned tails, things that were shaped like a person but moved on all fours, all kinds of twisted shit,” she said with a shudder that was obviously real.

The lady to Malcolm’s right wormed into the conversation, looking at me as she asked, “And you killed them all?”

“Actually, Stacia and Jep and 'Sos killed them.  I was pretty busy trying to close the damn hole!”

“You did kill that scorpion thing,” Stacia pointed out.

“Nope, I just wounded it. 'Sos stepped on it after I knocked it down.  It kind of splattered.”

“He doesn’t look that heavy?” Deena asked.

“Did you miss him in bear form earlier?” I asked her back.  She looked confused.  “His other form is a really big grizzly.  About twelve hundred pounds or so.”

“Oh,” she said with big eyes.

Katrina pulled our empty appetizer plates and handed them off to another waiter.  She replaced them with bowls of what smelled like seafood chowder.

“So, John, does Asheville have a large contingent of Darkken?” I asked.

He froze in place for a split second then answered stiffly, “Not large.”

“And you’re the Master for the region?”

His head shook slightly from side to side.  “We’re a subgroup of Charlotte. I answer to the Master there.”

“Oh, I never made it down here during my short stint as a Rover,” I said without really thinking.

“
You
were a Rover?  But you’re not a vampire?” Deena asked.  John instantly placed his hand over hers in a vampire fast move before turning to me.

“Please don’t take offense, Chosen.  She meant no harm,” he said.

“How could I be offended?  She’s right.  I wouldn’t expect her to know.”

“But the Coven expects her to know, so we have some things to go over later, Deena,” he said, patting her hand but not looking away from me.

“Rover?  Chosen?  What’s all this?” Coreena asked, looking between Stacia and me.

Stacia had a closed-off expression and said nothing, leaving it to me.

“Christian Gordon is the Chosen of Tatiana Demidova and holds high rank in the Coven,” Katrina supplied from behind John and Deena, where she was refilling their glasses with dark red blood.

“The Chosen of the Young Queen?” Deena exclaimed, staring at me.  I shot a small glare at Katrina, but she just smirked it away.