Releasing the Demons (The Order of the Senary) Page 14

  “Get moving,” his brother said in that empty voice of his. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  Blaze sat outside her apartment, on the only bench that hadn’t been smashed into pieces. To Valerie’s surprise, the mess had been cleaned up, but not entirely erased. The tree, now a charred skeleton, and the lack of outdoor furniture were the only indications of last night’s battle. The dead vampire, of course, was also gone.

  As to where, she didn’t care to know.

  She moved up the walkway, back from her coffee date with Deron. To her relief, he was alive and well, having slept like a rock the night before. If anyone had been outside his apartment, he didn’t know it. She hadn’t mentioned anything about the fiasco at her place since she didn’t want to worry him. The slightly patronizing look he’d given her was starting to fade, but his concern was still obvious.

  After all, they’d seen their share of detectives go off the deep end. She wasn’t one of them, of course. At least, not yet. But right now it was probably best for Deron to think so.

  No matter how much she hated it.

  Blaze regarded her from behind his sunglasses, puffing on a cancer stick. There were three butts already on the ground beside his tan work boot. He wore loose-fitting jeans and a dark gray T-shirt, the fabric stretched tight over his broad upper body. She’d been getting used to looking at him half-naked, so the shirt seemed unnatural on him.

  “Hey.” He smiled a little, dimples creasing his cheeks. She’d never noticed them before.

  “Hi.” Valerie stopped in front of him, keeping her distance, a bit apprehensive. The image of him beating a vampire with his bare hands crept into the back of her skull.

  “Figured I’d come back and clean up.” He motioned around. “And, you know, apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For not coming back last night. Not checking on you. For,” he shrugged his big shoulders, “yelling at you.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She took a seat beside him, her apprehension disappearing. The smell of his cologne enveloped her, its dark and smoky scent no longer reminding her of funerals. “You were busy. I understand.”

  “Yeah.” He took a drag of his cigarette, blew the smoke away from her. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “Trust me, I’ve seen worse.”

  He glanced at her, expression guarded. “I’m sorry about my brother, too. He can be a bit extreme at times.”

  She let out a laugh. “Well, he definitely has an interesting superpower.”

  His eyebrows rose above his shades. “You saw it?”

  “Kind of hard not to.”

  He made a sound, half-grunt and half-chuckle. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Don’t tell me his name is Iceman.”

  Valerie could see the laughter bubble up inside him but he managed to contain it. “No. His name is Dax.”

  “That’s fairly normal.”

  “Wait until you meet him.” Blaze dropped the cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. “He’s far from it.”

  Wait until you meet him. As if he planned on introducing her to his family.

  She took a moment to study him, the cruel line of his mouth, his high cheekbones and strong jawline. Her reflection in his sunglasses stared back at her, hiding the eyes she so desperately wanted to see. His nose had been broken a couple of times, but it didn’t take away from the savage beauty of his face. If anything, it only added to it. The interlocking tribal tattoos that covered his entire body clawed at the sides of his tawny neck, crawling out from beneath his T-shirt and sharpening to a point near his jaw. His buzz cut had maybe a week of growth, covering his head in shiny black hair. A dangerous allure surrounded him, like a jaguar trapped in a cage, too captivating to ignore but too vicious to touch.

  “I just had coffee with Deron.” Valerie broke the silence. “He’s fine.”

  Blaze nodded. “I know.”

  “How?”

  “One of my brothers, Shaul. He’s fast and he’s quiet. Hence, no problems.”

  So he did send someone over there. Shaul, another brother. “Are they all your brothers? Real brothers?”

  He lifted his gloved hand and spread out his scarred fingers. “Half-brothers. I have five of them. We’re all from the same . . . I don’t know, strain I guess.”

  Strain. Meaning vampire strain. “Father?”

  “I'm not sure. They never told us much.”

  Valerie sensed his growing unease. He wasn’t comfortable discussing this, although why he continued to reveal his personal info was beyond her. She tried to imagine not having a mother or father to rely on as a child, growing up in a laboratory, raised as an experiment, with your whole life depending on whether you were successfully ‘hybridized’ or not. She struggled to picture the stigma something like that would cause, both physically and psychologically. What had they done to him? Had he been forced to harm others?

  She couldn’t conceive it.

  Or maybe she just didn’t want to.

  “I got a lead last night.” The gravelly bass of his voice drew her back into the here and now. “Do you want to check it out with me?”

  “A lead?” She perked up. “What kind of lead?”

  “Just a location.”

  “Where?”

  He stood, towering toward the bright blue sky. “Harlem train station.”

  “Harlem train station?” She followed suit, falling about a foot short of him. “Why there?”

  “Looks like Cyrus was there last night. He’s probably gone by now, but I want to scope it out, see if I can find anything.”

  “Who told you this?”

  Blaze shook out a fresh cigarette from his pack of Marlboros. Valerie felt his hidden eyes on her as he shoved the pack into his pocket and lit up cancer stick number five with his magical hands. She thought of the blond vampire he’d pounded into the ground, of how the leech had refused to tell him where Cyrus was.

  A worm of dread wriggled in her belly. Looks like he got his information after all.

  Comprehension must've dawned on her face because he simply asked, “Are you in or not?”

  She hesitated, watching him slowly kill himself. “Yeah. I’m in.”

  “All right then, let’s go.” He motioned for her to follow, heading back down the walkway toward the front of the complex. They walked through the visitor’s parking lot before he stopped at a black Ford Mustang, customized with black rims and nearly opaque tinted windows. Blaze took the wheel and she climbed into the passenger seat to find the interior sported the same black-on-black theme.

  “Nice car.” Valerie set her messenger bag down in the foot space and snapped on her seatbelt.

  “Not mine.”

  “Still nice.”

  “Not as nice as a Chevelle.” Blaze started the Mustang without bothering with the seatbelt.

  Her lips twitched. “So?”

  He spared her a glance, his cigarette pinned between his lips as he flashed those dimples again and backed the car out of the lot. He popped the clutch and switched gears, cruising out onto the Bronx streets. Jay-Z thumped over the speakers and he turned up the volume before he rolled down the windows. It was nine in the morning and already muggy out. The balmy wind blew through her hair as the buildings of Marble Hill whirred by.

  “So you’re okay to drive? With your vision and all?”

  “Yeah, for the most part. I have the whole city memorized. I can see other cars, traffic lights, people, you know, the important stuff. Day or night, it doesn’t make a difference. The day is just more intense than night, which can be good or bad, depending on cloud cover.”

  Valerie nodded. He seemed to be driving just fine. Hell, she would’ve never guessed he saw in infrared.

&nbs
p; Infrared. Christ.

  “Whose car is this?”

  “My brothers and I share it. We have three of them, actually. We use them for missions.”

  “Like Batmobiles?”

  He chuckled. “No. Although I’d take a Batmobile any day.”

  “What about your Chevelle?”

  His face fell, just a touch, but she noticed. “It’s gone.”

  “Gone? Gone how?”

  “Just gone. Don’t worry about it,” he said, dropping the subject. “It’s no big deal.”

  She eyed him warily, but let it go. Maybe he had to get rid of it because she’d tracked him. Similar to spy movies, where the agent had to destroy any traces of himself before he risked another exposure. It made sense, considering Blaze was supposed to be nonexistent. Valerie wondered if it worked that way for people, too.

  She pushed the thought away.

  Don’t start doubting him now, Val. You have a leech to catch and he’s your best shot at finding him.

  Not to mention he’d saved her ass last night. And not just her ass, but everyone else in the building. She couldn’t have taken on all those vampires by herself.

  Blaze was on her side. The right side.

  They made their way from the Bronx to Harlem, the streets alive with people now that it was daytime. Traffic slowed them down, but Blaze didn’t seem to be in a rush. He just sat back, smoking, listening to rap music and thinking about God knew what. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but he seemed oddly quiet.

  They rolled to a stop at a traffic light and he tossed his cigarette butt out the window. An expert at keeping the smoke out of the car, he gave Valerie the impression someone close to him wasn’t fond of his nasty habit. He’d obviously been trained well.

  “That’s littering, you know.”

  He flashed her a comically insulted look. “Have you seen the corners of these streets?”

  “Still littering. And you should put on your seat belt. I can write you a ticket for that.”

  His eyebrows rose as he let out a laugh. “You are going to write me a ticket? Go ahead, I dare you—”

  Then he stopped, instantly shutting down, his body going rigid. He stared past her, through her window, at an old navy blue van parked on the road beside them with a plumbing advertisement across its flank. She glanced at the driver, a forgettable middle-aged man who spoke to his passenger.

  “Open the glove compartment.”

  Valerie swung around at the growl in Blaze’s voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just open it.”

  She flicked the button. A .45 Glock nearly fell into her lap. Shit.

  “Give me the gun.”

  “What are you doing, Blaze?”

  “Give me the damn gun.”

  And there it was, the jaguar baring its teeth. She fingered the gun by its barrel and presented the handle. Her hand trembled.

  What the fuck is he doing?

  The light turned green. Someone leaned on their horn behind them.

  Blaze ignored it as he checked the clip and racked the slide, jaw clenched. The temperature in the car climbed, higher and higher, and it didn’t take a genius to know he was furious. He didn’t bother concealing the weapon as he opened the car door.

  “Stay here.” An order, not a request.

  He stepped out and the honking abruptly stopped. Valerie turned to watch the growing horror on the cabbie’s face as Blaze rounded the back of the Mustang, coming up on the van with the gun in his grip. She whirled back around to find the plumber gawking in his rearview, watching Blaze come at him. The guy moved, disappearing into the van as if reaching for a weapon, but Blaze got to him first.

  Blaze grabbed the back of the guy’s collar and dragged him out of the open driver’s side window, dropping his plump body on the asphalt with no trouble at all. As soon as the guy hit the ground, Blaze lifted the Glock and fired at the passenger in the van, barely looking at who he executed.

  Screams ripped through the air as chaos broke out everywhere, people ducking for cover and hiding behind anything they could find. Stupefied, Valerie grabbed her Beretta from her messenger bag, unable to tear her eyes off Blaze. He released the plumber’s collar and brutally kicked him in the face, his expression nothing short of stone-cold rage. Raising the gun, he fired, spraying blood and brain against the side of the Mustang.

  Then he pivoted, heading for the back of the van as Valerie scrambled from the car. Thumping resounded from within the van, pounding against the frame. She forced herself not to look at the plumber as she lifted her gun, aiming at Blaze’s right shoulder. Sweat bloomed from his spine and branched out across his back, like the burnt tree in front of her sliding doors back home.

  “Blaze!” Her voice held firm even though she was scared out of her damn mind. “Stop!”

  He ignored her as he disappeared around the back and wrenched open the van’s rear doors. A blood-curdling scream sliced through the air, followed by the loud crunch of metal and shattering glass. Valerie cursed as she moved for the back door, pressing against it. She took a deep, steadying breath before she whipped her gun around the door’s corner and absorbed the scene in front of her.

  A female vampire writhed across the broken windshield of a parked Honda, squirming and hissing in agony. Her skin had erupted with blisters, distorting her pretty Asian face and bubbling beneath her dark clothes. She held what looked like a katana, the blade glittering in the sunlight, likely for the first time in its existence. As she seized in the sun, the sword clattered to the ground, flashing quicksilver. The stench of scorching flesh and car exhaust pervaded the air, and Valerie resigned herself to getting used to the smell of burning bodies.

  A horrified observer once again, she gaped as Blaze approached the hood of the car, Glock trained on the roasting vampire. He didn’t pull the trigger; he just stared as the leech shrieked and sizzled on top of the wrecked Civic. His jaw clenched and his body stiffened, wire-tight, yet Valerie saw how he trembled.

  “Blaze,” she called. Noting her Beretta was still leveled at his back, she turned it on the dying vampire. The leech’s screams grew louder and more obscene, like something straight out of a bad horror movie. Valerie had never heard anything like it in her entire life.

  Instead of responding, Blaze finally fired, unloading the entire clip into the vampire and silencing her agony. The Glock clicked empty, but he continued to pull the trigger, the trembling now in full effect. Valerie lowered her gun and moved around the van’s door, approaching him from the periphery so he could see her coming.

  Or at least she hoped.

  Keeping her eyes glued on him, she touched the scarred, feverish skin of his forearm with her free hand. When he didn’t flinch, she curled her fingers around the corded muscle and gently pushed his arm down. He stopped pulling the trigger and lowered the gun, his throat working and his body shaking.

  What the hell had that vampire done to him?

  People rose from their hiding places, some already gaping at the macabre scene before them. Others ran away, like the cabbie who’d been honking behind them. A vampire in broad daylight was no joke.

  And this one had been hiding in the back of a van.

  A whimper drifted to Valerie’s ear—soft, barely audible, and female. She turned her attention to the shadowed depths of the van to find a woman curled up in a ball in the corner, naked, shuddering, and bleeding. Valerie’s heart took a nosedive into her stomach when she realized who the girl was.

  “Bianca? Oh my God, Bianca, is that you?”

  It was. And when she looked at Valerie through bleary eyes, she started to cry.

  Valerie leapt inside the van. As soon as she was within reaching distance, Bianca threw her arms around her, sobbing and wailing Spanish prayers of thanks. Valerie held her, tryi
ng to soothe her while she assessed the damage. Knife wounds littered Bianca’s body, some shallow, others deep, likely carved by the katana now lying in the street.

  And Valerie had a feeling this wasn’t the worst of it.

  “Shh.” She stroked Bianca’s dark, oily hair. “It’s going to be all right. You’re safe now.”

  A shadow dimmed the van’s interior and Valerie looked up to find Blaze standing there. Her heart somersaulted at the sight of him. No longer armed, he still appeared as dangerous and menacing as ever. Bianca’s grip on Valerie tightened, the girl’s fear palpable in the stifling air.

  After all, Bianca believed he’d killed her best friend.

  Blaze grabbed the edge of his T-shirt and pulled it off, careful not to take his sunglasses with it. He tossed it and the gray, wadded-up garment landed on Valerie’s sneakers.

  Sirens blared in the distance, no more than a few city blocks away.

  “Cover her up,” he said, his black gravel voice empty. “We need to get out of here.”

  Valerie swallowed dryly. “She needs a hospital.”

  “I know someone who can help her more than any hospital can.”

  Bianca shook her head frantically against Valerie’s shoulder, her thin, fragile fingers digging into her skin. A ball of frustration, guilt, and anger knotted Valerie’s stomach. God damn it, how the hell could this have happened?

  “Who?” she asked, her voice no longer as steady as before. “Who do you know?”

  “Just trust me, Val. Please.” He glanced over his shoulder, the sirens coming closer. “We need to move. Now.”