KnockingonDemon'sDoor (9 page)

Of course she was. She probably thought a threesome might do “Sunny” some good.

A hand slid beneath her jacket to the gun in the shoulder holster Blake had asked her to start carrying, and for a moment, stark terror filled her. Then the hand shifted and it was Blake who hoisted her up and found her feet for her.

“I’ve got her,” he said. “Lead the way.”

Blake caught her as her knees gave out, hoping like hell that she was playing along.

So this was how they found their victims.
Or at least one of the ways, because he’d be surprised if it had actually worked on Cass.
Even half-demons had a pretty good tolerance for any kind of drug. That was why they went for the hard stuff.

He lifted Sunny into his arms, relieved to find how light she was. Definitely, she was at least partly playing along because dead weight was harder to carry. And thank you, Jesus, she’d actually started wearing her gun.

The trick now was to make sure no one else discovered it.

He wasn’t surprised when Neal took the service elevator to the basement. He was a little more surprised to find Trevor Black already waiting for them.

“Put her over there.” Trevor gestured for Blake to drop Sunny on the bed. Blake carefully rolled her to her side so she could more easily reach her gun if she had to. But it worried him that she wasn’t moving at least a little.

Trevor was watching him with all the warmth of the lizard he was. “How would you like to be in movies? We blank out your face so customers can picture themselves in the lead role. It’s all part of the fantasy. Neal’s already been in a few. Haven’t you, Neal?”

Rage unfurled inside him and he fisted his hands at his side.
Jesus, what cold bastards.
Blake would rather go up against a demon any day. Better the monster you knew.
And understood.

These men were conniving pricks, and things had gone too far, farther than he’d ever expected. He needed to get her out of there, now.

As he formulated a plan, the only one he could come up with under the circumstance, and the one and only he thought would allow him to get her to safety he said, “Maybe next time.” Blake shot a shriveling glance at Neal, who already looked like he had a woody the size of his arm.
Cold, sick bastards.
“If your friend here had let me finish what I’d started to say to him, rather than just go ahead and slip her a drug, I could have told him that she’s probably a cop.”

Trevor’s eyes flicked to Sunny, still motionless on the bed. “Kill her.”

Fuck no.

Neal slipped a gun from his waistband, not even bothering to question the command. Not only were they cold-blooded, they were stupid.

Jesus, he really hadn’t thought his plan would backfire like this. He assumed they were at least smart enough to figure out what he meant. Apparently assumptions were dangerous. His mind raced a million miles an hour and it was then that he realized he was going to have to walk them through this, step by step. This was going to work, he assured himself. It was a good plan. And it had to work.

“Wait. Where there’s one cop, there’s always at least one more, and we don’t know who it is. I have a better plan.” Sunny still hadn’t moved. Right now that was a good thing. “So far she’s got nothing on us. We put her back in her own bed. We tell her someone slipped something in her drink. We apologize like shit, tell her we’re doing an internal investigation into it, give her a false lead, and just like that, she’s off on a wild goose chase.”

“That’s assuming she’s really a cop,” Neal said.

Blake laughed but there wasn’t any humor in it. “You think I can’t tell when I’ve been screwed by a cop?”

Michelle kept her eyes closed and her breathing steady, wishing like hell she could kick his half-demon ass. Not just because he’d told them she was a cop, although that was big part of it. It was because he was trying to get her out of that room, and there was no way she could leave. Not now. She’d never get another chance to get back in. She tried to clear her head enough to think, but it was hard. She’d like to drift off into sleep and let Blake take care of the whole frigging mess. But if she let them take her from this room, she’d never get a search warrant. She’d been drugged and that meant her testimony wasn’t worth squat.

As Blake negotiated for her life, however, she came up with a plan she thought just might work. If she discharged her weapon in here, she’d have proof that she’d been in the room and it would officially become a crime scene. There would then be grounds to search it. She could swear in court that she’d fired her weapon because she’d thought her life was in danger, and the fact she’d been drugged would work in her favor. Women weren’t slipped date rape drugs for the good of their health.

Of course if she discharged her weapon one of them would most likely return fire, but that was a chance she was willing to take. She’d just have to trust Blake to watch her back, like he’d promised. The man was part demon. He might as well put that to good use.

Michelle reached for her gun, rolled from the bed and fired—all in one fluid movement.

Except “fluid” was a relative term to someone who’d been drugged and she didn’t exactly master the element of surprise. The first return shot caught her high in the chest and felt more like a solid punch. The second shot she didn’t feel at all.

Blake didn’t have much time to react when Sunny pulled her weapon. Neal, his gun already drawn, managed to get off one shot at her before Blake’s fist caught him in the side of the head and dropped him like the sack of shit he was.

As Neal fell, his finger tightened on the trigger again, but the second shot went wild and hit the wall behind Blake.

The roaring in Blake’s ears and the sudden terror on Trevor’s face told him his eyes had flashed to demon yellow.

“Jesus,” Trevor breathed.
“Your eyes.
They look like—”

Blake didn’t give a damn what his eyes looked like. Sunny was bleeding all over the floor.

He picked Trevor up by the throat and slammed his head against the wall, not caring if he killed him and rather hoping he had. He tossed the limp body aside and rushed to Sunny.

He clamped his hand over her chest, trying to stop the bleeding, only to realize that most of it was coming from beneath her. He carefully lifted her to check the damage,
then
squeezed his eyes shut against the sight of it. The exit wound was far worse. She was going to die, right there in his arms, and it struck Blake hard what it was he was about to lose. Other than his mother and his sister, Sunny was the only woman he’d ever known who was strong enough to see him for who he truly was and face him as an equal, unafraid.

A world without Sunny was a world he no longer wanted to be a part of. The demon in him roared to life, unleashed, and when the demon world called out to him, for the first time in his memory he didn’t bother trying to resist it. Instead, he breathed in its darkness and let it consume both Sunny and himself.

The room tilted. When it righted again he was in a different place and a different world. And this world, oddly enough, felt much more like…home.

Bright yellow eyes approached them from out of the shadows, and with a snarl Blake tracked their progress, prepared to protect Sunny with his own life. She wasn’t dead yet.

The yellow eyes had a face,
then
the face had a body. Clad neck to toe all in black, the demon halted a few paces away from them. Blake, even in his demon rage, hesitated before it. Heat curled around him.

“So this is the demon slayer,” it mused, its attention focused completely on Sunny and disregarding Blake as something unworthy of interest.

Too late, Blake realized what he’d done. This might feel like home to him, but he’d brought Sunny to the one place that would be unlikely to welcome her.

It extended one hand to her and Blake bit out a warning. “Touch her and you’ll die.”

Its eyes went to Blake as if seeing him for the first time. Then, it laughed at him. “I’m not going to harm her,” it said. “I’m wondering what
it’s
worth to heal her.”

“Anything,” Blake said, not daring to hope but unable to hold a flare of it back.

The demon seemed even more amused by that. “Is it worth giving up your sister?”

Cassie was there, shrouded in darkness. The blank, empty look on her face, her once-violet eyes now a steady, yellow glow, tore an even deeper hole in Blake’s soul. The demon stroked her cheek. “You can’t have them both,” it said to him. “Choose one.”

Sunny’s
weight grew heavier in his arms, the dampness of her blood seeping into his clothes and chilling his flesh, and Blake knew he was losing her.

But he was losing Cass too, and he’d loved Cass his whole life. One woman was his future, the other his past. The demon in him, the part of him that refused to compromise when it came to something he wanted, rebelled. “I’m taking them both.”

Cass’ face was no longer empty. She looked at him, violet banishing the yellow, and her voice was soft when she spoke. “I’m not ready to go back, Blake. I don’t know if I ever will be.”

And then Blake understood. The demon didn’t hold her. She was here by her own choice, because the mortal world had become too much for her. In her own way she was as damaged as Sunny, and she’d chosen this place to heal. Just as he’d sought it out when he realized Sunny was dying.

The difference was
,
Sunny couldn’t survive here. Cass could.

Blake looked at his sister, loving her and offering her whatever strength he could and silently begged for her understanding. Then he held Sunny out to the demon.

“I choose this one,” he said. “I’ll pay any price.”

The demon grinned.

“The debt won’t be yours,” it assured him. “The debt will be all hers. And I think I would like to have the demon slayer in my debt. I would like that very much.” It ignored Blake again as it stepped in close and laid its hand on her still body.

Color and warmth slowly flowed back into her face and the soft fall of her hair brushed against Blake’s forearm as she shifted her head to one side. Then suddenly it was light, not darkness, surrounding them, calling Blake back to the mortal world.

“Tell her I gave her life,” the demon called after him. It laughed again, softly this time, but with a delight that made Blake shiver in spite of the heat it expelled. “And tell her I gave her a small gift to go with it.”

Blake found himself back in the underground room of the hotel with Sunny still in his arms. And when she opened her eyes to look up at him, they shone with a warm yellow light.

* * * * *

Michelle didn’t remember much of what happened over the next few days other than that she’d spent much of them asleep in a hospital bed with Blake refusing to leave her side.

Trevor Black’s career in the movie industry was over. That much she knew, thanks to her captain. And after her partner’s disgraceful behavior, he’d been demoted to beat cop duty. But it was Blake’s silence, and the way he studied her when he thought she wasn’t looking, that kept her from wanting to celebrate.

As she lay in her bed watching Blake pace, small bits of information began to trickle in, filling in the blanks, until she had a clear picture of what had happened to her in the demon world. Even though she’d been given her life back, her destiny was in the hands of a monster she didn’t know, and whose motives she didn’t trust.

But as long as Blake had her back, the good in them both would trump any evil. As far as she was concerned they were now in this together and she wouldn’t want it any other way.

She focused all her attention on him as he scanned her monitors. God, she was so amazed. She could actually hear the pounding of his heart from this distance. What other powers had the demon given her? She could also smell Blake, and what she smelled was spice, earth, shampoo…love and fear.

For her.

Her heart filled with love. “Hey, Cowboy, you’d better slow that heart rate down before it’s you lying here instead of me.”

He moved to her side. His sensuous mouth flashed a grin, and it was all she could do not to pull him down alongside her and make love to him for the rest of her life. She released a little of her own charm and watched as beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead.

“I didn’t realize you were awake.” His smile faded, replaced by sadness when his gaze collided with hers. After a moment of silence he said, “Sorry, Sunny.
For everything.”

She closed a hand over his. “Sorry for what?
For trying to save me?
For caring enough about me to make a deal with the devil himself?”

“I meant it to be my debt, not yours. I didn’t think of that.”

He perched on the bed beside her while she digested that bit of information. “How does he expect me to repay the debt? What does he want from me?”

He rolled one shoulder and frowned, his dark eyes regretful. “Only time will tell.”

Her heart ached, loving that he was willing to barter his life for hers and hating that he now felt responsible for her fate. She was a big girl and accepted whatever cards were dealt her way. It was her burden to bear, not his.

When his sadness reached out to her, heat burnt her eyes as anger erupted in response. Something dark and dangerous stirred her blood, something she was determined to harness and use for good. Even though she was no longer quite the same physically, she was still the same Michelle in all the ways that mattered. And wasn’t that the same for Blake? He was human in all the ways that mattered, too.
Even more.

Then she thought about Cass. Michelle had a fuzzy memory of a beautiful, tragic face, very much like her brother’s, and of enormous yellow eyes flashing briefly to a deep violet when Blake had drawn Michelle back to this world. She reached for his hand. “We’re going to get Cass back, Blake.”

Sadness and sense of loss apparent, he tore his gaze from hers, although his fingers tightened their grip. “Cass doesn’t want to come back. She feels like this one has nothing to offer her.”