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Focus on what can be yours.
Now that his nervous energy had begun to relax, his senses opened wide to his surroundings. He liked the close quarters and the mingling of scents and bodies. A man could fall in love with someone if he closed his eyes and breathed the exotic spice of flesh, perfume and life. Humanity was a marvel.
The doors clattered shut and the car tugged into motion.
Bye, bye, vampires.
Seriously? Vampires? They couldn’t have known they pursued a Fallen one and a demon. Only vampires who would do that were stupid, or ash.
He noticed a smear of vamp blood down the side of his kilt, and turned so that thigh was concealed against the train wall.
A long slender body pressed along Cooper’s backside. She wrapped her arms about his waist and spread her fingers up his chest. The Parisians were so friendly.
Turning, he huffed when he saw Red smiling at him.
“What the hell are you doing?” He tried to shove her off, but it was too crowded. “Don’t press your bits against me,” he whispered by her ear. The man next to him smiled and waggled his brows. “You’re a crazy one.”
“There’s nothing else to hang on to. You don’t want me to fall on top of the old lady sitting behind me, do you?”
“Won’t happen. And don’t try that pouty, innocent look with me. Where do you live? You can’t possibly be going the same direction as me.”
“Nowhere. Only been here a day.”
He’d been here a couple weeks, but already he’d found himself a sweet little place tucked away from the world in the 16th arrondissement, yet still within Metro distance of all the hotspots. And in that time, he’d already slain one Sinistari in much the same method he’d employed against the vamp. Though Sinistari hearts did not bleed and were as strong as steel.
Much as he liked the feel of this female’s body warming up against his—and making things very hard—he didn’t want the trouble that accompanied her. Or the confusion over whether to slay her or to turn around and kiss her.
“They were after you,” he said. “I’ve had no problem with vampires until you showed up.”
“Says the guy who needed rescue from two vampires.”
“Rescue? Are you mentally unbalanced? Oh, right, you are.”
He flicked some ash from the shoulder of her men’s shirt that sported a design of blood and now some of her own black demon blood. She fluttered her lashes at him.
Not going to work on him. Not even when her pupils dilated, pushing the kaleidoscope perimeter of iris to a narrow band.
He averted his attention to the wounds above her ear. “You’re bleeding.”
“That’s the vampire blood.”
“No, sweetie, that stuff is black.”
She touched her head in a moment of panic. “Is it bad?”
“No,” he said under his breath. “You don’t feel pain?”
“A little, but it’s healed. Hope you can’t catch rabies from vamps. Ugg. That thing was hungry.”
“It’s all over your shirt. You’re not being very covert.”
“Didn’t know that was a requirement. You want me to take my shirt off, too? That’ll show ‘em how covert I can be.”
“I’ll give you all the attention you need if you play it cool around mortals and keep your shirt on.”
“Mmm …” She slid closer to him, and if he didn’t know better, he’d guess she was angling for some touch and man, did his body react. The brush of her shirtsleeve across his nipple did not preach patience.
But he did know better. She was Sinistari. She had come to kill him, not snuggle with him.
His stop was next. No doubt, she would follow him out no matter where he got off. The demon was like a tick. But she wouldn’t find nourishment from him because he had no intention of giving her what she wanted. If his muse were in the vicinity, Cooper intended to walk the opposite direction.
Just because a Sinistari had found him didn’t mean he was close to his muse. He’d actually landed on earth in New Jersey. Upon feeling the compulsion to stay there—and seek his muse—he’d immediately flashed across the ocean.
The doors opened and he nudged the demon’s hip with his. She took the signal, wrapping her arm around his back and leading him out onto the platform.
“I don’t need an escort,” he said as he plodded under the sorte sign toward the stairs.
The tick clung. At the very least, she was hanging on to him on the side of the blood smear.
Surfacing on the sidewalk in the center of the 16th arrondissement, Cooper sighted the distant lights twinkling down the always-busy Champs Elysees.
“You’re not coming home with me, so shove off,” he told her. “You are like one of those sad-eyed puppy dogs, aren’t you?”
“Fine. I don’t need to see where you go, I can track you by vibration.” She leaned against a metal street post and crossed her legs at the ankle. The cowboy boots pointed toward the sky. Drawing her finger along her lower lip, she looked up through her thick ginger lashes. “Nightie night, Cooper.”
That lip demanded a nibble. Or two. And those lashes. What would it feel like to brush his mouth over them?
Cooper huffed, and marched down the narrow cobblestoned street toward his building. This quarter of the city boasted homes from medieval times sandwiched between twentieth-century buildings. The eclectic mix appealed to his sense of craft and artistry.
He forgot about demons and vampires—until he thought of them—and he scanned all around him and searched the darkness in between buildings.
At the door to his building he punched the numbers into the digital security box, then jogged the three flights up to his apartment. Listening acutely before he closed the door, he reassured himself she’d not followed him. But then, before he did close the door, he heard the street-level door creak.
“You can’t sleep in the foyer!” he called down.
“Says who?”
Rolling his eyes, he slammed his door and stalked through the darkness to the bedroom.
The moon was high and it shimmered through the tall window facing the distant Seine. He kicked off his boots, then landed the bed on his back, arms spread. A pillow wobbled onto his face and he punched it away.
He’d thought his existence on earth would go easy if he kept a low profile and didn’t answer the compulsion to seek his muse.
Someone had different plans for him. And it wasn’t the Sinistari that worried him most.
Why in Beneath were vampires after him?
Antonio del Gado strode at a quick pace through the limestone halls of his underground sanctuary. Here in Paris he owned an exquisite mansion, the Hôtel Solange, which was underlined with a network of tunnels. The medieval and rococo centuries had been a time of necessity for secret escape tunnels thanks to the political maneuvers that tested the resilience of kings and their subjects.
During evening hours he lived aboveground, but when daylight reigned, he was forced below-ground.
Vampires could walk in the sun. Ninety-five percent of them. But the rare ones who had descended from an angelic race could not, only because their bloodline had not been rejuvenated with their ancestors’ blood for millennia.
Antonio was going to change that, for him, and for his entire tribe Anakim. He wanted the daylight, and he would not stop at anything until he had it.
Behind him he was flanked by Bruce Westing and Stellan the Pale. Bruce was Anakim’s Fallen hunter, and Stellan’s expertise had uncovered half a dozen angel halos over the past year. As well, Bruce had secured the eight paintings lined along the north wall in the dungeon, each of them depicting a different Fallen angel, complete with sigil.
Yet Antonio had no names to match to those sigils.
“You’re sure it was a Sinistari with the Fallen?” he asked as he entered his underground office. The cave walls were hung with medieval tapestries depicting scaled dragons and knights with bloody spears. “I thought you said he was with a female?”
Bruce shoved his hands in his front jeans pocket. He and Stellan stopped before Antonio’s marble-topped desk. “It was a woman,” Bruce said, “and I’m pretty sure she was Sinistari. She was strong, as strong as the angel.”
“But Sinistari are male,” Antonio said. Though, honestly, he hadn’t a proper description for the demon breed, only that they exclusively hunted the Fallen. “And why wouldn’t she have slain the angel?”
“Still missing a key ingredient,” Stellan offered.
“The muse,” Bruce said.
Antonio rocked backward in the richly padded office chair and put up his feet on the desktop. He eyed the painting Bruce had carried in from the dungeon weeks earlier. It featured an angel fashioned from blue glass with a sigil impressed upon its abdomen. The name to match the angel—Juphiel—had come courtesy of Zaqiel, a Fallen Bruce had encountered months earlier. Antonio had summoned Juphiel two weeks ago. It surprised him the Sinistari had only now shown on the scene. Though certainly, if the Sinistari were slacking, that would make his efforts all the easier.
“You’ve been following Juphiel, Bruce?”
“Yes. He hasn’t run into his muse yet. Doesn’t seem as if he’s looking for her, actually. Spends a lot of time in nightclubs, and during the day he wanders the Louvre.”
Bruce was not Anakim blood, thus, his ability to walk in daylight. Antonio trusted and needed him to be his eyes during the day.
“Stay on him.”
“I will. You know I never lose a mark.”
Bruce did like to go after the Fallen. Even though the angels were much stronger than a vampire, Bruce was wily and took pride in his daring. He was also warded to the hilt against angels and their associated ilk. Thanks to a blood grimoire, Antonio had all he needed to protect himself and his closest allies from the Fallen and Sinistari.
“You keep an eye on the Sinistari,” he said, glancing at Stellan. “She’s the greatest deterrent to our final goal.”
Stellan nodded and turned to leave, always aware of when he was no longer needed.
Bruce wasn’t so quick on the draw. He turned to study the painting of Juphiel. It had been painted using a computer, or so Bruce had explained to Antonio. Eden Campbell was the artist—as well as a muse. She was living with a former Sinistari now. Antonio kept her on his radar, but he didn’t want to approach her with a demon standing close by, former or not.
“Why are you lingering?”
Bruce shot him a gape. “Er, sorry, monsieur. It’s just the Fallen. I don’t know that he is the key to what we want to accomplish.”
“And what is?”
“Well, the muse.”
“Tell me more.”
Chapter 3
Pyx suspected the vampires were following the Fallen for a specific purpose.
When a Fallen one successfully impregnated a muse—meaning a Sinistari had not done their job—the resulting child was a nephilim. The nephilim grew to maturity in less than a week, and began to feed. On everything. Including people. The abominable creature gave new meaning to the term blood hungry.
It ached in her chest when she thought about it. She had been responsible for allowing a nephilim to walk this earth so many millennia ago. You failed.
Never again.
Could the vampires be after the resulting nephilim? What the vampires planned to do with the creature once they had it was beyond Pyx. But any creature that fed on blood must be of interest to vampires.
Flicking at the dried blood on her scalp, she dusted off the black crust. The wound had healed, but not her pride. She really wanted to lay some vampire ass flat for no other reason than that they had pissed her off. And she’d probably get a chance since they seemed very interested in Cooper.
“Cooper Truhart.” She snorted and settled on the steps out front of his building. “Stupid name.”
Like Pyxion was any better. The Other, even. Man, had that been a joke on her.
Beneath had been no ball of fun. An empty void of darkness run through by a mercury sea roiling with wickedness. Pyx had wandered aimlessly, never finding anything but sea and darkness. The few times she had met another of her breed they’d recognized each other by name. It was simply a knowing.
Her fellow Sinistari had sneered and berated her. They had somehow known she was different, ineffectual, though their true demonic forms were all similar and sexless.
Well, she could do the woman thing. Just watch!
Her feminine wiles seemed to have an incredible effect on the Fallen. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her in the club. And when she’d pressed against him on the Metro she had felt his exhale against her cheek. And though she knew an angel’s glass heart did not beat, she had felt something throbbing against her thigh.
“Wiles,” she muttered. “Whatever that means. I got lucky. But I’m going to start paying attention from here on out. I’ll be the best damn woman demon my Sinistari brethren have ever seen. No more sneers for me.”
Perhaps she could use her female status to her advantage. It was apparent Cooper was in no hurry to locate his muse.
That had to change.
She didn’t look forward to tracking him all over the world until he decided when was a good time to switch into Fallen-claims-his-muse mode. She had to prove herself.
But she couldn’t sleep out on the steps hoping Cooper would trip over her in the morning. Not that she needed sleep, nor did the angel.
Scanning her sight about the dark neighborhood, Pyx roamed up and down the brick-fronted three-and four-storied buildings. A residential neighborhood with narrow, cobbled streets and steel poles to prevent cars from parking on an even narrower sidewalk. It was charming, if she were to label it.
Though charm meant as little to her as experiencing touch for the first time—it was a nuisance.
Closeness to the mark meant everything.
She spied a sign with red writing, loger disponible. “Room available.” It sat across the street and around the corner from where she had determined Cooper’s apartment must be. Perfect.
Striding across the street, she approached the building. The foyer opened without a code, but she hesitated punching a button on the speaker box this late at night. Mortals were snoozing. It wasn’t that she had a problem punching all the buttons and waking them up; she didn’t want to interact right now.
Drawing her finger down the list of apartments, she found the one missing a name. “Third floor, apartment 12.”
The inner lobby door was locked. Pointing her forefinger, she shifted enough to grow out the long adamant talon from the top of her fingertip. She slid the talon between the door and frame, toggling it against the dead bolt. Her talon slid the solid bolt to the left, and with a shove, the door opened.
