Deamon's Daughter Part 27

This claim surprised him, but whatever perplexity she might have caused, he shook away. "Of course you disgust me. The mixing of a lower race's blood with ours is abominable. What my body desires, however, is a separate matter." His gaze narrowed as he studied her, his now-black eyes glittering. "I'm intrigued that you read my fire-talk that wella unless your father has been instructing you?"

If he didn't know the answer, she wasn't going to supply it. "I'll kill you before I cooperate."

The demon blinked, his only sign of reaction. "You can try," he said and pressed his mouth over hers.

For one astonished moment, she couldn't believe what he'd done. Did he honestly think he could seduce her? Then, as her knees threatened to give way and the front of her body suddenly went cold, she realized there was a different, and far more pernicious purpose to his kiss. He was feeding from her. His hand had slipped between them as she tried to push him off, and he was now drawing energy from the swirling center above her heart.

"No," she said against his mouth, sickened by the numbing dizziness. Her protest did her no good. Her legs turned to rubber, and she fell.

The prince didn't bother to hold her up, but simply caught her beneath the arms and followed her down to the paper-strewn parquet floor. He was strong enough to make their descent graceful. At the bottom, his body settled between her sprawled thighs, his hips rolling pointedly against hers.

"That's it," he praised, as if she had welcomed him there intentionally. "Give everything up to me."

She struggled under his weight, wis.h.i.+ng her father had instructed her so she'd know how to stop what he was doing. His hand was on her breastbone again, sucking her energy. She couldn't comprehend how other humans could stand thisa"even for money. The sensation was horrible. She could feel her strength throbbing out of her with every beat of her heart, or maybe with every beat of the prince's heart. He, by contrast, was energized, lengthening as he rubbed her with greater and greater force, digging his erection into her mound. His whole body writhed against her, as if he wanted to bathe in her etheric-force. His breath came quick and fast.

"This won't hurt you," he panted. "I'm only taking enough to make you faint. Then I'll carry you out of here with no trouble. Come on, girl. Give yourself over to your prince."

"Nota mya prince," she said. Her hand was between them just as his was. She s.h.i.+fted it to cover his heart as if somehow that would help her lift him off. "Nevera mya prince."

Something rose inside her in frustration at her helplessness, an anger that went deeper than flesh and bone. She couldn't let him take her. Wouldn't let him rob Max and Charles and Adrian of her care. Never again would she let him hurt a child, whether it came from her womb or another's. She didn't care if The Dragon had done the dirty work; the prince had been the mastermind. This man who crushed her deserved to be crushed himself, deserved to be torn apart limb from limb.

"NO!" she said, the strength of the word buoying her spirit.

She shoved, but not with her hand. With some knowledge she'd held unsuspected in her half-demon blood, some method of focusing the will, she pushed the black rage from her body and into his. He stiffened, but she didn't care. No, she said again with her mind. You are not my prince. The blackness swallowed him and her, shrieking like a banshee, tossing the tiny spark of her soul inside its whirlwind. The immensity of her anger frightened her, the violence that seemed to have no limit. In that moment, she did not see a vast distance between the prince and herself. In that moment, they might have been one. Back, she thought in a panic. Pull back.

The blackness obeyed her call. Back it rushed, to her skin, to her heart, forcing it to pump so hard each compression hurt. To her surprise, the blackness came back crammed with rainbow gleams of light, beautiful corruscations of energy. Force was force, she supposed. No matter its source, it could have no ugliness. This force made her skin p.r.i.c.kle as if tiny wires were running over it. She flung out her arms, trying to ground herself. Then she lost consciousness.

She couldn't have been insensible for more than seconds, because when she jerked back to awareness, her hair hadn't stopped standing on end. The prince lay completely limp on top of her. Repelled by the contact, she pushed him off. Far from resisting, he rolled just as limply onto the floor. His appearance shocked her. His face was blue, his silver eyes wide and staring. His pupils were shrunk to pinp.r.i.c.ks. He seemed not to realize a book was digging into his cheek.

"Oh, G.o.d," she said, struggling to sit up. She pressed one hand in horror to her mouth. She was both blazing hot and s.h.i.+vering, as if she had reversed what he was trying to do to her, then magnified it twentyfold.

Long before she dared to touch him, she knew the prince of Narikerr was dead.

Chapter 28.

The Yama have had their own internecine struggles, about which we know little. Suffice to say, they haven't become so good at intrigue by accident.

a"The True and Irreverent History ofAwar Adrian wouldn't have guessed a dead body could be this heavy, even one rolled in a strange cold tarpa"a 'refrigeration sheet,' according to Herrington. Obtained from the fruit cellar, the rubbery black cloth smelled of the apples it had been keeping crisp. As he and Adrian lugged it through the secret pa.s.sage's twists and turns, Adrian was grateful one of the guests had alerted Roxie's father to The Dragon's presence. With his strength burned to its lowest ebb from using his implants, Adrian doubted he could have managed alone. As it was, his shoulder burned from the scoring it had taken.

"Almost there," Herrington said, his face dripping sweat. He was carrying the body's shoulders and, hence, most of its weight, though his Yamish muscles were up to the challenge. The sweat was the result of the hot steam pipes that ran through the tunnel, which seemed to affect him more than Adrian, perhaps because of his colder national origins. Tiny electric lights lit the walls at meter-long intervals, like fireflies that didn't blink. The way the illumination glistened on the signs of Herrington's exertion almost made him look human.

Exhausted beyond logic, Adrian decided this was as good a time as any to make his stand.

"Your daughtera isn't marryinga that Jeruvian diplomat," he said between pants. "He's far too short."

Despite the perspiration running down his face, Herrington's response was cool. "Are you suggesting my daughter has a height requirement for a mate?"

"No, sir. Just stating that I don't intend for her to marry anyone but me."

"Might tell her that," Herrington muttered as they maneuvered their burden around a last bend. He set the body down with a sigh and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. Adrian let the feet fall, too. "Lord," said his future father-in-law, "I must be getting older than I thought."

He gazed at Adrian in the dim yellow-white light. Adrian had a feeling Roxie's father had donea"or at least seena"skulduggery like this before. Herrington's face was oddly relaxed for a man who'd recently witnessed, then helped cover up a killing. "Are you prepared for this?" he asked Adrian.

This seemed to be pa.s.sing through a door in the tunnel wall, presumably back into the house somewhere.

"Yes, sir," Adrian said, though he did give in to the urge to blow out his breath.

Herrington's ghost of a smile felt like the equivalent of another man's shoulder clap. "I'll go first," he said, "to make sure it's clear. I didn't get a chance to lock up before I left."

Adrian leaned against the peeling wall as Herrington pressed a secret latch to slide the paneling aside. The older man stiffened at what he found.

"Roxanne!" he said in a startled voice, which brought Adrian to alert as well.

When he saw her for himself, he understood the reason for Herrington's surprise. Roxie looked as if she'd been through the proverbial wringer: her face pale and smudged with dust, her hair falling every which way out of its coiffure. She must have been more worried than he'd realized. When she spotted Adrian, she pressed her hands to her mouth.

"Oh," she cried, her eyes welling up with tears. "You've been hurt!"

"Just grazed," he said, touching the bullet wound on his shoulder without turning his gaze from hers. Luckily, he wasn't bleeding anymore. Her concern for him filled him with a longing only holding her would satisfy. If her father hadn't been there, he would have gone to her straightaway. "The Dragon had an odd sort of gun."

"A gun!" she exclaimed, even more horrified.

"Automatic pistol," Herrington corrected as he lowered himself into his big leather chair. He didn't groan, just looked like he wanted to. "It fires without beinga"Oh, never mind. They're quite illegal, I a.s.sure you, here or at home. Civilians aren't allowed to possess firearms."

In light of what they'd been doing, Herrington's legal quibble was humorous. Adrian only wished he had the energy to laugh.

"Max is all right," he said, propping his hips on the corner of Herrington's solid desk. "Charles got him away before anything happened. The Dragon shot at us while we were chasing him across the grounds."

"The wonder is that you caught him," Herrington said in the manner of one man congratulating another on a tricky billiards shot "Those implants are impressive. It must be divine justice that you wouldn't have apprehended the man who installed them if he hadn't designed them so well." He rubbed his jaw in an unwittingly human gesture. "Hopefully, someone can reverse engineer them, and the Security program will be able to continue."

Whatever that means, Adrian thought. He was too weary to ask, even wearier than his post-implant crash could account for. This was only the second man he'd killed in his life, the first that wasn't in the line of duty. Mixed in with his relief at being alive was his awareness that he'd done something he truly wished he hadn't had to. Unfortunately, The Dragon hadn't given him a choice.

He was wiping his hands up and down his face when he noticed the body lying half hidden by Roxie's skirts, a body in an unmistakable silver-on-white outfit. The pointy-toed suppers clinched the matter.

"Criminy," he said. "What happened to the prince?"

Roxie's cheeks flared cherry red. "Um," she said. "I accidentally killed him while he was attacking me."

It wasn't the least bit appropriate, but Adrian couldn't keep a laugh from snorting out his nose. "My, what a murderous bunch we are!"

"Bunch?" Roxie repeated. "I thought you said you apprehended the doctor."

"Apprehended with lethal force, I'm afraid. I had a choice of breaking his neck or letting him shoot me again. We left him in the pa.s.sageway until we can figure out what to do with the body. Bodies now, I suppose. Lord. How are we going to explain a missing prince?"

"I don't understand this," Herrington said as if it pained him to admit. His elbows were on the desk, his head wagging like a bear. "Why did The Dragon try to take Max? From what you say, he already knew the boy was no use to his experiments. And why on earth would he bring a gun?"

"The prince must have led him to believe he'd need one," Roxie said, then explained what had pa.s.sed between her and the ruler of Narikerr. Adrian listened with growing shock. Here he'd thought she'd been pacing the floor over them, when in truth she'd been fighting her own demon. Even with the editing Adrian suspected she was doing, the story appalled.

She seemed rattled to tell it, but not hysterical. Out of respect for that, Adrian tried to respond calmly. "In other words, whatever reason he gave the doctor for taking Max, what he really wanted was a clear field to get to you."

The sound of gla.s.s smas.h.i.+ng on the wall brought both of them around to stare at Herrington. The tumbler that had sat on his blotter a moment earlier was in pieces.

"Sony," he said, on his feet with his hands clenched on the edges of his desk. Considering the force with which he gripped it, Adrian half expected to hear marble crack. "Sorry. I justa If that b.a.s.t.a.r.d wasn't dead already, I'd kill him myself." He released one side of the desk to squeeze his temples and shade his eyes. After a few more ragged exhalations, he composed himself and stood straight. "You're sure you killed him by taking his energy? He didn't perhaps. .h.i.t his head?"

"I don't think so," Roxie said.

Piqued by Herrington's question, Adrian followed him to the corpse.

When he saw the gaunt, blueish features, he couldn't suppress a low whistle. "Boy," he said. "He looks bad."

Herrington knelt down heavily and felt for his pulse. Adrian could have told him not to bothera"the prince was deader than deada"but Herrington seemed to need to check. When he looked up again at Roxie, a very definite emotion had gripped his face, an emotion Adrian could only specify as dread. Meeting it, Roxie looked as if she longed to crawl under the carpet.

"This isn't possible," her father said. "Yes, maybe being half-human gives you the power to feed off us, but you can't kill a person by draining their etheric-force. Not like this. A human would go catatonic before you could finish, and the only time I saw an energy death imposed on a Yama was during the intercity wars. The process took three priests working on the prisoner in s.h.i.+fts and lasted nearly a week. This must have happened in minutes."

"Maybe less," Roxie admitted, then pressed her thumb to her teeth.

"Maybe less," he repeated and breathed a very human curse.

"If it makes you feel any better," she said, "I've no idea how to do it again."

"Believe me," her father said, pus.h.i.+ng to his feet as if he'd aged a hundred human years, "once is more than enough."

She thought he was going to berate her. Instead, he took her face in his hands, his touch so tender it tempted her to cry. The expression in his eyes was frightening. It was naked with emotion: love, fear, a determination so deep it seemed boundless. Until she saw the look, she hadn't truly known what she, what family meant to him. Despite what his eyes were saying, when he spoke, his voice was pure demon ice.

"I want you to listen to me very carefully. You must never tell anyone you did this, no matter the provocation. If anyone, human or Yama, imagined you had this power, the prince's interest in you would seem like child's play."

"But how can we hide it?" Roxie exclaimed. "Look at him!"

Her father didn't look, simply held her worried gaze with his steady one, as if he could force her to do as he wished by will alone. "I know he appears strange to you, but these symptoms aren't unheard of for a Yama who's had a heart attack."

"Surely he's young for that," Roxie protested.

"Yes," Herrington agreed, "but he led a less-than-wholesome life. Who's to say he didn't have a hidden weakness? Fortunately, what you did to him left no marks. If pressed to explain his condition, we'll tell my government the prince tried to rape you. When Adrian walked in on the heinous attempt, the prince's shock and humiliation must have been too much. Even if they don't believe us, the chance that we're telling the truth will discourage them from asking more questions."

"You can carry that off?"

"I can," said her father, "and I will. He got what he deserved. No one needs to know how."

When he released his clasp on her face, Roxie's knees were so wobbly she had to sit. She barely noticed the discarded papers crinkling in the chair she chose. Her skin was p.r.i.c.kling again, as it were about to shoot sparks, despite which she felt as if she could have slept for a week. She pressed her hand to her breast. She was having trouble catching her breath.

Seeing this, Herrington turned to Adrian. "She drank a lot of power," he said. "Take her to your suite before she swoons."

"I can't leave you with this mess," Adrian said, then added, "sir."

His politeness in the midst of chaos made Roxie smile, but her father's response was stern. "The less you know about how I handle this, the better."

To her surprise, Adrian didn't accept his p.r.o.nouncement. "I know someone who'll take the doctor's body off your hands, a rohn who has more reason to hate him than we do. I suspect she can make his death appear as accidental as you wish."

Her father stared at him narrow-eyed, then inclined his head. "You may tell me how to contact her," he conceded. "For now, you will take care of my daughter."

This Adrian did not argue. He bent to her chair and scooped her into his arms. Though his body shook with weariness, his hold was wonderfully secure. He squeezed her for a moment, as if to let her know he felt the comfort, too.

"Come on, my demon killer," he whispered fondly against her hair. "I'm giving your father an address, and then I'm getting you to bed."

She cried a little as he tucked the covers around her, claiming the cause was the ruination of her new purple gown. To hear her tell it, that dress had been the only garment ever capable of rendering her beautiful.

"Of all the demon families to be half-born into," she sniffed, "I had to pick a homely one."

"Hardly that." He smiled down at her from his seat beside her hip. "Or do you think I'd prefer you look like that spider-woman?"

"She way pretty," Roxie sighed.

Adrian laughed at her seemingly willful misreading of his meaning. "Her breath smelled funny."

"No-o," she said, scandalized.

He nodded. "Just a bit like flies."

She smiled at his foolishness and touched the single clean spot in the center of his s.h.i.+rt. He could tell she was sleepy. "You're a nice man, Adrian Philips."

"I'm a smart man. Look who I finished the night with."

Her eyelids closed as he stroked her brow, her lashes golden in the candlelight. Circles as purple as her gown curved underneath. "I think my father likes you."

"I got that glimmer of an impression, too. In fact, I think he may be ready to jettison his plans for the Jeruvian diplomat."

"Who?" she asked drowsily.

"Precisely."

He caressed her face and hair until he thought she slept, but she murmured "Stay," when he would have left.

He peeled off his b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt and curled around her on top of the blankets. She hugged his arm under both of hers.

"I didn't like that feeding thing," she confessed, sounding like his nephews when they were fighting the need for a nap.

"Probably just as well. I don't think many Yama will be lining up for the experience."

He sensed she was smiling even though he couldn't see. "Maybe humans taste better to them than they taste to me."

"Maybe they taste like cinnamon kirbaz," he teased next to her ear.

She hummed with pleasure and wriggled her bottom closer to his groin. "I'm sorry you had to kill that doctor."