Meljean Brook - Demon Marked

No need to worry about waking her; she couldn’t hurt him without breaking the Rules. When he held her, she couldn’t even try to loosen his grasp.

He let her flop back onto the bed and shoved her legs up. She didn’t stir, but he couldn’t have much time left. With one hand locked around her left wrist, he opened the nightstand’s top drawer, scanning the weapons there.

She wouldn’t give him a chance to shock her with the Taser again. His pistol was useless against a demon. She could easily break the handcuffs. The darts filled with hellhound venom would paralyze her, but he needed her to talk. And though he could prevent her escape by holding on to her wrist, Nicholas preferred not to touch her.

The collar, then. A quarter-inch thick and constructed of steel, she wouldn’t be able to rip it from her neck. Its heavy battery pack could be activated by remote to deliver another electric shock, briefly incapacitating her.

With the crossbow backing him up, “briefly” was all that he needed. He snapped the collar around her neck. Snagging his shirt from the bench at the end of the bed, he slipped his arms into the sleeves and waited, the remote in hand. Not long now—she was coming around. The crimson had faded from her skin; her wings had vanished. For the first time since he’d electrocuted her, she took a breath.

God, she looked so much like Rachel. Her gestures had been Rachel’s, too. When he’d come into the room and she’d turned to face him, the way she’d swept her long blond bangs away from her forehead as if to get a better look at him had been so familiar.

Those red symbols weren’t. He realized now that the tattoos didn’t just cover the side of her face, but continued down her neck and arms. Hundreds more of the inch-high symbols were tattooed over her torso and halfway down her legs, and an elaborate, palm-sized glyph decorated the skin between her breasts.

Why was this demon wearing those markings if she’d meant to impersonate Rachel? Nicholas couldn’t understand the purpose of it, not when a demon could imitate a person’s appearance so precisely. He couldn’t believe the tattoos were a mistake, not when she’d made certain to get the other details exactly right. Hell, the demon had even worn Rachel’s favorite clothing: the black leather jacket she loved, the knee-high boots with their three-inch heels, the snug jeans.

Would Madelyn have known about that jacket, those boots? Rachel had never dressed like that around her. It hadn’t been professional. Rachel had worn those clothes only away from work, and on the few weekends she and Nicholas had taken . . .

God. Nicholas shook his head. He couldn’t let himself do that. He couldn’t go back to those few months when he’d cared for her, as much as he could care for anyone. It hadn’t been love, but when this demon woke up, it would twist any available emotion, and those memories brought his guilt and his grief too close to the surface. So he couldn’t think about Rachel.

And he had to remember that every word coming from a demon’s mouth was a lie designed to mislead him—or a truth designed to fulfill some other destructive goal. He couldn’t risk listening to her, or believe anything she said.

He only needed to know if this demon was Madelyn. If she wasn’t, he’d slay her.

Or he’d use her to find Madelyn . . . then slay them both.

Three minutes later, the demon opened her eyes. Her gaze immediately found him standing at the end of the bed, his crossbow aimed at her chest. Without a word, Nicholas showed her the remote in his left hand, his thumb resting on the red activator button.

Her brow furrowed, but she caught on quickly. Her fingers flew to the heavy rectangular battery at her neck.

“It’s an explosive collar,” Nicholas said. “If you move, your head is gone.”

Lies. It would only stun her and give him time to capture her again. He didn’t mention that the broadheads of his crossbow bolts would detonate on impact. She’d discover that for herself if he had to use one.

She nodded and looked down at her naked form. No shock or embarrassment registered on her features. Rachel had always been a bit nervous when they’d undressed. This demon’s lips tilted, but he wasn’t certain if that faint smile indicated amusement. It didn’t seem to indicate much of anything.

Of course, Nicholas’s reaction to the beautiful woman lying naked on the bed wasn’t his typical response, either. No thoughts of sex intruded—only a sharp awareness that this demon might have killed his mother and driven his father to suicide.

Unexpectedly, she didn’t seem interested in trying to arouse him. She didn’t adopt a seductive posture; he couldn’t detect a hint of suggestion in her movements or her expression. Her clothes simply reappeared. She began to rise from the bed, but froze when he followed her up with the crossbow.

“I knew handguns were hard to come by in England,” she said, sitting at the edge of the mattress. “I didn’t realize crossbows were easier to find.”

“A gun won’t kill you.”

“It wouldn’t?” She glanced down at her chest, as if imagining a bullet slamming into it.

Nicholas imagined it, too—all too clearly. This demon would bleed. It would feel pain. Then it would heal. Rachel hadn’t. She’d thrashed and choked on her own blood, and nothing that Nicholas did to help had—

No. Determinedly, Nicholas forced that memory away. Within seconds of this demon waking, he was already thinking of Rachel. This had to be what she’d wanted.

He wouldn’t play her games. “You know a gun can’t kill you.”

“No. I didn’t know.” She tilted her head as if taking his measure. Just like Rachel. “If you know I can’t be killed by a gun, then you know who I am?”

“You’re not Rachel.”

“No, I’m not,” she agreed. “I don’t know why I look like her. Or why I feel as if I should remember something. Perhaps this is her body, and there is an imprint of her memories in my brain? I don’t know. I hoped that you would.”

Playing dumb. Six months ago, Nicholas might not have known what the demon was doing. Then he’d met Rosalia, a Guardian who could have given a demon lessons in extracting the information she wanted without offering any of her own. Thanks to Rosalia, he recognized this tactic: The demon pretended ignorance to discover how much he knew. She couldn’t physically fight him, and so her only power came from possessing more knowledge than he did. So she was trying to figure out what lies to tell.

Nicholas was just as interested in seeing what lies she tried to spin when he didn’t give her anything first. “What do you know?”

She answered more easily than he’d anticipated. “That almost three years ago, Madelyn St. Croix brought me to a private psychiatric hospital and left me. I don’t remember where I was before that. I don’t remember anything from before that.” If that frustrated her, she gave no sign of it. “And until a few months ago, I didn’t care. Now I do. I want to know who I am, what I am. And I think you might have the answers.”

Weren’t demons better liars than this? She’d barely gotten into her story, and already he saw holes in it.

“You have no memory, but you recalled Madelyn’s name?”

“Not until a month ago. I looked up pictures of Rachel Boyle’s associates online, and recognized Madelyn as the woman who brought me to Nightingale House.”

Nightingale House. Jesus. No question that this demon either was Madelyn or connected to her.

When Nicholas had been a boy, she’d had his father committed to Nightingale House—and it had destroyed his business, his reputation, his life. It had been Madelyn’s first step in driving him toward suicide.