The Demon's Song

CHAPTER Four


She might still be in one piece, but Sofia felt as though she was the one who’d taken the punch to the windpipe.

“No?” she repeated, turning her head to look into eyes that were fathomless up close. Inches away from her, Phenex’s breath feathered her mouth, almost a kiss. His lashes, long and dark, lowered as his eyes dropped to her lips, as though he’d been thinking the same thing. Heat flooded her cheeks.

Phenex said nothing, just shook his head slowly from side to side, silently reinforcing that simple, biting word. No. Maybe she was imagining it, but he looked almost sorry. He was also completely focused on her, his interest so intense that she felt every hair on her body prickling with awareness. It took a surprising amount of effort to remind herself that she was standing in a blood-soaked bathroom with an inhuman corpse and two men who didn’t seem to be anything like humans. Sofia turned her head, breaking eye contact despite the sharp pang of regret it produced. This wasn’t exactly hookup time on the dance floor. He’d grown wings. Wings. Enormous, beautiful, black ones, complete with feathers. After which he’d sliced her friend’s attacker neatly in half with a sword he’d brandished as if he were some ancient warlord.

Focusing on the gore, and on the slim, dark-haired man staring at her with eyes that gleamed red no matter how she tried to convince herself they couldn’t be that color, worked quickly to clear Sofia’s head. Still, instead of backing away, she found herself moving closer to Phenex. It might have been foolish, but he’d already protected her once.

Hopefully, if things went south here, he’d be inclined to do it again.

“What’s your name? And no games, please. I’ll know.”

She looked at the man with the red eyes and knew he was telling the truth. “Sofia Rivera,” she said, wishing the words had come out less tentatively. He gave a curt nod.

“Miss Rivera,” the man said, his voice commanding but not exactly unfriendly. “I’m Justin, the owner of Amphora. No one here is going to hurt you. But before I let you go, I need to know what exactly happened. Did you know the man your friend was with?”

It was strange. He gave no order, didn’t issue any threats. And yet, the longer Sofia looked into those dark crimson eyes, the more she felt as though she could tell this man anything, that she wanted to tell him everything. Her thoughts were slowly enveloped by a pleasant fog, and she heard herself speaking as though from far away.

“I...I’ve never seen him before...” The word “master” nearly fell from her lips before Phenex’s voice interjected, beautiful but razor sharp, dispelling the fog as quickly as it had rolled in.

“Knock it off, Justin. She’ll answer without you laying it on so thick. Sofia didn’t do anything.”

Sofia blinked, startled at the speed with which she came back to herself. The room reappeared in sharp relief, from the sea of red on the tiled floor to the two men, each unusually handsome in his own way, glaring at each other.

“Sofia can answer for herself, I’m sure. I’ll take care of this, Phenex. You’ve got a crowd to entertain, and I’ve got a mess to get cleaned up. I told you, we’ll talk later.”

Phenex crossed his arms over his chest, and Sofia saw, with a wave of relief, that he had no intention of going anywhere. The expression he wore was arrogant, unimpressed, and decidedly mulish.

She wondered, suddenly, if it was a mistake to be putting so much faith in him, so blindly. Still, right now, he was all she had.

“It’s fine,” Sofia heard herself saying. “I’d rather he stayed.”

The man—Justin, Phenex had called him—looked almost comically surprised, though he recovered quickly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Phenex’s smirk.

Oh, God, what had she gotten herself into?

“Suit yourself, then. What can you tell me, Sofia? May I call you that?”

“Yes, please,” she replied, finding his formality bizarre. She wished she was still with Amy, and anywhere but this blood-covered bathroom. “I didn’t know him. The one he was”—she couldn’t bring herself to say biting—“attacking is my roommate Sara. The blonde who just left is my other roommate, Amy. We came looking for Sara tonight because she’s barely been home lately. Her mom is worried, we were worried... She hasn’t been right since she started working here a few months ago. It was only getting worse, and things had gotten to the point that this was the only place I thought we might be able to see her. So we—”

“Sneaked in,” Phenex finished for her. When she turned her head toward him, he looked as amused as he sounded. “I knew you were up to no good.”

He looked too appreciative of the fact for Sofia to really be offended by the observation. Anyway, he was right. Or partially right. Whatever her intentions had been, not much good had come of this trip. Then again, Sara was still alive. She hoped. This mess would be worth it, Sofia thought, if that held true.

Justin’s sigh was exasperated. “Phenex. Not helping.”

“We came in through the kitchen,” Sofia admitted. “I said we’d brought Sara her wallet, since she was supposed to be working tonight. And that’s about it. We saw her with that guy, followed her in here, and I found...what I found.”

“And then punched what you found in the throat and the nuts,” Phenex said. “You take martial arts?”

“I’m an ER nurse at Georgetown,” Sofia replied, a little unnerved by Phenex’s casual attitude about violence. Then again, she reminded herself, that was probably one of the least unnerving things about him, all things considered. “I know how to handle myself.”

He looked intrigued, and there was a flicker of that sensual smirk. “I bet.”

There was no mistaking his meaning, and Sofia had to force her attention elsewhere. What kind of a guy hit on women in situations like this? What kind of women liked it? Her kind, apparently, Sofia thought, utterly disgusted with herself. She turned her head to watch Justin frowning at the mess that had once been a fanged psychopath. When Sofia forced herself to look more closely at the head, those fangs were still very much in evidence. She went cold as the harsh reality of the situation hit her again like a bucket of ice water. Fangs. Wings. And her friends were gone.

“Are Sara and Amy going to be okay?” she asked, the panic she’d so successfully kept at bay trying to work its way up the back of her throat again. Staying calm in crazy situations was one of her gifts, a thing that helped her excel at her job. But even she had her limits.

“Amy is being returned home as we speak,” Justin said, which was comforting until his eyes went carefully blank. “Sara is going to require extra care for a while. You shouldn’t worry. We’ll get it sorted out.”

She felt slightly ill. “Are you kidding? Of course I’m going to worry!”

Justin shrugged, an infuriatingly casual gesture considering what they were standing in the middle of, and what Sofia had just seen. She glared at him helplessly as frustration joined fear to twist into a hard knot in her stomach.

“She’s one of my best friends,” Sofia said, struggling to keep the urge to scream in check. “I got that monster away from her. I at least deserve to know what’s going on.”

“You already know more than you should,” Justin told her. The look he gave Phenex was decidedly beleaguered. “Go ahead and gloat, Phenex. You Fallen were right. Hiring humans was a bad idea.”

“Told you.”

Sofia’s chin went up as she looked between them. “If I’ve already seen too much, then a little more information can’t hurt.”

To her surprise, Justin smiled then, a startling flash of humor in a face that was as serious as it was handsome. It was gone before it could even begin to set her at ease, but there was a softening in the way he looked at her that helped the raw nerves she was contending with. It gave her some small amount of hope that she would walk out of here in one piece. Still, her friends…

“You don’t cower, do you? I can appreciate that.” Justin drew in a deep breath and looked away, appearing to be in deep thought about something. At her side, Phenex leaned over to murmur in her ear.

“Relax. He isn’t going to eat you.”

She turned her head just enough to give him a sidelong glance. He didn’t seem to have any trouble being completely in her personal space, something that normally would have bothered her. Now, the fact that it didn’t bother her bothered her. Especially because he seemed a lot more dangerous than Justin did.

“Nothing about this is funny,” she hissed back.

“Sure it is. Humans just have no sense of humor.”

His amused disdain for her, well, species, did nothing for Sofia’s ragged nerves. An acid comment rose to her lips, only to be banished by Justin’s sudden reentrance into the conversation.

“Fair enough. I know you’re telling the truth, Sofia. I just wish you knew more than you do about what went on here. As it is, I’m going to have my hands full with…this…for a while.”

“Aren’t you going to call the police?” she asked. Justin’s reddish eyes narrowed, and for an instant she caught a glimpse of what he must be like when he was truly angry. It would be terrifying, she realized. Phenex might be bigger, but Justin was deadly in his own right. Like the guy in pieces on the floor. Except far, far more competent.

“We take care of our own problems here,” he said, his voice deceptively cool. “I suggest you heed that, unless you want even more attention from my kind.”

“What are you?” Sofia didn’t realize she’d asked out loud until it was too late to take the words back. She blamed the shock now setting in, making her shiver, fuzzing her thoughts. But that didn’t make the question vanish. Some part of her already knew the answer. She just couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it.

I’m no bloodsucker, Phenex had told her, seeming offended that she might think so. Justin simply arched a dark brow.

“You know what I am,” was all he said, then turned the subject with businesslike precision. “You’re free to go, provided you can keep tonight to yourself.” He tilted his head, his gaze intense. “I think you can, actually. Unusual. Which is why I’ll give you a choice I didn’t give your friend. If you’d rather just forget everything, I can accommodate that. She won’t even remember coming here tonight. I can do the same for you. You’d be happier.”

“No,” Sofia said, sure of this if nothing else. “I wouldn’t.” She didn’t want anyone messing around with her thoughts, erasing memories. Justin didn’t look surprised, though there was something calculating in the way he was watching her that she didn’t like at all.

“I can provide you an escort home, at least.”

Sofia was already backing toward the door, treading carefully around the blood. “No,” she said, hardly able to believe he was letting her go so easily. “No, that’s fine. I—I’ll get a cab. Out front. But thanks. Really.”

That sudden flash of a smile again. “No thanks are necessary. I appreciate the fact that you’re managing to stay so calm. Your injured friend will be in touch. Soon, I’m sure. And, of course, you’re always welcome at Amphora.”

The coppery tang of blood filled her nostrils, and the room suddenly seemed too bright, too harsh, too everything. Sofia drank in a gulp of air that she hoped wasn’t too noticeable as her stomach started to roll again. Reality was catching up to her…and all she wanted was to be far away from here when she finally lost it. She’d dealt with injuries that most people could only imagine, functioned in situations where normal people would have broken. But she’d never feared for herself, or questioned her own sanity, quite like this.

“I’ll…yeah. Okay,” she said, shooting one more look at an obviously puzzled Phenex before she felt the door at her back and pushed it open. A few steps and she was out in the crowded club, where everyone but the tall, muscular man discreetly stationed right outside the bathroom door seemed oblivious to the bloodbath that had just occurred. That, or it was just so ordinary to him that he didn’t care.

And no one would ever believe her if she tried to tell them, so Justin didn’t need to worry about that. She just wanted to go home.

Sofia suffered only the briefest moment of hesitation as she watched the bathroom door swing shut, her eyes meeting Phenex’s for a single, electric second. If this were somewhere else, some other night, she thought wistfully, but then stopped herself. He wasn’t human. That wasn’t changing, and she needed to get out of here before somebody decided to bite her. She straightened her shoulders, turned on one spindly heel, and walked away as fast as she could.

When she hit the front doors, heels be damned, she ran.