Demon Night by Meljean Brook Read Free Book Online

her,” Ethan drawled.
    Rebecca pursed Jeeves’s thin lips. “And you’ve screwed up the entry logs by failing to swipe your card. There’s no record of you at the main door, but there’s a record here at security? Red flags everywhere. And guess who has to go in and fix them?”
    Ethan adopted his best aw, shucks expression. “I’m just keeping you on your toes, Miss Becca. Training and all.”
    Rebecca spread her arms wide; Ethan could almost hear the starched shirt cracking. “Do I look like a fucking ballerina to you?” A choked laugh from Jake had her glaring in his direction. “You: Shut up. I just learned how to take my sword out of my hammerspace, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
    Jake held up his hands in surrender, but his gaze centered over her shoulder and on the monitors lining the small room. “You’ve got a motorcycle coming into the parking lot, Jeeves.”
    Rebecca turned her head; when she glanced back, Jeeves’s smile was a ghastly thing. “Speak of the devil. It’s Lilith,” she said and slammed the door.
    Ethan’s brows rose, and he looked from the still-quivering door frame to Jake. “Her hammerspace ?”
    â€œHer cache.” Jake shrugged and moved the toothpick from the right corner of his mouth to the left. “It’s a video-game thing. We’ve been playing DemonSlayer in our downtime.”
    â€œLearning a bushel from it, are you?” Ethan asked, his voice dry as desert sand. Though based on a book that accurately described Guardians, the game was riddled with errors—but, fortunately, the public assumed both were fiction.
    â€œThere’s only so much porn you can download before the thrill is gone.” The toothpick bobbed with Jake’s unapologetic grin. “Speaking of, that’s probably why Becca’s ready to snap: I think Emo Vamp always falls asleep right afterwards.”
    â€œI can hear you, you bloody bastard.” Rebecca’s reply came clearly through the door, but this time it was rounded by Jeeves’s cultured voice. “And Mackenzie’s worth it.”
    Her vampire lover likely fed from her just before falling into the daysleep, then. Ethan didn’t allow his revulsion to show; the thought of the blood and feeding didn’t disgust him, but the memory of a vampire’s bloodlust, and of how easily it had slipped into his own mind, left a bitter taste in his mouth. He’d done a lot of wrong in his lifetime, but what he’d done to that vampire had been one of the worst.
    He’d been a Guardian with a century’s training—but the overwhelming need had left him as weak as a human…or a vampire.
    A hiss of compressed air and the slide of the door preceded Lilith’s entrance, and Ethan made a mental amendment as she strode toward them, her long black hair coiled tight at her nape, her dark eyes fixed on his. Lilith was human now, but with the physical strength of a vampire, and “weak” described her about as well as “unsightly” described an Arizona sunset.
    And nothing about Lilith was unsightly, either, though Ethan wasn’t used to seeing so little of her. Perhaps in deference to the crisp morning, she’d traded in her corset for a high-necked black shirt and a jacket that rivaled his in length.
    She didn’t stop and offer a greeting; as she passed him, she simply commanded, “Drifter. In my office. And bring your puppy.”
    Jake made a woofing sound, but Ethan was surprised that her dog wasn’t trailing at her heels. Lilith’s three-headed hellhound could make a demon quake with fear and served as her protection. She rarely went anywhere without it, and Sir Pup’s absence likely meant that, wherever Castleford was, he had needed the hellhound more than she did.
    Which gave Ethan an advantage he’d have been a fool to squander. Whistling soundlessly, he fell