Demon Night by Meljean Brook Read Free Book Online Page A

into step behind her.
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    With its walls painted a rich gold, mahogany furniture, and shelves of books, the office that Lilith and Castleford shared could have fit as easily in a nineteenth-century English manor house—although a gentleman farmer likely wouldn’t have had an arsenal of weapons hidden in his library. Lilith sat lightly on the front edge of her desk; Jake dropped into one of the club chairs facing her. Ethan didn’t take the seat she pushed toward him with her boot.
    Though her psychic blocks were impenetrable, he felt her dark gaze as he moved toward the painting of Caelum that hung against the east wall. Columns and spires of white marble rose against a gloriously blue sky.
    â€œYour pup ain’t here,” Ethan said.
    â€œWashington, D.C.’s vamp community was wiped out last night,” Lilith said. Though her voice was flat, she allowed her frustration and anger to slip through her shields. “Michael took Hugh and Sir Pup with him, looking for evidence. They teleported there just after dawn.”
    Jake sat forward, inhaled through clenched teeth. “Was it the same as in Rome and Berlin last month? No survivors?”
    â€œYes. Whoever they are—and however many of them there were—they were methodical.”
    As they had been in Rome and in Berlin. Ethan could hardly comprehend the organization and planning it must have taken to wipe out every vampire in a city over the course of a single night. “Nothing to show whether it was demons or nosferatu?”
    Though demons and nosferatu had once been angels, the nosferatu hadn’t been tossed into Hell after Lucifer’s rebellion—instead, they’d been cursed with bloodlust and intolerance for daylight. Most demons and every Guardian would slay a nosferatu on sight; for that reason, they usually hid in caves, safe from psychic detection.
    But not always—in the past year, Ethan had seen more nosferatu than in the first two decades of his active Guardian service. And, to a one, nosferatu despised vampires. If ever a group would want to destroy the communities, it would be nosferatu.
    â€œI’d wager it was demons,” Lilith said, and Ethan’s brows rose. She must be certain, then; Lilith didn’t speak of bargains or wagers lightly. As a demon, she’d been bound by one—and the consequences for entering into a bargain or wager and then breaking its terms were severe: an eternity of torment, frozen between Hell and the Chaos realm. “Nosferatu would have left a mess, not piled the vampires’ bodies up and let them disintegrate in the sun. The demons are trying to keep their activity hidden from humans—but not from us.”
    â€œThat’s still a heap of ash and personal items to be concealing from the local authorities,” Ethan pointed out.
    â€œYes. Michael will take care of that.”
    Meaning that the Doyen would vanish the evidence into his cache. She wouldn’t need Ethan and Jake to go in and help with the physical cover-up, then, but there was still a community missing. So many people disappearing at once would be noticed—jobs and apartments suddenly abandoned, human family members left with questions—and, after Berlin and Rome, Special Investigations had formed a task force to handle the fallout. But neither Ethan nor Jake belonged to it.
    â€œIs this what you pulled us in for?” Ethan asked.
    â€œNo. I want an update on Seattle.” Lilith stood and shrugged out of her jacket, throwing it across the back of the chair she’d offered him. “Milliken’s transformation failed.”
    Dread digging at his gut, Ethan frowned and watched Lilith round the desk and sink into her high-backed seat. When a human was turned into a vampire against his will—drained, and then forced to drink vampire or nosferatu blood—the transformation rarely took. After a long and painful degeneration, the vampire went out one