Sure, it was after midnight, and the guy had only been on the case for less than twelve hours but for what Niol was paying the charmer, he expected some damn good results.
And Giles knew he didn’t like disappointment.
The charmer looked up from his computer, brows beetled. “I know I locked that suite door.”
Niol shrugged.
“Damn demon.” Giles sighed and motioned him forward. “Zack…let me guess, you’re referring to the esteemed Doctor Zachariah Nathaniel Hall? Otherwise known as the jackass of the MU biology department?”
Niol threw his body into the nearby chair. “Could be-what do you know about the jackass?”
Giles smiled, and it really wasn’t a pretty sight. Too many teeth. “I know the jackass was engaged to your little reporter.”
The lights over them flickered. “Run that by me again.”
The investigator looked up and his smile dimmed a bit. “Holly…uh, Storm, she was engaged to the ivory tower guy.”
The lady hadn’t mentioned an ex-fiancé.
But then again, they hadn’t exactly been exchanging secrets about old lovers.
Still…a fiancé ? What the hell?
“The engagement ended two months later.” Giles sniffed. “Apparently, old Zachariah had a thing for one of his young students.”
Fucking idiot. He’d screwed around on her?
Humans could be so stupid.
Whatever. The bastard’s loss. His gain.
The lights steadied.
Giles looked at him. “He paid her a visit today.”
And she hadn’t mentioned that to him, either. “Why?”
Giles sighed. “Shit, man, how about a ‘That’s great-you work fast, charmer.’ Or some kind of freaking praise? I haven’t even been on this case for a whole day and-”
“Why did the asshole go to see her?”
No smile now. “I don’t know yet.”
Niol would find out. The human had better not be sniffing around Holly again. He’d had his chance and blown it to hell from the sound of things.
Niol wasn’t the sharing type. Never had been. The human had better back off-or he’d get burned.
“Something I did find out though, you might find it inter esting.” Giles shoved a file across the table. “Holly had an older brother.”
Didn’t know my own brother was fighting for his life, until I walked in and found him dead on the floor of his bedroom.
He flipped open the file. Saw the old clippings from a Mississippi paper. Overdose kills teen. Laurel youth loses battle with addiction. Body found by sister.
Damn.
“Looks like the kid got hooked when he was young, maybe around thirteen. By seventeen, he was dead.”
And Holly was finding his body.
“He was a year older than her. Newspapers say they were close.”
Niol could still hear the echo of pain in her voice. Yes, they’d been close all right.
“A couple of the kid’s friends were quoted as saying he took the drugs ‘to quiet his demons.’”
Very slowly, Niol glanced up from the grainy photo of a boy with Holly’s mouth and with eyes that were darkened by pain and fear.
“Your kind…” Giles licked his thick lips, “you guys can get hooked on the drugs fast, right?”
Some demons did. Because a demon’s power, it could be a very, very dark thing.
Like Sam Miters. He’d gotten hooked fast and when he was young. Niol knew the poor bastard had heard the thoughts of killers. Slow, insidious whispers that had tried to drive him mad. For Sam, only the meth had quieted those voices.
The usual drugs wouldn’t always work on a demon. If a demon went into a clinic, looking for help to stop voices and nightmare visions, usually he just got pumped up with anti-psychotic drugs like chlorpromazine. And that didn’t do shit for a demon, except make the voices louder and the visions clearer.
So the more desperate of his ilk tried their own drug mixes-and got addicted too fast to know they were sliding straight into hell.
Drugs weren’t the way to treat demons. Mind shields, like the one he knew Emily Drake had created for herself, that was the way to keep the insanity out.
But it took years to perfect a shield like that and most demons, especially the young ones who’d just hit puberty and felt the full rush of their demon power for the first time, they didn’t have that precious time.
They needed a fucking system in place to help the young ones so they didn’t grow up to become like Sam.
And so they didn’t die like-Niol glanced down. “Peter Storm.” Had he been a demon? Odds were high that he had. Maybe he’d been stronger than Holly, had a greater power, and been scared to death of that unknown darkness.
“Have you found a demon link in Holly’s family tree?” Had to be one. Demons didn’t just randomly pop up as some kind of mutation in the general population. Vampires did that-those weird-ass Born Masters. They were born to humans. Seemed completely normal then-wham. Woke up one day with a wild hunger for blood and enough power to generally level a city block.
Maybe they were the cursed ones.
As for demons, his kind had been around forever. Since the first gasp of man, and before.
And they’d be around long after that last desperate breath, too.
“I’m working on the rest of the family now…give me more time, Niol.” Almost pleading.
He grunted and pushed out of the vinyl chair. Great view, shitty chairs. “Call me.” A glance at the round face of the clock on Giles’s wall showed him that it was nearing midnight. Holly should be finishing up at the station soon.
And coming to meet him.
His cock swelled at the thought.
He’d meet her at the door.
Her house was dark when Holly pulled into the driveway just before one a.m.
The porch light glowed, but the interior of the house was pitch black.
She slammed her car door shut and stared up at the house and the darkness.
Maybe she should have been a bit nervous, walking up alone toward a house cloaked in shadows. A psycho was on the loose, one she’d deliberately baited on camera.
Maybe she should have been afraid.
But she wasn’t.
Because Holly knew she wasn’t really alone. She didn’t glance over her shoulder and down the street to the left; she didn’t need to look over to see the gray SUV that had been tailing her. She’d spotted the vehicle earlier, right after lunch, and recognized the two men inside from Paradise Found.
Niol’s guards.
She’d been pissed for five minutes. Ready to call him and bawl his ass out for putting his goons on her tail.
Then reality had set in. A killer was on the loose. Holly knew that hit-and-run hadn’t been pure coincidence, and if two really big, really strong demons wanted to watch her ass, who was she to argue?
Once the killer was caught, she knew they’d vanish.
So, no, she wasn’t afraid of the darkness or of the monsters that waited under that cover-and she knew he was waiting for her.
Niol was inside her house. As promised.
Holly knew it, with every fiber of her being. She’d been thinking about Niol since she’d left him. He’d slipped into her thoughts almost constantly as she’d worked.
Not like the lovers she’d had in the past. Not even close.
Her fingers tightened around her keys.
She hurried toward the door. She wanted to get to him. To hold him. To strip and feel the hot slide of his body against hers.
For the last few hours, she’d been working on that damn demon killer story and she wanted to forget.
Niol would help her to forget.
Holly shoved the key into the lock and pushed open the door.
Silence.
Her heart slammed into her ribs. “Niol?” She crossed the threshold, kicking the door shut behind her. A quick punch of the alarm had her safe light shining steady again. “Niol, are you here?”
He was…She could almost feel him.
So dark. She reached for the nearby light switch-and warm, strong fingers curled around her wrist.