that accompanied her. Or the confusion over whether to slay her or to turn around and kiss her.
“They were after you,” he said. “I’ve had no problem with vampires until you showed up.”
“Says the guy who needed rescue from two vampires.”
“Rescue? Are you mentally unbalanced? Oh, right, you are.”
He flicked some ash from the shoulder of her men’s shirt that sported a design of blood and now some of her own black demon blood. She fluttered her lashes at him.
Not going to work on him. Not even when her pupils dilated, pushing the kaleidoscope perimeter of iris to a narrow band.
He averted his attention to the wounds above her ear. “You’re bleeding.”
“That’s the vampire blood.”
“No, sweetie, that stuff is black.”
She touched her head in a moment of panic. “Is it bad?”
“No,” he said under his breath. “You don’t feel pain?”
“A little, but it’s healed. Hope you can’t catch rabies from vamps. Ugg. That thing was hungry.”
“It’s all over your shirt. You’re not being very covert.”
“Didn’t know that was a requirement. You want me to take my shirt off, too? That’ll show ‘em how covert I can be.”
“I’ll give you all the attention you need if you play it cool around mortals and keep your shirt on.”
“Mmm …” She slid closer to him, and if he didn’t know better, he’d guess she was angling for some touch and man, did his body react. The brush of her shirtsleeve across his nipple did not preach patience.
But he did know better. She was Sinistari. She had come to kill him, not snuggle with him.
His stop was next. No doubt, she would follow him out no matter where he got off. The demon was like a tick. But she wouldn’t find nourishment from him because he had no intention of giving her what she wanted. If his muse were in the vicinity, Cooper intended to walk the opposite direction.
Just because a Sinistari had found him didn’t mean he was close to his muse. He’d actually landed on earth in New Jersey. Upon feeling the compulsion to stay there—and seek his muse—he’d immediately flashed across the ocean.
The doors opened and he nudged the demon’s hip with his. She took the signal, wrapping her arm around his back and leading him out onto the platform.
“I don’t need an escort,” he said as he plodded under the sorte sign toward the stairs.
The tick clung. At the very least, she was hanging on to him on the side of the blood smear.
Surfacing on the sidewalk in the center of the 16th arrondissement, Cooper sighted the distant lights twinkling down the always-busy Champs Elysees.
“You’re not coming home with me, so shove off,” he told her. “You are like one of those sad-eyed puppy dogs, aren’t you?”
“Fine. I don’t need to see where you go, I can track you by vibration.” She leaned against a metal street post and crossed her legs at the ankle. The cowboy boots pointed toward the sky. Drawing her finger along her lower lip, she looked up through her thick ginger lashes. “Nightie night, Cooper.”
That lip demanded a nibble. Or two. And those lashes. What would it feel like to brush his mouth over them?
Cooper huffed, and marched down the narrow cobblestoned street toward his building. This quarter of the city boasted homes from medieval times sandwiched between twentieth-century buildings. The eclectic mix appealed to his sense of craft and artistry.
He forgot about demons and vampires—until he thought of them—and he scanned all around him and searched the darkness in between buildings.
At the door to his building he punched the numbers into the digital security box, then jogged the three flights up to his apartment. Listening acutely before he closed the door, he reassured himself she’d not followed him. But then, before he did close the door, he heard the street-level door creak.
“You can’t sleep in the foyer!” he called down.
“Says who?”
Rolling his eyes, he slammed his door and stalked through the darkness to the bedroom.
The moon was high and it shimmered through the tall window facing the distant Seine. He kicked off his boots, then landed the bed on his back, arms spread. A pillow wobbled onto his face and he punched it away.
He’d thought his existence on earth would go easy if he kept a low profile and didn’t answer the compulsion to seek his muse.
Someone had different plans for him. And it wasn’t the Sinistari that worried him most.
Why in Beneath were vampires after him?
Antonio del Gado strode at a quick pace through the limestone halls of his underground sanctuary. Here in Paris he owned an exquisite mansion, the Hôtel Solange, which was underlined with a network of tunnels. The medieval and rococo centuries had been a time of necessity for secret escape tunnels thanks to the political maneuvers that tested the resilience of kings and their subjects.
During evening hours he lived aboveground, but when daylight reigned, he was forced below-ground.
Vampires could walk in the sun. Ninety-five percent of them. But the rare ones who had descended from an angelic race could not, only because their bloodline had not been rejuvenated with their ancestors’ blood for millennia.
Antonio was going to change that, for him, and for his entire tribe Anakim. He wanted the daylight, and he would not stop at anything until he had it.
Behind him he was flanked by Bruce Westing and Stellan the Pale. Bruce was Anakim’s Fallen hunter, and Stellan’s expertise had uncovered half a dozen angel halos over the past year. As well, Bruce had secured the eight paintings lined along the north wall in the dungeon, each of them depicting a different Fallen angel, complete with sigil.
Yet Antonio had no names to match to those sigils.
“You’re sure it was a Sinistari with the Fallen?” he asked as he entered his underground office. The cave walls were hung with medieval tapestries depicting scaled dragons and knights with bloody spears. “I thought you said he was with a female?”
Bruce shoved his hands in his front jeans pocket. He and Stellan stopped before Antonio’s marble-topped desk. “It was a woman,” Bruce said, “and I’m pretty sure she was Sinistari. She was strong, as strong as the angel.”
“But Sinistari are male,” Antonio said. Though, honestly, he hadn’t a proper description for the demon breed, only that they exclusively hunted the Fallen. “And why wouldn’t she have slain the angel?”
“Still missing a key ingredient,” Stellan offered.
“The
