I couldn’t—which meant I needed to say no-go to the demon-hunting thing. I needed to be the responsible big sis. And I needed to get my kid sister (and her hitchhiking demon companion) home and into bed.
I knew it, but somehow I couldn’t do it. Because once the idea had been planted in my head—once I was thinking about the kill and the dark and that somber, sensual rush that came right after my blade cut them down to goo—well, by then I couldn’t seem to do anything else.
I needed the kill. I craved the dark. And I hated myself for what I’d become.
I should go home. I should march through the door, plunk myself down on the couch, and tune the television to the Disney Channel. I needed saccharin to counteract the tug of the demonic inside me. Because it was there, that dark, and it wanted to be fed.
And damned if I didn’t want to feed it.
We drove back the way we’d come, all three of us in the car so tense, I’m surprised the windows didn’t fog up. But we saw no sign of the warrior demon.
“Looks like our demon friend is long gone,” I said.
In the backseat, Rose drew her legs up onto the seat and hugged her knees to her chest. She looked at me, the whites of her eyes eerie in the reflected light of the dashboard. She didn’t have to speak; I knew what she was thinking. That demon might be gone, but there was still another right there with us, alive inside of her.
I reached back, wanting to take her hand and offer some sort of comfort, but she shifted away, turning on the seat so that my fingertips only brushed her knee. I pulled back, rebuffed and uncertain.
I was distracted from my own self-loathing by the sight of my bike, splayed out at the side of the road, wounded but apparently untouched.
“Later,” Kiera said, watching me eyeing it. “We’ll catch it on the flip side.”
“I’m tired,” Rose said. “Can’t we just go?”
I wanted to say yes, to be responsible. So help me, I wanted to tell Kiera to pull over, then plunk Rose on the back of the bike and speed off toward Boarhurst. But I didn’t, because I was hard up by then. I’d gotten the idea of a hit in my system, and I wasn’t backing away. Not then. Not even for Rose.
“Soon,” I said. “This is important.” And it was. Every kill made me stronger, right? And if warrior dude was any indication of the kind of demons that were in store for me now, I needed all the strength I could get.
All true . . . and at the same time, all utter bullshit. Because right then, it wasn’t strength I was craving. Not by a long shot.
I had Kiera stop just long enough to retrieve Rose’s duffel, then we were on our way again. It wasn’t even ten when Kiera eased the car into a slot in front of the gray façade of a club that had no visible signage. But despite the early hour, I saw a couple of junkies finalizing a deal in the shadows near the front door, and a drunk couple getting so down and dirty with copping a feel that even I was about to get embarrassed. And, honestly, considering all I’ve done in my twenty-six years—and Alice’s twenty-two—it takes a lot to get me embarrassed.
“I love this place,” Kiera said, killing the engine and opening her door. “It’s got atmosphere.”
In the backseat, Rose’s eyes were wide. “Don’t look at anything,” I said, channeling a responsible sister for a few seconds. “And anything you do see, I want you to forget by morning.”
Either my words or my tone broke the spell, and she rolled her eyes and sighed. “I’m fourteen, Lil. I’m not a baby.”
“I’m just trying to make sure you’re fourteen going on fifteen, and not thirty.”
“A little late for that,” she said, and I had to silently concede the point. She’d been through hell, and she’d grown up fast. And maybe I couldn’t turn back the clock, but I was damn sure going to try.
The door was manned by a beefy guy with arms so thick he couldn’t actually put his hands down by his side. He gave Rose the evil eye, then shook his head. “ID. And it better not be fake.”
I eyed Kiera, who was clearly thinking that he would be a good subject on whom to practice her knife skills. Rather than deal with the inconvenience of a homicide investigation, I sidled up close and turned on the charm. Or I tried to. The truth is that despite having absorbed the essence of an incubus, I hadn’t yet mastered the control aspect of my newfound sexual prowess.
My lack of skill, however, was not an issue. Either enough sex-goddess aura oozed out without me trying, or the guy was too damn horny to care. But when I put my hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear that I would be really, really, really grateful if he let the girl in with me, he complied without complaint. True, he squeezed my ass, but he didn’t complain, and he let us pass. Kiera gave me a questioning look, but I just lifted a shoulder, shook my ass, and led the parade inside. Some tricks it was better not to share.