Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

why didn’t you poison her?” he asked.
    “Poison is an art. There’s a time for subtlety. Then there’s a time to get the job done.”
    “It takes a brave woman to kill like that, baronessa. The girl would have suffered, otherwise,” he said.
    “Killing has nothing to do with bravery,” Luciana told him tersely. “Especially not killing like this.”
    Fury burned through her. How the Gatekeepers could have kept such a person in the house without her approval—well, it galled her. But she would deal with them later, when she had the luxury of time to do it properly. Not now.
    “Of course, baronessa, ” was all Massimo said.
    She followed him up the stairs. But while he headed to the workroom, she retired to her bedroom. In her private bath, she ran the water in the huge marble tub for herself. Rummaged in the drawer and found a bandage to bind her crushed hand.
    When that was finally done, she removed the lipstick tube from her pocket. How that had survived the evening intact, she didn’t know. She set it on the countertop of the marble vanity. She stripped off her bloody, ruined dress, tossing it on the floor. Then she sank into the warm bathwater, wincing slightly as it lapped over the gashes on her back.
    The residual pain was fading, even if her memory of the angel’s touch was not.
    Thank God the night was finally over.
    Why did it all go so wrong?
    She had killed countless young girls, many of them younger than Violetta Ravello. Had always enjoyed the process. The draining of the blood. In the past, she had felt no guilt. She had felt nothing. Exactly as she had explained earlier this evening, she knew that death was not the end. Pain was fleeting.
    And she, Luciana, had fared so much better as a demoness than as a human.
    In her afterlife, she had gained power that she had never imagined before.
    She had reveled in the deaths of the innocent, as if somehow it could profane the name of God. While she had drained their bodies and bathed in their blood, she imagined that she was giving these girls the same opportunities that she, Luciana, had achieved through death.
    But this time, thinking about the child who lay dead downstairs, Luciana wanted to retch.
    Perhaps because she knew that Violetta should be on her way to heaven. Instead, the girl was headed in a different direction entirely.
    At the slight creak of the old door, Luciana called, “Is that you, Massimo? I told you never to interrupt my baths. If there’s some problem, I’ll be down in a moment.”
    At the soft laugh behind her, she froze.
    She looked in the mirror. The person she saw reflected there was not Massimo.
    His amber eyes glowed in the dim lighting of the bathroom, the steam rising around him as though he had risen freshly from hell itself. His blond hair was as immaculate as ever, his face as classically handsome as ever, but his Nordic good looks put a chill through her.
    Even in the heat of the bathwater, she shivered.
    Corbin Ranulfson had come out to play.
    He was one of the most powerful Archdemons in America. Arguably the most powerful demon on earth, before Julian Ascher had knocked him down a few rungs on the demon hierarchy. And she had used him. Luciana had endured Corbin’s companionship and his perverse sexual tastes for months as she schemed to get closer to Julian Ascher.
    Whatever Corbin was doing here, his arrival did not bode well.
    “No, my dear. Massimo’s not back yet,” he said, coming to loom over the bath. He dipped his hand in the water, swirling it as he perused her body beneath the clear surface where the bubbles separated. “Plain water this time? I thought you preferred to bathe in blood. The blood of young girls, like Elizabeth Bathory. If I understand correctly, there was one downstairs that might have served nicely.”
    Admittedly, she had previously made a practice of bathing in blood. It was something she had done from time to time, partly to keep up her reputation. Especially when one traveled in circles with the likes of Corbin, terrifying behavior was necessary to avert the bloodlust of other demons. To keep them from attacking oneself.
    However, right now, all she wanted was to cleanse herself of blood, not cover herself in it.
    “I heard about your little encounter in the glass gallery on the Street of Assassins. I would have come sooner, but I was detained elsewhere,” he said, and she knew what that meant.
    Detained by their boss, in the bowels of hell.
    “I was released only