Demon Angel

do him no good to revisit the past, to reenter a world he was no longer a part of. His curiosity was just another symptom of the restlessness that burned within him of late.
    But was it curiosity or sense when Savi might be in danger— not from Colin, but from the nosferatu? Why not gather information from this source? "Have there been any human deaths?"
    "Only vampire," Colin said. "They seem intent on exterminating us. There were seventy or so at the club; the community elders thought there would be safety in a group."
    Hugh nodded slowly. It wasn't surprising; in the last hundred years, as the nosferatu neared extinction, the creatures had been unable to endure the combined insult of the destruction of their kind and its corrupted continuation in the diluted, human form. They had begun killing their vampiric offspring, and the vampires had little protection against the stronger, older nosferatu. But as the number of nosferatu decreased, the danger to vampires had been slight.
    Until now.
    "What protection have you?"
    Colin seemed to choke. "A dog."
    Hugh frowned. "Colin—"
    "I'll explain tomorrow. After six? You choose the location."
    Withholding information was an old bargaining tactic, and one Hugh had always been susceptible to. "No."
    "She'll kill me, but it's time you knew." She ? The vampire forged ahead before Hugh could question him. "Oh, and Hugh—I read your book."
    The dial tone cut Colin off mid-laugh.
    Hugh slowly replaced the phone. Emilia licked her paw and stared up at him. "A menace," he told her, feeling a bit as if he'd fought three invisible demons and come out the loser. Miraculously alive, and unsure of what the hell had happened.
    A light knock at his door was followed by Savi opening it and poking her head through. "I heard your voice, and broke in," she said. They kept the door connecting her upstairs apartment to his house unlocked, but she always insisted on making her visits sound like a crime. Her way, Hugh assumed, of adding excitement to a rather tame living arrangement—a tame life . "The team in Mumbai just finished the code on the update. Since you're awake, want to play? I need a beta tester."
    He groaned and dragged his hand through his hair. "No."
    "No fun." She pretended to pout, but her quick eyes focused on the paper in his hand. "Did the number reach who you thought? Were you speaking with him?"
    "Yes. Thank you." He crumpled it, and tossed it into the garbage bin, then picked up his glasses from the nightstand. He slipped them on, grateful that her presence would keep him from dwelling on his conversation with Colin—and the reason he'd been awake to begin with.
    She shrugged and stepped half inside the room, leaning against the doorjamb. Her short black hair had lost some of its spike, but otherwise she looked fresh, alert. "I'm always up for a quasi-legal search of government databases." She cocked her head. "The London address you had was fifty years old. I went into the IRS records—followed that trail from Ramsdell Pharmaceuticals. The grandson is the major shareholder now, but it was like the same man… don't give me that big brother look. You may have only asked for contact info, but you know I'm nosy. So it's your fault."
    He only stared at her.
    She grinned. "Food then? I'll meet you downstairs; I have to burn the new version onto a disc first. And then you can watch me as I kick the demons' asses. And they're bigger and badder than ever."
    Bigger and badder than ever . Hugh rewound the video, paused as the camera panned across the crowd. The fire flickered across the features of those who had gathered to watch Polidori's burn, but only two faces had caught Hugh's attention the night before. To the casual observer, they would only have seemed to be large men who had taken body modification to an extreme. It was not unheard of—particularly in the Goth community—to have undergone cosmetic surgery that lightened the skin to such a degree, pointed the ears and removed any trace of hair. Fangs could be dentures, or implants. Their appearance might be remarked upon, remembered, but no one would assume they were truly inhuman—particularly outside a club famous for its vampiric theme. Very few knew the vampires inside had often been real, but even those humans who might have known would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a vampire and a human in costume.
    Not so the nosferatu. Along with an inability to shift form, they had long been denied the