Demon Blood

was exactly what she’d expected. “I want to watch it.”
    “I can arrange that.” Deliberately she looked him over, as if calculating his worth. “If you have any interest in moving up through Legion’s ranks, there will be several positions opening soon. But you might want to dump them from your stock portfolio for the time being. Consumer confidence is going to take a dive.”
    His eyes gleamed. “Then I’ll have people ready to move in and take over.”
    “Don’t tip your hand.”
    He placed his palm over his heart and smiled, but his gaze was deadly cold. “Never.”

CHAPTER 19
    Taylor teleported them high above Amsterdam before disappearing again. Rosalia’s wings caught air, her psychic scent spinning a little, and Deacon realized that he hadn’t felt the disorientation that came with jumping from one location to another since he’d taken the nephil’s blood.
    He also realized that teleporting around like this was going to fuck Rosalia’s plan up. “I’m getting around too easily. Warsaw last night. Sarajevo before that. Now Amsterdam. Vampires don’t get around like this. Any demon with sense will know I have help.”
    She shook her head, her gaze searching the ground for their target’s home. From this height, the canals running in concentric half circles around the city center looked like dark ribbons against the sparkling city lights.
    “I’ve been purchasing tickets that are easily traceable back to you. If they’re looking, they’ll think you traveled by rail from Rotterdam in a shipping container today, and that you reached Rotterdam by plane from Warsaw last night.”
    Jesus Christ. “Have you had a trip planned out every night?”
    “Of course.”
    Of course? He could hardly imagine creating a scheme as complex as the one she had going, and now he learned that she probably had more layers to it than he’d realized. How long had she been planning this?
    It couldn’t have been too long. She’d only discovered that her family had been slaughtered six months ago. How long had she grieved before deciding to act? Deacon’s plan for revenge had been simple: tracking down Legion’s executives and figuring out whether they were demons, then killing them. Yet he’d still had to spend three months selling everything off and practicing with his swords so that he could take on the demons. How much time had she put into hers? And how long had he been part of that plan?
    But she must have been thinking of using him from the first, incorporating his strengths. Even now, he was realizing that she’d only sent him to communities where he was fluent in the local language.
    He couldn’t decide what astounded him more—that she’d considered that detail, or that she’d known exactly which languages he spoke.
    “I’m heading down,” she warned him an instant before her wings folded behind her back.
    Her dive didn’t seem so fast now with the nephil blood in him, his stomach no longer swooping up through the top of his head. He watched Rosalia, instead, the dark hair streaming out behind her, the narrowing of her eyes against the wind, the minute adjustments of her wings. She smiled as they landed in a narrow deserted alley, changing from her Zorro getup into a black dress that hugged her curves and skimmed her knees. Her shoes were just sparkly straps, with heels as high and as ridiculous as her boots. At some point in the past few days, she’d painted her toenails a soft pink.
    He’d never been a toenail-painting kind of guy, but God help him, he could imagine spending plenty of time at Rosalia’s pretty feet.
    As if noticing him staring at her shoes, she said, “We have a bit of a walk.”
    They always did, though Deacon had his doubts whether landing here or just outside the demon’s door made any difference. “Does coming at a demon from a few miles away really mean he’s less likely to pay attention?”
    “No. It’s for me.” Her eyes warm and soft with quiet laughter, she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, her fingers wrapping around his biceps. “I’ve always enjoyed walking through different cities.”
    Hell. He should have realized that was her reason. Even the past couple of days, when they’d passed through the cities with barely a word between them, he’d seen how she’d looked at every building, watched every person, took in everything there was to see and smell and hear—especially any kind of plant or flower, as if she was considering