Demon Blood

not imagine how much that meant to him.
    Deacon slid out from beneath the car on a little rolling plank, and she crouched beside him.
    “We have tonight free, if you know of a place you’d like to take them.”
    Shaking his head, he sat up. His voice was raw. All of him was raw, she realized, down to the core.
    “I’ll do it after we’ve finished. And instead of making a promise to them, I can tell them it was done.”
    “Okay. Are you all right?”
    “Yeah, princess. Just fine.”
    He wasn’t, but she let him have the lie. She touched his shoulder as she rose to her feet, and it was as if he broke. Turning toward her, he kneeled on the concrete and buried his face against her stomach, his arms wrapping around her waist. His body shuddered. She tried to sink to her knees, to hold him, but he didn’t let her come down to the floor. Her heart aching, she smoothed her hands over his hair, uncertain whether he wept from grief, relief, or a mixture of both.
    Irena’s gesture had torn him open, exposing a need for forgiveness he hadn’t admitted—one he probably had not admitted even to himself. And Rosalia had never thought Irena, hard and unyielding, would give it. She’d never been more grateful to be wrong.
    She brushed the wetness from his cheeks when he raised his head, his gaze searching her face.
    “Two days,” he said hoarsely, then stood, sweeping Rosalia into the cradle of his arms. “Remind me why the hell we’re here instead of in your bed?”
    Then his mouth was devouring hers, and she couldn’t remember, either.

CHAPTER 23
    Malkvial chose to use the catacombs beneath the church.
    For an instant, Deacon was certain that the demon had found out about Rosalia. Had known that she’d been beneath the church for eighteen months, and a hollow dread filled his chest, as he thought that everything had gone wrong, that both he and Rosalia were fucked now.
    But the demon didn’t look as smug as when he’d reminded Deacon of how he’d betrayed Irena in this same church. No. The bastard was wary, keeping a good span of aisle between him and Deacon. And Deacon realized the simple reason he’d chosen the catacombs: If Deacon didn’t have reason to leave, Malkvial could keep his eye on him throughout the night.
    So it was a damn good thing that Rosalia had anticipated the possibility that he wouldn’t shake Malkvial until dawn. They could carry this whole thing off without once contacting each other.
    Camille stood by in Paris with a chartered plane, the heads of twelve vampire communities, and a dozen bound-and-gagged human monsters. Deacon called her up and told her to haul ass to Rome.
    The demons began to gather before the vampires arrived. A little over a hundred, by Deacon’s count. Malkvial must have told them to keep their hands off of the vampires, but a few got it in their heads to fuck with Deacon, a couple of hours of trying to shred his soul apart, strip him down to nothing. Deacon shut his ears to their whispers, knowing that any fear or weakness on his part would be pounced on, and then it’d all go to fuck. Rosalia was watching from an apartment next door, and he didn’t doubt that if she saw one sign that the demons were thinking of betraying Deacon, then she’d charge through a hundred demons trying to rescue him.
    Camille arrived thirty minutes before dawn, as arranged. Deacon met the vampires outside to prepare them, but even telling them how many demons waited inside couldn’t halt their shock and terror. The demons ate it up, and Deacon led the vampires and the struggling, whimpering, angry humans down to the ossuary. The chamber was empty of everything but bones and a few of the cameras Rosalia had installed for Deacon’s first meeting with Malkvial, each neatly hidden within a skull’s staring eye socket. They didn’t need the additional cameras that Camille had brought with her, but they quickly placed them, anyway.
    Deacon tied the humans to the thick stone columns supporting the ceiling, then removed their blindfolds. He couldn’t dredge up any sympathy for humans like these, but he offered them the tiny comfort of knowing they wouldn’t die.
    Some of them might wish for it afterward.
    He hardened his heart and ordered the vampires out of the catacombs, back upstairs. Tomás and Stefan led them; Camille and Deacon took the rear. The only words spoken on the way up came from Camille.
    “My friend’s brother has a house nearby that we can all use to sleep