Demon Blood

Rosalia returned to Earth with the intention of helping Lorenzo, Mariko had been Rosalia’s staunchest supporter. By the time Mariko became a full-fledged Guardian, however, only her friendship with Rosalia prevented her from killing the vampire herself.
    Rosalia wasn’t sorry she hadn’t given up on Lorenzo. And she was forever grateful that Mariko hadn’t slipped in and killed her brother behind Rosalia’s back, like hacking off a gangrenous limb. Mariko preferred to get the pain over quickly, to make clean breaks.
    Rosalia admired that. She never managed to do it herself.
    “How did you find me?”
    “I called Gemma. Is that the one you’re looking at?”
    “Yes.”
    Knowing better than to say “demon” aloud, Mariko kept it simple. “Is he?”
    “I don’t think so. Look at her wrist.”
    She knew Mariko would immediately recognize the bruises in the shape of fingers on Nikki’s wrist.
    Mariko whistled through her teeth. “Bastard.”
    “And still alive,” Rosalia pointed out.
    Demons couldn’t physically hurt humans. If they did and broke the Rules, a nephil would be called—teleporting to the demon’s location—to slay him. A demon might fight back, but the nephilim were stronger, faster, than demons. Even most Guardians couldn’t defeat a nephil alone.
    Rosalia added, “But I’m not certain it was he who hurt her. So I wait.”
    “And if he did and is human? You’re hiding, so you can’t pull your ‘I’m going to shape-shift into a scary bitch and frighten him straight’ routine.”
    That routine never worked as well as it should, anyway. “Maybe something else.”
    “This is why we all need dogs,” Mariko said, frowning. “We could sic them on the people we don’t like.”
    “Hmm,” was Rosalia’s only response. She studied her friend. Mariko seemed edgy—making inane comments and picking at her pastry filling, but not yet taking a bite. Was she not doing her usual thing, either? Perhaps putting something off?
    “Why would you call Gemma?”
    Mariko took a deep breath. “The London community elders were slain last night and no one claimed their position,” she said, then crammed the pastry into her mouth.
    Oh, God. The slaughter of the vampire communities in every other city had been preceded by the deaths of the communities’ leaders. Why the nephilim killed the elders first, no one knew—only that each massacre had those early deaths in common.
    “How much time separated the others? How much time between the elders being killed and the entire city?” Rosalia had only heard the stories secondhand. She’d been beneath a church in Rome with a spike through her forehead when her brother had been killed—then a month later, her family. All slaughtered by the nephilim.
    “The shortest was two weeks. The longest was three months.”
    “In Seattle, they stopped the slaughter.” More than a year had passed since a Guardian had slain the nephil who’d killed the Seattle elders. That vampire community hadn’t been targeted again.
    “And we’re going to try to stop it in London, too. I’m here to tell you that, although you wanted everyone to stay out of Europe, a few of us will be in London.” Mariko held up her hand, though Rosalia hadn’t been going to protest. She couldn’t look for the nephil in London, find Malkvial, and bring the vampire communities together under Deacon. “We’re talking about evacuation, but there isn’t another community that wants to risk taking them in and moving the target to their cities. So we might bring them here to Prague.”
    Where many of the vampires’ homes and gathering places still lay empty after Caym had slaughtered Deacon’s community. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.
    “So we have two weeks—maybe—until another city is slaughtered,” Rosalia said.
    Mariko nodded.
    London had two hundred and seventy-three vampires in their community. Rosalia knew their names and faces, their stories. And if the Guardians—Rosalia’s friends—were in London when the nephilim came, hoping to stop their attack . . . many would die.
    Mariko read her face. “So whatever you have planned, Rosa—”
    “I need to do it fast.”
    “Yes. And I’ll help—”
    “No.”
    “You don’t have to take this on alone.”
    “I won’t be.”
    Mariko snorted. “Because you’ll be with him ? Turn your back and he’ll stab you—”
    “Don’t.” Rosalia couldn’t think that way about Deacon. If she didn’t trust him, it