Demon Blood

claws into you after all?”
    Deacon reminded himself that this was Rosalia’s son and that he couldn’t pound his fist through the screen. “Do you need her?”
    “Not if you’re there,” Vin said. “The garage watchman is heading into the john, so I’m off to tag our target’s car with a tracker. Can you keep an eye on his screen?”
    Deacon glanced at the blob of infrared color on the monitor. “I can.”
    So, now he watched two demons pretend to sleep. Rosalia had the right idea. Killing them was better.
    He flipped through the folder next to the computer, got this one’s name: Nicholas St. Croix. Yeah, that sounded like a name a demon might make up.
    Then the man got out of bed, and Deacon revised his opinion.
    After a few minutes, the van door opened and slammed again. Vin’s face appeared in the monitor. “So he’s awake?”
    “I don’t think he’s your guy. He took a piss.”
    “If he knows he’s being watched, that doesn’t mean anything.” Vin unwrapped plastic from a take-out plate and shoved it into a tiny microwave, then rolled his chair back in front of the screen. “Mother once told me that she used to find demons just by listening to servant gossip. They’re all rich, and a hundred years ago and more they had the servants, the chambermaids. And when a maid started talking about how she never had to empty a pot, Mama would go hunting. So the smart demons think about little things like that if they know there’s any possibility the Guardians might be looking at them. And they fake it.”
    “Fake pissing?” Deacon drank his meal every night and couldn’t shake out a drop if he tried.
    “They fake it with something else. Before toilets, they used to vanish waste into their cache, and fill up the pot to fool the maid—but that isn’t convincing when they’re under real-time observation. One demon used his blood and a bulb syringe. He filled it up, squeezed it out. The sound is right, and even the infrared is fooled. And while sitting, he’d cut his dick off—that one managed to stump Mama for weeks.”
    The microwave beeped. Vin pulled his plate out and dug in, his appetite apparently unaffected. Dinnertime conversation in this abbey must have been a far cry from Deacon’s home. Supper in the Knox home had been a serious affair, meat and potatoes and silence, with the Bible coming out afterward. He’d certainly never thought about whether any prophets or saints had taken a piss.
    And he’d get along just fine if he never thought about it again. “You can’t rely on the infrared?”
    “We can for vampires. But with demons, the core temperature isn’t so different from a human’s. Throw in variations like room temperature, and it’s easy for someone to read a few degrees hotter or cooler. On a cold night, with humans for comparison, we’d probably be able to pick a demon out. But basing it on a temperature determined through walls, when he’s alone? It’s best not to try.” Vin paused. “But I’m leaning toward human, too. Another day or two of observation won’t hurt, though, until we’re certain.”
    Deacon tilted his chair back, and was wondering if Rosalia’s son would be so open to sharing if the topic turned a little more personal when Vin said, “What happened to her in Athens tonight?”
    “What?”
    “She called around midnight. She didn’t look so good.”
    She hadn’t? A knot tightened in his stomach. But Deacon wasn’t going to answer to her son. Only to Rosalia.
    “We took out Valeotes and Sardis. The vampire gave her some trouble.”
    “Is she going in as a human?”
    “Yes.”
    Vin looked away from the monitor, his jaw hardening. “Sardis, Jesus. That fucking bastard.”
    “You know him?”
    “I know enough about him to imagine what happened. But I don’t know them all like Mother does.”
    Deacon frowned. “All?”
    “Every vampire in Europe. Their names, their history.”
    He could believe that. She’d known his history, though few others did. “Every one?”
    “Maybe she’s missed a dozen or two, but she can name every vampire in a community, tell you what he did as a human, all of the aliases he’s used and the partners he’s had.”
    “Jesus.” That was about a thousand vampires.
    Vin shrugged. “She overcompensates for her brother.”
    “How’s that?”
    “She couldn’t save him. So she wants to save everyone else—and their information is her tool.”
    He looked at the cabinets behind him. “There’s a