Demon Night

I’m pretty sure you busted my eardrums from inside.”
    “And you had an audience,” Jake said, and pointed at the door.
    Charlie looked. Outside the room, a group of Guardians and vampires had gathered, their faces reflecting the shock that she felt.
    Ethan lifted his head. “I can’t hear them.”
    “The spell’s still up,” Jake said. “But it wasn’t just you that came through. How did Charlie get in here?”
    With a groan, Ethan propped himself up on his elbows, and didn’t seem in a hurry to move out of his reclining position. His gaze roamed her face. “You all right?”
    She nodded. “You?”
    “Mighty fine.” His eyebrows pulled in tight. “I reckon the blood maybe tied us together. That’s the only way I can figure the both of us matching, becoming that key. My Gift going into you, the noise you was making going into me.”
    “What kind of noise?” Jake asked.
    Ethan sat the rest of the way up, climbed to his feet. “It was your psychic scent. Which says to me that the psychic energy in the blood powers the symbols somehow or another—like a current through an electromagnetic lock. And it also occurs to me that’s maybe why we have to cut our fingers open each time we set the spell. When the blood ain’t from a living source, nothing much happens.”
    He moved in front of the door, his head tilting as he examined the symbols.
    Charlie ran what he’d just said over in her head, waiting for it to make sense. “You mean, you think that the blood on those symbols is still living—carrying that psychic energy? Even though it’s not in a body anymore?”
    Ethan slowly nodded. “That’s what I’m wondering, and I reckon we can discover whether it is awful easy.”
    Yet there was no way to measure it; if there was, the possibility of Legion replicating a food source might not be so farfetched.
    Charlie shook her head. “But how can you…oh. Oh. Well, licking a door is kind of perverted, but okay.”
    Ethan stepped aside as she approached the door frame. She had to stand on her toes. The scent of the blood was incredible; the door frame was flavorless—except for the three drops that sang across her tongue.
    The excited voices of the Guardians swept inside the room. Charlie turned, and nodded. “Just like Jake.”

    Only thirty minutes remained before sunrise when Charlie finally got back to her room. She headed straight for the restroom, running through her nightly routine as quickly as she could.
    She was yanking on her shortest nightgown when Ethan stepped through the door. He hurriedly closed it, activated the spell, and Charlie grinned as she finished shimmying into the wisp of lace. “Did it work?”
    Ethan shook his head, his amber gaze sweeping her from hair to toes. “Mackenzie felt my Gift well enough, and the difference when we ran it over the spell, but he couldn’t give me anything to open it with.” He stalked across the room, his jacket and boots vanishing. “And he said I tasted like the dust that lies in the coffin of dying dreams. But I imagine that was only because Becca was watching, and his dream was of sexing me.”
    Charlie edged toward the bed. “So it was…hot?”
    His uneven smile had her heart racing. He began unbuttoning his shirt. “You jealous, Charlie?”
    “No.” Yes. She and Ethan had practiced several times after that first success; each attempt had been easier. But when the inevitable suggestion that Ethan try it with another vampire had come, Charlie had used the first excuse she could think of to escape. “But like I said downstairs, it’s almost dawn. So I’m in a hurry, and I was hoping he warmed you up for me.”
    His amusement rumbled through the small room. Her eyes followed the trail of dark hair that led from his chest to his stomach, and lower. He was very obviously warmed up, and she decided that there nothing sexier in the world than a half-dressed, fully aroused, and laughing Ethan.
    When she felt the mattress against the back of her thighs, she turned, bent over the bed, and lifted up on her tiptoes.
    His laughter stopped. “God Almighty, Charlie.”
    “I warmed myself up before you got here,” she said huskily. “So you don’t have to waste time getting me ready.”
    “That’s a damn fool thing to say.” His fingers traced fire up the insides of her thighs. Her eyes closed, and she swayed forward, her hands clenching in her sheets. “Every moment not touching you is what’s a waste.”
    And she was already