Demon Night

break his neck anyway. It didn’t, and he just hung there, struggling, his feet kicking. Until all they did was twitch. Just like Charlotte’s.”
    Charlie. She was quiet in his arms now, her head tilting back. Ethan met her eyes; beneath the sheen of horror and pain, realization swam to the surface. “Caleb?” she whispered.
    His nod was abrupt. His breath was rough. “It’s past, Charlie, it don’t matter now. I need to know—do you want to live?”
    Her mouth pressed into a wavering line. After a long moment, she nodded.
    Relief hollowed his chest, but that small gesture wasn’t enough. “You sure? There ain’t no going back.”
    Tears slipped over her cheeks, but she nodded again, harder, determination filling her psychic scent. “Yes.”
    He didn’t give her time to reconsider. She gagged on the first taste, but he held the vampire’s bleeding wrist against her lips, urged another swallow. Used his left palm to rub her back, trying to soothe the shuddering revulsion that was tearing through her.
    Sammael dropped to the ground, looking in but staying a safe distance away. Ethan eyed him warily, but didn’t take his hands from Charlie.
    The demon smiled again. “I don’t intend to stop you. She’s drinking fast. By the time the rescue crews make their way down, we should be finished.” He tilted his head, as if to get a better angle. “It took a long time for your brother. The poison would have been faster—I remember how you squirmed as it tore out your guts. You should have let him drink it, too. It’d have been kinder than the hanging.”
    Ethan sliced open the vampire’s wrist again, his jaw set, but when Charlie was back to drinking he couldn’t hold it in. A man could only take so much, and fierce pleasure rose up in him. “You didn’t keep up your end of the bargain.”
    Which meant that as soon as Ethan killed the demon—slow—Sammael’s soul and face would be frozen in Hell, his body dangling in Chaos and eternally devoured by dragons.
    That suited Ethan just fine.
    “No, I didn’t renege. We let him ride out, gave him a month’s worth of supplies, and not a single one of my deputies or I went after him. But you didn’t say anything about my flying to the next town and alerting the law there, telling them he was running off west. Of course, once he realized they were after him, he tried to throw them off by going back the other way.” Sammael chuckled, shaking his head with amusement. “Didn’t get far, did he?”
    He’d gone west. The demon couldn’t know how welcome that was. Ethan held back his smile, bent his head to rest his cheek against Charlie’s temple. Pressed a kiss to her hair.
    Her fingers flexed on his arm—stronger now. Then a hard, painful clench as the first wave of the transformation hit her.
    Sammael formed his wings. “Well, that’s done. You’ve still got to pay for Eden, McCabe…but I’ll give you time to ruminate over this failure.”
    “I’m much obliged,” Ethan said. He let the vampire’s arm drop away from Charlie’s mouth and called in the crossbow, but Sammael was already flying high, quickly moving out of range.
    Astonished human shouts rent the air.
    Damnation.
    He laid Charlie back on the seat; she immediately turned and curled in on herself, her eyes closed and her hands over her ears, her body shaking. The vampire he’d stuffed between the seats was jerking around a little now.
    Charlie had likely experienced enough violence for one night, and her daysleep—the dreams—would be coming soon. As it was, it’d be plenty difficult getting her stable before she fell into them.
    “You are one lucky son of a bitch,” Ethan muttered as he hauled the vampire out of the SUV, then flung him as far as he could over the water. A splash told Ethan he’d got three hundred yards; if the vampire went down deep and avoided the sun, and if the humans didn’t think to drag him up, he might just live through the next day.
    He returned to the vehicle and pulled Charlie against his chest, frowning. Convulsions were hitting her hard—he’d never seen them this hard. Most transformations were smooth.
    The change was obviously taking hold—her skin was cooling, and the points of her fangs were visible between her open lips—but she was panting, whimpering, her palms tight to her ears, her eyes squeezed shut.
    He vanished the SUV into his cache, and walked beneath the bridge’s expanse so they wouldn’t be seen. Cold water crept up to