Inked

found Grant frowning at him.
    “Several,” Grant said, still watching the football player. “Not much hard cash offered, just goods and services, which is all I was really after. I’ll probably have to sell one of the Hong Kong apartments, but it’s near the Peak. Even in this market I shouldn’t have trouble finding some tycoon willing to lay down thirteen million.”
    “Right,” I said dryly. “Small change.”
    “Whatever it takes.” Grant gave me a grim smile. “I doubt my father expected that his money and property would be used like this when he left it to me.”
    “You make it sound as though he would have found it dirty. There’s nothing shameful in keeping a homeless shelter afloat, or helping people.”
    “I know,” he said quietly, still watching the crowd. “But I don’t like the attention any more than you do.”
    True enough. Grant did not need donations to keep the shelter going, but there was little wrong with getting things for free, or involving the private and public sector in charitable works. Unfortunately, that meant events like this, where his looks, history, wealth—and how he was spending it—had made him a minor celebrity.
    That was also why, over the past eight months of our relationship, I had declined attending other black-tie events that Grant had been invited to. Cowardice, excused as self-preservation. I was afraid of people asking too many questions. I was unused to attention. Not accustomed to being noticed, most certainly not for being on the arm of a man.
    A man, I had been told, who had never once in five years brought a date to these events. Which, given what I knew about Grant, was not much of a surprise.
    But it did make me stand out.
    And that, as my mother had always said, was a good way to get dead, and fast.

    THE dinner cruise docked an hour later. Every bone in my feet felt broken, and my soles burned. I hobbled down the gangplank, fighting to maintain my dignity. Grant was having his own difficulties.
    “A long hot bath,” I muttered.
    “Long hot night after that?” he replied, grimacing as the gangplank bounced under the weight of so many people. His cane slipped on the red carpet that had been laid upon the thick metal rails.
    I grabbed his hand. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, buster. We haven’t even made it off the damn boat yet.”
    He flashed me a pained grin. “Race you.”
    I groaned, and slung his arm over my shoulder, making it look as though I needed him to hold me. He sighed, and planted a rough kiss on top of my head.
    Some of the guests had drivers waiting for them, but most had driven themselves and chosen the valet parking that the function organizers had provided. I was sensitive, though, about who got behind the wheel of my Mustang, and had left the car a block away in a short-term lot. I was kicking myself for that now, but it couldn’t be helped. I didn’t want to risk questions about why there were so many shredded teddy bears in my backseat, along with bags of nails, fast-food cartons, knives, and a half-eaten aluminum baseball bat—teeth marks plain.
    So we walked, we limped, we hobbled down the sidewalk; and we were not alone. It was a crowded Saturday night. People everywhere, young and old.
    And demons. My demons. My little boys.
    Red eyes glinted in the shadows, watching us from cracks beneath closed doors and in the spokes of hubcaps. Above my head I heard whispers, and the rasp of claws against stone; and another kind of hum in the air that was partially from the throats of the demons in my hair, but mostly the city: engines rumbling low and warm, and the thrum of hot electricity running through the veins of the buildings around whose roots we walked. I heard laughter, glass breaking, a throb of music from the open door of a bar; a groan from an alley and the long liquid rush of urine hitting concrete; and a small dog, barking furiously from an apartment above our heads.
    I saw no zombies in the crowd. Zombies, who were not the living dead, but humans possessed by parasitic demons who had managed for millennia to slip through cracks in the prison veil. The parasites could take over a weak mind, and turn a human host into little more than a puppet, a means of creating pain and misery: dark energy that was more than food.
    We reached the parking lot, a parcel of concrete stuck between two office towers and bordered by a low wall covered with thick ivy and splashes of graffiti. Claws rasped, and I glanced to