Battle With Fire (Demon Days & Vampire Nights)

Penny and Emery’s faces snapped up. A huge smile glowed on Penny’s face, although it quickly crumpled into anger again.

“Are you stupid, Reagan Somerset?” she yelled, her voice so high that all the dogs in the neighborhood were probably barking. “You nearly died!”

“Whiskey or coffee?” Callie asked, turning from the stove.

“I’m surprised Darius didn’t insist on making a meal,” I said, sliding into a chair next to Emery. I didn’t trust Penny not to throat-punch me.

“He was watching over you. Where is he?” Emery asked.

“Reading.” I pointed upstairs. “Coffee, please, Callie.”

“Well…you brought about change.” Penny sighed and sagged back into her chair. “You did it in the stupidest way possible, but you brought about change.”

“The angels were clearly the big secret the Red Prophet was keeping,” Callie said, handing over a mug. “And I have to say, it’s good she didn’t say anything, or it might have gone down very differently. Which would’ve gone all sorts of terrible.”

“Because Reagan almost dying wasn’t all sorts of terrible?” Emery asked with a crooked grin.

“You know what I mean.”

“The Red Prophet has been involved in two decisions that nearly got us killed,” I said, and sipped my brew. “I’m a nope on any more of her shenanigans. In fact, no more Seers, period. No offense, Penny, but I’ve had my fill.”

“I get it.” Penny held up her hands. “I’d like to take a break on battles for a while, too.”

“Let’s take that vacation,” Emery said, reaching a hand over the table. She took it, and her expression softened. “We’ll take a long honeymoon.”

“Oh!” Dizzy beamed. “Did you two set a date? How exciting! I love weddings.”

Emery’s thumb slid over the top of Penny’s hand. “As soon as possible.”

“Whatever happened to Ja?” I asked. “I forgot to ask Darius. She wasn’t with his contingent of vampires. Was she with Vlad?”

“Nope.” Callie turned back and put a fisted hand to her plain gray sweatpants. I wondered whether I should be worried. “From what I overheard Darius—”

“You shouldn’t eavesdrop, hon,” Dizzy said.

“Well, how else do you think we’ll get information? He certainly doesn’t ever come clean and just tell us,” she replied. “Anyway, it seems she was found skulking through the Underworld by Lucifer himself. She was given a choice to help him or die. She chose to help him, obviously, which was why she called up those demons at the compound. The thing with Reagan’s ex and Darius’s past was just a little detour. The vampires can’t find a trace of her, so Darius isn’t sure where she went.”

“He’ll need to stay allied with Vlad,” Emery said, “or they run the risk of her gaining too much power in their faction. She is…dangerous.”

“Yeah, keep the hits coming, Emery.” Penny pulled her hand back from his grip. “I didn’t mean to wake her up or whatever, okay? That wasn’t my fault. That was Darius’s fault.”

“Don’t mind her,” Dizzy told me. “She’s awfully wound up.”

“My ex,” I said softly, having forgotten about that issue. “What do I do about that?”

“Nothing.” Callie moved a pan off the stove and turned the burner off. “That’s a vampire issue. We can all give Darius credit for not killing him before now, but obviously that line has been crossed, and now you just need to look the other way while he sorts it out, Reagan. I mean, hello? That idiot vampire challenged an elder. How has he even made it this long? Reagan, honey, you ended up picking a good guy—for a vampire—but your choices in the past were less than exemplary.”

“I wasn’t in it for the conversations at the time,” I said.

Dizzy patted my hand. “You can’t have that sort of thing following you around like a fart. Callie is right: you’ll just need to look the other way. It’s just a vampire, after all, and quite a dumb one at that. No big loss.”

I should’ve known what their stance would be on the issue. After all, they’d offered to kill Darius in the beginning.

“Well then.” I wiped my hand over my face. I was still tired, but not just from surviving the battle. Ever since my mother had died, I’d been living from one day to the next, surviving. Sometimes I’d have to hide, and sometimes run headfirst into battle. My situation had gone from counting on one person to several, one home to possibly many, one world to a few. I had some big decisions to make.

A path to choose. A life to begin. A future to chase.

But all of that could wait until tomorrow. Right now, I would sit with my closest friends and give thanks that I had them in my life.

“What’s for breakfast—or dinner? I’m famished.”

Twenty-Three

Cahal sat on a stone bench in the park near the French Quarter in New Orleans. Shadows encircled him, shrouding him from view as a couple ambled by. Deep night waited around them, not masking the sounds from the cars and city in full swing.