Demon's Vengeance The Complete - Jocelynn Drake Page 0,131

held in either hand.

Chang handed me one of the oranges before easing back into his chair. I smiled as I turned it around in my hand. It was a sanguinello, a blood orange; the same type that Chang had sold me a couple years ago when I had been trying to help my vampire ex-girlfriend out with a problem in her nest. It was the same time that I met Trixie.

“You do have a way of getting yourself into trouble,” Chang murmured, slowly peeling away bits of the thick orangish-red rind.

“Tell me about it.” I put the orange away from me, setting it against the ashtray in the center of the table so it wouldn’t roll around. “I think we’ve got a good lead on the woman. She’s human, with an Alpha Conversion tattoo. It’s made her insane, but in the end, she’s still just a human. My problem is the other asshole. I have no idea how to catch this guy. Fuck, Chang, I don’t even know what he is! How am I supposed to stop him if I don’t know what he’s capable of?”

“He is the one who is using this Death Magic?”

“Yes,” I sighed. Jumping out of my chair, I paced into the kitchen area and turned back, running my hands through my hair. “When we started tracking the guy, he was putting all this strange writing on the wall, like he was experimenting. Gideon seems to think that he didn’t quite know what he was doing. But as he moved farther north, he got better at what he was doing. He slaughtered vampires and brought them back as zombies.”

“Death Magic is very old,” Chang said slowly, nodding. “I don’t even remember the last time it was used. The Ivory Towers destroyed all the spell books years ago. This man would have to experiment if he was to accomplish what he was seeking.”

“Yes, but who or what is he? Who used the Death Magic in the first place?”

“Humans.”

“What?” I said, stopping sharply. “That’s impossible!”

“Why?”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. These crimes were so horrible that I didn’t want to think about my own people being responsible for them. But then, the Towers were still humans and they were responsible for all kinds of atrocities. I guess I just didn’t want the humans to be responsible this time. I needed it to be someone else.

“It was a very long time ago. They were a sect splintered off from either the Picts or the Vikings that had settled in the region. They were fighting very bad wars and had lost many people. They wanted a way to raise their dead so that they could continue to fight. They started stealing the children of their enemies and killing them so they could bring back their dead.” Chang sighed, staring down at the orange in his hands. “They had some help. Goblins stole the children. There were also some Dark Elves who helped to twist the magic.”

“But as you said, it’s been a really long time. Who the hell remembers?”

“There would be a few. Not many. What did this man look like?”

I frowned and resumed my pacing. “Tall and thin, he had white hair and large black eyes. There was a kind of . . . luminescence to him. It reminded me of the fey, but he was . . .” Turning back to face Chang, I stopped and stared at the old man. He was sitting perfectly still, his head down so that I couldn’t see his face, but there was a new tension in his lean frame.

“You know,” I said in a low voice. “You know who this bastard is.”

“Yes.”

“Are you working with him? Damn it! Are you what he is, Chang? I know you’re not human. You’re too damn old and know too many damn things. You do magic. Are you one of these things?”

“No!”

“Then what the hell are you? You seem to know all my secrets.”

When Chang looked up at me, his dull brown eyes were gone, replaced with bright red eyes. The irises were narrow, vertical black slits like those of a cat. The old man smiled, revealing a row of sharp, pointed teeth, while a thin stream of smoke curled out of the corner of his mouth. I took an unsteady step backward away from Chang as he smoothly pushed out of his chair, displaying an ease of movement that I’d never seen in him before. He waved a hand at me