Demon Fire (Angel Fire #3) - Marie Johnston Page 0,59
that were a regular occurrence in this realm, and he’d had plenty of practice—his sire had loved putting him in the fighting rings. Zanda, too, used the way others naturally underestimated her to eviscerate her opponents at their most vulnerable.
They’d make the perfect couple. If he could stand her.
He tolerated her. They’d fucked. He used her and she used him. If he didn’t take what she offered, it’d be worse than a neon sign over his head that he wasn’t an ally of anything in this realm.
“Andy likes to make demands.”
She bared her black fangs. Zanda might be fine boned, but you never saw her coming in the shadows until those sharp fangs sank into your skin and her bloodred tongue suckled you dry.
He repressed a shudder. She liked to latch on to him during sex. He hated sharp things in his body. Weapons, claws, fangs. None of it, and not during sex. But that was his secret.
“Andy needs to be killed,” she hissed.
“Gerzon should go ahead and do it,” he replied blandly.
“Gah. That male is weird about the human.” She tilted her head to study him. She lied. She knew why Gerzon catered to Andy, but he didn’t challenge her. He was more worried she sensed Sierra’s blood. “Gerzon thinks you’re helping the fallen.”
“And Gerzon’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach set me back weeks. I almost had her willingly coming with me.” He grinned wide enough to show his own fangs. Zanda had a thing for them and he wanted to keep distracting her. She couldn’t find his new toy. “But it was fun watching a fallen take him down.”
Zanda barked a harsh laugh. She wasn’t strong enough to defeat Gerzon in an outright battle. Her tactics were more like Sandeen’s. Let others do it, or be there when the opportunity arose to chop his head off herself. “He doesn’t trust you.”
“Of course not.” That was why she was here. To spy on him. He wasn’t going to get rid of her easily. “Look, my host is a bust. I have to find a new one and get back to Sierra.”
“Where is she?”
“Now if I told you that, what would I have for Andy?”
Her black eyes narrowed to slits. “I go with you. We find two hosts. Stay together. Gerzon’s orders.” Orders that probably came from Andy.
Shit. He couldn’t surreptitiously disappear, and he couldn’t disappear at all without his stash of fallen blood. He crossed to the bed and dropped next to her. He fluttered his wings behind him to mingle them with hers.
“Here’s the thing. You don’t want to be Andy’s bitch, and I don’t want to be spied on.”
She uncrossed her leg and slid it over one of his. Her sex was bared. Her favorite signal to tell him she wanted to fuck. “What do you have in mind?”
Even harbingers of nightmares and pain didn’t want to hurt all the time. It was what gave him bargaining power with Zanda. “I tell you where Sierra is.”
And he would. Sierra was surrounded by warriors. If they couldn’t protect her, that wasn’t his fault. The ever-insidious guilt snaked around the base of his skull. He would not feel bad. Sierra wasn’t helpless. She might not know it yet, but she wasn’t.
“And you can bring her in for Andy. Show him that Gerzon is too much brute with too little brains.”
She flipped until she straddled him, but before her claws could dig into his chest and feel the little tool, he whipped his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. Time to put out a little to get what he wanted.
“And what would you do?” she purred and dug at the tie of his waistband, her claws ripping at the fabric. His cock twitched to life. Bloodthirsty or not, Zanda had nice breasts.
“Figure out a way to kill Andy.”
Excitement blazed in her obsidian eyes. “How?”
“He’s human. It wouldn’t take much. I just have to get close to him.”
She licked across his ear and fisted his cock. He winced at the sharp stab of her claws on his most sensitive flesh. She grinned. “What does he want with the fallen?”
“I can torture that information out of him.”
She lifted herself and slammed down on him. He groaned, more from the sudden impact than pleasure.
“We have a deal, Sandeen.”
Relief washed over him. He closed his eyes and let her have her way with him. This time tomorrow, he’d be somewhere on Earth, staying in his own form thanks to Jameson’s blood, and no