Why would a Daimon not take her soul?
As he reached to close her eyes, he realized something else. Tabitha wasn't with him.
Panic threatened to consume him. It wasn't like her to really listen. Rising quickly, he dashed back to the storeroom, where he found her sitting before a video surveillance console that showed the flickering black-and-white images of Tia's death.
Tabitha sat there with tears pouring out of her eyes as she held her hands crossed over her lips. Her sobs were silent, yet they shook her entire body.
"I'm so sorry, Tabitha," he whispered before he shut off the monitor and pulled her into his arms.
"She can't be dead!" she wailed as she clutched him to her. "This isn't true. Not my sister. She's not dead. She's not!"
He didn't speak as he rocked her gently in his arms.
She screamed out in pain before she shoved him away from her and ran for the storefront.
"Tabitha, no!" he snapped, pulling her back before she saw Tia's body. "You don't need to see her like that."
She turned on him with a shriek and shoved him back. "Damn you! Damn all of you for this. Why didn't you just kill me? Why kill my sister? Why...?"
Her eyes widened in horror. "Oh, God, they're going for my family." She pulled her phone out, no doubt to call Amanda again.
While she called her family, he pulled his Nextel out to notify the others what had happened. "Code Red to everyone," he said, his voice tight. "Tia Devereaux has been slain inside her store. Everyone needs to pull back and secure their families."
One by one, the Dark-Hunters and Squires checked in: Otto, Nick, Kyr, Rogue, Zoe, Jean-Luc, Ulric, Janice, Kassim-even Talon, Kyrian, and Julian. But there was no sign of Acheron.
Valerius tried to buzz him, then call him.
There was no answer.
His blood ran cold. Had the Daimons gotten to Acheron already and hurt him again?
"I love you, Mandy," Tabitha said as her lips quivered from her grief. "You be careful, okay? I'm going to find this bastard and I'm going to kill him tonight."
Valerius glanced to the now blank monitor screen. "Do you know who killed her?" he asked.
Tabitha nodded. "It was Ulric and now I'm going to kill him."
Nick was walking down Ursulines, headed for the house on Bourbon Street that he shared with his mother. After hearing Valerius's call about Tia, he'd gone immediately to check on his mother, who was working late at Sanctuary.
Since he'd planned on hanging around the outside of the bar to watch out for her until it was time for her to leave, he'd practically been there already when the call went out.
As soon as he'd reached the saloon-style doors that were monitored by Dev Peltier, one of the bears who owned Sanctuary, he'd been told that his mother had left work early because she wasn't feeling well. Nick had been absolutely furious with the bear until Dev had told him that Ulric had agreed to escort her home.
Given Nick's busted ribs, his mom was a lot safer with a Dark-Hunter than she would have been with him anyway. Still, he had a need inside him to check on her to make sure she was all right.
It'd been just the two of them his whole life. Impregnated by a career felon when she was only fifteen, his mother had been cast out the door to fend for herself. He wouldn't have blamed her had she given him up, but she hadn't.
"You're the only thing in my life I ever did right, Nicky, and I thank God every night for giving me you."
It was why he loved her so much.
Nick had never met his grandparents on either side. Hell, he'd only met his father a handful of times and only once that he really remembered. It'd been when Nick was ten and his father had needed a place to crash for the longest stretch of freedom the man had known as an adult-three whole months.
In a bad cliche, his father moved in, drank beer constantly, and knocked the two of them around before one of his felon friends had convinced him to take a stab at bank robbery, where his father had shot four people dead just for the hell of it. His father had been quickly convicted, then died a year later when some inmate had cut his throat during a prison riot.
Cherise Gautier left much to be desired when it came to her taste in men, but as a mother...
She was perfect.