Kali Sweet Series, Three Urban Fantasy Novels (Boxed Set) Read online

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Depends. You try any Undead mojo on me and I will.”

  “Fair enough. If I promise not to seduce you, will you come by so we can discuss Toel’s trial?”

  Like he could seduce me. “And my fee. You owe me for bringing him in.”

  “Technically, you brought him down and nearly killed him, which was against my wishes.”

  “A capture is a capture. You got what you wanted. And technically, you got Vicky in the deal too. My fee should include a bonus.”

  He chuckled and the sound made me smile for some stupid reason. After all the shit, it was a nice feeling. “Your fee will be direct deposited as soon as the bank opens in the morning. With a bonus.”

  Charming and smart. No wonder we were friends. At least when he wasn’t double crossing me and turning me into his blood slave against my will. “I’m taking tonight off.” I glanced at the clock over the sink and saw Maddy making a face at me and not so subtly nodding at the doorway. I turned and saw Rad, in all his rock god glory, standing there watching me. “What’s left of it, anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  We said our goodbyes and hung up. Rad removed a knit cap from his head. “You’re okay.”

  Relatively speaking. “I am.”

  He looked so damn handsome, especially when he smiled. “Good. Get your coat.”

  Maddy perked up. “Where are we going?”

  He held up a pair of fancy leather ice skates, the laces wrapped around two of his fingers. He wore gloves, but the ends of the fingers were cut off. “Out for a little winter exercise.”

  I’d had enough winter exercise that night to last a lifetime. “I’m going back to bed.”

  As I passed by Rad, he grabbed my hand, raised my arm over my head and twirled me around. A wave of happiness washed through me. His? Mine? I laughed and lost my footing, although I didn’t feel unbalanced like I had in the cell.

  I stumbled into his chest. He tossed the skates to Maddy and hugged me tight. “I missed you while I was gone. Just one turn around the pond. That’s all I’m asking for.”

  “It’s four in the morning. You can’t get into any rinks right now. Besides, we can’t be seen together in public, remember?”

  “Exactly why we’re going to a private spot while everyone else is sleeping. No one will see us.” He grinned down into my face, his gold eyes dancing. “Come on. Live dangerously.”

  Live dangerously. He had no idea.

  I couldn’t resist his enthusiasm. And I’d missed him too. I felt a little adrift after everything that had happened and I didn’t do adrift.

  You’re just restless, I told myself. It’s either this or you go pick a fight with a certain War demon and get your butt kicked.

  “Did you bring cocoa?” Maddy asked.

  “Of course.” Rad dug in one of his pockets and withdrew a miniature plastic-wrapped candy cane. “And for you, candy canes to stir it with.”

  She squealed, snatched the red and white cane from his hand and clutched the skates to her chest. “Can we go, Kali? Please? I haven’t been ice skating in years.”

  The look on her face was as hard to resist as Rad’s. This was such a bad idea, but since when had that ever stopped me? I sighed, heavy with Maddy-like drama just to be sure they understood I was only doing this for them. “I’ll go change.”

  Another whoop from Maddy and a kiss from Rad sealed the deal. Then he turned me loose and I went upstairs to dig out my insulated underwear and my parka, ignoring the lightness in my step and the sudden fullness in my heart.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The Chaos Demons are a band made up of exactly what the name implies: Chaos demons. In the demon world, there are multiple levels of Chaos with lower level demons and higher level ones.

  Even though Rad was half-human, the Chaos magic inside him was upper level. He possessed elemental magic—the ability to manipulate air, earth, water and fire (although fire was his weakest element)—and he could mess with a human’s mind and emotions, creating simple confusion all the way to total madness. Put both skill sets together and his magic was strong enough to create anarchy or start a war.

  The other members of his band were lesser demons. The drummer, Bottrill, could whip up a strong wind and cause clouds to come and go. Shine, the keyboardist, could get into the minds of animals and control them. Some shifters as well. The bassist and guitar players, Que and Ozzie, were weak demons who majored in troublemaking.

  How Rad managed to hold the band together was beyond me, but he did. Somehow out of all that chaos and bedlam, he managed them into a unique type of order. Unique and very talented.

  Rad seemed better than the last time I’d seen him, before New York and my incapacitation. There were still circles under his eyes and he needed a shave, but the emotional angst and inner bedlam seemed eased. Had Damon extracted my vampire-infused blood and fed it to my slaves while I was unconscious? Seemed like a good bet.

  We took Rad’s brand new Lamborghini Urus, a prototype SUV that wasn’t yet for sale in the U.S. Rad claimed to know one of the company’s owners who’d shipped the Urus to New York for him. Another reason he’d made the trip. The SUV was luxurious and sporty and completely over the top in the gadget department…a bigger version of the standard Lamborghini. It was even red.

  The sound system was exceptional and Rad let me have control of the music. I dialed up my favorite pirate radio station on the satellite and we rocked out to Stone Sour and Breaking Benjamin as we left the burbs and entered farm country. Lake Michigan was on my right, the dark, choppy water absorbing the moon’s light. I scanned the horizon for any signs of storms or errant lightning and saw none.

  The private ice skating rink wasn’t just some pond in the backwoods of Illinois. Less than hour after we’d left my place, we were slightly northwest of Lake Forest and smack dab in the middle of an estate, hidden from the main road by a curving, tree-lined drive.

  The elaborate gated fence swung open the moment Rad drove up. Fifty yards in front of us was a beautiful Italian-style mansion, surrounded by statuary, snow-covered lawns and decked out top to bottom in white Christmas lights.

  Maddy leaned forward from the backseat as we drove up to the front door, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “Holy pretentious, Batman.”

  To me, it wasn’t pretentious at all. In fact, it reminded me of home. As in Rome.

  Arched windows, iron-railed balconies. Stepping out of the car, I could almost smell baking filone, wet cobblestone streets and sputtering tallow candles. “I thought we were going ice skating.”

  “We are.” Rad opened the SUV’s back door, hauled out three pairs of skates. “Come on.”

  We skirted the house, taking a shoveled sidewalk around to the back. Inside, lights were on and rock music thumped. Out front, there were several other vehicles, so I wasn’t surprised there were people here. The owners appeared to be throwing a party.

  “Our publicist lives here,” Rad explained as we passed an in-ground swimming pool covered for the season. “He’s out of town for the holidays, so he’s letting the band use it.”

  The band. Hmm. I hadn’t officially met any of them, and didn’t really want to. I’d seen them plenty of times on various tabloids, in the news and on my computer at work when Maddy’d been surfing the web. “I thought you and I were keeping our relationship a secret.”

  Rad took my hand, led me to a gazebo draped in more Christmas lights near a man-made pond. A thick layer of ice covered the surface, the water underneath appearing black. High stone banks held back the blowing snow and a set of Victorian lamps built into the stones illuminated the landscape around it. Swags of evergreens lined the gazebo’s walls and wrapped around the light poles.

  “Everyone saw you at the Halloween party, Kali.” Rad made me sit on a white bench inside the gazebo. “The guys know who you are. But they’re cool with it. Nobody’s going to out us.”

  Looking back at the house, I saw sever
al curious faces in a downstairs bay window. Female faces. “Uh, huh. And what about their human girlfriends?”

  He bent in front of me, tugged off one of my boots. “I told them you were a CIA agent and they couldn’t take pictures or post anything on Facebook about you because it could blow your cover.”

  Maddy dropped down beside me, her normally pale Undead cheeks showing a hint of pink from the brisk temp and even brisker wind. “A secret agent? That so rocks. Can I be a spy too?”

  Rad secured a skate on my foot. “Tonight, you can be anything you want, Mads.”

  A few minutes later, she and I were flailing our arms, spinning in unruly circles and randomly grabbing each other’s coats to keep from falling on our asses. Skating seemed to come easy to Rad and he took turns guiding Maddy and I around the pond and showing us tricks to turn and stop without breaking anything.

  After twenty minutes or so, I found my sea legs and started to get the hang of it. My breath came in white plumes and my thighs felt strong as I raced Maddy from one end of the pond to the other. It ended in a draw, both of us slamming into the stone wall and laughing ourselves silly. Then, being the fierce competitors we were, we turned around and raced back.

  Rad caught me on that end and Maddy lost her balance and tumbled to an ungraceful stop at my feet. “I won,” I called out, and she flipped me the bird.

  Rad spun me away and took me on a slow skate around the circle. The sky was lightening in the East, sunrise approaching. Out here, away from the city lights, the stars seemed brighter, closer. The woods around the estate were still dark and ominous, but peaceful. Maddy dragged herself to the gazebo for hot cocoa, and the only sound I heard was the swishing of the skate blades on the ice.

  Rad’s emotions were balanced. One of his hands held mine, the other wrapped around my waist as he skated alongside me, our feet moving in a synchronized motion. The people inside the house had either passed out or gone to bed. Most of the lights had been shut off and there was no longer any music coming from the first floor. I drew in a deep breath and relaxed into the flow of our movements. For a few seconds, my world seemed complete. Normal.

  I didn’t want the night to end, but it did. We packed up the Lamborghini and headed back to Chicago, stopping once at a fast food place to grab some breakfast for the road. We were halfway home when Maddy fell asleep in the backseat and Rad turned off the radio. He seemed like he wanted to say something, but he kept glancing out his side window and drumming on the gear shift.

  “So, how are you?” Maybe if I initiated the conversation, he’d relax and tell me what was bothering him. “How was New York?”

  “Fine. We did our guest appearances, signed a contract for Bullet Blues to be used on the next Call of Duty soundtrack, and finalized two more stops on next year’s world tour.”

  Busy weekend. “Was it all work or did you have time to do fun stuff?”

  It was a weird thing for me to ask, and Rad gave me a look that said that. The winter sunrise was a washed out color behind his profile. “I picked up my new baby—” he patted the steering wheel, “—So, yeah, I guess so.”

  I waited for him to pick up the conversation, but he didn’t. After the last couple of hours of lighthearted fun, I wanted to close my eyes, lean back in the seat and remember the feel of him spinning me around. The freedom of not worrying about Toel or Maria’s ghost or Damon or Dru.

  We sat in silence for several more miles. Maybe there wasn’t anything bothering him. Maybe it was all in my imagination.

  I’d just started to relax when he said, “And what did you do over the weekend while I was gone?”

  It wasn’t the words so much as the tone. An obvious accusation was present. The truth about my run-in with Dalinda, Toel, and Vicky wouldn’t shock him, but the story was so convoluted, especially when added together with my solitary confinement, Salmad’s appearance, and the fact I now carried Dru’s blood, I hesitated. For the first time since I’d met Rad, the two of us had acted normal. No psycho queen trying to tear us apart, no job responsibilities conflicting with our relationship, no enemies ambushing us and no addictive blood disorders driving us mad. In fact, if I’d been more like Maddy and Di, I would have called the past few hours a miracle.

  My hesitation seemed to confirm whatever suspicion he had. “You smell different again. You look…healthy.”

  My smell. Merde. I no doubt smelled like Dru now. “It’s a long story.”

  His hand tightened on the wheel. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  Crap. This conversation was not going to go well. “Not by choice.”

  He shot me another hard glance. “What the hell does that mean? He forced you? I’ll fucking kill him.”

  Long version or short version? Bad news sucked either way, and I was never one to beat around the bush. “I had a run in with Toel, Damon thought I lost control of my demon, and he put me into a coma. Apparently, while I was out, it appeared I was going to die, so he called in Dru and they pumped me full of his blood.”

  He swore in French and the crushed paper bags from the fast food joint rose from the floor and flew into a whirlwind spin, smacking Maddy in the face. She sputtered, jerked upright and batted them away. “What the hell?”

  “So now you’re his fucking blood slave?” Rad shook his head, his eyes glued to the road and his jaw tight. “Is Damon out of his goddamn mind?”

  The Lamborghini’s radio flipped on without warning, the digital dial spinning through station after station, not settling on any. My cushy leather seat’s built-in seat warmer jumped several degrees.

  So much for Rad having his emotions in check. Wait until I told him he’d already drank Dru’s blood as well if he’d had a fresh bottle in the past week. “I would never let a blood sucker control or manipulate me.” I glanced at Maddy. “No offense.”

  She waved me off. “None taken.”

  Rad wasn’t appeased, but his face had gone blank. Like Cole’s did when he faced an opponent. “You can’t control the blood’s pull on you, Kali, no matter how strong you are. No matter how strong your demon is.” He took a breath, let it out slowly. “You’ll give in. In the end, you’ll succumb.”

  Didn’t anyone have faith in me? “I won’t succumb. I’ve already set the ground rules with Dru and he’s in total agreement. This is an inconvenience, nothing more, and if it keeps us all alive and functioning, so be it.”

  Now Rad glared at me. “So be it? You become an Undead Master’s slave and that’s all you can say? So be it?”

  During the conversation, the car’s speed had reached one-hundred miles an hour. I needed to calm him down, but really there was no way to do that and I was growing annoyed at his attitude. “Don’t you think I hate this? That I’m pissed as hell that Damon took my free will away and turned me into Dru’s bitch? I was out, Rad. Totally gone. They thought I was dying and I probably was. I don’t remember anything but awful dreams where I was dying, over and over again. But there’s nothing I can do about it. What’s done is done. I can’t extract Dru’s blood from my system. If I could, I’d open a vein right now and bleed all over your brand new car.”

  That shut him up. He returned his attention to the road, but he didn’t slow down. Traffic grew heavier as we neared downtown and early morning commuters headed out. Rad passed car after car as we flew toward my house.

  Finally, he had no choice but to decrease speed due to the traffic, and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Twenty minutes later, he drove into the church’s parking lot. He, Maddy and I stared at the line of cars parked there.

  A big-ass black Land Rover—Bridge Institute-issued—a shiny black BMW, a flashy red Porsche Carrera and a rusting Chevy hatchback filled the lot. Damon, Dru, Aphrodite and JR.

  My fighting instincts kicked in, my hands closing into fists although I wasn’t sure why. My heightened Undead awareness, thanks to Dru’s blood, was sending clear warning signals. “This can’t be good.”

  “We can leave,” Rad said, his hand shifting the SU
V into reverse. Funny how fast his attitude changed when he sensed I was in danger. Or maybe his awareness was heightened as well.

  I bit the inside of my lower lip, mentally chewing over my options. Running away accomplished nothing. I preferred meeting trouble head-on anyway. “Take Maddy home for me?”

  “No way.” She shot forward, sticking her head between our seats. “Whatever’s up, I’m staying with you.”

  There was no sense fighting with her. I touched Rad’s hand. “Thank you for this morning. I had a good time. I’ll call you.”

  I slid out of the car, Maddy on my heels, and walked to the front door. Di—the traitor—had a key to the place and must have let in Damon and Dru. Why JR was here, I had no idea.

  Behind me, the Lamborghini’s engine shut off, a door slammed.

  My heart skipped a beat when I looked over my shoulder and saw all that Chaos demon stalking toward me. “What are you doing?”

  Rad sidled up to me, grabbed one of my hands and gave it a squeeze. “I told you, we ride this blood thing out together. You go down, I’m going with you.”

  A rush of renewed confidence hit me as I stared into his eyes, his sweet salty ocean scent reassuring me.

  But behind his golden gaze, I saw another emotion. One I knew all too well. Revenge.

  “You’re sure that’s the only reason you’re going in with me?”

  He gave me a half-hearted grin. “If I get the chance to kill a certain vampire, I’m going to rip his fucking Undead head off.”

  Alrighty then. I opened the door.

  Someone—most likely Di—had straightened up Rad’s mess and my living room looked respectable once again.

  Respectable, except for the multiple supernaturals glaring at me. Cole and Brianna had joined the group.

  “This better not be another one of your crappy interventions,” I said, zipping off my coat and ignoring the sudden heat coursing through my body as Dru looked me over. He licked his lips ever so slightly and the spot between my thighs got happy.