The man was of middle height, with black hair and a goatee. The woman, who edged away from him, had a sunny face, curly red hair, and a friendly demeanor that made me address her rather than her companion. “What on earth just happened?”
“I summoned you,” the woman said. She had an English accent, and a nice smile as she gestured toward the man, who stood with his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed on me. “You have Mr. de Marco to thank for that, though, since he hired me. I’m a Guardian, you see. My name is Noelle. Do you know that you’re glowing ?”
“So I’ve been told. Why . . . wait, de Marco? You’re—” A shadow moved behind the man, coming forward and resolving itself. “Ulfur!”
“I am Alphonse de Marco, and you will give to me the Occio di Lucifer,” Ulfur’s boss said in a no-nonsense tone of voice that really just irritated me more than frightened me.
“The . . . oh. That.” I wondered how he’d feel if he knew the Tool was broken, and that I was the designated hitter. I glanced at Ulfur, but his expression gave nothing away.
Ulfur hadn’t told his boss what happened, I realized with a secret smile. Bless his heart, he used the fact that I had the Occio to convince his boss to pull me out of the Akasha.
Leaving Alec and Diamond behind.
“Do you have it? ” de Marco asked, his expression darkening into anger.
“Yes.” Hastily I assembled a plan that I hoped would rescue both Alec and Diamond. “I do.”
“I have summoned you out of the Akasha. In gratitude, you will give it to me,” he ordered, his bossy tone really starting to get under my skin.
I looked at the imperative hand he held out before me. “Well, you know, the Occio is a really big deal. It’s one-third of the Tools of Dale.”
“Bael,” Noelle the Guardian corrected.
“Bael, sorry.” De Marco’s eyes narrowed on me suspiciously. I cleared my throat and said with what I hoped was convincing insouciance, “I call him Dale. It’s a little thing we do.”
Ulfur rubbed his hand over his eyes, but said nothing.
“But that’s neither here nor there, and what is here is . . . well, actually, he’s there, not here. If you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?”
“No,” de Marco growled.
“Oh. Well, it’s Alec.”
“Alec? Who is Alec?” De Marco was clearly getting angrier with each passing second.
Ulfur’s eyes widened as he glanced between his boss and me. I had the feeling he was trying to tell me something, but I didn’t know what it was.
“He’s a friend,” I said carefully, trying to suss what had Ulfur so agitated.
“I don’t care about your friends. I just want the Occio, and I want it now. Hand over the payment for your removal from the Akasha, or I will have you returned there immediately.”
“Hang on there, buster,” I said, deciding that the best way to deal with people like him was to bluff my way through his demands. “I will make a deal with you—you spring my two friends from the Akasha, and I’ll give you the Occio.”
Ulfur’s eyes just about bugged out of his head.
“You dare—” De Marco sucked in a huge amount of air just like he was inflatable or something. “You dare to defy me? Do you know who I am, mortal?”
“Yeah, you’re Ulfur’s boss, the guy who told him to steal the Tools from the frickin’ king of hell!”
“Prince, not king,” Noelle said, then looked away quickly, pretending interest in a picture on the wall.
“Dale likes me to call him king in our private moments,” I lied, trying to look like someone who dated Satan. “So here’s the thing, de Marco: You want Dale’s Occio, you can have it . . . just as soon as you get Alec and Diamond out of the Akasha.”
“I am not an Akashic removal service!” de Marco snarled, his black eyebrows pulled down to form a unibrow. I was tempted to tell him it wasn’t a good look for him, but felt he wouldn’t be receptive to such criticism. “You owe me, mortal, not the other way around. You will hand over the Occio now.”
“Or what?” I said, buffing a fingernail on my jeans.
“Or I’ll make you sorry you ever drew breath,” he snarled.
“Hello? Who has the eyeball of Dale? That’s right, I do, and that means you can’t hurt me.” I fervently prayed that was true.
Ulfur weaved a little, like he might pass out. Noelle looked startled.
Maybe it wasn’t true.
De Marco seemed to swell again, then let out a scream of sheer frustration. “One.”
“Huh?” I stopped edging toward Noelle, who was in turn sliding covertly away from de Marco.
“One.” His nostrils flared. “I will have the Guardian summon one more person, but that is it.”
“But . . . I have two friends there.”
“Then you will choose between them. Now!”
I swallowed back a little zing of fear at the look in his eyes. He didn’t strike me as being too mentally stable. “Um . . .” I thought frantically. Diamond, I should tell him to get Diamond out. She was my friend . . . of a sort . . . and she didn’t do anything to deserve being banished to the Akasha. I would get Diamond out.
Leaving Alec behind.
Alone.
With no one to feed him.
And worse, he would know I hadn’t cared enough about him to rescue him, too.
But he was a murdering vampire and, by his own admission, had betrayed his friend. He had accepted the punishment meted out to him. He was resigned to being in the Akasha.
“All right,” I said, sending a little prayer that Alec would understand why I had no choice but to pick Diamond. “I’ve decided.”
“Give the name to the Guardian, and let us be through with this!” de Marco snapped.
“Noelle, would you please summon . . . ?” I looked at her. She looked at me, waiting. I thought of Diamond. My inner devil wept and called me all sorts of names.
No one had ever tended Alec’s wounds.
“Summon Alec Darwin, please,” I heard someone say, and to my astonishment—and inner devil’s joy—it was my mouth that spoke the words.
Chapter Seven
Alec stared at the spot where, seconds before, Corazon had stood. He narrowed his eyes. He put out a hand to touch nothing but empty air.
She wasn’t there. Just like that, she was gone.
Someone must have summoned her.
“Good riddance,” he said defiantly, not wishing to admit to the hurt that spiked through him as sharp as a dagger. It was annoyance, not pain, he told himself. She was simply someone put there to torment him, and he’d be damned if he gave her the power to hurt him.
She had left him, just left him, without so much as a backward glance, or one last jab at his appearance. She hadn’t even called him a murdering bloodsucker before she left, dammit, and he was beginning to be fond of the way she caressed the words in her mind.
“Very well,” he said aloud to no one, gritting his teeth and looking around for a new spot in which he could almost die. “So be it. She’s gone. I’m here. That’s all there is to it.”
But it wasn’t all there was to it. Cora was out in the mortal world with no one to protect her, no one to keep her safe from anyone who might want to use her.
“I don’t care,” he told the nearest rock, stomping off to find a new resting spot. “She’s not my problem anymore. I don’t mind at all never seeing her again, never smelling her, never watching those hips that know how to make me hard with just a little twitch, never letting her suck my tongue almost out of my head, never making her hum with ecstasy. I don’t need her or her blood. I’m quite happy being miserable here on my own.”