A Demon in Waiting (Crimson Romance) by Trent Holley

Author:Trent, Holley [Trent, Holley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, Paranormal
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2013-06-17T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

“You look like him,” Claude said, opening the driver’s door of his Jeep and bobbing his head toward the other side. “Even more than Charles.”

John took the cue and walked around. He climbed in and endured his brother’s scrutiny.

Claude looked around thirty. He was tall and thin, with short-cropped black hair, tanned skin that’d come naturally, and eyes some shade between Gulielmus’s blue and … red? They seemed to shift as he turned his head.

Claude laughed, obviously understanding the source of John’s discomfort. “My mother dabbled in the black arts. I was born cursed. Doubly so.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“It is what it is. You let your woman go in there alone?”

John shrugged. “Why not?”

“Papa may not be everywhere at once, but he gets around. Let him think you’ve become too attached and he’ll swoop in and do the job for you.”

“Ariel wouldn’t — ”

“Sure, in most circumstances, she probably wouldn’t. I saw the way she watched you walk away. That wasn’t like a woman looking after some stranger. That’s a woman who wants to get her claws into you.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

Claude put his hands up. “Bad. Good. Not for me to judge. I’m just saying, he did it to me once. It was around the war. I took too long with this beautiful Haitian and he cracked the whip. I never made that mistake again.”

“But was it a mistake? Really?”

“How would I know? I’ve been like this — ” Claude held up his left palm and on command, it seemed, some archaic hieroglyph glowed as blue as his eyes at the moment. “ — since I was a child. He claimed me when I was a baby. My mother could summon him, you know? And he’d appear. He did what she wanted, because a woman who had that kind of control over a man is a terrifying thing. A woman like that could lead you to your death.”

His gaze indicated he didn’t only mean his mother.

“Ariel’s not like that.”

“If you say so. I don’t know much about love,” Claude mused, closing his hand into a fist and pulling it to his lap. “Some people say I’m not capable of feelings at all. I am. I just choose to guard them.”

What a terrible way to live life — feeling nothing. John shifted in his seat and cut his gaze to the coffee shop window. Ariel was still in line. Looked like she’d be a while.

“How do I get rid of this thing?”

Claude held out his hand and made a give-it-here gesture.

John placed his left hand in it, palm up.

Claude stared.

“Well?”

Claude shook his head and dropped the hand. “It’s not the same. That one’s quite different from the rest I’ve seen. The girls — theirs are a little different, of course, just being female, but this … I don’t understand it.”

“Why would mine be different? What would that serve?”

“I don’t know. I don’t pretend to understand why a demon does what a demon does. Maybe he thought it wouldn’t take, or maybe you were harder to mark.

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