Mickey nuzzled Wraith’s ear, as though trying to comfort him. “I wouldn’t think information like that would be available to Aegis grunts.”
“Tay isn’t exactly a grunt.” E leaned back in his desk chair, looking annoyed.
No, Tayla was definitely more than a grunt. She headed up the New York City cell of slayers, and since taking command, the demon body count had gone down, and so had demon-on-human violence. A fragile truce had been declared between the New York cell and peaceful demons, which left the slayers more time to concentrate on taking out the harmful species. In addition, the friendly demons were more willing to give up intel. The symbiotic relationship had worked well so far, but with the unrest in the demon underworld lately, Guardian-demon relations were once again on shaky ground.
Wraith rubbed his palm over his face. “I don’t like this. I need to think about it.”
“You don’t have time,” E said. “And there’s something else you need to know.” He trailed his finger along the gold-embossed spine of the book in front of him. “She was bitten by a Mara before she was charmed. After you take her, the disease will progress rapidly, and she’ll die.”
Wraith paused mid-step. “What?” He looked at Shade. Then E. Then Shade again. “This is such bullshit. I’m not doing this.”
“You have to—”
“No!”
E stood, knocking his chair into the wall and startling Mange to his feet. “Then you doom the hospital.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Eidolon planted his fists on the desk and leaned forward, nailing Wraith to the wall with the intensity of his gaze. “We built it with our blood, sweat, and tears.”
Literally. When the foundation had been laid, each of them had given up one of the elements in order to make the hospital strong, enchanted, and undetectable to humans. Wraith had given his blood. E, tears. Shade, sweat.
“Yeah, and?”
Shade scrubbed a hand over his face. “I can’t believe we didn’t see this coming.”
“See what?” Wraith snapped, at the end of his patience.
“Our life forces are bound to the hospital,” E said softly. “You’re dying.…”
Ah, fuck. Wraith exhaled slowly. “So the hospital is dying. That’s why strange shit is happening there.”
“Yeah.”
Nausea rolled through him. “Is that also why it’s running half-staffed?”
E shook his head. “Whatever is shaking up the underworld is shaking up the staff. They aren’t showing up for shifts. Quitting. They’re terrified. Things are a mess. And, oddly enough, it all coincides with the charmed human’s appearance on the scene.”
“Dammit,” Wraith breathed. He might not give a crap about much, but the hospital had given him a purpose in life, at a time when he’d been directionless and self-destructive. Not that he wasn’t those things now, but he’d mellowed a lot. He was probably still alive only because of his brothers and the hospital.
More important, it meant the world to E and Shade. More than anything except their mates and Shade’s offspring. Wraith might not give a shit about his own life, but he couldn’t let the hospital die just because he didn’t want to bang and kill a human.
He was really a piss-poor excuse for a demon.
It was time to let that particular childhood trauma go. If he didn’t, his mother would win. She’d wanted him dead from the moment he was born, thanks to the horror his father had inflicted on her. Not that Wraith could blame her—she’d been a human on the verge of turning into a vampire when his father had raped her, then kept her just this side of alive with the same gift Shade possessed. For nine months he’d kept her in a horrible stasis, raping and abusing her until she gave birth.
Not surprisingly, she’d gone insane. His father had taken off after he was born, as all unmated Seminus demons did—although usually they abandoned the female immediately after sex and conception.
His mother had completed her transformation into a vampire, becoming vicious as well as insane, and had taken out her anger on Wraith. He’d fought to live, and though he’d done some incredibly stupid things to get himself killed as an adult, something deep inside always kept fighting.
So fuck it. He was going to live. He was going to find the charmed human, take what he needed, and rock on.
And once he was nicely charmed and invincible, he was going to start taking out vampires in a way he’d wanted to do since he’d broken free of his cage. Starting with the Vamp Council.
Oh, yeah. Let the good times roll.
Wraith’s plan to find and seduce the human woman hit a roadblock right away
The fancy shmancy New Haven mansion where she lived was warded against demons.
For hours, Wraith was forced to lurk in the woods that hugged the expansive and well-tended grounds, but when a middle-aged man came out, loaded his Mercedes with luggage, and climbed behind the wheel, Wraith struck.