Demon of Desire (5 page)

“I think I heard you. Something was sure scurrying around
when I came here. You tried, Aunt, that’s what counts. Thank you.” Sin glanced
toward the ceiling. “Is there anything else in the house that I need to worry
about?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. I never went through all of
those crates of my father’s. And I couldn’t just get rid of them in case some
innocent stumbled onto something dangerous.”

“We’ll be careful, I promise. But we do need to get rid of
it all.”

Great-Aunt Absinthe nodded again. “I hope you’ll be happy
here, dear. I truly do.”

“I will, Aunt.”

Her great-aunt began to fade, and with a wave, she
disappeared. Sin inhaled a lily-of-the-valley-laden whiff of air, then gathered
some clean clothes and went to shower.

Later, feeling more like herself, she worked with Baen
sorting through the dusty trunks and boxes in the attic. Constantly distracted
by his nearness, Sin scolded herself. She was attracted to all three of the
brothers. Talk about slutty. Yet all three had shown interest in her. How
complicated would it be if she chose one and not the other two?

The first box she opened almost sent her shrieking from the
room. She should know better than to unwrap Great-Aunt Absinthe’s father’s
treasures. Digging through the shredded wood-wool inside a smaller box, she
lifted out a shrunken head. With a queasy dry heave, she dropped it. “Please
tell me this is a box of Halloween decorations.”

Baen appeared to be biting the inside of his cheek. “Let me
look.” He put the head back into the wood-wool and carefully set it aside.
After shifting some packing paper, he pulled out a manila envelope which he
opened. “Here we are. Contents: one Jivaro Indian
tsanta
, circa 1900. I
think that’s your shrunken head. One XXV Dynasty Canopic jar. Three mummified
fingers, origin unknown. Wow, there are some real treasures here.”

He set down the paper, dug through the box and lifted out an
Egyptian container with a sculpted dog’s head lid. Opening the jar, he peered
inside. “Well, you’re safe here. This one doesn’t seem to have been used.”

“Used?”

“They put the organs into jars like this when they prepared
a body for burial.”

“Gross.” She couldn’t stop the shudder that swept over her.
“My mom told me about my great-grandfather’s collections, and I know I saw some
of them when I was little. But I still don’t get why she hung onto them. My
aunt said it was because she was afraid of someone getting hurt, but it’s just
creepy.”

Baen repacked the box and put the list back in the envelope.
“Maybe because they belonged to her dad, she couldn’t bring herself to get rid
of them.”

Sin moved carefully on to the next box, thinking they should
try organizing them as they opened. Set everything worth keeping off to one
side.

“Check this out.” Baen waved her over to the cedar chest
he’d opened.

“What is it?” She feared he’d found more carvings or another
shrunken head.

She couldn’t be more wrong. Folded inside the chest was an
ivory silk wedding gown. She lifted it and held it out in front of her. Fine
netting covered the bodice. Tiny seed pearls were sewn in and around ivory
embroidered flowers. Judging from the wide waistband-style inset, she judged it
to be from the 1940s, when her aunt had been engaged. “I wonder what Aunt
Absinthe’s fiancé was like.”

For some reason she felt compelled to carry the gown to the
cheval mirror they’d found in the corner. There she pressed the gown to her, as
if to see how it would fit. Her aunt had been petite, with a waistline
comparable to one of Sin’s thighs in circumference.

Over her shoulder, Baen’s face appeared in the mirror. “You
would look beautiful in that.”

Laughing, she lowered the dress and faced him. “I’d need two
of these to cover me.”

His gaze traveled downward over curves she knew he’d seen
bare. Instead of embarrassing her, it stirred quivers inside her. Heat pooled
between her thighs.

Baen’s eyes smoldered when he looked back up. “We’re
obviously not looking at the same body,” he said.

She couldn’t respond. Had her shape ever inspired such a
scorching look in any of her lovers? She’d never worried about what she ate,
and the closest she came to aerobics was lugging her purse up the two flights
of stairs to her old apartment. Her figure wasn’t one to garner second looks,
but she never really cared.

She tore her gaze away and folded the gown. As beautiful as
the dress was, fate was cruel to leave it there for her to find since, if it
were her great-aunt’s, it had never been worn. Like a slap in the face. A
reminder of what she’d never have.
Old maid. Cat lady
. “I always
wondered why Great-Aunt Absinthe never married. There must be more to the story
than this gown.”

“I would lay odds Suthu played a role in it.”

Shudders rolled over Sin. “Suthu? How?”

“In the box with the fetish was an obituary for her fiancé.
Did you see it?”

Sin remembered the love letters and embroidered handkerchief
in the box, too. “Yes. But why would the demon kill her fiancé?”

“Suthu is like a black widow. She seduces men and kills
them. My guess is the demon possessed your aunt and killed the fiancé before
they could marry.”

“So my aunt was an old maid because of some creepy artifact
her dad brought home from his trips abroad? How awful. Now I really don’t
understand why she kept all this, in spite of what she told me.” She looked at
the stacks of wooden crates around her, having no clue what they held. Her
voice rose in pitch with her anxiety. “What else did he bring home? What else
do I have to worry about discovering?”

Baen stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her.
He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “We won’t let anything get to you. I
promise you we’ll keep you safe.”

Safe. She hardly knew the meaning of the word. Yet she found
comfort in the warmth of Baen’s body pressing against her. So odd to feel like
that with a stranger.

The brothers had battled the demon for her. And won. That
was definitely more than a step beyond the other men in her life. Did she
remember how to trust? “Thank you.”

He turned her in his arms. His hands caressed her back,
drawing her closer. Sin’s pulse raced and she was unable to breathe. She barely
noticed she was rising on her toes, bringing her lips more in line with Baen’s.
He leaned down to meet her.

His mouth was cool against hers, but liquid heat spread
through her as he captured her lips. He was gentle, seeking, enticing her to
beg for more. She dragged her fingers through his short hair. Hard muscles
pressed into her softness, melding them into one pulsing being.

He kissed her jaw, beneath her ear, and moved down to the
base of her neck. His nip made spikes of hurt and need shoot through her. She
cried out, half in pain, half in desire.

Baen lifted his head. “Are you okay?”

Her head remained tipped back, baring her throat as if
waiting for his bite. “Yes. No. I…I’m not sure.”

He sucked in a deep breath but didn’t pull away. “I’m sorry.
I got carried away.”

Sin laughed without humor. “Hey, it’s not your fault, after
the way I acted yesterday.”

Grabbing her chin, he forced her to look at him. “That was
not you. That was the demon. I know the difference.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just—”

“It’s just too soon. I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
He smoothed her hair, his gaze looking toward the movement of his hand.
“There’s so much to explain to you. So much you need to learn on your own. I
shouldn’t be complicating it with sex.”

“That’s usually my role in a relationship, finding sex
complicated.” She had her own explaining to do. She couldn’t play the brothers
against each other, getting involved with more than one of them. Nor could she
decide which one she was most attracted to.

When his lips spread in a grin, she noted how normal his
teeth looked for a vampire. Dear God, they were vampires. Herself included. And
she was worried about casual sex. She stepped back and turned to face a new
stack of boxes. “You’re right, Baen. It’s too soon to think about anything.”

Some of the stuff buried in those boxes was probably family
heirlooms, but she didn’t think her dad would appreciate it if she sent the
boxes his way. She should sort through it first. But she didn’t want to find
out what else lay waiting in the attic. “I think I should just haul all these
boxes out and burn them.”

“That’s not the safest thing. We’ll take them to Marrett, the
demonologist, to go through. He’s capable of disposing of the icons and
fetishes without freeing the demons.”

Whispering Valley had its own demonologist. Why didn’t she
find that comforting?

Sin blew the dust off another box and opened the flaps.
Books, antiques by the look of them, filled the space. She lifted a few and
examined the covers. “These look like travel guides and local histories.”

Baen leaned over her. “Wow, the old man traveled to some
obscure places. Tripoli Ankara, Bohemia…”

As he wandered away, a book in hand, Sin opened one written
in a foreign language. She thumbed through pages filled with what looked like
poetry. She tried to pronounce what she read. “
Behem podke po mezi stat,
Leko na do mistu
—”

“Stop! What are you doing?” Baen snapped shut his book and
grabbed hers from her hands.

“Just reading the poem. Why? Do you know the language?”

He scanned the pages. “I’m not sure, but it sounds familiar.
And dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

Setting the books back in the box, he roughly grasped her
arm before relaxing his hand and stroking her sleeve. “Yeah. Just promise me
you won’t read anything aloud if you don’t know what it says, while you’re in
Whispering Valley.”

* * * * *

A few days later when she finally felt strong enough to
brave the closet in her bedroom, Sin asked Gower to help haul the dresses
downstairs to donate to a thrift store. The snow had melted enough to allow
them to travel around the valley. The process of getting the clothes out was
cleansing for her. “You know, one of these days this place might start to feel
like my own.”

Gower tied the last trash bag of clothes and tossed it with
the others in the corner of the enclosed back porch. “We’ll have the whole
house sorted soon enough, I guess. We can make a trip to Loveland soon and get
whatever you can’t find in the valley.”

Stretching, Sin yawned. “I need to get used to shopping at
night. Hey, come to think of it, you guys were here in daylight the first day I
arrived. I thought the sun kills vampires.”

“Only if you get a severe case of sunburn.” Gower rolled the
sleeves of his wool shirt to the elbows and held his forearm next to hers.
“It’s not a lack of melanin in our skin that makes us so pale, it’s the lack of
blood circulation. That’s why the mountains of Colorado are such a great place
to be a vampire. The higher elevation means more UV risk, but the cooler temps
allows us to comfortably wear long sleeves.”

“Then why do I want to sleep all day? My body clock is
completely turned around.”

“I can’t give you a medical reason,” Gower said. “But I
think it has to do with bats being nocturnal.”

She studied him for a moment trying to decide if he was
pulling her leg. Giving up with a shrug, she went back through the kitchen and
up the stairs. Gower followed. While Sin unpacked her clothes, she asked, “How
did you guys become vampires? I mean, all three of you. I would think two of
you could have escaped when you saw what happened to the first.”

“It wasn’t like that. We’re actually triplets but we were
bitten at different ages. Baen was first. He was mortally wounded fighting in
the Napoleonic wars. One of his brothers-in-arms was a vampire, although Baen
didn’t know it at the time. His friend couldn’t bear the thought of Baen dying,
so he fed his own blood to Baen.”

She stopped what she was doing and went to sit on the bed.
The story was too intriguing not to catch the whole thing. “And because he
turned into a vampire, he stopped aging?”

“That’s right.”

Snorting ungracefully, she said, “I wish you guys had come
along twenty years ago, in that case.”

Gower grinned. “Enos took a mistress eight or nine years
later and learned she was a vampire. He had hopes of spending eternity with her
and begged her to change him. She was killed a few years later by a group of
vampire slayers.”

“How sad.”

He shrugged. “He loved again. We’ve all had a few loves over
the years, but family tradition said there was only one woman we would all
three love.”

“You were destined to fight over a woman?”

“Not fight.” Gower sat on the edge of the bed beside her and
picked up her hand. “Share.”

She almost pulled her hand back. Share one woman? Did he
mean her? Of course he did, or he wouldn’t be holding her hand. “Um, look, I
like you guys and I admit I’m sexually attracted to you all. But we just met
and—”

He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “No one is
pushing. We’re just happy to have met you.”

Watching his thumb move over her hand, she felt the
stirrings in her body as if he stroked her breasts or thighs. Her sensitive
spots acted as if she’d been hibernating for years. She was so much more aware
of these men than most she knew. Was that because she’d been involved with Tim
for all those years, and had shut herself off to noticing other men? She didn’t
believe in fate or soul mates. Fate would not have allowed her to build a life
around a loser. Would it?

How could she be sitting with this gorgeous specimen of a
man and end up thinking about Tim? Tim was too thin, balding, and seriously
lacking in bed. Not in size, in style. That had to be her answer. She’d been on
a sexual diet of missionary position only. Now, presented with this smorgasbord
of testosterone, she wanted to try a little of everything.