But if you do that, you’ll lose everything. I hated to admit it but it was starting to look like Amy’s strategy might end up being our only viable option. I wasn’t ready to give up just yet, though. “You were going to tell us what you’re doing,” I reminded him. “Why are you trying to capture all these women?”
“To love them, of course.” He made it sound so matter-of-fact I had trouble coming up with a response.
“Seriously?” I asked finally.
“You make it sound like I’m some sort of monster,” he chided me. “I love all of the women I summon to my side, every one. I make them happy. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Happy?” I couldn’t believe I heard that right.
“There’s so much fear and stress in your world, Peter. Everywhere you go, women are neglected and abused and oppressed. No one respects them, they struggle to make a living, they’re treated as objects and property instead of people. Women are beaten and ignored and denigrated wherever they turn.”
“It’s not that bad,” I insisted.
“You’re a man, Peter,” Not-Peter said condescendingly. “You don’t know what the other half of the population deals with every day. You’ve never experienced it.”
“And you have?”
“Of course not. But I’ve made it my mission to free them from their suffering. I offer them clarity of purpose and the sweet ecstasy of perfect love.”
“You enslave them and take advantage of them!” I retorted heatedly.
“They obey me of their own will and they enter my embrace eagerly. I don’t hurt them in any way. Quite the contrary, I provide each of them what they most desire. Virgins surrender their maidenhoods to me without shame or fear. Wives and lovers discover that there’s more to intercourse than tired thrusting under the covers. Even the aged are grateful for a taste of the pleasures they barely remember. And when my seed quickens within their wombs, they receive the blessing of a new life that loves them unconditionally, just as I do. I ease their pain and give them hope and purpose, Peter. How can that be wrong?” He sounded genuinely puzzled.
“You’re forcing yourself on them for your own pleasure!”
“Their pleasure is as great as mine, if not greater. No one has ever pushed me away.”
“Because you control their minds!”
Not-Peter let his breath out in a disappointed sigh. “Well, it’s clear I’m not going to convince you. That’s too bad. I don’t really want to kill you. You’re me, after all.”
“I’m not you,” I ground between my teeth. “I’m nothing like you!”
“Have you looked in the mirror, recently, Peter?” he chuckled. “We’re two sides of the same coin. I have your body and your memories, I even have your powers.”
“What?” I hadn’t expected to hear that.
“Well, I can see the spells when I hold out my hand and I can highlight the target I want to hit, but nothing happens. Something’s missing. You, I suppose, or your soul, anyway. Not that I really need your magic, now that Ariel and Fay are helping me, but it would have been a nice bonus. Like this Philosopher’s Stone I’m wearing,” he added thoughtfully. “It doesn’t seem to be working like it’s supposed to. Fay thinks it’s bound to your spirit instead of your body.” He sounded disappointed but that was actually great news. That was one less weapon he’d be able to use against us.
“Anyway, I’ll give you one last chance to surrender, Peter. There’s no point in someone getting hurt over a philosophical disagreement.”
“Philosophical disagreement?” Karyn couldn’t hold herself back anymore. “Give me my sister back, you bastard! Don’t you dare touch her!”
“Too late,” a voice that sounded exactly like Karyn’s giggled in the background. “Don’t be such an uptight bitch, Sis. Come on over and join the fun.”
“Karin?” Karyn’s freckles stood out on her skin like spatters of brown paint as she gaped at the phone, aghast, Her horror turned to rage when her sister just laughed and she threw a fiery red symbol at the phone. It exploded in an acrid puff of smoke, scattering bits of glass and plastic across the table. “You bastard!” she screamed at the smoldering remains.
“What’s going on here?” Dad stood in the doorway, frowning at the scene. Everyone else just looked at me, waiting for me to say something. It took a long time for me to unclench my fists and draw a steady breath.
“We have to kill him, Dad,” I told him grimly. “There’s no other way.”
17
I’m not a planner. I find things a lot less stressful when I don’t obsess about every little detail or schedule my day down to the last minute. Deciding where to go for lunch with my friends, for example, doesn’t have to become a full-blown military campaign. We can just throw out a few ideas, converge on a mutually-agreeable destination, and get there when we get there. Apart from showing up on time for school and work, I can pretty much cruise through life without worrying that I’m forgetting something important.
Mom, on the other hand, owns pretty much every personal organizer and planning app known to man. She’ll dutifully note down every place she needs to be, when she needs to be there, and the names and numbers of every person she’s supposed to meet. She’ll make a list of everything she’s supposed to bring and make sure everything is ready to go long before her calculated departure time. Nothing stresses her out more than discovering that the rest of us haven’t even started looking for our shoes by the time we’re supposed to be walking out the door. Planning genes are clearly recessive in our family.
This compulsion to nail down every last detail of our lives seems to be a relatively recent invention. People used to just drop in on their friends unannounced or take a drive through the countryside on a whim and yet somehow the world didn’t come to an end. I think people would be a lot happier if they could just learn to relax and go with the flow. Sure, someone might forget to bring the mustard to the picnic, but that’s why we have cellphones.
“Glamours, I guess,” Allison shrugged sullenly. She sat by herself on the far side of the table with everyone else lined up across from her. If Karyn had her way, she’d be locked up in the jail with Cruz.
“You’ll have to explain that,” Dad told her. “I’m new to all this. What can you do with a glamour?” He sat in Rebecca’s vacated spot with me on his right. Rebecca huddled beside Karyn and Olivia sat between us.
“Glamours are illusions,” she frowned, as if it should have been obvious. “They make people see things that aren’t there or hide things from them.”
“But they’d still know something was there if they accidentally touched it,” Dad pointed out.
Allison shook her head. “A good glamour will keep them from doing that, or convince them that whatever they experience is perfectly normal.”
“And you can cast good glamours.”
“Yes,” she said, without any hint of arrogance or pride.
“But we can’t trust her!” Karyn insisted again. “She already betrayed us once!” Allison failed to incinerate under her glare but that didn’t stop Karyn from trying.
“We need every advantage we can find,” Dad reminded her somberly. “Peter will make sure she doesn’t ... misbehave.” The sour look on her face conveyed her doubts about my ability to do that. “So what’s your specialty, Karyn?”
“I do charms.” She crossed her arms belligerently, daring him to ask her what those were. He did and she rolled her eyes. “Charms make things better or worse.”
“What good is that?” I asked doubtfully.
“Charms can make weapons sharper or weaker,” she said, flicking her finger at Daraxandriel’s sword. “They can make you stronger or confused. They can make lights brighter or keep wood from catching fire. You name it, I can change it.”
“You mean like buffs and debuffs in a game?”
“If you say so,” she shrugged. She clearly wasn’t a gamer.
“Does your sister have the same ability?” Dad asked.
“More or less,” she nodded. “Karin’s better at charming things, I do people.” She nodded at the scorch mark on the table where Allison’s phone used to be. “But I can get the job done.”
“That seems like a very useful power,” he observed thoughtfully. She sniffed but she seemed secretly pleased. “What about you, Rebecca?”
She sat up, startled, pulling her wide-eyed gaze away from Olivia. “Oh, um, I don’t do anything special,” she apologized. “I’ve only been a witch for a year.”
“What about that shield of yours?” I asked her. “That looked pretty impressive.”
“Oh, that.” She eyed the corner of the room apprehensively. “That’s just when I get scared.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“No,” she insisted, but Karyn scoffed, lifting her eyes to the ceiling. “I don’t! Not very often,” she amended weakly. “It’s just – I don’t like surprises.” She eyed Daraxandriel and hunched her shoulders.
“You and me both,” I assured her. “So what do we have?” I asked Dad.
He sat back in the chair and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “I’m probably not the right person to ask that, Peter. I just don’t have the experience with magic and witchcraft the rest of you do.”
“I’ve only been involved in all this for a couple of months,” I reminded him. “Melissa and Olivia too. Even Rebecca has more experience than I do.”
“I’m the senior witch here,” Karyn jumped in. “I say Allison glamours Melissa and me into invisibility. I’ll charm us up and we’ll sneak into Mrs. Kendricks’ house, kill the incubus, and rescue Karin. And the others,” she added belatedly. “Problem solved.” She sat back in her chair, crossing her arms with an emphatic nod.
“Well, that’s certainly direct,” Dad noted, “but won’t they be expecting us to do something like that?”
“That only matters if they spot us,” Karyn retorted, “which they won’t.”
“Isn’t Tara really good at detecting supernatural beings and stuff like that?” I asked doubtfully. “And wouldn’t Mrs. Kendricks have cranked up the protective spells on her house?”
“That’s for demons, not witches,” she argued, but now she looked worried.
“Our best bet is to isolate the incubus,” Dad insisted, shaking his head, “far away from his, ah –”
“Army?” I suggested gloomily.
“Harem?” Amy sniggered.
“Support,” Dad corrected us firmly. “Without anyone to protect him, Melissa can do, well, whatever it is she needs to do.” Melissa’s fingers tightened on Daraxandriel’s but she nodded. “Unfortunately, that still leaves us with how and where.”
“How to convince him to come out alone and where to ambush him,” I guessed. Dad nodded somberly. “He wants the journal and he’s obsessed with killing Dara. He can’t enthrall her so he’s afraid she’s going to come up with a way to stop him. If we send her out to some public place with the book, that’ll get his attention.”
“Except he’ll just send Mrs. Kendricks and Agent Morgan after her,” Melissa pointed out. “You said that yourself.”
“Not if he thinks there’s a chance they might escape his control,” I mused. “We need to convince him that Dara’s discovered the secret of breaking his hold over women and she’s planning to use it. He’ll have to come by himself.”
“How are we going to do that?” Karyn asked scornfully. “Send him an anonymous letter?”
“No, we’ll tell him.”
“Why in the world would he believe us?”
“Because we’ll get someone under his control to do it.” All of us turned to look at Allison, who blinked back at us.
“I’m not under his control,” she protested. Now it was Karyn’s turn to blow a raspberry.
“You are,” I told her apologetically, “I’m just keeping you from acting on his orders. If you contact him privately and tell him you overheard us talking about this, he’ll believe you.”
“No offense, Peter,” Olivia said doubtfully, “but you’re going to have to tell her exactly what to say and do and that hasn’t worked out all that well so far.”
“We’ll figure out the exact wording so Allison does it right. Olivia,” I explained to the others, pointing at the apparently empty seat beside me.
“Assuming that works,” Dad said, not sounding at all convinced that it would, “where are we going to do this? It needs to be someplace away from the public, where we can see anyone approaching and stay hidden until we’re ready to attack.”
“And someplace that doesn’t look like a trap,” I added. “Can anyone think of a place like that?” The room fell silent as everyone looked at everyone else. One by one, they shrugged and shook their heads, except for Rebecca, who timidly raised her hand. “You know someplace?” I asked her eagerly.
“Well, no,” she said, “but doesn’t it need to be a place Dara would go?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you want the incubus to believe that he needs to stop Dara from doing whatever she’s going to do to stop him, she needs to go to a place where she needs to go to do that.”
I tried to parse that out and failed. “Huh?”
“I think what Rebecca is saying,” Dad said with a ghost of a smile, “is that Dara needs a plausible reason to be wherever we send her. Is that right?” Rebecca nodded gratefully. “This ties in with the story Allison needs to tell. How could Dara use the journal to stop the incubus and where does she need to be to do it?”
Now everyone looked at Daraxandriel, who leaned back doubtfully. “I have no such ability,” she protested, “nor did Parathraxas’ journal reveal such.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I told her, “as long as the incubus believes it. So what could Dr. Bellowes have discovered that would worry an incubus?”
“A magic spell of some sort?” Dad frowned.
“Dara can’t do magic, at least not in the traditional sense, and the stuff she can do doesn’t work well against witches and other demons. Right?” Daraxandriel acknowledged my explanation with a reluctant dip of her head.
“We need a warlock, then,” Karyn suggested. “Someone she can pass the spell on to but who can’t be captured by the incubus.”
“There aren’t any around here,” Allison argued, “except maybe that other FBI guy.”
“Agent Morgan sent him out of town,” I informed them with a sigh. Having Prescott here would have solved a lot of problems.
“Maybe we could claim that he found out what’s happening and Dara is meeting up with him,” Dad mused.
“I got the impression he’s not anywhere close by,” I said doubtfully. “It would take him hours to get here. I don’t think we can wait that long.”
“We could say that Susie is going to do her portal thing and bring him here directly. In fact,” he added thoughtfully, “why doesn’t she actually do that? We could certainly use his help.”
“She doesn’t know him well enough to find him on her own and all his stuff is at Mrs. Kendricks’.”
“You are such a downer, Peter,” Karyn groused.
“The story has to make sense or it won’t work,” I countered. “The incubus has most of my memories. If I don’t believe it, he’s not going to.”
“What about another demon?” Rebecca shrank under our combined gazes but she forged on. “What if that doctor person knew about a demon who could hurt the incubus or take the ring from him? Couldn’t Dara be trying to summon it?”
Now we all looked at Daraxandriel. “Dost thou speak of Metraxion?” she whispered. She looked like she was about to pee her pants, had she been wearing any.
“No,” I said firmly, “definitely not.” The last thing we needed was the Bane of the Broken Plain in our midst again. “But maybe someone else, someone you could conceivably summon to help out, preferably someone the incubus knows about.”
“I am forsworn against my Dread Lord,” she reminded me sadly. “My life is forfeit among the denizen
s of Hell and none would heed my call.”
“All those demon lords Lilixandriel threw at us didn’t seem to care all that much about your Dread Lord,” I countered. “There has to be at least one scary demon who would help you out.”
“Aye,” she admitted reluctantly, “yet such aid would not be given freely. Recompense would be demanded.”
“I’m guessing you don’t mean US dollars,” I said wryly.
“Nay. The currency of Hell is souls, Peter Simon Collins, as thou well knowst.”
“That’s no problem.”
“Peter!” Melissa gasped. “You can’t sacrifice someone’s soul just to get rid of the incubus!”
“We’re just pretending, remember? We’re not actually summoning a demon, we’re just saying we are.”
“Oh.” She sat back, still looking doubtful. “Okay, I guess.”
“Yet the incubus would wonder were he to come upon me without such a sacrifice at hand,” Daraxandriel pointed out. “Someone needs must accompany me to the designated place. Someone pure, by choice.”
Eight pairs of eyes focused on Rebecca and she straightened in alarm. “Why are you all looking at me?” she squeaked.
“Well,” I said awkwardly, “you’re a, um, you’re a – I mean, you haven’t been with a, uh, boy, have you?”
Rebecca’s face went from pale to pink in the blink of an eye. “I’m not the only one!” she protested. “What about them?” She pointed around the table.
“Don’t look at me,” Karyn sniffed. “I have a boyfriend.”
“Me, too,” Allison chimed in.
Melissa cleared her throat. “Peter was my first,” she admitted.
“Really?” Karyn grimaced. “Why?”
“Let’s not get off topic here,” I jumped in hastily.
“What about Olivia, then?” Rebecca suggested. “She’s innocent, right? And she’s already dead anyway.”
Olivia cast a sidelong glance at Daraxandriel and wouldn’t meet my eyes. Her purity – or lack thereof, if I was interpreting her reaction correctly – didn’t matter, though. “We can’t use Olivia for this,” I explained. “The incubus needs to be able to see the, ah, volunteer.” She let her breath out in a grateful whoosh.
Sudden Death Page 25
