Rule sighed. “This is not a simple story. Nor is it brief. You really should sit.”
Abby took one look at the enveloping wing chair behind her and repressed a snort. Instead she stepped over to a plush ottoman—gritting her teeth when the wall of Others moved with her—and perched on the edge. At least the footstool didn’t have a back. She could always jump off the other side if worse came to worst.
“OK, tell me what’s going on.”
Rule settled his imposing frame into a seat facing her and leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs. “The first thing you must understand is that the human conception of what you call ‘demons’ is, as Tess told you earlier, very wrong. Demons have existed since long before your kind became aware of your God. In those days, we were called daimon and we were the messengers between the worlds.”
“Between what worlds?”
“All of them. Surely you have realized by now that more exists in the universe than this single reality.” He raised an eyebrow, but Abby just pursed her lips and nodded for him to continue. She had no earthly idea what she’d realized over the last few hours, let alone the last few weeks. “We carried news and messages between all living creatures, until the Fae declared war on us.”
Tess dragged her husband to sit beside her on the sofa near Rule and made a rude noise. “You’re lucky neither Fiona nor Luc is here to take exception to your POV, pal.”
Abby had no idea who Tess was talking about, so she ignored her. “The Fae? You mean faeries?” She tried to imagine a squadron of fluttering little Tinkerbells attacking an army of figures like Rule and nearly laughed out loud.
“As I said, more exists than what you might think you know. In any event, the war between the Fae and my kind lasted nearly a thousand years,” he continued. “Eventually, the treaties signed between us banished the demons to the Below where we have lived in exile ever since.”
“I thought you said before that everything I knew about demons was ‘bupkes’? That sounds a lot like the battle between Lucifer and God’s angels to me.”
Rafael gave a shout of laughter that echoed around the room. “My apologies,” he chuckled when his wife hit him in the chest. “It was simply the idea of anyone mistaking the Fae for ‘God’s angels.’ The idea is too amusing.” He snickered. “You will understand when you meet Fiona. Trust me.”
Abby had no intention of broadening her acquaintance in the Other world, but she held her tongue. She needed the information more than she needed to make a point right now.
Rule’s mouth had curved into a half smile at Rafael’s reaction to her opinion. “I am familiar with the story, but believe me, the reality was much different. The Fae are no angels, and before we descended to the Below, my kind were no devils.”
“But they are now? I thought you all tried to tell me that demons aren’t evil.”
“We are not. We are not so different from humans: some good, some bad, and some mostly indifferent. But there are some among us who did not deal well with our exile.” His dark eyes caught hers. “The world Below is very different from this one, with forces at work for both the light and the dark. Those trapped Below who have been warped by the dark are very similar to what humans have come to know as demons. We call them fiends. There are fiends who have given completely over to the dark, but you may rest assured that Louamides is not one of them. He is a minor entity. You will not find yourself burdened with the curses of evil. You are not damned and will not feel the ill of it.”
This was all a little much for Abby to take in. “Splitting hairs?”
Rule’s mouth tightened. “Merely attempting to avert the splitting of heads. Yours among them. My kind have assumed the duty of protecting ourselves and this world against the fiends by establishing the Watch. I am one of its officers. It is my job to ensure the fiends do not stir up trouble in the Below or in this world.”
“Well, that seems to be going just swimmingly.”
The demon looked like he wanted to strangle her. With exhaustion creeping rapidly up on her, Abby couldn’t bring herself to care. There were plenty of witnesses. Maybe that would at least slow him down.
“We have heard rumors that the fiends have begun to plan an attack on the capital city of the Below, Infernium.” He continued as if she hadn’t spoken, but his tone was even grimmer than before. “I and several of my men formed a kind of . . . task force to prevent the rebellion. We drafted an informant in the company of the leader of the discontents. Louamides is the fiend who was assisting us and Uzkiel is the fiend whose plans we sought to foil.”
“Louamides? One of you said that was what the thing inside me was called, didn’t you? I’m being possessed by a fiendish stool pigeon?”
“An informant. A very important one that I have traveled from Below specifically to find.”
“Great. Fine. You found him.” Abby glared. “Now tell me why you can’t get him out of me.”
“For two important reasons. First, as you already know, the fiend appears trapped. And second, Uzkiel sent Louamides to find something for him, a very powerful bit of magic called the solus spell. When Lou realized that passing the spell to Uzkiel would mean not just his death, but the war we have all been trying to avoid, he fled. As long as Uzkiel is looking for him, he must stay hidden.”
“Then he can darned well hide somewhere else!” Abby jumped to her feet, panic lending speed to her movements and about an octave to her voice. “This is your war, not mine! I don’t want any part of it. Find someplace else to store your blasted informant and let me go home. Now!”
Tess got to her feet as well and sent the men back into their seats with an authoritative glare. When she turned back to Abby, Tess kept her voice calm and her expression soothing.
“We’re not doing this to torture you, Abby,” she said. “It’s not our idea of a good time, either. And Rule isn’t lying about the first spell I tried to get Lou out of you failing. Trust me, figuring out why that happened is going to be my top priority. But Rule’s top priority has to take into account the fact that you were seen in public with Lou’s last known host. Uzkiel has an army out looking for it, and we have reason to believe they’ve made their way into our world to look for you. If Lou was able to piggyback on another summoning to enter our world, we have to believe other fiends are capable of the same trick. We can’t let them find you.”
Abby set her jaw. “They won’t have any reason to come after me once you find a way to get rid of the fiend they’re looking for.”
“And how are they supposed to know it’s gone? Are you planning to take out a newspaper ad? It won’t stop them from coming after you to find out for themselves.” Tess’s guileless blue eyes suddenly looked a great deal harder than they had a few minutes ago. “It also won’t stop them from doing whatever they think they have to, or even just think would be fun, to get you to tell them where Lou has gone. We can’t take that kind of chance.”
“There are many chances we cannot afford to take right now.” Rule’s voice sounded firm and hard, as if his being adamant was likely to make a difference to Abby. “The spell Louamides carries gives Uzkiel too compelling a reason to continue to search for him, and I cannot allow it to be found. Until Tess can relocate it, you are the best hiding place I have.”
“I’m not a hiding place; I’m a person! and there’s no reason you can’t find another person for the job. You’ve got seven million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine other choices.”
“You wish to ask another person to go through what you have just gone through and more?” His tone and his expression matched in their utter blandness.
Abby’s first instinctual answer to that question was a resounding, “Yes!” But something stopped her from saying it. Blast her conscience anyway. So instead, she pursed her lips and just glared. At everyone.
“I’m sure it sounds horribly selfish of us to ask this of you,” Tess said, her mouth twisting in a self-deprecating smile, “and I’m fai
rly certain that it is horribly selfish, but it’s not just about keeping Louamides in hiding. It’s also about keeping you safe. This is more than a human can deal with, Abby. Not even one of us would want to deal with it on our own.”
The room seemed to spin around Abby. She couldn’t decide if she was about to faint or throw up or just break down and cry. If she had anything to say about it, she’d probably do all three just as soon as she got back to her apartment.
She took a deep, shaky breath. “Okay, I appreciate the fact that you’re concerned about my safety. That’s very hum—” She caught herself and broke off awkwardly. “That’s very . . . kind of you. But I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself, and frankly, that’s what I prefer to do.”
Samantha turned her own set of puppy dog eyes on Abby. How did she do that when the darned things were blue instead of brown?
“You’re not safe, Abby,” the Lupine said, her voice low and urgent. “You need protection, and trust me, that kind of thing is our pack’s specialty.”
She frowned. If she needed protection, she’d call her big brother. And his assault rifle, hand grenades, and utility knife.
“No, really. I’ll be fine. I’ve got good locks, a building with a doorman, and if I need protection, my brother can—”
Rafael and Rule looked at each other, heaved simultaneous and nearly silent sighs, and turned back to her. She wasn’t going to like this.
Hey, look. You’re starting to pick up the signals, she thought.
At least, she thought she thought it. Who knows who might be in control of her inner voice at the moment?
The Felix stood, the charming smile slipping from his face, leaving behind a fine-bladed expression of arrogant command. “I had hoped you would not put me in this position, Miss Baker, but I am afraid I have no choice. We are no longer asking you to put yourself in our care. We are ordering it. You will stay here in the club under twenty-four-hour guard until we have found and dealt with Uzkiel.”
Abby’s jaw dropped to the Oriental carpet and bounced twice. She didn’t know who said what came out of her mouth next, but whether it was her or the fiend possessing her, she wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment.
“Over your dead body!”
CHAPTER NINE
Tess had been right. Poker was definitely not Abby Baker’s game.
Rule saw the intent to move in her eyes before her muscles got the signal. When she shot out of her chair, he leaped in front of her, and when she bolted for the door, he got ahold of her arm before she could so much as twitch in that direction. Judging by the frantic strength she put into fighting his grip—obviously augmented by Lou’s presence inside her, because, Rule figured, her left hook didn’t usually threaten to crack ribs—it was a good thing he’d been paying attention or she’d have been hell on wheels to catch.
No pun intended.
“Let go of me!” she howled, writhing like a fish on a hook in his grip.
Cursing under his breath, Rule grabbed her by both arms and spun her around to press her back against his chest until his arms crossed in front of her like a straitjacket. The hold immobilized her upper body, but that didn’t stop her from using her heels to try to dislocate his kneecaps. It was a good thing she was so bloody tiny or she’d probably have broken his nose with a vicious head butt. If she slammed her head into him any harder, something was bound to crack. Whether it would be his collarbone or her skull was up for debate.
Face set, he caught Rafe’s gaze over the top of her tangled hair and jerked his chin toward the door. “I’ve got her. Take everybody else out. She may be feeling a little outnumbered just now.”
“Outnumbered?! I’ll show you outnumbered, you slime-sucking son of a syphilitic goat!” Her shrill scream made a greater impact than her epithets; it nearly burst his eardrum.
Rafe nodded. “If you need backup, you know where to find us.”
If this had been a movie set, Abby’s eyes would have been glowing with red-orange flames. As it was, smoke was nearly pouring out of her ears.
“You think I’m going to forget you were in on this just because you leave the room, you catnip-chewing cretin?! I’m going to get out of here and I’m going to make every single one of you beg my pardon!”
Tess winced and ducked as Abby’s increasingly loud tirade became increasingly moist as well. “Um, I think that’s our cue to exit, baby. Come on. Getting Gabriel into his bath and pajamas will seem like a cakewalk tonight.”
“Actually, why don’t you guys have a nice night out?” Carly suggested, pushing Samantha out the door ahead of her and glancing warily back over her shoulder at Rule and the still-swearing and struggling Abby. “Sam and I can babysit. We’ll make sure the kitten gets to bed shining like a new penny!”
A moment later, the library door clicked shut, leaving Rule alone with the Tasmanian devil–woman in his arms.
His biggest problem, he realized as a particularly violent motion sent her undulating against him like a belly dancer, wasn’t that the human female seemed in no hurry to calm down; it was that his attention had fixed more firmly on the warm, soft weight of her in his arms than on the fact of her determination to do him great bodily harm.
She felt amazing. Her soft curves and silky skin had obviously been designed for loving, not fighting, and the incongruous strength she currently possessed only drew more attention to the plush welcome lying in wait beneath her snarling attack. The exertion had begun to speed her heart rate, dampen her skin, and make her breathing fast and ragged just like it would be if he had her beneath him, bare and begging. . . .
Shit.
Gritting his teeth and banishing the image from his mind, Rule moved quickly to separate their bodies. He had more important things to think about right now than his sudden and obsessive interest in a human woman who never should have made him look twice. From a distance, she looked like a mouse. Maybe if she’d stayed that way when he got closer, his libido would have been easier to control.
“Calm down,” he hissed into her ear, thinking about what good advice that was. For both of them. He saw his breath stir the baby-fine ash-brown hair at her ear and tried not to picture what the pale, plump lobe might taste like.
What the hell was wrong with him?
“I said, calm down,” he repeated in a growl. “No one is going to hurt you. I swear it.”
Her shriek rang with frustration. “No one is going to hurt me? What the hell is wrong with you? This is kidnapping! You think this is my idea of a good time?”
“I think nothing of the sort, but unfortunately, none of us have a choice in the matter just now.”
“Oh, that’s rich! No choice. Because, you know, you’re under some kind of divine compulsion to grab me off the street, take me to your secret hideout, and keep me prisoner against my will.”
The only compulsion Rule felt at the moment couldn’t have been further from divine in origin, but he had no intention of discussing that with her.
He grunted when she landed another solid kick to his left knee. “You know exactly where you are; therefore, the ‘hideout’ is hardly secret. And I believe it would be better for all of us if you took Tess’s suggestion and began to look at this as a form of protective custody. No one here means you any harm. In fact, it is quite the opposite.”
She turned her head until her blue eye pinned him with a look of icy rage. “If you want to help me out, you’ll let me go. I have friends and family to keep me safe.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” Rule shifted his grip on her. “If we let you leave here, you would be dead within the hour, along with your friends and family. I guarantee it.”
He saw her blink. It wasn’t much as far as weakening went, but he would take what he could get just then. If she didn’t calm down enough for him to let go of her soon, he was afraid he’d do something stupid. Like lick her. All over.
“And it is not only your life at stake,” he reminded her. “If you die, Louamides becomes an open target, an
d if Uzkiel finds him, any chance we have of defeating Uzkiel dies as well.”
Her compelling eyes narrowed. “Let me just tell you that reminding me of the thing that’s currently possessing me is not going to put me in a very cooperative mood right now!”
Rule met her gaze squarely. “What if I remind you that if Uzkiel finds you and retrieves the solus spell from Louamides, your vision of Armageddon will look like a summer picnic in contrast to the hell those fiends will loose on the earth.”
She heard that. He felt it in the way her struggles suddenly eased even as her muscles stiffened. He resisted the temptation to press the advantage and let the silence fill the space between them.
“You act like that should mean something to me.” She sounded far from happy, but she was no longer shrieking at him. “I have no idea who this Uzkiel you keep mentioning is, or what the heck a ‘solus’ spell is, or why you think I have any influence on the fate of the universe. I’m not even that important to my boss. Why should I be important to the fabric of the universe?”
“I am not an expert on why. My concern is with how. Or rather, how not, as in how not to bring about a bloody reign of fiendish tyranny.”
“You paint an impressive picture; I’ll give you that. But I still don’t really understand how I’m the secret to the triumph of good over evil.”
Rule slid his hands down to her wrists, ignoring the smooth glide of her skin beneath his hands. Gripping her wrists not tightly but securely, he turned her to face him.
Stars, but she was tiny. The top of her head didn’t quite reach his shoulder, and the body that had fought so hard against him a few minutes ago looked delicate enough to break with a harsh word. She wasn’t small or waiflike by any means, but she was so soft and so obviously human she may as well have been a baby bird.
“If you can remain calm for the next few moments, I will do my best to explain it all to you.”
She shot him a dirty look that he was willing to take as agreement, but he didn’t release his hold on her wrists. He used it to steer her the few steps to the sofa and urge her to take a seat. Settling beside her, he kept a wary eye on her. She might look like a baby bird, but she clearly had the temper of a rabid raptor.
The Demon You Know Page 7
