The Demon You Know

by Christine Warren

  “Tell them to concentrate on Battery Park City,” Tess said, stepping forward and linking hands with her husband. “That’s where the sisters think Uzkiel is hiding, and I have a bad feeling that if Abby is missing, that thing has something to do with it.”

  A shiver of pure fear ripped down Rule’s spine. “If Uzkiel has her, we don’t have a second to lose.”

  “Perhaps, but perhaps not,” Rafe said. “We do have one thing going for us. It is the middle of the afternoon. Daylight. Even if one of Uzkiel’s minions has captured Abby, the fiend will not be able to harm her until nightfall.”

  Tess winced. “The building they’re in has a basement. Windowless. He’d be able to function down there.”

  Rule took a deep, steadying breath. As hard as the panic fought to overtake him, he knew he’d be no use to Abby unless he maintained control. “Function, yes, but not well. He would not be able to perform magic, and since the solus spell is what he wants, he will not be able to harm her until tonight. Fiends are not only affected by the light of the sun; they are weakened by its energy. Even if they cannot see the light, they are not at their full power until nightfall. So we have a little over four hours to find out where she’s gone.”

  Tobias raised a hand to his ear and turned his head to the side, his expression intent. It took Rule a second to realize Tobias was listening to something in a wireless earphone.

  “Still not sure where she’s gone,” he said after a long, tense moment, “but I think we know how she got there. Camera on the back entrance recorded Abby leaving at twelve-oh-seven this afternoon, and she wasn’t alone.”

  “At least there’s that,” Tess said, sounding slightly relieved. “She had the sense not to go anywhere alone. Who did she take with her?”

  “Carly,” Tobias answered, “but it was Carly who did the taking. The alley camera shows her hitting Abby on the back of the head after they exited the building and knocking her unconscious. She carried her out of the alley and, we suspect, into a waiting vehicle.”

  Rule swore. “So you won’t be able to track her then. Not if they drove away.”

  “Not by scent, but I have a very large staff and a very big grudge to settle. We’ll start looking for treads and knocking on doors. If we have to interview every person in this city, we’ll do it. Carly was pack. Her betrayal is a disgrace to us all.”

  Everybody turned when the front door slammed open and Samantha came skidding to a stop on the polished tile. “Oh, my God! Is it true?”

  Tobias nodded shortly. “It looks like it is. What have you heard?”

  Samantha shook her head and gulped in a deep breath. “Just the alarm. Since Graham and Missy are out of town, I was covering a meeting for him with one of our liquor distributors. I ran all the way back here. Scott told me about the tape just now. He was leaving when I came up the steps.”

  Rule looked past her businesslike skirt suit and down at her bare feet. Little shreds of nylon clung to the fair skin, the ragged remains of which had probably started the day as panty hose. The Lupine’s shoes were nowhere to be seen.

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Tobias demanded, all his attention focused on sniffing out any potential leads.

  “Carly?” Samantha looked vaguely green as she said the name, as if the idea of her friend’s involvement nauseated her. “I was hoping I’d heard wrong. I can’t believe she would do something like this. I just talked to her the day before yesterday. On the phone. She was having a rough shift that night. A lot of people got hurt in the rioting in the Financial District.”

  “Did she say anything odd?”

  “Not a word. She sounded completely normal. Tired, but normal.”

  “And she never gave the slightest indication she might be planning something like this? Never hinted that she had any reason she might want to hurt Abby?”

  “Of course not, Tobe! Carly is a sweetheart. You know her. She’s pack.” Samantha looked hurt and confused, but no more so than any of them. “And even if she had said something like that, you know I would have told you. It would have set off every alarm in my head. I would have thought she needed serious help.”

  “Well, Abby is the one who needs our help now,” Tobias said. He didn’t look at all reassured by what Samantha had told them. “Do you know if Carly has a car?”

  “She does. I always said she was crazy, but she said that once you’ve driven an ambulance through Manhattan at rush hour, a regular car seemed positively sane.”

  “What kind is it?”

  Samantha frowned. “A little thing. Used. An old VW Rabbit, I think. Gray. It’s almost more primer than paint. She said she didn’t see the point in getting it repainted when it would just get scratched or dinged again inside of a week.”

  “You don’t know her plate numbers, do you?”

  “I’m her friend, Tobe, not a witness to her hit-and-run accident. That’s not the kind of thing I pay attention to. Why would I?”

  Just in case she got mixed up in a demonic plot for world domination?

  Rule turned to Tobias. “Can you find out that kind of information?”

  “I can try. I’ll see if any of our people works at Motor Vehicles.”

  “I will contact her employer,” Rafe offered, “and see if I can obtain copies of her logs to determine exactly where she’s been working over the last few days. Maybe we will find something valuable in tracing her movements.”

  “You can get that stuff? Those call sheets are usually as confidential as hospital records.” Tobias sounded impressed.

  Tess snorted. “You’d be amazed at what Mr. Pussycat can get his hands on when he lays on the charm and waves around a big stack of money.”

  “We all have our little talents,” the Felix demurred.

  “Well, for the moment, mine is going to be good old-fashioned legwork.” Tess grimaced. “I’m going to find out the name and address of that building the sisters pointed us to. If Uzkiel is involved in Abby’s abduction—and I think her disappearance is too big a coincidence to discount the possibility—we’re going to want to know where he might be hiding.”

  Rule nodded. At the moment, it was the biggest gesture he could manage, given that every muscle in his body had locked down in rage and fear. He turned blazing eyes on Tobias. “I want to see these security tapes. Then I want the best trackers you have to go over every last inch of the alley with me. If there’s the slightest chance of picking up her scent, I’m going to find it.” His hands clenched until the knuckles turned a stark, bloodless white. “And when I find her, there will be more than just hell to pay.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Abby woke with the feeling that a very large person had placed her head under the leg of his chair and then sat down. Hard. If her skull wasn’t cracked straight through, it would be a miracle.

  You can thank me for that later.

  Abby didn’t even try to lift her eyelids, let alone move her jaw. The most she could manage was a thought, and she couldn’t even do that loudly. Louamides?

  The one and only. How you feeling?

  Like last week’s moldy cat food. You?

  Hey, all I can feel is you, but judging by that, I’d say that’s a fairly accurate summary.

  Where am I? Er, I mean, where are we?

  Damned if I know. You’re the one with the eyes. How about you open ’em and take a look around?

  Abby groaned. I was afraid you were going to say something like that.

  I would say take your time, but under the circumstances, I’m not going to be able to recommend that as a first-line strategy.

  The only thing Abby could see when she first opened her eyes was blackness, and considering even that felt like an ice pick to the retinas, she could only be grateful no one had thought to leave a light burning for her. After a moment the darkness began to take on depth and she found that if she held her hand about six inches from the end of her nose, she could just barely make out that there was something there.

&nbs
p; She discovered simultaneously that any movement beyond shallow breathing sent nausea rolling through her like an invading army.

  “Okay, that was so not worth it,” she muttered, concentrating very hard on breathing very, very slowly through her nose.

  Sheesh, this human thing is so limiting. Let me help with that.

  Abby didn’t know what the demon was talking about, and until the urge to vomit subsided, she didn’t really care.

  “I think I may have a concussion.”

  She did not get the world’s most sympathetic feeling from Lou. You’re going to have worse if you don’t take another look around and see if there’s a way to get us out of here.

  “Why is that my job?”

  You’re the one with opposable thumbs. Actually, you’re the one with any sort of corporeal being of any kind at the moment. You’ve been appointed.

  “Swell.”

  It took Abby another minute or two to tamp down the nausea enough to open her eyes and take another look around. This time, she could actually see things. It was a little like watching one of those TV shows on ghost hunting, where the people wandered through old houses with all the lights off, filming everything with night-vision cameras. She could see the walls and the doors of the small room around her, but everything had the appearance of black-and-white and grainy shades of gray.

  “Is this really what the world looks like to you?” she asked. She couldn’t imagine it. She’d go crazy in a world completely devoid of color.

  At the moment it is. Normally, I’d see things in terms of their heat values, but your eyes aren’t equipped for thermal imaging. Primitive, really.

  Abby frowned and very slowly and very carefully turned her head to glance around the entire room. If she moved at a rate of approximately one millimeter per minute, she could keep her stomach from turning itself inside out.

  The room she lay in was large and empty, not just of other living things but of other things in general. She saw no furniture, no boxes, no clutter, nothing to indicate anyone had ever been here before her, except for the fact that the walls were standing, so clearly someone had built it. She just couldn’t tell if they’d ever been back since.

  She saw no windows anywhere in the room, but two doors cut dark outlines into the cinder block walls, one at either end of the room. The walls themselves appeared bare except for a few streaky patches that looked like water damage. They didn’t even sport the scrawl of graffiti to break the monochrome surface, which in itself was pretty creepy. In a city like Manhattan, pristine vertical surfaces rarely lasted an hour before someone left their mark on them. Either the building owners had a security system Fort Knox would have envied, or no one came down here. Ever.

  “Um, I’m not thinking I’m real happy with this situation,” Abby muttered, and carefully eased herself into a sitting position. The room swung a little around her, but everything stayed where it was supposed to. She wrinkled her nose at the musty smell.

  You’re not supposed to be. What? Did you think the werewolf bashed you upside the head because you forgot to mention you liked her new nail polish?

  Lou’s sarcasm brought the last few hours rushing back, in particular those few panicked seconds in the alley behind Vircolac when she’d realized something was horribly wrong.

  Carly had invited her to lunch, and Abby had gone. It had never occurred to her not to trust the woman. After all, she was a member of the pack, was a friend of Samantha’s. It wasn’t like Abby had been taking candy from a stranger. There shouldn’t have been a problem.

  There wouldn’t have been, she was sure, if it hadn’t been for that glow in the back of Carly’s eyes.

  Abby shivered. “What was that?”

  I don’t know if it’s got a true name. Some people call it hellfire; some call it the taint. Mostly you’ll hear about people like that being demon-touched. Or fiend-touched. Either way, it spells trouble. It means Carly wasn’t the only one home when she lured you out of the club. If you were Other, you would have been able to smell it. She didn’t smell like she did last time.

  “You’re not human,” Abby pointed out. “Why didn’t you notice?”

  Hey, what am I? Your babysitter?

  “No, you’re what’s called my cross to bear,” she grumbled, and slowly climbed to her feet.

  For someone who’d been kidnapped twice in one week, Abby thought she didn’t look too bad. Her clothes were wrinkled and dirty, but nothing a load of laundry wouldn’t fix. She lifted a hand to her head and felt a sense of déjà vu when she reached the spot where Carly had hit her and didn’t even find a lump, just a small tender patch.

  Oh, good. Nothing’s broken.

  “Maybe not,” Abby said, quickly taking inventory of any other injuries. “But it still can’t be healthy. Things are going to get all scrambled in there if this keeps up.”

  She found no broken bones and no other serious injuries. She had a couple of minor scrapes and some very major bruising, but considering the alternatives, she figured she should count herself lucky.

  You can buy a lottery ticket when we get out of here, but the getting-out part is the most pressing goal.

  “It would help if I knew where ‘here’ was.” She played a quick mental game of eeny-meeny-mineymoe and headed for the door to her right.

  Wait! You’re not going to just open that, are you?

  “I thought you wanted to get out of here.”

  But you have no idea what might be on the other side!

  Abby laid her palm against the door and raised an eyebrow. “It feels cool, so I think I can be pretty confident that the other side isn’t a raging inferno. What else do you want to know?”

  Who’s out there? What do they want? What will they do to us if we try to escape?

  “Well, the fire trick was the extent of my repertoire in these situations, so unless you plan to imbue me with some sort of psychic ability you’ve been hiding from me up until now, the only way to tell what’s on the other side of that door is to open it.”

  You could at least try listening. You know, to hear if you can hear voices or anything.

  “You mean just in case the villains are on the other side, outlining their plans for us in graphic detail?”

  Or in case there’s a chain saw–wielding psycho out there. You don’t know. Don’t you ever watch horror movies?

  Abby snorted. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, Lou, but if we’re in a horror movie, we are so already doomed. You’re evil, I’m sleeping with the enemy, and we’re trapped alone in the dark in what looks like a basement. By the laws of the horror genre, we should have died three scenes ago, at least.”

  Wow. Remind me next time I’m picking a human to hide in not to go with such a downer.

  “Gladly.”

  Figuring it wouldn’t kill her to humor him, Abby pressed her ear to the surface of the door for a moment and listened. The only thing she could hear was her own pounding heartbeat. It resembled the sound check for a speed metal band.

  “Nothing,” she muttered. “It looks like we’re going to have to go downstairs to find out if the power going out in the middle of the thunderstorm while the escaped serial killer is on the loose had anything to do with that ear-piercing scream we heard coming from the basement of our supposedly empty house a few minutes ago.”

  Very funny. Do you see anything around here we can use as a weapon?

  “Aside from my razor-sharp wit?” Abby shook her head. “We’re going to have to take comfort in the fact that I’m not blond, stacked, or a cheerleader, and hope God doesn’t hold grudges over the occasional crisis of faith.” She took a deep breath and curled her fingers around the doorknob. “Here goes.”

  Holding her breath, Abby said a quick prayer and eased open the door as quietly as possible. She didn’t even breathe as she cautiously poked her head out of the room and glanced around.

  The door opened into a hallway, equally dark as the room, stretching in either direction for at least as far
as Abby could see. She scowled.

  Now, see, I don’t like this, she thought to Lou, glad she was wearing sneakers, which at least minimized the sound of her footsteps on the bare concrete floor. Who kidnaps someone, transports their unconscious body to a remote location, then goes away and leaves them all alone without even a token henchman to stand guard and make sure they don’t run away?

  Carly?

  No. I don’t know what her damage was, but when she was in her right mind, she seemed way too smart for that. Something weird is going on here.

  Abby eased her way out into the hall and headed to the right. It seemed to have worked last time. The hall was as bare as the room she’d just left, nothing but walls and floor, though out here the distinct odor of dampness was even stronger. She had the feeling that if she reached out and touched the walls, she would feel the slime of accumulated mildew. Somehow, she stifled that urge.

  Lou’s enhanced night vision allowed her to walk through the hall without bumping into anything, but she still moved slowly, as if she didn’t quite trust the unfamiliar perspective. An occasional door broke the solid line of the wall at her right, but after glancing in the first two and seeing bare rooms nearly identical to the one she’d just left, she ignored them and walked forward. Several minutes after she started, she reached another wall and realized she’d hit a dead end.

  She swore under her breath.

  Shhh!

  Abby just gritted her teeth and turned around to retrace her steps. I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

  Do you know what time it is?

  Why?

  Because I’m getting my nails done at six and I don’t want to be late. Because I asked!

  Abby raised her left arm almost to her face before she could make out the tiny lines on her watch face. Four forty-six. Satisfied?

  Not hardly. It’s nearly sundown.