Dara didn’t recall a green scrapbook, but she opened the bottom drawer that held Nana’s sweaters. Beneath a stack of cardigans, she found a moss-colored photo album. It was a little smaller than the other scrapbook. She carried it back to the bed. Nana opened the cheap cover to reveal yellowed newspaper clippings. One included a photograph of a young Granddad, still with all his hair, standing behind a wooden pulpit, his arms lifted in supplication.
“There was a time when your granddaddy traveled all over these United States, casting out demons and teaching others how to do the same. I wasn’t supposed to keep the pictures.” Nana’s cheeks turned pink, but her jaw took on a mulish set. “But I wasn’t the one that was given the lesson—he was. I never let on to Lonnie that I still had them.”
She turned the pages so fast it didn’t give Dara time to do more than skim the headlines. The early articles were about Granddad’s triumphs—all the places he’d been invited to speak, all the demons he’d cast out. There was one particularly startling snapshot of a young girl, seated at the end of a pew, vomiting into the aisle.
“He did a lot of good, your granddad.” Nana tapped the picture. “But after that movie come out, that news program come to interview him. It went to his head.”
Nana turned the thick pages to reveal bigger articles, with larger headlines and even more dramatic pictures of Granddad. Perhaps because of Nana’s reference to his escalating pride, Dara could see a change in him. The poses became less natural, more staged. In one, he pointed at a man writhing on the ground. He held a Bible over his head. Behind him, a backlit cross seemed to beam energy to the leather-bound Bible and channel it through Granddad to the man on the floor. The man looked like he might be suffering an epileptic seizure.
“What happened?”
Nana turned the page over. This clipping showed Granddad preaching inside a coliseum. Thousands of people listened, rapt, as he spoke. On the facing page was a picture of him talking to Mike Wallace. “That’s how he come to be on 60 Minutes.”
Dara had always wondered how the pastor of a little backwoods church had drawn so much attention. Now she understood.
“He stopped focusing on the Word,” Nana said, “and got focused on hisself as a vehicle of the Word. The more demons he drove from the face of the Earth, the cockier he got. That’s when he started debating the scripture with demons. And they egged him on, telling him how smart he was, until he started taunting Satan.” Nana flipped over another page. The headline proclaimed, “SATAN, I AM YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE.”
Dara stared at it, shocked. The blustering man in the photo was unrecognizable as her gentle grandfather.
“What did you mean when you said he was given a lesson?”
Nana tapped the picture. “By this time, he was out on the road on his own a lot, staying in fancy hotels with saloons in their lobbies. He was traveling to a different town every night, and he had trouble sleeping. He took to stopping off for a nightcap before he went to bed. Then it became two, and then three.”
Maybe this was why they never had alcohol in their house.
“And then liquor wasn’t enough, and someone in a bar offered him some pills. The next night, he ordered a demon out of a man, and the demon laughed and told him, ‘You have no authority over me.’ Your granddad tried to beat the demon out with his Bible. Three men had to pull him off. They took the man with the demon to the hospital and your granddad to jail.”
Dara stared at her, sick with horror.
“The police found the pills on him. He was convicted of possession of a narcotic and assault. He did sixty days, but it wasn’t the jail time that hurt him—it was knowing that demon was right, that he’d lost the authority to cast out Satan. That humbled him. He come back to his home church and vowed never to leave again.”
She put her hand over Dara’s. Her flesh was so thin you could see the network of tendons and veins beneath.
“So don’t you let that demon talk you into believing you can stand against him,” she said, “because you can’t.”
Chapter 22
Ben was already at the clinic when Dara got there at ten the next morning. She stifled a groan. She wasn’t ready to deal with a demon before she’d even had a cup of coffee.
“What are you doing here so early?” she asked.
“No rest for the wicked.”
Nor for someone who was trying very hard not to be wicked. She headed for the kitchen. The coffeemaker was dark and cold, with only the dregs of yesterday’s last pot in the carafe. Was she the only person in this clinic who knew how to operate a coffeemaker?
He followed her, standing far too close for comfort. She’d taken her antihistamine that morning, but hadn’t remembered to put on VapoRub. His scent slammed into her like a pile driver, literally making her mouth water. It was going to be that kind of day. Great. She looked at the clock. Ten a.m. Only ten hours to go.
“Here, let me make that.” With one hip, he butted her out of the way. “Go put your purse away or whatever you have to do.”
The warmth of his flesh penetrated through the thin fabric of her scrubs all the way to her bones. Low in her belly, it was like wax had melted, leaving a puddle of heat. If he was going to be in the clinic for the next several weeks, she would have to start bringing a change of underwear. Maybe more than one.
The worst part was that he knew what she was feeling. The vibrating tension of his flesh told her so. He was like a panther, waiting for his prey to make a move or give off some kind of signal, however slight, so he could pounce.
If he kissed her again, she’d be lost. Deep inside, she knew this to be true. Which meant all she had to do was never betray, with the smallest sign, how much she craved his touch.
She stepped back and let him take over the coffee pot, but she didn’t leave the kitchen. “Why are you here? You’re only scheduled to work the evening clinics.”
“I thought you could probably use help with the daytime clinics, too.”
That was impossible to argue with. “We don’t start seeing patients till eleven.”
“Dr. Edwards has agreed to see Viola. I wanted to get the referral filled out before patients arrive.”
“How did you manage that?” Exasperation flared, and Dara fanned that tiny flame. Better to feel exasperation than lust. She had approached Dr. Edwards when she first opened the clinic. She had begged him to see one or two patients. She’d gotten nowhere.
“I visited him this morning,” he said.
“I didn’t even give you his name.”
“Of the two gastroenterologists in Alexandria, one is named Emily,” he said. “It was reasonably simple to figure out the identity of the other one.”
“And he agreed to see Viola just like that?”
“He agreed to accept five referrals a month.”
Dara gawked at him. “Five? None of the other specialists will take that many.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is he another demon?”
“No, of course not.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. How did you convince him?”
He shrugged. “It’s what I do.” His eyebrows lifted. “Do you want me to visit others?”
It was tempting. There were so many patients who needed to see specialists. Dara shook herself. Of course it was tempting. It was what he did.
“No, thanks.” She headed out the door, but his voice stopped her.
“By the way, I arranged to cater in lunch today from Oakley’s.” He’d named the most expensive place in Alexandria. “The staff works hard. They deserve a treat.”
She stared at him. “Is this going to be a regular thing?”
He smiled blandly. “As regular as I can afford.”
“So, every day.”
“Something like that.”
She went to her office, where she smeared a thick layer of VapoRub on her upper lip before putting away her purse. She had to keep him at arm’s length. It was the only way she’d survive without giving in to the cravings he arou
sed.
She pulled a red marker from her center desk drawer and looked at her wall calendar. He wouldn’t be here on weekends, of course, and she’d convinced Javier not to schedule him for the tiny pediatric clinic on Mondays. She scrawled an X across the previous day.
Only thirty-eight to go.
“Did Viola Finch come in tonight?” Belial asked Gabby. Dara stood two feet away—close enough to observe him, but not close enough to be drawn in.
He’d been in the clinic for two weeks now, but beyond that, he’d made very little progress. Dara was professional to the point of being chilly, and he never saw her without the gleam of VapoRub on her upper lip. She was also very skittish. If he brushed her arm as they worked, she jerked away like she’d been burned.
And he badly wanted to make some progress. The wager’s end date loomed, now just three and a half weeks away, Satan was breathing down his neck, fretting about the amount of time that had passed without a completed seduction, and Lilith had begun making snide little comments about demons that were past their prime.
Even more disturbing was the way Dara’s lush body filled his dreams. Fantasies of touching her scarred clavicles as he buried himself inside her haunted his nights.
Days weren’t much better. He’d taken to sporting an erection at the most inopportune times. He blamed the human DNA Bad had inserted into his genome—after ten thousand years, his demon body had long since stopped reacting except on command. Now he was like a lusty schoolboy.
The receptionist pointed to Viola through the big sliding-glass window to a corner of the lobby. Belial spotted the Day-Glo orange beret. “Give me five minutes to talk to Mrs. Strong about her case and then call her in, please.”
“Okay,” said Gabby. “Oh, and Dara—Lilith dropped by.”
Dara’s eyes swept the clinic. “She didn’t stay?”
Gabby shook her head. “She brought coffee. She said she noticed we were almost out the last time she was here, so she donated some.”
There was as much chance Lilith had come by to donate coffee as there was that he was there to heal the sick. When Belial got home tonight, they would have a little black-heart-to-black-heart talk. He’d discover what she was up to.
In the exam room, he pulled up Viola’s record on the computer. Gabby had entered her long history into the system before sending his referral on to Dr. Edwards. The results of her visit to the specialist were there.
“What did he say?” Dara sounded worried.
“Why do you care?” he asked. “She’s hardly your favorite patient.”
“No.” Dara was honest, as usual. “But she is a patient. She’s also a lonely old lady, and a human being.”
He’d seen Dara tell lies of commission to avoid hurting people’s feelings and lies of omission to evade confrontations, but she didn’t lie simply to make life easier for herself. That meant she lied far less often than most of the humans he’d observed over the centuries. Other than her demon resistance, it was the sole trait she’d displayed so far that offered any hint why the Enemy had chosen her as his champion.
“And that’s all it takes for you to care what becomes of her?” He didn’t bother to hide his skepticism.
Dara’s shrug said she didn’t care what he thought. “Pretty much.”
He examined the record. “The specialist put her on a new drug. He thinks there’s a good chance it will completely relieve her symptoms.”
Dara let out a long breath. She hadn’t been exaggerating. She did care what became of the old woman, whether she liked her or not. He frowned. Was this the Enemy’s reason for selecting her? It seemed unlikely.
Someone tapped on the door, and a student nurse ushered Viola into the room. Viola thumped her way to the exam table. Using her cane for leverage, she climbed up onto the table.
“How are you feeling tonight?” Belial asked.
“Fit as a fiddle,” she answered. “Last night was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in years.”
“No problems with your new medication?”
“I miss my grapefruit juice.”
He smiled. She was following directions.
“Are you seeing any other side effects?” Dara asked.
And there lay the crux of the problem. The drug in question had been all but removed from the American market because of the impact it had on heart rhythms. They should do an echocardiogram on Viola every time she came in, but if he told Dara that, she might decide the digestive specialist was demon-influenced. He wasn’t, as far as Belial knew, but he didn’t know the details of every mission currently underway. What he did know was that the boss was intent on staying within the terms of the wager. That meant nothing their side did would put the old woman at risk. He tossed a snare in Viola’s direction.
“Not a thing,” she said.
They had just finished with their last patient and Belial was entering his notes into the computer while Dara pulled clean paper over the exam table. He kept his back to her, hiding the erection that had manifested itself as soon as the patient left the room. Just a glimpse of Dara’s scarred collarbones, or a brush of her hand, was enough to bring him to painful rigidity.
He thanked the stars for the black tape that covered the computer’s camera. If the crew below realized his near-constant state of arousal whenever he was near Dara, he would never hear the end of it.
“What did you prescribe for him?” she asked.
In the two weeks he’d been there, she had never stopped double-checking, even second-guessing, his work. “A beta blocker.”
“Are you sure he wouldn’t have been better off with an ACE inhibitor?”
“Who’s the doctor here?” he asked.
“Who’s the demon here?” she responded.
“If you don’t trust my judgment, have Jeremy double-check my work,” he said over his shoulder.
“Oh, believe me, I will,” she said. “But you’ve been seeing so many patients he’s falling behind.”
“Am I supposed to apologize for being competent at my job?”
“That depends. Which job are we talking about?”
Before he could respond to that, screams sounded from the back hallway. Dara turned pale. She dropped the wad of discarded paper and ran out the door. Belial followed close on her heels.
They reached the kitchen as a pair of student nurses erupted through the doorway, squealing like piglets. The last one out slammed the door shut behind her.
“What’s wrong?” Dara grabbed the closest one by the shoulders.
“Bugs.” The girl was almost hysterical. “Giant bugs.”
He expected Dara to smile in relief, but she flinched. “What kind of bugs?”
“Huge ones,” said one girl.
“Noisy ones,” said another.
“With wings,” said the third.
Dara shuddered.
Belial stifled a laugh. The chaos had allowed his erection to wane. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of bugs.”
She shivered again. “Ugh.”
“Just two weeks ago you dealt with lice without batting an eye.”
“I’ve gotten used to them. I’ve had to, working here. But I draw the line at big, noisy, winged bugs.”
He laughed. This woman who faced down demons without faltering was afraid of bugs.
Now that the girls had stopped shrieking, he recognized the racket coming from the kitchen: locusts. It had been like pushing a boulder up the side of a pyramid to keep Neferhotep from caving in to Moses’s demands when the little beasts had darkened the skies above Thebes. But why would locusts invade the Strong clinic?
As soon as the question formed, he knew the answer: Lilith. That was why she had dropped by tonight. She was making mischief, trying to sow discord so that Dara wouldn’t trust him. When he got home that night, he would do everyone a favor and strangle Lilith.
“Would you like me to take care of them?” he asked.
“Could you?” Dara’s voice was tremulous. For the first time si
nce he’d come to work in the clinic, her defenses were down. It would have been the perfect time to draw her closer if it weren’t for the bevy of students underfoot.
“How in the world did you survive growing up in Florida?” he asked.
She shuddered.
Laughing, he opened the kitchen door a crack and slipped through the opening. From the other side of the window, Dara watched, the students peeking over her shoulders. How best to capture the creatures? He could chase them around as a human would, looking clumsy and foolish in the process. He could summon them to him, but Dara might recognize the demonic method and eject him from the clinic, and her life.
Then he spied a stack of Styrofoam cups beside the coffeemaker. He picked up the entire stack and then threw a tiny snare, bidding the insects to remain where they were. He scooped the nearest bug into the top cup and sealed it in by taking the bottom cup and fitting it inside the top one. He repeated the process eleven more times. Lilith certainly hadn’t stinted on her effort.
The insects reacted to their captivity by ratcheting up their whirring calls until the noise was deafening. Once he had them all confined, he carried the stack of cups outdoors. Dara followed him. He set the cups on the ground and lifted his foot to crush them, but Dara put her hand on his elbow.
“Don’t kill them.”
Her scarred hand on his arm made his flesh tingle. He thought about snaring her to his will. He could sow the idea that she wanted to be in his arms, and in her current state of mind, there she would be. Finally, he would get to experience the pleasures of her body. With regret, he let go of the idea. There was too much at stake to lose the wager over a minor infraction.
“I thought you wanted them gone,” he said.
“I did. I do.” She released his arm. Without her warm hand, his arm felt cold. “But trespassing isn’t a capital offense.”
He knelt on the pavement and unstacked the cups, one by one. The cicadas flew away.
She cleared her throat. “Thank you.” Then, as though she might as well get it over with, she added, “I talked to the doctors that have seen Viola in the past. They agreed with your approach. They said, with all the other things we’ve tried, and with the state of Viola’s esophagus, there was nothing else left to do.”
The Demon Always Wins: Touched by a Demon, Book 1 Page 14
