Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei

by L. J. Hayward

  There was a touch of something dark in Lila’s tone, but she continued before I could question it.

  “It has a second purpose as well. Anything created of the demon’s power is linked to its spirit. If the demon attacks the barrier, it will hurt itself along with the summoner. The threat of pain keeps the demon complacent. Mostly.”

  I swallowed the lump of unease in my throat. “Wild animals will chew off their own leg to get free of a trap.”

  “And humans will chop of a limb with a switchblade to do the same. That’s why I said ‘mostly’.”

  A jogger glanced at us curiously as he went past. We must have looked strange, in our casual attire, leaning over a picnic table at South Bank covered in papers sporting demon summoning instructions. Middle class Satan worshippers.

  To one side sat the remains of my, once again, late lunch and a half drunk skinny-mocha-vanilla-half-strength-latte with no foam and extra chocolate sprinkles—or something. The drink was there before we were, I swear.

  “Is there any way I can guarantee the demon won’t risk the pain and break free?”

  “Sure. Be stronger than it is. Simple.”

  Right. Simple. Kermit seemed to think I was a serious contender—his quip about the ‘Primal’ thing hadn’t wandered far from my thoughts—but he also said I wasn’t strong enough to manage this.

  Contemplating the papers and everything Lila just said, I was impressed. “I really appreciate this. You must have done a lot of research to get it all.”

  “Not as much as you’d think.” Lila sat down and smoothed out the paper with the diagram on it. The action looked nervous. “When do you plan to do this?”

  I stroked her hair. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”

  She glared at me. “You can’t promise me that. Let me be with you when you do it. If anything goes wrong, I might be able to help.”

  “Or get hurt. No, Lila. I’ve already said I don’t want you there.”

  “But—”

  “Listen, I know you don’t believe me about this demon being real. You still think this is just a part of my overactive imagination.”

  She began to shake her head. I caught her face between my hands and stilled it.

  “This thing is very real. It’s already put one friend in hospital. I won’t risk you as well. Trust me, I have a failsafe of my own.”

  Sapphire eyes glimmering with tears, she nodded. “I trust that you do.”

  “Good. Now, is there anything else I need?”

  Lila took a moment to gather herself, then said, “The demon’s name.”

  “Check.”

  She grabbed my arm in a tight hold. “You know its name?”

  “I’ve got a name.”

  “What is it?”

  Heeding Kermit’s warning, I said, “Probably best I don’t mention it. Just in case.”

  “Why? You won’t let me be there with you. Why can’t I know who you’ll be summoning? And don’t go yabbering on about my safety. Why won’t you tell me?”

  Gone was the seductress. In her place was the fierce, liberated woman. Only one way to respond to that.

  I gathered up the drawings and rolled them into a tight tube. “Because.” I leaned down, kissed her angry lips and then made a strategic retreat. “Got an appointment, babe. Trust me. I’ll be fine.”

  She didn’t chase me down, which was a relief and a worry. I didn’t particularly feel like a public fight but a token curse or two would have let me know she cared.

  At the bike, I checked my phone again. No more calls from Erin. Definitely no message. I suppose I could have called her, but things concerning Erin were still a little weird. For me at least. My brain knew it had been the demon the night before, but there were other parts of me that could only recall Erin’s voice, her eyes, her lips, her… ah hem. Yes. So, things were still a touch uppity regarding all that. I didn’t trust myself to not make a fool of myself should I have to talk to her. Avoidance was a good thing.

  Instead, I rode on over to the north side of the river and to a relatively new building on the riverside at Hamilton. Planned as an all in one office, shopping and day care complex, the place hadn’t filled up as quickly as its investors would have liked and as a consequence, a lot of the office space was being offered at less than market value. Something I’m sure wouldn’t have bothered Gerry Davis much, since she was sitting on a minor mountain of cash. But the fact the building was largely empty probably played a big part.

  I’d called ahead and after several rings, the phone had diverted to the front desk. The building receptionist had all but jumped through the phone line the moment I mentioned my ‘investigation’, inviting me to come and view the offices whenever I wanted. Hardly professional, but lucky for me.

  “Let me guess, Matt Hawkins,” greeted me as I walked into the foyer.

  The speaker looked as if he would have to lie about his age to get into a nightclub. He could have been no more than seventeen years old, with several proud and defiant pimples on his chin and a mop of hair any emo worth their black boots would have been proud of. The faux security guard get up completed the ‘what’s wrong with this picture?’ picture.

  “Deiter?”

  Deiter grinned. “Yup.”

  “How did you know who I was?”

  “Dude!” Said with all the confidence of his age and the disbelief that there could possibly be any reason to question his certainty. “This place is like a crypt, man. We don’t get any visitors.”

  “You said I could look at the offices on the sixth floor.”

  “No problem. Look, I can’t leave my post.” He patted the top of the counter he sat behind. “I’ll buzz you up, though. Stay as long as you want and if you have any questions, just call down. I know everything that goes on in here. But if my uncle asks you what you’re doing, don’t let him know I’m helping your investigation. He’s not very cool like that.”

  “Your uncle?”

  “The building manager. He got me this job. If I screw up just once, he reckons he’s gonna kick me out.”

  “Yet you’re willing to let me into a closed office.”

  “Why not. Nothing else ever happens around here. The elevator will take you up to the sixth floor. I’ll watch you here.” He proudly showed off a bank of small screens showing black and white images of the building. He was right. The place looked empty. “When you’re at the door, I’ll buzz you in.”

  “Thanks.”

  A little concerned Deiter would be watching me, I took the elevator up to the sixth floor. The halls were deserted, humming with the soft whir of the air conditioning and faint music. Pan pipes. Sheesh.

  I found Gerry and Karl’s office and I’d done little more than pause before it when the lock clicked. Glancing over my shoulder revealed a black dome on the ceiling across the hall. I waved to Deiter and opened the door.

  Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any cameras in the office space. And when I say office space, I mean a warren of tiny rooms linked by a random seeming placement of doors. Wandering through them revealed a tiny tea room, bar fridge still stocked with out of date yogurt, a wrinkled apple and a dribble of milk in the bottom of the bottle. The next three rooms were filled with towering servers, extra cooling units and a row of impressive looking computers. All of it seemed to be turned off, though one screen blinked through a generic screen saver of picturesque views from around the world. I nudged the mouse and the screen saver disappeared. The screen sat on the prompt for the C drive, cursor blinking next to a short message that simply read ‘no files available’.

  Most tellingly, the chair in front of the computer was knocked over and broken, like someone had stomped on it. Generally, only folks angry at finding no files brutalised office furniture.

  Someone had been here looking for Gerry’s research already. I wondered if I wasn’t the first person Deiter had let in on the sly.

  Moving past the computer, I entered the last room.

  Well, well. Fuck.

>   Have to admit the last thing I expected to find was a life sized version of the circle Lila had just drawn for me. But there it was.

  The carpet had been pulled back to reveal the bare floor. The summoning circle was perfect, as I would expect from someone like Gerry. No messily drawn circle that was more oblong than round, no smudge marks, nothing to indicate this had been a hasty thing.

  Crouching down, I studied the circle in more detail. It had been drawn in blue chalk and at the points of the hexagram were brown, flaking stains. Dried blood.

  Great. Had Gerry and Karl summoned Asmodeus? If so, it had gone wrong and poor Karl suffered for it. Of course, now I had to find out why they would want to summon a Demon Lord. What could a pair of physicists want with a demon? Or perhaps they didn’t want a demon. Perhaps they just wanted to prove they could do it. The biggest prize in the scientific world—proving other dimensions existed alongside ours.

  “Holy cow,” I muttered.

  But even as I stood, I knew that wasn’t the whole answer. They may have accidentally let Karl get possessed, but why would someone else then summon another demon to kill Gerry? Apart from being drawn into Gerry and Karl’s circle, what was Asmodeus doing here? He could have left Karl at any time, but instead he had to be evicted against his will and even then, still hung around because he said he had stuff to do. What stuff? Was his summoning not purely a means to prove a theory?

  Argh!

  I’d hoped to find some definitive answers here, but all I got was a headache.

  Turning to leave, I spied something in the corner by the door. I picked it up and my guts churned.

  Headache with a side order of aneurism for Mr Hawkins.

  In the foyer I stopped by Deiter’s little domain.

  “Get what you need?” he asked cheerfully.

  “And a bit more besides.” I put my find on the counter in front of him. “Do you recognise this?”

  “It’s a Red Socks cap.”

  “Ever seen it before? Say on the head of someone going up to the offices on the sixth floor?”

  Deiter screwed up his face. “Maybe.”

  “Think, Deiter. You could blow my case wide open if you can remember who was wearing this cap.”

  “Well, I didn’t see his face. The cap was too low, right.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Skinny, ‘bout my height, maybe a bit taller, walked all hunched up and his hands in his pockets. Totally ignored me.”

  I took a calming breath. “When was this?”

  “’Round about a week ago.”

  “Thanks.”

  Cap crushed in a death grip I left the building. Of course, the cap wearer could have been anyone, but odds were he wasn’t just anyone. A week ago was just after Gerry died. The time Chris said Rufus had gone missing.

  Shit.

  Chapter 30

  Chris wasn’t answering his phone. I roared on out to Rocklea and he wasn’t home, either. Neither was Rufus.

  I sat on the bike and tried to work out what the fuck was going on. Chris had lied to me. At least, he hadn’t told me everything. Rufus was keeping big fat facts to himself as well. None of that screamed complete innocence to me.

  I called Erin’s office.

  “Hello, Sol Investigations. Ivan speaking.”

  “Ivan, it’s Matt. You sound like shit.”

  Ivan sighed into the phone. “I feel like shit. Did Erin catch up with you?”

  “Not yet. What does she want?”

  “She thinks you’re incapable of finding out who killed Gerry.”

  I snorted. “Listen, I’m not after Erin. I’m trying to find Chris and Rufus. Chris isn’t answering his phone and neither of them are home. Any ideas?”

  “Um, not really. Brad might have a clue.”

  “Can you call Brad and get him to call me with any ideas he might have. This is important.”

  “Are they in trouble?”

  If I caught them they very well could be. “Maybe. Can you call Brad?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good, if you could do that right now, I’d be really appreciative.”

  He said he would and I hung up. While I waited for the call, I considered my options. It was just after four, still three hours to full sunset. A whole heap of time I could be doing stuff before Mercy got up and could... What? Go bonkers and try to kill me again? Or worse?

  I had to stop thinking I could rely on Mercy at the moment. But the truth was, the vague plan forming up in the back of my head wouldn’t work without her. She was too integral to my thinking processes these days. Without her, Night Call would just be some idiot in a black car with high ideals about himself.

  Pushing aside thoughts of Mercy, I considered what it left me with. Not a lot, truth be told. Unless Brad could pinpoint his uncle and cousin I had little hope of finding them.

  Wow. Without Mercy, I was pretty useless. Scary thought.

  Of course, I could give in and deal with Erin. I had to eventually talk to her, didn’t I. Still, I didn’t feel like having the confrontation over the phone and I didn’t think I should just leave the Davis house unwatched. They could come home at any time and I wanted to be here. I settled in to wait.

  “About time,” I muttered when Brad finally called.

  “Sorry, but when Ivan said what you wanted, I did a bit of a search myself. Chris isn’t at home.”

  Glancing at the closed up house, I said, “I figured.”

  “And he’s not at work either. Rufus was at school today and left at three.”

  An hour for him to have got home, surely more than enough time. Curse rebellious teenagers.

  “Any places you can think of Rufus might go after school? A friend’s house, a park, anything?”

  “I’m not that close to Rufus,” Brad said. “But Chris does play lawn bowls.”

  I should have guessed. Brad gave me what he thought was the name of the greens where his uncle played. Wishing Roberts would just give in and fix my phone, I stopped at a convenience store and asked for directions. I lucked onto a lady who was quite the bowls enthusiast and left with several greens to check out within easy reach of Chris’ place. It took two hours to cover them all and make sure Chris wasn’t at any of them. By the time I’d ruled them out, I had resigned myself to not finding either of them on my own.

  Right now, my best bet was probably to continue with my original plan for the night. Tonight was, of course, the last night of leniency my personal demon had from her boss. Tonight, she would be after me with all of her determination.

  I called Roberts.

  “Long time,” he said in greeting. “Was starting to think some vamp had finally kicked your arse for you.”

  That one hit a little close for comfort, so I said in a derisive, totally compensating manner, “Not likely. Are you free tonight?”

  “Let me check my social calendar. Nope, nothing. What’s the fun planned for tonight? Should I wear galoshes?”

  “Don’t rule it out.”

  While he moaned and groaned I filled him in on what I wanted him to do. Once he found out, he agreed readily enough, on one condition.

  “If my car gets messed up you’re paying for a complete detailing.”

  “All you’re doing is picking up a few things for me. How’s your car going to get messed up? Oh, that’s right. You’ll be driving.”

  “Yeah, you’re real funny. And what will you be doing while I’m running your errands?”

  “I’ll be picking up a few other things.” I gave him the address for where we’d meet and hung up.

  By the time I reached Dutton Park Cemetery, it was close to full dark. I called Kermit from the entrance to the cemetery so he was waiting for me when I arrived at his clearing.

  “What now?” he demanded testily. “I was in the middle of dinner.”

  Somehow, he’d managed to get himself a hoodie, a fresh one, not one taken from some tragically hip dead body. He kept in the shadows of the scrub, looking around nervou
sly, making sure his hood was pulled as far forward as possible. He looked like Batman, his ear tips making two pointed peaks on either side of his head.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said, with unusual amounts of consideration. “We’re friends, right. The sort of friends who do favours for each other.”

  Kermit stopped searching the growing dark and settled for staring at me. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing much. Just wondering if you wanted to get out of the cemetery for a bit. You know, see some new sights, have ride on the Moto Guzzi, feel the wind in your... ears, maybe help me talk to a demon, get some take out, see the sights from Mount Coot-tha.”

  The ghoul took a startled step back. “Did you just... ask me out on a date?”

  I gaped at him. “Oh, fuck no. I need something, shit, I mean someone to put a demon spirit into while I talk to it. Jeez, Kermit.”

  “But what about the rest of it? The ride, the site seeing, the dinner. You weren’t actually going to go through with that if I agreed?”

  Doing my best not reach for my gun, I said, “If we did all those things, would you help with the other thing?”

  “Hell no.”

  I gritted my teeth against the need to growl. “Then why go on about it?”

  “To see how serious you were. And you are serious.” He held up a long, four fingered hand to keep me away. “After everything I said yesterday you have the nerve to come and ask me this.”

  “Listen, Afzal, I understand what it would mean for you to agree to do this. I wouldn’t ask unless I had no other option. And hey, you do this for me, and I’ll be so much closer to getting rid of these demons and you can go back to your usual life.” Not that I could see much difference in how he lived, unless being even more obnoxious counted. Which, I suppose, it did. At least I never had to treat him like a princess before.

  “No way, little man. Not on your willy.”

  I winced. “Nelly, Kermit. It’s not on your nelly.”

  “Well, not on that either. I don’t owe you anything.”