“Stop.” Nick held up his hands. “I can’t take that much in. I’m still trying to deal with the whole my-girlfriend-is-a-demon part.”
“Try dealing with my side of it. I’ve just realised I was happily playing the part of sex slave for two years.”
“Sex slave? How can you say that? I—”
“All right!”
Erin swerved the car onto the side of the road and applied the brakes with more than necessary force. The back of the car fishtailed slightly but she controlled it well and they came to a hasty but safe stop.
“I’ve had it up to here—” She jabbed a hand as high as she could in the car. “—with all these arguments. I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours, I have yet to work out how I’m going to live with a debt to a Demon Lord hanging over my head, I had to watch a friend nearly die last night and I haven’t washed my hair in three days! I have a headache and a gun. I will shoot the next person who picks a fight with someone else.” She glared at Matt. “And that includes you and any demons we might cross paths with, okay?”
It wasn’t really a question but everyone answered with hasty nods and mumbles of agreement.
“Good.”
Erin put the car back in gear and calmly pulled back onto the road. The rest of the drive was silent, broken only by Matt’s directions to their destination.
They all got out of the car and stood in front of a normal looking house on a normal looking street. There were kids playing in front yards, cars pulling out of driveways and dogs barking.
“Who lives here?” Nick asked, risking Erin’s wrath.
“Chris and Rufus Davis,” Erin said, not shooting anyone.
“And Asmodeus,” Matt added.
Amaya shivered. “Asmodeus is here?”
“Yup. Remembering anything?”
She shook her head.
“Nick? Care to help out with that?”
Nick looked between them all. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Amaya’s bound to you. It’s her job to give you anything you want. Before, you wanted the last week to have not happened, and now she can’t remember it. All you have to do is want her to remember it.”
“How do I want something that I don’t even understand?”
Amaya turned around. This street. It was familiar.
Cloaking herself in light, she changed into her true form and sprang into the air.
Leaving behind the confused exclamations of Nick and the others, she soared into the sky. It was a warm day, gloriously so, and bright. She found a current of warmer air rising over the black street. It lifted her higher and, resisting the urge to coast along on it in lazy sweeps, she scanned the street below. It was more familiar from this vantage point. She’d flown over it before.
Banking, she searched the surrounding area, felt a faint tug on her spirit and followed it.
She touched down in front of an empty house a couple of streets over. Resuming her human shape, she let the reflecting light go and walked up to the house.
“Who are you?” a voice asked.
A boy sat on the fence of the neighbouring yard. He wore torn jeans and a hoodie so it covered his face in shadows. A smouldering cigarette dangled between the fingers of his right hand.
“My name’s Amaya. Who are you? Do you live here?” She knew he didn’t. No one lived here.
He slipped off the fence, came a bit closer. “Amaya? That’s a… strange name.”
“Strange or not, it is my name. What’s yours?”
“Hey, do you want to see something really cool?” he asked instead of answering. Tossing aside the cigarette, he headed for the house. “It’s in here.”
Amaya hesitated.
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing dangerous. The house is empty. Come on, it’s really cool.”
She followed him in, not quite sure why.
He lead her into the family room, a large area bare of any furniture or decoration. The floor was tiled and on them was marked a summoning circle.
“Get in the circle, Amaymon.”
Amaya shook her head, willing her legs not to move even as every bone in her body tried to do as he said.
“Amaymon.” He threw back the hood. “I command you to get into the circle.”
The façade of her human shape faltered. Her wings struggled through and fell heavily from her back.
Her summoner lifted his mutilated left hand and pointed to the circle, his burned face stern. “Get in there.”
Amaya slunk into the circle and crumpled to her knees, the final elements of her disguise disappearing.
He walked around the circle, dropping blood from a cut on his arm onto the six points. Power was wrenched from her spirit and the circle snapped closed.
“What happened to you?” he demanded. “Did you get Hawkins or not?”
Hawkins. Matt. Everything Erin had said about her missing memories was suddenly all there, fresh and bright in her head.
“Answer your master!”
“No. I didn’t get him. He had protection.”
The young man growled. “How hard could it have been? My God, Amaymon, you’re a demon. He’s just a man—”
“A man with more knowledge than you! Don’t you get it yet? You’re not some mighty demon summoner. You got lucky, that’s all. No, not lucky. You got very unlucky. Do you know who gave you my name? Lucifer. Demon King of Hell. You’re being used. You’re not in charge here. You’re the child who found a gun and thinks it’s a toy. You think you’ve got power when all you’ve got is a complex and a grudge.”
Her summoner paced back and forth, hands clenching and unclenching. “A child,” he muttered. “She calls me a child when I’ve killed a person.”
“You didn’t kill anyone. I did. You made me do it.”
He screamed something unintelligible, then shouted, “No! I have killed someone. I killed my mother. I made her crash the car into a truck. Don’t you get it? I look like this because she wouldn’t get me the new PlayStation. I hated her and I made her hit that truck.” He shoved his ruined face so close to the barrier it sparked with the proximity of his wild power. “No one can look at me without being disgusted. Everyone is horrified or they pity me and they either can’t look at me or they can’t stop looking. Even my dad. Especially him. But not Gerry. She was the only one who didn’t care about this, but then I learned why she didn’t care about how I looked. It was because she didn’t care about me. I asked her to stop what she was doing, I pleaded with her. She didn’t though. She didn’t care enough to worry about what I wanted. She wouldn’t listen to me when I told her what Asmodeus really wanted so I made sure she couldn’t keep doing it.”
His voice had quietened during his tirade and the last came out as a weary whisper. He stepped back from the circle, hands fidgeting at his sides, gaze roving around the room.
“And now I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d miss her like this. I didn’t think I’d feel like this. I didn’t…”
“Think, period.”
A man stood in the doorway. He was short and round and had about the saddest face Amaya had ever seen. Her summoner turned to him.
“Dad.” His back straightened. “How did you find me?”
“I’m sure the whole neighbourhood knows you’re here, Rufus. What were you thinking, shouting like that? It’s a wonder Hawkins isn’t here right now taking you out.”
Rufus scowled. “Brad and Ivan should never have brought him into this. Everything would be fine now if not for him.”
“No, son, everything wouldn’t be all right. Your stepmother would still be dead and you would still be her murderer.”
“I had to stop her.” A desperate pleading note entered Rufus’ voice. “She was going to destroy the world if she kept going. Don’t you understand that?”
Chris Davis came further into the room. He glanced at Amaya and his eyes flashed intense blue, a small, intimately familiar smile curling his lips before he turned back to Rufus.
“Rufus,” Amaya said. “Don’t listen to him. It’s not your father.” It was hers.
Rufus looked between them even as he backed away from the advancing man. He was scared now, eyes wide, arms shaking.
“She’s a demon, son. You can’t trust her. I am your father. And I’ll protect you from her and Hawkins.” Asmodeus lifted his stolen arms out to the boy. “Come with me and we’ll sort this all out.”
“No,” Amaya shouted. “Don’t do it, Rufus.”
Trembling, Rufus studied the man. All traces of Asmodeus were gone. He was just a small, worried father, trying to reach out to his son.
Rufus took a step toward Asmodeus.
“Stop!”
Hawkins skidded to a stop just inside the room. Erin was a step behind, her gun out and trained on Asmodeus.
Asmodeus snarled. “Damn you, Hawkins.”
Chris fell to the floor, leaving behind the blue spirit of the Demon Lord. It twisted into a tight coil and sprang across the room at Hawkins.
“Don’t,” Amaya yelled, but it was too late.
Hawkins and Erin dodged to either side, losing precious seconds and sight of Asmodeus’ real target. The spirit changed trajectory in mid-flight and arrowed back for Rufus. The boy watched it come, stunned into immobility.
“Move!” But again Amaya’s warning wasn’t fast enough.
Asmodeus roared into Rufus. The boy convulsed, gurgling a scream. The blue spirit emerged from his back, trailing a multi-coloured mist which he enclosed in his own presence. Then the Demon Lord vanished.
Rufus, slack jawed, collapsed.
Chapter 39
“He’s alive,” Erin announced. She knelt by Chris.
“So’s Rufus,” I said, checking the boy’s neck for injuries before rolling him over. “Out cold, though.”
“Not unconscious.” Amaya sat in the circle still, even though the power that had trapped her was gone.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Asmodeus took him.”
I looked at the boy on the floor.
“His soul,” Amaya clarified softly. “Asmodeus took it.”
“What?” Erin went horribly pale.
“You interrupted him before he could kill Rufus, so he took his soul. They’ll be back in our realm now and Asmodeus will be torturing him. He’s done it before.”
Nick leaned in the doorway. “My God.”
“No closer,” I warned him. “I need Amaya clear headed now.”
“She won’t try to kill you anymore?”
From Nick’s tone, I wasn’t sure which way he was swinging on the answer.
“The bond between me and Rufus was broken the moment he crossed into Hell, the demon realm,” Amaya said. “You’re the only one with any control of me now.”
“Well, I don’t want it anymore. I can’t handle this. You’re free, Amaya. I’ll be in the car whenever you’re ready to go,” he said to Erin, deciding she must be about the most normal person present. “And if I could get a lift to the airport, I’d like to go home, too.”
Nick left. In her corner, Amaya heaved a big sigh.
“You’re really free?” I asked.
“I think so. I’d have to get close to him again to be sure.”
“No, ah, homicidal urges?”
Amaya gave me a tight smile. “Not yet.”
“What exactly happened here, Amaya?” I straightened out Rufus’ limbs, made sure there were no other injuries and then went to check Chris. Not that I didn’t trust Erin, but I had more medical training than she did. She sat back and let me do my stuff.
“Rufus was my summoner,” Amaya said sadly.
“We figured that one out. Did he say why he did it?”
Amaya gave us an almost verbatim replay of what had happened when she left us outside the Davis house.
“How did you find us?” she asked, coming out of the corner and shifting into her Lila appearance.
A little uncomfortable, I stood and went to study the circle. It wasn’t an obvious avoidance, but I’m sure it wasn’t missed by anyone in the room—well, by anyone who was conscious.
“I felt the power when he sparked the circle and followed it here.”
“Sniffed you out like a hound dog,” Erin supplied. “Poor Rufus. Thinking he killed his mother.”
“Maybe he did,” I said.
Erin glared at me, reminding me of the day in the hospital when she’d almost pried one of the few secrets of my past she didn’t know out of me. Rufus had been the cause of the accident that killed his mother. He’d had to live with that knowledge for half of his life, bearing the results on his body and in his soul. I understood the rotten sourness of his aura now; and I had finally found something he and I could relate on.
Erin’s glare dissipated as she watched me and not for the first time, I resented how well she knew me. How could a man remain mysterious and cool if someone knew all the worst bits of his dark soul?
Doing what I could to distance myself from bad memories, I said, “All I’m saying is he’s got power. Might not be your classic psychic power but it’s something and it’s strong. Maybe he did influence his mother. He was a child, he would have had no idea of what he was doing or the consequences of it.”
“He wasn’t a child when he commanded me to kill his stepmother, though,” Amaya said. “He was well aware of the consequences.”
“I think in this case he probably believed the consequences were worth it. He was stopping Asmodeus from installing himself as Demon King of my realm.” Was that anger creeping into my voice? Given that I was getting a bit angry, I’d say so.
“And that makes murder okay, does it?” Lila… Amaya stamped a foot so hard it was a wonder the tiles didn’t crack.
“No it doesn’t, but I understand his reasoning and agree with his sentiment, if not his solution to the problem. Asmodeus needed stopping and Gerry didn’t realise that until it was too late. It was too late for Karl Roeben. He’s going to have to live for the rest of his life with the memory of having a demon in his head, controlling him.”
“And I don’t have to live for another couple thousand years with the countless memories of various humans controlling me?”
“This isn’t about you! It’s about that boy Asmodeus is torturing right now.”
“That boy is a murderer.”
“And your summoner. That’s what you’re most pissed about, isn’t it. That you were caught and bound by a sixteen year old kid with pimples and a fixation on emo rebellion.”
“At least he had the balls to summon me,” Amaya snarled.
“At least I didn’t pretend to be something I’m not!”
“When will it get into your thick head? I had no choice. I had to do that.”
“No, you didn’t. You only had to kill me. You didn’t have to seduce me. You didn’t have to give me anything I wanted or did you forget that I never bound you?”
“I was trying to kill you but—”
“You didn’t have to throw Erin off a fucking overpass.” It came out deadly quiet. I hadn’t meant to say it.
Amaya hadn’t been expecting me to say it. She took it like a fist in the gut.
The click-clack of Erin chambering a round was thunderous in the silence.
“Did neither of you hear what I said in the car?” she asked, also threateningly soft. “Nothing has happened to alleviate my headache. Unless both of you want to be picking bullets out of your kneecaps, shut the hell up.”
Amaya gave in first. She spun around and stalked out of the room.
When she was out of the house, I let out a long, pent up breath. It didn’t do much to cool my head, but it fooled Erin at least.
“Right.” Erin holstered her gun. “At the risk of sounding like a parrot with amnesia, what now?”
“Get an ambulance here for these two,” I said. “Hopefully Chris will be okay. He wasn’t possessed as long as Karl. That can only work in his favour.”
“And Rufus?”
<
br /> I crouched by the boy. Now that I was calming down, I could feel it. Or rather, not feel it. He wasn’t there. That rough aura I’d brushed the day I met him was gone.
“You really understand why he did it?” Erin asked.
“Yeah. He honestly thought he was doing something right.”
“No. I meant about his mother.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” whispered in my mind, and I wouldn’t break that promise. I wouldn’t tell anyone her part in it, at least.
“When I was sixteen, my uncle did something I couldn’t…” I let out a long, steadying breath. “He did something bad. Very bad. I found him at it and I lost it. It wasn’t the first time I went berserk but it was the worst, at that point. You thought what I did at Kirby’s was bad, but this went beyond that.”
Erin caught her breath and I could almost feel the progress we’d made this morning evaporating like the first drops of rain on a boiling hot road. I’d started and it wouldn’t stop, though.
“He lived. My mum managed to talk my aunt out of pressing charges, but it split the family forever and even my parents couldn’t really forgive me.”
“You didn’t tell them what he’d done?”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“No. I’d done enough damage already. You want to know why I lost faith in God and religion? It wasn’t because of science. It was because after what happened with my uncle, our priest refused to have me in his church. He said I was evil. I didn’t even get the excuse of being possessed. I was evil, plain and simple. For a while I believed him.” Running a hand back through my hair, I shook off the bad memories and said, “That’s why I understand Rufus. He couldn’t control himself and something terrible resulted. Objectively, he wasn’t at fault, but it’s hard to look at something objectively when you’re slap damn in the middle of it.”
Erin was quiet for a while, then she touched my shoulder quickly, lightly. “How do we get him back?”
I let out a small, relieved sigh. She wasn’t running away, screaming ‘monster!’ Was that why I kept telling her things I shouldn’t? Because she could still see me beyond all these horrible truths?
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Would Kermit know?”
Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei Page 35
