I shrugged.
“Come on, Matt. Don’t give up now. You’ve spent the last day acting on impulse. What does your gut tell you to do now?”
“Get out before anyone else gets hurt. Maybe Amaya’s right. Maybe Rufus deserves what Asmodeus might do to him.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Might be easier to convince myself of that than fix this mess.” But even as I spoke, thoughts were moving in my head. I reached for my phone, pulled up a number and hit ‘call’. “Go find Amaya. See if she’ll forgive me long enough to help us.”
Erin left and I spoke to Kermit. He wasn’t happy about being woken up and he was less than happy when I told him what I wanted. I let him grumble and carry on about how I wasn’t immortal like a Primal before I made him cough up the goods. I was just finishing up with him when Erin returned, a stiff backed Lila-shaped Amaya behind her.
“What’s the plan?” Erin asked.
“Mad, that’s what it is,” I said. “Amaya, will you help me try to rescue Rufus?”
“That depends. What do you want?”
“Knowledge. How did you cross the boundary?”
Amaya hesitated. “Why do you want to know?”
“Professional curiosity. Everything everyone’s said to me says it’s pretty much impossible without a super-duper powerful human doing the summoning. So?” I left it hanging for Amaya to fill in the blanks.
“Natural fissures occur all the time. I found one and came through.”
“Common belief has it that those fissures are really small. A little imp might get through but nothing else.”
“Tell me why you want to know.”
“Tell me why you don’t want to tell me.”
Erin tapped the butt of her gun.
Amaya sighed. “I don’t want you to know because it might spread and then we’ll have demons aplenty doing the same thing to get here. Neither of us wants that.”
“You can trust us not to go blabbing.” I crossed my heart. “And hope to die. Erin?”
“Who would I tell that would believe me?”
“All right. It’s pretty simple, actually. You find a fissure, even a tiny one will do, so long as you can get a small object through. You have to have two of the objects, as identical you can, and they have to both be imbued with the same power. The more power the better. With one of them on either side of the rift, it’s an easy matter then of calling up the bond between the two objects. The power shift will open the rift wider for a second or two. You pass through and it closes.”
I glanced at Erin. She gave me a you-are-mad-if-you-think-I-understand-that look.
“Perhaps it has something to do with quantum physics,” I said.
“Either way, it works,” Amaya said. “It’s easy, but it takes a lot of power. When I came through, I was very weak. So weak I spent forty years bonded to a very feeble sorcerer in a slum in Delhi. You do not want to know what he made me do.”
“How long have you been here?” Erin asked.
Amaya thought for a moment, doing the math. “A hundred and fifty six years. Now that you know, what do you plan to do?” she asked me.
I told them.
When I had finished, Amaya held her hand out to me and said, “It was interesting knowing you.”
Erin’s expression said pretty much the same thing.
I just shrugged. “Told you it was mad.”
Chapter 40
When the ambulances arrived, Erin distracted them with stories of high teenagers lashing out physically at small, sad fathers while Nick, Amaya and I pretended to be concerned citizens. The paramedics were closed mouthed about the condition of their two patients, but I knew it wasn’t good. If Chris didn’t wake up soon, he’d probably be passed over to Angelshire or one of his colleagues at Mentis. Rufus had absolutely no chance at waking up if I didn’t act quickly.
As the ambulances sped off, wailing, Erin agreed to drop Nick off at the airport on the way out to my place. The drive was silent and tense, mostly I think because we were all lingering on the memory of a succubus doing loop-de-loops and laughing hysterically when she worked out she wasn’t Nick’s slave anymore. He got out of the car at the domestic terminal mumbling something that could have been mistaken for farewell and good luck.
“He misses her,” Erin said as she pulled back into the traffic.
“She only just left,” I said, recalling the long sigh Nick had let out when Amaya, still grinning, had vanished, heading off on her own part of my mad plan.
“That’s not what I mean. He misses Amaya, not Amaymon. They were together for three years. He loves her.”
“No. He commanded her.”
Erin took her gaze off the road long enough to give me a pointed, and probably unintentionally honest, look. “Sometimes love can be very binding.”
“Yeah,” I admitted slowly. “I guess.”
It didn’t take us long to get out to the ‘Cliffe and I was surprised to see Roberts’ car still in the driveway. Erin pulled up beside it and we got out. Next door, Charles and Sue were in the garden, trowels and spades forgotten as they stared at us.
“Great,” I muttered.
“Hi, Erin,” Sue said brightly, waving a dirt streaked gardening glove. “How’s the investigation going?”
Charles scowled at Sue and I scowled at Erin.
“Fine, thanks, Sue,” Erin replied, stalking past me. “Found him.”
“What was that all about?” I asked as I herded Erin inside.
“Don’t be so suspicious,” she snapped. “It was nothing. Sue just agreed to call me if she saw you come home yesterday.”
Whatever response I may have had was knocked on the head and stuffed under the bed when I saw what awaited me in the living room. Namely, Roberts. He was still dressed in the clothes he wore last night, hair skewed by a night on the couch. His arms were crossed, foot tapping and brows furrowed hard enough it was difficult to say if there were two of them or just the one, very angry brow.
“What time do you call this?” he asked, deceptively casual.
I didn’t bother looking at my watch. “Um, very late, dad?”
Roberts pointed to his mobile phone, which sat in a prominent place on the coffee table. “Ever heard of a phone?”
“Sure, but—”
“But nothing, mister! I waited up all night—”
“Well, not all night,” I said, pointing to the discarded blanket on the couch.
“ALL night, worried sick about you. A back burned raw, two demons and no vampire protection. I had no idea if you were dead or alive. A simple phone call, Hawkins. Is it too hard?” Then, as if just realising what was standing right in front of him, he stepped back and eyed us both warily. “What’s he doing up and about? Shouldn’t he be in a hospital?” It was directed more at Erin than me.
Not wanting Erin to have to explain, I said, “Asmodeus healed me. I’m fine and I’m sorry I didn’t call you. Did you ever think to call me, though?”
“I tried,” Roberts said, not exactly calm but at least he had two eyebrows again. “Went straight to message bank.”
When changing clothes I’d simply transferred my phone from one jeans pocket to another without looking at it too closely. I checked it now. Its screen was blank and wouldn’t respond to any amount of poking.
“I think it’s fried,” I said. “Probably happened when Amaya pushed me into the circle barrier.”
Roberts simmered, then snatched the phone out of my hand. “I’ll see what I can do.” Apart from being a booze-pusher and not a morning person, he was a techno-guru. “If the whole thing’s fucked we’ll have to put a new tracer on Mercy, you realise.”
Yay! Not to the potentially fatal issue of putting a new subcutaneous tracker in the vampire, but to the potential new phone without a socially suicidal ring tone. I pretended to be bummed about it so Roberts wouldn’t get suspicious. “What fun. How is the kid?”
“Snoring her little heart out. Ate and zonked.�
��
“How much did you give her?” I asked, not because I didn’t trust Roberts, but because I knew the power of Mercy’s big, brown eyes and super-duper pout.
Roberts concentrated on my phone, taking it apart like some over-excited US Marine dismantling his rifle in record time. “You said two, so I gave her two.”
I headed for the kitchen. “And how many more did she con out of you?”
“Oh, come on, man. She didn’t—” He followed me into the kitchen and saw me reach for the cupboard door that hid the blood fridge. “Three.”
“Three total?” I let my hand linger on the door handle.
“Three more,” he admitted and then muttered something about needing something from his car and disappeared.
“Five whole bags.” I shook my head. All my good work at rationing the blood supply out the window.
“Isn’t that good?” Erin asked from the doorway. “I mean, she’ll need to be strong for your plan.”
I slipped past Erin and went into the garage where I keep my monster fighting equipment. Erin followed me.
“Mercy’s not coming,” I said, checking my stock of paintballs. Enough for several cartridges for the paintball rifle.
Erin sat down on a box and helped me fill the cartridges. “No offence, but your chances without Mercy aren’t that hot.”
“My chances with her there are even colder. You saw her flip out last night. I’d have absolutely no chance of holding her back if she came with us.”
“But isn’t that what you need? No holes bared? Aren’t you stronger when you go berserk?”
“That’s different. Besides, Mercy nearly got whipped going up against one demon. Where we’re going, she’ll have no chance.”
“And you’ll have any sort of chance without her?”
I grimaced. “I’ll have Amaya.”
Erin put down the full cartridge and faced me. “I trust her even less than I would trust Mercy in a mad killing rage. If you don’t bind Amaya, who knows what she’ll do once you get there.”
Snapping a full cartridge to the top of the rifle I aimed at the side of a box and pulled the trigger. Red paint, Holy water and garlic exploded across the cardboard. It looked distressingly like blood dribbling down in a high-impact-splatter pattern. If it hadn’t smelt like garlic, it would have been more convincing.
“I won’t bind Amaya,” I said. “She came here to escape the life of a demon. Nick’s bound her for long enough, I won’t continue it. Besides, I’d rather have her helping me because she wants to, not because she has to.”
Erin sighed and nodded. “I’m not so sure how much she wants to help you, though. I think it’s more guilt than anything else.”
“Hey, at least she has the free will to feel guilty.”
“And you definitely won’t take Mercy?”
I sucked it up and said honestly, “I can’t risk her. Not for something like this.”
Lips pursed, Erin studied me. “And if you don’t come back?”
Packing the filled cartridges into an Army Disposal store knapsack, I said as blandly and dryly as I could, “When she’s asleep through the day, stab her in the heart. It’ll be quick and she’ll never know.”
Erin shook her head, mute with shock.
“I can’t ask Roberts to do it. He’s... he talks tough but that’s all. Big softy. He could never do it.”
“And I could?” she asked, trying for indignation and missing wide.
I met her gaze, let her aura touch mine. She was all smooth chocolate and sweet Moscato. The recklessness was gone, replaced with grim realisation. I didn’t need to say it. She knew it and slowly, she nodded.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
From her back pocket, she pulled a crucifix. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had need of this, but I’ve been carrying it around for the past couple of days. Usually it’s in my car with a bottle of Holy water for, well, vampire emergencies. I don’t know if it will work against demons, but you’re welcome to it.”
She held it out. It was about as long as my hand, made of pewter and looked old. The Christ pinned to the cross looked peaceful. A loop at the top showed where it had once been worn on a necklace. It would have made an awkward pendant.
I don’t know why I took it, but I did and Erin gave me a little smile.
“I’ll bring it back,” I promised.
“I’d appreciate it if you did. It was my mother’s.”
In companionable silence, we finished getting together my weaponry—consisting of the paintball rifle and cartridges, spare mags for the Cougar and, from the kitchen, a measly bag of sea salt—and found Roberts tinkering with my phone in the living room.
“What’s the prognosis?” I asked.
“Not good. You’re going to need a new one. Happily, I’m prepared to deal.”
“We’ll talk when I get back.”
“Where are you going now?” he demanded.
As if on cue, Amaya popped into existence a foot behind Roberts. He yelped and jumped a good meter to the left.
“We,” she said grimly, “are going home.”
“Home?” Roberts asked, looking from her to me to Erin.
I swallowed the not so irrational urge to run away screaming. “Did you get it?”
Expanding her wings slightly, she shook a shower of snow free of her shoulders and held up a midnight black feather. “Right where I left it.”
Eyeing the quickly melting snow, Erin asked, “Which was?”
“Under a rock on top of Mount Everest. I didn’t want to risk anyone finding it.”
“And that’s going to get you home?” Erin wasn’t convinced.
Me? I was absolutely convinced. Even from a couple meters back, I could feel the power in that single feather. It thrummed against my mind like a buzz saw, a deeper, harder resonance than that of Amaya.
Asmodeus. It was almost like he was in the room with us.
“I took it from him when his strength was at its peak,” Amaya said reverentially. “He was glorious, beautiful and terrifying. It was so difficult to remember why I was there, why I had succumbed to his wants. I couldn’t understand why it was wrong to let him do whatever he wanted to me. It was hard, but I managed it. Three times I went to him. Three times I let him use me.”
I shivered at the utter coldness in her tone. “Three times? I thought you would only need two.”
“I did, but imps stole the first feather while I was securing the second, so I had to go back for the third.”
“Just how did you steal feathers from Asmodeus?” Erin asked, her voice strained.
“I let him mistake pain for pleasure.”
Erin stared at her. “Isn’t he your father?”
“Yes, and?”
“Never mind.” Erin backed out of the room and went to the kitchen.
“So,” Roberts said, drawing out the single syllable. “When you say home…?”
Amaya folded her wings around her body. “I mean, my home. The demon realm. Hell.”
“You’re going home,” he said, then turned to me. “And you’re going with her?”
“I have to get Rufus back,” I said.
Roberts shoved his hands in his pockets, sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I always thought you’d end up in Hell. Just didn’t think it would happen quite this way.” He joined Erin in the other room.
“You should listen to what they’re not saying,” Amaya said. “Don’t do this.”
“I can’t let Asmodeus torture Rufus. Listen, Amaya, I’m very grateful you agreed to help me, but if once we’re on the other side, you want to go your own way, that’s fine with me. I know you don’t consider this your fight, so I won’t ask you to.”
Amaya went to the window and parted the curtain a little so she could peer out. “You know there’s an easy way for you to get me to do what you want.”
I sighed. “It’s not about what I want, or even what you want. It’s about what needs to be done, and who can
do it.”
Then I too walked out. I went to Mercy’s room and sat on the edge of her bed. She was sprawled on top of the covers, hair curling across the pillow, mouth open just enough to flash her fangs. There was a smudge of blood on the corner of her mouth and two empty blood bags on the floor.
I brushed hair off her face. “Sleep tight, Merce. I’ll be back soon.”
She didn’t stir.
In my room, I took off William’s clothes and got into my familiar hunting gear: cargo pants, tough shirt and camo jacket. Erin’s mother’s crucifix went onto a chain and hung around my neck. Then I slipped out the back and sat on the old couch on the patio, looking out over the sun drenched canal. Somewhere deep inside, I was screaming desperate denial and I knew I should be listening to it and to Amaya and Roberts. It may have been the dumb ignorance of childhood that saw Rufus’ mother die, but it was the knowing, aware arrogance of near-adulthood that saw Geraldine Davis killed. Pre-meditated murder in no uncertain terms. Any jury would judge him harshly.
Still, I didn’t think any sentence handed down by a judge would be as bad as having his soul tortured in Hell by a Demon Lord with a personal grudge.
I closed my eyes and reached for the seesaw of my psyche. Events of the past eighteen hours combined with no sleep for thirty-six hours meant I was pretty much tapped. The psychic powers were still there, they just wouldn’t pack much of a punch. I didn’t think I’d really need them where we were going—all I foresaw was a lot of violence and name-calling—but I levelled out my Zen seesaw regardless. A calm head never hurt anyone.
Well, except the victims of pre-meditated murder, I guess.
Cool, calm and collected, I went back inside and found Amaya. “Let’s do this wild and crazy thing.”
Amaya blurred into her Lila shape. “Let’s.”
I didn’t bother saying goodbye to Roberts or Erin. They knew what was happening and seeing their disapproving faces would only weigh on one side of the seesaw and I had no extra-happy to balance it with. So human-Amaya and I left in the Monaro, but not before Charles and Sue did a little double take at the awesomely sexy woman I left with, who was not the one I’d arrived with. What do you know? Seems I would have had that extra-happy counterweight after all.
Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei Page 36
