Inner Demon

by Jocelynn Drake

  When I was sure I had my bearings again, I opened my eyes and pushed away from the fence to stand on my own. My cloaking spell was gone, and I just didn’t have the strength to put it back into place. I was still using the energy I had pulled in to heal my damaged body.

  “What the hell was he?” I demanded, starting to slowly walk toward Gideon. I prayed that the neighbors didn’t pick that exact moment to look out their windows. Of course, I seriously doubted that anyone in this neighborhood frequented my parlor, but then I was taking enough chances in life, I didn’t need to add to my troubles.

  Gideon straightened, his eyes slipping back to the swing set. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him long enough to recognize any distinguishing traits. I also didn’t sense anything in his magic use that would have identified him. Did you?”

  “No,” I grumbled.

  Frustration was building. If I had finished my schooling in the Towers, I might have been able to recognize what the bastard was, but my knowledge was considerably lacking. As it was, I could only recognize most creatures if I’d met them in the past.

  Raking my fingers through my hair with a groan, I turned back toward the house. “On the plus side, I don’t think he’s planning to leave town. He mentioned having a surprise, a final triumph that he wanted me to witness. He’s sticking around to perform his final show here.”

  “Wonderful,” Gideon muttered. “Did he mention what exactly that would be?”

  “Nope.”

  “He give you an address of where he was staying?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I guess we do some digging here before I report back to the council,” Gideon said as he turned back toward the door he had exited minutes earlier.

  “Why report back? We don’t know who or what this asshole is. We also don’t know what he’s planning.”

  “True, but they need to know if something bad is about to happen. We can call in more guardians to search the area.”

  “Is that really a good idea? Do we want more witches and warlocks running loose in Low Town? How many ­people do you think they’ll slaughter in their so-­called search for this prick? A few hundred?”

  “And what choice do we have?” Gideon shouted back at me, throwing the door open. “I don’t like the idea of it any better than you, but this guy has to be stopped before he opens up hell beneath us all.”

  And maybe that’s exactly what this asshole was planning to do if he was hoping to free Lilith. I shook my head. “We’ve got to figure out what this guy is and what his plans are before we tell the Towers. We saw what the guardians did to Indianapolis when they felt threatened. They’ll do it all over again, but this time it’ll be Low Town that’s a smoldering pile of rubble.”

  The warlock stood in the open doorway with his back to me, his head lowered. We were trapped. We needed more help, but the Ivory Towers’ preference for blowing things away and asking questions when the smoke cleared would result in too many deaths and not enough answers.

  “Let’s look around the house and do some more digging,” I said calmly, trying my best to sound reasonable rather than desperate. “Something helpful might be found in there, giving us an edge that we didn’t have before.” Anything so we didn’t have to call in more warlocks and witches.

  It was with considerable reluctance that Gideon nodded his head and continued into the house. I followed behind him, clinging to what little hope I could muster that we might actually get ahead of this prick and stop him before the Towers leveled Low Town.

  What we found didn’t help our cause.

  Chapter 6

  After a quick search through the ground level, where we found nothing, we descended the stairs into what appeared to be a family room and play area for the kids of the house. As with the other sites, the psychopath had been kind enough to leave behind some bodies in the basement. The only thing different was that he’d changed his style of murder, which left me torn between crying and wanting to level the city myself.

  In the center of the family room, we found children tied back to back in a pair of wooden dining-­room chairs. The little boy looked to be about four years old and the girl was six or seven. It was easier to guess because they both still had their heads. The fucker had punched into their chests and ripped their hearts out.

  Their young faces were still streaked with tears from where they had cried for their parents before being murdered. Their horror was a palpable thing, seeming to suck the oxygen from the air. Where were their parents through this? Had the children been forced to watch their parents being murdered before they finally met their own grisly end? Or was it the other way around?

  Gideon cleared his throat, dragging his gaze away from the tortured pair. “No writing this time.” His voice was rough and I pitied my companion. Sometimes I could almost understand the Towers’ edict against warlocks and witches having children. Bridgette had to be on Gideon’s mind, haunting him while he stood in the blood of children so close to her age.

  “He’s not experimenting anymore,” I murmured, trying to find my own voice through the sadness and rage.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “He knows what he’s doing now. I think he perfected what he was attempting with the vampires.”

  “Then why do this?” I waved a hand at the two children, starting to lose my grip on my temper.

  “To get our attention. To taunt us. To bring us out so that we could finally meet, letting him show us that he’s not afraid of the Towers.”

  I sighed, rubbing my head as I turned away from the kids to trudge back up the stairs. “The Ivory Towers have pissed off every race on this planet. You care to take a guess as to which one has figured out how take on the Towers and win?”

  Gideon followed me up the stairs to the kitchen. The room was nearly spotless. There were a ­couple glasses and a plate with bread crumbs in the sink. A roast was defrosting on the counter. Someone had planned ahead for dinner that night. Our killer hadn’t resided in this house. No, he’d just stopped by to kill the kids so that we could meet at last.

  “You think there’s a reason he chose this house?” I asked, turning around the island in the center of the room to face Gideon. “I mean, he took some risks coming here in the middle of the day. ­People would have noticed someone strange in the neighborhood.”

  “Possibly. Of course, he could have been using a cloaking spell just like you.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, but I don’t sense any of the magic residue from him like I did at the first location.”

  Pulling out his wand, Gideon started for the front of the house. “Let’s finish our search. The owners are around here somewhere.”

  I hope they’re dead. It sounded horrible in my head when I thought it, but I really didn’t think they’d want to know how their children died or why.

  I got my wish, but there was a price for that. We found the parents on the second floor, but one look at them confirmed that our killer now had a partner. The bitch who had been stalking pregnant women had been here and worked her horrific skills on the parents.

  The parents were found in a nursery. The husband was tied to the rails of the baby bed while the wife was across from him, leaned up against the dresser. She had been killed in the usual way; stabbed in the chest and slashed across the stomach. However, judging by the blood crusted to the man’s wrists and the broken rails, he had been forced to watch the death of his wife before our killer took him out with a long cut across the throat. His death had been slower.

  Looking at how the two victims were arranged so that they could clearly see each other, I was sure that this murder had been personal for our female psychopath. In all the other deaths, they had been terrible but relatively quick and completed in secrecy, taking limited risks. She picked the location, not the white-­haired weirdo.

  “They found each other,” Gideon said emotionlessly from behind
me.

  What he meant to say was, We’re fucked.

  “Tell the council,” I said past the lump in my throat. Something big and nasty was bearing down on Low Town and we needed help. “Just try to keep them from destroying the city.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Shaking my head, I stepped around Gideon and started back toward the first floor. “I’ve got to call Serah. She might be able to figure something out that we haven’t thought of.”

  “You think?” Gideon asked skeptically, following me down the stairs.

  “I’m telling your wife you said that. Humans are pretty damn resourceful and you know it.”

  “True,” he conceded, sounding more tired with each passing minute. This investigation was wearing us both down.

  “I really doubt that we’ll be able to track the magic user, but the woman chose this place. Serah might be able to pull some info out of the cops that would allow us to track down the other killer.”

  “Agreed.”

  Gideon went quickly around the house and into the backyard, wiping away any evidence that we had been there, while I stepped outside under a cloaking spell to call 911 to report screams and a strange man at this address. The second call was to Serah to tell her the whole story.

  As I pulled up her number in my cell phone, I hesitated. She’d been warned away from this case. If she kept pushing, she would lose her job. And yet, I still completed the call, because she wasn’t the type to walk away. I’d met few ­people more determined or tenacious than she. Serah was not going to stop until the killer was caught and dragged in front of a judge.

  With the scene reset to look as if we hadn’t been mucking about the place, Gideon disappeared. I could only assume that the warlock was heading to one of the Ivory Towers to report to the council. I dreaded the idea of more witches and warlocks getting involved in this hunt for a madman, but Gideon and I were a step behind and outgunned when it came to taking these assholes down. We needed help, but I was afraid that we were getting the wrong kind. I wanted someone to act with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel, not a five-­year-­old with a chainsaw and too much sugar.

  I hesitated, trying to decide where to go. It was with some disgust that I found myself standing in what had been Simon’s rooms within the Dresden Tower. I at least had the excuse of wanting to pick up my coat, but as I stood there holding it in my fists, I knew that the truth was that I didn’t want to go back to Asylum. There was too much unsettled business between Trixie and me, but I didn’t have any new answers for her.

  Throwing the jacket down, I slumped in a chair with my head in my hands. Zyrus danced around me, excited by the scent of death clinging to me like a second skin. In my desperation, I even tried asking the demon if it knew what I was up against, but Zyrus was unable to help. It recognized the magic as Death Magic, but it didn’t know who had cast the spell or even why.

  Shoving myself out of the chair in frustration, I paced over to the bookshelf on the far wall, but I didn’t pull anything down. What creature existed now that might be old enough to know what Death Magic was? What creature would be powerful enough to use it as well as have a vendetta against the Towers? The Dark Elves? Definitely, but that man didn’t look anything like a dark elf. His hair made him similar to the Winter Court, but that was the only similarity between them. The stranger’s features had been softer, more rounded than the Winter Court elves.

  My mind kept going back to the first trip Gideon and I took to investigate the magical disturbance. The magic we had sensed there had been different. Extremely different. Something I had never encountered before. It wasn’t fey and it wasn’t shifter, despite the man’s ability to easily change forms.

  Could Gideon be right in that this creature, this man, was one of the Lost Ones? They certainly had a bone to pick with the Towers, since it was believed that all of their kind had been wiped from the Earth centuries ago. There were a few species out there that were on the cusp of being categorized as Lost Ones, but the only groups who had truly earned the title were dragons and unicorns. Had I just seen one of those?

  I shook my head. Couldn’t be. I wouldn’t have survived an encounter with either creature if it had been. Then again, I had barely survived the encounter as it was. Gideon had pulled my ass from the edge.

  Fuck.

  And what if it was one of the Lost Ones? What was I supposed to do? Kill him, officially destroying the last of his kind. That’s what I wanted to be known for! Gage, the man who slaughtered the last unicorn. Gage, the dragon slayer.

  I roared with rage. Twisting around, I blasted energy through the room, shattering every glass vial, jar, and beaker in its path. Papers scattered, flying through the air.

  What the fuck happened to just being a tattoo artist? When had my life gotten so damn complicated? I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and tried to clear my thoughts, but they kept getting pulled along the timeline of my life. Was it when Simon came back, hunting me? Should I have not killed my mentor to survive, but let him kill me that night last summer? It would have gotten me out of the Towers’ hair, but it would have landed me solidly in Lilith’s hands, which couldn’t possibly be a good thing.

  Was it when I faced down the Towers and saved my brother’s life? No witch or warlock likes to be shown up, and that was what I accomplished by outmaneuvering them. Or maybe things went off-­balance when I solved the elves little reproduction problem?

  Trixie blamed magic for all my problems and magic was involved in all those incidents. But what would have happened if I hadn’t used magic? My brother would be dead, Low Town would be a smoking crater in the earth, the elves would be going extinct because they couldn’t have babies . . . oh, and I’d be dead. Sure, magic had caused all those problems in the first place, but it had fixed it all as well. Where did you draw the line? How did you stop the cycle?

  Flopping back in the chair, I stared at the mess I’d made across the room. Glass glittered in the pale light while scattered paper soaked up the liquids that were spreading across the table and onto the floor. I didn’t know the answer. It felt like I was left with only two choices. On the one hand, I could let the Towers kill me. That would stop them from bothering Trixie and our child. But, in my opinion, that was a really shitty choice.

  On the other hand, I could use the magic and information that filled this room and many like it in this Tower to take down the witches and warlocks, dismantling the Towers and all their power. Removing the Towers meant removing the threat from Trixie and the world. That road was long, treacherous, and unlikely to lead to a happy ending for me.

  “Is it even possible to get rid of the Towers?” I murmured, talking to myself.

  Of course you can. The man who destroys Lilith can do anything in this world.

  The demon’s words reminded me that I had another task waiting for me that I’d rather not think about. Zyrus still had its little black heart set on me destroying the Queen of the Monsters. I wasn’t sure how the fuck I was going to accomplish that feat, but that seemed a little more possible than the road I currently faced against the Towers. I might just be reassured by the idea that Zyrus had already read in the future that I had the ability to take Lilith down. It was too much to hope that such a thing was possible.

  “And become a murderer in the process,” I muttered, dropping my head into my hand.

  Murderer for some, but savior for your world.

  I would happily give my last breath to save the world for Trixie and my child. But then dying was easy. Was I willing to become a murderer for my love?

  Serah called, jerking me from my dark thoughts. She said it was safe to return to the scene of the crime now that the cops had arrived and locked the place down.

  Glancing around Simon’s old room, I sighed. I needed to stop spending time here. It wasn’t good for my state of mind. I also needed to stay focused on the probl
ems directly in front of me. If I could catch the killers, the city would be safe and I could turn my full attention to Trixie. Maybe then it would be time for me to part ways with Zyrus. It might not be too keen on the idea, but I didn’t think hanging around with a demon was good for my health.

  Chapter 7

  Night had claimed the city when I crawled back to my apartment. The investigation at the crime scene had taken longer because of the changes made by the killer. I kept my mouth shut about the fact that they were now looking at the chaos created by two separate killers. The Low Town police didn’t need to chase after the other asshole. I was still trying to figure out how a pair of warlocks was going to take these lunatics down. Humans didn’t have a chance.

  When Serah dropped me off, she promised that she’d follow up with me as soon as possible. She was confident that we’d get closer to the killer now because she was sure she could establish a link between the victims and the killer. I just pitied them. How could you piss someone off so much that this was the result? The world had enough of pain and death already.

  Rubbing my eyes, I shoved my key in the lock and froze. Someone was in my apartment. I could feel them on the other side of the wall. Their energy was warm and inviting, though the occupants felt agitated, as if they were anxious about my arrival. Very carefully, I probed the room to find that Trixie was in the living room along with . . . her brother.

  My heart stopped for a second and I leaned my head forward to rest it against the door. I didn’t want to move forward. Hell, I wanted to back away and go hide at Asylum, where I could bullshit with Bronx and pretend that my girlfriend wasn’t leaving me. But they would have heard the key going into the lock. They could probably hear me breathing. I didn’t get the choice of acting like a coward.