Red Demon

by Deidre Knight

  And then he had an idea; two, really, and both were ideal strategies for fighting this crafty Djinn. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his BlackBerry. “Let me take your picture,” he said, employing the same sultry tone she’d been working on him. “You know, to commemorate our little reunion.”

  Her eyes turned bright red. Only for a second, but he knew she didn’t want to be photographed. Too damn bad. He lifted the camera and took the shot, knowing already what he’d see.

  “Tell me your name,” he added. “Come on, sweetheart; give me that at least. For ole time’s sake.”

  To have a demon’s name was to command that demon. A demon could be controlled when someone with spiritual authority invoked the demon’s name—along with that of Jesus Christ. If Mason could get this little demon to slip up and reveal her private, intimate name, he could destroy her. They both knew it, which was why she gave him only a bland smile in response. But he wasn’t about to give up that easily.

  He took another photo, the flash electrifying the night. Setting her off-kilter.

  “Come on, pretty darling; just give me your name,” Mason cajoled. Then, dropping his own voice into a husky, tantalizing timbre, he added, “Don’t you want to hear me say it? I know you do. So give me just that little bit of you.”

  “Which bit do you want?” she asked, her blue eyes turning a brilliant mixture of red and violet. “Surely something can be arranged so long as I keep Juliana at bay.”

  Mason’s mind whirled. She made it sound as if she’d possessed the woman Ari knew, meaning there were two distinct entities, linked together in a single body.

  The female covered Mason’s hand. “You’re not still mad about that other little thing—are you?”

  Mason yanked his hand free, and thank God above, Ari suddenly focused again, his eyes returning to their usual shade of almost black. “What other little thing?” Aristos barked.

  The Djinn brushed a lock of hair back from her eyes, and with an otherworldly vibration, auburn turned much darker, but only for a split second. “I have a feeling Mason would rather I didn’t say anything”—she laughed musically—“about our special past in Iraq.”

  It took everything in his power to remain composed, but Mason didn’t lunge at her. He just prayed that Ari could see the truth here—even as he himself was beginning to sort out facts.

  Leaning much closer to the woman, he lowered his voice. “Where is she right now? Juliana?”

  The Djinn scowled back at him. “She’s not in charge.”

  “You are.” Mason nodded.

  She shrugged. “For the moment. But I’ll be in control soon enough. I feed off her fear and despair. And I’m getting stronger by the second because she’s so very afraid for you, Aristos.” She flashed a cruel smile in his direction. “So, yes, I am in control.”

  Ari’s face crumpled, and Mason wished he could feel more vindicated. But with the facts becoming as clear as his nana’s Waterford crystal, he felt only angry and vigilant and ready to get down to the real work this mission required. Juliana—dead, gone, lost Juliana Tiades—had somehow managed to bind herself to the most vicious demon Mason had ever encountered.

  Which made her not the enemy, as he’d come into this scenario thinking, but a vulnerable human soul. A victim of a demonic attack who desperately needed his spiritual-warfare capabilities, probably those of all the Shades combined.

  Mason knew that Juliana’s only hope for survival was if he figured out the most complicated of answers: how to free a dead woman from a demon’s lethal grasp.

  “We need your name,” Mason insisted bluntly. “Give it over.”

  “I’m not that naive, Mason,” she trilled, the violet brightening in her eyes like a backlight. “To have a demon’s name is to command it,” she recited, as if quoting from Demon Fighting for Dummies.

  “Let Juliana go,” Ari urged, his own eyes growing bright. “She’s innocent. She didn’t want you. . . . She didn’t invite you. Are you inside her body? Is that it?”

  “I resurrected her, yes,” she said easily. “For now, we’re sharing this body and all its many pleasures.”

  “No!” Ari roared at her. “Let Juliana go!”

  The demon snapped back in her seat, startled, and then began coughing. “Her prayers are working! The bitch doesn’t even have a voice now, but she’s . . .”

  Suddenly, the tone of her voice, even its timbre, became familiar. Like Juliana’s voice, with its refined and gentile inflections. “Aristos? Aristos . . . help me.” Juliana was back, gasping and choking. “Oh, God. Oh . . .” She started pulling at the collar of her dress. “I can’t . . . breathe.”

  Her eyes became wide and frightened, and she turned to Ari with a horrified cry. “I’m so sorry,” she said, and then went limp in the chair.

  Chapter 30

  Somehow, Mason had gotten them out of the restaurant, and they were on their way to the Spartans’ compound. One minute, Ari had been battling the tide of surging power in his own veins, all the while trying to process the truth about Juliana and the demon that had possessed her. The next, the cocktail bill had been handled and Mason was wrangling them all out the door.

  Mason drove his truck in silence, eyes focused on the dark road, and Nik rode shotgun, equally serious. They were like Grim and Grimmer. He could only imagine what his own face might look like.

  Jules stirred, her head in his lap. “I’m so sorry,” she said, apologizing yet again.

  Ari didn’t know what to do, so he stroked her hair as reassuringly as he could.

  “I’m not sure what happened,” she continued, her voice filled with anguish. “I’m . . . not feeling myself.” She tried to sit up, reaching a shaky hand toward Mason. “I’m sorry, sir, for behaving horribly toward you. Please, will you accept my deepest apologies? Both of you, truly.”

  “You’re not sure what happened, yet you’re apologizing for it?” Mason asked, casting a glance in the rearview.

  Jules glanced down at her half- opened bodice and yanked it shut. “At the very least, I am not properly dressed. As for the rest, I remember enough to be deeply regretful.”

  Nikos turned in the seat, as reticent as he always was, but seeming like he felt the need to say something to her. Finally he settled on, “No problem,” and faced the road again.

  “Goddamn problem for me,” Mace muttered under his breath, handing his BlackBerry over his shoulder. “Take a look,” he instructed Ari. “That might bring some memories back for your girlfriend there.”

  Ari stared down at the saved image—damn, but did Mason have to make it his screen saver? It was a picture of Juliana, lips parted, a seriously depraved come- hither expression on her face.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it; she seemed to have a kind of aura about her, like a second skin. An afterimage, maybe? Some result of the flash at night? No, Ari knew better—now. Juliana hadn’t come back from the grave by herself; oh, no, she’d done something even more spectacular. She’d brought along a hitchhiker, a truly vile Djinn. He stared down at the picture and wanted to be sick. He thrust the phone back at Mason. “Your point?”

  Mason met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Something’s fishy in Denmark, Petrakos; that’s what.”

  “I think I realized that over the Budweisers, dude,” Ari fired back. “So, your grand plan, other than showing me that picture? And you better not say . . .” Offing her, he finished mentally, pointing his finger like a gun at Mace in the rearview.

  Mason rolled his eyes impatiently. “Jesus, I wasn’t gonna say that.”

  Ari shoved him in the shoulder. “You showed up saying it.”

  “Saying what?” Juliana lurched forward, intercepting the BlackBerry. She scooted sideways against the window, studying it. Then, pressing it against her breast, she began shaking her head but said nothing more.

  “Jules,” Ari ventured. “You passed out cold, but do you even remember all that went on at the restaurant?” He had to figure out if she was aware a
bout the genie inside her personal bottle, so to speak.

  Juliana blanched. “No.”

  “That’s all you gotta say for yourself—just no?” he roared, seizing hold of the phone and forcing her to look at the image. “You were . . . Damn, woman, you were wanton! A . . . a . . . hoyden,” he sputtered.

  She turned to him, genuinely affronted. “And this from a man who believes that the sex act should be completed against a church spire,” she said low enough that Mace and Nikos wouldn’t hear, thank God. “One who claims to have loved me, yet never once questioned the doubtful circumstances of my death! Instead, sir, you made assumptions that painted me in the worst possible light!”

  He stared out the window, not wanting her to know how deeply that accusation hurt. But she knew, anyway; she knew everything about him, heart and soul. She moved across the seat, burrowing her head against his shoulder.

  “I guess it was the hoyden bit that really got ya, huh?” He tried to laugh.

  “I am not feeling myself at all.” She slid a hand beneath his shirt, and her palm was surprisingly clammy. “I’m overheated and chilled at the same time.”

  Ari stroked her hair again and bit back a sarcastic comment about swine flu symptoms mimicking demon possession; even he knew it wasn’t the right moment to be a smart-ass, and especially not when Jules didn’t understand her predicament.

  Mason cleared his throat. “Uh, Aristos?” he said, changing lanes on the expressway. “We should talk, probably. After a while?”

  “About me,” Jules finished. “I’m quite aware that you don’t believe I’m to be trusted.”

  To his credit, Mason gave her a kind look over his shoulder. “No, but I do think you’re in trouble.”

  She sank into her seat. Then, straightening to a dignified posture, she addressed Mason. “Sir, unfortunately, you are correct. I believe that I’m in a very great deal of trouble.”

  Mason nodded after a moment. “Yeah, well,” he said, meeting Ari’s gaze in the rearview, “maybe I can help.”

  Eros paced the length of the Spartans’ drive, overwrought that he’d lost contact with Layla for the past hour. Everything had changed the moment he’d observed Aristos and Juliana in the parking lot of the restaurant. From that moment, the gaming table had tilted, the stakes entirely altered.

  Because their love was one of the purest forms he’d ever encountered between any coupled pair of young lovers. They’d even invoked his name, playing at the idea of being “Eros” and . . . and her. He pressed his eyes shut, as always refusing to even think her name. To allow its musical sound into his head. But that love, what he’d shared with her once, so long ago—he saw it reflected in Juliana and Aristos’s passion.

  His chest swelled at the exchange he’d witnessed, a pure example of the love Eros brought to the world, and yet . . . he was meant to bring about that couple’s destruction. It was only by his hand that Layla had joined with Juliana; by his power that she’d been resurrected at all.

  But not to create the rare, enthralling love he’d seen displayed so exquisitely between Aristos and Juliana.

  No, he had used his power to create destruction. To sow heartbreak and suffering.

  His stomach gave a terrible spasm, and he grasped the rail, struggling not to lose his evening meal. His actions, his participation in Ares’ plan, all were an act against his own divine purpose. He was literally, perhaps by his father’s intended will, destroying himself. That realization had been confirmed when he’d watched Aristos and Mason in that same lot, the discord between them.

  This was the mission he’d agreed to, certainly, when he’d made the alliance with his father. But now, watching events unfold, he reconsidered whether his actions weren’t too much at odds with his own gift.

  And then there was the matter of Layla herself. . . .

  He’d found her in the desert, the place where all female Djinn were locked—unless someone was given authority to free them, or possessed it by virtue of his or her god’s power.

  One glance into the reflective waters of his pool and he’d instantly perceived her to be the most effective, cruelest form of destruction against the Spartans and the Shades. He’d seen everything in that brief glimpse, the truth of what she would be capable of, the profound division she could create among them. And once a team was split apart, it lacked real power.

  “I can give you Mason Angel,” he’d told her simply, and those violet-red eyes had glowed, illuminating the desert night.

  Then she’d calmed a bit, had become focused with ferocious intensity. “Can you make him want me?”

  Eros had known that, perhaps with the right aim of his arrow, yes, he could bring about that unlikely outcome. “I can cause anyone to love or lust for another. That is my gift,” he’d answered, knowing then that he would wait to see the unfolding of events. He was thankful that he had.

  Layla had seemed most aroused by his offer. “May I kill? Destroy as I see fit?”

  “You are to use your own erotic abilities,” he’d answered evenly. “That is the way you will infiltrate their cadre.”

  The way she’d stared, that craven lust in her eyes, continued to unnerve him even now.

  And yet there was little Eros could do to stop the unfolding plan: Juliana and Layla were already bound as tightly as any lover’s knot. Even if he’d wanted to extricate them, it would mean final, lasting death for Juliana, not that she wasn’t headed toward that fate, anyway, and most expeditiously.

  But then he had a thought. There was one who could help, one who had always loved and cared for him, even in the face of his father’s neglectful disdain. And she, too, had her reasons for supporting the Spartans. In fact, it was only a matter of time until she returned to this compound once again.

  Chapter 31

  Jules wandered about the guest bedroom, trying to sort through her myriad, disturbing thoughts. What should she tell Aristos about Layla? He deserved an explanation, but would he be harmed if she shared any of the facts she’d learned? So many years apart, all that time spent searching for him, waiting, hoping—she refused to let Layla take him from her. She’d die again before she allowed him to be harmed at all.

  As for Ari, he was much quieter than usual. He’d sprawled on the bed, his long legs stretched out, leaning against the headboard.

  “I think you should sit down,” he said, patting the spot beside him. His expression was dour, but he didn’t seem furious. More . . . troubled. A feeling she certainly understood at the moment.

  She sat on the edge of the mattress and removed first one boot, then the other. “I thought maybe you were still angry with me.”

  “I’m upset because . . .” He looked away. “We’ve got a problem, Juliana. A big one. I’m just not sure how much you know. You remember anything from the restaurant?”

  The memories were murky, muddled, but she was certain of one thing. She had a demon inside of her, one that apparently planned to kill Ari if she revealed details about its presence.

  She buried her face in both hands, fighting tears. “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she gasped.

  He sat up a little taller, reaching for her. “Baby, I don’t think it’s me we need to worry about.”

  “I think,” she said slowly, “what we need . . . is a priest.”

  His black eyebrows cranked down over his eyes. “So you know about the demon.”

  As if in answer to his statement, her stomach seized tight, the muscles rippling with wrenching spasms of pain. “She doesn’t . . . I can’t tell you. Can’t admit . . .” The pain stabbed even harder; her breath left her lungs.

  Ari sprang to her side, trying to hold her, but she shook him off. “Don’t! Get away from me. . . . Don’t you see? She’ll . . .” Hurt you. The words were there, on her tongue, but no matter how hard she worked her mouth, they wouldn’t come out.

  She pointed at her throat, gasping for air, but only a rasping sound came forth. Ari struggled to hold her, and she sagged against him,
still rendered mute.

  “Just breathe,” Ari instructed. “In and out, one breath at a time. That demon’s not in charge. You are.”

  She nodded, rubbing the column of her throat, desperately wanting to communicate with Ari—to explain why she feared revealing anything more about Layla.

  “Now,” Ari murmured after a moment, apparently believing her soothed, “tell me what you know about the demon.”

  She’ll hurt you! She screamed the thought in her mind, still clinging to Ari. And then she recalled one very wonderful fact.

  She’d once taught Ari sign language so he could communicate with her young brother, Edward. The two of them had been so close, and Ari had worked diligently to become proficient with his signing skills, even though the method had been unpopular at the time.

  Working her fingers quickly, she signed, “She will hurt you. If I tell more.” She gave him a hopeless, pleading glance. “I did not know what she was. I believed her an angel.”

  Ari’s eyes grew wide as he watched her fingers fly, and then a furious, protective expression filled his face. He cursed in Greek and then signed back to her. “Demons are angels, love. Fallen, dark ones. I eat them for lunch.”

  A knock came on the door, and Emma called out from the other side. “Can we come in?”

  Ari slung an arm around Juliana, propping them both against the headboard. Using a friendly, upbeat tone that he surely didn’t feel, he called out, “Okay, Witches of East-wick, get your butts on in here.”

  “They’re not witches,” Jules scolded, cutting a look at him as the door opened slowly. “They’re Daughters.”

  Sophie, Emma, and Shay entered the room, and Ari grinned at them. “We heard Juliana wasn’t feeling so hot,” Sophie said, then, getting a look at Jules’s flushed face, added, “Or, yeah, I guess too hot is more like it.”

  “The Crab Shack was a bust, huh?” Shay asked, her blue eyes riveted on Juliana.