Demon Inside

Chapter 24

“But we don’t know where the Accuser’s house was!”

Being back at Greyson’s place hadn’t really helped her mood, but realizing she could draw a trickle of energy from the ground outside had a bit. At least she wouldn’t need Greyson to keep kissing her in order to stay awake. It was a little embarrassing.

Her eyes still itched with tiredness, but she could handle it.

“That’s why Brian is coming over,” Greyson said.

“You called Brian?”

“Yes. That’s why he’s coming over, see. It’s very simple.”

“But—”

He shook his head. “I think I know where the Accuser’s house is. But I’m hoping Brian can confirm it, because if I’m wrong we’ll be wasting important time. He can read the document. The corporation papers of your father’s? He might get something from those.”

“But we only have the photocopy.”

“No. That viper who gave you life has the copy. I took the original.”

“You stole it?”

“Does that surprise you?”

She leaned back on the couch. “I guess not.”

“The only person besides us who’ll need to see it is Tucker, anyway. I’ll give him the original next time I see him.”

“When will that be?”

“When you decide what you want to do with the property, darling, and we start probate.” He sat next to her and handed her a Coke, which she took with the sort of gratitude dogs offer when given table scraps. Her throat felt like sandpaper; her stomach was a hollow, nervous space in her belly.

It tasted like pure, sweet life on her tongue. “So you knew we might need to do this. To get Brian to read it, I mean.”

“Of course I did. I certainly didn’t plan to have Orion over for a chat before—well. I didn’t plan on discussing the situation with him.”

And the decision had been taken out of his hands, out of hers too. Orion had needed to be killed. Was Greyson pleased by that? Megan didn’t know how she felt. On the one hand she was horrified, absolutely stunned that she had stood and watched Winston Lawden murder a man. On the other hand…he would have died anyway, right? The minute he let Ktana Leyak into his body he signed his death warrant, one way or the other. At least this way he hadn’t been able to take anyone else with him.

But would Greyson have listened to her, and changed his mind about having Orion killed? He’d said they would discuss it. That didn’t mean he would agree with her.

“Greyson, about Orion…”

“Brian’s here.”

“What? How do you know?”

“Nobody enters or leaves the property without the Gretneg knowing, remember? Except witches, unfortunately. They can break our protections.”

He got up and shuffled through some files on the desk, finally grabbing one and taking some papers out of it. The documents of incorporation they’d taken from her old bedroom.

Brian came in. He smelled like wintry air when he bent to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Jesus, Megan, what happened to you?”

“My—I’m just tired. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

“You should go back to bed.”

Ha. He had no idea how good that sounded. All she wanted to do was go back to bed, and stay there with the covers up over her head and the TV on low. “I’ll be okay.”

“Drink, Brian?”

Brian too took a Coke, then sat down on the opposite end of the couch. “Okay, so what do you need me to look at?”

“This. It’s—it’s related to Megan’s dad. We were hoping you might be able to see him from it, maybe something of his conversation with a couple of demons.”

“Demons aren’t readable, you know that.”

“I know, but Megan’s father was, so maybe you could get something through his eyes.”

Brian nodded and glanced at his watch. “Okay, sure. But I have an interview scheduled in about forty-five minutes, so—”

“It shouldn’t take that long.” Greyson handed the papers to Brian, who closed his eyes.

They flew back open as his face turned bright red. “Whoah! Hey, um, I’m not sure you guys want me to see this.”

God damn it. She was forever doomed to have Brian watch her have sex, it seemed. He’d managed to catch a glimpse of a college boyfriend the night he’d read her after they met, and now…she rubbed her forehead with her hand. This was just perfect.

“Try to go back further,” Greyson said, in his just-doit voice.

“Okay.” Brian used his thumb and forefinger to pick the papers up from the floor where he’d dropped them. “I’ll try again.”

This time he held on. “Okay, your dad—I think that’s your dad, he looks younger than in the picture at the funeral—filing these, thinking about what a great deal he’d made…um…oh, okay. I remember Templeton Black, and that guy from the funeral, Orion? He’s there. Blah blah blah, the hospital will be the perfect place to house your daughter, everything she needs is already there and she’ll be very comfortable, just sign here…they’re sort of smirking at each other but he’s not paying attention…” Brian opened his eyes, and looked up. “Is that it, or do you need more?”

Megan had to force the words from her throat. “No. No, I think we have everything we need.”

“The truck,” as Greyson called it, was actually a Mercedes SUV, with cushiony leather seats big enough to lie down on and dark-tinted windows. It was about as close to a truck as the QE2 was to a rowboat, but it certainly did the job.

Trouble was, it wasn’t a job she wanted it to do. She’d intended that the next time she rode in this particular vehicle they’d be on their way to the woods for a romantic, relaxing holiday, not headed into the belly of the beast—pretty much literally—back in Grant Falls.

Back to the hospital.

She shifted a little, adjusting her blanket. With her head on Greyson’s lap and the soft, heated leather beneath her, she could almost pretend she was back in bed. At least, if not for the murmuring voices of the men and the soft drone of music from the CD player, fading in and out as she dozed.

Nick and the brothers were with them, coming along for moral—well, for support, anyway. But Malleus and Spud in the front seats and Nick and Maleficarum in the back ones did make her feel a little as if she were onstage.

“Just think about it, Nick,” Greyson said above her. “I could really use you here.”

“I like Miami.”

“I know. But I need someone…”

Megan drifted back off. They’d been having this discussion on and off all day, and from the way they spoke she had a feeling it had been going on longer than that.

She was back in her own house, on the couch, watching TV, when the doorbell rang. Her feet seemed to sink into the floor as she got up and crossed the room to open it, knowing it wasn’t the smartest thing to do but unable to stop herself.

Her partners from work, holding bottles of champagne, come to celebrate her father’s death.

Her eyes opened. Only the soft glow of the GPS system in the dash lit the interior of the car; they were well out of the city now, and the moon must have gone behind some clouds. She closed her eyes again, her waking unnoticed. Back to sleep…it was so hard to stay awake.

She was back in the house where her demon died, but when the police came this time, they brought flowers.

“She already hinted she’d accept you as a substitute, if you’ll do it.”

Pause. “You don’t have anybody else?”

“Not really, and…I can’t. I don’t want to. I said I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, I’ll do it for you. But this is why I don’t want to get involved, man. I don’t get this shit in Miami, nobody bugs me there.”

“You know I wouldn’t ask if…”

Brian Stone took her out to dinner, but there was a huge dog outside the restaurant and they couldn’t leave. For some reason they thought this was amusing and laughed so hard Megan fell down on the cold cement, which was soft as a feather bed.

This time when her eyes opened, she smiled. Greyson’s hand was warm on her hip. She started to snuggle into him, then stopped when Nick spoke.

“Is she going to do the ritual?”

“I don’t know.” Greyson sighed. His thigh tensed under her head but he didn’t move. “I don’t think she knows.”

“You’re not talking her into it?”

“It’s her decision.”

“But I thought—”

“It’s her decision. I can’t interfere with that. Think about it.”

Silence. “I guess I see that. But…I mean…” Nick sounded uncomfortable, as if he’d just offered Greyson oral sex and been turned down.

“Hell, Nick. You know I’d—What the fuck!”

The car crashed into something, skidded, and spun sideways, flinging Megan off the seat onto the floor. For one long, terrifying moment she was certain she was about to die in a crush of metal on a deserted road. Malleus was yelling from the driver’s seat.

Then silence. The SUV gave a final rock to the left and stopped. Bright light flooded the interior of the car as the doors opened, and Greyson grabbed her and pulled her out, setting her down on her unsteady feet.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” She wrapped her arms around herself. The night air was freezing and her coat was still in the car. Someone laid the blanket over her shoulders; she didn’t turn around to see who. “What happened?”

Greyson pointed behind them.

An oak tree grew by the side of the road, its gnarled arms reaching out as though it could trap the moon between them. From one of those branches dangled a rope, and at the end of that rope hung the body of a man, his eyes black holes in his swollen face. A chair, its legs reduced to splinters by the wheels of the SUV, lay about four feet from the tree.

He’d killed himself. The piece of paper pinned to the front of his shirt testified to that. Suicide, right by the road. It wasn’t the highway, as Megan had thought. They’d gone farther than that. The back of the sign welcoming them to Grant Falls gleamed in the darkness beyond the man’s swinging feet as the first flakes of snow drifted down.

Sleeping further would have been out of the question, even if she’d wanted to. The specter of that grisly welcome home haunted her.

Aside from a few dents on the right-side doors, the SUV was fine. They piled back in and headed toward the center of town, tooling slowly down the road, all of them on the alert. Greyson gave her his gun, grabbing another one from Maleficarum. It rested in his hand like a cobra about to strike. Nick had a gun too, in addition to, of all things, a sword. She might have laughed at the sight—it wasn’t often you saw a man swinging a blade in modern small-town America—if he hadn’t handled it with such deadly confidence.

Malleus, Maleficarum, and Spud, of course, looked like they were about to storm Fort Knox. Megan would have prayed they wouldn’t be pulled over, but even if Greyson couldn’t have handled any police officer who came near the car, she doubted it would be an issue tonight. Something told her the police in Grant Falls would be otherwise occupied.

They rolled past the hotel, silent and dark, and continued on. Through the haze of falling snow Megan saw Christmas lights twinkling still on some of the buildings and in the windows of the shops farther down the road, in town. The clock read 11:00. Surely the stores would be closed, the lights off?

Movement off to the right caught her eye. Emerging from the little forest was a woman, her filthy shirt in tatters. Through the strips of grayish fabric they could see her bra soaked with blood and her bare, ghostly pale skin streaked with it, making her look like a bizarre zebra. Even in the darkness her eyes seemed terribly white, wide with terror or the blank screen of dementia. Something else was wrong too, but Megan couldn’t seem to place it and it didn’t matter.

“Pull over,” she started to say, but Greyson interrupted her.

“No.”

“What? Look at her, she must be freezing, she’s—”

“Where’s the cemetery?”

“What? Malleus, I said pull over!”

“Mr. Dante?” Malleus glanced back. His features, cast in pale green light from the dash, looked somehow leaner, as if his frown was pulling them tight.

“Meg, where’s the cemetery?”

Megan glared at him and reached for the handle of the door. They were going slowly enough, and once she opened it Malleus would stop. She knew he would. “I can’t believe you’re going to let that woman just die like that, I—”

“She’s already dead.”

“Sure, if you let her…oh.” Megan subsided. That’s what was wrong. Snow was piling on the woman’s shoulders and forming an old-fashioned nurse’s cap on her head. “Oh.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d had this idea—this fantasy—that they’d roll into Grant Falls, pop into the abandoned hospital, take whatever relic of the Accuser still lived there—which in the fantasy was a lock of hair or something similarly inoffensive—thus defeating Ktana Leyak and getting back her demons. Then they’d stop for a piece of pie or something before driving back toward the city singing “Adeste Fidelis.”

Nowhere in her fantasy did demon-powered zombies appear. Not once.

So much for fantasies.

Then again, the idea of riding around in an SUV with a bunch of demons singing Christmas carols was rather silly itself, wasn’t it? So why should she be surprised that this obviously wasn’t going to be the uncomplicated little jaunt she’d hoped for?

“Do you think there will be more of them?” she asked in a small voice. The energy to speak loudly eluded her.

“I think it’s a pretty safe bet, yes.”

“There are two cemeteries in town,” she said. “At least there were when I lived here. There’s, um, Holy Innocents, which is that way”—she waved her hand to her left—“and Harbor Lawn, where they buried my—oh God.”

The men exchanged glances. “We may not have to see many,” Greyson said. “We might manage to get in and out of here before they have a chance to reach us.”

Megan just nodded. If she opened her mouth she would start screaming, and if she started screaming she didn’t think she would be able to stop.

“Zombies aren’t going to be a problem,” Nick said finally. “They won’t even be able to get close to us, thanks to Grey. It’s the people who worry me.”

Megan glanced out the window, desperate to look anywhere but at the faces of the men watching her, then wished she hadn’t. Behind the picture window of Kelly’s Tap bodies lurched and leaped in a brawl of epic proportions. A man flew through the glass, landing on the white-dusted asphalt outside in an ungraceful heap. Blood steamed in the freezing air as the chaos inside the bar became audible, shouts and screams ending finally in gunfire.

The men tensed. Greyson and Nick lifted their weapons, waiting, but they were already passing the bar, leaving the wreckage of it behind them.

More evidence that something was very wrong in Grant Falls awaited them as they rolled past, the low hum of the SUV’s engine bouncing off the blank storefronts. A bloody handprint embellished the holiday display in the window of Tommy’s Toys. More blood smeared across the wall, ending on the pavement as if the bleeder had fallen, but no body lay there.

Megan pulled the blanket more tightly around her. “The hospital is to the right, closer to the center of town.”

They floated down the street, the only warm and moving things in an alien landscape. The blanket didn’t help. Even Greyson’s warm hand on her leg didn’t help. The wrongness, the plain and simple sense that all was not well, soaked into her bones. Even with her shields up she could feel the despair, the misery, the rage.

Especially the rage. She realized that tired as she was her body was still humming, adrenaline making her heart pound and her feet jiggle. Her lips felt raw from where she’d bitten them and stung when a tear rolled down her cheek and touched the shredded skin.

She might be able to draw strength from it. If the Yezer—her Yezer—were causing all of this, it was entirely possible she could, that if she lowered her shields and tried to pull them back she could take all that power and use it.

But doing that would also alert Ktana Leyak to their presence, if she wasn’t already aware of it, and that was a bad idea. Yes, Megan would have to fight her sometime, but she would much rather that sometime not be now. Not now and not here.

“Make a left,” she said softly. Her voice would crack if she tried to speak much more forcefully.

Malleus did, then stopped abruptly. Four cars blocked the road, their windshields gaping holes with jagged edges of glass protruding like broken teeth. Their dashboards already looked frosted with snow. In the dim light from the pale sky she saw bloody footprints leading away, but there was no other sign of people.

“There another way ’round, m’lady?”

“Um…yeah. Go back, we’ll head toward the park. We can circle around it and come up from the other direction.”

Malleus nodded and executed a three-point turn as neatly as a driving instructor, while Megan stared out the window at the wreckage.

They made it as far as the edge of the park. Megan was increasingly aware of her skin prickling, of silent watchers from the buildings they passed. Zombies or demons or simply people, twitching their curtains to the side in their apartments above stores, wondering who was out and about on a night this cold, this close to Christmas, in a town that usually bedded down by ten.

Malleus slammed on the brakes. If his reflexes hadn’t been quite so fast the truck would have plunged headfirst into the gaping hole where the road had once been. The snow fell so thick and fast it was almost impossible to see.

Megan waited in the car with Nick and Greyson while the brothers got out to inspect it. They returned moments later, shaking their heads.

“’S all ice, outside it,” Maleficarum said. “That little hill, there, we can’t drive up it or nuffin’.”

The park itself sat on a rise, not steep but steep enough when frozen. To the left of them sat a row of parked cars, the lead one half-buried in the sinkhole, its rear wheels off the pavement. The SUV could not get through the line, and it could not go up the hill.

Greyson sighed. “I guess we walk.”

Why don’t we just go home was on the tip of Megan’s tongue. She couldn’t think of anything she’d ever wanted to do less than leave the warm interior of the car and go traipsing through the park under the watchful gaze of a town driven half mad by Yezer.

Because they were here. She knew it. Nothing else could account for what was happening. Ktana Leyak was here and so were Megan’s rubendas, and they were having themselves a merry little Christmas indeed.

“Meg.”

“What?” She pulled the blanket more tightly around her, as if trying to save up some extra warmth before they started trekking across the barren park. Not empty, oh no. Things waited in that park that she’d hoped to never see.

Greyson held out his hand. “Come on, bryaela, let’s go get back what’s yours.”