Demon Possessed

Chapter 10

At least the breeze was cool, even if feeling it across her brow reminded her a little too forcibly of her ordeal on the roof earlier. The wind he’d kicked up, how could he—oh, right. Dumb question. Witches could do just about anything. She was so used to thinking of powers as specific skill sets that didn’t translate; fire demons like Greyson could burn anything and had some basic mental powers but couldn’t read people the way she could or the way any psyche demon could, for example.

But witches weren’t bound by any of that. They dealt with energy, with the molecular structure of things, and could make almost anything bow to their will. It was one reason they kept such a rigid hierarchy.

Tera answered on the third ring. “Hey! I thought you were away.” She sounded awfully chipper for one in the morning, but then she’d probably still been awake; Tera never seemed to need sleep.

“Yeah, I am.” Megan bit her lip and, feeling a little guilty, turned her back on Spud, who had come out with her to keep watch. “I’ve, um, I’ve got a little bit of a problem here, and I was wondering . . . I was hoping you could come. Here. I’m at the Bellreive Hotel.”

Pause. “What kind of trouble? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay, but . . . it seems someone is trying to kill me. And I could really use your help.”

“One of the demons? Do you need me to bring soldiers? How many? What—”

“No, no, don’t do that.” Megan wanted to roll her eyes at the idea of Tera showing up with an army of witches ready to blast holes in the Bellreive’s stone walls, but she couldn’t. The truth was, it warmed her heart. The truth was, Tera would do it in a second too. “It’s . . . I hate to say this, Tera, but I think it’s a witch. Or at least it was a witch earlier. He tried to throw me off the roof.”

“No. Why would a witch try to kill you? Why throw you off the roof? One of us could kill you just like that, you know. There’s so many easier ways to do it. We certainly don’t need—”

Megan shuddered. “Yes, thank you for that reminder. But it wasn’t a demon, and he did magic. He did a spell to get us on the roof and another one to control the wind. He made the wind blow harder.”

“Shit.” Tera paused, for so long Megan wondered if she was still there. “Weather magic is very difficult. He must be incredibly skilled. How did you manage to escape?”

She explained and added, “But there’s no body. His body, it just isn’t there. So if you—please, Tera. We really need you here. Can you come? For a few days?”

“We?”

“Greyson and I. He told me to call you and ask you to come. I mean, I said I wanted to, and he said he thought it was a good idea and that you should.”

“Greyson wants me there?”

“Yes.”

“To stay there, at the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. I guess this really is serious.”

Megan was prepared for what Tera said next, even allowed herself a small smile. It was exactly what Greyson said she would ask, and Megan answered the questions the way he’d told her to. “Yes, he’ll pay for your room. Yes, a big room, at least a double, and he’s trying to get you a view. Yes, he’ll cover all your bills while you’re here. Yes, all of them. Even pay-per-view. And the bar and the boutiques, sure. No, I don’t need to double-check, he said all, and that means all.”

Finally Tera asked, “You do know I would come anyway, right?”

“Yes, I know.”

“But if he’s offering to pay, I just want to be sure I know what’s covered. I mean, demons are pretty well known for trying to get around their promises.”

“Sure.” Megan glanced back inside. The clerk was on the phone; Malleus saw her looking and gave her a thumbs-up. He was the only person she knew who still did that.

“Okay. I can be there in an hour or so. What room are you in?”

“Fourteen—Hold on.” The glass lobby doors parted with a faint whir; the men stepped out onto the dark green carpet that lay just past it.

“The FBI agent’s gone to the Windbreaker Hotel,” Greyson said. He didn’t look happy about it; she could sense his tension.

Not surprising that he would be tense, really. Of all the places for their wandering FBI agent to have wandered, that was the last place Megan would have expected. “Where the exorcism thing is happening?”

He nodded, his face grim. “She told the clerk she had to help Reverend What’s-his-name rid the world of demons.”

The contrast between the Bellreive and the Windbreaker couldn’t have been sharper had it been etched with a razor blade. Where the Bellreive’s lobby was a wide expanse of gleaming marble and shining wood, with suited bellhops and desk staff, the Windbreaker’s lobby was muggy and loud with ancient air conditioning. The desk, a cheap slab of veneered pressboard, was empty; yellowish lights shone from the ceiling.

“We’re going to need to roust a clerk,” Greyson said. “I seriously doubt the good reverend is playing with his snakes this late at night. He’ll be in his room.”

“We should have waited for Tera.” Megan hugged herself tighter; the buzzing at the base of her neck was growing. Something wasn’t right there, not right at all. There was an . . . an emptiness in the building, somehow.

“Roc will get her here,” he replied. His knuckles made a hollow sound on the desktop. “If our friendly G-girl is in mortal danger, it’s best not to waste any time. We have enough to do this week without getting involved in some silly police business.”

“Right.” The goosebumps on her arms refused to be soothed away, no matter how hard she rubbed. There was really no reason for her to be so nervous, none that she could see. Whatever the odd emptiness was, that blank sort of pressure she felt, it didn’t threaten. The brothers stood around her and Greyson, their poses confident and prepared; she didn’t think a moth would be able to get past them, much less anything else.

Malleus caught her looking around. “Don’t you fret none, m’lady. Nowt’ll ’appen wiv us around.”

“Yeh.”

Greyson knocked on the desk again. “What a rathole.”

She felt the clerk coming before she saw him, the stirring of thoughts and emotions in a back room.

Wait. How did she feel that? She wasn’t open. Wasn’t focusing. Usually in order to sense people in other rooms, she had to lower her shields a little. She’d had to earlier, when she felt Agent Reid and the wi—

No. That wasn’t what she’d felt; at least it hadn’t been what she thought she felt. She’d thought it was a demon. But why?

The clerk, a large man with dandruff dusting his cheap suit and the shiny look of someone who’d been sleeping rough, ambled out from behind a wall. “What do you need?”

“I believe you have a guest here by the name of Walther? Reverend Walther?”

“I can’t give out that information, man. Our guests are—”

Greyson leaned forward. Megan felt his power slide through the air. “I think you can,” he said softly. “Why not tell me his room number? That’s all I need. It’s not so much to ask, is it? No. Of course not. It’s the right thing to do, really. So why not?”

A moment of silence, Greyson’s power curling in the air. Megan shivered, and not just from the weight of it. That power was everything she felt in the hidden hours they spent together, alone, and her body responded. Couldn’t help but respond.

His free hand reached for her, stroked her arm. The touch whispered through her body; she felt it spread through his as well, but he didn’t look at her. He couldn’t, she knew. To break eye contact with the clerk would break the hold on him as well.

“Room three thirty-three,” the clerk said finally, in the slightly dreamy tone of someone asleep.

“Has he had any visitors this evening? Anyone ask for him?”

“A woman came, half an hour ago. The reverend came down and met her. They went back to his room.”

“Has she left?”

“Didn’t see her leave.”

“Thank you. You can go back to sleep now.”

The power snapped away as Greyson turned. They left the clerk, already shuffling off back behind his wall, and headed for the elevators.

Megan stopped halfway there. The emptiness was stronger there. She felt it like stepping into a cold draft. “Hold on.”

They stood outside a nondescript brown door. The thin plaque on the wall beside it informed them that this was the entrance to the Flower Ballroom.

“What is it?” He’d taken her hand as they walked away from the desk. Now he gave it a faint squeeze. “You look a little pale, bryaela. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just . . . it feels weird in here.”

He examined her for a second, his gaze sweeping over her face and resting on her eyes. “Want to go in?”

She didn’t, actually. But she didn’t want to admit that. She wasn’t scared, necessarily. It wasn’t fear making her heart beat a little faster. It was that emptiness, that sensation of nothing. She hadn’t felt that in a while. Or rather, she hadn’t felt that outside Ieuranlier Sorithell, a houseful of demons she couldn’t read.

She’d never felt it out in the real world, the human world.

So she nodded. Even as she did so, she was aware that they could be walking into a trap, but she did it anyway. “The room feels empty.”

He glanced up, nodded at the brothers. The secret sound of knives being drawn from pockets and sheaths filled the air around them before Maleficarum opened the door.

The room wasn’t empty.

What the hell?

How had she not been able to feel them? They were just people. Three hotel employees, two maids and what looked like a maintenance man, tidying the room. They glanced up when the door opened. Quick movements beside her were the brothers tucking their weapons behind their backs.

“C’n I help you?” The man plucked a screwdriver from his pocket. The brothers tensed around her, but he simply held it. Beside him were exposed wires and a wall sconce half dangling like an open seashell.

“We were looking for Reverend Walther,” Greyson said smoothly, as if he’d expected to find people in the room. People she hadn’t sensed. People she couldn’t read.

“He’s not here now.” One of the maids picked up a chair, started carrying it to the stacks against the wall. The room was set up as for a seminar of some kind, with a table at the far end and rows and rows of chairs lined up to observe it. About half the chairs appeared to be gone, waiting against the wall for the next day. Or so she assumed.

“Bless him,” the other maid said. “He must be just exhausted from what he did here earlier. You should have seen it. He was amazing.”

“He’s touched by the angels,” the maintenance man agreed.

“I’ve never seen anything so amazing.” The first maid turned around and headed back to the row of chairs. Her gold necklace caught the light and flashed at Megan before she bent again to grab another chair. “He truly has the power of Jesus behind him.”

“We’re lucky he’s here,” the maintenance man informed them.

“We’re all blessed by his presence,” said the second maid.

Megan and Greyson glanced at each other. His eyes were troubled; he cut them sideways, back at the chair-stacking maid, and raised his eyebrows.

Megan looked again but didn’t see anything. He shrugged. “Well, thank you. What time does the show start tomorrow?”

The maintenance man frowned. “It’s not a show. He’s saving lives.”

“Of course. What time does the life-saving start tomorrow?”

None of the room’s occupants—none of the human occupants—seemed to like that comment, but finally the first maid spoke. “Eleven. Eleven in the morning, and he won’t leave until everyone is clean.”

“Until they’re all free from the demon scourge,” added the other maid.

Malleus snickered.

Greyson’s lips twitched. “Thank you.”

They barely got the door closed behind them before the demons started giggling. Megan understood their amusement but couldn’t bring herself to share it. “Why couldn’t I feel them?”

Greyson stopped smiling. “Did you try while we were in the room? While they were speaking?”

“No, I—no. I don’t know why.”

He reached for the doorknob. “Do you want to try again?”

“Careful now, Lord Dante.” Malleus had not stopped smiling. He looked like the Joker. “There’s a demon scourge about, there is.”

Maleficarum slapped him on the back. “Aye, there is! Fink we oughter be scared? Nobody’s safe wif demons about.”

For once their humor didn’t go completely over Megan’s head, but for once she didn’t feel at all like laughing. The only people she’d ever failed to read had not been people at all. They’d been demons. But the three inside the Flower Ballroom had most certainly been human. Since Christmas and the consolidation of her powers, she’d been more easily able to tell the difference. Demons had a certain feel to them, a power signature that humans simply didn’t have.

Even as she thought it, though, something else occurred to her. No. There had been another human she couldn’t read. Not a witch either; witches were also difficult to read but had a certain feel to them.

She’d had a radio caller just before Christmas, just before things with her demons and Ktana Leyak—a leyak demon, the one who’d created the Yezer—had gotten truly out of hand. The caller had called because of problems with her mother or something—Megan couldn’t remember the details very well. She wouldn’t have remembered the details at all if not for the fact that the woman had been unreadable.

Megan had suspected possession herself at the time. But perhaps . . . perhaps something else was going on?

Shit. The last thing she needed was for her powers to start going wonky again.

“That’s enough,” Greyson said, dragging her back to reality and dragging them all toward the elevator. “We need to find that FBI agent, and we need to figure out what exactly the reverend is up to. I don’t like this one bit.”

“Yes, what were you looking at, by the way? You raised your eyebrows at me.”

“The maid’s necklace,” he said, and pressed the button. “Didn’t you see it? There’s clearly something off happening here.”

“No, I didn’t see it, why?”

The elevator doors opened. They all stepped inside. “She was wearing a Star of David.”