Fury of the Demon

Chapter 11

I’d have downed more coffee if I’d known the day was going to descend into chaos so thoroughly. Now I had to figure out a way to clean up this clusterfuck.

“Zack.” I kept my voice low, but I knew he could hear me. “Maybe you should get hold of Ryan to help take care of—” I grimaced, lifted a chin toward the corpse. Under other circumstances Mzatal could have disposed of the body with a potency-fueled cremation. Yet I felt his reserves through our connection, and I knew he didn’t have the strength to do so and still have a chance of saving Thatcher.

Zack remained silent and still for several heartbeats, but finally gave a slight nod and pulled out his phone. He thumbed in a text message, sent it, then moved over to the dead man, crouched and laid a hand on his chest, face filled with a look of such unbearable sadness that I had to turn away. I heard him murmuring something over the body, but I was too far away to make out the words. The rhythm and lilt of it led me to believe it wasn’t English, though it didn’t sound like demon either.

Thatcher drew a steadier breath. Paul still clung to his friend’s hand, his eyes red and puffy in a face wracked with shock and desperation.

“What were you two doing here?” I asked.

It took a few seconds for Paul to realize I was talking to him, and another couple for him to focus on me. “It . . . it was my stupid idea,” he said, voice cracking. “This is all my fault.” His eyes dropped to Thatcher again. “I’m sorry, Bryce. Oh god, I’m so sorry.” His face twisted, and I reached out and seized his arm.

“Stop it,” I ordered. “He’s going to be all right.” I filled my voice with as much absolute certainty as possible. It helped that I truly did believe Mzatal would save the man’s life. “Why did you come here?” I pressed.

Paul’s eyes flicked up to Mzatal, and a whisper of hope crept into them. He swallowed, visibly struggled to be strong. “It was going to be at ten-seventeen a.m.,” he said and cast a worried look over to where his tablet lay where he’d dropped it. “There was going to be a wiggle in the feeds at ten-seventeen.” His lower lip quivered for an instant before he firmed his mouth and regained a bit of control. “I told him I wanted to come check it out. Made him bring me.”

I look at him in bafflement. “A what? A wiggle in the feeds? What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s, uh . . .” The grief on his face melted away as he focused on finding words to describe whatever it was. He opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head. “I do stuff with computers,” he explained, apparently giving up on providing details. “Lots of, er, deep level stuff. And I’d noted some, well, wiggles, shifts in the data patterns and streams. Always after the fact though. I figured out some of the parameters and extrapolated to predict one for today right here. I just wanted to be here to see what happened.”

I struggled to parse his explanation. Data patterns? Streams? “You do stuff with computers?” I echoed. “That’s it?”

A trace of insult crossed his face at the slight. “Yeah. That’s it.” His brow furrowed as he looked around, really looked around at us all for the first time. Zack and I probably looked normal enough, but Eilahn crouched shirtless near Thatcher’s feet, and there was no mistaking Mzatal for ordinary. And, of course, there was that pesky dead body not all that far away.

His attention returned to me. “Who are you people?”

“We’re . . . ” Shit. Now I was the one at a loss for how to explain things. “We’re the good guys, trust me,” I finally said lamely. “So, you don’t do any, er, arcane or ‘magic’ type stuff?” I even did the quotey marks with my fingers, which didn’t at all help how silly I felt asking him if he did magic.

Paul turned wide eyes to Mzatal again, and it was clear he knew something “magical” was happening to save his friend. He shook his head slowly, voice dropping to a rough whisper. “No.”

“What about him?” I asked, jerking my head toward Thatcher. “What’s he do? Does he do anything arcane?”

Paul looked back over at me. “He’s my bodyguard.” The sudden look of stunned realization that swept over his face was almost comical in its unabashed extreme. “Oh my god. He saved my life.”

I sat back on my heels and processed all he’d told me. According to Paul, neither of these two were arcane practitioners, though I knew he could easily be lying. Fortunately, I had a Mzatal-shaped lie detector, and as soon as he wasn’t otherwise occupied in major tissue and organ repair, I’d ask him to assess Paul and find out for sure.

But if Paul was telling the truth, and Thatcher wasn’t a summoner, then why on earth did Tracy have a bodyguard’s name in his journal? Maybe he’d planned on hiring one? Maybe Thatcher had actually worked for him at one point? Only the man bleeding on the floor could answer those questions.

I abruptly noticed that the blood on Paul wasn’t all Thatcher’s. “Your arm is bleeding,” I gently pointed out. Looked like the bullet had scored his left upper arm after exiting Thatcher’s chest.

Paul blinked and looked down at the shallow wound. I fully expected him to freak a bit at being shot, especially after being so upset about Thatcher, but to my surprise he simply gave a somewhat distracted frown. “Oh. Yeah. Guess it is.”

I took a closer look at him. Now I saw that his nose was slightly crooked, with a bump on one side that told me it had been broken. A thin scar ran along one cheekbone, and another one cut through an eyebrow. He’d taken damage before, I realized.

Falling silent, I continued to weave support while I wondered about this pair. Why did a computer nerd need a bodyguard? And how the hell had he used a computer to trace what he called a “wiggle” to this precise spot and time if he didn’t know about the arcane? Sure, Tracy—and obviously Tsuneo—had tracked it, but they were summoners. More questions to be answered.

“Enough,” Mzatal said after a while, voice drawn and lacking its usual resonance. He lifted his hands from Thatcher’s chest. Raw, angry tissue sealed the ugly wound, and though Thatcher’s skin still held a sickly pallor, he breathed slowly and with relative ease.

Blue-green potency flared on Mzatal’s hands as he burned the blood cleanly away. I felt his profound exhaustion, but there was no more I could do for him at this point except worry. I reached for his hand. He took it, gave it a soft squeeze, conveying reassurance, affection, and gratitude in the simple gesture.

“Is he going to be okay?” Paul asked, face twisted with concern.

Mzatal met the young man’s eyes, remained silent for several heartbeats before answering. “He will recover, Paul Ortiz,” he told him. “Now breathe.”

Paul drew in a ragged breath and gazed up at Mzatal in utter awe.

The side door creaked as Ryan entered. He swept his gaze around the warehouse, taking it all in. His eyes briefly met mine before moving on to rest on the corpse, and I watched the emotions crawl over his face as the implications hit home. Mzatal had killed a man, and now Ryan, a federal agent, was expected to help cover it up. Ryan had dealt with a lot of grey areas in the past year, including faking a story about the death of Tracy Gordon. But this crossed another line.

Yet when his eyes returned to mine, they offered reassurance. It reminded me of the old saw, “A friend will help you move. A best friend will help you move bodies.” This was a horrible scenario fraught with all sorts of issues, but at the end of the day I knew he’d help me clean up the mess we were in.

I stood, legs a little shaky from managing the support for so long. “We need to get these two back to the house,” I told Ryan with a nod toward Paul and Thatcher. “And take care of . . .” I gestured toward Tito.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Right. Zack gave me a summary in his text. I’m thinking.”

“Wait. House?” Paul scrambled to his feet to stare at me in horror. “What house? I can’t go!” Terror suddenly flooded his face for no reason I could pinpoint. “We can’t go,” he gasped, then fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “We can’t go! Oh, god. I need . . . I need to make a call!”

“No!” I lunged to grab his arm. “No. Paul, please, you have to trust me. Your friend needs more care.” I searched his face. Sweat dotted his upper lip, and his breath came in short panicked gasps. “And you’re somewhere you don’t want to be,” I said. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said to Thatcher when he thought the man was dying: I can’t take it there without you! I can’t stay there without you. I can’t do it. I’ll die.

“Let us help you,” I urged.

All color drained from his face. “No. You don’t understand.” He shook his head and struggled to twist free of my grip. “Please,” he said, voice breaking. “I need to call.”

My skin prickled at the odd fervency in his voice. I glanced over at Mzatal to see him regarding the young man with narrow-eyed intensity. “Why?” I asked Paul. “Why do you need to call?”

“I j-just do,” he said. I felt a tremble go through him. “It’s where we need to be.”

I stared at him in confusion. “What will happen if you don’t call?”

He gulped and cast a panicked gaze around him. “They’ll be looking for us soon if we don’t call in. I can’t just go with you. I have to get back. To work.” Emotions warred on his face, and I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know there was some serious turmoil going on in there.

“Who will be looking for you?” I asked.

He made an unintelligible response and pulled against my grasp. His eyes darted this way and that like a cornered animal seeking any possible escape, even if it meant off a cliff.

What the hell was his deal? “Paul, it’s all right,” I said as calmly as possible. Whoever “they” were, he had some heavy duty fear associated with them, and Mzatal would get farther by reading him than I would by pushing the question. “You don’t have to answer me right now, but you do need to listen.” I kept a firm grip on his arm and turned him to face me more. “Thatcher is still in bad shape. If he doesn’t get more healing, he’ll die. He needs to stay with us to get that healing.” I let that sink in for a few seconds before continuing. “I won’t keep you against your will, but do you really want to leave your friend? Or allow him to die?” Yeah, I was playing horribly dirty, but I only felt a little guilty about it. Okay, shit, I felt a lot guilty about it since it was like telling a kid that the bogeyman would take him away forever if he didn’t eat his vegetables.

His mouth dropped open as a look of undisguised horror temporarily replaced the fear. “No. No! He can’t die!”

“Then come with us,” I said. “I promise you’ll be able to leave whenever you want.” Or rather, I’d let him leave after I found out why he wanted to go so badly.

He drew a breath and relaxed a bit, and for a shining moment I thought he’d accepted the pure genius of my argument. Yet in the next instant he yanked in wide-eyed desperation against my grip as the fear returned.

I bit back a curse. “Boss, I need some help here.”

Mzatal moved to us and, without any preliminaries, gripped Paul’s head between his hands. Paul’s face abruptly went slack, eyes glassy as he succumbed to Mzatal’s influence. I released Paul’s arm and rested my hand on Mzatal’s back as he worked, offering what support I could. The healing of Thatcher and the potency strike on Tito had drained him, and it showed in his pallor and the lines of tension on his face.

Mzatal’s eyes narrowed. “He carries a pervasive influence that is not a direct manipulation,” he said. “It is insidious, as though he has been steeped in an energy that has contaminated all parts. Very different from conscious manipulation and challenging to clear.”

“Who did it? A lord?”

Mzatal shifted his grip on Paul. “No. His fear is of Big Mack.”

“He’s afraid of a burger?” I asked, baffled.

Mzatal’s brows drew together as he deciphered the meaning from me. “No. Big Mack is a man.” He returned his attention to Paul, and I held back further questions. Fortunately, Mzatal provided an explanation before I went too far into my vision of a scary hamburger clown wreaking havoc. “It is one named Farouche.”

“He must mean James Macklin Farouche,” I said. “These guys work for StarFire Security, which is owned by him.” I frowned. J.M. Farouche was a prominent Louisiana businessman and philanthropist. The security company was only one of his many holdings. “That’s who he’s so afraid of?” I asked, unable to fully hide the note of disbelief in my voice. “Everything I’ve ever heard about him is that he’s a great guy—gives tons to charity, treats his employees well. His family has lived around here for a couple hundred years. In fact he still lives on the Farouche plantation.”

“It is truth. This Farouche held heavy influence over this one,” Mzatal said. “A compulsion component wound tightly with primal fear. I have removed much of the influence and dispersed the residuals such that they will not obligate him to take action.”

I had a tough time believing a respected—and seemingly ordinary—businessman like Farouche could do such a thing, but I also knew better than to doubt Mzatal. “All right. That’s pretty, um, interesting.” I took a few more seconds to process it all. “If it’s not manipulation, then how does it work? And how is a human doing it?”

Mzatal frowned. “I have seen talent for such in three humans before,” he said. “For two of them, it was an innate ability to influence the actions of others simply by being in their presence, though without lasting effect.” His frown deepened. “The third, long ago, demonstrated not only the passive influence, but also a conscious and invasive ability to impose her will in more permanent fashion, much as Farouche has to Paul Ortiz.”

A shiver ran over me. Bad enough that lords could mentally control people, but at least they were usually tucked safely away in the demon realm. I knew there were humans other than summoners who had more-than-normal abilities. In fact, it had been less than a year since I tracked down a killer who fed on the essences of her victims.

But I’d never heard of one who could control actions and behavior as Farouche supposedly did, and even the concept left me cold.

“I asked Paul if he or Thatcher ever used the arcane,” I told Mzatal. “He denied it, but I wanted to check with you. Did you assess him?”

“I did,” Mzatal said. “He speaks the truth of himself and what he knows of Bryce Thatcher.”

“Can we trust them?” I asked. “I told Paul we’d help them both, but at the same time I don’t want to bring a potential enemy into our midst.”

Mzatal withdrew his hands from Paul’s head and stepped back. “In this moment, Paul Ortiz holds no intention of taking action against us,” he assured me. “However, I will continue to monitor him for any indication of duplicity or threat.”

“Thanks, Boss,” I said, relieved. “I’d rather be over-paranoid, y’know?”

Paul blinked, focused on Mzatal. “What happened?”

Mzatal regarded the young man. “I have eased your unnatural fear of James Macklin Farouche.”

Paul opened his mouth as though to protest but then closed it again. Bafflement swept across his face, followed quickly by amazement as he no doubt felt the difference in himself.

“Oh my god. Oh my god!” He gazed up at Mzatal as though looking into the face of a superhero. “Thank you.” Tears glistened in his eyes.

Mzatal inclined his head. “You are most welcome.”

“Paul, this is Lord Mzatal,” I said. “We need to get Thatcher out of here and get the place cleaned up. You cool to go with us now?”

“Yeah,” he replied, voice barely above a whisper, eyes still on Mzatal. “I’m okay now.”

A sudden wave of disorienting vertigo hit me, as though I stood in the middle of an upward swirling vortex. I threw a hand out to steady myself, felt Mzatal gather me to him.

We both held onto each other and swayed for nearly a full minute until the sensation subsided.

“What the hell was that?” I gasped out.

“Ten-seventeen!” Paul exclaimed with unmistakable exuberance, though he looked just as shaky as I felt. “It’s ten-seventeen. That was the wiggle!”

“This is a nodal point of the valve system,” Mzatal said, face set in the familiar frown that told me he was deep in assessment of the area. “What we experienced was a type of valve emission, a release of—” He paused as though seeking the words. “—a release of pressure, like unto a geyser.”

Comprehension dawned. “It’s a place that regulates the pressure of multiple valves?” Mzatal nodded. Like an arcane Old Faithful, I thought. “And Tracy was trying to use that burst, that emission, to feed his gate creation,” I added with satisfaction as a few more bits of the puzzle came together. It also explained why Tsuneo had shown up, though it didn’t explain what he’d planned to do once he was here.

“It was unwise of him to attempt such,” Mzatal said, expression darkening. “The balance of both worlds depends upon the integrity of the valves. They are not to be altered or misused. Tampering with a node risks damaging many valves.” He swayed again, but this time I knew it was from potency depletion and not an aftereffect of the node geyser.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I’ll bring the car close to the door. Eilahn, can you carry Thatcher?”

“Wait!” Paul exclaimed, aghast. I paused mid-stride to give him a questioning look. “You can’t just go outside like that!”

Frowning, I glanced down at myself and then at the others. “Oh, of course,” I said with a low laugh. “Good catch. Boss, will you please loan Eilahn your jacket?”

Mzatal slipped off the Armani suit jacket and handed it to the still-topless Eilahn, but Paul shook his head. “No, no, no. Not that,” he said with a touch of exasperation. “There are cameras out there. My tablet. I need my tablet.” He looked around, face twisting with a different kind of worry as he looked where he’d dropped it. “Shit.”

I retrieved the tablet and handed it to him. It was in a rugged, shockproof case, and the screen wasn’t cracked, so hopefully it was all right for whatever he needed it for. “You can do something about the cameras?” I asked doubtfully. I hadn’t really been worried about surveillance when we arrived, but that was before we’d stumbled into a gigantic mess.

“If my tablet still works, sure,” he said matter-of-factly as he pushed the power button. His shoulders slumped in relief when it turned on, and he proceeded to quickly tap away at it.

“You’re serious.” I stared at him. “You can hack into the security system here?” Was he so good with computers he warranted a bodyguard?

He shook his head. “There’s no system in here. I mean, not in this building, and not one that’s active anymore.” Intense concentration suffused his features as he continued to tap, reminding me weirdly of Mzatal’s super-focused expression.

“Streetlight cam that catches the entrance to the industrial park,” he murmured to himself. “Two cameras covering the back of this section of the park. Knock the street cam out for a bit, loop the others to cover.” He frowned, tapped some more. “Wipe our entry.” He flicked a glance up then back down. “And yours.” His frown deepened, but about a minute later his mouth spread into a grin. “There. All set!” He took a deep satisfied breath and released it, looking almost recharged by the quick bit of hacker work.

“Um, okay.” I gave a mental shrug. With Mzatal monitoring him for anything treacherous, I had no reason not to trust him at this point.

I hurried out and brought the car closer. Eilahn carried Thatcher out, showing no more strain than if he were a child. Paul followed her, clearly impressed and amazed by what surely seemed like a superhuman feat.

Through the open door I saw a blue-green shimmer as Mzatal burned the rest of the blood from the floor of the warehouse. Ryan passed me with the body of Tito slung in a fireman’s carry and gave me a tight nod as he headed to his own car. “See you back at the house,” he said over his shoulder.

I didn’t ask what he and Zack intended to do with the body. Some things were best left undiscussed.

Eilahn climbed into the back of my car and cradled the unconscious Thatcher to her, while Paul settled in beside her and took hold of the limp hand again. Eilahn’s eyes closed, and I knew she would arcanely support the wounded man until we could get back to the house.

I turned to Mzatal as he exited the warehouse, his hands clasped behind his back. “Boss, you’re going to have to ride with me since Ryan and Zack are . . . cleaning up the mess.”

“With you is my desire, zharkat,” he said, voice lacking its usual fullness which only served to increase my worry for him. He kissed me tenderly then slid a hand down to take mine.

I walked with him to the car, got him settled in the front passenger seat and prayed that Paul wasn’t feeding us a line of bullshit about the cameras. “Everyone good?” I asked with a glance into the back before I slid into the driver’s seat.

“What about Bryce’s car?” Paul asked, brow furrowing with renewed concern as he looked over at the white SUV. “Oh man, they’re gonna freak out no matter what.”

“We’ll deal with it,” I said. Somehow. It was all too probable that we’d deal with the SUV by leaving it right where it was.

I started the car and headed home. I couldn’t even be relieved that we were leaving a mess behind. I flicked a quick glance at the rear view mirror. No, we were bringing this mess home with us. All I could do was hope it would be worth it.