Mark of the Demon

CHAPTER 23

Ryan was practically breaking his jaw with his yawns, so I finally bullied him into returning to the guest room to try to get some more sleep. I, however, had approximately zero desire to sleep again at this point. I made a pot of coffee in an attempt to battle my own attack of the yawns, then took another look through my notes to see if anything new would come to me. I was grasping for anything at this juncture that could point me in the right direction. I felt like I was running in place while the time until the next full moon rapidly slipped away.

My cell phone rang as soon as I’d poured my second cup. I glanced at the clock. Four a.m. Calls this early were seldom good news.

“Detective Gillian? This is Detective Powell in Narcotics. I’ve found one of your people.”

A surge of sick dread went through me. “Oh, shit. Another body?”

“Huh? Oh, no. Nothing like that. Her name’s Michelle Cleland, and I just arrested her for prostitution and possession of crack cocaine.”

I nearly swayed in relief. “Oh, that’s fantastic. Where is she now?”

“She’s in holding. I just finished booking her in.”

“Powell, I owe you. Thanks a million.”

“No prob, Kara. I hope it helps you guys out.”

I hurriedly changed into jeans and a T-shirt with the Glock emblem on the front while slugging down as much coffee as I could without burning my mouth. Twenty minutes later, I was at the jail, waiting for the girl to be brought into an interview room.

Michelle Cleland had the ultraskinny frame, sunken cheeks, and beaten-down cast to her eyes that told me that she’d been on crack or some other highly addictive substance for a while. I glanced quickly at her booking sheet for her age. Twenty-three. Damn hard to tell by just her appearance.

She looked at me sullenly as she sat down, though there was a flicker of bravado about her as well. I could see by her driver’s license photo that at one time she’d been pretty. Nice smile, long brown hair, and big brown eyes with a scattering of freckles across her nose. Not anymore. She’d probably be dead in a few years from an overdose.

“Hi, Michelle,” I began. “I’m Detective Kara Gillian.”

Michelle slumped down in the chair. “I already talked to the narc guy and told him who I bought the shit from.”

“That’s not what I want to know.”

Michelle looked up at me uncertainly. I kept my expression serious. “I’m going to go ahead and read you your Miranda warnings, but I’ll tell you right now I’m not looking for any information that’s going to get you into any more trouble.” I quickly ran through the required rights and Michelle dutifully signed the form.

“All right,” I said, as I put the form away. “Now that that’s out of the way, I have some questions to ask you about these.” I pulled out the pictures and the drawings from Greg Cerise’s house and spread them on the table.

Michelle leaned forward, breath catching in surprise. “Oh, my God. That’s me!” She touched a drawing that depicted a woman drawing water from a well. In the picture, the woman was dressed in a simple clinging shift, with her hair pulled back into a loose braid. She was beautiful and smiling, looking over her shoulder at something or someone not depicted in the drawing. Another picture showed the same woman, but this time she was belting on a sword and the expression on her face was harder, determined, but by no means defeated.

“Oh, wow. Wow. I almost look good.” Michelle slumped back down in the chair, clearly saddened by the reminder of how far she’d fallen.

“Yeah. You’re a pretty girl. And these are incredible drawings. What do you know about the artist?”

The girl shrugged. “Dunno. He was just this guy who hung out at the park and would give people like ten bucks or so to let him take their picture. He was always drawing or taking pictures.”

“Was there anyone else with him?”

Michelle shook her head. “Nah, not really. I mean, he talked to the people who hung out there, but he didn’t have anyone with him or anything.”

“Did you ever see any of the pictures he drew?”

“Yeah, it was some wild stuff. Comic book or something, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Yeah. It was cool. I talked to him once, y’know? He was nice. He told me that he was a lot better at drawing people with a picture to start from, not real good at drawing from just his imagination. He gave me twenty bucks and he took a bunch of pictures.” She looked down at the drawings. “Why are you asking me about him? Did he do something wrong by paying us? I never fucked him, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“No. I’m the lead investigator on the Symbol Man investigation.” I waited for it to process through the girl’s head.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “He’s the Symbol Man?”

“No. He was killed by the Symbol Man.” I put the drawings back in the folder, noting that the girl looked at them wistfully.

“Oh, my God. He’s dead?” To my surprise, tears began to well up in her eyes. “Oh, man, he was nice. That’s horrible.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Michelle sniffled and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “So why are you asking me all of this stuff about him if he’s dead?”

“Well, when we went into his house, we found a bunch of pictures and drawings—people he’d taken pictures of around town.” I kept my gaze on her. “It turns out that all the victims of the Symbol Man had been photographed and drawn by Greg already.”

The girl paled. “Wait. You mean—”

“Yes,” I said. “You’re at risk of being a victim.”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh, my God, you can’t let him get me!”

I reached out and put my hand on top of Michelle’s. “I won’t. That’s why I’m talking to you now. I know you don’t want to hear this, but jail is the safest place for you right now.”

Michelle stared at me, then shook her head. “I can’t stay here. It’s cold, and the food is awful, and all the other women in the holding cell are nasty.”

“Would you rather be slit open from throat to twat?” I said, forcefully blunt.

Michelle seemed to deflate. Her eyes filled with tears again. “This just sucks. Jail sucks.”

“I know,” I said, softening my tone. “I know, but give me just a bit more time. We’re close to this guy. Once we catch him, then you’re out of here.” I gave Michelle a wry smile. “And I’ll do my best to make sure that any time you spend in here will apply to your sentence.”

Her lip quivered. “Okay. But this still sucks.”

I stood and pressed the button to call the guard back. “I know, Michelle. But it beats being dead.”

I didn’t head back home or to the office. There was a conversation I’d been meaning to have for a while now, and time was running out to get all the answers.

I walked up the steps to my aunt’s house and rang the doorbell. It was barely six a.m., but I knew she would already be up and about. True to form, the door opened before the echoes of the bell had faded away.

“Hiya, sweets. You know you don’t have to ring the bell.”

“Aunt Tessa,” I said without preamble, “we need to talk.”

Tessa’s smile faded and she gave a nod, as if she’d been expecting this visit. She turned and headed down the hall to the kitchen and then sat at the counter, pushing a cup of tea toward me.

I couldn’t help but smile a bit as I lifted the cup. Perfect, as always.

“Aunt Tessa, I need you to tell me about the time you saw Rhyzkahl.”

Tessa sighed and set her hands on the counter as if to examine her nails. “I knew you’d be coming to me at some point about that whole thing.” She lifted her eyes to mine. “It’s all connected, isn’t it?”

“I’m almost positive,” I said. “But I need some more information, and you’re the only one who can give it to me.”

Tessa squeezed her eyes shut briefly. “I can still see the whole thing. Even almost thirty years later.”

“Greg told me that you two were in the basement when his father attempted to summon Rhyzkahl,” I said, gently prompting.

Tessa shook her head firmly. “No, he wasn’t attempting to summon Rhyzkahl. Only someone with a death wish would do that. He was trying to summon another lord, Szerain, who was much lower in stature than Rhyzkahl and supposedly willing to negotiate terms. It was a ridiculous and doomed attempt to heal his wife of breast cancer, which had gone undiagnosed and untreated because of his insane aversion to the medical community.” Her voice was filled with bitterness. Then she sighed again. “Not that there was much that could have been done back then. They just didn’t have the treatments they do today, but she might have had a few more years.” An expression of regret flickered across her face. “We’ll never know now.”

“Aunt Tessa,” I said, leaning forward. “Please tell me everything that you remember about that night.”

Tessa curled her hands around her cup, empty as it was. “Greg and I had both just turned seventeen. Our birthdays were only a few days apart. We’d been playmates since we were just kids—used to spend darn near every waking minute together. When we got older, the friendship just naturally progressed to intimacy.” Her lips twitched. “I guess you could say we were best-friend-fuckbuddies.”

I knew she wanted me to react, but I refused to amuse her. Get to the point, I thought silently.

After waiting a few breaths for me to respond, Tessa began to speak again. “Greg’s mother had been sick for a while, and his father decided that performing an incredibly risky, idiotic, insane summoning was preferable to actually taking her to seek medical help. We knew that it was breast cancer only because Greg had snuck her out and taken her to see a damn doctor.” Anger colored her voice. “At that time, I had no idea what a summoning was or that I had any talent for it. I knew that my mother had a private study that was sometimes locked, but that was about it. But that Saturday night, Greg called me and asked me to come over. He didn’t say so, but I knew he was worried about his mom and didn’t want to be alone. His parents had some sort of dinner party planned for that night, and I figured that meant we’d have lots of time to fool around in his basement.” A ghost of a smile lit her face. “I was doing my best to distract him from his worries, when people started coming downstairs. My mother was among them, which I hadn’t expected. We scrambled to grab our clothes and dove behind a bookcase, figuring we’d hide until they all left again.” She shook her head. “But they didn’t leave. We stayed behind that bookcase and watched as the ritual began.” She set the cup down and stood, moving to the sink to look out at her backyard and the morning sun on the lake beyond.

“Go on,” I prompted after a moment.

Tessa rolled her head on her neck as if trying to ease the tension. “You have to understand the … feelings of guilt that I’ve dealt with all these years. I know it’s not rational, but I feel guilty all the same.”

“Aunt Tessa, why?”

“I could feel the ritual, feel the opening of the portal.” Her voice was low, thready. “It was the first time I’d ever seen a summoning, and I could instantly feel that it was something I could do.” Her shoulders slumped. “And without knowing what I was doing, without thinking, I sat in my hiding place behind that bookcase and I reached out mentally to that portal as it opened.”

“Oh, shit,” I breathed.

“Yes. I altered the forming of it, changed the structure just enough …”

“And Rhyzkahl was pulled through.”

Tessa’s hands were white-knuckled on the rim of the sink. “Yes. Completely unwilling and without any warning. And because it was an imperfect portal, it was probably quite painful for him as well.”

I shivered. The memory of his unshielded fury came back to me.

“He … he’s beautiful, as you know. Angelic. There was a moment, a perfect small moment, when all everyone could see was that beauty, and everyone thought that the summoning had gone as planned.” She turned back to me, hugging her arms around herself. “And then he let us feel the full extent of his anger.”

“I’ve felt it,” I said softly.

Tessa gave a single jerky nod. “It was a bloodbath, a slaughter, but I’ll grant him this: He took his vengeance but did not revel in the suffering. Only enough to satisfy his honor.” A shudder rippled through her. “But it was still a horror to watch. He killed two of the men first, literally ripped them apart. He broke the necks of two women.” Tessa took a deep breath. “The only summoners left were my mother and Peter Cerise. They were both pinned down by his sheer power.” She brushed her hair out of her face, hands shaking slightly. “Rhyzkahl knew we were there, hiding. He looked straight at us. I could … feel his presence, feel him measuring and testing us.” She fell silent for several heartbeats. “I don’t know exactly how he killed my mother, but in one breath she was alive and screaming in terror, and then she just … fell silent, sighed, and didn’t breathe again.” She licked her lips. “Greg’s mother was next. Powers above and below, how he drew that out! Peter Cerise was held down by the unbelievable potency of Rhyzkahl, both legs snapped like dry twigs. Couldn’t move, forced to watch as Rhyzkahl ripped gobbets of cancerous flesh from his wife, that angelic face utterly impassive.”

I realized that my hands were clenched into tight fists under the table, nails digging into my palms.

Tessa dragged a hand across her face. “And then he gathered his power and was gone, leaving the blood and the slaughter.” She made a breathy sound that I realized was meant to be a laugh. “It’s funny. I hate Rhyzkahl for what he did that night, but I could never blame him for my mother’s death. It was Peter Cerise’s arrogance and my ignorance that were the true causes for what happened.”

“Aunt Tessa! You can’t blame yourself like that.”

Tessa turned back to me. “Oh, I know. I was so very young. But Rhyzkahl was merely acting on his nature after being dragged unwillingly through the portal. He took the vengeance he needed to satisfy his honor. Greg’s mother … it was hideous what Rhyzkahl did to her, but … I could see her face. I don’t think she felt any of it. I think Rhyzkahl did it solely to further torment Peter Cerise.”

I struggled to grasp how my aunt could be so accepting of the Demonic Lord’s actions. “What happened after he was gone?”

Tessa took a deep breath, beginning to recover some of her color. “I grabbed Greg—dearest powers of all, but he was hysterical. I was just trying to not think about it. I hated Greg’s dad, hated him so much for making my mother do this thing, hated him for not treating his wife properly. I dumped Greg upstairs, then went back and ran to the garage …” She trailed off.

“Greg told me,” I said gently. “Told me that you burned the house down to cover up what had happened.”

“He didn’t tell you everything. He didn’t tell you what he didn’t see.” Tessa’s voice was flat.

“What didn’t he see?”

“I dumped the gas down into the basement, then lit a towel off the stove and threw that down as well.” She looked at me. “I stayed there long enough to make sure that the place was going to catch fire. I stayed long enough to make sure that the stairs had caught, so that Peter Cerise couldn’t get out.”

I felt as if I’d been punched. “What? I thought he’d been killed by Rhyzkahl.”

“No. He was alive. Rhyzkahl broke his legs and left him to watch it all. He knew that it was a greater revenge to make Cerise live with the memory, the guilt.” Tessa gave her head a sharp shake. “I wasn’t thinking that elegantly. I just wanted him dead.”

I stood. “Aunt Tessa. Are you sure he died in the fire?”

Her thin eyebrows drew together. “When they finally put the fire out, the basement was a mess. And since we never saw him again, I …” She smacked her hand to her forehead. “I never even thought of him!”

“Basements usually have windows or doors, other ways out in case there is a fire,” I breathed. “He’s alive. He’s alive, and he wants to summon Rhyzkahl. It makes sense. That explains how he knew Greg.” I grabbed my aunt by her shoulders. “Aunt Tessa, do you know what he looks like? Do you have old pictures of him? Anything?”

Tessa shook her head. “No, sweets, nothing like that. And if he stayed around here, he must have changed his appearance, because Greg always thought he was dead too.”

“Aunt Tessa, I have to go,” I said, as I snatched up my cell phone and took off for the door. This was almost worse than not knowing. I knew who the Symbol Man was now, but I had no idea how to find him.

I had my cell-phone headset jammed into my ear even before I got the car started. I punched Ryan’s number in as I backed out of my aunt’s driveway. “Come, on, Ryan. Pick up!” I muttered.

“Good morning, Kara,” Ryan said as he answered.

“Ryan! I know who the Symbol Man is,” I said in a rush. “It’s Greg Cerise’s dad, Peter Cerise, who was supposedly killed in a summoning, but I think he wasn’t killed after all. And now he wants revenge on Rhyzkahl and everyone else for letting his wife die, even though it was his own damn fault to begin with!”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down. Okay, it’s Greg’s dad. So where is he now?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what he looks like or what he’s doing.”

I heard him mutter a curse. “All right. Well, it’s a start, at least. I can go back and do some legwork and see if he had any prints on file or anything like that.”

“I bet Greg had photos of his dad.”

“Mr. Greg Cerise is quite dead, and the search warrant on that residence is no longer valid.”

“Details, details!” I retorted. “I’ll find you a damn photo.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

The search warrant was expired, but at this point I really didn’t give a shit. I called dispatch and got the number for the owner of the house, Greg’s erstwhile landlady, a Ms. Dana Sebastian. I dialed as I drove to the house.

A woman answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hello, this is Detective Gillian with the Beaulac Police Department. Is this Dana Sebastian?”

“Yes … yes, it is. Is this about the murder?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m the lead investigator on the Symbol Man murders. Look, I know the search warrant has expired, but I really need to get back into your rental house and look for something.”

“Oh, damn, I’ve already had a crew come through to fix the door and scrub the place down, and I packed all of Greg’s stuff up. It’s all still there in boxes, though. I really don’t know what to do with any of it, to be honest. I don’t know if he has any family.”

“I can’t help you there,” I said. The only next of kin I knew of wasn’t likely to step forward just to claim some boxes of junk. “Is there any way you can come by to let me in and let me look through the stuff?”

“I’m at work and can’t get away until late this afternoon, but if you want you can let yourself in. The key’s under the frog statue on the back porch.”

“I really appreciate this,” I said fervently.

“Sure thing. I hope it helps you out. I still can’t believe this happened. Greg was a supernice guy and a good tenant.”

“I met him only once, but he seemed pretty cool,” I said. “Of course, the neighbor across the street was convinced he was up to no good.”

“Oh, my God, that racist bitch? I swear, I wanted to rent the place out to a black Jewish gay couple just to piss her off, but then I figured it wouldn’t be fair to the black Jewish gay couple.”

I smiled wryly. “Makes me glad I live way out in the country with no neighbors.”

“Lucky you! Look, if you need anything else, just let me know.”

“You got it. Thanks again.”

The Blood Had been cleaned up in the kitchen and the tile scrubbed and bleached. The cleaning crew had done a good job; there was no visible sign at all that a gruesome murder had taken place here. But it was still going to be hard for her to rent or sell the place.

The house had been stripped down to the walls, and I found about a dozen boxes piled in a back bedroom. I began looking through them and made the delightful discovery that Dana had labeled each box with a short description of its contents. Oh, I do so love this woman!

But even with the labels, it still took me well over an hour to find which boxes held pictures and then an hour more to find what I was looking for.

I sat down on the floor, holding the picture of a man in a suit standing stiffly next to a grinning teenager, arm draped awkwardly over the boy’s shoulders. The kid was definitely Greg. Even thirty years later, the grin had remained constant. And this picture had likely been taken not long before the summoning-gone-wrong—a couple of years at most. So this must be Dad. I peered at the picture. Slightly above-average height. Light-blue eyes. Brown hair. Nondescript features. Medium build. He’d be in his mid to late sixties now, I figured. I made a note to find out his date of birth when I got back to the office.

I pushed my hair back from my face, frustrated. I still didn’t have much to go on. But this has to be who the killer is. Peter Cerise. It fit perfectly. So, who the hell was he now?

I pulled my cell phone out again and called Ryan.

“Kristoff here.”

“Hiya, Agent-with-the-high-tech-resources-that-I-don’t-have. Can your peeps do an age progression on a photograph?”

“I can get it to someone who can,” he said. “Whatcha got?”

“Picture of Greg’s dad. But it’s about thirty years old. I can’t figure out who he is.”

Ryan gave a low whistle. “That’s terrific. Get it to me and I’ll send it off.”

“You got it. Where y’at now?”

“I’m out and about, but if you email it to me, I’ll forward it to my ‘peeps,’ as you put it.”

“I’m not near a computer. But I’m ten minutes away from the office.”

“I’ll be looking for it in eleven.”

I shut the phone and stuffed it into my pocket, then let myself out the same way I’d come in, tucking the key back under the statue.

As I walked back out to my car, Ms. Dailey was standing at the end of the driveway, dressed this time in a bright fuchsia velour sweat suit. I wondered briefly if her entire wardrobe consisted of velour sweat suits of varying obnoxious hues.

“Young lady,” she said with a stern expression on her face. “May I ask just what you were doing in there?” Her tone was accusatory, as if she thought I was looting the place for valuables.

What, now the woman was concerned about her neighbor? I closed the distance to Ms. Dailey, getting close enough that she was forced to take a step back.

“It’s Detective Gillian,” I said through bared teeth, yanking my badge off my belt and thrusting it into the woman’s face. “I am here on official police business for the purposes of investigating a series of murders. But for you, Ms. Dailey, I have just one thing to advise.”

Ms. Dailey’s eyes widened.

“From now on, why don’t you try minding your own fucking business?”

I turned and marched back to my car, leaving the woman behind me gaping and speechless. And, for the first time, I felt like the warrior woman in that picture.