Sins of the Demon

Chapter 22

Traffic was a fucking bitch, adding to the mounting frustration already plaguing us. Tracy’s threat about finding a way to motivate me haunted me, and I knew I needed to be prepared. I knew without a doubt that he needed me alive only because he intended for me to end up dead or drained or something worse. Personally, I wanted to avoid that sort of fate.

The strip mall ended up being a complete bust, but luckily not one that took too much time to check out. It helped that it stood completely empty, and through all the window fronts we could easily see that there was nothing nefarious going on there. Moreover, Zack gave me the slight shake of his head that told me he couldn’t detect arcane residue of any kind—which would surely be there if Tracy had been summoning anywhere around there.

But the residence was a different matter. It was a small single-story house in the middle of the block in a neighborhood that had probably been decently middle-class a couple of decades ago. Now shriveled grass pushed up between cracks in the sidewalk. Several of the mailboxes had dents in them, testimony to someone’s game of mailbox baseball. Few of the yards were maintained beyond a sporadic mowing, and there were several driveways with cars in them that looked like they hadn’t been moved in a while, to judge from the amount of leaves and pine needles caught in piles against tires. A house further down the street looked like it had been broken into and vandalized a number of times—probably a foreclosure. Several windows were smashed and the door had been tagged with spray paint and other unknown substances. The house we were looking at had no cars in the driveway, and a dried brown lawn that probably hadn’t been cut in six months, but even though it looked and felt like an empty house, it remained untouched by any vandalism.

“This is it,” Ryan murmured. “There are definitely protections around this place.” I flicked my eyes to Zack, and he dipped his head in the barest of nods.

Elation surged through me, quickly followed by frustration. We were on the right track, but now what were we supposed to do? “I can’t do anything about the wards with the cuff on,” I said. Not that I was sure I’d be able to do anything even if I didn’t have it on. There was a reason I called demons to do my heavy ward work. I flicked a glance to Zack. He answered with a faint grimace and shrug, then tapped his watch. In other words, Sure, he could probably get through them, but it would take time. And he would need to do it where Ryan couldn’t see what was going on.

I could get Ryan out of the way, but I didn’t think we had much time.

Ryan scowled. “Do you think he’s in there?”

I considered this. “No,” I finally said. “I think he’s wherever he wants me to go. He said he was going to provide incentive for me.” I rubbed my arms through the coat, then I pushed my sleeve back and narrowed my eyes at the cuff.

“When that arcane grenade-thing went off,” I asked, “what did it feel like? What did it do?”

“Hurt like hell,” Ryan admitted. “And left me super-dizzy for a couple of minutes. Could barely focus my eyes.”

I glanced over to Zack, and he nodded. “Same. Pain, dizzy, disoriented.”

I pursed my lips. “And I didn’t feel any of that. I only puked.” A smile slowly spread across my face. “Holy shit. Duh. This cuff not only blocks my own arcane, but blocks arcane shit from affecting me—which is why the drug hasn’t done much to me yet. I’m a moron. Of course that would make me immune to arcane protections as well. ”

“You can cross the wards,” Zack breathed, beginning to grin.

Ryan still frowned. “Won’t it still make you sick?”

“It passes. At the worst I’ll puke, but I’ll be able to get through without getting hurt.” I hope, I added silently.

“And what if he is in there?” Ryan asked, clearly still less than thrilled with this plan of mine.

“Then I shoot him,” I said bluntly. “He needs me alive. I have no such need of him.”

Ryan considered this for a few heartbeats, then gave a firm nod. “Okay. As long as we’re agreed on that.” He handed me the transmitter. “Just in case he doesn’t have a ward blocking the signal.” I nodded and obediently tucked it inside my collar.

Despite my confident words, my heart pounded as I approached the house. A mild queasiness washed over me as I stepped onto the walkway that led to the front door. Those were probably aversions, I thought as I moved forward, gun in hand though tucked inside my coat. No sense freaking out any neighbors who might be watching from behind their curtains. About five feet away from the door, a stronger wave hit me, and I had to pause and take deep, gulping breaths to get it under control. Okay, and those are some of the actual protections. But I was making it through. So far at least. Puking was better then being fried. Still, I hesitated before I tried the door. That’s where the strongest protections would be. Taking a deep breath, I seized the door handle.

Nothing. I exhaled in relief, then frowned in annoyance as I tried to turn it. Locked. Great, a zillion levels of arcane protection, and he still feels the need to use a mundane lock. Shielding the view with my body as much as I could, I broke the decorative window beside the door with the butt of my gun.

And that’s when the nausea slammed into me like a truck. I dropped to my hands and knees and lost breakfast, yesterday’s dinner, and even a few meals I didn’t eat yet, or so it seemed. After what felt like forever it finally faded but I stayed there, gasping for breath as I slowly regained control of my body. Okay, whatever that ward was, it was definitely meant to be a lethal one.

Legs shaking, I pulled myself upright then reached through the broken window and unlocked the door. I braced myself for another layer of protections as I entered, but thankfully I seemed to have already triggered everything that was there. I glanced back. “I’m in, and I’m cool so far,” I said. I gave a thumbs up toward the Crown Vic in case he couldn’t hear me, then closed the door behind me.

There were no furnishings or décor. Nothing on the walls. Only a tired beige carpet with obvious traffic stains. I listened carefully for any sign of life, but silence held the house in a strong grip. Breathing shallowly, I edged forward with my gun at the ready. Clearing a house of possible suspects was best done with backup—preferably lots of backup—but since I didn’t have that option I went slowly and methodically as I searched from room to room. Though I did pause in the kitchen to rinse my mouth out. Bile was never a fun aftertaste.

I hit pay dirt in the master bedroom. The floor had been stripped to bare concrete and painted black, and on it a complex diagram had been carefully inscribed in white and red chalk. Black bookshelves lined two wall, and a long low chest made of a lighter wood rested against a third. Books and scrolls and papers filled every shelf, but unlike my aunt’s library these were all placed with nearly pathological precision.

But all that was nothing compared to the sight of the reyza crouched against the far wall, casually paging through a book in his wickedly clawed hands. The twelfth-level demon looked like a living gargoyle made of burnished copper, with a bestial face, massive leathery wings, and a sinuous tail that coiled around his feet. I knew that if he were to stand he’d tower over me by several feet, and even crouched as he was he seemed to fill the room.

He lifted his head, and I dared to smile. “Greetings, Kehlirik,” I said as I holstered my gun. It would be useless against him if he wanted to attack me.

He bared his teeth in his version of a smile and lowered his book. “Greetings to you, Kara Gillian,” he rumbled.

I didn’t move into the room, merely stayed just beyond the doorway. “Does your current bargain prevent you from answering questions regarding the reasons you have been summoned and the circumstances regarding said summoning?”

The demon tilted his head as if considering the question. “There is nothing in my current bargain that prevents or precludes me from answering questions.”

I thought for a moment. I could ask questions until the cows came home, but unless I offered him something in return, I wouldn’t get any useful answers. “I have no suitable offerings on my person,” I said, “but would you be willing to accept my promise of a jar of popcorn kernels— payable the next time I summon you—in exchange for information about the reasons you are here?”

He snorted, nostrils flaring. “I would.”

I grinned. He’d developed a fondness for papcahn the last time I’d summoned him. “Who summoned you?”

“The summoner who names himself Raymond Bergeron.”

“What have you been tasked with?”

The demon lifted his head and settled his wings. “I am to guard this focus point.” He dipped his head toward the diagram on the floor.

I frowned as I peered at it. At first glance it looked like a fairly normal summoning diagram, but then I realized that there were several crucial differences—at least a half dozen sigils coming off the center portion that flowed into each other with exquisite and intricate beauty. “If I enter this room, are you honor bound to attack me?”

“I am.”

Well, that was pretty much what I figured. Damn. I had no doubt that all his grandparents’ notes were in this room. Once this whole thing was over I intended to come back and take every last scrap of paper in here. “This focus…is it connected to the other portals?”

The reyza gave a low rumble. “Not at this time.”

Perfect. “Is it intended to be?”

“Yes.” His eyes seemed to glow, and I had the unerring feeling he was enjoying this tremendously.

I skimmed my gaze over the diagram, annoyed that I didn’t dare enter to get a closer look. Each of the sigils no doubt referenced a portal, which meant there were some that he’d either already known about or had found by some means other than killing people on my Do Not Like list. The detective in me itched to call Doc and find out if there’d been any other stroke deaths in the past year where the body had been found in a seemingly random location. But the summoner in me knew that would be a waste of time. I wasn’t going to be able to pin these deaths on Tracy/Raymond anyway.

“What is Raymond Bergeron’s plan?”

The reyza set the book down. I saw with amusement it was one of the Harry Potter titles. “He wishes to open a gate that will allow him to summon at will, without need to store potency.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed. That was a summoner’s wet dream. I loved and cherished my storage diagram—which I intended to rebuild as soon as possible—but even that had its limits. At the most I could summon every few days, unless I wanted to wear myself out, constantly channeling power into the diagram. But to have unlimited access to the demon realm.…Anyone who had that would end up pretty damn powerful. “How did he learn about this?”

“From papers left behind by his grandsire and granddam—instructions given to them by the demonic lord to whom they were sworn.”

A cold chill of foreboding went through me. “You mean Szerain, right?”

Kehlirik nodded.

“What were Szerain’s plans?”

“I am oathbound. I cannot answer that question.”

I tucked my thumbs into my pockets and nodded. I was getting used to this sort of questioning. “Would his plans be detrimental to this world?”

“That is subjective,” he replied. “But I would conjecture that one such as yourself would not be pleased with the possibility of widespread destruction and upheaval of the current society.”

I swallowed. “Yeah, good conjecture there,” I muttered. “Why does Raymond Bergeron need a summoner?”

“Because the abilities of a summoner are required for the initial opening of a gate,” he answered. He tilted his head. “And if that summoner is bound into the gate by another summoner, it can then be opened and closed at the second summoner’s will.”

Figured. “And is he doing this with the goal of impressing Szerain and perhaps calling him?” I eyed the demon with a knowing smile and he gave a soft hiss of approval.

“I do not know his mind,” the reyza answered. “But there are other lords, and I’m certain you are able to conjecture the benefits of owning a gate.”

I shoved my hand through my hair. I could definitely conjecture what would happen if a sociopath like Tracy ended up with it. “If I destroy this,” I lifted my chin toward the diagram in front of me, “will it make it impossible for the gate to form?”

“No,” Kehlirik replied. “This merely refines and concentrates the power drawn from the portals.”

I frowned, disappointed.

“However,” he continued, “destroying it will cause the power flows to be weaker. It is far more likely that a skilled summoner could dismantle an unfocused gate.”

That was better. A lot better. “Did Raymond Bergeron screw up by not telling you to keep quiet about all this?”

The demon stood and spread his wings, baring his teeth in an unmistakable grin. “He did.”

I had the feeling the demon didn’t care much for Tracy/Raymond. Laughing, I retreated to the kitchen and found an empty plastic pitcher. After filling it to the brim with water, I returned to the door of the bedroom. “Just so we’re clear,” I asked, “you’ll only attack me if I enter the room, right?”

“That is correct, little summoner.” Clearly he knew what I was up to, because he shifted to the far corner of the room and shielded his book with one wing.

“Awesome.” I let fly with the pitcher of water toward the diagram, smiling in vicious satisfaction as the chalk lines blurred and melted into each other. I couldn’t feel the arcane, but I knew there was no way that diagram was still active.

I set the pitcher down and gave the demon a respectful bow. “My thanks, Kehlirik.”

“It was my honor, Kara Gillian,” he replied, bowing his head in response.

I started to leave, but then paused and turned back. “One more thing…would the wards surrounding this house prevent me from being summoned?”

The demon shook his head. “Those protections are far more specialized.”

Oh well, that was probably too much to hope for. “Okay, then, are you prohibited from altering the wards protecting this house?”

A deep rumbling came from the demon. “I am not.”

I flicked a glance to the book he was reading. “There’s this TV show that I think you’d really like.” I said, thinking of the space cowboy thing Ryan had strong-armed me into watching. I looked back to the demon. “If you could deactivate the wards, I’ll summon you as soon as is possible so that you can watch it.”

“These are terms I can and will abide by,” he answered, to my delight and relief.

I could tolerate watching the show again if it meant I wouldn’t have to puke on my way back out.

I headed to the front door. “Ryan, did you hear all that?”

“I did,” he said through the earpiece. “Tell Kehlirik I love him.”

“Like hell,” I replied. “I’d rather not piss him off.”

As soon as I got back in the car—without having to stop and puke, thankfully—I called Jill and put her on speakerphone to give her the rundown. “My next job is to figure out if there’s some way to block the portals so he can’t pull power from them,” I said after I caught her up. “Problem now is that I don’t know if that’s possible. Plus there are probably some other portals in play that he knew about before he started using enemies of mine to find these latest three portals.”

“I was thinking there might be other portals too,” Jill said. “I put this focus you just found on the map to see if we could maybe figure out where other portals might be, but it still isn’t all that clear. I mean, it’s not forming some recognizable pattern.”

I considered that for a moment while I absently toyed with the cuff. My eyes dropped to the mark on the inside of my left forearm. Without othersight it was practically invisible, like a faint and faded henna tattoo. “Well, unfortunately it might be part of a pattern that we don’t recognize. A sigil or a mark.”

“Sort of like constellations, right?” she replied. “If you only have half the stars of the big dipper, you’d never realize that’s what it is.”

“Exactly.”

Ryan rubbed his chin. “But do we need to know what the whole constellation is?”

I exhaled. “Well, without knowing the whole pattern we don’t stand much chance of figuring out how to disable it—which would be a whole lot nicer and neater to do instead of having some big fucking showdown or confrontation. He can’t start this shit without me, and as long as I’m wearing the cuff, I’m not going to be feeling compelled to head there.”

Zack grinned. “No confrontation? Is that even allowed?”

“Well, if not,” I said, “I plan on being a bad girl.”

Jill gave a snort. “So what else is new?”

I ran a thumb over the mark on my forearm. “Jill, if I give you some general locations, can you look in your database and see if there’ve been any deaths there in the last, say, forty years or so?”

“I think so,” she said. “The records department supposedly just finished putting the last fifty years of reords online.”

I gave her the locations that Rhyzkahl had looked up on my computer. “Look for deaths that would have occurred right before the summoning of Szerain, or within a year or so.”

Ryan narrowed his eyes. “You think that they might have tried to open this gate-thing once before?”

“Right,” I said. I didn’t look up at him, since I wasn’t sure I could keep my face totally neutral. “Szerain was up to something, and I think that he needed an easier way to be summoned.” But would that have been enough to get him punished? There had to be more to his crime than that.

Out of nowhere the memory of my dream swam up. For an instant I could smell the dust of the place on my tongue, feel the stone against my feet.

.…smooth marble cool against my cheek as I struggled for breath, the taste of blood thick in my mouth…

“Kara. Kara?”

I blinked and jerked my gaze up to Ryan. What the hell just happened? That wasn’t part of the dream.

“You okay?” he asked. “You just went pale.”

I forced a smile. “I’m fine. Just hungry, most likely. We should go grab a bite to eat soon.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” he said.

Jill cleared her throat on the phone. “You were right, Kara. Three deaths. All looked to be natural.”

“And I’ll bet anything that all three were linked somehow to one of the summoners,” I said. “Then that summoner was killed by Rhyzkahl in the summoning-of-Szerain that went wrong, and so now Tracy’s picking up where he or she left off.” I fought the urge to slide a look toward Ryan. I wonder how Tracy would react if he knew that Ryan was Szerain. I bit back an inappropriate giggle. With as many oaths and secrets and whatnot going on around Ryan, I had no doubt that Tracy was completely clueless as to that little detail.

My phone beeped to indicate another call was coming in—one with an out-of-state area code. Something about the number tickled at my memory, but I couldn’t immediately pin it down. “Lemme get this call, Jill. If it’s a telemarketer I’ll just hang up on them.”

I took it off speakerphone and clicked on the new call. “Detective Gillian,” I answered.

“Kara? It’s Roman.”

Something about the tone of his voice sent a warning zing through my body. “Hiya, Roman. What’s up?” I replied, keeping my own tone light.

“There’s a man here with a gun pointed at my head,” he said, and now I could hear the slight shake in his voice. “He says if you don’t come to the…the gate he’s going to shoot me.”

I couldn’t breathe for several seconds. When I finally could I said, “It’s going to be all right, Roman. Let me talk to him, please.”

Ryan’s eyes narrowed. I upped the volume on the phone and motioned him closer so that he could listen in.

“Hello, Kara,” Tracy said after a few seconds. “I figured you needed some incentive to move you along.”

“You’re a cocksucker. Where is this gate? I haven’t been able to pinpoint it.”

“That’s because you’re being stubborn and resisting it, but it doesn’t matter now. Come to three five two Garden Street. Oh, and the usual ‘no weapons’ and ‘come alone’ rules apply. I have a zhurn helping keep a lookout. If it catches a whiff of any of your FBI friends—or any other cops for that matter—your ex here will get splattered, and the cops will get torn apart.” He said it easily, with a laugh in his voice. “Speaking of, I’m intrigued by the fact that there’s been no traffic on the PD radio about a shooting victim at my house. I know I didn’t miss. How’d you manage to cover that one up?”

“She was wearing a vest,” I managed through the white-hot rage sweeping through me. He had no clue she was a demon. He meant to kill her.

“Ah, smart of her. Anyway, your ex here is not wearing a vest. So please do get your ass down here. I have shit to do. You have half an hour.” And with that he hung up.

I slowly lowered the phone. “Guess we’re going to have a confrontation after all.”