The Devil's Playground

ten

ADAM’S IDEA OF “REINFORCEMENTS” DIDN’T EXACTLY make my day, but we needed another demon to help us keep Cooper contained. We could have called Saul, but Barbie pointed out that her presence—more specifically, her injury—might distract Saul too much to make him useful. Which is how we ended up stuck with Raphael.

Raphael lived in Center City, so it took him more than twenty minutes to drive out to Cooper’s house outside the Main Line. We’d had to juice Cooper a second time to keep him down, and the Taser’s battery was starting to run low. If Raphael had gotten stuck in traffic, we would have been in trouble.

I guess Raphael didn’t feel the same need for subtlety that the rest of us did, because he drove his car straight up the driveway, parking in front of the house in full view of anyone who drove by or who was watching from across the street. No, there was no reason for anyone to be suspicious of the car, but my paranoia instincts were on high alert, and I was tempted to tell Raphael to park elsewhere. I finally convinced myself that time was of the essence, and Raphael’s car was fine where it was.

One of the side effects of the Taser was that Cooper hadn’t been able to heal the bullet wound. I’d never thought of it before, but since the electricity ruined the demon’s control over the host body, it ruined the supernatural healing ability as well.

The wound was still bleeding, though not as badly as before. The bright red puddle of blood on the floor and the coating of blood on Cooper’s hands made my stomach turn, but ugly as the wound was, it wouldn’t be fatal—not unless we kept Cooper incapacitated for a long, long time.

Raphael—whom we would all have to remember to call “Tommy,” to keep his true identity secret—

circled Cooper’s limp body while Adam kept a watch on him, ready to pounce if Cooper made a sudden move. Not that he was making any moves, sudden or not, under the circumstances.

“You need to exorcize the demon,” Raphael said to me after a moment’s thought.

I shook my head in confusion. “What? Why?”

“So that Adam can do his special interrogation technique on Cooper. I can probably make the demon talk, but these aren’t ideal circumstances for it. There’s not enough privacy for me to get terribly creative, and, of course, information obtained under duress isn’t always accurate.”

As usual with Raphael, I looked for hidden ulterior motives behind his rather merciful-sounding suggestion. Raphael wasn’t big on mercy. “Do you know this demon?” I asked him suspiciously.

Raphael shrugged. “You know we can’t recognize one another on the Mortal Plain.” He scowled at me. I guess he’d finally figured out why I’d asked him that question. “I don’t know if I know this demon, and I don’t give a shit. I’m making a practical recommendation, but if you’d like me to try to torture some information out of him, I’d be happy to oblige.”

He grinned at me—a feral, angry expression. I could have apologized for my implications, but why should I? Raphael was a devious bastard, and he knew it. He shouldn’t be surprised when people—

especially me—suspected his motives.

“What do you think, Adam?” I asked, and Raphael’s scowl darkened.

Adam looked grim. “I think he’s right. If we keep Cooper Tasered, he won’t be able to tell us anything, and if we don’t, he’s liable to kick up enough of a fuss to have the neighbors calling the police. We’ve got a sticky enough situation on our hands already.”

It would have been nice if Raphael had mentioned his plan on the phone. I could have had Cooper exorcized by now. But Adam had given Raphael a very abbreviated account on the phone and had stressed the need to hurry. Maybe Raphael just hadn’t fully appreciated the situation until he’d seen it himself. Giving Raphael the benefit of the doubt ran contrary to my nature, but I tried.

Cooper was starting to twitch, the first sign that his muscles were coming back under control. I wasn’t sure how well I was going to do at getting into the trance state under the circumstances—I hadn’t thought to bring anything vanilla-scented with me—but I sat cross-legged on the floor beside Cooper anyway, ready to begin the ritual.

“Not yet,” Raphael said, grabbing me and unceremoniously pulling me to my feet.

“Get your hands off me!” I snapped, and he let go with gratifying speed.

I hadn’t even noticed him taking the Taser away from me until he gave Cooper another jolt. He looked at me with a sneer. “You’re supposed to be a pro. Don’t you know better than to get that close to a demon who’s not restrained? If he were more recovered than we thought, he could have grabbed you and transferred before you even blinked.”

I had to bite my tongue hard to keep any number of snappy comebacks from leaping out of my mouth. I would have looked pretty stupid saying them, though, since Raphael was right. If I were a normal, nonpossessed human, I’d have been much more cautious around an unrestrained demon who might be starting to regain control of his body. In my arrogance, I hadn’t thought of Cooper as a threat, since Raphael and Adam were here to jump on him if he made a hostile move. But if Cooper had tried to transfer to me and found me already occupied … I was getting careless.

So I swallowed my protests and took up my post again.

I was getting better at reaching the trance state under less-than-ideal conditions. Even with the lack of scented candles, the lingering resentment, and the gross-out factor of the still-growing pool of blood, I struggled only briefly to relax enough to open my otherworldly eyes.

The demon’s red aura writhed around Cooper’s body, smothering the human aura underneath. Performing an exorcism is an exercise in visualization. The specific visualization technique you used didn’t matter, just so long as it worked. I always visualized a sudden gust of wind blowing the demon aura away. I gathered my energy around myself, then blasted it out at the demon, imagining a gust of wind blowing that aura to wisps.

Usually, that first blast was all it took to drive a demon out of its host body. But apparently, this demon was stronger than average and wouldn’t be as easy to expel. Sudden fear tingled along my nerves. I was, as far as I knew, the strongest exorcist in the U.S., possibly one of the strongest in the world. But there still were some demons who were too powerful for me to exorcize—like Raphael, for example—

and this would not be a good time to encounter one.

I took a deep breath to calm myself and bury my doubts. Then I concentrated once more on drawing energy into myself. This time, I didn’t stop when I had “enough;” I just kept drawing more and more in—like taking a very deep breath, until your lungs feel like they’re about to explode. When I could draw in no more, I let myself unleash that energy and thrust it at the demon.

To my intense relief, the demon aura shattered and disappeared, leaving a patch of human blue behind.

I opened my eyes to find Cooper gasping in pain as he pressed his hands to the wound in his thigh. He wasn’t doing a great job of it—Tasers don’t bother humans as much as they do demons, though they certainly have an effect—but I was glad to see someone was still home in his body. If the demon I’d just sent back to the Demon Realm had made mincemeat of Cooper’s brain, this whole escapade would have been an exercise in futility. Not to say there was a guarantee it wasn’t even now.

Cooper was moaning, his face shiny with sweat and tears. Weasel or not, I felt sorry for him.

“Let’s get on with this,” I said.

Adam seemed to have no objection. He dropped to his knees beside Cooper’s curled-up form and touched his hand to the back of Cooper’s neck. Instantly, Cooper stopped moaning. His hands fell away from the wound, and I saw that his movements had started the blood flowing faster again.

Adam’s host—whose name was, confusingly, also Adam—rolled Cooper over onto his back. Losing his original demon hadn’t cured Cooper’s Taser problems, and Adam would be unable to control the body, at least for another few minutes. He could, however, still rummage through Cooper’s brain while he waited.

“We need to get the bullet out of his thigh,” Adam’s host said. “Once we get the bullet out, Adam will heal the wound enough to save Cooper a trip to the emergency room that might be difficult to explain.”

“Hello to you, too,” I said under my breath. It was decidedly weird to look at the person I’ve always known as Adam the demon and know that an entirely different person was looking out of his eyes.

“Can’t Adam get the bullet out himself?” I asked out loud. “Demons don’t generally go to hospitals, so I assumed they somehow …” I made a vague motion with my hands.

Adam’s host smiled at me. “If Adam were going to stay in there for a few hours, he could make the body expel the bullet without help. However, for reasons I can’t understand, he finds my body more appealing.” He grinned at his little joke—no one in their right mind would want to look like Bradley Cooper, especially not with a stud muffin like Adam’s host available.

Adam’s host looked up at Raphael. “I need you to rip the pants leg for me so I can get to the wound.”

Something sparked in Raphael’s eyes. I didn’t think he much liked being ordered around, but he didn’t argue. Who needs scissors when you’ve got demon strength?

Adam’s host had orders for me, too. “I need a sharp knife.”

I blinked at him. “You think Cooper has a scalpel sitting around somewhere?”

“A kitchen knife will do.”

My eyes widened. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

He made a shooing motion with his hand. “Yes. Now go on before he loses any more blood.”

I found my way to the kitchen easily enough, but then realized I should have asked Adam’s host what size knife he needed. I rummaged through Cooper’s drawers and selected a paring knife, a steak knife, and a utility knife. Surely one of them would be what he was looking for. The thought of him cutting into Cooper’s thigh with a steak knife brought back my urge to hurl, and for a moment, I didn’t think I could keep my gorge down. The nausea I experienced when Lugh and I exchanged control was bad enough without the blood and gore.

When I returned to the foyer, Cooper’s pants leg was ripped all the way up to his hip, giving me a glimpse of his tightie whities, which I could have done without, thank you very much. Adam’s host was using a piece of material torn from the pants to wipe blood away from the entry wound.

I laid my selection of knives on the floor beside Adam’s host. “Do you need me to find some alcohol to sterilize these with?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Adam will make sure there’s no infection.”

He picked up the paring knife, and my stomach lurched again. I turned my back, figuring there was no way I could keep from throwing up if I watched the proceedings.

Adam gave an incoherent grunt that I couldn’t help but interpret as a sound of pain.

“Sorry,” his host said. “It’s going to get worse. Do you need something to bite on?”

Adam is one of those demons who has a fascination with pain, but he’s more interested in other people’s pain than his own. Having a bullet removed without anesthesia by an amateur with a paring knife was not going to be fun, even for him. Again I fought the nausea, trying not to imagine what it would feel like.

“You’d better be shielding Cooper from feeling this,” I told Adam, still without turning to look.

He hadn’t regained enough control of the body to do more than grunt his answer. I had no idea if that meant he was or he wasn’t, but apparently his host could interpret his caveman grunts.

“He’s shielding him. Unfortunately, he can’t shield himself.”

The wordless cry that followed needed no interpretation. I supposed Adam had been too macho to accept the offer of something to bite on—or maybe he didn’t have enough control to bite—but he couldn’t keep himself quiet. The sound wasn’t particularly loud, his body still being too discombobulated to muster a whole lot of noise, but I flinched at it anyway.

With my back turned to the drama in the foyer, I had a clear view of Barbie, lying on the living room couch with a big bag of ice covering her hand. Our eyes met, and Barbie smiled grimly at me. No doubt she was in plenty of pain herself, but she wasn’t enjoying the show any more than I was.

After that last cry, Adam had fallen eerily silent. I fought the urge to turn around to see what was happening. I hoped he’d passed out, though I wasn’t entirely sure if a demon could do that.

Finally, Adam’s host said, “It’s done,” with an obvious tone of satisfaction.

I started to turn around. I’m not sure what I was thinking, because the scene was likely to be considerably messier than before, when it had almost made me toss my cookies. But I didn’t get all the way around, because Raphael—who’d been so quiet I’d almost forgotten about him—grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a little push toward the living room.

“We already have quite a mess to clean up,” he said. “I don’t want to deal with puke all over the floor.”

That was Raphael, all right. Always full of compassion. Too bad I couldn’t argue his point. Just listening to the impromptu surgery had my knees shaky and my face coated with sweat. Even if I managed not to vomit, I might pass out, which would be even more humiliating. So I didn’t object to Raphael’s callousness, and I didn’t turn around. Instead, I made a beeline for an armchair tucked in the far corner of the living room, one that would have no view of the foyer.