The Devil You Know

CHAPTER 6

“I guess I should have followed my first instinct and Tasered the hell out of the son of a bitch,” I muttered under my breath.

Andy neither laughed nor smiled. He merely sat rigidly in his chair and stared straight ahead. I couldn’t tell whether he was shocked because what Adam had said had come as a complete surprise, or whether he was shocked because Adam knew. Earlier, I’d assumed Andy knew nothing about the circumstances of my birth, but now I wasn’t so sure. He said Raphael had kept him from learning any deep, dark secrets, but I couldn’t say I really believed him. Maybe it’s just my natural, suspicious nature. Or maybe my Spidey senses were telling me something was off. Hard to tell.

I didn’t want to sit next to Andy again, so I took a seat on the couch. It was still warm from Adam’s body, and against my will I noticed the faint scent of spicy aftershave that lingered in the air. I really wished Adam weren’t so goddamn sexy—it sure would make it easier to hate him. I watched the struggle on my brother’s face and wondered what it was about. Wondered if he would tell me. Wondered if I would believe him if he did.

He finally glanced at me, but his gaze quickly slid away. I tried not to squirm.

“So, care to comment?” I asked him when it became obvious he wasn’t going to volunteer anything without prodding.

He gave me a closed, shuttered look. “No.”

I ran a hand through my hair, scrubbing at my scalp as if that would make everything suddenly make sense. It didn’t work. “Do you know anything about my biological father?” I blurted.

The look on his face didn’t change. “Dad is your real father.”

He sounded firm and sure, but if he were so sure it was true, he wouldn’t be guarding his expression so carefully. What did he know? And why wasn’t he telling me?

“Whatever it is you’re hiding, you know you can tell me,” I reminded him. “Right?”

He gave a bark of bitter laughter. “I’m not hiding anything. But if I were, I’d be happy to share it with you.” His gaze pierced me, his expression filled with intensity. “Of course, I can’t share anything with you without sharing it with Lugh, too.”

I cursed under my breath, annoyed with myself for how easily I could forget that I was inextricably bound to my own personal demon. And yet…“Lugh’s one of the good guys,” I told my brother.

Andy looked away yet again. “Lugh has his own agenda. It won’t always mesh with yours.”

I couldn’t disagree with his words, though I wanted to. I’d never been much good at trusting anyone, and there was a part of me that longed to let go of my constant suspicions, my constant search for ulterior motives. I wanted to trust Lugh with not just my body, but my soul. And I knew I could never do it, no matter how much I liked him, no matter how much I believed in his cause. It’s hard enough for a person to really know another human being all that well. It’s impossible for a human to really understand a demon.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I let the subject drop.

Andy and I had settled into an uneasy silence. He turned on the TV and stared at CNN while I puttered around the apartment trying not to notice the awkwardness. I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there, but after Adam’s disturbing report, I didn’t dare leave Andy alone. Even if I sort of wanted to kill him myself for being such a pain in the ass.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand his reasons for not talking to me. It’s just that I have approximately zero patience. I wanted to find out what the hell he knew, and I wanted to find it out right now.

At around six, I ordered a pizza for dinner. Andy wasn’t up to going out, and I wasn’t up to cooking. At six forty-five, the security desk called to let me know the pizza guy was on his way up. I muttered under my breath about the delights of cold pizza as I rooted through my purse for cash.

I was still digging through the purse when I opened the door, scraping loose change off the bottom in my quest to cobble together a decent tip. I expected the pizza guy to wait impatiently for me to get the money out, but instead he pushed past me into the apartment.

“Hey!” I yelled indignantly, dropping the purse and the money as it occurred to me that something most definitely wasn’t right.

The intruder tossed the pizza box onto the nearest table, and I prepared for battle as he turned to face me. It took me a moment to recognize him, and when I did my head spun with confusion.

“Dr. Neely?” I said, blinking at him. He’d been carrying the pizza box, and he wore a baseball cap with the pizza place’s logo on it, but how anyone could have mistaken him for a pizza delivery guy was beyond me.

He doffed his cap and bowed. “At your service.”

I was still a couple of steps slow, trying to figure out a) why the doctor was here, and b) why he was pretending to deliver pizza.

The TV went silent, and I glanced over at Andy, whose face had gone pale.

“Raphael,” he said, and there was a tremor in his voice.

Dr. Neely smiled and performed another fancy bow. “In the flesh, as it were.”

I might have been slow on the uptake at first, but now that I understood what was happening, I moved damn fast. Before Raphael had risen from his bow, I closed the distance between us and jerked my knee up, catching him squarely in the nose. He howled in pain and clutched his face, blood seeping between his fingers.

I glanced over at Andy again. “Is he one of those demons who gets off on pain?” I asked. Being incorporeal in their own world, some demons find physical sensation so fascinating that they greatly enjoy even unpleasant sensations—hence Adam’s fascination with pain, both his own and others’.

Andy chuckled, and there was more life in his eyes than I could remember seeing since he’d awakened. “No.”

“Oh, good,” I said, then planted my fist in Raphael’s gut. He made a loud “oof,” then collapsed to the floor. He couldn’t seem to decide whether to clutch his nose or his stomach. As he was thinking about it, I made a dash for the coat closet where I kept my Taser, arming it in record time.

I put a respectable amount of distance between myself and Raphael, assuring myself I’d have time to pull the trigger if he launched himself at me when he’d recovered. Then I waited.

Being a relatively smart guy for a son of a bitch, he remained on his knees even after he got his breath back and the bleeding in his nose stopped. In Neely’s body, his eyes were an arctic blue, and before he managed to pull himself all the way together again, he gave me a look that froze my marrow. Then he pulled his usual urbane mask on and smiled ruefully at me.

“You’d think I’d have learned by now what kind of reception to expect from you,” he said, sounding so amused I could almost forget the way he’d just looked at me before he’d regained control of himself.

My finger tightened on the trigger of the Taser as I remembered all the shitty things Raphael had done to me and to people I cared about. Never mind that he’d actually saved my life in the end. He and I were never going to be anything resembling friends.

“Is there any particular reason I shouldn’t Taser you into a quivering mass of Jell-O?” I asked.

His smile faded and he sighed. “If that’s what you want to do, I’m in no position to stop you. When you’ve finished torturing me, though, we need to talk.”

He sounded so damn calm and rational that some of my fury faded. Yeah, I knew he was a cold-blooded bastard even if he was marginally on my side. But I figured if he were here to bulldoze his way past me to kill Andy, he’d have done it before either of us had realized who he was. I hadn’t exactly been on my guard when I’d opened the door.

Idiot, I chastised myself. Suspicious as I was by nature, I hadn’t been suspicious enough.

I kept my distance but lowered the Taser. Like I said, Raphael was a pretty smart guy—he didn’t even try to get up, and he kept his hands open and splayed over his thighs where I could see them.

“What do you want?” I asked. “And how long have you been in Dr. Neely?”

“I took Neely last night, after I heard that Andrew had recovered.”

The hand with the Taser started rising again almost like it had a will of its own. “Then that poor bastard Adam found in the alley last night really was your former host.”

Raphael looked puzzled. “No. I’m not sure who you’re talking about, but I can guarantee no one has found my former host in an alley.”

Andy made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, and Raphael gave him a penetrating look. “No, I didn’t kill him, if that’s why you look like you swallowed a live frog.”

Andy managed to look scared and skeptical at the same time. “So there’s someone out there who knowingly summoned you to the Mortal Plain, knowingly transferred you into an illegal host, and has lived to tell the story?”

Raphael’s ice blue eyes fixed on Andy in a chilling stare. “He won’t be telling anyone anything, but not because I did him any harm. Amazingly enough, it’s possible for someone to host me for a couple of days without hating me.”

Andy’s lip curled in a sneer. “Or becoming an animated turnip?”

For someone as scared of Raphael as Andy seemed to be, he had quite an attitude, but I had the feeling I’d stepped into the middle of a long-standing feud. I figured it would do no one any good if I let the hostilities escalate, so I interrupted before Raphael could retort.

“All right,” I said, “so the vegetable Adam told me about wasn’t your former host, and you hate each other’s guts. Why don’t you tell me what the hell you’re doing here? Or is that a deep, dark secret? Because if you’re here just to pick fights with my brother, I’m going to pump you full of electricity and let him work out some of his hostilities on you.” I pointed the Taser for emphasis.

Raphael gave me an unfriendly look. “You really are a cast-iron bitch, you know?”

“Your point being?”

That drew what sounded like a reluctant laugh. He shook his head and quickly sobered. “When I returned to the Demon Realm, I told Dougal that you were no longer hosting Lugh. I told him you’d managed to ditch him into a different host, one whose face I never saw.”

“Oh, thanks a lot!” I said, appalled. “Now I’ll have every demon in existence after me.”

He shrugged. “I had to tell him something. He was mad enough at me already for not just letting his people summon Lugh into the sacrificial host. If I’d refused to tell him who I’d chosen to host him, I wouldn’t have been in any position to help you right now.” I supposed he had a point, but I still didn’t like it. “Dougal’s sent me back to the Mortal Plain with a twofold mission—to find out from you who’s now hosting Lugh and to eliminate Andrew, who by all rights should have been dead the night I left the Mortal Plain.”

My Taser hand sprang back to the ready, but Raphael showed no sign he was about to attack.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to do it. You may find this hard to believe, but I do respect Lugh, even if he and I will never be the poster children for brotherly love. If you would let him surface, I know he’d command me not to kill your brother, and I would respect that command.”

I snorted. “Yeah, like you respected his command to tell him what the hell you know about Dougal’s activities?”

He shrugged. “I have my reasons for that.” He turned his head to look at Andy. “Besides, Andrew knows me well,” he said with what I could only describe as an evil smile. “I’m sure he has some idea what the consequences would be if he said something inadvisable.”

Of course, Raphael had been living in my brother for ten years before he’d fled back to the Demon Realm, which meant he should have known me pretty well by now, too. While he was giving Andy the evil eye, my finger tightened on the Taser.

I didn’t consciously decide to shoot him, but somehow the pressure on the trigger became just enough. The Taser popped, and the probes rocketed across the room and buried themselves in Raphael’s back. He screamed and collapsed, his muscles quivering helplessly. I worked hard to resist the urge to go beat on him some more while he was down.

Over the distance between us, Andy’s and my eyes met, and he smiled faintly. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

“Too late,” I quipped back, ejecting the Taser cartridge and reloading while I waited for Raphael to pick himself up and dust himself off. It would take a while. Demons take Taser shots even harder than humans do. “That was a gentle warning,” I told Raphael, who glared at me as he lay twitching on the floor. “Not only are you forbidden to hurt my brother, you’re forbidden to threaten him.”

He bared his teeth at me like a dog. He was either growling at me or gritting his teeth in pain. I hoped it was the latter.

We all waited in silence until Raphael regained control of Dr. Neely’s body. “That was unnecessary,” he said when he had the breath to spare.

“Maybe. But it was fun.”

He shook his head at me and sat up. “You’re supposed to be pleased I’m not here to kill Andrew. Instead, you shoot me.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

He sighed. “I suppose not. Do you want to hear what else I have to say, or would you rather punish me some more?”

I couldn’t claim to be real anxious to hear anything else he might have to tell me, but I figured it wasn’t something I could avoid. “Why don’t you just shoot me an e-mail?” I grumbled, but he knew I was caving.

“It wasn’t me who left an empty host behind for your buddy to find.”

“Adam is not my buddy,” I retorted, though I knew how unimportant the distinction was.

Raphael gave me a knowing look. “Whatever. It wasn’t me.”

“I heard you the first time.” Then I noticed the concerned look in his eyes, and I frowned. “Are you telling me you know who it is?”

“I have a suspicion.”

That worried the hell out of me. “Who is it?”

He smiled condescendingly. “No one you know.”

“Do you want me to shoot you again to loosen up your tongue?”

The smile faded. “You and Lugh make a great couple. I saved your life, remember?”

I couldn’t help laughing. “You don’t get credit for saving my life when you’re the one who put it in danger in the first place, asshole. And you tortured my boyfriend, and God only knows what you did to Andy in the ten years you were with him. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”

It didn’t look like he appreciated that at all. He scowled at me, then rose to his feet despite the fact that I’d rearmed the Taser.

“Fine,” he snarled, moving toward the door. “Maybe I don’t owe you a goddamn thing, either. You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

“Tell me who just entered the Mortal Plain!” I demanded, but Raphael kept moving toward the door.

“Fuck you,” he said, and jerked the door open.

My finger twitched on the trigger, but I stopped myself from shooting him again. Yeah, it might get him to hang around, but somehow I didn’t think it would inspire him to talk.

“I’m sorry,” I said, belatedly realizing I should have kept a muzzle on my temper.

In case I didn’t get the message the first time, he gave me the finger. And he slammed the door behind him when he left.