Demon Bait (Keeley Thomson) (4 page)

"Ah? Interesting? I bet your
Grandfather was thrilled to find that out? Or did he know?" That seemed
unlikely, since the man wasn't a slave, but Lyn had fooled
her
totally
when they'd met, hadn't she? The lady had
seemed
like a mage. A healing
one at that. It was such a good act that even checking her out had seemed not
worth the effort at the time.

"Yeah, he did
not
like that one. He found out when I was confirming that I was one, too. I need
to get around and visit with him again soon, before he has a chance to flip out
and start thinking that I'm all evil. Anyway, if you live through the Second
Crucible, you should meet her. Darla and her are friends, so you two should get
along, too."

Hally looked away, responding to
the idea that her friend might well die, but Zack didn't take it back, even
though it was clear he noticed it. He also didn't seem to be taking pleasure in
his own words. It was just the truth, and his new pet needed to be ready for
whatever came.

It was hard to think about the
situation that way, but since it was either pet, slave, or girlfriend, she
could live with it.

The meal had small talk, and Zack
ate most of the food, giving her a nice check for it, which rounded up the
cost, but didn't pay for more than that by too much. Unlike her, he probably
did his own grocery shopping, so knew what things were worth that way. Not that
she had an excuse as far as that went, herself. That kind of information was in
her head, if she bothered to look.

After they were done, he stood up
and held out a hand for Hally, explaining things as they walked to the front
door.

"It's considered rude to go
onto the lines in front of someone. The real truth is that it distorts space,
and making people walk through the ripples left over can make them sort of
seasick. I don't have that problem, but a lot of people can't take it, so it's
considered best to set up rifts and nodes outside of a person's home." Then
chattering the whole time, they moved to the door at the front of the house.
Hally turned and kissed her suddenly, her lips warm and slightly strawberry
flavored. It was her lip gloss.

She didn't have bags, having
already set up in Washington. Her parents knew what was happening, and that
part was taken care of. All that was left was leaving Keeley behind, to face
whatever would come. Alone.

That was fair however. Hally
couldn't survive what she could, and really, it might not work for Zack either,
if he got too close just then. It was a big enough risk for him to take people
in like he was. If the wrong Demons went for him, they could all wind up dead.
The only good thing there was that Finias and Darla had both suggested that
just getting them out of town, under Zack's protection, would be enough. The
point was, that as long as she didn't have assets, they couldn't be taken away,
by the rules. If those counted in her case. It was, clearly, a set up. She
would have wondered who was doing it too, if the man hadn't volunteered the
information himself, through several other people.

Tarsus. The Librarian. Pretty
much the leader of all the Greater Demons everywhere. Not that it was an
impressive number, being that only about five hundred and twenty of them
existed. Still, there was no way that she was ready for whatever it was the
being had planned. Along with a threat to kill her if she failed, that pretty
much guaranteed that she wouldn't be around much longer. True, the man could
have been bluffing, or simply playing a prank on her, but that wasn't too
likely, was it?

If that was the case, it would
have already come to a head, and she'd know the punch line. It
did
occur
to her that Tarsus had to have
something
other than her simply dying in
mind. If he wanted her dead, it would be easiest to kill her himself. So it
wasn't that. Not by any normal meaning of the concept. So what did that leave?
She thought about it, not for the first time, and ended up back at the same
possibilities that she always did.

It was either that he wanted her
dead, without angering anyone else too much, like Finias, her father, or Darla,
or there was a trick involved. Probably not one meant for her, either. Of
course, that could leave an awful lot, if she wanted to be creative about what
she considered. The most likely one was that the man wanted her there as a
distraction. Possibly bait, in a trap. At the moment she couldn't see one
closing around her, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Did the bait ever
really see the bite coming from above?

Really, it probably
had
to
be that second one, or some variation of the same. Finias was an old and
powerful Demon in his own right, but no match for Tarsus, head to head. Oh, he
might
win a fight, but odds were he'd lose, as often as not. Darla, The Technician,
was a formidable person, but still young, compared to a being that had to count
the passing of centuries by using decimal places. The base unit there being
thousand year groups, she was willing to bet.

Tarsus certainly didn't care for
her
,
which included the fact that she wasn't feared either. So that pretty much left
either being bait, or something that she couldn't even think of.
If
it
wasn't both at once.

That was one of the bad parts
about being a Greater Demon, she realized, as Hally and Zack moved into the
node that he'd created. She had the ability to really see reality for what it
was, but not all of it at once. She could generally work out what people were
doing, if she were able to find all the data she needed, but there was no way
to have it all. Not even most of it. That meant, much like a regular person,
she was left in the dark, a lot of the time. You
had
to have facts, to
make good choices.

The other side of that was pretty
much where her power came from though. When she did get evidence, she could see
what it was all about and make it fit, the vast majority of the time. Okay,
unless it was a lie or tainted somehow, but other than that, she could see it
for what it really was. It gave her a measure of protection against most of
life's little mistakes, while still leaving plenty of room for the big ones.

She was just standing there, the
door to her home left wide open, looking out into the street, with no one in
sight. It was a residential neighborhood, but a quiet one, as far as that went.
Families lived there, but they kept to themselves for the most part, and while
the older woman across the street did tend to spy on her a lot, that was just
curiosity, not anything too judgmental. The woman was bored, not a creep. She
had caught Keeley making out with a few people, including Hally, but she wasn't
torn up about it, just finding that the new family across the way was more
interesting than not.

Before the woman could realize
she was there, doing nothing at all, except for missing people, Keels forced
herself to remember what it felt like to be alert and peaceful at the same
time, and moved back into the place. It wouldn't take too much longer for the
lady to realize that she was there alone now, for some reason. Even the flower
delivery van hadn't been sitting out front for weeks. Except for her, no one
was home. That probably wouldn't work for much longer.

Not because of child protective
services, either. It was just that, no matter what happened, Keeley had to
leave the area soon. She was living in Darla's territory, and while that was
fine for a little kid, the council had named her a full adult already. She'd
passed the test for it and everything. Adults didn't live full time in anyone
else's area. On the good side, she probably wouldn't have to fight anyone to
take theirs, since there really was enough to go around. Some of her people
held large expanses of course, but most were content to have their own city.

She needed to work out where in
the world she wanted to set up shop, and get on that, no doubt. Really, she
needed to get on that one pretty quickly, and buy some land for it, before she
dumped the rest of her funds on someone. Her mother seemed the most likely
person to do that with, but if she tried that, it would probably make it seem
like Zack was just faking being her new owner. So that left people that she
either didn't care about, or didn't know. The best situation would be finding
someone so trustworthy that they would give it all back when she wanted it
later, but short of being her slave, that probably wasn't going to happen. That
meant getting the land first, and going from there.

She didn't have to go too far,
having a lot of funds for the project already. That, and the internet let her
purchase a nice place in Elko County, just outside of Sparks, which was big
enough to be worth setting up in, and small enough that no one would want to
take it from her. Someone else almost certainly had a claim on both Reno and
Las Vegas, but from the set up of the town of Sparks, it was free and clear
that way. Still, she decided to check it out, if after she started the
transactions on EBay.

That, she did the easy way, by
calling up Gregor, The Cleric. He was in charge of North America after all,
which meant that he would want to stop problems, if he could. In the main.

She had to wait for four rings,
but a kindly voice finally answered. It was long distance, since, in charge of
North America or not, his personal territory was in Switzerland. All of the
country, if she had that right. He also held Rome, but that place was pretty
small and didn't leave him with a lot of resources, she was willing to bet.

"Hello? How may I be of aid
to you this fine day?" It was pleasant, but then the Demon generally
was
.
Not that he couldn't be a problem, if she didn't play her cards right.

"Cleric. This is Keeley
Thomson." She waited, since the man had to call her by her own title, or
at least one of them, or it would be an insult. Then... Well, it would be
foolish of her to fight, but it would mark them as enemies. For half a second
she wondered about that, but the man spoke without hesitation of note.

"Mistress of Souls. Did you
call to set up that date that the Line Walker suggested for us?"

That was the man being either
pretty creepy, since he looked like a sixty year old priest most of the time,
or it was him actually trying to be friendly. Zack hadn't suggested they
date
after all, but that the older Demon and her have sex. It was a bit blatant for
her, but then, for one of her kind, she was a prude and knew it. That had been
Zack's point, though she also knew that Darla had put him up to it. To
help
her, most likely. She was too young and fragile to be out on her own, and
everyone knew it. Oh, she'd passed her test for it, but she kept wondering how
that had happened. She
should
have ended up dead. There was really no
other way for that to have gone, but Tarsus had proclaimed himself satisfied
with her performance. It was another sign that the Greater Demon
hadn't
wanted to simply get rid of her. For some reason.

She killed off most of her
emotions, except for a slight tingly feeling of lust and appreciation for the
being she was talking to. That took an application of magic, but, she noticed,
not all
that
much. Gregor was old and looked it, but he wasn't
disgusting about it. The Demon was clean and polite and had really pretty eyes,
she suddenly noticed, thinking about them. A nice blue with clear whites, even
in his slightly wrinkled face.

"That sounds fun, but wasn't
why I called today. We should do that though? Maybe after the Second Crucible,
if I live? I hear tell that a certain Librarian is planning to kill me if I
fail. Not that I'm complaining, but since that clearly isn't the real
situation, I think that I
might
find a way around the death part. Or
not." She couldn't be certain, given that if killing her was needed for
the whole thing to work, she'd be dead before her body, or what remained of it,
hit the ground.

"Ah? Well, if you've worked
that out, not that I'm saying it's correct, perhaps you should see about
talking to Tarsus directly? He's in charge of this action, so would be a
valuable resource for you to study, or court. As to the other thing, I do think
I can spare some time, say in three months?"

"Sounds wonderful. I'll
pencil that in, just in case. Now, I was wondering if I could buy the life of
the Greater Demon that has the territory around Sparks Nevada from you? I plan
to kill them and take it for my own, but you understand, I don't want there to
be problems between you and I."

There was a dry sounding chuckle
then.

"Very cute! At least you
tried to get the information for free, which is
darling
of you. Let me
see here... Sparks... Well, that area stands empty. Do you wish to certify that
with me for you right now? There is a small fee, but it's nothing. A few million.
Ten, since you tried to trick me. Normally that would be
free
, but I
must keep up appearances."

She nearly winced, then just
rolled her eyes. It
had
been a bit much, trying to do it that way.

"Four million." There
was no loss for her, trying to negotiate. It either worked, or it didn't.

"Seven, and one medium sized
favor, to be named later. You can reject it, if it's too much for you."

"Five and one medium favor.
Same rules."

"Done then, since I don't
normally charge anything for the service. Transfer the funds and I'll log that
for you."

She stuck out her tongue. Not in
a naughty little girl way, but just to stretch it out. It was a bit odd, but
the bottom of it had tried to cramp on her, for some reason. Probably nerves,
dealing with a being as powerful as the Cleric. He'd
invented
Christianity, and kept it going for two thousand years, which was impressive.
True, he'd also let it become a major pain in the rear for their kind of people,
and created a lot of the Lesser Demons in the world, out of the fear of his
followers, but problems aside, it was the kind of thing that very few could
have done half as well. It was his special ability, she thought. Like hers to
make bargains with others.