Demon's Hunger (5 page)

Swallowing, she peeled off her gloves, tried to steady her nerves. She thought about the bone he had showed her, focusing on that. It was a calcaneus, a heel bone. She'd noted the sustentaculum tali and the sulcus calcanei, and three distinctly shaped facets for articulation with the talus. Human characteristics, but the bone was far too large, and the articular surface for the cuboid was wrong, with dual facets where there should have been only one.

Apprehension slithered through her, leaving her cold.

She'd examined thousands upon thousands of bones in her lifetime, and she'd never felt anything like this before. Evil. Darkness. A terrible brooding power seated in what amounted to little more than a charred network of minerals and matrix and dead cells.

"Well, you
are
a surprise."

Vivien's head jerked up at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. She froze, let out a startled huff of air, and a cold horror chilled her.

There was a
creature
addressing her, a frightening phantasm at least eight feet tall, not human, but a terrible monster conjured from the depths of her mind. Gray cracked hide covered a thick and meaty frame, and its blackened lips peeled back to reveal row after row of jagged teeth. Behind it stood a small woman with dull eyes and a slack expression.

Not real. This was not real.

Okay. Okay. This was it. Everything she had feared.

She was having a psychotic break. Of course. There was no monster, no woman; maybe there wasn't even a gorgeous guy. How much was real? How much had she fabricated from some deep, swirling pit in her mind?

"If you would be so kind as to accompany me," the creature said calmly, extending one limb, palm up, pointed yellow talons curving over the ends of its fingers. "And bring the bags, if you please. How lovely of you to collect six in one place for me."

The smell of it. She knew that smell, had worked with it floating thick about her time and again over the years. The smell of death, old death, rotting death.

Vivien jerked to her feet, knocking over the stool in her haste. Choking terror. Her breath locked in her throat. Real or not, this thing petrified her.

Fury sparked, a deep resentment. She would not go lightly to her fate. Closing her fingers around the metal legs of the second stool, she swung it up and brandished it before her, a weapon of sorts.

Her heart slammed against her ribs, frantic.

The
thing
watched her with what might have been amusement.

Footsteps on the stairs, pounding, fast.

In a blur of movement, Dain Hawkins vaulted over the handrail, his features drawn stark and savage.

Vivien gasped, stared. He was haloed in light, bright, almost blinding. Beautiful. Frightening. And she thought,
He is a warrior.

The gray creature turned to him, its expression one of surprise. Dain's gaze slid to hers for an instant, then dropped to the stool she brandished as a weapon, and he smiled a little.

Turning away, he swung a thick stick—where had that come from?— At the same moment the
thing
lunged for him, raking its talons across his chest. Blood surged from the gashes.

"Fuck, not again," Dain snarled. "Those just healed."

He spun and struck, and as the stick cast out a shower of light, Vivien had her answer. All of it was part of the psychotic break. She'd imagined Dain's arrival, imagined this
monster
in her workshop along with the woman who huddled in the corner.

She needed an ambulance,
now
, and a psychiatrist, and meds. Lots and lots of meds.

Rising, she scooped up her velvet bags, a habit. She began to inch forward, toward the stairs, past the bizarre duo that battled with vicious concentration.

But they weren't real.
Not real.

She told herself that as she slid along the cool, smooth wall. She told herself again as her foot hit the bottom of the staircase. She told herself a final time as, with a vicious snarl, Dain Hawkins slashed at the creature, hard, his staff of wood aglow, as though it were on fire, the light bright as the sun.

"Upstairs," Dain ordered, cool, calm, and she knew he was talking to her.

Good. Yes. Good. Her imaginary hot guy was telling her to do exactly what she wanted. Nice when the hallucination was so amiable.

Only she froze, unable to move, unable to look away, her heart pounding, her lungs working like a bellows. Dain blocked the creature's claws with his forearm, a sharp hiss escaping from between his teeth as the talons raked deep, leaving the cloth of his coat and shirt in shreds, his skin and muscle ravaged and torn.

"Well, if you want to play nasty…" Dain laughed. The sound made Vivien shiver.

He feinted right, spun left, brought the staff down hard across the back of the creature's neck. Only the swing of the staff didn't stop. The momentum carried it through the thick column, severing the head from the body, blood pumping in a geyser that sprayed the ceiling, the walls, and finally, the floor.

The head rolled across the floorboards and bumped against Vivien's toe, leaving a slick smear of blood in its wake. A film of moisture on the creature's eye caught the light.

Years of training kicked in, and she stared down at the head, studied it. Dark blood, more black than red. Possibly higher mineral content than human blood. The eyelid closed from the bottom rather than the top. Interesting. The—

She closed her eyes.

This was not a nice hallucination. Why couldn't she have a nice hallucination?

Maybe a fairy godmother.

Or a Chippendale dancer.

She had the frantic thought that she should be in Mexico right now, lying on the beach with a margarita in her hand. She should have gone on vacation with her best friend, Amy, when she asked.

"Vivien, we need to go. Can you smell it? They've torched the house. Come on."

Warm fingers on her wrist.

She opened her eyes. The head wasn't there anymore, just a smoking, hissing, gray lump.

Shaking, she took a deep breath, smelled smoke.

"
Now
, Vivien." Dain stared down at her, his eyes cool as ice on asphalt, clearly expecting her to obey.

She glanced down, realized that he was drawing her charm bags from her grasp, tucking them in the roomy pocket of his long coat.

"I need my picture," she said. "Of my dad."

He gave a sharp nod, and taking her hand, steady fingers closing tightly around her trembling ones, he led her up the stairs.

Halfway up, she froze. "The woman!"

She spun, peered down the stairs to the basement. There was no woman, just a conical pile of ash in the corner where she'd huddled.

"She's gone. Keepers don't survive the death of their demon. She must have been ancient, indeed, to have disintegrated so quickly."

As if she had a clue what he meant by that.

"Head for the back door," Dain said, and pulled her up the stairs. "It's closer."

She paused at the bookshelf and grabbed the framed photo of her dad then snagged her purse from the couch as they passed. He tugged on her arm, and she thought that for a hallucination, he had a pretty strong grasp.

It was all a hallucination, only… the black smoke gathering about them felt so
real
, thick in her nostrils, burning her eyes.

Sliding open the glass and the screen, he dragged her out into the sunlight, across the deck, his firm grasp keeping her from falling as her feet slid in her fuzzy green slip-ons. They rounded the side of the house, cut across the lawn, and finally stopped on the front drive. The black SUV was there but no sign of the other two guys, Darqun and Ciarran.

She looked at Dain then, and there was no more light shimmering around him, no wooden staff in his hand. He was just a man, standing on her gravel driveway, dripping blood from his arm like a faucet with a slow leak. His long coat was torn in several places, and the poet's shirt had a slick, red blotch across the front.

More blood. Blood, blood, blood.

Feeling strangely disconnected from the situation, Vivien reached out, almost touched him. Jerked her hand back.

Red had always been her favorite color.

She might have to rethink that.

Talyn Baunn hadn't been in a church in about five hundred years. Okay. A hundred, but it felt like five.

He paused in the doorway, breathing in the scent of wood cleaner and wax. Familiar, a hazy memory.

Before him stretched row after row of empty wooden pews. He found it odd that the place wasn't locked up tight. Yeah, churches were a place of worship, places where everyone was welcome. Only, they were usually dead—bolted from past midnight until morning because the homeless weren't welcome to sleep there.

Wasn't that a bitch?

But the door to San Francisco's St. Helen's Church had swung open on well-oiled hinges at the slightest push. Apparently, the new priest had his own ideas. Young guy. Idealistic. Left the doors unlocked because he thought people should be able to pray at will, even if the urge hit them in the wee hours of the night.

It made the church a good place to meet. Neutral ground. And demons tended to avoid the holy places of any religion.

Baunn looked around at the stained-glass windows, truly magnificent works of art. Here, variegated shades of blue framed a bright orange-yellow sun, and there, in the choir loft, was a rose window some two feet in diameter. He turned a full circle. It was beautiful in the meager light of an overcast dawn; he could imagine how splendid it would look filtering the full rays of the afternoon sun.

Unfortunately, the Ancient preferred shadows, dim light, so he'd chosen a time where the sanctuary was just coming to life. The timing of their meeting wouldn't allow Baunn to enjoy the full view.

Perhaps he'd come back someday.

He made his way along the wide aisle to the front of the church, where the smell of wax from the burning votives was stronger. As he slid into the front pew, he felt the shimmer of air that told him the
continuum
carried a sorcerer to this place. He recognized the signature aura. The Ancient.

A pretentious title. Baunn knew him as Asher from a time before he had led the Compact of Sorcerers, a time long, long before he had betrayed his every ideal. He had been honorable once.

Reining in his disdain, Baunn glanced across the aisle.

The Ancient sat in the opposite pew, watching him with shrewd attention. Draped in simple garments, layers of dark, loose cloth that had neither style nor specific shape, he held his slim frame erect, ready. Of medium height and unremarkable build, the Ancient's appearance was deceptive. He was powerful beyond measure, beyond any one of them alone, save perhaps Ciarran, who had gained power through his demon parasite.

"Hello, Asher," Baunn said.

"I am Asher no longer. I am the Ancient."

Baunn nodded slowly, his lips pursed. Not a good thing when an all-powerful being believed his own hype.

They sat in silence until the quiet stretched and grew strained.

"So talk to me," Baunn said. "Tell me about this rift that rips the Compact apart."

"You are wise to prefer to make your own judgments. Wise to consider the path I propose." The Ancient turned to face him fully. Pale blue eyes, rimmed in navy, pinned Baunn with a knowing gaze, studied him, as though searching for some deep truth.

"Make my own judgments… yeah, that's part of it," Baunn said after another lengthy silence. "But I guess mostly I was hoping I'd come here and find out that I was wrong, that
they
were wrong. That Dain and Ciarran got it all ass-backward and you didn't betray everything we exist for."

"You speak to me of Dain?" the Ancient snarled, an uncharacteristic show of emotion. "He presented me with the face of friendship while in truth he spied upon me, watched me, judged me. He is an illusionist, putting on a false face. He cannot be trusted."

Uh, yeah. And you can
? Baunn swallowed the words, kept his mouth shut, and listened.

"I betrayed nothing," the Ancient continued. "I became
enlightened
. A pact with the Solitary ends the war, ends the perpetual battle to weave the wall between dimensions. There will be no more enemies, only allies. You of all of us know that there are many shades of gray, Baunn."

No, not so much. He'd believed that once, believed that maybe there was hope for those whose souls were stained gray but not black. He'd learned the hard way that demons—regardless of whatever beautiful form they took—were demons, dark and twisted, and no amount of wishing would make it otherwise. He'd fallen back on his ideas of black and white, then. Good and evil. No more shades of gray.

The Ancient made an impatient gesture, again strangely out of character. "Allying to the Solitary is the only way."

Clearly, he believed his own rhetoric. Baunn could hear the conviction in his tone. "You can tell yourself that, but what of the humans we're sworn to protect? They'll be—what?—no better than cattle?"

"They are what they are," the Ancient said, his tone hard. "And an oath is only as valid as the strength of its giver's belief. My belief is that this way is best."

Anger roiled in Baunn's gut, at Asher and at himself. But he wasn't one to point a finger, that whole stones-and-glass-houses thing. He'd made his share of mistakes.

For a moment, he just stared at the statue of the Madonna, and he remembered. Ugly regret oozed through him. He didn't want to remember what he'd done, the choices he'd made. Lousy goddamned choices made in the name of love.

Leaning forward, he rested his forearms on his knees. "You offered up an innocent, Asher, a human—"

"Clea Masters is no human. She is a sorcerer," the Ancient interjected.

Baunn studied him with curiosity. Asher evinced no apparent guilt over his failed plan to offer up Clea Masters—a woman who had had no idea that she was a sorcerer—as a sacrifice to open the portal between the mortal and demon realms. Clea had survived his machinations and come into her full power, but in the process they had almost lost both her and fellow sorcerer Ciarran D'Arbois.

"And that makes it right? You were going to let the demons sacrifice her, take her blood, use her to bring the Solitary to the human realm. At the time, none of us knew she was a sorcerer. We thought she was human. And you planned to let her die."

"For the greater good. Mortals have a term that applies;
Collateral damage
."

Baunn slapped back his rage. "We
protect
humans. We protect the wall between dimensions, hold back the demons that would bring chaos. That is our role. We are sworn to the
Pact
One human life lost to
collateral damage
is one too many."

"When was the last time you did aught to protect anyone but yourself, Baunn? I wonder that you dare point a finger at me after your decades, nay, centuries of negligence."

Baunn clenched his fists, skewered by the ugly truth of the accusation.

The Ancient looked away for a moment, then back. The long fall of platinum hair spilled over his shoulders as he moved, so pale it looked white in the dimness.

"If you had predetermined your position, Talyn, why did you seek me out?"

"I dunno." Baunn tapped out a staccato rhythm, his fingertips pounding the wooden pew. "Because I wanted you to deny it. Explain it.
Something
. I wanted to be wrong."

The Ancient nodded. "I will bring the Solitary at my first opportunity. In fact, there are those already working with me to accomplish that very end."

"There will be no opportunity." At least Baunn had that comfort. He might not have seen his brothers in the Compact of Sorcerers for more years than he cared to count, but he stayed in touch enough to know the basics of what was going down. Ciarran's wife, Clea Masters, was the conduit, the magical key that could open the wall between the realms of man and demon. And by all accounts, she was as good and pure of heart as could be, strong and noble. Honorable. Brave.

"Clea would never willingly open the gate between dimensions," Baunn continued. "And with Ciarran's power mated to hers, she can't be forced." He did a quick drumroll with his fingers on the wooden pew.
Badda-bing
. "You lose, Asher."

"There is another." The Ancient's voice was ripe with twisted satisfaction.

Baunn's gut clenched. "Another conduit? That's impossible."

"Impossible? True. There is no other
conduit
, but there is another
way
to bring the Solitary across. A summoner. A demon-keeper."

Humans who summoned demons were bound to the monster they called up. In exchange for eternal youth, eternal life, the summoner became the demon's keeper in the mortal realm, doomed to witness the demon's every vile action in perpetuity. Most struggled and fought once they realized what they had signed on for, and then most of them simply went mad, became husks of their former selves, their souls tormented in the living hell of their own making.

Some struggled against their fate for years and decades and centuries. None managed to kill the demon they had summoned or send it back to the stinking realm that had spawned it.

Except once. More than two thousand years ago, the Solitary had been sent back, and the human summoner, a child named Bezal, was saved, a happenstance made possible because Bezal had asked for no boon in return for the summoning. The child had said the words completely in error, had not understood what he had done, nor asked for any gift from the demon he called. Everything combined in a unique circumstance that allowed the Compact to save that one young boy and save the mortal world.

Because the Solitary was banished during the summoner's natural life span, Bezal did not wither and decompose. He went on to live a full life, one he chose to dedicate to helping others, a self-imposed payment for his terrible mistake. He died. He was buried.

That was the end of it. Or so they had thought until a dark power attempted a re-animation. At that point, Bezal's remains were warded and spelled, scattered across the earth so no possibility remained that he could be brought back to life and used to summon the Solitary. Finally, the end of a very ugly story.

So whatever Asher thought he was talking about, he was wrong.

"The Solitary can't be summoned by a keeper. Not anymore. You know that. You're the one who devised the plan to lock him in the demon realm by casting wards and spells that prevented his being called by any but Bezal," Baunn said.

"True." The Ancient's smile was chilling.

An oily wariness slithered through Baunn's veins. "The Compact made certain that no human could summon the Solitary after Bezal.
You
made certain of it."

"Did I?" The Ancient's smile grew broad, feral, not a pretty sight. "The spell the Compact cast is powerful, true. The Solitary can be brought into the realm of man only by his original and first demon-keeper, Bezal, a human long dead, his remains destroyed. Or he can be summoned by the descendants of the original. Those are the only options."

Baunn said nothing, refusing to feed Asher's dark delight.

"Such a conundrum. The Solitary's summoner, Bezal, is dead, and he died without begetting offspring… did he not?" Asher laughed.

Did he not
? Now that was the question.

A cold wind whipped through the chambers of Baunn's heart, a glacial dread.

They'd thought so. They'd all thought so.