Devil's Paw (Imp Book 4) (30 page)

They were right. And as ruthless as it sounded, the good of the pack would outweigh the needs of one lone wolf, a stranger to them.

Gina looked up, a lopsided smile on her face. “A fifteen–year–old girl saved me. Can you believe it? She came forward and asked them to let me live, to bring me into the pack, and they did.”

I stared at her, confused. Why would the pack jeopardize their entire group on the whim of a teenager? What sort of governance was that?

Gina’s smile grew broader. “And, someday, if we’re not cleansed from the face of the earth, you’ll learn the secrets we keep.”

With that, she stood up, collected the empty plates and vanished into the kitchen.

~25~

I
left the inn and headed toward the waterfront, relishing the warm sun that shone on Juneau. The pockets of wild gates danced like prisms and the air shimmered. It was perfect. We’d won, defeated the murderer before he could cause damage on a massive scale. I’d recreated the stretch of ice field and coastal mountain range he’d destroyed, and it was a rare sunny day. But I still couldn’t get the thought of that shining silver collar out of my mind.

“Hi babe.” Wyatt’s voice was a welcome sound through my phone. “I was getting worried.”

“Sorry. It took us a while to get to the gate, then I passed out after the battle and didn’t wake up until this morning.”

“So? Bad guy dead, I take it, and you heading home soon?”

Bad guy. I frowned. Raim had been an arrogant jerk, but I still couldn’t quite slap the label of bad guy on him. Behind all his nasty bravado, he’d seemed rather sympathetic, which was a ridiculous train of thought. He’d admitted to devouring demons. He’d devoured an angel. He’d eaten chunks of land in Seattle and by the seaplane base and destroyed miles of Alaska. He’d attacked both Gregory and I twice, with intent to kill. He
was
a bad guy. So why did I feel so guilty?

“My flight heads out in the morning.” I hesitated, but of everyone I knew, Wyatt surely would understand. “I don’t feel right about this, Wyatt. He admitted that he killed all those demons, wasn’t at all remorseful about it. He admitted to killing the angel. He attacked us on the mountainside, was attempting to devour Gregory. If I hadn’t killed him …well, he’d already destroyed miles of land. I think half the continent would have been lost before he died.”

Wyatt’s voice was soft and sympathetic. “Sounds like a bad guy to me. You did the right thing, Sam. If you hadn’t killed him, so many more innocent people would have died.”

He was right, but it still didn’t sit well in my gut.

“Raim was injured, Wyatt. Mortally wounded, and I can’t figure out why.”

“Maybe the gate guardian in Seattle?” he suggested. “You said he went back and tried again to get through the gate. He looks pretty beat up in the airport video, and it looks recent, like he didn’t have a chance to fix himself.”

“He
couldn’t
fix himself. It wasn’t just injuries to his physical form, he was dying. Whatever happened to him seriously damaged his spirit self. He couldn’t store energy, couldn’t repair his form. When we caught up to him on the mountain, he was beginning to dissolve. He didn’t have more than a few hours left before he would have come apart and died.”

“What could do that?”

Another devouring spirit that didn’t complete the job? “I’ve got no idea.”

“Sam, sweetheart, I know you feel bad for this guy. There’s no victory in winning against an injured and dying opponent, but he needed to be stopped. Think of how much worse things would have been had he gotten to Hel.”

Very true. “I was lucky he was so damaged and weakened. If he’d been at full strength, he would have beaten me. My Iblis shotgun was nowhere to be found, so I had to fight him as another devouring spirit. His power levels were much higher than mine, and his skill was greater. Thankfully he didn’t have enough power to back it up yesterday.”

“I’m glad you’re okay, Sam. I wish you were here.”

“Me too. I’m going to try and forget about all this and have some fun in Juneau today. I’ll call you when I change planes in Seattle.”

“Sounds good. I’ll be waiting here for you. And, Sam? You did good. I’m proud of you.”

It warmed my heart to hear him say that. There was a time when I never thought he’d have praise for my actions again. “Love you, see you soon.”

“Love you, too.”

I did have fun in Juneau the rest of the day. I went whale watching on a small boat excursion where we saw a group of humpback whales arching their backs and flipping their tails above the water’s surface as they dove for food. The scenery was beautiful, even more so from my point of view since my senses picked up the pouring streams of energy and power rushing like rivulets from a melting glacier into this realm from the tiny wild gates that rent the landscape. Harbor seals fought for a sunny spot on top of a channel buoy, and I contemplated changing my form and eating a couple of them before I left Alaska behind. Instead, I headed back to town to lunch on halibut and drink beer for the afternoon. Before I left, I made sure to order some salmon and halibut to be shipped fresh in a few weeks to my home. I tried, but they wouldn’t ship me a live harbor seal. I did convince the owner to mislabel a few pounds of seal meat as cod and ship it to me with my order.

The next morning I was in my hotel room, packing to leave, when I heard a knock on the door. Gina held out a box. It was one of those refrigerated packs, and I wondered if they had gotten my fish shipment mixed up and sent it to the hotel instead of home, to Maryland.

“It’s probably my halibut,” I told her, pondering if I should eat it raw or try somehow to carry it on my flight. Wondering how long the ice packs would last through Seattle and across the continent, I opened the box and found a hand inside. A severed human hand.

“Doesn’t look like halibut,” she commented with admirable calm, her nose twitching as she peered into the box. “Looks like a mafia threat to me. Have you gotten on the wrong side of some godfather?”

I reached in to pick up the hand and saw the ring. On the middle finger was a gold ring surrounding an onyx stone inscribed with an X and an inverted triangle. I gasped and an emotion I’d never felt before flooded through me. I recognized that ring, and diving my personal energy into the flesh surrounding the ring, I realized that I recognized that hand. It was the mage. The mage who had attacked me back in Frederick on rent day.

“It’s a ring of power,” Gina commented. “Although I don’t know exactly what it does.”

“What? You recognize it?”

The werewolf looked a bit embarrassed. “Back in the seventies, you know. I was young and experimenting with some questionable metaphysical philosophies.”

I stared at her blankly. “What does that have to do with the ring?”

She squirmed. “We did all kinds of crazy stuff. Sat in pyramids made of copper piping, smoked freeze–dried lettuce. I was reading a lot of books on alchemy and magic, and there was a sorcerer in one of them that had a ring like that.”

This was turning into a shaggy dog story, and I couldn’t figure out her point. “So. . .?”

“Nothing. The ring just looks the same. Basilius something. He never did get that alchemy thing to work, but there were suspicions it was all a front for something else.”

I shook my head. None of that mattered. What did matter was that my angel had killed off the mage who’d threatened me, lopped off his hand and sent it in a box as a gift. I pulled it from the box and rooted around to see if there was anything else in there, like the note at the bottom.

Trust no one

Angelic script. Gregory’s handwriting. He’d believed me. Gregory had believed me about the angel, the humans, and a mage attacking me downtown after rent day. He’d believed me, and he’d taken it upon himself to hunt down my attacker. How had he found the guy?

I admired my gift. For it really was a gift — a tribute. Gregory had delivered up my enemy to me, sent me a trophy. If that wasn’t a declaration of his feelings, then I didn’t know what was.

“This is the best present anyone has ever given me.” I ran my fingers over the severed hand and felt his energy, the angel’s energy like a signature, like a kiss. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get the hand past airport security and home, but the ring I could keep as a symbol of an angel’s love. I pulled it off the clammy, cold finger and shoved it onto my warm, live one. It was a bit loose, but I could fix that.

“All righty then,” the werewolf said, eyeing the ring with a smirk. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay here with us in Juneau. Be sure to come back soon.”

~26~

I
should have been working on my four–nine–five reports as I flew into Seattle, but the only thing occupying my mind was the nagging sense that I was missing something. I could believe that Raim devoured Baphomet, but he’d not seemed to even know he was dead. If Raim didn’t kill Baphomet, who had? And why would the devouring demon have jetted across the country to kill three demons on the east side of the U.S.? There were plenty of demons on the west coast to devour. Why was he down in Mexico, where he killed the angel? Raim said he had devoured the angel in self–defense. He’d obviously protect himself if he was under attack, but Gregory had said the angel wasn’t one of his enforcers. Why was a random angel walking around among the humans, and what had gone on between him and Raim?

We were betrayed.

Raim’s words surfaced. What in the fuck had he and Baphomet been up to? Baphomet’s steward had said something about sending Lows and other demons over. I’d assumed they were for Raim to devour, but how would that have benefited the other demon? I didn’t know what kind of scheme they’d been working, but I was beginning to think there was a third partner — a third partner who was conspicuously absent.

I stood before the gate to my connecting flight, staring at the arrivals and departures board in indecision. This wasn’t my problem. The devouring spirit was dead, my name was free and clear of any possible accusation in the angel’s death, Gregory was sending me little love gifts, and Wyatt waited for me at the other end of this long flight. I had shit to do; four–nine–five reports to complete and horse manure to dump on the cars parked on Third Street. Let the angels deal with it. Let someone else deal with it.

“I need to change my flight,” I told the woman at the gate counter. “Is there anything in …say four or five hours?”

I really wanted to go home, but I had a bad premonition that if I didn’t keep digging and find out what was really going on between Raim, Baphomet, and this third demon, it would come back to bite me hard. And I was sick and tired of things biting me hard. So I scooped up my new tickets and headed out of the Seattle airport to rent a car for four hours. And I called Wyatt.

“Hey babe.” I smiled to hear the warmth in his voice. “I’ve got a bottle of vodka in the freezer for tonight. Call me when your plane lands in Baltimore and I’ll make sure I’m ready and waiting.”

Damn. The idea of Wyatt ‘ready and waiting’ was causing all sorts of titillating, naughty thoughts to race through my head. Damn, damn, damn I wanted to go home. “Flight delay,” I told him. “I’ll probably be on the last flight in to BWI.”

Wyatt laughed. “Hey, it’s not like I go to bed at nine o’clock or anything. I’ll wait. I miss you. I can’t wait to see you.”

A wave of longing hit me. “I miss you too. What are you doing with the girls tonight? Are they slumming it at your house while you spend the night with me?” I hoped so. I didn’t want to have to worry about Nyalla hearing what I anticipated would be our exuberant love making.

“They’re at Mom’s.”

Ugh. Wyatt’s mom hated me. That I appeared to be an older, wealthy, cougar–type was bad enough, but add the fact that I was Ha–satan into the mix and she was predestined to hate me.

“Amber told her Nyalla was a college friend from Finland who couldn’t afford to go home for the summer. Mom welcomed her with open arms.”

Well, at least someone got the open arm treatment. I grumbled under my breath, jealous that Nyalla was fitting in so well while I still struggled occasionally with humans. I missed the girls though. I’d been making plans to take them to a wine festival this weekend, and maybe hit up some of the museums. I wondered if Nyalla rode? I could put her on Piper and teach her. It would be fun.

“So, do you think you can go? We’ve hardly had any time together. We’ll stay an extra day or two.”

“Huh?” I’d been lost in daydreams of girlfriend time, of jogging with Candy, of falling asleep in Wyatt’s arms.

“Vegas.”

“Your horse?” I asked, confused.

“No, Las Vegas. Next week. The gaming company interview I told you about?”

Vegas. It had been a while. I was sure they’d forgotten by now. Either way, I’d need to play it safe and avoid Caesars Palace. “Sure. Sounds fun.”

I thought about my call with Wyatt as I drove from the airport to the waterfront. I’d avoided telling him exactly why my arrival in Baltimore was delayed. He’d approve. Wyatt always loved a good mystery, was obsessed about tying up all the loose ends and working out the details. I wasn’t sure why I kept it from him. This whole thing with Baphomet and the devouring spirit just seemed personal. Their project might have nothing to do with the deaths, but I wouldn’t rest easy until I’d found out.

The gate guardian was cross–legged on the sidewalk, guitar case open for donations as he serenaded passerby with a suspiciously expensive guitar. An array of Chinese food containers sat beside him, the telltale stain of sweet and sour sauce along the edges. He sprang to his feet when he saw me, only to sit back down as I showed him my brand.

“Figures,” he grumbled. “Nearly half a century you’ve managed to avoid me, and now you’re off limits.”

“Do you know I’m also the Iblis?” I squatted down next to him on the pavement.

He nodded. “What are you doing here? I thought you were out by the Baltimore gate.”

“I’m investigating the deaths of some demons.”

He looked shocked. I didn’t blame him. Demons didn’t usually give a crap about murders and deaths, even among their own.