J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough (27 page)

Going the other way now she used her sense of Paul to guide her and pulled onto a side street with no traffic. She gunned the Jag and sped recklessly down a winding road past expensive homes and mansions, turned a corner and spotted the limo just inside the entrance of a gated community, pulling rapidly away.

She spun the Jaguar’s wheel, turned in front of an oncoming car, careened past it and screeched to a halt in front of the gate next to the guard station. A young woman in the uniform of a security guard leaned out of the guard station, a wary look on her face. “Is there some problem?” she asked as Katherine lowered the Jag’s window.

“Not at all,” Katherine said politely, keeping one eye on the limo as it disappeared over a small rise. “I have an invitation,” she said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of charms. She selected one, leaned down so the guard couldn’t see what she did and spit on it. She held it out the window toward the guard.

The guard frowned suspiciously and reached out cautiously, but the moment their fingers touched Katherine released the spell. The guard blinked her eyes rapidly and shook her head. She’d feel a strong sense of confusion and a need to believe anything Katherine told her.

Katherine said, “You’ve seen my invitation and everything’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” the guard said blearily, shaking her head and blinking her eyes rapidly.

“Then please open the gate and let me through.”

The guard complied and Katherine sped after the limo, driving almost recklessly through the streets of the exclusive community. A tall stucco wall bordered the road on the left, and as she passed a large wrought iron gate a hint of movement caught her eye and her sense of Paul pulled her that way. She stomped on the Jag’s brakes and skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust and scattering gravel. She threw the Jag into reverse and backed up to the gate.

It was just closing, moving silently on some motorized mechanism. And in the distance she spotted the limo pulling into a garage at the end of a driveway about four-hundred feet long, a five-car garage part of a rather large mansion. She watched the garage door close, concealing the limo from view. She waited for her sense of Paul to disappear as he entered the wards of a powerful practitioner, but oddly enough that didn’t happen. She waited there for a good minute, the Jag’s engine idling softly, and when nothing further happened, she pulled the Jag forward about a hundred feet and turned off the road into the dark shadows of a large tree.

Still sensing Paul’s direction and distance, she climbed out of the Jag and locked it. It bothered her that the mansion wasn’t properly warded, that the link between the locator charms hadn’t been broken when Paul entered the place. She could sense him moving about inside as the dark shadows of a moonless night descended quickly, and she wished she didn’t have to do this alone.

Chapter 19: Into the Demon’s Lair

Belinda led Paul down a dark hallway clutching his hand almost desperately. Back in the limo his thoughts had been completely consumed by the pleasures of her body. It seemed that when they made love his ability to think rationally abandoned him. His mind generated random snippets of thought, punctuated by his desire for Belinda. He’d have a thought of something else, something not-Belinda, something he should be aware of, something he should do, perhaps something he should worry about. And then the taste of her skin would distract him and he’d think of only her for a moment, and the not-Belinda thought would disappear. And then he’d have another not-Belinda thought, and he was certain if he could just put the not-Belinda thoughts together in a stream it would mean something much more. But the Belinda thoughts always interrupted the not-Belinda thoughts, and he could never put two of them together at one time, though he had to admit the Belinda thoughts were pretty good thoughts to have.

She pulled him into a dimly lit room that contained a large desk, with leather bound books lining the walls and a warm fire crackling in a hearth. She’d obviously brought him into a gentleman’s elegantly furnished study.

The gentleman in question stood from behind the desk as they entered the room. He was tall, handsome, wearing an elegant dark suit, elegant dark hair with an elegant touch of gray at the temples. With him present the room seemed even more elegant.

He stepped out from behind the desk and crossed the room, saying, “Belinda, my love.”

“Father,” she said as he hugged her warmly, and she seemed overwhelmed with joy to be in his presence.

They separated, and the gentleman turned to Paul. “And this must be the young man you told me about.” He spoke with a refined accent, not British refined, but as if America had its own aristocracy, and its own aristocratic accent.

“Paul,” Belinda said. “I’d like you to meet my father, Cassius.” When Belinda looked at her father it was as if Paul wasn’t even in the room.

“Sir,” Paul said, extending his hand.

The man grasped Paul’s hand warmly in both of his. “Belinda told me you’ve been having trouble with demons.”

Blink
.

Paul had seen something overlaying Cassius’ image, but it wasn’t one of the bat-things like the demons. And in the same
blink
he’d seen that image of an older Belinda overlaying the image of the Belinda standing in front of him.

“I don’t know what to do, sir,” Paul said as Cassius continued to hold his hand. For an instant he thought he felt that
pull
where the flesh of his hand met that of Cassius, the
pull
he’d felt when the demon had touched him. But Cassius was Belinda’s father, not some demon, and at the thought of Belinda Paul looked her way, couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Suddenly an immense sense of weakness and lassitude overcame him. He struggled to keep from collapsing to the floor. Cassius stepped in closer, slipped an arm around Paul’s shoulders and supported him. Belinda supported him on the other side and they walked him carefully toward a chair. “Don’t worry, Paul,” Cassius said. “When you don’t know what you’re doing demons can be quite dangerous. But when you do, they’re no more than a minor inconvenience. I can help you, son.”

They lowered him into the chair as his head swirled sickeningly. Cassius said, “Don’t worry, Paul. I can help you.”

Cassius leaned over his desk and touched something there, then spoke into some sort of intercom. Paul heard him say the name Joachim, then a few moments later the limo driver arrived. Cassius gave the fellow some hurried instructions, then Joachim helped Paul upstairs to a bedroom, all but carried him there.

“Ah!” Baalthelmass cried. “The taste of him was wonderful. I only sampled him, but it was enough. He’s like nothing I’ve tasted in centuries—no, millennia.”

Belinda watched the demon lord pace back and forth across Its study. Then It turned toward her. “You have done well, my dear. You’ll have great joy of your reward. Go to his bed. Keep him enthralled. I want him pliable, so I can consume him slowly.”

Her master was in no mood to hear of complications, so she dare not tell it now of the young man’s resistance, of the unaccountable strength he showed regarding her spells. She’d go to his bed, strengthen the spells that entangled him, and later there would come a time when she could help her master see the danger in the young wizard.

Katherine needed to find a way over the wall onto the grounds of the mansion. About seven feet high, the wall was plain, unadorned stucco, probably with a brick and mortar structure beneath it, and no purchase for climbing. She tried to jump up and get some sort of hold, managed to get her arms on top of the wall with her head just above it. But there was nothing to grip and she didn’t have the upper body strength to simply hoist her own weight over the wall.

From a distance she considered the wrought-iron gate. She might spell the mechanism and get it to open, but there must be some sort of security system to warn those in the mansion.

She turned away from the gate and started down the length of the wall, hoping to find some way to climb it. Traffic on the road was light, and as night settled over the peninsula, when the occasional car approached its headlights gave her plenty of warning, and for each she stopped momentarily and hide behind a bush. She didn’t need the local police asking her why she was stalking about some wealthy person’s estate.

About two hundred feet from the gate she found an oak tree about six feet outside the wall. There weren’t any limbs close to the ground, nothing so convenient as to simply allow her to climb the tree and drop down on the other side of the wall. But there was one, stout limb growing from the main trunk about eight feet off the ground and extending out over the wall.

She crouched, leapt up and caught the limb on the first try, then, hanging by her hands, she edged slowly along the limb toward the wall. The limb was quite solid and thick, but it still bowed under her weight, and when she got to the wall her breasts just cleared the top of it. Still hanging from the limb she swung her legs side-to-side, like a gymnast on the high bar. The limb swayed with her, but she finally managed to throw her hips and legs up, and her butt smacked painfully on the top of the wall. With her butt on the wall, and still hanging by her hands from the limb with her torso suspended precariously over an eight-foot drop to the ground, she edged her hands along the limb until she could let go and remain on the wall. In the process she’d scraped her knees and elbows, torn her jeans and coat, and lost the baseball cap.

She sat there for a moment and sorted through her charms. She imagined snarling attack dogs patrolling the grounds, a pack of them bringing her down and ripping her throat out, but she put that thought away as being just a bit overly dramatic. This wasn’t some spy movie, but she’d still feel better with something to protect her. She selected an aversion spell. It should work on animals as well as people, make them always want to look away, to look at and take interest in something else. She activated it with a touch of saliva, stuffed it back in her pocket, then eased over the edge of the wall and dropped down into the compound.

The knock on the door didn’t wake Belinda. She’d only just gotten in bed with Paul, and after their escapades in the back of the limo she was sated, so she’d spelled him into sleep.

She rolled out of bed, crossed the room and opened the door. Joachim stood there. She was barely dressed, her nipples protruding through the translucent fabric of her nightgown. He’d never tried to hide his desire for her, his pure, unbridled lust. And she’d always taken pleasure in the way she could control him with it, especially since she’d never allowed him to satisfy his desire. He looked her up and down and his eyes paused for a long moment on her breasts. Then he looked past her toward Paul, and nodded. She answered his unasked question. “He’s asleep. And he won’t wake until I want him to. What is it?”

Joachim’s voice came out in a throaty grumble. “The master says there’s an intruder on the grounds. He wants you downstairs, now.”

His eyes returned to her breasts as she said, “I’ll dress and be there in a moment.”

Mikhail gave Vladimir explicit directions to the walled estate, then flipped his cell phone closed and stuffed it into his pocket. The young woman had parked her car in the shadows at the side of the road about three hundred yards away, though now that night had descended it was no longer visible in the darkness.

The old man appeared in front of him as if by magic, and quite possibly it was by magic. The shadow standing next to him had to be the old hippie woman. Mikhail knew a few spells, but against either one of them he was completely out of his league.

“Good evening, Mikhail,” McGowan said. His voice was not kind.

Mikhail took one step back, though he knew nothing would help him if the old man wanted a fight. “Good evening, Mr. McGowan.”

McGowan stepped forward aggressively. Mikhail wanted to take another step away from this dangerous, old wizard, but his feet were suddenly immovable as if rooted to the ground. McGowan leaned in close so their noses were almost touching. When he spoke his voice had the timbre of a large predator. “Tell Vasily my daughter’s in there. And if any harm comes to her as a result of any action he or any of you take, there’ll be open war between us. Tell Vasily that.”

The Old Wizard and the hippie disappeared just as quickly and silently as they’d appeared.

The grounds of the estate covered several acres, most in a fairly pristine state. In case she needed some sort of defense beyond the aversion spell, Katherine kept a sleeping spell cupped in the palm of her hand as she worked her way through well-spaced redwoods, then through a stand of eucalyptus, always moving toward the lights of the house. It was one of those old-money mansions, with steep and complex rooflines, well-tended grounds close in to the house itself. So far, no snarling, attack dogs.

She paused at the edge of a stone patio, stayed hidden in the shadows of a wall of shrubs that surrounded it. Light spilled out through a set of French doors that opened onto the patio. She waited and watched for quite a while, but she saw no movement within, so she stepped out from behind the shrubs and crossed the patio silently, taking care to stay out of the light from the French doors.

She edged up to the doors carefully from one side and peered through the glass into the room. It was empty. She could easily spell the lock on the doors, and she was about to do just that when she heard footsteps approaching from behind her. She froze as a man and a woman walked casually onto the patio. The aversion spell would only work as long as she remained still.

The man stood well over six-feet tall, wore a chauffeur’s cap and carried a metal water bucket. The woman wore an overcoat that covered her completely from shoulders to mid-calf, but something about her radiated a raw sensuousness that Katherine even envied a little. She exuded a fundamental, visceral, primal sexuality, something almost elemental in its nature. As she and the man approached the French doors, a cascade of tightly curled, black hair hid her face. “You can’t see her?” the woman asked.

The man turned to look at the woman, which had him looking almost directly at Katherine. “No,” he said. “Nothing.” His eyes glanced past the woman toward Katherine momentarily, then he looked away under the influence of the aversion spell.

“She’s a reasonably strong witch,” the woman said. “Not strong enough to fool me, but clearly strong enough to fool you.”

Just as Katherine realized they were talking about her, the woman stepped back from the French doors and said, “And that’s easily fixed.” In the same motion she turned toward Katherine, threw her hand out and something that sparkled and shimmered on the air fluttered about Katherine’s shoulders.

Katherine tensed, activated the sleeping spell just as the man threw the contents of the bucket at her. A torrent of water hit her in the face and made her stagger backward, soaking her completely just as she threw the spell. But the spell fizzled like a wet firecracker as its energy dissipated into the earth and the trees and bushes about them. The man and woman both staggered, but they didn’t swoon and drop to the ground in a deep sleep as they should have. And then Katherine tasted the salt in the water and realized the bucket had been filled with seawater. She’d been soaked from head to foot with saltwater, grounding her magic and shorting her spells.

Katherine spun on her heels, hopped a shrub like an Olympic hurdler and ran. She felt the force of some sort of spell slam into her. She stumbled and missed a step, but the spell sizzled and dissipated and she ran on. The saltwater dimmed her own powers, but since she’d been completely soaked it also limited the effects of spells they might throw against her. She heard the woman swear, “God damn it, get her.”

Katherine dodged into the stand of eucalyptus. She heard the man grunt as he hurtled the shrub behind her. He was a big man, must outweigh her by a hundred pounds and none of it fat. And with legs much longer than hers she probably couldn’t outrun him either. But she wasn’t going to give up without one hell of a fight.

She wasn’t counting on the tall, distinguished, older man that appeared directly in front of her without warning. She ran headlong into him, and he didn’t stagger, move, or even twitch as she bounced off him like she would off a solid an oak tree. She landed hard on the ground, wrenching her shoulder badly in the process.