Spellbound (9 page)

“I'll check for a basement,” I said. “If there is one, I'll see whether there's a place down there we can stash him long enough to decompose.” Not an ideal solution, but a lot safer than smuggling him out of the house.

Adam started to stand, as if ready to come with me. Then he hesitated and said, “You're good?”

I picked up the flashlight he'd set down on the desk. “I'm good. I may need to consider investing in an actual weapon, though. And learning how to use it.”

“We'll get you a really big flashlight.”

“Thanks.”

I was almost into the kitchen, searching for a basement door, when a
skritch-skritch
sounded behind me. I stopped. A low growl reverberated through the hall.

We'd forgotten about the damned dog.

I
turned slowly. A Rottweiler stood ten feet away, growling. Bloody froth dripped from its open mouth.

Great. Confronted by a rabid dog the size of a lion, while I'm armed with . . . I looked down. A pocket light.

“Um, Adam?” I called, as loud as I dared.

He stepped from the office. “Shit.”

That about summed it up.

“Hey, pooch,” he called lifting his glowing fingers. “How about you come play with me instead?”

The dog took two lurching steps my way. Adam started forward, then stopped.

“If I come after it, it might charge you,” he said.

“Then don't come after it. Please.”

“Okay. Remember how Lucas taught you to handle dogs?”

“With a knockback spell.”

“If you don't have a knockback spell?”

When I didn't answer, Adam said, “Okay, rule one, and this is going to be really tough for you: Act submissive. Keep the dog in your line of vision, but don't make direct eye contact. Then put your hands in your pockets and in a firm voice, say no.”

“No?”

“A little firmer.”

I glowered, then did as he said. The dog seemed satisfied . . . that I'd make an easy, nonthreatening target, and staggered toward me, bloody drool trailing behind. I realized then that this pooch wasn't rabid.

“Um, Adam?”

Creeping up behind the dog, he motioned me to silence. “Those survival tips. Do they work with zombie dogs, too?”

“Zombie . . . Shit!”

The dog spun. Or it tried to, scrabbling awkwardly as it turned around to face Adam. He lifted his glowing fingertips. The dog lunged at him. I dove at it. Adam stepped to the side. The dog kept going, stumbling past him into the office.

We stood in the hall, listening to claws scraping the hardwood, then a thump. The office chair squeaked.

“Think zombie pup's hungry?” I whispered, thinking of Alston's bloodied body.

“I hadn't . . . until you mentioned it. Thanks.”

I slipped past him to peek into the office. I saw the dog, lying in a heap on the floor. Then Walter Alston lifted his head.

“That's better,” rumbled a voice. The corpse's head turned, eyeless sockets scanning the room. “Better being a relative term.” It turned toward me. “I don't suppose you'd care to untie me?”

“Walter Alston?” Adam said, striding past me.

I followed. Even from ten feet away, we could feel heat radiating from the corpse.

“Not Walter Alston,” I said. “And we are so not untying you, demon.”

“A wise choice. I might crawl over and bite your ankles. In case you haven't noticed, child of Balaam, this body lacks working knees, which is why I inhabited the dog. If I wanted to hurt you, I could simply return to that form. Right now, I would prefer the power of speech.”

“You're a demon,” I said. “You don't need working knees to move. And you don't need me to untie you.”

“Demi-demon,” Adam whispered.

Right. Possessing the living is beyond the powers of most demi-demons. Some can take over corpses, though.

“I'll untie you if you give me your name and liege,” Adam said.

The demi-demon cocked his head, lips pursing. It wasn't as simple a request as it seemed. His name could be used to call him again. I was surprised that he seemed to be considering it. Even more surprised when he said, “Kimerion, under Andromaulius.”

Adam keyed the name into the database on his phone, then passed it over to me. When I read the entry, I was a lot less surprised.

Andromaulius was a demon duke in the court of the lord demon Asmondai. Adam's father. Either this demon couldn't refuse Adam or he feared it might insult his liege's lord.

Adam knelt beside Alston's corpse and untied his arms. The demi-demon lifted his bloodied hands and flexed them, then folded them into his lap.

“If you're here to carry through on a bargain Alston brokered, you're going to have to go straight to the source,” I said. “Unless it's your part that hasn't been completed, in which case you can probably use his death as an excuse for breaking the deal.”

Kimerion smiled, cracking the dried blood on Alston's cheeks. “You know all the loopholes, I see. Your mother taught you well. I'm not here to fulfill a bargain. I'm a confederate of Walter Alston. I helped him negotiate his deals in return for certain considerations. A very satisfactory partnership that has now, apparently, come to an end. He tried to summon me, without the proper ritual material, and I only heard him as his spirit was winging its way to the other side.” His sightless eyes traveled across the room. “He did not go easily, it seems. Or painlessly.”

It was a reflection made without pity for his former partner. But no regret either, that he'd missed out on the chaos feast of the death. That was a big deal—demons feed on chaos, particularly the negative variety. So this was a respectful reflection, which was the best eulogy one could expect from a demi-demon.

“You'll be investigating this, then? You and that . . .” He gave a dismissive wave. “Council.”

“Do you have any idea who killed him?” Adam asked.

“Oh, I know exactly who killed him. I arrived as they were leaving. I found the dog's corpse—the beast had been poisoned—but by the time I possessed it, Walter's killers were gone.”

“Did you recognize them? Had they done business with him before?”

“That was the problem—they didn't do business with him before. They'd asked him to summon a demon, to aid their cause, and he refused. They came back to see if he'd changed his mind.”

“So Alston gets a visit from this ‘Free the Supernaturals' movement. He refuses to help them. Then the guys come back and do this—?” I waved at Alston's mutilated corpse.

“Not guys. It was a guy and a girl, to use the vernacular. Or, more precisely, a man and a woman, both being past the age of adulthood.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, I'm certain they were adults. Not much older than you, but adults nonetheless.”

“I mean the part about his killers being activists. People like that don't do things like this.”

The possessed Alston pursed his lips. “You have a point. Those who argue for their version of a better world never do anything violent. Animal rights activists never bomb buildings. Antiabortionists never murder doctors . . .”

“Check it out. He's not just a demon. He's a keen observer of the human condition. So fine, it's possible these activists would torture and kill Walter Alston. That could be in their nature. But I know what's in
your
nature. A serious hard-on for chaos. What better way to stir things up than to set the council on these guys.”

I glanced at Adam for support.

Adam hesitated, then said, “True, but if chaos is his goal, there's more to be gained from letting their campaign continue. And even more if it succeeds.” He looked at Kimerion. “Why, then, put us on their trail? You might want Walter Alston's killers caught, but that chaos snack isn't worth sacrificing the upcoming buffet.”

Kimerion smiled. “You've inherited Asmondai's head for politics. He must be pleased. Yes, the exposure of supernaturals would cause trouble. But there's trouble, and then there's trouble. If all demons would love to see it happen, it would have happened already.”

“So you're voting nay?” I said.

“Asmondai is.”

“And you don't disagree enough to vote against your party platform.”

“It's not so much a matter of party politics as personal politics,” Adam interceded. “You have more to gain personally by helping me stop a campaign that Asmondai would like to see stopped. Which brings us right back to Savannah's original point. You have something to gain by setting us on the trail of these people. So why should we believe you?”

“The house is equipped, as you saw, with security cameras. Walter's killers were clever enough to disable most, but there's one they missed. You'll find the recording device in Walter's bedroom.”

Adam nodded. “Okay, we'll get that later. Right now, I'm more interested in which demon the activists wanted to summon.”

“If Alston went through all that”—I pointed at the mutilated corpse—“he
really
didn't want to summon him.”

“More likely he couldn't,” Adam said. “No matter how pissed off a summoned demon might be, he isn't going to do anything worse to him than that.” He walked over to the books scattered on the floor and picked up a journal. “So which demon wasn't Alston skilled enough to summon?”

“You could ask me,” Kimerion said.

“For a price.” Adam leafed through the journal. “I'll limit my questions to you, thanks.”

“In general a wise practice, but I'm inclined to be helpful here. Walter was an expert. If a demon can be summoned, he could do it. Some are more difficult—and dangerous—than others but, as you pointed out, at a certain point during his torture, I'm sure he would have tried. And it doesn't appear that he did.”

“But if he could summon any demon . . . ,” I said.

Adam shook his head. “Any demon that can be summoned. That was the problem. They wanted him to summon the unsummonable. That's why he set an impossible price on the job. He couldn't do it, but he didn't want to admit it. Bad for business.”

“What demon is—?” I stopped. “Lucifer. They wanted Lucifer.”

Contrary to Christian mythology, Lucifer is not the king of the demons. He's just another lord demon, like Asmondai, Balaam, and Satan. But Lucifer is, as the story goes, a fallen angel, and that makes him unique. For one thing, he can't be summoned.

“That might be why Hope's having weird visions,” I said. “If someone's trying to contact her father, she could be catching the signals.”

“Lucifer's daughter is having unusual visions?” Kimerion said. “Of what?”

Adam told a little and withheld a lot, which is the best way to deal with demons. Show them a card, but not your whole hand. The last card that he did reveal surprised me.

“Savannah,” he said. “She's having visions of Savannah.”

Kimerion hesitated. Then he said, “She strongly resembles her mother. I believe it was Eve Levine that Lucifer's daughter was seeing. Was there any . . . associated imagery? Possibly . . . celestial?”

I thought of the sword.

Adam shook his head. “No, it was definitely Savannah. Hope knows her. So why would she be dreaming of Savannah?”

“There are possibilities. I can say no more than that right now, but I will also say that I'm quite certain she is mistaken. There is a role for Eve Levine in this, and if Lucifer's daughter is seeing her, that may confirm a suspicion.”

“What suspicion?”

This he wouldn't answer. Just deflected until Adam switched gears and asked why the activists would be trying to contact Lucifer.

Again, Kimerion only circled the question. He knew something. He wasn't telling us. Adam didn't pursue it, and I was wondering what the hell he was doing when he said, “One last thing. Savannah's magic has disappeared.”

That got Kimerion's attention. “Disappeared?”

Adam told him the whole story, leaving nothing out, then asked, “Do you know who's responsible?”

“No.”

“I'll pay for an answer.”

I protested, but Adam cut me off, and repeated the offer.

“Then that is an answer I wish I had,” Kimerion said. “A chit from Asmondai's son would be most useful. Will the offer stand if I return with the solution?”

“No,” I said. “We're not—”

“The offer stands,” Adam said. “But I'm not making any bargain before you have the answer. Come back when you do, and we'll negotiate.”

Kimerion smiled. “Excellent. I would suggest, though, that the question to consider is not who took the girl's powers but why they were taken.”

A blast of hot wind, and Alston's body slumped again as the demi-demon disappeared.

 

 

When Kimerion was gone, Adam bent to untie Alston's legs.

“That was really dumb,” I said.

Adam glanced up. “Excuse me?”

“What you just did. He knew something about my mother and he knew why these guys were trying to summon Lucifer, and you didn't press him on either, because you were saving up your influence to ask about my powers. I don't know whether to hug you or smack you. I'm leaning toward the latter, though. Something big is going on here. In the overall picture, my spells—”

“—are the least important issue. However, that was the only matter he was going to help with.” Adam stood. “He stonewalled on the other two. Yes, I could have used my father's name and pushed him, but he won't give good answers if he doesn't want to. Did you see how he reacted when I said your powers are gone? That interests him. That's what he'll investigate for us, because it'll satisfy his own curiosity and earn my favor. As for the rest, we need more before we'll get anything out of him.” He looked at me. “I do know how to deal with demons, Savannah.”