Demonfire (30 page)

“No.” Ed set his glass down
and leaned forward. “There’s not a damned thing you can do differently. All you
can do is love her for as long as you’re here. She asked me if, knowing her
mother would die so young, would I have still wanted to love her. I realized
then that I wouldn’t give up those few short years with Eddy’s mom for
anything. That woman was the best thing that ever happened to me. Maybe you’re
the best that will ever happen to Eddy. I hope not. I hope she’ll find love
again someday, after you’re gone. After enough time has passed—but she’s right.
You go after love. You hold on to it with both hands and your heart, no matter
how briefly it lasts, no matter how painful the end might be. It’s too precious
to waste a moment. I hope you and Eddy hang on to every second you’ve got.”

He tipped his glass and
emptied it. Then he stood. Stronger this time. More sure of his step. “And
right now, young man, you’re wasting what little time you’ve got with my
daughter, sitting in here yammering with her old man. Go help Eddy find that
bat of hers. Let her know you love her enough to help her wrestle her own
demons along with yours.”

Dax stood as Ed left the room.
He held the glass of brandy up to catch the light. Then he glanced at Willow.
She appeared half asleep, nestled snuggly in Bumper’s thick coat of curls.
“Rest, little one,” he said. “Stay with your friend. I’ll be with Eddy.”

Willow flashed a tiny flicker
of blue light. Dax finished off the last swallow of brandy and turned out the
lights as he left the room. He met Alton at the kitchen door. “Is everything
quiet?”

Alton nodded. “Ginny’s home
safe. I took a swing back through town on my way here. Nothing is stirring. I
drew my sword, and there was no reaction, no sense of demonkind. I’m wondering
if we’ve gotten all of the ones that crossed over, other than the gargoyle. I
hesitate to go after him until we’ve all rested. I don’t think either of us has
the power to take him on our own.”

Dax nodded. “I agree. Willow
and Bumper are asleep in the front room. Ed’s gone on to bed.” He nodded toward
the garage, where a pale light glowed through the window on the small side
door. “I’m going to get Eddy. We’ll be in shortly.” He rested his palm on
Alton’s forearm. “Sleep well, my friend. Thank you.”

“You, too, Dax.” Alton nodded.
“Tomorrow we go after the gargoyle. Again.”

Dax watched Alton enter the
house. Then he quietly opened the door to the garage. Eddy didn’t appear to
hear him. She sat on a wooden box near the rows of large shelves in the back.
She had her back to Dax and held a large book in her lap. A smooth, wooden
baseball bat lay on the floor beside her. She’d clipped a shop light to the
closest shelf, and it spotlighted the place where she sat and the book she
looked at so intently.

“Eddy? What is that?” Dax
squatted down beside her and realized she was gazing at a book of photographs.

“It’s one of my grandmother’s
old albums. See?”

She pointed to a picture of a
little dark-eyed girl sitting in the lap of a powerful-looking elderly man. A
sweet-looking woman who could have been an older version of Eddy stood beside
them with her hand on the man’s shoulder. Everyone was smiling, their eyes
alight with what had to be love.

“That’s me when I was about
six,” Eddy said, pointing to the little girl. “That’s my grandfather holding
me, and that’s Gramma standing beside us. She died the year after my mom passed
away.” Eddy glanced up at Dax. There were tears in her eyes. “Grampa died years
before when I was still a kid, and when Mom died, it was like a light went out
of Gramma. She just sort of slipped away, but she was already pretty old. She
and my grandfather were married for almost sixty years.”

“You still miss her, don’t
you?” He brushed her hair back from her eyes. She nodded and smiled at him, but
she was biting her lip and he knew she struggled not to cry. Always so brave,
so intent on putting on a strong face for him that it made his heart ache to
see her grieving now, to know she would grieve even more when he was gone. “I
love you, Eddy. No matter what happens, I will never forget you.”

She touched her palm to the
side of his face and leaned her forehead against his. “I won’t ever forget you
either, Dax. I love you so much.” She shook her head. A tear landed on the back
of his hand. “I never imagined falling in love with anyone like this, not this
hard, this fast.” She took a deep breath, closed the album, and carefully put
it back in a large, plastic box. Then she replaced the lid and made certain it
was on tight.

Dax reached for the box and
picked it up before Eddy could. She didn’t say anything, but she pointed to an
empty spot where it belonged. Dax slipped the heavy box back on the shelf and
reached for Eddy’s hand.

She slipped her fingers into
his, and they left the garage together. Eddy turned out the light and locked
the door. She was yawning when they reached the bedroom, but the tears in her
eyes were gone. She held tightly to her baseball bat with one hand, and just as
tightly to Dax with the other.

They showered together. Dax
helped Eddy rinse her hair, and she carefully scrubbed the blood off his back
and shoulder. He held her beneath the soothing spray while she cried for a few
minutes. He had a feeling that tears didn’t come easily to her, that she rarely
showed any kind of weakness to anyone. The fact she felt comfortable enough to
be herself with Dax told him more than mere words might ever say.

They stepped out of the
shower, and he grabbed a towel off the rack to dry her silky skin. She brushed
her teeth; he shaved. It all felt terribly domestic, and he was struck with the
fact that less than a week ago he’d never done any of these things.

He’d never shaved, never
showered, never bathed with a woman, yet his body seemed to know everything.
How to use a razor, how to brush his teeth and tie his shoes and eat with a
fork and knife. He knew the language, knew what things were, knew how to
interpret his feelings, his fears, his needs.

And he knew how to make love
to Eddy. He paused and stared at himself in the steamy mirror. White shaving
cream covered his chin and throat, and his hair was slicked back from his head.
It looked almost black in this light, though he knew it was really a very dark
brown. There were even a couple of gray strands in it, though he knew he wasn’t
very old, even by human standards.

He’d wrapped a towel around
his waist, and it hung low on his hips. A dark trail of hair ran from his belly
button to his groin, and the snake tattoo ran through the trail. The thing had
been quiet since the battle this evening, though he was always aware of its
existence. The glow was gone, but it hadn’t hurt since the fight with the
gargoyle. The gaping jaws remained poised over his heart, and the beady eyes
were fixed and lifeless, but he’d seen them sparkle with intelligence, had felt
the tongue lash between his fingers. He’d seen the head pull away from his
flesh and strike at his throat.

The demon’s curse wasn’t gone.
Not by a long shot. It waited patiently, ready to strike when his defenses were
down, which meant he needed to remain alert to it at all times.

He rinsed the razor in the
sink and took another careful stroke along his jaw and down his throat, and
then another. He actually enjoyed the ritual of shaving, the way the lather
felt so cool on his skin, the slide of the razor over bristles that hadn’t even
existed earlier in the day.

Usually Eddy stayed in the
bathroom to watch him, but she was so tired tonight, so dejected, she’d gone on
to bed. He finished shaving and cleaned the razor. Then he rinsed out the sink
and wiped it down with an extra towel, wondering, even as he performed the
simple tasks, if the man whose body he owned had done the same things.

It was so easy to forget that
he wasn’t the original resident of these parts—these hands and feet, this
strong back, and these wide shoulders. That his pair of legs had carried
another man, these hands had probably made love to other women.

The only woman Dax wanted was
Eddy. He rinsed his face once more, dried his skin, and looked at the man in
the mirror. He’d grown accustomed to this face, to this body. He hardly thought
of it as borrowed.

Hardly thought of himself as
demon.

He didn’t want to think of the
fact he only had use of this body for a couple more days, but that was the
truth, and he hated to waste a moment. Not when he could be lying beside Eddy.
He glanced over his shoulder. The bedroom was dark, which meant she was already
in bed. He draped the towel over the shower door and turned off the bathroom
light.

Then he quietly crawled into
bed beside Eddy. He lay there for a moment, listening to the soft, even sound
of her breathing that told him she slept. Then he rolled to his side and pulled
her unresisting body into his arms.

He immediately grew hard and
aroused. The merest touch was all it took when he was around her, but he
ignored his body’s reaction. It was enough to hold her. Enough to feel her body
close to his, to hear the soft puff of her breath, the steady beat of her
heart.

With Eddy’s small sounds
soothing him, Dax drifted off to sleep.

His dreams in the past had
usually been nightmares of his life before coming to Earth. Fire and fights and
the fear of death, terrible battles with hideous creatures of the night—the
kinds of creatures that once were common in his life.

The kind of creature he once
had been.

Tonight, though, was
different. He was aware he was dreaming, though it had the quality of memory,
not imagination. He was Dax, yet he wasn’t. He struggled to hold his balance on
a strange, flat boat in rough seas. He was surrounded by other men, all of them
wearing the same uniform. Round metal helmets covered their heads; heavy, olive
green uniforms gave little protection from the wet and the cold. He was holding
a rifle, and he was terrified, absolutely scared to death, but it was okay,
because everyone else was just as frightened. Some of the guys were seasick,
and they’d been heaving their guts over the side of the boat. He wondered if
they were too sick to be as scared as he was.

It was early in the morning,
and he knew the date was June 6, 1944, and he was off the coast of Normandy,
just one of tens of thousands of men making the landing on Omaha Beach.

He could see the beach ahead,
and the heavy fortifications they’d have to go through or over. The boat
lurched, the front opened up, and salty spray hit his face and soaked his
uniform, but it didn’t matter. Like lemmings going over a cliff, they all raced
out into the icy sea, carrying their weapons, weighed down by heavy packs
loaded with way too much gear and ammunition. The water was deeper than they’d
been told to expect, but he was taller than most and it hit him at his chest.

Fear drove him through the
pounding surf. He saw one of the smaller guys floundering beside him, held down
by his heavy pack and ammo and the big rifle in his arms. Dax grabbed him by
the arm and hauled him along, all the way to shore, where both of them hit the
cold, hard sand to avoid the hail of bullets whizzing by their heads.

He crawled on his belly and
made it as far as the first set of barricades, but when he looked around, there
were more bodies than live soldiers scattered around him. The little guy he’d
helped was with him, just a few feet back and doing his best to stick close.

There should have been tanks
with their heavy weapons covering them, but he couldn’t see if any tanks had
survived the landing. The noise was indescribable. Gunfire and screams, and the
horrible cries of dying men. Waves crashed with booming thunder, and the air
shook with explosions as big shells fell all around. Confusion reigned supreme.
It was Hell on Earth, and there was no hope.

He knew with a certainty he’d
never known before that he would die today.

The enemy had the superior
position, high up on the bluffs, hidden from sight. The infantry coming ashore
were nothing more than ducks in a pond, and he was just one more duck.

He would die today, but not
yet. He refused death, refused to even consider his end before he’d
accomplished something worthwhile. He couldn’t stay here, and damn it, their
mission was to storm the beach, to take the bluffs and wipe out the mortars, to
get rid of the machine gun nests and the artillery. If he was going to die on
the beach at Normandy, he’d be damned if he’d die before his work was done.

He wasn’t sure how it
happened, but somehow he managed to get beyond the first barricade and then
another, and another, and the next thing he knew, he was at the base of the
bluffs. The smell of death made him want to vomit, and the unrelenting noise
made it impossible to think.

So he acted. There was no one
else near him, at least no one alive. He looked to his left, where the little
guy from the beach had been, and there was a body lying in the wet sand. He
thought it was the one he’d saved, but half the kid’s face was blown away and
it was hard to tell who he’d been.

All he knew was that, just
moments ago, whoever that kid was had been as young, as alive, as he was now.

There was nothing he could do
for the kid. Not now. He’d done the best he could when he pulled him from the
water. Given him ten more minutes of life. He hoped the bullet that found the
soldier had made for an easier death than drowning in the cold waves with a
full pack on his back and a rifle in his arms.

He turned away from the body
and began to scale the bluff. His fingers slipped on the cold, rough rocks, and
he left a trail of blood behind wherever he’d grabbed hold. Hiding behind rocks
and brush where he could, trusting to blind luck when he couldn’t, he managed
to slowly but steadily make his way up the rugged face.