bedeviled & beyond 02 - bedeviled & bedazzled (12 page)

The trunk of the tree where he touched it burst into flame and the tree went up like a torch, all one hundred feet of it consumed in about three seconds.

Emo and I gulped. The power we’d thrown out died with a pop and we stood there naked to the world, magically speaking, as the demon picked itself up and started moving toward us.

As he did I became aware of a series of whooshes behind the demon, which heralded the appearance of several more of its kind. I realized with a start that the demon hadn’t simply been throwing a temper tantrum when it had screamed but had apparently been calling for backup.

Aside from being a little bit impressed with myself over the fact that a demon from the fires of Hell thought it needed backup to deal with me, I was just about ready to pee my pants over the reality of not one but eight of the things lurching toward me.

Dimly I became aware of Raoul, who apparently had come out of his trance and was chanting again.

Too little, my friend and too late I think. “Get the Hades out of here, Raoul!” I screamed.

No response. The chanting continued.

The original demon continued toward us and as he drew near he burst into flame. I realized with a start that he was going to stay that way and my fear of our predicament climbed another few notches.

Emo, get out of here. Now!

Not gonna happen, boss.

Do it or you’re fired.

You’d better come up with something fast or we’re both gonna get fired.

I shook my head at his bad joke and shifted my mental drawers.
Dialle! Emo and I are about to become demon toasties, do you think you could spare me a few minutes of your time and maybe a few bazillion jolts of your power?

The air shifted and Prince Dialle was standing beside me. My heart—and other parts—warmed at the sight of him. But before I could tell him how happy I was to see him the demons attacked.

Flame-encased arms wrapped around me and I screamed as my skin start to melt. The fire demon squeezed me in its deadly embrace and opened its nasty mouth to bite my face. I threw my power out, joined by an additional burst that had Dialle written all over it. Thankfully the demon shot away from me and hit the rock altar. Then I shot him again and held him with the power while I took physical inventory. My arms and shoulders where the demon had grabbed me were bright red and looked like they would blister and peel. I suspected my face looked pretty much the same. My clothes were still smoking and hung in tatters from huge burned out spaces where the demon’s arms had clutched me. But I was happy to report to the Astra Q Phelps medical assessment team of one—that’s me—that I would live.

That was when I remembered to take friend and lover inventory as well. Emo was barely holding his own against a demon that didn’t, thankfully appear able to flame out. He was basically just holding him away with a power bubble but I could tell from the look of strain on his face that he wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer. Dialle had managed to take out three of the nasty things and was fighting two more, even while giving me a power boost.

Now that just pissed me off.

He couldn’t be that much more powerful than I was. I let the anger fuel my power and refocused it on the demon that was even now trying to regain its feet and come back at me. I managed to throw him back to the ground but he didn’t blow up into millions of tiny little pieces and disappear like I wanted. Shit!

Movement above the clearing caught my eye and I looked up at the hundreds of spirits that hovered just above the action at the edge of the clearing, watching the festivities with happy spirit faces. Their hovering presence gave me an excellent idea.

I decided it was time they joined the fun, on the side of the good guys. Well, the good guys as compared to what we were fighting.

It’s all relative you know.

Reaching upward with my power, I used it to gather up the spirits and draw them in. At first I felt resistance but then they came to me almost eagerly, as if they finally realized that I was going to let them join the fun.

One thing I’d learned about spirits is that they resent the inability to use their personal power more than anything. I was about to give the spirits in that clearing not only a pathway to use their own power but I was also going to give them access to more power than they had ever experienced in their before and after lives.

The first spirits hit me with a painful jolt and I gritted my teeth against the onslaught. But as they started to accumulate and my power sucked up their collective energy, I no longer felt them as they climbed into my body and surrendered their power to me.

The energy in my body grew until I felt like I was getting taller, bigger, larger than life. Then I noticed the demon had unfurled itself from the ground at the base of the scorched tree and was looking at me as if, for a change, it wasn’t sure it wanted to tackle me. I laughed and the sound shook the trees around the clearing.

I realized I should have been startled by this but somehow I wasn’t. My cells had literally swollen with power and it felt as if the power belonged to me. I had incorporated it into my body and it had become a part of me.

Somewhere outside my consciousness I realized that everything around me had stopped and appeared to be in waiting mode.

I turned to the demon that moved toward me and smiled. Wisps of spirit flowed from my eyes and my mouth as I did. I looked down at the ground and realized that yes, I was larger than life. The ground was farther away than it should have been.

I flung a wave of sizzling energy toward the monster. The demon jerked back from the strength of my power and flew upward, dangling from my upraised hand by an invisible thread of power. I made it dance for a moment, laughing as its horrible spiky limbs performed a jerky pantomime of dance in the air. Then I remembered there were other of its kind in that clearing and decided to finish it off. The demon’s mouth opened and it screamed again as its body started to pull apart, ion by ion until it finally exploded outward into a million, tiny little purple pieces.

Oh yeah. I was juiced.

I turned to the remaining demons and they disappeared with a pop. The look of horror on their ugly demon faces was the only impression they left behind as they fled my power.

I looked at Dialle and my face must have shown my regret because he laughed. “Let the spirits go, Astra. You can’t keep them.”

I scowled but relented. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and concentrated on letting the power ease away from me. As the energy ebbed, the spirits drifted upward and disappeared with a long, low hiss, like air leaving a balloon.

The first thing I realized when I opened my eyes was that I was small again. The second thing was that Raoul stood before me, the hood of his robes lying flat on his back and his face a mixture of anger and shame.

Then Dialle moved to stand with me and all I was aware of was how good he smelled and how yummy he looked in those tight pants.

Damn! Flattened by the horn dog express again.

Raoul scowled at me but seemed unwilling to meet my eyes. It was an interesting combo of emotional emissions and I just watched him, waiting to see how he would explain the night’s events.

I didn’t expect the first salvo.

“Astra, you had no right to come here tonight.”

Dialle chuckled but I decided to ignore him. I could only deal with one beady little brain at a time.

I glared at Raoul and poked him in his black robed chest. “Are you frunkin’ crazy? The woman on that altar would have been killed. What were you thinking calling a fire demon to join your little party?”

The errant witch placed his hand on his chest where I’d poked him as if it hurt. Maybe it did, I didn’t think I’d released all of my power yet. Then he sighed and looked away, shame taking precedence on his face for the moment. “I had no choice. I would have stopped it...somehow...before it killed her.”

The angry retort that rested on my lips fell off into the dirt at my feet. Shock made me nearly speechless. Nearly. “What do you mean you had no choice?” Suddenly I was overcome with a feeling of hurt self-righteousness. I planted my fists on my hips and leaned toward him, really pissed. “You berated me for even suggesting that black magic was being used in your coven! You abused me over it. And here you are using sexual energy to call the worst type of demons into this world. How dare you stand there now and tell me you had no choice!”

Raoul looked at me with a mixture of rage and pity in his chocolate-brown eyes. “You’ll understand some day, Astra.”

I waited for him to go on with his explanation. He just stood there looking at me like a whipped puppy.

“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna say to me?”

When he continued to stand there mute I lost it. Throwing my hands into the air I turned away and stalked toward the woods. I didn’t even realize Emo and Dialle were with me until I felt Dialle’s hand on the small of my back and Emo’s shoulder brushed mine. I turned to Dialle as I stalked toward the edge of the clearing. “You were doing pretty well for yourself out there, pal. How’d you manage to take out so many of them?”

Dialle smiled. “I only vanquished one.”

I turned to Emo, raising an eyebrow in question. He shook his head.

I stopped and turned to the lone figure standing in the center of the clearing. A visual of him standing on that rock platform chanting as we fought off the demons played itself out in my mind. As my eyes found Raoul the clouds cleared from the fat moon and a trail of light beamed down to illuminate him. He was watching me. His face was obscured but his body language spoke volumes.

We stared at each other for several seconds and then, shaking my head, I turned away and headed for the Viper.

I felt immeasurably sad. I was pretty sure a long and treasured friendship had died in that clearing. And I had no idea what I was going to do about that.

CHAPTER NINE

Misplaced Blame

The death detective staunchly blamed, the devil for the deed,

And closed his mind to every fact, our lady then did plead.

I told the televisual in my office to disconnect and sat staring out the large window behind my desk. Outside the sky was a leaden, metallic gray that matched my mood.

I’d spent the morning trying to find someone in the paranormal police department who could tell me what was going on with the hostage situation. Nobody wanted to talk to me. They all wanted to tell me it was police business, the unspoken message that I needed to butt out.

How I longed for the days when DD Raoul had been active. Raoul understood what I had to offer and respected me. I gave a huge sigh and stood up to pace. Thoughts of Raoul caused actual physical pain in the region of my heart. I didn’t want to believe he’d turned to the dark purpose. But it was pretty hard to ignore the evidence when it wags a wilted pee pee at you and spits on your partner’s new silk shirt.

I was deep into similar such philosophical thought when the air around me changed and my angel shimmered into view. I forced a welcoming twist of the lips that was the best I could do for a smile. As usual she smothered my meager smile with a metaphorical cranky pillow.

“Let’s go, Astra!”

I jerked my arm away when she reached for it. “Not until you tell me what’s up.”

She scowled and all but stomped a foot in temper, but after twenty-nine years of dealing with me she knew it was just faster and easier to give me what I wanted.

“The first hostage has been killed. The demons dumped him on the altar at St. Edwards.”

I gasped. “Holy shit!”

Myra’s response to that was to reach for my arm with the speed of a striking cobra. And my outraged reaction was locked in time and space, as she spaceshifted us to the church.

When light and sound returned Myra immediately put a soft, white hand over my mouth to squelch the string of obscenities that hovered there before I could screech them out to all and sundry in the quiet church.

I glared at her over the hand and she scowled back.

Finally, I gave her a short nod and she lowered the hand. I stage whispered, “Stinkin’ damn angel.”

She sighed and turned toward the front of the church, where several cops from the strange deaths department hovered around a form that had been draped over the altar.

Following the direction of her gaze, I noticed that they hadn’t even covered the body yet.

I turned back to say something to Myra but she was already gone. Angels like to stay on the fringe of all human events, there to help when needed but never interacting directly with the humans.

It’s company policy.

As I walked down the softly carpeted aisle of the old church, several heads turned to watch my approach. One death detective said something in low tones to a DD I couldn’t see and then began ushering the other death detectives away from the scene. When they’d dispersed, I was left looking at Raoul. Apparently he was no longer on leave. Raoul straightened from where he’d been examining something on the floor and watched me as I approached.

I stopped five feet away. We stared at each other for a beat of ten and then I gave him a small nod. “Death Detective, Raoul. Why are you here?”

His chocolate-brown eyes narrowed just the tiniest bit and he gave me a sad smile. “I’m doing my job, Astra.”

I snickered and his shoulders stiffened in offense. “You can’t ride the air train in both directions at once, Raoul.”

He looked nervously over his shoulder at the knot of death detectives across the church from us. “Keep your voice down, Astra. I need to keep that part of my life totally separate from this.”

I snorted unbecomingly. “I bet you do.”

“Damn it, Astra. I’ll explain it all later, just work with me here will you?”

It was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. I wasn’t sure I could believe anything he told me anymore. But I decided our years of friendship had earned him one more chance. “Okay but you’d better have a damn good explanation, Raoul, or I’m going to have to tell your boss what you’ve been up to.”