He was Ram.
I gasped, trying to get my bearings in the midst of his power. Unshielded, he felt older than dirt, like an ancient pyramid with its base buried in the sands of time. I could almost sense the desert wind in the palms, the scent of spices, and the cooling waters of the Euphrates lapping inside of him. He was eternal.
To think he could shield this, and make himself feel like an ordinary man!
Like an ordinary man . . .
“It was
you
,” I breathed. “You’re the one who sneaked into my house to kill Shock!”
Ram’s shields slammed back into place, cutting off the exotic reverberations. He looked caught. “Allay, we don’t have time for this. You have to take Dread now. Before Vex returns.”
I looked down at Dread, who was curling into a ball, his hands clenched into claws. He would be easy to take, and my need to regenerate was clamoring urgently, demanding that I do it. I would die—die soon—if I didn’t.
I looked down at my hands and imagined myself touching Dread, sucking the life out of him, in the same way that Theo—no, Ram—had sucked the life out of Shock.
I couldn’t get it through my head.
Theo is a demon. I should have known it. Shouldn’t I?
Looking back, I realized he was the only one in my apartment when Shock was attacked. And it explained why he never asked questions, accepting whatever happened, no matter how outlandish it was. No ordinary guy could have done that. But he gave me exactly what I had needed, so I ignored the warning signs.
Demons always give you what you want, so you give them what they want.
“Why Shock? What did she ever do to you?”
Now Ram really looked caught and even a little sheepish, if that was possible. “Those demons she births every half century are brutal. Do you know what Stun does to his victims? Once I saw him hit an old lady with a baseball bat. I would have killed him a long time ago, but there’ve been others who are even worse, too many to keep up with. The numbers are growing exponentially. Now I have to kill the demons who birth too many offspring. It’s the only way to control our population.”
He had used me to get to Shock. He had used me to try to kill the one person I could be honest with. And I had protected him and cared about him, while he lied to me.
I launched myself at him, with every intention of hurting him. I felt like an animal, filled with mindless rage. “You bastard!”
He kept me from punching him, easily holding me off. Through his palms, he forced some of the energy he had stolen from Dread into me, feeding me his concern and admiration. He actually liked that I was fighting mad. “It wasn’t on purpose, Allay. I was hunting Pique. You would have died if I hadn’t jumped him outside your bar.”
“That’s why you had sex with me. You wanted to kill Shock.”
“It’s true that’s why I went upstairs with you. But, Allay, I never lied about how I feel about you. I’ve never met a woman with such resolve to do right, with such force of character and strength of will. What happened between us had nothing to do with any other demon. Never. The only lie is who I am.”
My strength was growing by the second as he forced more energy into me. “What are you doing?” I tried to jerk my wrists away from him.
“Dread nearly killed you. You need to take in a lot of energy fast, or you’ll be defenseless.”
“No.” I tried to wrest my arms from his grasp, struggling to raise my shields to keep him from giving me his stolen energy. But I wasn’t skilled or strong enough to block him. “Stop it. Let me go or I’ll scream!”
“The guards are probably used to screams coming from this room,” he said. But he let me go. My aura was glowing nicely now.
I edged away from Dread, avoiding his feet. He was in bad shape, his clawed hands drawn up to his pinched face. His eyes were heavy lidded. He was still murmuring; I don’t know what. But it sounded more furious than pleading for his life. A demon like Dread had probably never imagined himself brought so low. Who had ever challenged Vex’s second-in-command?
It was the height of irony that I, a possessed human, was supposed to do him in. I supposed for someone like Ram, it was easy. “How could you kill all those people?”
“I have to maintain the balance, Allay. I can’t let demons overrun humanity; it would ruin everything. Take a look around you—even the poorest families live better than kings used to. If I hadn’t culled the most dangerous, despicable demons over the centuries, that couldn’t have happened. It’s good for demons, too. Civilization has to flourish for us to survive. We die with them when they fall.”
“The last time someone wanted mankind to make great leaps, it involved cutting off my head.”
“Forget about all that.” Ram pointed at Dread. “You have to consume him, Allay. We’ve got more than enough evidence that he tortures people, as well as demons, in this cage—”
Abruptly, he stopped. I felt it, too—the first tingles of Vex’s signature. Vex was approaching quickly down below, outside the building. What if he had felt it when Ram lowered his shields?
“Vex is coming. We have to move fast,” he said.
I clutched the bars behind me, still shaking my head.
“Allay, you have to take him. Now.” Ram ran a hand through his hair in frustration. Naked, wounded, he looked like my familiar Theo, but somehow he was completely different. “I have to go wipe the tapes. I can’t allow proof of demon existence to be linked to the death of the prophet. That would be catastrophic for civilization.”
“What about Vex?”
“I’ll take care of him. You do the right thing and finish off Dread.”
Ram hurried to the door, but he paused on the threshold, looking back. I met his eyes, still angry and confused. Then I resolutely looked away.
The door closed and Ram was gone. I couldn’t sense him now that he was shielded again. I had come to rely on my ability to sense other demons before I saw them. Avoiding them kept me alive. So the possibility that a demon could shield himself to the point that he felt completely human was terrifying. I had stopped thinking straight, or apparently, seeing straight. I had believed his line of bullshit, and accepted him for what he portrayed himself as—a man who had such a strong connection with me that he would give up everything to stand by my side in my hour of need.
That man didn’t exist.
But Ram had saved me again—this time from death at Dread’s hands. The energy he had forced me to take had been so satisfying . . . better than anything I had ever consumed. It had revived me from the brink of death. But getting drained had also intensified my aching need to take another demon, to renew my dying spark of life force.
Dread was within arm’s reach. I slowly sank down to my knees next to him. He looked defenseless now, smaller and more fragile. His signature was a feeble thing, weaker than Shock’s had been when I had found her.
It would take nothing, a brush of my finger to the back of his hand, and I could steal his essence away from him. I could see it glowing inside of him, vulnerable and ready to be taken. There was only a thin layer of energy keeping it from leaping into my core and it strained against those bounds, eager for my touch. I almost called to it, wanting it more than anything.
It was such a small thing to do to gain two centuries of life, to give me all that I would do and see. . . . I was sure I would be productive, generous, useful—not a corrupt, greedy bastard like Dread.
But I would be a murderer, a cannibal. People shouldn’t kill other people to survive. It wasn’t right, on the most fundamental level. It was what made demons evil.
Vex’s signature was approaching, on this very floor. Vex was more attuned to Dread’s signature than anyone else. What if he felt Dread’s flickering signature and came to check it out?
I reached out for Dread again, pushed to the brink by self-preservation.
But Vex’s signature began to recede as he walked past, down the hallway toward his loft at the other end of the building.
I pulled my hands back without touching Dread.
I was still myself.
It was a remarkable relief, despite the gnawing in my belly. And at least I could sense Vex. It was better than knowing Ram was right next door and I couldn’t sense him.
Then I remembered seeing Theo and Vex grappling in the hallway. It suddenly took on new meaning. Ram had been trying to kill Vex, not the other way around. And I had interrupted him.
Ram, the self-professed assassin, proved how right I was to hold tight to my last remnants of humanity. I had scared myself with the fear of becoming a human serial killer, but the reality was much worse. How many of his offsprings’ offspring had he eaten?
And he was proud of it.
I leaned in close to Dread’s ear. “I could kill you, but I won’t. You owe me one, Dread.”
I got up and left the cage. The key was still in the lock, so I turned it—a final, irrevocable sound; then I pocketed the heavy iron key, leaving Dread curled like a small, empty husk on the floor.
There, nobody would be able to reach him and accidentally become possessed.
It was my only choice. If anyone deserved to die, it was Dread. But I was no executioner.
17
Somewhere along the way, I had accepted that I wasn’t getting out of this mess alive.
But who does? Life always ends in death.
My only choice was in how I lived.
With Vex’s signature pulsing strong at the other end of the building, I cautiously opened the door into Dread’s loft. In a truly schizophrenic moment, I half feared, half hoped that Ram would be there.
But the enormous loft was empty. The shattered remains of a speaker lay in front of several open wall panels holding electronic equipment. The sleek black machines had been dragged out, trailing wires, their guts smashed. That had to be Ram’s work, erasing the tapes of the torture chamber.
I glanced down at myself; I was sticky with drying blood from my chest to my fingertips: Ram’s blood.
I sniffed the back of my hand. It was definitely demon blood. Why hadn’t I recognized it when Ram was shot? I, of all people, shouldn’t have doubted that a demon could shield his signature. I had seen those motorcycle boots with my own eyes and hadn’t felt a signature. But still I hadn’t truly believed it.
Feeling as if dogs were nipping at my heels, I shoved aside the bamboo screen and washed myself in the large sink. I took off my shirt and bloody bra and practically had to crawl inside to rinse myself, scrubbing my face, as well. The water that ran off was pale scarlet, the color of old anger.
Then I started checking doors, looking for the closets. There were several private studies and sitting rooms, but no bedroom. One large room was lined with cabinets, shelves, and bars for hanging clothes. It looked as if a tornado had blown through and taken some of the stuff, leaving the rest dangling from hangers and spilling out of drawers and across the floor.
Lash had left in a hurry, it seemed.
Using the hand towel to dry off, I chose black leggings and a dark empire-waist dress with a pattern that looked something like irises down one side of the skirt. I didn’t have much energy to spare to fully heal my throat, so I left the bruises alone. Then I fluffed up my hair and glanced in the mirror placed discreetly in a nook near the door.
I stopped short, caught by my wide eyes. I was a stranger to myself, just another desperate girl. The city was full of them.
Trying to calm myself, I reached for the door handle. I was plotting ways out of the Prophet’s Center, but I realized something else had changed.
Vex’s signature was not as strong.
I’d been thinking about running for the stairwell, but instead, a foreboding drew me down the long corridor. The door to Vex’s loft had been left ajar.
I pushed it open and ducked inside to avoid the prying eyes of the security guards with their cameras in the hallway.
Vex’s loft had the same sleeping mezzanine with a galley kitchen below, but his was decorated in industrial chic, black and silver. It was scattered with the paraphernalia of a skateboarding geek—video games, racing magazines, graphic novels of every kind. The lithographs and multimedia sculptures were bold, rough, grating on the senses. Neglect showed in the dust bunnies rolled against every wall in fat wads, as if the cleaning staff never entered.
The windows were streaky and clouded, obscuring the sweep of the suspension bridge that crossed right in front of me. Orienting myself, I realized that Dread’s show office was one floor directly below.
The sun was setting, casting golden flares off the wires of the bridge. Beyond it was the park on top of the Prophet’s Arena, along with the rooftops and towers of Brooklyn surrounding the bay of the old Navy Yard. Along the water’s edge were towering cranes like prehistoric giraffes. Rows of the reflective round pools of the Red Hook sewage plant were on the far side of the bay.
I heard Vex gasp.
Looking in, I saw that Ram’s arm was around Vex’s neck, putting one of Vex’s arms behind his back where it could do no harm. Ram had healed his body so there wasn’t a trace of the burns or his black eye, or of the cut on his forehead, though the butterfly bandages were still where I’d placed them.
If this was a wrestling match, nobody would win. But Ram already had what he needed. He was pulling energy from Vex, drawing it through his strong shields one drop at a time.
With his face pressed into Ram’s shoulder, Vex said breathlessly, “What are you?”
I could tell that Vex was trying to find an angle—by playing meek, he hoped to make Ram overconfident. But Ram replied, “I’m Bedlam’s progenitor. I’m the one who killed him.”
