Dweller on the Threshold (29 page)

I rolled my eyes. Of course it would look pagan. Dooby was a being of magic—a necromancer. I really wasn’t worried about anything he conjured, raised or whatever it was he did. Dweller Demons would easily trump anything he pulled out of his ass. I smirked and made sure he saw. “Bring it on.”

Dooby was so freaking flamboyant, I expected a show. Smoke, spooky music or maybe even fireworks. Instead, all he did was move the chair aside and prick his finger to let blood drop to the floor.

Dooby watched me, frank appreciation in his gaze. He used his sexuality to play games. Maybe even the bait and switch kind to fool an audience. So I didn’t take my gaze off him to look at the symbol as he obviously wanted.

Anger boiled low in my gut. People who used their looks to manipulate pissed me off. When Nikolos placed a hand on my back, I nearly jumped. I hadn’t even heard him stand up and come to my chair. I lifted my chin and met the gaze of a man who could have used his looks yet didn’t. I wasn’t sure why he felt the need to calm me but for some reason, it worked. I nodded slightly and turned back to the idiot necromancer.

“We don’t have time for this crap—”

A crash sounded near the front door.

I jumped to my feet.

Slow, shuffling sounds came from that direction. There was a soft grunt, and then a dead thing lurched around the corner. Long dead, from the looks of it. A man—maybe about five feet, ten inches tall, with threads of a black, burial suit embedded in what was left of his skin. Looked like it had been melted into him. He staggered into the room, bringing with him a wave of heat and a stale, foul smell—like the inside of an old refrigerator that had sat outside in the sun too long.

He tripped on the step down, and hit his skull on the hard, marble floor. Harsh rumbles spilled from what was left of his throat as he pushed up on all fours.

The bottom part of his jaw fell off and clattered across the tile floor, a cloud of dust following in its wake.

I had already pulled my knife, but for the life of me, I had no idea where to stick it. Besides, this was nothing more than a power show. This thing couldn’t hurt any of us. It couldn’t even stay in one piece.

“Now, now,” the necromancer soothed in a back-scraping, smarmy voice. “It won’t hurt you unless I tell it to.”

I snorted. “Like it could. That’s the most pathetic zombie I’ve ever seen. Send it back, Doob.”

“It’s Dooby, and I’ll send it back when I like.”

I took a step toward him and made sure he saw my eyes go from the knife to his ponytail. I had a feeling his loved his hair. A lot. Couldn’t stab him—not when we needed him. Pissing him off would be fun, though.

Blythe suddenly stood. “You haven’t changed at all. Always the showy magician, always the drama queen. Put that silly ghoul back—”

“It’s not a ghoul, it’s a zombie,” Dooby muttered between clenched teeth. “I’ve told you that before.”

“Whatever! Just put it back. It isn’t even a good one!” She stomped her foot, turning to me. “He doesn’t need the money and he won’t care that a lot of people will die. He’s too selfish for such things. But you can easily get him to agree.”
 

The zombie was just kind of hunched there. Pitiful really. I could feel Nikolos standing tense beside me—knew he watched the thing in case it did something more interesting, so I glared at Blythe. “I’m sure your methods were—uh—inspired, but I’m not into cradle robbing, Blythe.”

“I’m twenty-two years old.” Dooby flicked his wrist and the zombie changed direction, crawled toward Blythe.

She jumped up on the couch. “This is ridiculous. Just promise him fame, Beri. Let him take all the credit. He’ll follow us like the desperate puppy he is.”

Wow. I blinked at Blythe before looking at Phro. Her smile said she remembered the earlier comparison between Blythe and puppies.

Dooby moved toward Blythe with murder in his expression and the next thing I knew, Frida stepped in front of him, and held up his palms. I could actually see the glimmer of a tiny shield go up as it stopped him. Dooby’s eyes flared wide for an instant before he quickly shifted and turned. He tried to make it look like a natural movement, a choice of his own making.

That was strange.

He acted as if he couldn’t see Frida—yet as one who dealt in the magic of the dead, he should have been inclined to see all the guides.

“That’s enough.” I pointed to his chair. “Sit your skinny ass down and listen to me. I promise you’ll receive full credit for summoning this thing. You’ll be the most famous necromancer in this world. We can pay any fee you ask. But you are going to help us. The one person who has ever meant anything to me is in danger of housing a kind of demon you’ve never seen—”

He held up a hand. “Hate to break it to you, but there isn’t a demon I don’t know. I’ve been studying goetic magic since I started reading. I raised my first corpse before my parents brought me home from the hospital.”

Nikolos stalked to the purple chair and looked down at the insolent, cocky asshole. “You have not seen this kind because the last time it walked the earth, there were no scribes to write its description down. It is not in the books—I too, have read them and more than once.”

“Then why don’t you summon one of them yourself then?”

“I am not a necromancer.”

Dooby crossed his arms. “Exactly. There aren’t that many of us, you know. Better back off and stop playing the intimidation thing because I won’t do it and I’ll make sure none of the others will, either.”

It was Nikolos’s turn to grin and I caught my breath at the absolute ruthless twist that turned his features dark. He didn’t have to say anything. As I watched, the black mass around him—the one I’d finally managed to somewhat ignore—began swelling and writhing as if it responded to his anger. Or maybe Nikolos was using it as a threat.

“Hey, dude, back down.” Dooby wiggled in his chair before peeking around Nikolos to look at me. “Call off your man, will you? Damn,” he murmured, rubbing his arms. “Something is really wrong with you. You have the feel of things I’ve pulled from the ground. I’ll listen, okay?”

I didn’t say anything, just glared at him. He felt those spirits trapped about Nikolos.
Felt them yet didn’t recognize them
. I would have thought a necromancer would recognize a soul eater. But then, I didn’t know for sure that Nikolos was one. For all I knew he could be Blythe’s
big, special warrior
. Which left me off the hook. I watched Nikolos move back to his chair and sit, never taking his gaze off Dooby.

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “We’re going into the Big Cypress Swamp and we may need your help summoning something Nikolos calls the Dweller on the Threshold. It’s not a usual demon but a being that has been gathering power for hundreds of years. You’ve heard of the people falling into comas?”

He nodded. “The Somatic Slumber. I saw it on the news.”

“This Dweller has stolen their souls and is using them to gain strength. When he gathers enough, he will rip a hole between our dimension and his.”

“Uh.” Dooby got up and stood behind his chair, gripped the back with his hands. “How do you know this? And are you sure because that would be a really, really bad thing.”

Phro snorted.

I didn’t blame her. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, this one. “No shit. Not only will he physically manifest here, but he will leave this opening there for other things to cross over.”

Some of the kid’s color went away. He might have been twenty-two but he acted like a child.

I nodded. “You of all people should understand that we want to keep the baddies on the bad side. There are enough of them here already.”

He frowned. “There are specific rituals for each kind of demon. There are rituals for dead humans, dead werewolves, et cetera… I don’t remember ever reading anything about a Dweller on the Threshold. Did it ever go by another name?”

Nikolos cleared his throat. “In my time, we called it the Abalam.”

I didn’t think that flawless, pale skin could get any whiter. The greenish tinge that followed wasn’t much better. Dooby began pacing around the room. Passed the useless zombie that still stood obediently with no expression on its dead face.

Dooby suddenly stopped. His gaze swept from Nikolos to me and back. “Give me a couple of minutes to think.”

Phro chuckled, grabbing my attention. She moved to sit by Blythe. “So, did you find sex with him to be a little otherworldly?” she whispered. Loud enough for everyone but Dooby to hear. At least I thought he couldn’t.

Blythe turned redder than the stripes in the ugly chair I sat in.

Phro continued, “In my day, all who practiced
goetia
were the most alluring, the most sensual and beautiful among us. It was once believed that their very beauty summoned the dead back to life.” She leaned close to Blythe. “It was also said that when one truly seduced, their prey had little chance of refusing.”

Blythe’s throat moved in a heavy swallow and she looked at the ceiling, the floor… anything but us.

I looked at Dooby. He’d started pacing again and he moved around the perimeter of the room with this sort of slinky, sinuous grace. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was floating. He waved his hands about in the air as if conducting some sort of inner symphony and he passed the motionless zombie several times.

 
The name Abalam meant nothing to me, but it obviously did to him since his skin was the color of paste. And when I squinted, I could see a fine tremor in his hands.

I turned to Nikolos. “I don’t recognize the name.”

Dooby stopped. “That’s because there isn’t anything written about him other than he was a king of Hell. Nothing of him exists today. Anything written about his summoning is long gone. All necromancers want to know, they all search. We believe he was the original one of us.”

As he spoke, Blythe pulled the cover off the magic book. When Dooby saw it, he gasped and hurried around the couch to sit next to her. He held his hand over the book and slowly lowered it to the cover. He closed his eyes. We all watched as he swayed and hummed.

When he opened his eyes, his gaze went immediately to me. “I think this is the original Key of Solomon. Supposed to be burned to ash. Holy shit. It’s fantastic.” He rubbed his hands over it and hummed some more. When he moaned, I stood, ready to put a stop to this. I was afraid he was about to start making out with the book.

Nikolos moved to stand beside me. “I don’t believe this Dweller is Abalam. I believe the gods got it wrong in the past. Like you, I found nothing on that demon and I’ve had a longer time to search. When it rose before, we dispatched it by killing the host it was attached to. It’s not a true demon, but a kind of karmic gathering of the many evil lifetimes of one soul. We want to know if this book says anything about summoning the spirit before killing the host.”

“It could take a while for me to find it. It’s a big book.”

I sighed. “Can’t you just hum and moan at it again?”

He primly folded his fingers and placed them on his lap this time. “No, and I wasn’t moaning at it. I was acquainting myself with its magic. I can sense the old spells.”

Nikolos nodded toward Blythe. “She will be able to help. But you must work on it in the car on the way.”

“So this host you spoke of—it’s in the Big Cypress?”

“We believe so.”

I let them talk. I’d put off thoughts of the swamp since I still didn’t want to consider the reasons that place was the last one I’d like to visit. I’d walked more swampland than anyone else I knew and yet this one place made me feel as if I were being turned inside out. I’d never wanted to return, but I’d always known I would. There were too many unanswered questions there.

Agitated, I stood and spoke in Nikolos’s general direction. “I’m going to check on my sister.”

He merely nodded and went back to the conversation. I stepped outside. Blinking into the sunlight—which was pretty damned harsh after that frigid, cave-like living room—I walked far out enough to catch the breeze on my face. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Jed.

“Detective Barnes speaking.”

The voice was young. “Isn’t this Jed’s phone?”

“Who’s speaking?”

“My name is Beri O’Dell and Jed is my sister’s partner. I’m calling to check on Elsa Remington.”

It took him a moment to answer. “I remember you. There has been no change in Elsa Remington’s condition. I’m guarding her room myself.”

“And why are you answering Jed’s phone?” I had to pull the words from my throat. I didn’t want to ask. I knew the answer before his long pause gave it away.

“Detective Jed Grant has fallen victim to the Somatic Slumber. He’s in a coma.”

I shut the phone and leaned against the brick wall of Dooby’s home. While I wasn’t close enough to Jed to consider him a friend, he certainly meant a lot to Elsa. He was her friend as well as her partner. I allowed myself a couple of minutes to feel the heavy weight of the task I’d taken on, a couple of minutes to worry that I was on the wrong path—and yeah—a couple of minutes to panic. Then I straightened and turned to find Nikolos standing several feet away, his brows lifted in question. I stared at him—at his long, long body and wide shoulders and considered letting some of the weight rest on them. They looked strong.