Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei (28 page)

She pulled into Matt’s driveway before she really comprehended she’d made it to Redcliffe. Intentionally not thinking about what she would say or do, she got out of the car and went to the front door. It didn’t look as if anyone was home. The front door was closed, the house silent. Of course, Mercy was in there, sleeping away the day, but she barely counted as an occupant while the sun was up.

“He’s not home.” The voice came from the neighbour’s yard. A young woman, perhaps a couple of years younger than Erin, knelt in a patch of freshly turned dirt in a garden bed. She dusted off her thick gloves and stood, dirt clinging to her bare knees, exposed along with the vast majority of slender legs by a pair of tiny yellow shorts.

“So I gathered,” Erin replied, walking toward the woman. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“Not really. Matt keeps odd hours. Are you a friend of his?”

“We’re business associates. What time did he leave this morning?”

“Pretty early, around eight. Usually he doesn’t stir until closer to noon, probably because he’s out till the wee hours most nights. And he was walking, not driving. Went down to the bus stop.” She closed the last distance between them, hand held out. “I’m Sue. I didn’t think Matt had any business associates. We thought he didn’t work.”

Erin pulled a card and offered it to Sue instead of her hand. “He does some consultancy work with my firm. I’m trying to track him down in relation to a job we’re working on at the moment.”

Sue read the card, her eyebrows arching. “Private detective. Wow. Charles, that’s my husband, was convinced Matt was a bum, sponging off rich parents and partying to all hours with the girl who lives with him.”

“As I said, Hawkins only does some consulting for me. Otherwise I’m not privy to his private life.”

“Except the other night.” Instantly, Sue pressed her lips together and looked away. “I’m sorry. We’re not stickybeaks or anything, but Charles saw you with Matt the other morning.”

“Just part of the job we’re on. Nothing personal. You don’t know when he might be home?”

Sue shook her head. “Sorry.”

“You have my number. If you see him come home, can you please call me?”

“You don’t want me to tell him you came looking for him?”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t. I think he’s being intentionally hard to find. If he knows I’m actively after him, he’ll just go to ground.”

A small, conspiratorial smile curled Sue’s lips. “Cool. It’s like a spy movie.”

“Yes,” Erin murmured. “Just like one. It was nice to meet you, Sue. Thank you for your help.”

Sue tucked the card into a pocket and waved as Erin left. At the intersection, Erin stopped and flipped open the file on Hawkins. He’d had a decoy house in Ipswich but she didn’t think he would have bothered keeping it after its address became known to the local vampires. It was most likely he was out investigating. She tried his mobile again and once again he didn’t answer. It wasn’t switched off, it just rang out and went to voice mail. Erin didn’t leave another message.

A couple of pages into the file she saw an address that was familiar. It was a long shot, but she had to try.

Time for a stakeout.

I frowned at my phone. Erin. Again. Calling from her mobile. The one message she’d left was a simple ‘Call me.’ Not very revealing. I mean, she could be either going to tell me about the miracle that saw her doctor release her early or she wanted to give me an ear bashing. I knew which one I’d prefer and I knew which one was more likely. They weren’t the same one.

“Who was that?”

I put the phone in my pocket and smiled at Lila. “No one. Didn’t even leave a message. Can’t have been important.”

She pursed those lovely lips at me. “I don’t think it was ‘no one’. Your expression says it was someone.”

“Okay, it was someone but someone I don’t particularly wish to speak to at the moment.” I pulled Lila close and kissed the tip of her nose. “I’m
kinda busy right now.”

Lila pushed me away and turned back to the papers she’d lain out on the table. “Busy learning how to send yourself insane.” She sighed. “And here I am, happily sending you on your way with a map and instructions.”

I looked over the diagrams and lists she’d drawn up. “I’ll be okay, I promise you. And thank you again for agreeing to do this.” Pointing to the main picture of a hexagram within a circle decorated with a few symbols I had no idea about, I asked, “So I just need to draw that on the ground and the demon will be trapped?”

“Very basically yes. It is the foundation of your cage. Anyone can draw this, summon a demon and it will be confined to the circle. What most people can’t do is hold the circle for very long, or aren’t strong enough to stop the demon from overcoming the barrier. Once the barrier drops, the demon is free. Then, if it has enough strength left, the demon can return to its own realm, or it can possess the nearest living creature capable of sustaining it.” She gave me a very frank look. “Usually the summoner. Or, if it’s expended most of its energy in breaking the cage, it will probably just dissipate.”

“Because it’s usually just part of the demon’s spirit that’s been trapped, right?”

“Right. The other thing to remember is the basic circle will draw the demon in only. To hold it for longer than a moment or two, you need to reinforce the circle with power.”

“Psychic power?”

“If that’s the label you want to put on it, yes. Faith is another label.”

“And how do I go about putting this power into the circle?”

“Blood.”

Yeah, I should have known. It always came back to blood.

“My blood or the demon’s?”

Lila rolled her eyes. “Yours. A human’s power is closely tied to their blood. A demon’s is tied to its spirit. You put drops of your blood at each point of the hexagram and that will close the circle. Once the demon drops into it, these symbols will act to draw power from the demon to reinforce the barrier.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “The demon helps power the cage it’s in? That’s twisted.”

“It certainly is. When the first warlocks and witches were working out how to trap demons, they realised some demons are much stronger than others. A weak summoner would have no chance of containing a powerful demon. So these sigils draw upon the demon’s own power to enforce the barrier. A strong demon’s power will create a barrier of equal strength, regardless of the summoner’s personal contribution. Problems arise because a weak summoner is more likely to be overwhelmed by the demon’s power and lose control.”

There was a touch of something dark in Lila’s tone, but she continued before I could question it.

“It has a second purpose as well. Anything created of the demon’s power is linked to its spirit. If the demon attacks the barrier, it will hurt itself along with the summoner. The threat of pain keeps the demon complacent. Mostly.”

I swallowed the lump of unease in my throat. “Wild animals will chew off their own leg to get free of a trap.”

“And humans will chop of a limb with a switchblade to do the same. That’s why I said ‘mostly’.”

A jogger glanced at us curiously as he went past. We must have looked strange, in our casual attire, leaning over a picnic table at South Bank covered in papers sporting demon summoning instructions. Middle class Satan worshippers.

To one side sat the remains of my, once again, late lunch and a half drunk skinny-mocha-vanilla-half-strength-latte with no foam and extra chocolate sprinkles—or something. The drink was there before we were, I swear.

“Is there any way I can guarantee the demon won’t risk the pain and break free?”

“Sure. Be stronger than it is. Simple.”

Right. Simple. Kermit seemed to think I was a serious contender—his quip about the ‘Primal’ thing hadn’t wandered far from my thoughts—but he also said I wasn’t strong enough to manage this.

Contemplating the papers and everything Lila just said, I was impressed. “I really appreciate this. You must have done a lot of research to get it all.”

“Not as much as you’d think.” Lila sat down and smoothed out the paper with the diagram on it. The action looked nervous. “When do you plan to do this?”

I stroked her hair. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”

She glared at me. “You can’t promise me that. Let me be with you when you do it. If anything goes wrong, I might be able to help.”

“Or get hurt. No, Lila. I’ve already said I don’t want you there.”

“But—”

“Listen, I know you don’t believe me about this demon being real. You still think this is just a part of my overactive imagination.”

She began to shake her head. I caught her face between my hands and stilled it.

“This thing is very real. It’s already put one friend in hospital. I won’t risk you as well. Trust me, I have a failsafe of my own.”

Sapphire eyes glimmering with tears, she nodded. “I trust that you do.”

“Good. Now, is there anything else I need?”

Lila took a moment to gather herself, then said, “The demon’s name.”

“Check.”

She grabbed my arm in a tight hold. “You know its name?”

“I’ve got a name.”

“What is it?”

Heeding Kermit’s warning, I said, “Probably best I don’t mention it. Just in case.”

“Why? You won’t let me be there with you. Why can’t I know who you’ll be summoning? And don’t go yabbering on about my safety. Why won’t you tell me?”

Gone was the seductress. In her place was the fierce, liberated woman. Only one way to respond to that.

I gathered up the drawings and rolled them into a tight tube. “Because.” I leaned down, kissed her angry lips and then made a strategic retreat. “Got an appointment, babe. Trust me. I’ll be fine.”

She didn’t chase me down, which was a relief and a worry. I didn’t particularly feel like a public fight but a token curse or two would have let me know she cared.

At the bike, I checked my phone again. No more calls from Erin. Definitely no message. I suppose I could have called her, but things concerning Erin were still a little weird. For me at least. My brain knew it had been the demon the night before, but there were other parts of me that could only recall Erin’s voice, her eyes, her lips, her… ah hem. Yes. So, things were still a touch uppity regarding all that. I didn’t trust myself to not make a fool of myself should I have to talk to her. Avoidance was a good thing.

Instead, I rode on over to the north side of the river and to a relatively new building on the riverside at Hamilton. Planned as an all in one office, shopping and day care complex, the place hadn’t filled up as quickly as its investors would have liked and as a consequence, a lot of the office space was being offered at less than market value. Something I’m sure wouldn’t have bothered Gerry Davis much, since she was sitting on a minor mountain of cash. But the fact the building was largely empty probably played a big part.

I’d called ahead and after several rings, the phone had diverted to the front desk. The building receptionist had all but jumped through the phone line the moment I mentioned my ‘investigation’, inviting me to come and view the offices whenever I wanted. Hardly professional, but lucky for me.

“Let me guess, Matt Hawkins,” greeted me as I walked into the foyer.

The speaker looked as if he would have to lie about his age to get into a nightclub. He could have been no more than seventeen years old, with several proud and defiant pimples on his chin and a mop of hair any emo worth their black boots would have been proud of. The faux security guard get up completed the ‘what’s wrong with this picture?’ picture.

“Deiter?”

Deiter
grinned. “Yup.”

“How did you know who I was?”

“Dude!” Said with all the confidence of his age and the disbelief that there could possibly be any reason to question his certainty. “This place is like a crypt, man. We don’t get any visitors.”

“You said I could look at the offices on the sixth floor.”

“No problem. Look, I can’t leave my post.” He patted the top of the counter he sat behind. “I’ll buzz you up, though. Stay as long as you want and if you have any questions, just call down. I know everything that goes on in here. But if my uncle asks you what you’re doing, don’t let him know I’m helping your investigation. He’s not very cool like that.”

“Your uncle?”

“The building manager. He got me this job. If I screw up just once, he reckons he’s gonna kick me out.”

“Yet you’re willing to let me into a closed office.”

“Why not. Nothing else ever happens around here. The elevator will take you up to the sixth floor. I’ll watch you here.” He proudly showed off a bank of small screens showing black and white images of the building. He was right. The place looked empty. “When you’re at the door, I’ll buzz you in.”

“Thanks.”

A little concerned Deiter would be watching me, I took the elevator up to the sixth floor. The halls were deserted, humming with the soft whir of the air conditioning and faint music. Pan pipes. Sheesh.

I found Gerry and Karl’s office and I’d done little more than pause before it when the lock clicked. Glancing over my shoulder revealed a black dome on the ceiling across the hall. I waved to
Deiter and opened the door.

Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any cameras in the office space. And when I say office space, I mean a warren of tiny rooms linked by a random seeming placement of doors. Wandering through them revealed a tiny tea room, bar fridge still stocked with out of date
yogurt, a wrinkled apple and a dribble of milk in the bottom of the bottle. The next three rooms were filled with towering servers, extra cooling units and a row of impressive looking computers. All of it seemed to be turned off, though one screen blinked through a generic screen saver of picturesque views from around the world. I nudged the mouse and the screen saver disappeared. The screen sat on the prompt for the C drive, cursor blinking next to a short message that simply read ‘no files available’.

Most tellingly, the chair in front of the computer was knocked over and broken, like someone had stomped on it. Generally, only folks angry at finding no files brutalised office furniture.

Someone had been here looking for Gerry’s research already. I wondered if I wasn’t the first person Deiter had let in on the sly.

Moving past the computer, I entered the last room.

Well, well. Fuck.

Have to admit the last thing I expected to find was a life sized version of the circle Lila had just drawn for me. But there it was.

The carpet had been pulled back to reveal the bare floor. The summoning circle was perfect, as I would expect from someone like Gerry. No messily drawn circle that was more oblong than round, no smudge marks, nothing to indicate this had been a hasty thing.

Crouching down, I studied the circle in more detail. It had been drawn in blue chalk and at the points of the hexagram were brown, flaking stains. Dried blood.

Great. Had Gerry and Karl summoned Asmodeus? If so, it had gone wrong and poor Karl suffered for it. Of course, now I had to find out why they would want to summon a Demon Lord. What could a pair of physicists want with a demon? Or perhaps they didn’t want a demon. Perhaps they just wanted to prove they could do it. The biggest prize in the scientific world—proving other dimensions existed alongside ours.

“Holy cow,” I muttered.

But even as I stood, I knew that wasn’t the whole answer. They may have accidentally let Karl get possessed, but why would someone else then summon another demon to kill Gerry? Apart from being drawn into Gerry and Karl’s circle, what was Asmodeus doing here? He could have left Karl at any time, but instead he had to be evicted against his will and even then, still hung around because he said he had stuff to do. What stuff? Was his summoning not purely a means to prove a theory?

Argh!

I’d hoped to find some definitive answers here, but all I got was a headache.

Turning to leave, I spied something in the corner by the door. I picked it up and my guts churned.

Headache with a side order of aneurism for Mr Hawkins.

In the foyer I stopped by
Deiter’s little domain.

“Get what you need?” he asked cheerfully.

“And a bit more besides.” I put my find on the counter in front of him. “Do you recognise this?”