Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei (34 page)

“So you went and hence the story of the poltergeist.” I sat down, feeling a tad worn out. “Nick’s a strong psychic?”

“No. It’s not psychic power that binds a demon. It’s something deeper, a remnant from a more primitive time. Nick feels a strong connection to sharks, a creature that’s been untouched by evolution for millions of years. Highly evolved but ancient. That’s the power a summoner sends out to catch a demon. It’s wild and dark and it calls to something inside of us. Nick’s is filled with his respect and awe for the sharks. It’s how he connects to me.”

I didn’t want to ask, but had to. “And me?”

“You’ve not summoned or bound me. I’ve not felt what it is about you that would catch me. But you got Asmodeus and that’s scary.”

Kermit stirred. “Told you.”

I glared at him.

“What about the person who summoned you here?” Erin asked. “What’s their… connection to you?”

“Pain. Anger. Resentment. Betrayal. It’s all mixed up in there. He’s not focused at all. A lot of raw power, very little refinement.”

Sliding the knife through my fingers, I said, “And if I was to cut that hair around your wrists, that person’s power would make you kill me?”

“Yes.”

“Bind her,” Erin said to me. “It’s the only way. She told you how to do it.”

“The wench is right,” Kermit said. “You screwed up summoning the other bastard. Fix it now, while you can.”

Amaya didn’t make a motion either way. She just sat there, eyes lowered. I could understand why.

They were right. To protect myself I had to bind her. Thing was, I was empty. I was tired and sore and more than a little upset. It’s not every day you find out the woman you’d spent three days tongue wrestling with was also the demon sent to kill you. That’s not something you can just deal with in a couple of hours. It’s also not every day another woman with whom you have a complicated relationship offers up her soul—or something very nearly as expensive—for you.

Things were easier when you didn’t let people get close.

Into the raw, open spaces of my mind, came a heavy, sharp weight.

“No,” Amaya said, struggling against the hair around her wrists. “He’s summoning me.”

It was just as she’d described. Angry, hurt, bitter. And it was familiar.

The power struck Amaya. She gasped and, wide eyed, was drawn away.

I pulled out my phone. “Anyone know what time it is in Adelaide?”

It was midnight (really? Only midnight?) by the time we’d cleaned up the house as best we could. Hopefully, if the owners ever moved in, they’d think the cracks in the walls and ceiling were from shonky builders. Because she was the only one remaining with transport, Erin offered to take Kermit home. She said the firm could pay for the decontamination of the car. Perhaps a little more reluctantly, she let me come too.

The drive to the cemetery was quiet. Kermit curled up in the backseat. I tried to see if he wanted to talk about the experience, but he just said it had been little different to any other possession. At the cemetery, Erin pulled up at the gates, Kermit checked to make sure the ghost tour had cleared out and then he scarpered into the trees.

“Well,” Erin muttered. “Now I can add ghouls to my weird menagerie.”

“Don’t forget the imps.”

“I had, actually, but thank you for the reminder. So, what now?”

“A couple of odour eaters for the backseat?”

She gave me a thin lipped smile.

“I guess I need to find somewhere secure for the rest of the night. Amaya’s out there and hot for me, again.”

Erin put the car in gear and pulled out. “Right.”

“Where are we going?”

“My office. The building has a pretty upscale security system. Sol wouldn’t have anything less.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve gone over the security for the whole building myself,” she said. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“No, I mean, are you sure you want to help me. Again.”

“I made a substantial investment in you tonight. Would be stupid of me to throw you into the path of a marauding demon.”

“When you put it that way.”

Erin parked in the underground car park beneath the office building. It was only when the gate rattled closed behind the car I realised how tense I’d been. Having that barrier between me and Amaya was a relief. She could probably blow it apart as she had the garage door, but at least it would slow her down, maybe tucker her out a bit.

It took a PIN to open the elevator and we rode it in silence to the twelfth floor and her office. Inside, Erin turned on the lights and went to Ivan’s desk. She pulled out a hidden drawer and showed me a bank of tiny TV screens. We had shots of the garage, the foyer, the elevator and the hall outside the office. With a push of a button, she cycled through several more views. The building was completely empty.

“There’s motion sensors in the foyer and halls,” she said. “They’ll alert us if anyone gets inside.”

“They didn’t go off when we came in?”

“The PIN I put in downstairs sent a signal to the security company that monitors the building. They would have recognised me and cleared the alarm.”

“You mean if Amaya does come here and gets inside, there’ll be witnesses?”

“There’s always witnesses.”

Nodding in complete agreement, I looked around speculatively. “Got a Niko?”

“What for?”

“Added security.”

Arms crossed, she dared me to keep being mysterious. I caved rather quickly and when I’d explained my idea, she grumbled about it but scrounged up a couple of thick nibbed pens. Between us, we drew hasty versions of the summoning ring on the main doors, the windows and every wall. Kermit had said Amaya wouldn’t come too close to the circle in case she accidentally got caught. My theory was it might keep her away if she found us here.

When we were done, Erin walked into her office. I followed. She’d turned the lights off after our art project was done, but the blinds were open and the glow of the city at night sent soft, hazy light into the room. Erin took a bottle from the sideboard and two shot glasses. She held the scotch up in invitation.

What the heck.

I took a glass and she poured a quick nip into it. When she had hers, we clinked glasses and tossed back the scotch. Erin didn’t offer a refill, putting the bottle away and the glasses on the sideboard.

“What now?” she asked, her voice quiet.

The pale light suited her. It hid the weariness in her face, covered the bruises and caught fiery highlights in her hair. She looked up at me, looked me right in the eyes, and faster than ever, her aura reached out to me.

It was all dark chocolate and rich coffee, with barely any hints of the sweeter parts. I wanted to kiss her again, to taste what emotion was fuelling this heady rush. Was it the same recklessness that saw her take a big chance on kissing me earlier? Was it something deeper? Something more in line with what had driven her to making a devil’s bargain with Asmodeus?

I wanted to kiss her but I couldn’t. Whatever I felt for her, be it true attraction and not just some misguided desire for someone who had even a slim chance of understanding me in all my muddy glory, was not returned. If it had ever been there, perhaps a spark ignited by the first time we laid eyes on each other, before she knew who I was, it was gone, burned away by the flamethrower of my best-policy policy.

What was there was understanding, honesty, a willingness to stand by me. She knew the breadth of the threat from the Old World, from other worlds; she knew it wasn’t going to go away just because she didn’t look it in the face. She would walk by my side into the night, to help me, to protect her friends and family from the things they didn’t know about, didn’t believe in, but when the dawn came, she would walk away from me. She would go home to the man she loved.

I still wanted to kiss her.

I leaned toward her, her grey eyes never leaving mine, accepting of whatever I chose to do. I kissed her, on the forehead, quickly so I wouldn’t have to discover the true emotion driving her dark aura, so I wouldn’t have to possibly discover everything I’d seen in her eyes was right—or wrong.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

She smiled and we stepped away from each other at the same moment.

Back in the outer office Erin fiddled with the coffee machine while I fell onto the couch and tried not to think about where we could have been at this moment if I had given in.

“Coffee?” Erin asked, then added, “Sorry. You’re off it, aren’t you.”

I contemplated that for a soul revealing moment. “Time to end the farce. Make mine a double.”

She chuckled, weary but honest and the sound eased the tension in my chest. This was what we wouldn’t have had if I’d kissed her in any other way than I had. Not quite best friends, but not enemies either. Within moments the scent of rich, dark coffee did a good job of smothering the lingering odour of ghoul that, sadly, clung to us both.

“Ewing Family of tumours,” Erin said as she passed me a mug of heaven.

“Pardon?”

Sitting down, she blew on her steaming mug and stared into the middle distance. “William’s cancer. The tumours form around bones. Right at the moment, chemo and
radiotherapy have managed to keep it localised to his left leg, but the doctors don’t hold much hope it won’t go metastatic soon. They even think it might have already, but the new tumours are too small for them to find.”

“I’ve not heard of that type of cancer before. How did you find out he had it?”

“He got electrocuted. He’s an electrician and was doing some work with another company when one of the apprentices didn’t switch off the power to the house they were working on. It wasn’t bad. He was out of hospital within a day with minor burns on his hands. Then his leg started hurting. His doctor said it was due to the electrocution and that it would go away.” Erin shrugged. “And it would go away, but then come back, worse, periodically. Finally they sent him for a bone scan.”

I sipped the coffee, waiting to see if Erin would carry on. She lifted her mug to her lips but didn’t drink.

“Does your family help out?” I asked.

Erin snorted and lowered her untouched coffee. “I don’t have any family left. Aunts, uncles, cousins in England but my parents moved out here when they were first married. I was an only child and never got to meet the family in the ‘Old Country’. William’s family is in Melbourne and they don’t like me, or William much anymore, so they took a step back and left us to ourselves. His mother calls every now and then and his sister sends presents at Christmas, but that’s it.”

Desperate for something good, I asked, “Friends?”

Realising it was silly holding onto the mug, Erin put it on the table beside the coffee machine and leaned back, eyes closed, hands curled into fists on her thighs.

“It’s tough keeping up with friends when every spare moment of your life is spent worrying about infections and illnesses and struggling through the next bout of chemo. Even when William’s feeling good, he can’t physically keep up with most people these days. He’s in near constant pain from the tumours, can’t walk long distances, run, ski, any of the things we used to do. Even going to dinner is hard because he can’t sit at a table for long periods.” She sighed. “It doesn’t feel worth it anymore.”

“If there’s one thing I learned as a paramedic, it’s that this can’t be done alone. You need a support network and I can’t believe I just said support network seriously.”

Erin gave me a tiny smile. “Neither can I.”

“Whatever sort of jargon you want to use, it is true. When things get bad, you need someone you know you can rely on. But even more so, when things go good, you need to be able to share that as well. I know it can be hard maintaining a normal social life when your personal circumstances are troublesome, but you should try.”

“Like you try?” she asked sarcastically.

“My situation is different.”

“Is it?”

“William’s not likely to rip out someone’s throat when he’s hungry.” I said it flatly, trying not to let recent close calls tip me over into a screaming breakdown.

Erin watched me and I could see things moving behind her eyes. The cool, considering evaluation of an investigator.

“Your face?” she asked.

“She didn’t mean it.” It sounded defensive, even to me.

“Just like the demon didn’t mean this?” She waved at her own face.

“Are we going to have this discussion again?” Please say no. The last time didn’t end so well.

“I suppose not, Pot.”

“Pot?”

Erin held her hand out to me. “Hi, I’m Kettle.”

“Oh, ha ha. Maybe we could be each other’s support network.”

With an indelicate snort, Erin reached for her mug. She clicked our drinks and said, “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Now what’s it for?”

“You’re close to wrapping your first case. You did well.” She shrugged. “For a beginner.”

I gazed into my coffee. “Yeah, I’m not so sure. A lot of it just seemed to fall into my lap.” After a long swig, I had the bolstering to admit, “And I had a lot of help from… other parties.”

“What do you think detecting is? It’s not the solitary gumshoe chain smoking and drinking his way through a series of fem fatales. Most of what I do is over the phone, calling sources in various places. I spend more time in that office going through mountains of paper than I do out on the streets.”

“That shatters all my fantasies.”

She patted my knee in a totally familiar, but platonic, way. “You’re tough, you’ll recover.”

Beep.

Both of us looked toward Ivan’s desk, then slowly looked back at each other.

“It’s the security alarm,” Erin said, getting up and going to the desk.

Beep.

“Shit.” I followed, leaning over Erin as she cycled through the camera images.

“She’s not inside.” Erin pointed to an external shot, over the front doors. “I think she was there, banging on the doors.”

“How did she find us?”

“How does she do anything she does?”

“Fair enough.” I looked into Erin’s office. “The windows.”

Those blinds were closed in record time and we retreated to reception. Erin turned off the lights and we crouched between the wall and Ivan’s desk, watching the cameras.

Amaya was good. She never let herself be fully seen by the cameras, but she set off the alarms by testing each access to the building. About five minutes in, the phone on the desk rang and scared the living shit out of me.

“Erin
McRea,” Erin answered, breathless. She listened for a moment. “I’m just here doing some catch up work. I have no idea what’s going on outside the building.”

It was about then I realised what it meant that we’d been caught on camera coming in. Catching up on work didn’t sound so convincing when you showed up with a shirtless man.

Erin spent a while talking the security guys down. I agreed with her desire to keep them away. Amaya hadn’t started the night in a very happy mood. No telling what sort of rage her summoner had inspired her to now. Chances were she’d lost the sense of guilt hurting Erin had given her.

“I don’t think they believed me,” Erin said. “Drunk teenagers just don’t make it as a cover story anymore.”

“Hopefully Amaya will steer clear of them if they do decide to show up.”

Yeah, Erin believed that one about as much as I did.

“If she goes for them, we’ll have to distract her,” she said.