Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei (9 page)

“Think it’s dead?” Erin asked.

Mercy tilted her head. “It’s not here anymore.”

“And that’s about all I care about.” I let my head drop back to the ground. Nice, soft cement.

The next thing I knew, I was in a car—a quick look around revealed it was mine—hurtling down the motorway toward home. Erin was driving and Mercy was in the back seat, an old blanket waded up over her wounds.

“How?” I mumbled.

“Mercy and I put you in the car. She’s too out of it to drive, so I am.”

I checked out again for a while, came back in when we were pulling into the driveway.

I had the wits to stagger into the house under Mercy and Erin’s steam. They tossed me on my bed and I gave Erin the blood fridge key and firm instructions for one bag only of O pos. Mercy sulked and trundled out after Erin.

After that, it was sweet goodbye for Matt Hawkins.

Mercy took her bag of blood and mooched out of the kitchen. Erin followed her. She wasn’t willing to let herself think the vampire was back to normal—whatever normal was for Mercy. The other vampires Erin had been exposed to—opposing armies on top of Mount Coot-tha—had been more mindless machines than autonomous creatures. Mercy was different, which probably stemmed from the fact she was under Matt’s control.

Or was it other way around?

It had been clear in the elevator Mercy had been the first to succumb to whatever terrorising influence the demon had, and Matt had followed suit.

She’d seen him go into a mindless rage twice before. Once, he’d been lost to it completely, going up against a 300 year old vampire strong enough to think for himself and smash Mercy around as if she was a bothersome fly. The second time, he’d come after her, a deadly, predator gleam in his eyes that spoke of emotionless, cold calculation. She had been nothing to him in that moment, a mere source of food for his vampire. For himself, in a twisted sense.

But he’d come out of it, both then and now. Then, he may have subdued her so Mercy could feed, but he hadn’t let Mercy drain her of blood. Tonight, he’d pulled himself—and Mercy to an extent—back from hurting her in the elevator. Now the demon was gone, there was not a glimmer of wild killer in either of them.

Still, Erin followed Mercy, wanting to keep her in view, be warned if she snapped again.

Mercy, bag of blood dangling from one hand, paused in the doorway of a room in the middle of the house. “Yes?” she asked pointedly.

Eyeing the vampire warily, struck by the contradictions between vicious supernatural creature and sweet faced girl, Erin asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Pale and watery blood bubbled out of a wound in her chest with each breath she took.

“Do you need a hand with your wounds?”

Mercy rolled her eyes. “No. Matt taught me how to pull out my own bullets.”

Erin’s stomach quivered. “Okay then.”

Mercy stepped back into the room and slammed the door.

“Fine,” Erin muttered and then went back into Matt’s room.

He was out of it again, half on the bed, half off it. She’d thought he would have at least fixed himself up before zonking. Considering just leaving him, she went over and tried to wake him up. He mumbled and pushed her away. Fending him off, she hauled him onto the bed properly and took off his boots. He didn’t make his bed and it was easy to pull the sheet out and toss it over him. All the while, he just slept on. Whatever he’d done had drained him.

She left the bedroom before she could collapse. What he’d done… It had been terrifying. Almost as frightening as the demon. A blast of… something reaching from him to the demon. And six months ago, she’d seen him—or rather, not seen him—move as fast as Mercy in order to chop off
Veilchen’s head. Neither feat something a human could accomplish. When she’d told him about the speed he’d used, he hadn’t realised he’d done it. She hadn’t stuck around to find out how that had affected him.

Yet here she was, in his house.

She pulled out her phone to call Ivan to see if he could come pick her up, but didn’t. He’d want to know how she ended up out here and her head wasn’t working enough to concoct a story to cover up the truth. She dialled a taxi company, then hung up before the automatic response could get too far. A fare would reach the lofty heights of a hundred dollars at the very least. Not officially on a case, she couldn’t write it off as an expense.

All in all, it would be easier to stay until Matt woke up and took her back to her car.

And then what? Try again to convince Ivan to drop Matt from the investigation? The last thing Ivan and Brad needed was some demon lurking around just because Hawkins was involved with them.

A demon.

Holy shit. Perhaps literally.

Escaping from vampires aside, Erin hadn’t been to church since William got sick. Too many bad associations. From William’s family’s response to his illness to Erin’s bitter argument with the blind injustice of life in general, belief in God had begun to feel too hard—too much like they’d been betrayed by the one, uncompromising ally they were supposed to have.

She’d almost made peace with the idea that God didn’t exist and that William’s cancer was just bad luck. Turn her back on religion and rile against fate instead. It was more understandable. God didn’t exist and life sucked.

Except that now Hawkins was convinced the thing they’d seen tonight was a demon.

Erin sank down onto the couch in the living room.             

Vampires and werewolves. Fine. Those she could wrap her head around, sort of. But demons? Demons that looked like the traditional image of angels? What did it mean? Had she seen a fallen angel tonight? Had she shot a fallen angel?

Unable to think straight, Erin dialled the hospital where William was. While it rang, she stood and wandered, unable to sit still while her thoughts tumbled one over the other. Finally, someone answered and, finding what might be an office, Erin identified herself, grateful it was a nurse she knew rather well.

“Hey, Erin, we w
ere wondering where you’d got to,” Nadine said in that soft voice all hospital workers seemed to adopt late at night.

“Something unavoidable at work came up. How’s he doing?”

“Really good. His latest blood culture came back negative.”

Erin let out a long, painful sigh. Inexplicable tears stung her eyes. She fumbled her way into the chair at the desk.

“Honey,” Nadine murmured, that sixth sense of nurses kicking in, “it’ll be okay. He’s strong, you know that. Another day or two and he’ll be ready to go home.”

“Thank you, Nadine,” Erin said, forcing back the tears.

“Get some sleep, and that’s an order from a medical professional.”

“I’ll try,” Erin said and they made their goodbyes.

Sitting back in the office chair, something eased inside Erin’s chest. Seems like they’d beaten the Devil—or God—once more. How many more times they could do it remained to be seen.

The office was illuminated by soft moonlight coming in through the open curtains over the windows. It was small, crowded by the desk and bookshelves against all available wall space. Erin turned on a lamp and wandered around, looking at the spines of the books. Chemistry and biology text books, clinical pathology references, medical texts and journals, several shelves of dog-eared detective novels; some horror, though judging by the amount dust on them, she guessed Matt hadn’t read them in some time—probably not since his own life had turned into something of a horror story. His history on display.

At last, she found the books that most reflected his life at the moment. Eight books about vampires, some of which looked very old, a couple on werewolves, a ‘field guide’ to supernatural creatures and a dozen, spiral bound notebooks. Pulling one out, Erin opened it to a page of neat handwriting.

Under a date was a short, concise entry.

Susan spoke today. She said she wanted to kill me and drink my blood. I asked her why she wanted to do that and she refused to speak again. A Pos given. She slept for twenty hours.

Am I doing the right thing?

He didn’t answer his own question and on the next line was another entry, detailing the effects of differing blood groups.

Susan was Mercy’s true name. At least, the name of the human she had once been. The date showed the entry to be a couple of years old. Flicking through the journal, Erin noted that Matt began referring to her as Mercy not long later. It was clear that as the vampire emerged from the ruins of the human, she was not Susan Greyson anymore.

Erin put the journal back on the shelf without reading any more. It felt wrong to pry into that part of their lives, especially when she wanted nothing to do with them.

She returned to the couch, determined to stay awake throughout the remainder of the night. Someone needed to be on watch for mad vampires or demons.

The next thing she knew was someone swearing.

Sunlight peeked through the curtains opposite the couch. Erin sat up, blinked the sleep out of her eyes and winced at the twinge of pain in her lower back. Couch sleeping was for the young. The room came into slow focus and she remembered where she was.

More muttered swearing came from somewhere behind her. She stood, realised she had to pee and dashed upstairs to the bathroom she’d found the night before. Relieved, she came back down and found Matt stalking past the bottom of the stairs. He only wore a pair of loose track pants.

“Morning,” he groused.

“You’re chipper.” She followed him into the kitchen, watching for signs of irrational rage—beyond the obvious, that was.

“Blue screen of death. Cornflakes?”

“Sorry?”

He pulled a box of cereal from a cupboard. “Do you want cornflakes for breakfast?”

“No. And blue screen of death?”

“On the computer. I’ve been meaning to upgrade the hard drive but you know how it is.” Matt poured himself a generous bowl of flakes and added grapes.

“Busy with vampires and werewolves, yeah I know how it is.” Erin checked out the coffee situation. Which turned out to be that there wasn’t any. “No coffee?” She could hardly keep the fear out of her voice.

He patted his admittedly taut abdominals. “I’m off caffeine. This body is now a temple.” Then he dumped half a tonne of sugar on his cornflakes. “And oddly, I haven’t been busy with vampires or
weres or much of anything lately. I was referring more to the fact that when there is nothing to do, you can’t seem to do anything.”

“I think the term is ennui and there’s Coke in the fridge.”

“For emergencies only. You’re free to have some if you want. Ennui it might be but you can’t avoid the fact there is a distinct lack of supernatural bad guys around the place lately. Obvious exceptions excepted, of course.” He crunched a mouthful of cereal.

“Of course.” Getting desperate, she asked plaintively, “Tea?”

“In that cupboard.”

Relaxing a bit, Erin made herself a cup of tea. “Your lazy boredom to the side, why aren’t there any vampires for you to kill? When I saw you that last time you seemed to think there was more than enough to keep you going.”

He had, in fact, hinted that he might need help. She’d rejected him before it could grow from a hint into something more solid.

“And there was, for a while at least. Then they all left. Well, most of them. A few hardy souls have stuck around, but they’re laying so low the worms are charging them rent.”

Erin sat down opposite him. “Could it have anything to do with that demon?” It still felt a bit unreal to be talking about something used to scare her as a child.

Matt poked at the dregs of his breakfast, hair falling across his brow in an untidy, just got out of bed, tumble. “I don’t think so. The vampires cleared out a couple of months back. If it had been here that long I’m sure I would have...” He shrugged and gave her a quick, rueful smile. “Felt it or something before now.”

Erin swallowed a sip of scalding tea. “Or been affected by it.”

He sighed and got up to put his bowl in the sink, with other such leavings. “I’m sorry about that. It caught me unawares.” Back to her, he gripped the kitchen bench and his shoulders tensed. “
Merce went dark quicker than I’ve ever seen before. And she nearly took me down with her. It’s never, ever, been like that before. I can always resist and I can always control her.”

“Always?” Erin couldn’t help herself. She asked before thinking twice, remembering the way he’d come after her, intent on making her dinner for Mercy.

He flinched.

Erin fought down the impulse to apologise and left the kitchen. She took her tea onto the back patio and stared at the water while she drank. How much could she blame him for what had happened? He hadn’t asked to have Mercy thrust onto him, to become so intimately linked with such an unfathomable creature. It wasn’t as if he chose to suffer the mindless rages that had shaped so much of his history. He hadn’t been the one to draw her into his life.

Maybe she should ease up on him.

Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. A man stood on the patio of the house next door. About her age, hair thinning a bit on top and a little saggy in the middle, he held a mug but ignored it in favour of gaping at her.

She could guess how it looked. A strange woman in rumpled clothes with dishevelled hair standing on his neighbour’s patio in the early morning.

A treacherous part of her made her smile at him.

Eyes widening, he dashed back inside his house.

“I see you’ve met Charles,” Matt said, coming up beside her.

“I’m going to hazard a guess and say he doesn’t like you.”

“Thinks I’m odd, for some reason. I just wanted to apologise again, and thank you for driving last night. I really appreciate it.”

“What else could I have done?”

He shrugged. “Left us there.”

She probably deserved that one. “You don’t pull punches, do you.”

A hint of his devastating smile flashed across his face. “Neither do you. Besides, life’s too short to be polite. Tell it like it is and get over it.”