Seduced by Crimson (32 page)

The head druid swallowed. His skin had turned a pasty white, and his gaze jumped about. "I… We… I mean—"

"Do you want to lead that charge, Peter? Do you want to be right out front when we face the demons?"

The man swallowed, too terrified to speak.

"Will you listen to my orders, druid? Will you follow the Draig-Uisge?"

"Yes! Absolutely!" His response was as quick as any soldier's.

Patrick held his position a moment longer, then finally sheathed the blade. A glance at the backseat told him Xiao Fei had watched the whole exchange. She curved her lips in a soft smile of approval, then closed her eyes and relaxed back into sleep.

"Where are we going?" Patrick asked.

"To my office. That's where everyone's meeting."

Patrick shook his head. "Call them back," he said.

"Tell them to gather at the park at sunset—no earlier. We can't risk getting everyone together before that."

Peter's jaw dropped open. "B-b-but how will we prepare? How will they learn the—"

"There is no goddamned preparation! All you have to do is stand in a circle and hold off the demons."

"B-but—"

"Just hold them off however you can. Even if you just impale yourself on their claws." Patrick felt his lips curve in a malicious smile. "You can start with that." Then he settled back in his seat. He dropped Peter's sheathed knife into his lap, though he still clenched the hilt in a tightened fist. "I'm going to take a nap now," he lied. Then he closed his eyes.

Vengeance. Hatred. Love. This was a hell of a time to discover his emotional core.

"That was quite a little talk you had with your friend." Xiao Fei's voice slipped into his thoughts, soothing even as it disturbed him.

"He's not my friend," Patrick mumbled.

"Yeah, actually, I got that. So, what is he?"

Patrick opened his eyes. They were in the department reception area of Peter's UCLA office. The moment they'd arrived, Peter had disappeared into his office to make phone calls. Patrick had stretched out on the floor and shut his eyes, leaving the long couch for Xiao Fei. Except she hadn't lain down. She'd curled into his side and tortured him by slipping her hand beneath his tee and playing with his chest hairs—the ones right below the amulet.

"Pete's the head druid in LA." He frowned and closed his eyes again. "I mean, the head druid in Southern California." Now that his father was dead.

"But you had a knife on him. You put it—"

"I know what I did."

She was silent a moment. "So, you must be pretty important too." It wasn't a question, so he didn't answer. Then she asked. "You're their muscle, aren't you?"

He opened his eyes a tiny bit, squinting at her. Had she actually asked that with a straight face?

"You know," she continued, "their knuckles, their enforcer." She brightened, and poked him in the ribs. "You're the druid Terminator!"

"You getting bloodthirsty all of a sudden? What happened to 'love thy neighbor'?"

Sobering, she lifted herself up on an elbow and her hair fell in a short curtain behind her chin. "That's what's ahead of you on the path, Patrick. I want to know where you've been."

He rolled his eyes. He tried to cover by closing them, but she must have seen. She grabbed a hunk of chest hair and tugged. "Hey! Ow!" he gasped.

"Talk, Patrick. It's important."

"Why?"

She paused long enough for him to open his eyes again and be struck by her beauty. There she was, her face scrunched up in thought, and he realized she felt solidly, amazingly, totally there. With him. His own personal bright light. And Xiao Fei was the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.

"Well?" he prompted.

"Well, you made me confess my deep, dark past. It's your turn."

"So you're getting even?"

She shrugged. "Okay."

He laughed. It just burst out of him, and he was so surprised that he tried to kiss her in gratitude.

She pulled back. "Stop avoiding. What is the deal with your name and title and… well, everything?"

He sighed. She wasn't going to let this go. "
Draig
means
dragon
. All the…" He let his lips curve into a smile. "All the 'druid Terminators' have Draig in front of their name.
Uisge
means water, so my name means water dragon. The one before me was Draig-Teine, a fire dragon, and his father before him was Draig-Athar, an air dragon."

"So this is a hereditary thing, passed from father to son? How'd you become the current Draig?"

Patrick let a long moment pass. "I killed my best friend."

From Patrick Lewis's journal.

June 8, 1992

It is done. I am the new dragon. A water dragon, to be exact, though I don't think I'll ever get used to being called Draig-Uisge. It sounds like a sneeze in a bad French accent.

The ceremony isn't until tomorrow, but I already have the amulet, have already wielded the damn thing, so everything else is moot. Dad has strongly encouraged me to write down what happened.

Jason's dad wrote the official report, of course. It says that Jason died while experimenting with questionable spells. He wrote that I wielded the amulet in an attempt to heal his son, and that my inexperience is what caused me to eventually fail. I have not disagreed with that, since it's essentially true. It's also completely false.

As Draig-Uisge, I have to get in the habit of recording my activities. I have decided always to record the truth here, even if the only ones who read it are future Draigs. Perhaps Jason's story will serve as warning to them. For me, it brings only a dark, overwhelming anger. He was such a goddamned fool.

Here is what happened:

I went to Miracles. It was late and the shop was closed, but Mr. Boden had a key and the code for the alarm. I didn't ask how, but he was Jason's father and the previous Draig; it's not surprising he had it
—
though he was obviously sick. He suffered from frequent tremors, and his skin was gray and slick with sweat
.

I cannot recall exactly what I saw inside the building. I was too involved in feeling the overwhelming power that swirled and eddied around me. It set patches of my skin tingling and raised the hair on the back of my neck. But most of all, it overwhelmed me with a sense of wrongness. Great power, yes, but it was nauseatingly wrong.

Mr. Boden felt it too. It threw off his balance and he often stumbled, steadying himself against the walls as he took deep, gulping breaths. I offered to go on without him, but he refused. I remember that his eyes seemed to glitter in the bright leather-and-chrome waiting room. And his words will haunt me for the rest of my life: "You feel it too, don't you? You know what he… That he… My son has gone bad."

I knew it was the truth, but I still denied it. I think I'd known for a long time. Since my seventeenth birthday party. But he was my best friend. How could he "go bad"? "We know nothing yet" I lied to Mr. Boden. He didn't argue, but let me lead the way upstairs. We both knew Jason was in his second-floor office. That was where the erratic power was centered.

We climbed the stairs of the big circular staircase. I remember it most specifically because the stairs seemed to weave and pulse, and I rubbed my eyes to try to clear them.

Mr. Boden said Jason was bending space, and when I didn't understand, he sighed and looked very old. "He's using the amulet. He's trying to open a demon gate."

I still couldn't believe it, fool that I was. Jason had been fascinated by that damn demon toy since the day he'd first seen his father with it. He knew he could wield it, even when we were kids, and it became his ambition then to have it. I just never realized what he intended to do with it. He always wanted money, so I figured once he'd bilked enough billion-dollar celebrities, he would be happy. I thought he was using the amulet to heal celebrities, but I was wrong.

Jason was killing demons.

He didn't hear his office door open, and he wasn't looking at us, so we had time to see his work. His profile was to us, his face and body twisted in pain around the amulet as he worked. There was an open dais in front of him, one surrounded by candles and etched with a pentagram. And inside it were dead demons.

There were almost a dozen. Young ones. Old ones. Fat ones. Beautiful ones. The demons looked just like humans, though dressed differently and with oddly colored eyes. I would have thought them human beings, except their energy felt clearly alien. Not bad, just different
—
not from Earth
.

But they were all dead. All except for a gorgeous, lavender-eyed woman in the center. She wore a brown suedelike blouse over loose green pants
—
a strangely stylish outfit
—
and her eyes were panicked as she opened her mouth in a silent scream. Except it wasn't silent. There was no noise, but there was energy
—
a loud riot of power pouring forth like blood, draining from her open mouth and into… what
?

It took a while for me to understand. The scene was unreal, and I still close my eyes and think what I saw could not possibly be true. And yet I know it was. The energy
—
this demoness's life and power
—
was pouring into the amulet that Jason held out before him. And from the looks of it, she was only one of many
.

I must have said something. The horror of it all was incomprehensible. Whatever I did, Jason heard. He turned in terror until he saw who I was.

In truth, two images still haunt my nights. The first I have already described: that beautiful woman being killed slowly. The second is Jason's face. There was such joyous welcome in his eyes that I cannot reconcile the two images. He was happy to see me
—
excited, even
.

And at that moment, I knew I would have to kill him. How could a druid
—
how could a
man—
be so twisted as to think I would celebrate the murder of any life, demonic or otherwise
?

He finished what he was doing. I was across the room as fast as I could move, but I was still too slow; the demon woman died. And with a muttered flourish, Jason banished the bodies of the dead back to the demon place
—
Orcus, he called it
.

I screamed. Mr. Boden and I had gone there to speak rationally to him. We went to ascertain the veracity of certain allegations. We went there to give him the opportunity to explain, but I never gave him the chance. He was too pleased with his work, too proud of it to understand my fury. I really heard only one sentence, and even now it still makes my blood boil.

"But the amulet has to be recharged somehow," he said.

That's what he was doing. I have pieced together what he learned from his notes. I have read his scribbles and deductions, and in truth, they're quite brilliant. He learned that the amulet manipulated energy. We all knew that the thing was once used to open windows between Earth and this other place, Orcus. We all knew that, and so the amulet is given to the Draig for protection so that no one will ever dare open the rift between worlds again. So no one will allow the monsters of old to return to torment Earth.

But no one thought about
our
monsters tormenting
them.
In the center of this amulet is a dark liquid, a black ichor. It is demon blood that was once bright red in the center, but as the energy drains out of it, as the power was used to heal Jason's celebrity clients, the red became darker
—
blacker
—
and more and more useless for a druid looking for power above all things
…

He learned to combine the old gate spells with something worse
—
the power to take demons from their homes and drain them of their life energy. He was killing demons who had not attacked, had not invaded, nor done anything to harm Earth in generations. As far as I could tell, the murdered were simple beings living their lives according to their own customs and culture. Jason caught them, drew them to Earth, then drained their life to recharge his amulet.

Now I come to what I have been striving so hard to admit, what even now makes my hand shake with fury and my skin flush with shame. I cannot explain this conflict within myself. I cannot forget the horror of what I have done nor the certain knowledge that it had to be done.

I lost control. I could not believe what Jason was doing, and he could not understand my confusion. He pulled the life out of demons to cure rich clients. Of course, I now know from his notes that he inflicted many of those diseases upon his clients and that he felt some guilt for what he did, despite his rationalizations. But truthfully, at the time, none of this entered my thoughts. I was too furious.