The Demon Abraxas (32 page)

“I’m finally going to see powerful magic at work,” she said. “But you need something else from me?”

“As soon as the ritual is complete, you need to leave the circle. I’m sure you can come up with a reason. Drake will be distracted with the captured demon. You need to get to his new apartment. Do you have a problem pretending to be his new lover?”

“No.”

“Good. Then your excuse is that you returned to claim something you forgot there in the morning. You will look through his closets and in one you’ll find a body.”

“A real one?” She didn’t have to feign alarm at the idea.

“Yes.”

“Who did he kill?”

Johnson smiled. “He will have killed the brother of the woman with the other demon, or at least that’s how it will appear.”

Outwardly, Sabel didn’t blink. She kept her breathing slow and cocked her head slightly to one side to suggest curiosity. Inside she was as cold as death and she felt as if a thousand dirty insects crawled over the underside of her skin. They were going to kill Gunnar.

“You want his death on Drake,” Sabel said slowly and carefully. “And you’ve connected it somehow to the news stories about that other woman’s death and that kidnapping. You’ll show that he’s involved in the same sorts of things his brother is, right? But won’t he just come after you from prison?”

“He’s still new to this Simon Drake body. He’ll have to stay near it for years and if the body is in prison, well, then so is he. By the time he can travel enough to come after me, I’ll have made an ally of this new demon or maybe I’ll take my money and go someplace he can’t find me.”

“The money,” Sabel said.

“When the company sells, I’ll see that you get a very generous payment. Maybe I will ask you out on that date then and shower you with gifts. I take you for a woman who likes small diamonds and large houses.”

She laughed a little, thinking how wrong he was, and turned it into an affirmative gesture. She wasn’t sure if he was offering the date seriously or just as a cover for paying her off.

“Very true,” she told him. “So all I have to do is excuse myself at the end of the ritual, talk my way into his apartment since I don’t have a key, discover this body and do the screaming woman thing?”

“The men I’ve selected to take the brother to Drake’s apartment will leave the door unlocked for you. You only have to get through the lobby.”

“That’s easy.”

Now it was starting to come together in her mind. Johnson had two men among the summoners that he trusted and they would make sure that Gunnar was taken to Drake’s apartment, then kill him there and hide his body for Sabel to find. Johnson needed her because she could play the distressed girlfriend and make the situation look so very incriminating for Drake. That might be the reason she had been accepted into this group so quickly.

After what happened with Helen, the police and media would be quick to believe that Simon Drake was continuing what his brother started. He’d be arrested immediately and as a wealthy flight risk probably held without bail.

“Good. You’ll tell the police that he’s been acting strangely and going on about this woman Ana and her brother.”

Sabel nodded. “Why kill the brother? Why not the woman?”

“She may not survive the ritual, in which case, I’ll count on you to help make it look like Drake killed both of them.”

Sabel had the impression that by “may not survive” Johnson actually meant that if Ana did make it through the ritual alive, he was willing to kill her himself. She had to warn Ana.

“I need the address,” she said.

He pulled out his smartphone, touched the screen and held it up so she could see the address on it. She reached for her phone but he put his hand on her arm and stopped her.

“Memorize it,” he said. She did.               

He put the phone back into his briefcase and pulled out a flat, square black box with a jeweler’s logo on the top.

“Open it.”

She looked inside and saw a delicate gold bracelet with two dozen perfect diamonds around it. It wasn’t ostentatious, but it was expensive.

“That’s your advance,” he said. “And your other goad is this: if you try to betray me to Drake, the university will receive electronic files detailing your involvement with the drug smuggling Satanists who killed Helen Reed.”

“Payment and threats? You’re very thorough.”

“We’re very similar, you and I,” he said.

She was afraid he might be right about that part. She slid the diamond bracelet in its box into her purse. Her fingers brushed her phone. The moment she was alone in her car, she’d call Ana and warn her, though Johnson’s paranoia about betrayal made her worry that he’d bugged her somehow.

He stood up from the table. “We’ll take my car.”

“Won’t it be suspicious if we arrive together?”

“He’s preoccupied and distracted. I have someone taking photographs of the warehouse for the police later. It’s best that they don’t see your car.”

“How will I get to Drake’s apartment after the ritual?”

“I trust you to figure that out,” he said.

Sabel followed him out to his car. When they got to the warehouse and started to prepare the ritual, she would have to put her phone in the pile with everyone else’s. They couldn’t wear any metal while working demon magic. Even if she tried to hide the phone, Drake would sense it and then he’d be tipped off. She had to find a way to get a message out, but her window of opportunity had already slammed shut.

By late evening, Ana was starting to panic. She’d tried calling Sabel multiple times but got no answer. Then she got a worried call from Gunnar’s wife because he hadn’t come home from work or checked in with her the way he did if he was running errands.

She called the police and told them that she thought Gunnar was in danger from the men who had kidnapped her and they put out a watch for his car. Then she called Detlefsen and gave him the address of the bookstore. He was there a few minutes later. She and Lily brought him up to speed on everything short of the actual existence of demons, though Ana thought he would probably take that in stride along with everything else. He told them the police were still looking through the company’s financial records and there would be some arrests later in the week. Unfortunately, he had nothing to tie Johnson to Helen’s murder.

At ten her phone rang.

“Ana.” Drake’s gorgeous voice drew up a seething hate in her. “As you have no doubt discovered, I have your brother, Gunnar. I have arranged for us to trade. You will get in your car, alone and not followed, and drive to the corner of Washington and Fifth Ave. North where you will be met.”

“You son of a bitch,” she said.

“This doesn’t need to be uncivil,” he said. “I will make it easy for you. Keep talking to me and walk out to your car. I’m sure you’re there with friends trying to figure out what you’re going to do about the fact that we have Gunnar. You don’t want to get them involved, so just keep talking to me and walk out to your car.”

“Fine,” Ana said, “I’m walking to my car.” She lifted a pen off the table and wrote, “Drake has Gunnar—meet him at N. 5
^th
& Washington. Don’t follow.”

Lily wrote back, “We’ll find you.”

Ana continued out the back of the store to her car, still talking into the phone, “Tell me again how exactly this is going to be civil?”

He chuckled. “You’ll come to me and offer up my old friend and I’ll give you Gunnar. It’s simple.”

“How do I know you won’t just kill both of us?”

“You don’t. But you know that Gunnar’s life is forfeit if I don’t get what I want. And you may have surmised that I’m not completely eager in this day and age to leave a trail of dead bodies.”

“But I know who you are.”

“Ah, but after tonight you won’t. I can take parts of your memory. You will go back to your life as it was. Won’t that be nice?”

“Sure,” she said. She could see the corner he’d directed her to and there was a car waiting, its lights squinting in the darkness. “I’m here,” she said and hung up the phone.

She was glad Drake hadn’t made her this offer two weeks ago. Then having her old life back seemed like the perfect answer.

A man in a suit held the door open for her. Every nerve in her body jangled. This was the most stupid thing she could think of, walking right into the arms of her enemy, but she didn’t have a better idea. The backseat of the car smelled like new leather and stale alcohol. As soon as she sat, a man reached over and put a blindfold over her eyes.

Abraxas didn’t speak, but she felt a shock of dismay from him and sent a questioning feeling in his direction.

They have a way to keep me from talking to Lily
, he said.
Not surprising, but unfortunate
.

Was she having any luck?

Before we were cut off,
s
he said Detlefsen had a plan but she’s concerned it will take too long.

Any words of wisdom from you? Is this completely stupid?

I would have stopped you if I had any better idea
, he said.
We are not lost yet, but definitely at a disadvantage. Drake cannot remove your memories of all this in any exacting way. He’s lying to you.

Will he kill me?

He might, but right now I am strong enough that if he kills you he gives me greater freedom to choose from any nearby body. He will try to take me first. In the process, it will seem like you are going to lose yourself and fall into death, and you will fear this. Only be certain that you will survive. Not a you that you know yourself to be, but the indestructible portion of your Self will come through this fire intact and burnished by the flames.

And everything else is crisped to ash?

Basically, yes.

Including, possibly, my body, my life?

Yes.

She sighed. “Bring it on,” she said aloud, with a large measure of sarcasm.

Some part of her looked forward to this confrontation if only because it meant the end of all the fear and waiting. One way or another, tonight would decide whether these men managed to kill her or not. She also felt, though she couldn’t explain it to herself, that she had been born for this. Already she knew from her childhood that she could face darkness and it would not destroy her. She could be deluded for a time, she could have her light covered over, but it was still there. Of course that high-minded metaphysical thinking didn’t do much for the fact that Drake could pretty easily put a bullet through her head and then her light wasn’t going to be able to stick around one way or the other.

It was one thing to experience herself as indestructible at the same time that her heart pounded and her palms drenched themselves in sweat. She didn’t want to die and give up this life, not now when she could finally see its beauty. Only a few days ago she’d been able to see her brother clearly for the first time. Would that be the last view she had of him?

The car stopped and her door opened; Ana got out blind. A man’s outstretched hand grabbed her elbow to draw her onward. She let herself be led, noticing that the sidewalk seemed even and there were no stairs to the door. Even though the blindfold covered her sight, she would log every detail in case it could help Lily find her. Once she was through the door and down a short hall, they took off the blindfold. She could have been in any one of hundreds of small buildings in the city. This one was being remodeled and looked half-finished, buckets of paint in the halls and spare pieces of drywall leaning up against unfinished studs. Two men flanked her, both wearing hoods and suits instead of their robes, and took her toward the back of the building where the hall stopped at a pair of doors. Through those she found a large room badly in need of updating. Wallpaper peeled on the walls and the tiles covering the floor bulged in places.

They had Gunnar in a chair on the far side of the room, his arms tied behind his back. His face, flushed red with rage, turned a darker color when he spotted her. She felt a pang of sympathy because she knew exactly what it was like to be caught in this situation, followed by guilt for getting him involved. On the heels of that was outright rage at Drake, Johnson and the rest of these men. They stood around in a grotesque re-creation of the first night they’d kidnapped her and all the fury of that night welled up in her, joining with the existing fear into a rush of panic and rage. These men in their black robes and masks, the tarp with circles drawn in blood, the dim lights of the room—she remembered how terrified and powerless she felt the first time she’d come into this group.

Now that she knew who they were, what they had done, and why, she had disgust for them and she leaned on that feeling, hoping for some respite from the feeling that her heart was about to burst. Then she spotted the one figure who stood out as different from the first night: a slender body in a black robe and delicately sewn hood. She didn’t dare look at her for long to reassure herself that it was Sabel, but it had to be and she prayed that Sabel had some better plan than she did.

“All right,” she said loudly, wanting to say anything before Drake’s silken voice could wrap the room in his spell. “Here I am. What do you want?”

He took two steps closer to her and paused, watching. “Please, sit down.”

Ana crossed to the chair he indicated and nodded toward Gunnar. “Let him go. He’s nothing to you.”

“All right,” Drake said and gestured to the men closest to Gunnar. They helped him up from the chair, though they didn’t untie him. Would they really let him walk out? He didn’t go for the door, though, he crossed the room to Ana.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For getting grabbed.”

“It’s okay. Get out of here. I’ll be okay.”

“Can’t leave you here,” he said.

Out of the corner of her vision she saw the cloud coming for him. When it covered him and sank in, his eyes went blank.

Ana jumped to her feet. “No!” But two men had her arms, forcing her back into the chair, binding her hands behind her. They wound a rope tight around her wrists and then tied it to the chair. Automatically she started to work at the rope, praying for it to loosen.