The Demon Pool (31 page)

Kat needed to do a couple of things before dealing with
Jim Demore. Postponing their confrontation another day added some risk, but she
could plan for that. She needed to eliminate the threat the witness, de la
Garza, posed. That would have to happen fast. She also needed to make sure she
had control of her not-so-dynamic duo, Bruce and Kevin. She could not trust
those two morons not to screw everything up.

A steady stream of information flowed to her from
whatever supernatural source of power she had tapped into, and information
equaled power.

It was surreal how she had gone from simply
trying to survive to having gained control of some powerful source of magick.
Freaking amazing, but also dangerous. Not that she was afraid of the growing
power inside of her. It was that her control over others was not as strong as
she wanted it to be. She needed to think like a chess player.

Greasy Robert Greer had been a chess player. And
an asshole. And a child rapist. Nevertheless, he had taught Kat to play chess
and she played well. She needed to put those skills to work now. Greer had told
her that good players thought three to five moves ahead. By the time he had
left, Kat had become a very good player. She had learned to live her life six
moves ahead of everyone else.

Kat dialed Bruce’s cell phone. He answered on the
first ring.

“I don’t like any of this,” Bruce said.

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Kat replied. “Not
if you want to keep all of your toys and be free to enjoy them.”

It was the most blatant threat that Kat had made
to him. She waited for Bruce to protest. He did not disappoint her.

“For God’s sake, Kat, I love you, but this is
crazy. We are all going to end up in jail, probably forever.”

“Bruce, you need to understand something.”

Kat waited for Bruce to ask the obvious. Once
again, he did not disappoint her.

“What do I need to understand? That you got me
mixed up in a kidnapping? That we probably have to kill a state police officer?
You know there is no way we can let him go, and we’ll have to kill the other
one too if he shows up. I didn’t ask for this Kat. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Oh yes you can,” Kat said. “Because if you
don’t, you’ll lose it all. The money, the house, the car, me. Then you get to
spend every night for rest of your life wondering whose prison bitch you’re
going to be.”

“You’re the devil,” he told her.

“Not quite, Bruce.” Kat laughed, but something
dark and humorless colored her voice. “Lucifer would not be nearly so kind to
you.” She let that thought sink in for a moment, and then continued. “It is too
late to do anything except what I tell you. It will be over soon.”
Definitely
over for you, Brucie-boy
.

“God, Kat. I just want things to be back the way
they were.”

“God has never been part of this deal, but you
are. Now, if you don’t screw things up, I promise there will be one hell of a
prize at the end.”
First prize, Brucie. A ticket straight to hell.

“I just want things to go back to the way they
were,” he continued to whine. “Can we do that Kat? Just make things the way
they were.”

“Bruce, I promise you. When this is over,
everything will be better than it was. Okay?”
For me, anyway.

“Okay,” Bruce agreed, “but, what about
him.
”

Kat knew that he meant Kevin.

“I will take care of everything when I get there,
Bruce. Everything.”

“When?”

“Today, Bruce, and tomorrow, and the next day,
and the day after that. Understand? I am in control and my will
will
be
done. Tell me you understand, Bruce.”

“I-I understand.”

“Good. I’ll be there soon and we will get this
done.”

Kat hung up.

***

Bruce sat in the chair by the window. It was dark,
inside and out. Frightfully dark. The only light brave enough to challenge the
darkness came from his cell phone, and that would extinguish itself in a few
moments. Bruce could make out Kevin, across the room curled up on the floor,
sleeping. In the middle of the room, he could see the Highway Patrol trooper
nodding fitfully, still securely tied to the chair.

Bruce had told Kat that he understood, but in
truth he did not. He did not understand why Kevin had acted insane, except that
maybe the little lunatic was insane. He did not understand how he had involved
himself in this mess. He did not understand why voices in his head alternately
cajoled and threatened him, and, most of all, he did not understand why his
life had suddenly careened so out of control.

All he had ever wanted was what every man wanted
— a good job, an attractive wife who was an animal in bed, a hot car, a nice
house, and the admiration and respect of the people around him. A couple of
weeks ago it all seemed to be coming together.

Now, it all seemed to be falling apart. Kat had
said her will would be done, but what about his will? As he asked the question,
he knew the answer. A voice in his head gave it to him.
Her will is your
will.

He had been with her, in her. They had become one
flesh. The voice laughed, reinforcing the stark, ugly truth. Her will would be
done. And Bruce willingly, or unwillingly, would do it.

***

Kat arrived at the estate before dawn. She called Bruce
and had him come out and unlock the gate. She drove her car around toward the
back and parked it on the far side of Kevin’s van. She followed Bruce into the
house.

When she entered the front room, the trooper’s
head turned and he looked at her. She did not worry that he would identify her
because he would never live to testify. That was a given.

The nighttime cloud cover remained as the sun
began its slow crawl into the morning sky. As dawn’s light reluctantly crept
into the house, Kat began her search. She did not have a clear picture of what
it was she was looking for, but she knew it was something needed for the next
move. An impression that it had something to do with a weapon and that someone
had stashed it, long ago, in some secret place.

Kat looked around the room. Wood paneled walls
gave way to heavy, arched doorways. An elegant stairway led to the upper
floors. A guiding force nudged her mind, steered her.

She walked around the room, looking at the
panels, pausing to touch them. She passed an empty bookcase, its shelves thick
with decades of dust. Beyond the bookcase, a stairway. She climbed the first
two stairs, running her hands over the boards. She went up two more stairs, and
at the bottom of the third panel, she felt a tiny protrusion. A tiny bump that
might have been easily mistaken for an imperfection in the wood. Pressing the
small bump, she heard a faint click. She pushed and the panel moved back
allowing Kat to slide it behind the adjoining panel, revealing a large, hidden
space.

The light in the room brightened enough for Kat
to see a cross-like object tucked back into the space. Kat wondered what a
cross would have to do with a weapon.

She reached into the dark hole and took hold of
the object inside, which had some type of oily-feeling material surrounding it.
She carefully removed the object. She placed it next to her on the stairs and
looked back inside the hole. Seeing something else, she removed a bundle
wrapped with narrow strips of equally oil-soaked cloth.

Kat put the bundle down and picked up the
cross-like object. She carefully untied the cloth strips that held the covering
material in place. Finally revealed, Kat stared at the ancient artifact. It was
not a cross. It was a crossbow and although it looked very old, even ancient,
the wood remained remarkably preserved.

She put the crossbow down and unwrapped the other
package. Inside were a dozen crossbow bolts and another, longer piece of wood.
She recognized the longer piece as a goat’s foot cocking lever, although she
was sure she had never seen one before. The metal points of the bolts were free
of rust and corrosion. Bruce stood at the foot of the stairs, watching, with
his mouth hanging open.

Kat picked up the crossbow, using pieces of oily
cloth as gloves. It was heavy and unlike anything she had ever seen. Yet, for
some reason, it seemed intimately familiar. The taut bowstring showed no signs
of fraying or wear.
Perfect.

“For God’s sake, Kat, don’t point that thing at
me,” Bruce said.

She looked up at Bruce.
You are such a piss
ant
.

“Don’t pee your pants, Bruce. I haven’t even
loaded it yet.”

Bruce looked offended.

“Now, give me the key to your car. I have to
clean up some loose ends,” she said.

“What’s wrong with your car? You driving my car
is what got us into this mess.”

The voices in his head did not wait for Kat to
reply.

“Give her the key, you fat piece of shit. Give
her the key now.”

“Give me the key, Bruce. Unless you want to spend
the rest of your miserable life being punked by prison predators who like their
bitchboys with a little meat on their bones.”

“You don’t have to talk to me that way,” he said.

Instead of answering, Kat used the goat’s foot
cocking lever and cocked the weapon. She picked up one of the bolts and loaded
it into the crossbow. She held the crossbow in front of her, pointing it at
Bruce’s crotch.

“Keep it up Bruce and I won’t be talking to you
at all. Understand?”

Bruce said nothing. He just pushed his glasses up
on his nose, blinked, and handed Kat the Viper’s key.

Pedro lay in the sleeping chair staring up at Saffi’s
ceiling. His eyes were still open when sleep rolled over him and pulled him
into a very dark place where sinister, demonic creatures chased him through a
nightmarish landscape, populated by the animated corpses of American and North
Vietnamese soldiers. Corpses horribly mutilated by the instruments of war. The
dead soldiers came in tens, hundreds, thousands — eventually becoming an
enormous army; an impenetrable wall of stinking, rotting flesh.

As he turned to run, an opposing army of demonic
spirits trapped him between themselves and the animated war dead, with no
avenue of escape. He screamed in terror. Bony fingers grasped for him. He spun
away from the wall of corpses and faced the advancing demons. They flew toward
him, a black, spinning whirlwind of hatred, violence, and wrath. He felt the
hands of the dead clawing at him from behind.

A huge, dark figure flew out from the middle of
the black horde and hovered in front of him. He could not move, held fast by
the innumerable hands reaching out from the corpse wall behind him.

The creature’s eyes were black pits that sucked
the heat, the light, the air, and the energy out of Pedro’s dreamscape. The
dream itself became an ever-darkening shadow that pressed him on all sides, pushing
in with the same bone-crushing force found in the coldest, darkest ocean
depths.

The being in front of him spoke, but no air
remained to carry the sound. He watched the creature’s lips form words he could
not hear with his ears, but that penetrated his mind. A simple message any fool
could understand.

Surrender your soul and live.

In the airless horror of his dream, where sound
had become as absent as truth, his soul shouted his answer. A single thought in
the voice of his mind.

No.

Pedro did not wake up screaming. His eyes popped
open when the morning sun forced its way through the day’s cloud cover and the
apartment’s closed curtains. It took Pedro a second to remember where he was.

He did not know when the dream ended, but he
remembered it. All of it. He knew that it had been more than a simple dream.
Evil had confronted him, threatened him, and he had not surrendered. His
born-again friend, quoting the Bible, had once told him not to be afraid of
those who could kill the body but could not kill the soul. Rather, his friend
said, only fear God who can destroy both soul and body in hell, but his friend
had never been in combat, had never stood face to face with death.

He lay still for a moment, then sat up and rubbed
his face. He heard Jim stir on the sofa. Pedro’s mouth felt coated with paste.
He ran his tongue across his teeth. It reminded him of how he felt coming in
from a three-day patrol. He wanted food, a shower, clean teeth, a beer, and a
cigar. In the light of day, he could think of no reason not to head home. He
looked over at Jim, whose eyes were also open.

“I need to go home.” Pedro said and rubbed his
face again. “Get cleaned up. My mouth feels like el diablo himself took a crap
in it.”

Jim sat up, throwing off the sheet and blanket
that Saffi had given him. He looked at Pedro and nodded.

“We ate a lot of dust in Iraq. The dust got into
your clothes, your mouth, into everything. Nothing was sacred, not even your
ass crack.”

Pedro laughed quietly.

“In Vietnam, we would go out for a week and it
would be so hot and humid that we would all come back with bush sores and
jungle rot. Nasty stuff, Señior Demore, but, then, all war is nasty stuff.”

Jim nodded and smiled bitterly.

“Sometimes, life itself is nasty stuff. We clean
things up the best we can and keep on going, trying not to get splattered by
the next load of crap that comes along.”

“Sí,” Pedro agreed.

“Sometimes,” Jim continued, “I think we need to
write down all the crap we’ve been through just so we have an operator’s manual
ready for all the new crap that’s already lined up for us. Something to remind
us that we survived the other crap and we can survive this crap too. Kind of an
‘Idiot’s Guide to Crap,’ with a nice brown cover.”

Pedro nodded. He suddenly looked as if he had
remembered something.

“I think I need to get going, Señior Demore.
Please tell your friend thank you for me.”

“Be careful, Señior de la Garza.”

Jim’s smile deserted his face.

“I am not sure what is happening, but someone
wants my investigation shut down, and it looks like they’re willing to do
anything to stop it.” Jim paused for a second. “And I am pretty sure that
includes killing witnesses.”

Pedro nodded. He knew that if he had not escaped
the estate, the men there would have killed him.

“S, Señior Demore,” he said. “
Yo entiendo
.
I understand.”

The attention of both men shifted to the short
hallway leading to Saffi’s bedroom. Saffi appeared wearing shorts and a simple
top, with her hair pulled back away from her face.

“Breakfast?” she asked.

Pedro answered first.

“No, gracias. I really have to go now, but thank
you.”

Pedro started toward the front door, turning back
to look at Jim and Saffi at the last minute. He spoke to Saffi.

“You are a Christian, no?”

Yes, I am,” she replied, not hesitating. “One of
them born-again types, actually.”

Saffi smiled at Pedro. A genuine smile, one that
Pedro had rarely seen since the smile his wife had given him the first time he
had told her “I love you.”

“Bueno, Señiorita. That is good.”

Pedro turned away for a moment and twisted the
deadbolt, unlocking the front door. He opened the door and the warm morning air
pushed past him. The sun’s heat and light forced its way through the clouds and
the air smelled heavy with salty moisture. The soul-restoring daylight had
pushed aside the darkness of the night and, with it, the darkness of his dream.
Pedro looked back at Saffi and Jim as he let himself out.

“If you have time, please take a moment and pray
for me.”

The door closed behind Pedro before Saffi could
reply.