Mortal Danger Read online

  “Maybe you’d better stick to blondes. The brown-haired ones remind you of Her, huh?”

  Patrick’s mind went white. His heart kicked in his chest so quick and hard that his heartbeat swallowed everything else—thoughts, memories… .

  He wouldn’t think about it. He didn’t remember it very well, anyway. Didn’t have to. She was in hell, and he was here. He was fine. “Stupid little shit. You don’t know what you’re talking about. She’s Chinese—black hair, not brown.”

  “I’m not talking about that one. I meant—hey, watch it!”

  Patrick had brushed that slick orange skin with the staff, sending just a trickle of power through it. He smiled. It was satisfying to see the little shit jump. “Whoops.”

  “You’d better watch it with that thing! You fry me, you’re gonna be in big trouble!”

  “I’ll be more careful,” Patrick assured it solemnly, letting the demon see how little he meant that. Time to remind the creature who was in charge. “You’ll be careful, too, won’t you?”

  It rubbed its shoulder—which was smoking slightly—and grumbled under its breath.

  Patrick turned away, feeling better, and noticed the way the man closest to him was looking at him. As if he was crazy.

  Better fix that. He smiled and stroked his index finger along the staff. The man—a cowboy type whose mustard yellow shirt strained over a beer gut—relaxed and smiled back. He said something, but Patrick couldn’t hear it over the pounding music. Patrick shook his head, still smiling, and gestured at his ears.

  Before Beer Belly could become a problem, the bartender slid Patrick’s drink to him. Patrick turned to him, his left hand grasping on the staff, his expression pleasant and friendly. “Thanks, asshole.”

  The man blinked. He hadn’t heard the words, of course, in all this din. Just the tone, the melodious crawl of Patrick’s voice … augmented by the staff he couldn’t see.

  None of these fools saw anything that mattered. Not the demon, not the staff, and only what Patrick allowed them to see of himself. Like right now. As the music crashed to a stop, the dazed bartender stammered, “On the house. Your drink’s on the house, man.”

  “You recognized me.” Patrick gave that just a touch of chagrin. “I hope you won’t tell anyone I’m here. Sometimes I need to get away, you know? Relax with real people.”

  “Hell, no, of course I won’t say anything. Wouldn’t blow your cover for the world, man.”

  “Thanks.” Patrick turned his back on the man, wondering idly who he thought Patrick was. Someone powerful, of course. Someone the man privately revered, but who would a turd like that look up to?

  Didn’t matter. It was easier to let them make up their own version of who he was. All he had to do was persuade them he was important, someone to admire and serve. He’d always been good at that. Now, with the staff backing him up, he was invincible.

  “Invincible,” he murmured into his glass before taking a sip. He liked the sound of the word, the sheer truth of it. The bitch wouldn’t win, and he would be the one to take her down. Personally. His hand slid lovingly along the staff.

  The band swung into another song—something about boot-stomping, with a heavy, driving rhythm. Patrick’s mouth tightened. He hated country music. Bunch of losers whining about their lousy lives, that’s all they were.

  “So are you gonna fuck the blonde or just do her?”

  This time Patrick was able to ignore the mouthy little twit. He continued to look over the crowd, searching for the right one. The staff wasn’t picky. It would take whatever he fed it—and it needed feeding often. She had done something to it, changed it, while he was in … that place. With Her.

  But that was part of the plan. All part of the plan, and it wasn’t so bad, after all, though he’d been upset when he realized how often … but a good workman takes care of his tools. That’s what his father always said, and what was the staff but a tool? His tool.

  There. The girl in the red T-shirt and short black skirt. She was looking for some action tonight, wasn’t she? Look how she smiled at that cowboy she was dancing with … he’d separate them easily enough. Patrick started for the edge of the dance floor so he could be in place when the current dance ended.

  Maybe he’d outlaw country music once he was in charge. Death to all who worship Kenny Chesney, he thought, and chuckled.

  The girl tossed her head and her hair flew out, a shimmering light brown halo alive with youth, motion, and light. And that, too, was temporary. Quite temporary.

  FIVE

  FORTY-FIVE minutes after learning she might be possessed, Lily was wearing underwear, a hospital gown, and the toltoi on its gold chain. She sat in a hospital bed with the head cranked up, the TV turned off, and a roomful of people.

  For a while, it had looked like she’d be thrown out instead of admitted. She hadn’t been sure which outcome to root for.

  The hospital authorities were prepared to tolerate a certain degree of deviation from scientific methods. Native healers were in vogue—a number of Hollywood types had been singing the praises of shamanistic healing—and Nettie had a quietly powerful reputation among the medical community. But the prospect of a mini-exorcism held within their respectable walls had pushed them past their comfort level.

  And that’s what it would amount to. Nettie had explained that the best way to find out if Lily had a demon in her was to perform the preliminary steps of an exorcism. That way they’d be ready to take things to the next level if the answer was yes.

  So Nettie had requested a private room for “a more elaborate procedure, which requires privacy,” without specifying the nature of the procedure. No point in ruffling feathers if they didn’t have to. Unfortunately, a nurse had overheard them discussing the situation. She’d tattled to the head of the ER, who’d called in the hospital’s senior vice president.

  Lily wasn’t sure if the man was afraid that she might really be possessed and wreak havoc in his fiefdom, or that the press would find out about a purported exorcism and the hospital would look foolish. She suspected the latter. A lot of people considered exorcism about as relevant as those old maps with sea monsters in the corners. Sure, demons existed, and every now and then some nutcase managed to summon one, but the gates to hell had been closed for centuries.

  Possession? Get real.

  Between Lily’s badge, Nettie’s professionalism, and Rule’s name dropping—his clan retained a prestigious law firm—they’d prevailed over the bureaucracy. Just before Lily was moved to a regular room on the third floor, Karonski and Cynna Weaver had shown up. And Nettie had gone to the chapel to pray.

  Prayer was a key component of the ritual, apparently. Lily wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She frowned at the sheet in her lap. It wasn’t as if she had anything against religion. But it was slippery stuff, wasn’t it? One person believed this-and-such, another believed that-and-such, and before you knew it they were having a nice little war over their differences. She didn’t like depending on something so hard to pin down.

  “Is your shoulder hurting?” Rule asked.

  He sat in a chair beside the bed, holding her left hand. Lily quickly dropped her other hand. She’d been rubbing her shoulder again, the way you’ll pick at a scab or run your tongue over the place a tooth used to be. Not because it helps, but because something isn’t right. “Not really.”

  “You aren’t possessed.”

  He said it so calmly, as if he were completely certain. She grimaced. “I don’t think I am, either. Magic can’t get inside me, so how could a demon?” And yet she’d felt something around the wound. Something that shouldn’t have been there.

  “Probably it couldn’t,” Karonski said comfortably from where he sprawled in a chair by the window, digging into a bag of Fritos. The blinds were pulled up, letting the tattered darkness of a city night peer in. “We’ll find out for sure soon.”

  Karonski was in shirtsleeves, having draped his jacket over the back of his chair. Maybe he’d
been too warm. Or maybe he’d wanted to have quick access to the .357 in his shoulder holster in case Lily suddenly turned green and started ripping off people’s arms.

  Cynna paced. They could have snagged another chair for her, but she didn’t want one. A restless sort, Lily supposed. Not comfortable with waiting.

  She could relate. “I see why you can’t take my word for my condition. But I’d know, right? If I were possessed, I’d be able to tell.”

  “Maybe.” Karonski dug into the bottom of the bag, frowned, and came up with crumbs.

  “I’d know,” Rule said. His hand tightened on hers.

  “Maybe,” Karonski said again, and popped another chip in his mouth.

  “I got the demon’s scent from the door. If it was in Lily, I’d smell it on her.”

  “Yeah?” Cynna paused. “What does it smell like?”

  “Cloves and car exhaust. Sort of.”

  Karonski shook his head. “If your sniff test was reliable, Dr. Two Horses would have said so.”

  Lily didn’t think Rule had been talking just about scent, but they couldn’t discuss the mate bond in front of Cynna. Would it alert Rule to an alien presence inside Lily? She didn’t know. She didn’t think he did, either.

  She looked at Cynna. “No opinion?”

  “Plenty of them, but not about possession.” She reached the closed door, turned, and kept moving. “I don’t know much about that.”

  “I thought Dizzies were into demonology.”

  “Some are.” She paused by the window, frowning out at the darkness as if she disapproved of it. “But most of demonology is a matter of finding enough names for a demon to summon it and then control it if it shows up. Exorcism’s a whole ’nother bag. That’s a job for religion.”

  Religion. The subject kept popping up lately. Most noticeably with the Church of the Redeemed, aka the Azá, and their former leader, the Most Reverend Patrick Harlowe. He’d tried to sacrifice Lily and Rule to the Azá’s goddess. But there was Rule’s mysterious Lady, too—the one he believed had Gifted the two of them with the mate bond. The one who, his legends said, had created the lupi a few millennia ago to defeat the Azá’s goddess.

  It was enough to make Lily’s head pound. “I thought the Dizzies were a sort of religion. Ah—is it okay to call you that?” Belatedly she’d remembered that “Dizzies” was a mangling of the original Swahili.

  Cynna shrugged. “That’s what everyone called us. I’ll admit I dabbled a bit in demonology in my young and stupid days. That’s how I could recognize the traces left by your demon.”

  “Not my demon.”

  “Whatever. The point is, it’s gone.” She scowled at Karonski in his chair by the window. “This whole rigmarole is so not necessary. I picked up two of the demon’s names.”

  Karonski crumpled up his chip bag and tossed it in the general direction of the trash. He missed. “Not enough to Find it, you said.”

  “No, but I could sure enough tell if it was in the room with me!”

  “I believe you, already. But there are procedures for this sort of thing.”

  That was news to Lily. But she hadn’t made her way halfway through the pile of reading she’d been given on FBI and MCD resources, regulations, and procedures. “And yet you delayed your flight.”

  He looked at her, his eyes gentler than usual. “If I’d left, there wouldn’t be a senior agent to oversee the procedure. Can’t very well leave you in charge of a major investigation until you’ve been documented as clean.”

  Okay, that made sense. Lily drew a steadying breath. She wished Nettie would hurry up so they could get this over with.

  “At least,” Rule said, “we can make a guess about what they were up to.”

  She nodded. Her head was feeling better. At first she’d thought that was Nettie’s doing, but that was foolish. Magic—even the good stuff, like healing magic—couldn’t affect her, so it must be getting better on its own. “They sent a demon to possess me. That required privacy, so someone supplied a bolt for the door and the demon zapped it into place.” The S.O.C. officers had confirmed that the bolt had been freshly installed.

  “Makes sense,” Cynna said. “The woman you followed was the demon, form-changed to look like Helen. It knocked you out and did … whatever.”

  Lily looked out the window. From fifty yards away two windows stared back, one lit, one dark. Like two great eyes frozen in mid-blink. What had the demon done while she was unconscious?

  She didn’t feel different. There was no sense of an alien presence in her body or her mind, none of the struggle she’d seen in Karonski when he’d fought against the mental tampering inflicted by Helen and her staff.

  And yet she’d felt something when she touched her shoulder. Something that shouldn’t have been possible. Lily’s fingers twitched in Rule’s grip as she thought of the odd, slick feel of her wound. Orangey.

  She looked at Karonski. “You know what’s required for a demon to take possession?”

  He was brushing crumbs off his shirt. “There are plenty of theories, most of ’em contradictory. But because of an incident seven years ago, MCD regs for dealing with demons limit involvement to persons of faith. Doesn’t seem to matter what faith, so long as the agent has one.”

  Seven years ago … it took a moment for Lily to place the reference, but the story had been sensational enough to stick. “You mean the shoot-out down in New Orleans? That FBI agent shot by his own team—he really was possessed?” Someone had leaked that to the press, but very few had bought it. Too outlandish.

  “Oh, yeah. The powers-that-be didn’t want to alarm the public with the facts.”

  “And this guy who was possessed wasn’t … um, a believer?”

  “Catholic, but lapsed.” Karonski stretched out his legs and laced his fingers over his middle. “Way lapsed. My personal take is that he was more vulnerable than most because he’d lost his faith, but that’s just a guess.” He shrugged. “MCD policy is just a guess, too.”

  “What do you know?” she asked, exasperated.

  The door swung open. “Proximity is a factor,” Nettie said crisply. “The demon must be in close physical proximity to its victim. Possession doesn’t happen at a distance.”

  “How did you do that?” Lily demanded. “Rule can hear me from two rooms away. You can’t.”

  Rule smiled. “You were a little loud.”

  And a little more rattled than she wanted to admit, dammit. Lily took a slow breath, reaching for calm. There was something different about Nettie. She was wearing the same lab coat and jeans. Her hair was braided instead of hanging down in a fuzzy cloud, but Lily had seen it that way before. So what …

  “Another thing,” Karonski said. “Demons can get into animals, especially birds. I’ve been on a couple cases involving possessed birds.” He shrugged. “Don’t know why. Maybe birds are easy for them.”

  “If you’ve dealt with possession before, why is Nettie doing this?” Lily glanced at Nettie. “No offense.”

  Nettie just smiled.

  Karonski shook his head. “I didn’t say I’ve performed an exorcism. I haven’t. When an animal’s involved, the procedure is different. Demons can’t hide themselves as well in animals as they do in humans, so we can confirm possession pretty easily. Then we kill the animal. That forces the demon out so we can kill or banish it.”

  Oh. That was different, all right.

  “Another thing,” Rule said. “They can’t possess cats. Or lupi.”

  “Cats?” Lily couldn’t see behind the surfaces of his eyes. They were dark and glossy in the glare of the fluorescents, reflecting the overhead light and hiding everything else. But he looked tired. “You’ve been talking to Max.”

  Nettie snorted. “I take Max’s pronouncements with a whole lick of salt, but the part about lupi is right.”

  “Who’s Max?” Cynna asked.

  “A friend,” Rule said.

  “He owns Club Hell.” It was Nettie’s face, Lily decided. Or ma
ybe just the eyes. They seemed to hold … more. Which was a silly thing to think. What did she mean, more? More what?

  Nettie nodded at Cynna. “I need you to stand over by Abel, please.”

  Karonski’s eyebrows shot up. “Lupi can’t be possessed?”

  “No. The Lady made them that way.” Nettie approached Lily’s bed. “It’s time for the rest of you to be quiet.”

  “This is a religious belief, then? One of your legends?”

  Rule answered. “It’s fact, though I don’t expect you to believe that.”

  “Talk later,” Nettie said, “or you’ll have to leave. Rule—”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “Stand on the other side of the bed, then. Don’t touch her until we’re finished.” She took Rule’s place by Lily’s bed. “How are you doing?”

  It seemed a genuine question, not mere courtesy. And her eyes, those huge, dark eyes … darker than Rule’s, they were, that deep, bottomless brown people sometimes call black. “I’m okay. I don’t know what to expect. Have you done this before?”

  “I have, yes. Twice. Possession is as rare as true amnesia, so my experience is unusual. The first time was with a chicken.”

  Lily grinned. “A possessed chicken. That’s … I don’t know. Like Bunnicula, who drains the juice from carrots. Just not scary.”

  “The chicken had killed two dogs and attacked a child. The other time was an adult man. He—or rather, the demon in him—tried to kill me.”

  That cut off any mirth.

  “He couldn’t. It wasn’t allowed. I tell you this so you won’t worry. You and I will be protected.”

  How? Or maybe she meant, by whom?

  Nettie smiled as if she’d heard the unspoken question and found it amusing. She sat on the bed by Lily’s hip. Her eyes were so dark. Knowing. “This won’t be like a Catholic exorcism. My people don’t wrestle with a demon spiritually. We connect with our gods through the earth. Demons aren’t of our world, so we call on the powers of this realm to expel the intruder.”