Demon Underground (2) Read online

  “Ram is a demon assassin, Allay. He’s been killing his own offspring’s offspring for thousands of years. You can’t possibly trust him. For one thing, he’s a master emotional manipulator. Look how he got you to change your mind about killing another demon. You were adamant, remember—I’m not going to kill anyone! But he comes along and you do exactly what he says.”

  “That’s true,” Bliss agreed. “He convinced you it was okay.”

  I knew they were right. “He told me that’s the only way demons die, that everyone has to die, so another demon will eventually kill each one of us because we’re mortal. We’re not gods. It seems . . . it seemed reasonable, at the time.”

  “He’s got you under his spell,” Shock insisted. “You have to tell him to get lost, and mean it, Allay. Stop acting like a lovesick teenager and get hold of yourself!”

  That stung. “I know.”

  “Then don’t open the bar,” Shock demanded.

  “I’m doing it for Bliss. She wants the company. And I need to feed.”

  Shock crossed her arms again. “Tell me you’re not secretly hoping Ram will come back.”

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t deny it. I had been thinking about him; would he come back and watch over me? Did he really care about me? It seemed impossible that I had caught his eye. Perhaps his rakish Theo Ram persona was not far from his true self, with a girl in every country, and I was just the latest diversion from his weary millennia-old battle with his wayward offspring.

  I couldn’t admit my fascination, so I tried to divert her. “If I touched him, I think I would know it was Ram. Even through his shields, he had a driving, aggressive energy that came through his persona.”

  Shock’s eyes widened. “Really? That could be very useful.” She shot a look at Bliss. “Don’t tell anyone. It could mean life or death for us, and we don’t want him to know we’ve found a chink in his armor.”

  Bliss nodded blandly. “Sure, that will really help when we ambush him after lunch.”

  I could tell she didn’t like Shock’s doubts about her. But Shock was too busy considering the implications of Ram’s existence to care about Bliss’s feelings. Shock must have been frightened out of her wits when she woke to find she was being killed by a strange demon whose signature she couldn’t sense. She had holed up in Revel’s apartment for days while I negotiated with Vex and Dread to try to find her attacker. Shock was not one to willingly put up with the circus at Revel’s place for long, but she had been paralyzed by fear.

  Until Ram had told me that he wouldn’t kill demons anymore just because they were fertile, demons like Shock. He had pledged to kill only demons who hurt humans, either by taking too much of their emotional energy or harming them by other means.

  The question is, Can I trust him?

  I needed to know more about him. I had thought I understood Theo Ram, the cabbie, so well. But Ram the vengeful demon was a complete mystery to me. He admitted his first great love was Hope, who was also a possessed human. Like me.

  Ram said he had killed Hope. That was the last thing I could tell Shock. Just last week, I would have denied it was possible—I talked over everything with Shock. Now I had only myself to question: What would make Ram kill his lover? What kind of betrayal would make his love turn to hate?

  And what exactly did he want from me? I had learned my lesson about taking favors from ancient demons after Vex’s beneficence turned out to be one big con job. All along he had intended to cut off my head so everyone could watch it rematerialize, turning me into a messiah for his church. I wasn’t going to let anyone think I was their pawn, never again.

  “You can’t trust him, Allay,” Shock said, more heated this time. “You have to be strong and guard against him.”

  “I also have to go get some ice, or we’re never going to open up.”

  “Allay ...” she warned.

  “I hear what you’re saying, Shock. I agree I can’t trust him. The man I knew was just a persona. But there’s nothing I can do about it now.” I brought up the real problem that was staring me in the face. “I’m more worried about the new ERI machines that can tell demon energy from humans. They’ll be hitting the airports soon, and then we’ll all be in trouble.”

  Dread had showed me the infomercial for the Electromagnetic Resonance Imaging machine that revealed the difference between human and demon auras. Vex had intended to use the invention to prove that his messiah (me) was different from humans. The problem was that they were being mass-produced by the FAA and were going to be rolled out as the latest weapons detectors in security technology. No demons would be able to fly or enter government buildings after that or they would be discovered.

  Shock waved her hand. “They said the same thing about X-rays and DNA genotyping, but nothing came of that panic. People see what they want to see, and our bodies are near-exact replicas of humans. Even when doctors see us heal, they don’t believe their eyes. We’ll get by as we always have.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Even if Shock wasn’t concerned, I was going to find out more. I couldn’t imagine having demons exposed. It would wreak havoc on the world.

  I was crouched down behind the ice maker when the bar phone rang. I extracted myself with a new appreciation for Pepe’s devotion to cleanliness. The damage to my shirt wasn’t too bad.

  I knew who it was the second I heard his voice. “Is this Allay?”

  “Dread,” I said, to alert Shock. Her eyes narrowed in concern. “What do you want?”

  I bit my lip, keeping myself from asking how he was doing. The last time I had seen him, he had looked like a dying lizard, curled up and defenseless. But I didn’t want to remind him of that. Dread was not the kind of guy who revealed weakness to anyone. He had been Vex’s right-hand man for too many centuries and had learned how to be invisible in order to stay out of the line of fire.

  “We have to meet,” he said flatly.

  “Considering that you tried to kill me, I’d be pretty stupid to agree to that.”

  “I’ve solved my problem, Allay. Like you, I took a demon last night. So I have no need to consume your core.”

  “How reassuring.” I wondered who the poor sod was. Not that I could feel self-righteous about it, having killed my own victim last night to replenish my life force for another two centuries. It made me nauseated to think I was just like Dread. He was even worse than his name indicated; he sought to instill fear in people, that special burning doubt that fed Dread’s soul.

  “We need to settle some things,” Dread said impatiently. “Unless you intend to declare war against me?”

  He wanted to see my aura to judge my emotions, and maybe even touch me so he could tell if I was deceiving him or not. That would be dangerous because demons killed other demons by touching them, sucking away all of their energy.

  But I didn’t want to fight Dread, not openly, anyway. He had too many resources at his command—including the entire might and wealth of the Fellowship of Truth as its prophet. I also couldn’t forget that he had imprisoned me in his iron cage and tortured me so I would birth him a demon to consume. He put innocent people, and even his own demon-wife, Lash, in that cage and tormented them to produce the energy he craved. I knew what he was now, and so did everyone else because I had spilled the beans about how he got his kicks. Without his progenitor, Vex, to keep him in line, there was no telling which way Dread would jump.

  That was why I needed to see Dread in person. I had to gauge that for myself.

  “Okay, let’s meet.” I waved to hush Shock’s indignant protest. “But I’m not going to Brooklyn.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.” His chilly tone indicated he didn’t want to discuss what he had done to me on the top floor of the Prophet’s Center. “I’m fairly certain that you’re not going to try to kill me—”

  “Because I could have before I left the Center,” I put in. Now that I knew we were going to negotiate, I wanted to unnerve him.

  I could hear him swallow, but
he didn’t respond to my taunt. “I can be at your bar in fifteen minutes.”

  “No way. You’re not bringing Goad here.” I shuddered at the thought of that slimy bastard in my bar. Vex had kept his henchman away from me for more than a decade—unfortunately now I knew why.

  “I don’t intend to bring Goad. Only Zeal.”

  That meant we’d be three against two, giving us the advantage. I glanced at Bliss. If she was willing to help us. Would she, if it came down to a fight with a sixteen-hundred-year-old demon and his trusty wingman?

  “Okay, I’ll see you here in fifteen.”

  I barely hung up before Shock exclaimed, “Here? You can’t let Dread come here.”

  I shrugged. “It’s better than meeting him out there.” I gestured vaguely. “I know this place. At least this way if things get gnarly, we can bolt upstairs.”

  “You mean the survivors can escape.”

  “Shock, I just went to hell and back to make sure you wouldn’t be killed. I’m not about to endanger you needlessly. We need to know where we stand with Dread now that Vex is gone. We need to make a deal with him, so he thinks we’re more valuable alive than dead.”

  Bliss was sitting on a barstool swinging her foot. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”

  “Naturally you’d say that,” Shock snapped. “You’re practically a carbon copy of Allay right now.”

  “I don’t think so,” Bliss and I replied at the same time. We looked at each other. I was the first to turn away, uncomfortable.

  I put in a quick call to the hospital to find out how Pepe, my janitor, was doing since he had been shot in the drive-by shooting of my bar. His wife was at his side, and she assured me that he was feeling much better since the anesthesia from the surgery had worn off. He spoke to me for a few minutes, thanking me over and over again for taking care of the bills for the doctors and hospitals. Michael had even sent over a Fresh Direct delivery for the family and signed it from me. I felt ashamed knowing that it was my own fault Pepe had been shot. I had been the real target.

  I hung up with Pepe sooner than I wanted when my senses began tingling at the approach of demons. The signatures were strong, breaking through even Shock’s buzzing signature, which rose in intensity until it broke off and started all over again. Now I suddenly began to feel as if the floor were tilting underneath my feet. That was Dread, coming from the south. With him was Zeal, a squeezing sensation. The cumulative effect felt as if I were being pushed down a steep incline. It was much more unpleasant than Dread and Vex together. Vex’s halting sensation had tended to counteract Dread’s slippery one.

  In all that ambient “noise,” Bliss was nonexistent.

  She winked at me when I looked over. “Let’s get the party started.”

  I shook my head. “You better not say a word while he’s here.”

  Bliss shrugged as if she couldn’t care less. At Shock’s insistence, we had lowered and locked the metal shutter from the inside. With the wrought-iron bars over the windows and steel doors, the old bar was as demon-proof as it could be.

  “You stay here, inside the bar.” Shock opened the door and gestured curtly for Bliss to follow her into the tiny foyer at the base of the stairs. This door wasn’t as strong as the outside one upstairs on my apartment. “Take your bat and brace it against the handle.”

  “Shock . . . if Dread wants us dead, he could do it a lot easier without getting his hands dirty.”

  “I’d rather not be stupid.” Her expression was blank.

  I didn’t want to fight her, so I stayed in the bar. But I didn’t get the bat. I would have preferred to open up and present myself to Dread as if I had nothing to fear. That would make him think he had something to fear from me. I was surprised that Shock didn’t know that.

  Things were feeling very different between us. We had both nearly died this week, each in our own way. While it made me want to bust out of my shell to pro-actively take care of myself, she seemed intent on retrenching her defenses.

  “Okay, Allay. You can open up,” Shock called through the door.

  I let the door swing open. Dread was in a male persona, but not that of Prophet Thomas Anderson. His usual guise was an urbane, Ivy-league man in his late fifties with silvery short hair and the lightly bronzed skin of an outdoorsman. I had never fallen for his obvious warmth and glad-handing, because I knew Dread for the demon he was.

  His current persona was much closer to what I would consider his “true” appearance, if physical attributes could indicate character. His eyes were narrow and black, and his features spare and sharp. He wasn’t a big man, and there wasn’t an ounce of extra flesh on his body, as if he ran hot, powered by pure cunning, in the service of his boss, his father, Vex. Now where would he turn?

  He nodded to us all in greeting, saying merely, “Allay.”

  I knew my fear would intoxicate him like nothing else. But I felt as if I were back in his iron cage, as his hips pressed against me, his rigid erection rubbing painfully into me, as he choked the life out of me.

  I retreated from him, since there was no use hiding the lurid orange flush of my fear in my aura, and watched his reaction carefully. Before he had locked me up and tried to kill me, I could have sworn he was crushing on me. He certainly opened up to me about Lash’s abandonment, maybe more than he had to anyone else. I remembered how his voice had broken in long-suppressed rage as he talked about her betrayal after being inseparable for hundreds of years, how she had left him so publicly for Crave, a young incubus posing as a hip jewelry designer.

  Dread remembered, too. He remembered it even as he had nearly raped and killed me, and it had added to his pleasure. If he couldn’t control me, I knew he would enjoy stamping out the one person who had seen him vulnerable.

  He couldn’t hide his reaction, though I think he tried. The green flush of desire stained his varicolored aura. He wanted me to fear him. Though I hadn’t meant to, I’d triggered his sexual cues.

  Shock shot me a startled, reproving look that was all the more embarrassing because I couldn’t explain that I hadn’t meant to arouse Dread.

  So I ignored the unsettling feeling of the floor falling out from under me and turned to Zeal. “Hello, Zeal. Finally we get to meet.”

  “I’ve wanted to,” Zeal said shortly, “but Vex wouldn’t let me.”

  “I guess things will be different now that he’s gone.” I wanted to keep reminding them that when Vex had crossed me, he had ended up dead.

  Zeal frowned slightly. She was also not in her usual persona—the coordinator of ministries for the Fellowship of Truth, the drill sergeant who whipped the masses into a frenzy during their circles and inspirational seminars. As Missy van Dam, she was a doughy middle-aged, rather unattractive woman. But I’d seen her do interviews on television, and she paired her completely unremarkable appearance with such smart, witty observations about life, based on a solid folksy foundation accented by an idiosyncratic mix of clothing and metaphors. Her self-help patter, like much of the church’s message of personal salvation through self-responsibility and enlightenment, was both appealing and unremittingly cheery.

  But right now Zeal was in the guise of a dour, round-faced woman of indeterminate age. There was nothing distinguishable about her—light brown hair, bland eyes, striped tunic shirt, and khaki slacks. I forgot what she looked like the second I looked away. Clearly Zeal’s job here today was to not distract anyone from Dread.

  “Have a seat,” I offered, gesturing at a two-top in the middle of the bar. I had the counter and the long mirror to my right, looking at the barred windows in the back, the most vulnerable part of the building. Shock took up a stance next to the locked door to the foyer, while Bliss sat behind the bar near the phone with instructions to dial 911 if anything “bad” happened. Zeal took a seat behind Dread, keeping her eyes downcast in a nonthreatening way.

  Dread motioned to himself. “As you can see, I wasn’t seriously depleted by Ram.”

  That was a lie. I had
seen him a breath away from death on the floor of his cage. Curled up like a fetus. He had been drained more than Shock, and it had taken days for her to fully recover. Dread was sixteen hundred years old and a very powerful demon; I could honestly attest to that. But even he couldn’t hide the telltale blush of his humiliation.

  He doesn’t want me to tell anyone that Ram almost killed him.

  “So that’s why you’re here. It’s about Ram.” I refused to commit to his version of the story. Not yet. I needed to know why he didn’t want me telling tales. Was it pride or did it have strategic importance? How much could I get from him without pushing him too far?

  “Yes, you know him better than anyone.” Dread’s eyes slid to Bliss. “My men tell me you were in the park with Ram last night. He walked out carrying you, with your new offspring by his side, all the way to this bar.”

  I was glad he skipped over the part about the wild sex I’d had with Ram in the park. Bliss’s name was proof enough of what we’d done. No need for everyone to be talking about it. Though apparently they were.

  “Yes?” I said encouragingly, committing to nothing.

  “So, is he here now?”

  My brows lifted in surprise. “You know Ram isn’t here, or you wouldn’t have come.”

  “In fact,” Dread said, “I got a report of his signature on the Upper West Side not ten minutes ago. Unless he can fly, he won’t be able to get here for another twenty minutes even if you called him the moment we set up this meeting.”

  He was so smug—and so stupid! He didn’t know about Mystify, who could mimic other demons with his signature. Mystify had been born from Ram after Vex’s death; I had watched as the influx of energy had split Ram in two. I would bet my last dollar that Mystify was having brunch on Columbus Avenue while Ram was lurking outside somewhere, probably dying over the fact that I’d let Dread into my bar.

  “Ram left,” I agreed. “And I didn’t call him back. I want to hear what you have to say.”