Demon Mania (Demon Frenzy Series Book 2) Page 13

  “I thought you said he was a friendly guy,” Amy said. “He sure doesn’t look warm and cuddly to me.”

  “Maybe he needs to get a couple drinks in him before he loosens up,” Lucky said.

  “This has stupid written all over it in great big letters,” Nyx said. “Let’s get outta here.”

  “We’re armed too,” Lucky said. He got out and walked up to Sam with his hand extended. “Hey there, pardner, it’s good to see you again,” he said.

  Sam just stared at him and didn’t accept the hand. The others got out reluctantly, and Sam said, “Walk in front of me.”

  As they headed toward the hacienda, Joe pointed at the roof. It was flat with a concrete parapet around its edges, and three rifle barrels were poking out through the decorative gaps in the concrete.

  “I told you this was stupid,” Nyx said.

  Sam ushered them through one of the two back doors into a sparsely furnished room that smelled old and dusty. The windows were shuttered on the inside with steel plates, and the only light came from one dim lamp. They followed him down a dim corridor to a shut door. He tapped on it, waited for an inaudible reply, then opened it and motioned them inside.

  The large room reminded Amy of a poor man’s version of Sandoval’s study. The windows were shuttered and two floor lamps gave off just barely enough light to discern a few old books and odd objects on the wooden shelves lining the walls. Like the rest of the house, the room smelled of ancient dust.

  There was a large desk, and Bill sat beside it in a heavy wooden armchair with his walking stick lying across his lap. He was wearing his three-piece gray suit but not his fedora. His old face, white as a skull, wore no expression, and his nickel eyes regarded them as impassively as the metal they resembled.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  There were five chairs waiting for them, all facing his, but none of them sat.

  “Amy, Shane, Nyx, Lucky, and Bloody Joe,” Bill said. “The only survivors of Blackwood.”

  “How do you know us?” Amy asked.

  “Neoma told me all about you. She sent me regular reports.”

  “You knew Neoma?” Amy asked.

  “She became my ward at the age of five, and I raised her till she was eighteen. I taught her everything she knew.”

  Amy stared at him in disbelief.

  “She was especially enthusiastic about you, Mrs. Malone,” he said. “Or may I call you Amy? Neoma said you had remarkable innate powers, which remained largely untapped despite her efforts.”

  “You put some kind of spell on me while I was sitting in that restaurant,” Amy said, “and four days later my daughter was kidnapped. Are you going to claim that was some sort of coincidence?”

  “No. A coincidence is the remarkable occurrence of two or more events at the same time apparently by chance, and there’s nothing remarkable about the juxtaposition of these two events and very little chance was involved. I’m here because the Church of Love and Serenity is here, and I intend to kill its leader, and since you also live in the area it’s by no means odd that I should bump into you. The church is a cell of the Lost Society, and no doubt long before I spotted you in Silver Stone the Society was already planning to kidnap you and your daughter. So you see, the only real coincidence involved is the fact that you moved to a place not thirty miles away from a Society headquarters. Or is that truly a coincidence? I believe you’ve had some small experience with the powerful spiritual and occult forces that to a large extent control our lives, so you may well wonder if they drew you to this remote place.”

  “Why did they kidnap Emily?” Amy asked.

  “Because of your genetic gift. They assume your daughter has inherited your powers, and they intend to raise her as their own. They’ll brainwash her from the cradle and foster her occult talents, and they anticipate by the time she’s sixteen or seventeen she’ll be the most powerful magus in their midst. As for you, Mrs. Malone, they want your eggs. Jeshua Godson, the leader of the church, is far more adept at breeding human-demon hybrids than Sandoval ever was. Nephilim, as they’re called. His oldest Nephilim are just ten years old, but many of them are already taller than most men and far more powerful and cunning. Some of them are able to pass for human, and they can be seen roaming around these parts doing Godson’s bidding. Extraordinary human genes are needed to breed good Nephilim, and your genes are quite extraordinary.”

  “Then she’s still alive?” Amy asked.

  “I expect she’s alive and perfectly healthy. They intend to treat her like a princess and make sure no harm ever comes to her.”

  “What do you want with us?” Joe asked.

  “I have just thirteen operatives here and can use some more. I’m very cautious about bringing new people in, so I wanted to watch you for a while first. I sent Sam to offer you a patch of this property that I’m leasing, so I could keep an eye on you and assess your skills. They’re not very impressive, I must say. My people are better trained, so if you come in with me you’re going to have to work pretty hard.”

  There was an unnatural calm about Bill, like the calm of a junkie in a heroin haze. He sat perfectly still, scarcely blinking, and spoke in a quiet monotone that conveyed no emotion or urgency.

  “We prefer working alone,” Joe said.

  “Two of Godson’s long adobe buildings are filled with minor demons—listeners, jabber-suckers, grimsnuffers, herky-jerkies, babbleboons, harpies, and the like,” Bill said. “The other two are filled with Nephilim, intelligent and ruthless creatures as powerful as Hercules. The big round fortress, which they call the Citadel, is filled with his human disciples. These are his elite, the cream of the crap. He has branches of his church all over the country, and they mostly attract damn fools who believe they can bring about world peace by eating brown rice and having a lot of sex, but the leaders of these branches pick out the very best of their recruits, those with a keen interest in the occult and absolutely no interest in conventional morality, and they send them here to Godson.

  “So tell me, Bloody Joe, what can the five of you do against all of them?”

  “Tell me what nineteen of us can do,” Joe said.

  “Eighteen highly skilled ops led by a powerful magus with a well-conceived plan can do a great deal,” Bill said. “You need to make up your minds now. You can go outside and talk it over, but don’t leave the property until you’ve made your decision.”

  Sam was waiting outside the door, and he escorted them through the dark, dusty house to the back door. Three men and a woman were waiting for them outside, all with the stony faces of assassins and rifles in their hands. Sam and the other four followed them to Joe’s vehicle and stood around it in a circle watching them after they’d climbed inside.

  “I think the message is pretty clear,” Shane said. “Either we join them or we won’t be leaving this place alive. Those gunmen are still up there on the roof.”

  “This takes the all-time suck award,” Nyx said.

  “But Bill has a point,” Lucky said. “What are five of us going to do alone?”

  “I just want to get my baby back,” Amy said. “I don’t think five of us can do that alone, so I’m going to join up with him and I’m hoping Shane will too. But the rest of you shouldn’t have to. I’m going to go back in and tell him if I join up he has to let the rest of you leave without any trouble.”

  “We’re all in this together,” Lucky said. “I don’t like this, but I won’t turn tail and run away.”

  “I don’t think he plans to let us run even if we want to,” Joe said.

  “Fuck this,” Nyx said. “He looks like an old junkie pervert to me. I’d like to know what kind of plan he thinks he has. The Lost Society will cut him in half.”

  “He may be an old junkie, but he did a pretty good job of invading our camp last night,” Lucky said. “Maybe he has a plan and maybe he doesn’t, but I sure as hell don’t have one. Does anyone else?”

  “Nope,” Joe said.

  “I don’
t like the looks of these fucking goons around here,” Nyx said.

  “Well, if you’re going into battle you don’t want to do it with choirboys beside you,” Lucky said.

  “I’m in of course,” Shane said.

  “So’m I,” Lucky said.

  “I’m in too,” Joe said. “I was getting tired of being a leader.”

  “You assholes are gonna get me killed,” Nyx said. “I mean, like, I don’t even have a car to drive home in.”

  ***

  Bill made them repeat their Unseen oath, and then they had to kneel in front of his wooden armchair so he could touch the tops of their heads with his walking stick to dub them.

  “The long shed is a bunkhouse,” he said. “That’s where my ops sleep, and you’ll bunk there with them. It’s not air conditioned, but I’m not running a fucking hotel here. The building next to it is the mess hall, and that’s where you’ll eat.”

  “We’ll sleep at our own campground,” Joe said.

  He and Bill stared at each other for a while, each one too stubborn to blink. Finally Bill shrugged and said, “I guess you can watch the back of the property for a night or two, until the show gets started. But that’ll be soon, and in the meantime I want you here at a moment’s notice if there’s any trouble. There’s a drivable path through the property, so keep off the roads.”

  He removed five cellphones from his desk drawer. “If there’s any trouble call me on these. My number’s already in them, also Sam’s number and Azura’s. They’re my lieutenants and you can trust them with any problem. Now go out back and train with the others until noon, and after you have your lunch you’ll train some more. You need to be in fighting trim very soon because Godson’s demons will be arriving before long. You stay here, Amy—you can join the others in the mess hall at noon.”

  “What do you want with her?” Shane asked.

  “Amy’s occult powers are probably more useful than her fighting skills. I intend to sharpen them.”

  “Nyx has skills too,” Amy said.

  “I’m aware of that. I’ll work with her later.”

  “You can kiss my sweet ass later,” Nyx said.

  Bill gave her a tight grim smile, and they all left the room except for Amy and Shane. “If Amy stays, I do too,” he said.

  “I’ll be all right, sweetheart,” Amy said, and she gave him her best husband-controlling look until he turned and left.

  She sat down in one of the five chairs that faced Bill. “I don’t buy your story,” she said. “I still think you had something to do with the kidnapping.”

  Bill shrugged. “Godson kidnapped your daughter, and Godson is my enemy. I intend to kill him and help you get her back. What more can I say?”

  “You put some sort of spell on me in the restaurant,” she said. “I began to spirit-travel even though I hadn’t been able to for a long time.”

  “Yes. When I spotted you in Silver Stone I didn’t recognize your face, though Neoma had described you clearly enough. But I recognized your spiritual fingerprint—I recognized your occult powers—and it occurred to me you must be Amy Malone. So I followed you to the restaurant and sat in the parking lot while I verified your identity. Would you like to know how I did that?”

  He gave her a tight-lipped smile, his metal eyes staring at hers, but she didn’t answer.

  “I spoke with Neoma,” he said. “Your old friend.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes, I’ve spoken with her many times since her death. If you stay with me long enough maybe I’ll teach you to speak with the dead as well. Though I don’t think Neoma will be available for conversation much longer. She says she’s in a better place now and involved in much more fascinating activities, so she’s no longer very interested in the distasteful events here on earth. You see, it’s much easier to talk with the newly dead, before they lose their interest in this sorry-ass excuse for a world. But of course even a child can talk with those wretched spirits who’ve lost their way and still roam this world haunting houses and the like.”

  “Like spirit-travelers who get lost?” Amy asked.

  “Yes, like those and like some others who get so attached to this world they can’t find their way into the afterlife. It’s easy for the dead to become lost or stranded. But Neoma has been gone a long while now and is losing her attachment to this world. I probably wouldn’t have been able to speak with her at all except she has some sort of odd affection for you and still has some concern for your wellbeing.

  “The dead can see our world only dimly, but because they see it from such a great distance they can see a much wider span of time than the thin slice we see, the little slice we call the present. Neoma told me she saw danger in your near future and said you’d be needing your powers again, so I came into the restaurant and spoke a few words to help you unlock them.”

  “Why didn’t you just warn me?”

  “I didn’t know what sort of danger you’d be facing, and besides I didn’t want to make myself any more visible than necessary. Godson still doesn’t know I’m here, and I don’t want him to know until the time is right.”

  “So Godson knows you?”

  “Oh yes. I was his teacher. His real name is James Hobson, and he was born in Tampa. His father was a plumber who specialized in toilets, though I doubt he tells his disciples that.”

  “You were his teacher and now you want to kill him?”

  “Yes, and he’d very much like to do the same favor for me. We’ve been enemies for many years now.”

  “So for you this is a grudge match?”

  “Yes, among other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “Books and money. Society cells hide some of their loot in overseas accounts, but there are risks to that, so they keep a lot of it tucked away at their compounds in cash or gold. After we destroy Godson we’ll raid his coffers. My ops, including you and your friends, will get a nice cut and I’ll keep the rest.”

  “So your people are mercenaries?”

  “Yes. They kill for money and you kill to get your daughter back, so we all have our motives, don’t we?”

  “You said books too.”

  “Yes. Godson has the second-finest collection of grimoires and occult treatises I’ve ever known about. I know this because he stole them from me. These few you see on the shelves are the only ones I have left. I want my books back much more than I want the money. They hold secrets and powers you can’t begin to imagine. By the way, the finest collection I’ve ever known about was owned by Miguel Sandoval, and unfortunately they burned with his house.”

  His metal eyes were watching her closely, and she wondered if he somehow knew she had lit the match that set them on fire. She looked away from them to the walking stick lying across his lap. It looked expensive and handmade, the wood gleaming with black lacquer with a shiny silver tip at the bottom and an elaborately embossed silver head at the top.

  “We’ve wasted too much time on talk.” He pulled a cellphone from his jacket pocket and made a call. “Come to my study,” he said.

  A minute later the door opened and a young woman walked in. She looked about eighteen and was exceptionally beautiful with sky-blue eyes that seemed especially pale in contrast to her long black hair. She wore light blue silk pajamas that clung to her slim graceful figure.

  “Azura, this is Amy Malone,” Bill said. “You know what to do.”

  Azura stood facing Amy from about seven feet away and held up her left hand with the palm facing out. She smiled shyly and said, “Hold out your hand like mine. Then push against mine. Telekinetically, I mean.” She fumbled the word a bit.

  Amy held out her right palm and quietly chanted. Something fell off one of the bookshelves, and Bill said, “Damn it, go to the training room before you break everything I own.”

  Amy followed her down a corridor, wondering how this beautiful and seemingly friendly young woman could belong with this gang of stony-eyed mercenaries. Azura led her to a large room as dim and dus
ty as the rest. There was no furniture except for some wrestling mats on the floor. Four of the mats were shoved together in the middle of the floor, and Azura stood on one of them and told Amy to face her from about eight feet away.

  “Try again,” she said. “Look at my hand and press against it.”

  Amy chanted again and tried to summon her power, but she found herself distracted by Azura’s incredible blue eyes. They looked more like sky than flesh. She looked oddly familiar, but surely if Amy had met her before she would have remembered those eyes.

  “Look at my hand, not my eyes,” Azura said.

  Amy felt something pressing her hand back and she pushed against the pressure.

  “That’s good,” Azura said. “Keep it up.”

  Her hand would press forward and Amy’s hand would be pressed back, then Amy would press Azura’s hand back. Soon Azura put up her other hand, and they were pressing each other’s hands back and forth in a sort of swimming motion. It was pleasant and soothing, like pushing against a big soft balloon and having it push back.

  “Get ready to break your fall,” Azura said. “I’m going to push you over.”

  The balloon suddenly pushed against Amy’s whole body, and she fell backwards onto the mat. As she was getting up she felt the same force pull her hands, and this time she tumbled face forward.

  “Now do it to me,” Azura said.

  Amy got up feeling slightly dizzy. She pushed as hard as she could against Azura, who was still eight feet away, and Azura fell softly backwards.

  “That’s good,” she said as she was getting up. “Now pull me forward.”

  Amy concentrated on Azura’s hands and pulled her own hands quickly back, making Azura tumble forward to her knees.

  “That’s good,” Azura said. “Now learn to block it. In three seconds I’m going to try to push you back, and you try to block me. One, two, three…”

  Amy pressed the palms of her hands forward against the force she felt pushing her back, but Azura was stronger and she toppled backwards anyway. Soon they were engaged in an intense wrestling match, though they stayed a good distance apart. Amy felt as if she were standing neck deep in water that was churning first one direction and then another. She had to keep pushing her telekinetic power against a competing force that constantly changed direction, making it extremely difficult to stay upright.