Personal Demon

by Susan Sizemore

  “I will be far larger and stronger very soon now. As soon as I am complete. Think how magnificent I will be as soon as the true demon me is completely released from the human shell.”

  There was nothing wrong with being human, half or otherwise. She’d never known her father to show any disgust at either part of his ancestry.

  “You’re not the only one in there, are you?”

  The demon laughed, and that wasn’t her father suddenly looking out of James McCoy’s eyes. “We found each other. We will be one.”

  “That’s what you’re telling him, at least,” she told the demon. To her father, she said, “I do not believe you fell for some line about how you would become your true self if you took in a demon spirit. That’s what happened, isn’t it? You read the wrong spell, summoned a creature from the dark dimension, and he conned you.”

  “It was a meeting of like spirits.”

  “You fell for a bujo, James McCoy! You! You’re from a Traveler familia—you pull the cons, you don’t get conned. He’s going to eat your brain, Dad! Not that you don’t deserve it…”

  Ivy’s voice trailed off. The fit of anger only made her feel worse.

  “You look terrible, Lilith,” her father said.

  “I’m about to be murdered by a demon! Of course I look terrible!” A sudden horrible thought made her want to vomit. “You are just going to murder me, right? You don’t have any perv incest plan in the works?”

  The demon looked her over in a way that really made her sick. “Maybe.”

  William Morris wallpaper, green-on-green floral print. Christopher found that he’d dream walked into Ariel’s Pre-Raphaelite room. He took a seat in a tapestry armchair and stared into the fire. That day was going on forever, and he couldn’t get his mind to do anything but wander in circles. All those circles led back to Ivy.

  She was out there, on her own. In danger. Waiting to die.

  He was the one waiting for her to die. She was doing something stupid and brave and what she thought was right.

  The Burne-Jones painting over the mantel caught his attention. The woman in the painting had just moved. He’d caught a shift of color within the frame.

  Probably some of his freakish senses returning.

  Ivy didn’t think him freakish, not as a vampire, not as a man with synesthesia. What an oddly tolerant woman.

  “You won’t find another like her,” the woman in the painting said. “She can live within your dreams, you within hers. Are you really going to let that go?”

  Christopher looked up to meet the blue-green gaze of his vampire maker. She was so much more beautiful than the woman in the painting. “Are you walking in my dreams, Lady Legacy? Or am I merely dreaming?”

  “I’m not asleep,” she said. “It’s not night where I am.”

  London. He missed London, even after so many decades. The city hadn’t been his home in his mortal life, but he’d come to love it in his years companioning the Legacy. Her love of all things British poured into him with her blood.

  “And then I told you England was no longer your home.”

  She stepped out of the painting and took the chair across from him. She wore the medieval draperies of the woman in the painting. The look suited her.

  “Not that I don’t know very well about your sneaking into Manchester every year.”

  “Only for the football,” he said.

  “Hooligan,” she said fondly.

  “Do you talk to Ariel this way?” he asked. “Is this why he has that horrible, sentimental painting? So you can step out of it?”

  “He knows I have a fondness for all things Arthurian, even Victorian nostalgic revival for all things Arthurian. Of course, there never was an Arthur, but there was and is a Guinevere. I gave Ariel the painting. As a reminder.”

  Christopher waited for further explanation. He really wanted the day to be over.

  “I never got the chance to tell you why I do not permit strigoi nests in my territory. Why I keep England free of the curse.”

  “Keeping somewhere free of the curse seems a good enough explanation to me,” he said.

  “You agree that the curse is an evil thing.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then wouldn’t it be wise to break the curse? To seek the holy grail of a cure? Or at least learn to live as we are without doing any more harm than necessary?”

  Christopher looked sharply at the lovely phantasm across from him. “You might have mentioned this to me before.”

  “You might have come home to visit your mother once in a while. I wanted to tell you in person,” she added. “But I don’t think they’re listening here.”

  “Here is inside my imagination.”

  “Do you think they don’t have dream riders trained to monitor even Nighthawks? Do you think the Strigoi Council is that trusting of vampires capable of killing vampires?” She sighed. “Forgive me. I meant to send you to America to be fostered, to Ariel, in fact. But you did not handle the change well. You don’t remember how sick you were.”

  Thankfully. The rebirth and nurturing period after the change was literally a second infancy. After his companion years with the Legacy, Christopher had come to consciousness in Italy early in the twentieth century, nurtured in the household of an ancient Venetian nest. The nest leader was a famous healer but very strict in the ancient ways of the strigoi.

  His second rebirth, the change from vampire into Nighthawk, had taken place in France in 1916. His maker then was a member of the Strigoi Council. Christopher had been immediately inducted into the ranks of the Hunters.

  “I take it that you are a rebel against the Laws of the Blood?” he asked the Legacy.

  “Darling, I was around long before there were any such Laws. They had their time, around the era of the Black Death, but their time is over with. Unfortunately, there are a lot of dead people around who don’t agree with that.”

  “Right.” Christopher stood. “You really are a figment of my imagination—giving me excuses to spare everyone.”

  To save Ivy.

  The Legacy began to fade, doing the Cheshire-cat-smile-going-last thing. “Call me when you have the time,” the fading smile told him.

  chapter forty

  The Master paced around the large open space of the warehouse room. Every now and then, he would circle the prisoner he’d had Jack tie to one of the bare metal columns. He would always go widdershins, in some sort of ritual movement.

  Ivy sat on the floor, leaned against the column, and tried to ignore the demon’s restless movement. Mostly, she leaned her head against the column, eyes closed, looking miserable, and very pale. But she was being anything but quiet.

  Jack watched by the door, his attention divided between his Master and their prisoner. He wanted out. Ivy kept talking in his head. He wanted her to stop. He ought to tell the Master. But he’d always thought she had a beautiful voice. Always wanted her to pay attention to him.

  No. That was Ian. He couldn’t let Ian come awake. Ian was weak. Ian couldn’t stand that place, the things that had been done, needed to be done.

  But Ivy whispered, Come home.

  The Master looked at him, a hot glare that brought Jack to attention. “Where’s John?” he asked.

  “I—I don’t know.” Jack cringed.

  He’d never been this afraid of the Master before. He knew he deserved the demon’s wrath, he deserved whatever the demon wished to do to him. But, for the first time, he dreaded the hot touch, the cruel words.

  The Master threw back his head and howled in fury. Jack dropped to his knees, ears covered. He tried not to cry out when the Master rushed forward to kick him in the chest.

  “Hey!” he heard Ivy yell. “Stop it! Dad! Leave him alone!”

  Ivy feared no one, respected no rank. How Ian had always loved her!

  “Do you want me to find John, Master?” Jack asked, when the demon was through with him.

  The Master stepped back. “No,” he growled. “The sun�
�s almost down. It’s almost time. I’m done with all servants but you.”

  Jack didn’t get his usual glow of pleasure at such words.

  Ian, please come back to yourself.

  “Undress the sacrifice and secure her to the altar,” the Master ordered.

  “Undress?” Ivy asked. She looked around wildly. “Naked? Oh, come on, Dad, it’s freezing in here!”

  chapter forty-one

  About bloody time!” Christopher had never been so relieved for a day to be over. He swung out of bed, while every cell of his being screamed, IVY! LILITH! IVY BAILEY! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? ANSWER ME, WOMAN! IVY DOESN’T SUIT, NEITHER DOES LILITH. ANSWER ME IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE NICKNAMED PICKLES FOREVER!

  “Ivy.” The word came as a rough whisper.

  He couldn’t feel her, hear her, taste her, see her. He couldn’t sense her in any way. Dead? Alive?

  Hiding from him?

  He couldn’t blame her for that.

  But he wouldn’t, couldn’t, let her hide for long.

  But simply standing around screaming for her attention wasn’t doing any good.

  Christopher Bell dressed quickly and went looking for the only mortal who might be able to offer him some help.

  You!” Christopher shouted, as he strode up to the big red-haired woman.

  Selena had pulled a gun on him the moment he’d appeared around the corner. She’d just been getting into her car at the time and instantly put the door between them. Selena was faster than a mortal should be. He noticed that she aimed the large-caliber pistol at his head. The muzzle of the gun seemed like a very large hole in the night. She knew what damage a head shot could do to a vampire, and so did he.

  Christopher had dodged bullets before, but he wasn’t interested in playing games just then. He curbed the impulse to snatch the weapon from her hands and held his own hands up before him. He took a step closer to her driveway. Another. Slow and careful when inside he was screaming to hurry, hurry, hurry.

  “Help me,” he said.

  “Keep away from my cousin, and I’ll consider it,” was her stern answer. “Oh, and get out of Covenant territory.”

  “Help me find Ivy.”

  “I’m working on that myself,” she said.

  “Liar.” He’d found Selena’s house because Ivy had been there before, a memory trail led him there. But he couldn’t sense where Ivy was now. “She’s hiding from me. And don’t tell me she has reason to. I know that already.”

  “I was going to tell you that I don’t have time for old-school vampires right now,” the police detective said.

  Her gun disappeared into a holster under her coat. She ran a hand over her curly red hair. She didn’t take her attention off him for a moment, though. She looked him over with her mind as much as her eyes.

  Christopher held on to his temper and let her in. It seemed like forever before she nodded.

  “If I’m going to help Ivy, I need to interrogate John Wayne Gacy,” Selena said.

  She seemed to think he should recognize the name. “Does he have Ivy?”

  “Gacy’s a dead serial killer. I just got a call that he’s been picked up. I’m on my way to talk to him.”

  Dead. Of course. This Gacy creature was one of the demon’s possessed—he hated to use the word—minions.

  “Take me to this man. Please.” He was desperate enough to say it to this rebellious mortal.

  “He was wounded resisting an arrest. After he killed the first cop, who only wanted to talk to him. This is a police matter,” she said.

  She got into her car and slammed the door behind her.

  He considered ripping the passenger-side door off.

  But realized that wasn’t what she wanted.

  He took Selena’s hint when she backed her car very slowly out of the drive. She wasn’t going to take a vampire to an official police interview with a man that was as much a victim as he was a murderer. She wasn’t going to be responsible for what a vampire might do to get at the truth.

  But if a vampire happened to follow her. If the vampire happened to snatch this minion from her and break into his mind—

  Oh, they were a tricky lot, this family of Ivy’s.

  Avert your eyes,” Ivy said to the creature wearing her father. “And get your hand off there.”

  She knew that Ian hadn’t tied her as tightly as he should have, but she wasn’t sure she could work her way out of the bindings in time. Not with the demon continuing to stand over the table she’d been fastened to—cold-linoleum-topped table at that. No velvet hangings and marble altar for this black-magic sacrifice. Though marble would be as cold as the cheap linoleum, she supposed.

  At least Ian/Jack had placed a lot of candles around the room and was going around lighting them. The ritual fire added a bit of light, but no warmth that reached her.

  The demon kept looking at her, touching her. Gloating. Anticipating. Triumphant.

  She almost expected him to start monologuing his secret plan to rule the world while they waited for the moon to rise and the ceremony to begin. But so far he’d refrained from going that far into evil-overlord mode.

  “The silver cup. The basin. The knife. Bring them,” the demon said when some inner signal told him it was time to begin.

  Ian, Ian, Ian—help me. Help yourself.

  “Stop talking to my servant,” the demon told her. “He’s completely mine.” He looked across her to where Ian stood holding a small silver basin cupped in his hands. “Soon, you will be my son. Your mortality will be over.”

  “Having a daughter isn’t good enough?” Ivy asked.

  “No.”

  “Thanks for the rejection.”

  The demon applied the tip of a hot claw to her forehead. She bit back a scream. “Shut up.”

  Then the demon said something ritualistic in what sounded like Orcish, and showed her a large silver goblet. Ancient. Covered in runes and sigils of deep, evil purpose. The tarnished thing was in need of a good polishing. Blue energy pulsed up over the rim. Dirty or not, the cup already contained a lot of magic.

  “It awaits a catalyst.”

  She knew what that catalyst would be. “Hope you choke on it,” she said. “Dad.”

  The demon held a short, sharp stone knife up before her eyes. She gasped. At first she thought it was the one she’d been given by the good witches who’d sent her to kill her father. Oh, the name had never explicitly been spoken, but everyone knew who it had to be—Aunt Cate, Uncle Crispin, Selena. Ivy.

  Obi Wan’s scamming Luke into killing Darth Vader for him had nothing on her familia’s scheming.

  Damn it. Ivy didn’t want to die. She wanted to plague Christopher Bell for all eternity in her physical form. Now she was going to have to try to haunt him.

  “Ghost of girlfriend past,” she muttered.

  She couldn’t help but think of Christopher as the knife sliced deeply first into one of her wrists, then the other. Think of him, yes. But she fought down the urge to cry out to him for help.

  Drawing the demon’s attention wouldn’t do any good at that moment. She had to let it all just happen.

  She didn’t try to look at the pair standing beside her, but she felt her lifeblood flowing into the cup for the demon and into the basin for Ian.

  If there was a rescue party on the way, she hoped it would arrive before she bled out completely.

  chapter forty-two

  Christopher’s gaze cleared. Buzzing orange of disinfectant. Silk, silk drip through intravenous tubes. A hospital room. Why was he in a hospital room? Oh, yes. He’d come in after Selena, thrown everyone out, and grabbed the patient.

  “The house. I have to get to the house.”

  People were banging on the door Selena had blocked to give him a moment. There was shouting out in the hall.

  “Tell me,” Selena said. “Let him go, first. Gently,” Selena added. Her hand was on the back of Christopher’s neck, the tip of a blade resting gently there. “You are not going to kil
l him no matter what he did.”

  Her precautions to protect this broken mortal were very annoying. “You aren’t strong enough or fast enough to sever my spine,” Christopher told her.

  “Of course not. The knife’s slathered in poison.”

  “I’m not your enemy at the moment.”

  The man he was holding up by the front of his hospital gown moaned. Christopher dropped him back onto the bed. Not an IV needle stuck into him was disturbed. Christopher had no urge to kill the poor broken bastard, now that he knew everything that was in his thoughts and memories. Though it might be doing him a favor.

  “House. Brick house. Two-story. Basement.” He knew where he had to go. He closed his eyes and sent what he saw behind them into her head.

  Then he leapt out the fourth-floor window. Selena and the police could follow him to the demon’s hideout at mortal pace. He had to get to Ivy right now.

  No one.

  Nothing. Empty of life.

  Christopher stood in the empty house. He turned and turned and turned. Images flew at him. Colors flashed. Sounds blinked and burned. Memories stabbed out of shadows. Ghosts were shadows. Demon stench slithered across the walls.

  He was surrounded. But nothing real was in this house.

  No one was here. Ivy had never been here.

  But this was the only place the possessed man knew.

  He paused in his turning. Sniffed.

  Something like Ivy had been here. What did that mean?

  Jack had told him he’d bring him to—

  The memory surfacing in Christopher’s mind hadn’t been in John’s consciousness, but it had been there. But then, there had been two men in the poor creature’s mind. Lots of things were fractured and confused in there. The detail about Jack floated unhelpfully up now.

  Jack. Jack. Jack.

  Why did it always come back to Jack the Ripper?

  He’d taken Jack out of the world once—what was he doing back now?

  Going to kill the woman Christopher loved if he didn’t get to him and the demon soon. If they hadn’t done it already.