Me, I’m a Guardian hunter. I’m very, very good at tracking people down, especially criminals. Equally good at dealing with them after I found them. Not surprising that I ended up a cop.
My boss is a hardass New Yorker who would scoff at the very idea of magic, but he’s learned to send me out to the weird deaths, like this one. Five smiling corpses. No signs of violence.
It could just be coincidence—street people aren’t the healthiest cohort—but my Guardian instincts were screaming. “Have you noticed that they’ve been getting younger? The first guy must have been in his seventies. Each has been a few years younger than the one before. This poor devil is in his late fifties.”
Jamal considered. He’s no Guardian, but he’s a damned good cop. “Probably coincidence, but if some dealer has been going around handing out high-dose samples, they might be taking out the weak more quickly.”
“It will be interesting to see the tox report.” I checked my watch. It was midevening, and technically I should have been off duty two hours ago. Maybe after we cleared up this scene, Jamal and I could grab some Tex-Mex at the restaurant down the block.
I was about to get back to work when a very, very bad feeling struck me. The kind where you drop everything and run.
I didn’t quite do that, but I said, “Jamal, I have to be somewhere else ASAP. Can you wrap up here and get a ride back to the station with one of the uniforms?”
He gave me a quizzical glance, but said only, “Sure. See you tomorrow.”
We’ve been partners a long time. No need to explain things. I pivoted and headed for my car, wondering what could have set off such loud alarm bells.
I PARKED RIGHT in front of my East Side destination—a Guardian talent that’s useful in New York is being able to find parking when needed—then took the steps of the neat brownstone three at a time. I felt as antsy as if I were the only one who could save a room full of kindergartners from certain death. Instead, I was responding to the silent distress of Bethany Sterling, one of my favorite people in the world.
Bethany swung the door to her apartment open before I could knock. No surprise there since she’s also a Guardian. She looked her normal self—petite and straight-backed despite her years, her silver hair pulled into an elegant twist. But her deep-set blue eyes showed the anxiety that had brought me running.
Giving thanks that she seemed all right, I asked, “Lady Beth, what’s wrong?”
She smiled wryly as she stood back and ushered me in. “Apparently I wasn’t shielding my worries as well as I thought. You always could read me better than anyone else.” She closed the door behind me. “You’re worried, too. Tell me about it while I make a nice pot of tea.”
Briefly I described the dead street people while Bethany filled her electric kettle. It’s one of the British types that serious tea drinkers use because it heats water to boiling in seconds. After pushing the on button, she stood on tiptoe for the tin of my favorite Darjeeling tea. I reached over her head to take it from the shelf.
She isn’t a lady in the sense of an English title, but she was named for an ancestor called Lady Bethany Fox, so my brother, Charlie, and I like to call her Lady Beth. Not only was she English born, but the title suited her classy nature.
She warmed the teapot, then added tea leaves and poured boiling water on them. “I suspect our worries are related, David. Early this morning I sensed a strange, menacing energy sweeping into the city, and it’s getting stronger. Something is very wrong.”
“And I have the corpses to prove it. Any idea what the cause might be?”
She set out two teacups and produced a cookie jar filled with her rich, crumbly scones. As she set them on a dainty china plate, she said, “I think a demon has come to New York.”
I experienced a moment of severe cognitive dissonance at the contrast between the sweet silver-haired widow and the words she’d just said. But though Bethany Sterling was indeed sweet, she was a Guardian hunter like me, with special abilities to track the ungodly and enforce justice.
I glanced across the kitchen at the old photo that hung over the neat computer table. It showed a young Bethany dressed in parachute gear early in World War II. She’d trained as a secret agent and parachuted behind Nazi lines in France, single-handedly freed a jail full of Maquis, and done a lot of other heroic things.
But she hadn’t managed the rescue that mattered most—her equally young husband had been a Guardian healer, like my brother, Charlie, and he died in a prisoner-of-war camp, treating fellow prisoners right up to the end.
So Bethany Malmain Sterling was one formidable woman even at her present advanced age, though she refused to divulge the actual number of her years. She’d also, in her youth, been one very hot babe, with cool blond hair and dangerous blue eyes. I wish I’d known her then. But I’m damned lucky to know her now.
“A demon,” I repeated. “This is new? The city has plenty of them, starting on Wall Street.”
“This isn’t a joke, David,” she said with mild reproof. “The—entity—is no metaphor, but a malicious noncorporeal being. A demon that feeds on human energy. Have all the victims been male?” When I nodded, she said, “So it’s a succubus.”
“A succubus,” I repeated. “Ooooo-kay. At least that would explain why the men were smiling.”
She judged that the tea had steeped long enough and poured the steaming liquid into the mugs. Then, knowing me, she added a dollop of rare and expensive Highland single malt to my tea. “There are worse ways to die, but I imagine that most of the creature’s victims would prefer to live.”
I took a long, appreciative swig of tea and whiskey. “Is there any way to get rid of this demon, or will it keep feeding indefinitely?”
“I don’t know. I was about to do a search on magematrix.net when you thundered in here.”
“Good idea.” I took my mug and the plate of scones and followed her to her desk.
She opened her laptop and used her fingerprint ID to enter magematrix.net. The site is a very, very private database and social network for Guardians, who are spread all over the world these days. I don’t think there is a better source of information on magic and impossible events anywhere—though I’m not sure. Any equivalent stash of knowledge would be just as secret.
Lady Beth typed “succubus” into the search engine, then scrolled through the results. “Not a very large entry,” she murmured. “Some of this data goes back centuries.”
I peered over her shoulder to read. The oldest entries had been translated into modern English, with links to the original text if someone wanted to consult that. “So these demons steal human life force through dream sex until they become powerful enough to acquire physical bodies.”
She clicked through to a section of original text. “This seventeenth-century report claims that sex demons are escapees from hell. They long to acquire human bodies because that makes the pleasure of their wickedness so much more powerful.”
“How do we get rid of this one?”
“A sufficiently powerful mage might be able to dismiss a sex demon from the body it’s taken over, but there are no details.” Bethany started clicking links at the bottom of the page to see if they led anywhere interesting.
“So maybe we could do an exorcism, if we knew how. This is beginning to sound like a low-rent horror film.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction,” she murmured. “The earliest account says that when the demon is dismissed from the body it inhabits, it’s sucked down to hell forever.”
“No way of checking that part, of course.”
Lady Beth leaned back in her computer chair and eyed the computer thoughtfully. “Our ancestors were happy to assume that demons came from hell, but today we want different explanations. These beings are quite rare. Are they space aliens? From another dimension that lies alongside this one? Or have we been watching too much Star Trek?”
“Probably,” I said pragmatically. “A parallel dimension is just as much jargon as saying that t
hese critters are from hell. Let’s bag this one before we worry about tagging it.”
Her silver brows arched. “Time to scout out the demon?”
“The sooner the better,” I agreed.
Bethany nodded and swiveled her chair to face me so we could hold hands. We always did this for particularly difficult cases. As I touched her thin, slightly arthritic fingers with mine, I felt energy spark between us. It’s been amazing to work with Lady Beth. Certain Guardian talents follow gender, and most hunters are male. But Bethany could hunt with the best of us.
I closed my eyes and visualized a map of the city. The mental image was like an aerial photo, enhanced by my own experience of many of those streets. When I had visited the scenes of the suspicious deaths, I’d picked up traces of disturbing energy, and with Bethany’s help, that came sharply into focus. “There’s a nasty, twisted red energy spike not far away. Can you feel it?”
“That’s our demon,” Lady Beth said, all cool, focused hunter. “And she’s become very powerful. Let me see if I can learn more…”
I felt my partner’s energy stretch out as delicately as a budding flower—and faster than thought, her probe was seized like a swimmer chomped by a killer crocodile. Lady Beth tried to yank free, but the scarlet energy roared hungrily along the trail and stabbed into us like a lightning bolt. Bethany screamed and I blacked out, every cell in my body shocked, as if I were being electrocuted.
I regained awareness to find that we’d both been blasted to the floor. Bethany lay beside me, her face paper white and blood splashed around her. “Lady Beth!”
As I scrambled up, I saw that the blood was pouring from a vicious slash in her left arm. I grabbed a tea towel and turned it into an impromptu tourniquet. At the same time, I gave a furious mental shout. “Charlie!”
My younger brother, Charlie, is my best friend, except for Lady Beth. He’s also the most powerful Guardian healer in New York, and he works as an ER resident in a hospital only a few blocks away.
My mind touched his and I felt his fatigue. He was just leaving work after a twenty-four-hour shift, and more than ready to get home to his apartment and his gorgeous Guardian fiancée. But he came alert when we connected. Sensing his question, I shot back, “Lady Beth, her place. She’s hurt bad!”
It wasn’t really telepathy, and not really words, but we knew each other so well that he understood the gist of it. “On my way!” echoed in my mind.
Most Guardians have at least a little healing power, and I’m no exception. I used what talent I had while desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood. Bethany was cold and shocky, and it looked like a sizable chunk of flesh had been torn out of her arm. Was the demon an eater of human flesh?
Her lashes fluttered up. She looked so damnably frail. “Don’t worry, David,” she whispered, her voice scarcely audible. “I’ve had a good life.” It sounded perilously like dying words. “We’ve made a good team.”
“Damn it, you can’t die on me, Bethany Sterling,” I swore. “Don’t you dare die!”
Luckily, Charlie arrived then. Like me, he had a key to Bethany’s house since we’re the closest thing she has to family in New York. He’d brought a backpack of first aid supplies with him, but his first move was to drop to his knees by Lady Beth and put one hand on her wounded arm and the other on her forehead.
I could feel the healing energy like a tidal wave of white light. At first it was a struggle, light against dark. I sensed the moment when his healing drove off the shadow of death. He gave a ragged sigh and sat back on his heels as he reached for his backpack. “What happened?”
I gave him a quick rundown of the situation while he cleaned and bandaged the wound. “Nasty,” he said. “We’re lucky Lady Beth is still with us. I want to check her into the hospital overnight at least. At her age, this is a dangerous injury.”
“Nonsense, Charles,” Bethany said in a surprisingly strong voice. “Hospitals make me ill. I’ll stay here, thank you very much. A cup of tea will fix me up quite nicely.”
I put an arm around her shoulders to gently help her to a sitting position. Her bones were as delicate as a songbird’s. “Maybe we should take you there, just in case.”
There was nothing wrong with her willpower. She fixed my brother with a basilisk stare. “I’m in better shape than you, Charles. You saved my life, for which I’m suitably grateful, but you’re so tired you’re a menace to society until you get at least twelve hours’ sleep. Now give me some nice drug to dull the pain and go home.”
Unlike me, Charlie knows when argument is pointless. “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly. “But I want you to stay with her tonight, Dave. Just in case.”
“Will do.” Not that he needed to ask. No way would I leave Bethany alone after an attack by a demon.
Charlie zipped up his first aid gear. His scrubs were bloody, and not just from Lady Beth’s injury. Wearily he got to his feet, almost falling. I caught his arm. “I’ll call you a cab.” He didn’t argue about that, either.
I helped Bethany onto the sofa and refilled the electric teakettle. Since Charlie was gray with fatigue, I carried his backpack outside. “Thanks for coming,” I said as we reached the sidewalk. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“Lady Beth won’t be with us forever, Dave,” my brother said quietly. “She’s very old. If you hadn’t bandaged her up and called me, we could have lost her tonight.”
“I know,” I said brusquely, not wanting to think of a world where there wasn’t a Bethany Sterling to laugh with. I’d had my share of age-appropriate girlfriends, but none were as easy to be with as Lady Beth. Or as much fun. “But this wasn’t her time.”
“For which I’m glad. But her time can’t be too far off.”
I knew that, just as I knew that her inevitable death would devastate me. But pain was better than not caring.
A cab turned down the quiet residential street, and I raised an arm to flag it down. My Guardian abilities included summoning taxis as well as finding parking spots. When I need a cab, the nearest available cab will suddenly decide to turn my way. Clearly, I was born to be a New Yorker.
After sending Charlie home, I climbed the steps back to the brownstone. I’d make Bethany her tea, then roll out a sleeping bag in her bedroom so I’d know if she took a turn for the worse. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d stayed here.
Lady Beth had not only recovered enough to make a pot of tea, but she’d also changed into a fancy black sweat suit with sequins scattered around the shoulders and long sleeves that covered her injured arm. It was a dressy version of the sweats she wore when we exercised together. A couple of times a week, we’d go to Battery Park at dawn, summer or winter. She’d walk along briskly while I ran, circling back regularly to catch up with her again. When we’d both had our fill of exercise, we’d grab bagels or croissants or a hot breakfast. Good times.
I frowned. “What are you up to, Bethany?”
I can make hardened drug dealers tremble with that frown, but she just said calmly, “We have to go after the demon tonight, David. The assault created a link between her and me. She is preparing to go out and feast on as many lives as she can claim before she’s stopped.”
“She almost killed you!” I exclaimed. “You’re in no shape to go after a demon. Get some rest. I can find her without your help.”
“You can find her, but I don’t think you have the power to take her down on your own. Neither do I, but together—we have a chance.” Bethany poured tea, this time without adding any single malt. “We must act quickly. If the entry on magematrix.net is correct, there will be many more deaths by morning, because killing is ecstasy for a sex demon who has taken on flesh.”
I felt a cold chill, the kind that says something really bad was about to go down. “Do you think that stealing high-octane Guardian energy from us gave her what she needed to get a body?”
“I believe that’s exactly what happened,” Bethany said soberly. “Now she can cause tremendous carnage,
and we’re the only people who might be able to stop her.”
In other words, duty called. Lady Beth was a fragile, precious old lady, and every instinct I have screamed to protect her. But she was as much a hunter as I am, and we were both sworn to stop evil whenever possible.
“Okay, we’ll go get her.” I pulled my gun from the shoulder holster and did a ritual check to be sure it was in firing condition. It always was. “Will regular bullets stop her? Silver bullets? Something else?”
“Her body is human and vulnerable. It’s her mental power that is dangerous.” Bethany bit her lip. “She will have acquired the body of a beautiful, desirable woman. You might have trouble bringing yourself to attack her.”
My mouth hardened. I take no pleasure in the prospect of killing people, especially not a woman, but I’d do what was necessary. “Is there any way to drive her out of the body she’s taken over so the original owner can regain possession?”
Bethany sighed, her years showing in the near translucence of her pale skin. “I simply don’t know, David. All we can do is try.”
I nodded. Regular criminals might be scumbags, but they were scummy in human ways. Metaphysical threats like succubi were largely unknown quantities. If either of us survived tonight, we’d have new information for the database on magematrix.net. The deep sense of dread I was feeling suggested that survival was a very open question.
I escorted Lady Beth outside to my car. As we belted ourselves in, I studied my companion’s profile. She looked calm, relaxed.
She looked like a woman who was prepared to die.
Once again, I fought down the impulse to protect her. We were equals, and she had as much right to face danger as I did. The excitement of the hunt was beginning to rise in me, and from the brightness of her eyes, the same was true for my companion. We hunt because warrior skills are always needed, and we’re careful how we use them. But there’s nothing wrong with enjoying ourselves in the process.
I started the car, then closed my eyes to tune into the demon’s exact location. “Brooklyn, right?”
Songs of Love & Death Page 40