Sins of the Demon

by Diana Rowland

  I stopped about a dozen feet from her. Last thing I wanted to do was tangle with a blood-covered bitch who was high on who-knew-what. “Make what stop? Come over here and have a seat by the car, and I’ll get you some help.”

  She took a shaking breath, and for an instant I thought she was going to comply and make my life easier. Then in the next heartbeat her hands fell away from her head, her face went slack, and she dropped like a stone to the ground, hard enough for her head to connect with the asphalt with an audible crack.

  “Shit!” I dropped the coffee and quickly closed the distance. Crouching beside her, I rolled her to her back and found a place on her neck that didn’t have blood on it to check for a pulse. Not an easy task. Two nosebleeds in one day? I thought with a grimace. Coincidences like that made me itch. Especially on the same day a demon decided to attack me.

  I whirled to signal for Tracy but he was right behind me and already on his radio, calling it in. “No pulse,” I told him. “Tell ‘em code three.”

  He nodded and relayed the information as I turned back to the woman, got my hands in proper position, and started giving chest compressions. I took the CPR class every year as part of my in-service training, but this was the first time I’d ever had to do it on a real person.

  The woman’s eyes were half lidded, and bubbles of blood formed at her nostrils with every compression. The latest guidelines called for compressions only, no mouth-to-mouth, and I sent up a silent thanks for that. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t want to risk giving breaths, even if I had one of those mask things. It was bad enough that my hands were getting blood on them. I don’t have any open cuts, I reminded myself. I hoped.

  I lost track of time, though it was probably only a minute or two before sirens cut through the air. An ambulance pulled into the parking lot, and a few seconds later EMS crouched beside me. I gratefully relinquished the duty to them.

  I stood, legs a little numb from kneeling. I staggered a step and felt a strong hand at my elbow steadying me. I looked over to see Tracy, then gave him a nod of thanks as he handed me a sanitizing wipe. I scrubbed my hands thoroughly of every trace of blood then hurriedly checked my lovely new jacket to see if I’d gotten any on it. If so, I couldn’t see it against the black leather. Yes, I knew I was being horribly shallow. But focusing on the little things kept me from losing my cool.

  I returned my attention to the paramedics and their patient. “She was in the Camry,” I explained with a gesture toward the two cars. “She ran into the other one, then got out and walked over here. She seemed a little unsteady, but then she just stopped and—” I paused, knowing it was going to sound strange. “She grabbed her head and said, ‘Help me. Make it stop.’ Then she dropped like a stone.”

  The one manning the ventilator glanced over at the car and frowned. “Could be a stroke. Doesn’t seem like a bad crash, but you never know.”

  There wasn’t anything more I could do then except stand back and watch. A glance over at the coffee shop showed a number of faces at the window peering out from the warmth. They were the smart ones. The paramedics continued to work on her, but it didn’t seem to be doing much good. After a few minutes they loaded her up and screamed off with lights and sirens going.

  I let my breath out as the ambulance departed then looked mournfully at my car. “Damn.”

  “At least you weren’t in it,” Tracy said with a rueful smile. “Then you’d have to go through the joy of a piss test as well.”

  “Yeah, small favors.” I sighed, tugging my gloves out of my pockets and onto my hands. “I guess I shouldn’t be whining about the car when there’s a chance that woman might not make it.”

  Tracy shrugged, then looked back at the sound of approaching footsteps. I followed his gaze to see the barista, David, trotting up with a cup in his hand. He gave me a smile, then held the cup out to me. “I saw that you’d dropped yours and made up a new one.”

  “Oh my god,” I said as I nearly snatched the cup from him. I took a big, scalding gulp and sighed in relief. “You are the perfect man!”

  David laughed. “And you’re quite easily impressed!” He gave me a wink and then headed back across the street to the coffee shop.

  Tracy smiled. “The perfect man is one who brings you coffee? Makes me wonder how the men in your life usually treat you.”

  Men? Or demonic lords? I tried to cover my reaction by taking another sip, but he took note of my sudden reticence and grimaced.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s none of my business, and it was a dumb thing to say.”

  “No, no!” I hurried to reassure him. “It’s all right.” I made myself chuckle. “I’m not really the ‘shower with gifts’ kind of chick, and that’s fine with me.”

  “Well, it looks like I get to write the report for this nonsense.” He lifted his chin toward the two vehicles.

  I peered into the open door of the woman’s car. It looked like she’d recently had it detailed. There were vacuum marks on the passenger side carpet, and the dashboard had a slight sheen of Armor All. An air freshener wafer tucked into the console sent the scent of chemical pineapple through the vehicle.

  I spied a dark red Coach handbag on the floorboard, wedged under the dash. “Her purse is here.” I set my coffee on the roof of the car, and snagged it out. “Least I can do is help you inventory all this.”

  “Appreciated,” he said.

  After this I’d need to make some phone calls to my rank to see if I could score another car. I scowled as I dug through the woman’s purse. Would I even be able to get a new one issued on a Sunday? I was most likely screwed until Monday.

  I found the woman’s wallet and removed the drivers license. “Her name is Evelyn Stark, and her address is.…” I trailed off. Son of a bitch.

  “Kara?” I glanced up to see Tracy with his pen poised above his notepad and a frown on his face. I passed the driver’s license over to him, fighting hard to maintain something resembling composure.

  “Sorry,” I managed “I know her. Knew her. I mean…I knew who she was.”

  His brow furrowed in concern. “Friend of yours?”

  I shook my head, chilled to the bone despite my coat. “No.” I took an unsteady breath. “No. Not at all. She’s the drunk driver who killed my dad.”

  Chapter 4

  I headed back over to the coffee shop after Tracy assured me he could handle the rest of the report just fine. I made a token protest, but he must have seen how dazed I felt and gently told me to get the fuck off his scene. The sun was making another valiant effort to break through the clouds, and the wind had died down a bit. Traffic had picked up some, and I paused at the street, waiting for a break. A silent ambulance went by. I knew it probably wasn’t the same one that had taken Evelyn Stark away, but I watched it continue on down the street.

  Would I have given her CPR if I’d known who she was?

  No. I let out a shaking breath. I’m not that good a person. I couldn’t get back at the ovarian cancer that had taken my mother from me when I was only eight, but I could sure as hell focus plenty of rage and grief on the woman who’d taken my dad three years later. When I first began learning about demons, I’d asked Aunt Tessa to send a demon after Evelyn Stark. Tessa utterly refused to aid me—not saying that such a desire was wrong but, instead, explaining how that sort of arrangement with a demon would be fraught with all sorts of peril because of their complex code of honor. Besides, she pointed out, the woman was serving a prison sentence, and it would be quite a tricky matter for a demon to get to her.

  But the simple fact that my aunt had understood my pain and not dismissed my desire for revenge as petty or wrong had endeared her to me more than anything else ever could have. And by the time I became a summoner in my own right, and could potentially carry through with such a desire, my lust for that sort of revenge had faded.

  But, no, I wouldn’t have given Evelyn Stark CPR and gotten my hands all bloody.

  The ambulance turned the corner. I s
hook myself out of the grim memories and made myself face the other thought clanging around in my head. Barry Landrieu and Evelyn Stark died on the same day, both with nosebleeds. I knew there was a connection between them, but I had no idea why anyone besides me would want to kill them. Hell, even I hadn’t wanted them dead. Not anymore, at least.

  I started to turn back toward the street, but movement on the roof of the PD building pulled my attention. Had the shadow of the AC unit moved? I held my breath, watching the shadow as my pulse thudded unsteadily. That was the graa’s leaping-off perch this morning. Could there be another?

  After a few seconds I let my breath out. No. Just my eyes playing tricks, and my paranoia working double-time. The sun was losing its battle again; the moving shadow had probably been a cloud.

  A chill walked down my back, and I forced myself to look away. Too much weird shit in one day was making me jumpy as hell. I glanced back to see if Tracy was looking at me, but he was peering through the windshield of the Camry in an effort to get the VIN. Quickly shifting into othersight, I extended my senses as far as possible, but nothing untoward leaped out at me. No sign of any demon. No whisper of arcane power. Only the unfinished chain of sigils snaking around the PD building.

  Letting out an unsteady breath, I hurried across the street and into the coffee shop. A table near the window gave me a good view of the PD and the parking lot. The coffee in my cup was still plenty warm, and I took a good long slug as I scanned the area. Nothing seemed out of place—other than the car that had attempted to intersect mine.

  Still unsettled, I pulled out my phone and commenced with the various calls I needed to make. First was to my sergeant, Cory Crawford, to let him know that I was—again—in need of a new vehicle, though at least there was a possibility that my current one was fixable. My last car had gone into the Kreeger River when I’d been shoved off a bridge by a soul-stealing psychopath. My life was seldom dull.

  I was getting ready to call Eilahn when I saw her pull in front of the coffee shop on her motorcycle. It was actually my aunt’s bike, but she hadn’t ridden it in months and was quite willing to allow Eilahn to use it—a relief to me since Tessa didn’t have a motorcycle endorsement on her license. Neither did Eilahn, for that matter, but since all of the demon’s identification were forgeries, it was a bit of a moot point. Besides, since Eilahn was in human form, she needed a way to get around, and the motorcycle gave her the most flexibility.

  Eilahn parked the bike, pulled off her helmet and shook her hair out in a perfect imitation of a shampoo commercial. Sometimes I wondered if she did the drop-dead gorgeous thing just to annoy me. The level of conversation in the café dipped briefly as she strode in—wearing leather jacket and boots and holding a motorcycle helmet in her hand. Because, y’know, she didn’t look like enough of a hot chick already.

  She dropped smoothly into the chair across from me and set the helmet on the floor by her feet. “Something’s wrong,” I said, then glanced around to make sure there was no one close enough to hear what we were saying. Eilahn gave a slight smile, then traced a small glyph in the center of the table. Curious, I took a quick peek in othersight. It held a dull glow, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything. It certainly wasn’t a protective ward—at least not any kind that I’d seen before.

  “Discourages eavesdroppers,” she explained. “You and I can hear and understand each other fine, but anyone else will hear only mumbles, or snatches of phrases that make little sense.”

  “That is too cool,” I breathed, staring at the glyph as I tried to memorize how she’d created it.

  A faint flicker of pride crossed her face. “I will teach it to you later, if you wish. But for now we are free to discuss…matters.”

  I sipped my coffee as I tried to gather my thoughts. “There’s a connection between the victim out at the nature center and the woman who ran into my car.”

  “I assume you mean more than the nosebleeds before their deaths?”

  I let out a slow breath. “Yes. So I guess that means she didn’t make it.”

  “She was dead before you could even lay hands upon her.”

  I didn’t feel any elation or relief at the knowledge. I was more pleased that since she’d been taken to the hospital, and it wasn’t a homicide, I didn’t have to investigate her death. That was for the hospital and the Coroner’s Office now.

  “What killed her?” I asked.

  “That I do not know,” she replied. “I sensed the freeing of the essence, but I cannot tell the cause.”

  “I knew both of the victims.”

  She tilted her head, eyes on me. “You do not seem grieved at the passing of either.”

  “Probably because I’m not,” I replied. I sat back and tunneled both hands through my hair. “Fuck. Barry Landrieu gave me heroin when I was fourteen, and I came within inches of dying of an overdose. And Evelyn Stark,” I cocked my head toward the window and the view of the aftermath of the accident, “was driving drunk when she crossed the center line on Serenity Road and killed my dad.”

  Her eyes darkened with sympathy. “You were not in the car?”

  I shook my head. “My dad got a call from a client who needed some papers notarized. He was a lawyer,” I explained. “He knew he was only going to be a few minutes, so he left me at home while he went to meet the guy.…” I’d been so pleased that he thought that, at the ripe age of eleven, I was old enough to stay home by myself. When he still hadn’t come home after two hours, I’d been worried sick and terrified to call the police because I thought I’d be getting him into trouble. It had been another hour before the knock on the door came.

  “And then your aunt had the care of you,” Eilahn murmured. “Which is how you learned to summon.”

  “Yep.” I took another sip of coffee to give me a few more seconds to push the unpleasant memories back. “Not the way I would have planned it, given a choice.”

  “A tragic path indeed,” she agreed, brow faintly furrowed. Then she spread her hands on the table and looked out the window. “And now these two people who did you harm both die on the day a demon attacked you.”

  “Oh, and I used to date the witness who found the first body,” I added.

  “Interesting.”

  I let out a small bark of laughter. “That’s one word for it. I was thinking of a description more along the lines of ‘fucking shit damn it all to hell this is a confusing mess plus it means there’s another summoner who’s trying to fuck my life up.’ ” The last time I’d been looking for another summoner had been during my investigation of the Symbol Man murders, and that case had not exactly been wrapped up nice and neatly. Sure, the Symbol Man had been stopped, but I’d ended up dead for a while, and my aunt had ended up in an arcane coma that had taken me weeks to get her out of.

  Her full lips twitched. “ ‘Interesting’ is more concise.”

  “Stick with me a few more weeks, and I’ll have you cursing like a pro.” Then I made a face. “Do you know of an easy way to find a summoner?” I asked, looking over at her with undisguised hope. “Are there any demons who can, um, sniff them out or something?”

  She raised one dark eyebrow at me as amusement flashed in her eyes. “No.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at her firm answer, even though it dashed my briefly shining hopes. “Okay,” I pressed, “is there a way to ask other demons who’s been summoning them?”

  She pursed her lips, appearing to seriously consider the question. “In theory, yes, but in practice, it is nigh impossible,” she said. “The demons are divided into numerous factions. It is a constantly shifting dynamic, affected by a number of factors, including which lord they serve. Simply answering a question would require payment on your part.”

  I winced at that. Summoning a demon wasn’t like calling forth a genie who’d be at your beck and call no matter what the request. A summoning was a contest and a contract—first to show you were worthy to even call the demon by the level of skill used to create the port
al and maintain the protections, and then to negotiate the terms of whatever service the summoner desired of the demon. Everything had a price and failure to abide by the terms—for either party—was a terrible breach of honor. If the summoner was the erring party, they usually ended up dead. There were no bad demons—only poorly worded contracts.

  “So, I guess there aren’t too many pollsters in the demon realm,” I said glumly.

  A smile curved her lips. “It is possible that you could pose the question and accept free response. However, that has its own drawback.”

  “I might tip off this summoner that I’m looking for him or her.”

  “Precisely.”

  I let out a sigh. I didn’t know of any other summoners in the area, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. As far as I knew there were only a few hundred in the world, but even that was simply a slightly educated guess. We tended to be pretty private about our activities, for obvious reasons.

  “Maybe the presence of the demon had nothing to do with the two deaths.” I paused in consideration. “Maybe it’s all a giant coincidence.”

  “I doubt that,” Eilahn said, and I had to chuckle. She wasn’t the type to snow me with pointless reassurances or allow me to wallow in comfortable delusions. Usually that was a good thing. But there were times when I could have used some pointless reassurances and some delusion-wallowing. “If it had wanted to kill you,” she added, “it likely would have been a harder fight.”

  So why the fuck hadn’t it? My arm still ached like a bitch where the damn thing had grabbed me. Had it been trying to do something else? Something Eilahn had managed to thwart? I had to fight the urge to thunk my head down onto the table. Fortunately the pinging of my phone signaling a text message distracted me from thoughts of self-injury. I read it with a growing sense of relief. “Ha! Since I’m on call Sarge is arranging for me to get another car.” It would probably be a total pile of crap, but it would be a pile of crap for which I didn’t have to pay a note or gas or insurance.