The Demon You Know

by Christine Warren

  The man’s chin jerked in a nearly imperceptible nod. “Two beers. Get those for yas.”

  Rule waited till the bartender trundled off to the tap before turning to his companion. “A secret password of some sort?”

  “I guess. Billy didn’t say anything to me about it, but he did say these guys don’t warm much to strangers.”

  “I would wager.”

  The mirror behind the bar was spattered and dingy, but Rule could still make out most of the patrons scattered around at tables behind them. It was early yet, so the bar was mostly empty. Only about half-a-dozen regulars had shown up, and none of them looked familiar to Rule. More significantly, none of them smelled familiar.

  The bartender thumped two mugs down on the bar in front of Rule and Noah. “Anything else?”

  “Maybe.” Noah wrapped a hand around the handle of his mug and met the bartender’s gaze steadily. “Badass said there was a guy here named Crank who knows everything that needs knowing in the neighborhood.”

  “That’s me. Whaddaya looking for?”

  “A who.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, Noah drew out an enlargement of the grainy photo Missy’s camera phone had snapped of Seth’s human host in the park. “This guy look familiar?”

  Crank hesitated for a moment before leaning down to squint at the photo. “He ain’t no regular, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Have you ever seen him before?” Rule asked.

  “Maybe once.” Crank looked from Rule to Noah and back again. Maybe the Badass blessing only extended to one friend at a time. “I mostly mind my own business, but this guy stood out. I mean, look at him. Not many yuppies bother to come to a place like this, you know what I mean?”

  Rule did, but he refrained from answering.

  “When?” Noah prompted.

  “ ’Bout three, four days ago. Got into it with a weird guy, Lenny, likes to sit in the corner of the bar and nurse shots of Jäger. Usually this Lenny fellow’s real quiet, keeps to himself. But that night, it was like he was lookin’ for a fight. Laid into the rich guy the second he walked in here. Eventually, I had to persuade them to continue their discussion outside.”

  Rule followed Crank’s nod to the heavy wooden baseball bat prominently displayed above the cash register.

  “I’m sure you did,” Noah agreed. “You see anything that happened after that?”

  “Nah. Two of ’em go outside, and next thing I know, the yuppie’s gone and Lenny’s propped up against my stoop sporting a couple of broken ribs, two broken wrists, and a cut nearly chopped his ear off. Paramedics loaded him into an ambulance and took him off right then. Ain’t seen either of ’em since. And Lenny still owes me for the Jäger.”

  Noah thanked the man and waited until he moved to the other side of the bar before turning to Rule. “Sounds like Lou isn’t the only one hopping around the city. I suspect the change in Lenny resulted from a possession by Seth that then transferred to the man we met in the park.”

  “I am not surprised. To remain undetected for as long as possible, Uzkiel and his minions would want to appear as normal humans, which requires them to take possession of human bodies.”

  “That’ll make them damned hard to track down.”

  “I never expected much else.”

  Swearing, Noah pushed aside his beer and stood. “Well, shit. Sorry this turned out to be a dead end.”

  “It was not.” Rule followed suit. They tossed money for the drinks on the bar and exited into the deepening night. “We have confirmed our suspicions of where the fiends are hiding, and we may have another lead to trace. If this Lenny person was taken to the hospital, there will be records. If he filed a police report after the possession ended, there may even be an investigation or a name of the other man, the one who was hosting Seth. It is more than we had to go on a few minutes ago.”

  “My, aren’t you the optimist?”

  “It is never productive to give in to the belief that nothing can ever change.”

  “I used to think that way,” Noah mused. “Then Abby learned to talk.”

  Rule shot him a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?”

  “Just that my baby sister is what physicists mean when they start talking about an immovable force.”

  “She seems very young to be so set in her ways.”

  “She was born set. And I’m not convinced the way our parents brought us up was much help in the flexibility department. They meant well, and they loved us both, but they’re kind of old-fashioned. A little unbending themselves.”

  “I would not have called your sister unbending,” Rule mused, thinking of the supple flex of her spine beneath his hands.

  Noah’s eyes narrowed. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t notice anything odd in the way you said that, Rule, because I like you. I’d hate to have to kill you.”

  “And I would hate for you to have to try. Rest assured, I have no plans to corrupt Abigail. She will always be safe with me.”

  For a moment, the only sound came from the light fall of their feet on the pavement. Then Noah glanced over at Rule, his mouth beginning to curve with amusement.

  “Hm. I wonder how long you’re going to be safe with her?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  For the first couple of days, Abby just kept repeating to herself that it would all be over soon. Rule and Noah had teamed up in the quest to locate Uzkiel’s hiding place, so at least someone was doing something, even if she wasn’t. Even Louamides managed to leave her mostly alone, probably still traumatized by its run-in with Seth.

  During the next couple of days, the reminders stopped being enough. She took to wandering the halls of the club during the day, when it was mostly quiet, and pacing the confines of her room at night. If she kept moving, it seemed easier to control the frustrated scream welling inside her. Samantha and Tess took turns trying to keep her occupied with movies and games and girl talk, and even Missy stopped by after a couple of days to take a shift.

  The first time the Luna showed up, Abby had apologized.

  Missy dismissed it with a wave and a smile. “Honey, I’d have tried the same thing if I were you,” she said. “In fact, come to think of it, I did try. Only let me tell you, it’s a lot harder to stage an escape naked from an Alpha’s bedroom than it is fully clothed in a public park with a military escort. You, at least, get points for planning.”

  Missy’s easy forgiveness almost made Abby feel worse.

  Noah spent time with her every day, but when he had chastised her, she didn’t enjoy it so much.

  “You didn’t tell me the whole story, Ab,” he’d said over a hand of rummy. “If I’d known about the fiends rebelling and the spell they’re trying to get their hands on, I’d have told you to stay put. You’re safer here than just about anywhere else I can think of, except maybe Faerie.”

  And that was another thing. Here she was with her universe rocking back on its heels, and she finds out her brother is practically an authority on all things Other. He seemed perfectly comfortable with magic and the supernatural power, and judging by the glances she occasionally caught him shooting at Samantha, he didn’t appear to have any problem with inter-species relations either.

  She knew the rest of the world was like her, still struggling to adjust. She watched the news occasionally on the big-screen TV in the club’s second-floor media room, so she knew the protests hadn’t died down. In fact, there had been rioting in St. Louis and Houston over the past few days. Other people were having an even harder time with this than she was, so why did she feel like such a jerk about it?

  By day five, Abby was ready to surrender her mind and body to Louamides just so she wouldn’t have to deal with the waiting and the confinement anymore. The times when he’d taken over had left her blissfully unaware and with no memory of anything that had happened. Just then that sounded like heaven.

  She knew she was reaching a boiling point, but she never expected to blow her top quite as soon or quite as spectacularly as she managed
. In the end, she blamed it on her brother.

  The door to Rafe’s office slammed open hard enough to send the knob bouncing off the wall behind it, and Abby stood in the center of the opening, hands braced on her hips like one of the nuns who had so terrified her all during her school years. Fortunately, none of the rest of the Council was present.

  “What exactly did you mean by telling my brother that it could be weeks before you manage to find Uzkiel?”

  Rule and Rafe looked up from Rafe’s desk, and two sets of eyebrows headed toward the ceiling. Rafe’s remained in that position, but it only took a second for Rule’s to descend into a glower.

  “I do not have time to listen to your temper tantrum, Abigail,” the demon dismissed. “You will have to wait for another time.”

  Through the red haze of her anger, Abby just barely heard Rafe’s hiss of indrawn breath. “I would advise you to choose your words more carefully, friend,” the Felix said quietly. “You speak as if you’ve never been faced with a warrior’s woman in all her glory.”

  Rule glared at him. “She is not my woman.”

  “At the moment, my goal is to be your worst nightmare,” Abby bit out. Her jaw felt so tight, she was amazed she managed to get it out at all. “There is no way on earth or in heaven I am going to stay cooped up in here for that long! Why aren’t you out there right now looking for him? Are you expecting him to knock on the front door and climb right into your lap?”

  She didn’t even bother to glance at Rafe, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him purse his lips and ease himself out from behind his desk.

  “I think perhaps I had better leave the two of you to sort this out yourselves,” he murmured, and began to inch toward the exit.

  Abby cleared his path by blazing ahead on her own straight toward the object of her fury. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

  Rule leveled a stare at her. His expression remained cold and distant, something she was beginning to recognize was his “on duty” mask, but his eyes blazed with dark fire. “I was not aware you required a response. You seem to have drawn your own conclusions about the matter at hand without any assistance from me. Or from logic or good sense.”

  “You arrogant bastard!”

  In the back of her head, Abby had a vague moment of wondering if her shout had managed to register on the Richter scale. It wouldn’t have surprised her.

  She sucked in a deep breath, but before she could let it out, a headful of blond curls poked in from the hallway.

  “Did someone commit a murder in here, or have I gotten here in time?”

  Rafe strode to the door and put his hands on his wife’s shoulders. “I doubt anything could halt the violence at this point, sweetheart, and for the sake of our son, I would rather you did not make the attempt.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to stop it,” Tess laughed. “I just wondered if I’d have time to make popcorn before the good parts.”

  Abby never took her eyes off Rule. “There aren’t going to be any good parts, but if Mr. High-and-Mighty over here doesn’t come up with some really good answers to my questions really fast, there just might be some NC-17-rated gratuitous violence.”

  Rule shoved back his chair and stretched to his feet, his gaze just as steady on Abby. “I have no intention of coming up with anything until you can behave with reason, maturity, and self-control.”

  Behind them, Abby heard Tess make a tsking sound.

  “Yikes. Isn’t he supposed to be like a bunch of centuries old?” she asked her husband. “You’d think he’d never done this before.”

  “Perhaps if he survives this round, I can give him a few pointers,” Rafe answered.

  Rule looked up, focusing over Abby’s head at the couple in the doorway. “I think perhaps it would be better if the two of you left us for a moment.”

  “They’re fine,” Abby growled. “I have no problem with ripping you a new one in front of witnesses.”

  Tess whistled. “Wow. For a nice Catholic schoolgirl she’s got a mean streak, doesn’t she?”

  “Come, love. I think Rule is right. Let’s give them a bit of privacy.”

  Abby was too busy struggling with the unfamiliar urge to commit an actual act of violence to watch them leave, but she heard the door shut behind them with an ominous click.

  “If you have a problem with me,” Rule said, his voice low and dangerously smooth as he prowled toward her in the suddenly quiet room, “I would appreciate your bringing it up with me, rather than airing it in front of an audience. No matter how appreciative they might be.”

  “And I would appreciate it if you would stop making decisions about my life and my captivity with my brother and letting me find out secondhand,” she hissed. By the time Rule stopped, he was looming over her like a golden-haired, black-eyed mountain, but Abby was too angry to be intimidated. “This is my life! Or it used to be. I’m sick and tired of being treated like some kind of inanimate object that can just be put up on a shelf or locked up in a closet without so much as a by-your-leave. I want my life back!”

  “You can’t have it.”

  “That is exactly what I’m talking about!” Abby threw her hands up, surprised one didn’t land knuckles-first smack dab in the middle of his infuriating mouth. “You make these decrees on high and expect me to meekly go along with them! Well, it’s not going to happen.”

  “The last thing I expect from you is meekness, Abigail,” he said. “But I do expect obedience. And I’ll have it.”

  She almost choked on a laugh. Not that she was amused, it was just either laugh or scream, and she knew she’d need her vocal cords to be in tip-top shape if she was going to get through that mile-thick demonic skull. “Do you even hear yourself? You sound like some sort of feudal lord. This is not the Middle Ages, my unholy friend, and I am not some serf to be ordered about on a whim.”

  Rule’s dark eyes narrowed, and she saw a flicker of anger beneath the impassive mask. “You have no right to call me that.”

  “What? My friend? I realize we’re not all that close, but since you’re one of only about ten people I’m allowed to talk to these days, I’m not ready to shortchange myself on possible companions.”

  “Unholy.” He took a step closer until she had to crane her neck to look up at him. A flicker of unease shivered through her. “You are no more entitled to sit in judgment on me than you believe I am to hold you prisoner.”

  A devilish voice inside her prodded Abby to take another step, never mind the chasm she sensed stretching before her. “Oh, am I hitting a little too close for comfort? It’s not my fault you’re a demon, Rule. It’s not my fault you’ve been forsaken by God and condemned to a life outcast from heaven.”

  She could almost hear his self-control snap. One minute he loomed before her, a wall of icy control, and the next he had her by the shoulders, hauling her up against a body she could now vouch for as being a long, long way from cold.

  “If you would condemn me as a monster, then at least I will give you a reason.”

  And his mouth came crashing down on hers like a landslide.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Inside Abby’s head, voices sang suspiciously like choirs of angels, and the explosion behind her eyes banished any thoughts of darkness more quickly than sunrise. If this was a sin, Abby would hang up her rosary and surrender herself to eternal damnation without a twinge of regret. It would be worth it, to feel this man’s hands on her forever.

  He swept inside her mouth like a conquering army, bulldozing past any tentative explorations and plundering her heated response. Abby whimpered and sucked on his tongue, pressing herself closer against him. He went to her head like a shot of whiskey but tasted a whole lot better. He sent the same fire curling into the pit of her belly with none of the bitter acid on her tongue. Instead, he was smooth and rich and sweet like fine chocolate, and for once in her life, Abby didn’t worry about the treat going straight to her thighs. She rather hoped he would.

  Rule, though
, seemed determined to take the long road. His hands glided over her shoulders and down her arms, raising goose bumps in their wake. Everywhere they touched, she tingled, her nerves on high alert. Her breasts pressed against his chest, molding to his hardness, and when she shifted restlessly, her denim-clad thighs rubbed against his, pushing a moan through her swollen lips.

  A growl rumbled in his chest, a low, thrumming response. She felt his hands slide beneath her arms to close around her ribs, tightening as if to warn her against trying to escape. As if the thought had even crossed her mind. She wanted to put less distance between them, not more. She wanted to be skin to skin. Closer if she could manage it.

  The intensity of her need surprised her, but she didn’t stop to think about it. She didn’t want to waste that kind of time. For the first time in her life, she burned with desire. She’d always assumed, especially after her disastrous first and only sexual experience, that when people wrote about lust in terms of aches and fevers and trembling needs, that was why they called it fiction. People didn’t really feel that way. She didn’t. She’d lived without sex for almost a decade, and she was none the worse for the wear. Or the lack thereof.

  Oh, how naïve she’d been.

  Rule had kick-started her sex drive, and the power of it now drove her on with a vengeance. She felt it like the sting of a whip driving her on, driving her closer, driving her to tempt him into a frenzy she had no idea if she could handle.

  She had a feeling she was about to find out.

  In the back of her mind, her conscience whispered at her. She had known this would happen. When she’d come storming down here driven by her frustration and the anger that had welled when Noah told her it might be weeks before she could go back to her old life, she’d known the spark of her fury would light this inferno. Yet she’d done it anyway.

  It was the coward’s way, her conscience chided her. It wouldn’t let her get away with putting the responsibility for this on Rule’s broad shoulders. She had known she didn’t have the guts to follow through with Tess and Samantha’s suggestion that she seduce the demon, so her subconscious had decided to shift the burden onto him. If she prodded him in just the right way, at just the right time, she’d get her seduction, and probably her vindication of her anger, and she’d never have to make a move for it to happen.