The Demon You Know

by Christine Warren

  That’s not just the dark, Lou informed her grudgingly. It’s this place. There’s some nasty energy here. Restless spirits and everything. Uzkiel must be in hog heaven.

  Are you telling me this place is haunted?

  As Salem.

  Great. Abby blew out a silent breath. Just what I wanted to hear.

  Trust me, it’s not the ghosts you have to worry about. At least, not much.

  You’re such a comfort to me.

  Abby took a moment to steady her nerves, then gave up. She was as steady as she was going to get.

  Which way do you think the smell is coming from? she thought.

  Why?

  So I can head in the opposite direction.

  Right.

  Good. We’ll go left. Left worked last time.

  Instinctively, Abby reached up to touch her gold and garnet cross. The action, the familiarity of it, gave her comfort. She just couldn’t decide if the symbol itself still offered any.

  I guess this is proof of that whole “demons aren’t inherently evil” thing.

  What is?

  The fact that I can be possessed and still wear this. Sounds like proof to me.

  It’s proof that you can’t drive one of us away with a symbol, Lou agreed, but that doesn’t make it proof of the absence of God.

  Abby did a double take in the darkness. You believe in God?

  Well, I’ve never met him, if that’s what you’re asking. . . .

  I’m asking if you believe.

  The longer you live, the harder it gets to believe in anything, especially when you’re living Below, he said. I can tell you, though, that when you’ve been around as long as I have and seen as much as I have, you have to believe there’s some kind of method to all this madness. I don’t know if that’s God, but it’s something.

  Abby thought about that for a minute, then laughed silently. I must be preparing to die, she thought. I’m standing in the dark debating philosophy with a fiend.

  Right. And what you should be doing is RUNNING!

  Her instincts reached her feet before her brain, but that was okay with Abby. By the time she processed Lou’s scream of panic, she’d already sprinted twenty feet down the hall and had no plans to stop.

  Unfortunately, her plans changed when a hand reached out, caught a fistful of her hair, and yanked her to a stop.

  Abby couldn’t help it. She screamed. The force of the pull felt like it had taken half her scalp off with it, bringing tears to her eyes and making the corridor swim across her vision. She fell to her hands and knees and felt a new, stronger wave of nausea overtake her.

  “Going somewhere, little human?” a voice rasped in the darkness. Abby couldn’t turn her head to see who it had come from, but she didn’t need to. She recognized the voice and the leg of the jumpsuit at the edge of her vision. The leg and the jumpsuit belonged to Carly, but the voice belonged to Seth.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” the fiend clucked in a mockery of concern. “We can’t have that, can we?” The hand in Abby’s hair jerked back and forth in time to the tsking, forcing her to shake her head in agreement. “After all, the party hasn’t even begun, and you are the guest of honor.”

  Abby remained silent and concentrated on not passing out. Do me a favor and let me stay for this, Lou. I won’t shut you out, so don’t you shut me out. If we’re going to get through this, we’re going to have to work together.

  We’re not going to get through this.

  Speak for yourself, she snapped. I am not planning on dying tonight.

  “Come, little human,” Seth hissed, and pulled Abby to her knees. She saw the inhuman voice coming from Carly’s familiar, friendly face and shuddered. “I think it’s time I took you to meet your host.”

  Every instinct Abby possessed screamed at her to fight!

  Run!

  Flee!

  Away! Get Away!

  —but she stomped on every one. She was in a dark corridor in an unfamiliar building in the very physical clutches of an archfiend that was fully capable of bashing her head in just to hear it pop. Running would only hasten her death, and she wanted to put it off as long as possible.

  “What? No begging? No screaming?” Seth-Carly pulled Abby along the hallway back past the stairs she’d climbed a few minutes before and down another short corridor. “By now, you humans are usually screaming like banshees. It’s one of my favorite parts.”

  Abby kept her silence, at least partly because it seemed to annoy the fiend.

  “Well, no matter,” it chuckled. “You’ll scream enough before the night is over, I assure you.”

  Wincing at the pain in her scalp, Abby put her hand on her cross and prayed, really fervently prayed, the fiend was wrong.

  Faith doesn’t need to be blind, she remembered, and you can have it in more than one thing. I have it in God, and I have it in the guys in my squad, and I have it in the people who love me.

  And she, Abby realized, had it in Rule.

  All at once, it was like a veil of calm settled over her. Oh, she was still afraid; she was scared shitless, to use one of Noah’s expressions, but she realized right then that she wasn’t alone. Rule was on his way, and he would move the Above and the Below if he had to in the attempt to save her. Sure, he might not succeed, but he was going to try. She knew that with the first unshakable faith she’d felt in a very long time.

  That’s all well and good, Lou said, sounding strained, but please don’t tell me you’re going to turn into a damsel in distress and wilt like a delicate flower until your knight in shining armor comes charging to the rescue.

  Abby nearly grinned, because, as she had just discovered, where there was faith, there was hope. I am a delicate flower. But even delicate flowers have thorns.

  She caught a glimpse of a crimson glow an instant before Seth-Carly gave a shove and sent her stumbling into another stone room, only this one was far from empty. She landed on the floor in an inelegant sprawl, but she had time to register a few details on the way down. The bloody light came from a series of torches mounted at shoulder height around the room, but the fire they burned with looked dim and unnatural. It also stirred a memory, a far from pleasant one. The light they gave off reminded her of the sickly crimson light in the vision Tess had shown her. The one in which Uzkiel had triumphed.

  Abby beat back the surge of panic.

  “Have you brought me a present, Set-halikel?”

  The voice hissed from behind her, as if a great serpent had mastered the power of human speech, and just the sound was enough to feed Abby’s fear.

  It’s magic. It’s part of his magic, Lou whispered. The fear. He generates it, like a toxic cloud. Try to fight it.

  Abby had no intention of giving in. She took her time getting her hands and knees under herself and pushing into an upright position. She used the time to prepare herself for what she would see when she turned to face the archfiend. Suddenly she was glad for Tess’s scare tactics. At least Uzkiel’s appearance wouldn’t take her by surprise.

  She still had to fight to keep from flinching. It looked as it had in the vision, an unnatural mishmash of incongruous parts. The bovine head, the serpentine torso, the misshapen satyric legs. Its hideousness was palpable, like a presence in the room, but Abby refused to let it cow her.

  What’s the point of faith, she thought, if you don’t test it?

  “Wow,” she drawled, praying for strength to keep her knees from knocking, deliverance for her soul in case Rule came too late to help her, and speed to hurry that help along. “It’s a little late for Halloween. You get a discount on the ugly freak costume?”

  She moved too slowly. The fiend crossed the space between them faster than she could blink, and when its hand touched her, she fulfilled Seth’s prediction and screamed.

  Rule longed for nothing more than to burst into the building, sword swinging and guns blasting, destroying Uzkiel and saving Abby in one fell swoop. But the daring rescue, Rule knew, only worked that way in Faerie st
ories.

  That was the reason that he skulked through the hallways of the Hudson Shipping building like a thief, following Noah’s military hand signals and beating back his primitive impatience with every breath. Their extraction team, as Noah had labeled it, had assembled on the next block to arm themselves and review the rules of the operation before moving on the abandoned building that served as Uzkiel’s headquarters on this plane.

  Rafe had taken point, shifting into his wereform as soon as they stepped in the front doors, using his feline stealth to ease through the darkened corridors unseen and unheard. Behind him ranged a compact line of warriors, beginning with Rule and including Tobias and his two best soldiers, Silverbacks named Simon and Huck. Noah brought up the rear, the only one of them who needed to bother with night-vision goggles, carefully guarding their exit. He had his favorite assault rifle in his hands and a compact pack filled with enough plastic to level the lower half of Manhattan. “Just in case.”

  A small army of Lupines was stationed outside the building, covering the other entrances and waiting in case they received a call for backup. At least three of them, Rule knew, were also in Rafe’s car with Tess, guarding her. It looked more like physically restraining her to Rule, but it wasn’t his job to get involved in a marital spat.

  His eyes had adjusted quickly to the darkness, and they tracked Rafe’s movements as the Felix padded through the seemingly deserted building, following his nose, his keen night vision, and his instincts, toward Abby.

  “I may not have the nose of a wolf,” he’d said, “but my nose is sharp enough and my eyes sharper. I’ll find her. The scent of sulfur is not easy to miss.”

  Rule hoped not, because he hadn’t caught a whiff of it yet. Rafe, though, moved through the empty halls as if he knew where he was going. He led the way to the back of the first floor and shifted back to human just long enough to raise the flat of his hand to signal the others to stop. He pointed toward the floor, and Rule looked past him to see the outline of a set of stairs leading downward. Gesturing to the others to follow single file, Rule gave Rafe the okay and moved forward.

  The minute they broke below the ground floor, Rule felt the oppressive presence of evil. Much of it, he knew, came from Uzkiel, but not all of it. There was a subtler chill in the air, the kind that came from recorded misery and trapped spirits. No wonder the fiend had chosen this place.

  When they reached the first basement level they paused while Rafe scented the air. Tobias, though, didn’t see the need to wait. He tapped Rule on the back and gestured toward the right, down a hall that led into the center of the building. Before the demon could pass on the message, Rafe turned and indicated the same direction.

  The hair on the back of Rule’s neck stood up. He didn’t bother to wonder if the others were right. Every sense he possessed told him they were getting close.

  Single file, the men moved silently down the short corridor, passing like shadows through the darkness. Their plans were sound and their execution flawless, right up to the point when Abby’s scream shattered the darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Rafe tried to stop him, but Rule barreled past him like a freight train. Nothing existed in Rule’s universe except Abby, and Abby was in pain. He had to get to her.

  It took Tobias, Simon, and Huck to tackle Rule to the ground, while Rafe caught Noah when the human would have raced past the commotion. Still, even three of them couldn’t hold Rule. He threw them off and burst through the door at the end of the hall with his sword blazing a trail ahead of him.

  “ABBY!”

  “How touching.” It was Seth who greeted him, Seth in Carly’s body. The evil smile on the sweet face looked doubly repulsive. Rule leaped forward, intent on slicing Carly’s head from her body.

  A small hand on his forearm stopped him.

  It was Abby’s hand, but when he looked at her face, he felt every cell in his body freeze with stony disbelief. Behind Abby’s smiling mismatched eyes burned the evil of an archfiend.

  “Now, don’t hurt my servant,” the thing inside Abigail purred, moving to stand beside a smirking Seth. “Or I might feel inclined to exact revenge. And these human bodies are so very fragile. . . .” She/it swept one hand down over her torso, and her/its lips curved in a hideous smile.

  “Madre de Dios!”

  Through the buzzing in his ears, Rule heard the other men swarm into the room and registered Rafe’s horrified exclamation, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Abigail. Off what used to be Abigail.

  She looked the way she always had, as ridiculously, beautifully plain as ever, her pale skin unmarred, her features as pure and perfect as ever. But behind her brown and blue eyes lurked an evil so pure and terrible it seemed as if the paradox of it would rend the fabric of the universe.

  Uzkiel had possessed Abby. Her soul was imprisoned somewhere inside her while the fiend spoke with her tongue and moved with her body. Rule could think of no torture more vile. He felt his heart cracking into hundreds of tiny pieces.

  “What’s the matter, Rule?” she/it taunted. “Don’t I please you anymore? Don’t you love me anymore? Don’t you want to touch me?”

  She/it laid her/its hands on Rule’s chest and leaned against him, letting her breasts press against him. He felt his skin crawl and fought against twin waves of fury and despair. He had come here to destroy Uzkiel, but how could he raise his hand against Abby? He could more easily slice through his own heart.

  “What the fuck have you done?”

  Noah’s howl would have done any Lupine proud. It tore from him in a choking agony, nearly shaking the walls of the room. Huck and Simon grabbed at Noah, but he spun out of their reach and charged toward the fiends. Rule reached out a hand to stop him, but he dodged and hit Seth-Carly at a dead run. The two figures flew halfway across the room and slammed against the opposite wall. Noah raised his weapon, but Seth slapped it away and flipped their bodies, pinning the human to the concrete floor.

  “Ah, you must be the doting brother,” the thing inside Abby said, amusement dripping from its tongue. “How quaint to think you would save her. But I’m afraid she’s mine now. Well, mine and Louamides’, but I’ll fix that soon enough.” It turned back toward Rule and smiled a hideous smile with the mouth he had loved to taste. “It’s a little crowded in here with the three of us, but we must all make sacrifices in the pursuit of greatness. Louamides will just have to make a bigger sacrifice than the rest of us. Except maybe the human girl. Do you think she’ll miss her sanity? The humans I possess never seem to keep it after I’m gone.”

  The rage and anguish that had paralyzed Rule suddenly loosened, like rock in an avalanche. He forced his mouth into a sneer and lowered the point of his sword to the ground. No matter what the fiend tried to tell Rule, he knew Abby was still inside her body, still somehow aware of what was happening. He just needed to find a way to reach her. A way to draw Uzkiel out and then spring the trap to imprison him.

  “I think the girl is too strong for you, Uzkiel,” Rule taunted, searching Abby’s eyes for some sign of her presence. “I would be willing to wager you have never before possessed a human who was pure of heart like this one.”

  The fiend threw back Abby’s head and laughed. “There is no such thing as a human with a pure heart,” it derided. “Look at them.” It waved toward Noah, who lay pinned to the floor beneath Carly, swearing the foulest forms of revenge Rule had ever heard. “They’re so easily corrupted. A little rage, a little hatred, and look what happens. The evil comes to the surface. In the end, there’s a little piece of me inside them all.”

  It smiled again, and Rule fought his revulsion. “But look at the source of that hatred,” he said. “He hates you because of what you’ve done to his sister. Hate that powerful can only be born out of a love that’s equally strong.”

  The fiend inside Abby shrugged. “What does it matter? In the end, it’s the hatred that wins out, not the love.”

  “Are you certain of that?”
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  For a split second, Rule thought he saw something other than hellfire flicker in Abby’s eyes. It happened so fast, his mind couldn’t swear to it, but his heart soared.

  “Of course,” the fiend said, turning away and walking toward where Seth held Noah pinned. “I will even demonstrate for you. Set-halikel, release the human and stand.”

  Rule saw the look of displeasure on Seth’s face, but it could not disobey, not when Uzkiel had used its full name. Reluctantly, the creature rose from its crouch on Noah’s prone body and stood, its back against the cinder block wall.

  “Now watch,” Uzkiel said.

  With a roar, Noah reached for his weapon and swung it around, squeezing off five rounds in rapid succession. The bullets sliced through the flesh below Seth-Carly’s chin, severing the head from the neck and sending a lifeless corpse crumpling to the ground.

  The fiend inside Abby grinned. “You see? Revenge, not love.”

  “I see both.”

  Rule jerked his head toward Rafe and the others. They swarmed Noah from behind, moving faster than his human reflexes could track, disarming him and knocking him unconscious.

  “How noble you are,” the fiend chuckled, “but it does you no good to spare him the consequences of attacking me next. You will all be dead soon enough.”

  “No.” Rule looked deep into the eyes that had once belonged to Abby, the eyes he’d fallen in love with, and prayed that the woman he adored could hear his voice. “I do not believe we will be.”

  “Oh?” The fiend’s amusement seemed to deepen. “And what makes you so certain, Watchman? The cavalry stationed outside? Do you really believe they can save you? Do you have a secret plan to defeat me?”

  “No,” Rule repeated, and he reached out to the essence of Abigail. His love. His heart. His mate. “I have faith.”

  Uzkiel laughed, a horrible grating sound that threatened to crumble the mortar in the walls until it ended as abruptly as it had begun.