by Julie Kenner
“Not a clue,” Father Ben said. “But we need to find out, fast.”
To Allie’s credit, she handled the fact that our plans to train had been shot to hell pretty well. A bit of whining at first, but when I put her on the phone with Father Ben so that he could go over the details of the ritual with her—and when she realized that while he knew the time, he didn’t know the location—her level of enthusiasm ratcheted up a notch.
“The mensa of life,” she said, repeating back what Ben had learned about the ritual. “Wow, that’s really freaky.”
“Hopefully you two can figure it out,” I said, having already admitted that I had no idea.
“We’ve still got a few hours,” she said. “We’ll totally figure it out.”
I hoped they would, because my toes were itching to kick a little demon butt. And to do that, I needed to know where to go.
I also needed help. It was one thing to patrol on my own. It was another thing altogether to walk boldly into a ceremony where a very pissed-off demon was about to be released.
I needed Nadia, but she wasn’t answering her phone. I took a deep breath, then another, working through my options. I could go by the library and round up Eddie, but even as I considered that possibility, I knew it was the least attractive option. Eddie still had a spark, but he was getting old. And if he got hurt because I’d dragged him to a battle that he didn’t want to fight, I’d never forgive myself.
I needed Eric. Needed him and, yes, I wanted to see him again, too.
This time when I called, he answered immediately, and his calming voice soothed me and promised that everything would be all right.
“I’m coming to get you,” I said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
I told Stuart I was going shopping, then raced off in the Infiniti. The drive to David’s apartment took about fifteen minutes, and I used that time to buck myself up. My heart was still raw, of course, but I told myself I could handle it. I had to handle it if we wanted to prevent the rise of one of the chancellors of Hell.
By the time I arrived at his door, I’d wrangled some measure of control. That control shattered, though, when I saw that his door wasn’t completely closed. Eric. A desperate fear that he’d been taken or harmed stabbed through my soul and I immediately tensed, my fighting instincts quashing my emotions and forcing me to stay calm and methodical.
I eased my purse off my arm and left it by the door, keeping only the pump bottle of holy water and my stiletto. I used the tip of the knife to push the door open just enough for me to squeeze through. And then I entered, walking on the balls of my feet so that—hopefully—I made no sound to telegraph my arrival.
They never saw me coming.
I, however, was drawn up short, caught by the horror displayed right in front of me—Nadia, perched on the arm of David’s couch, her breasts practically falling out of her top and her face so close to his that her hair brushed his shoulders.
David sat on the couch beside her, one hand on her shoulder. From this angle, I couldn’t see his face, but I saw hers. More, I saw the possessive, hungry smile.
I heard a little gasp, and realized it came from me.
Immediately, David turned, his eyes going wide as he saw me. He was on his feet in an instant, roughly pushing Nadia back. “Kate. It’s not—”
I held up a hand, determined not to cry. “Leave it,” I said. “We have bigger issues to deal with right now.”
We were in the car racing toward the cathedral when my cell phone rang. I pressed the button to answer in speaker-phone mode, and my daughter’s voice blared out. “We got it! We totally got it!”
“Where?” I demanded, my eyes going automatically to the clock. Eleven-thirty. Maybe we could still make it.
“The stone table,” she said. “That’s got to be it.”
“It does?” I asked, slamming on the brakes and making a U-turn to head us back to the mountains and the National Forest. “Why?”
“Everybody says they did sacrifices at the table, right? Huge rituals about life and death. And mensa means table in Latin.”
“She’s right,” Nadia said. “Good work, kid.”
It wasn’t a perfect fit, but I couldn’t think of anything else around San Diablo that fit the bill. Somehow, I didn’t think that table of life referred to a really nice restaurant.
The stone table might be one of San Diablo’s famous landmarks, but it’s not a commonly visited one. That was good for us. Unfortunately, the reason it was so infrequently visited was that it was near impossible to access. The table had been discovered by some university botanists who’d forged their way through the dense growth of the forest while cataloguing plant life. Now, there was a narrow footpath, but it was still overgrown and rugged. Driving the entire distance was impossible, and running there wasn’t much easier.
As we battled our way through the underbrush, I decided that maybe Nadia did have the right idea about wearing leather. Whereas I was being assaulted by branches and stickers, she moved confidently through the brush, her tight leather pants forming a perfect barrier.
Bitch.
I frowned. The thought might be accurate, but at the moment I really needed to keep my head in the game. Whatever she was doing on the couch with my husband— former husband—could wait.
“Two minutes,” I said. “Where are we?”
“We have to be getting close,” Nadia said. “It’s been at least a hundred yards since we passed one of the park’s markers.”
The U.S. Parks & Wildlife Service had taken the trouble to mark various walking paths through the forest. We were following a series of arrows that led to the table. And if the department had accurately labeled the walk, we had to be getting close.
“One minute,” I said, my voice tense. “This damn well better be a long ceremony, or we aren’t going to make it.”
“We’ll make it,” David said, his voice as tense as his body.
We pressed on, moving as fast as we could, until finally we could see a clearing. The brush thinned and we picked up speed. Still a few seconds until noon. Still time to-
“Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
The deep bellow split the sky, along with a violent cracking. And as I burst into the clearing, I saw a burly man standing atop the now-splintered stone table, two other demons standing guard at each end. A knife protruded from the risen demon’s heart, and I felt a momentary wash of sadness for the innocent human who’d been sacrificed so that the demon might be freed.
“Andramelech!” Nadia yelled and rushed forward, her face a mask of rage.
I looked at David, but there was no time for words. The battle had begun. And if we wanted to keep Andramelech out of this world, the time to cut him down was now.
“You!” the demon howled to Nadia, quelling any uncertainty I might have had that this creature was, in fact, the risen Andramelech. “You who have stalked me, sought to imprison me. You,” he said, “must die.”
She wasn’t the least bit fazed by his words. Instead, she leaped onto the table, her sword at the ready, and thrust it at his eye. He slammed it away, slicing his forearm in the process, but not even hesitating. I swallowed, realizing just how powerful this demon must be. Newly made demons are usually a bit slower, more unsure. And their strength hasn’t reached its maximum potential. If this was Andramelech in low gear, then we really were in trouble.
Not that I had time to think about it. David had reached one of the guard demons already, and as I rushed to help Nadia, the third barreled toward me.
“Get back, you son of a bitch,” I shouted, pulling the crossbow into ready position. He didn’t even slow down. Just raced pell-mell toward me, arms wide out at his sides, his chest exposed.
I fired, nailing him right in the heart. The shot didn’t kill him, of course, but it did fell him, and as he tumbled, I leaped on him, then stabbed my stiletto through his eye before he even had time to react.
As the demon was sucked out of the body, I sprang back u
p. He might have been an easy kill, but there were two more demons to worry about, and I could see that David and Nadia had their hands full.
Unlike the demon I’d killed, the creature David was fighting was armed with a serious-looking machete. David was holding his own, but as I watched, the demon caught David’s saber right at the handle, splitting the metal at the joint and sending the blade flying.
As I screamed and raced toward them, the demon thrust the blade down, aiming for David’s heart. David kicked up, his leg intercepting the blade, knocking it off course, but slicing his leg in the process.
He howled in pain, then collapsed as the demon kicked his good leg out from under him. I’d reached them by now, and as the demon lunged again for David, I intercepted, managing to get a good kick of my own in and knock the machete out of his hand.
It went tumbling to the ground, and as the demon scrambled to retrieve it, I leaped to nail him. I caught him off balance and we rolled over and over. My stiletto jerked free in the confusion.
We ended with him on top of me, both of us unarmed. He had his fingers on my throat, and I used one hand to try to force his fingers away and keep my air passage open. With my other hand, I grappled for my lost blade.
I couldn’t find it, and as the pressure of his fingers increased, I knew I couldn’t afford to scrabble for it for too long. I needed both hands to pry the demon off if I wanted to stay conscious.
“Kate!”
I turned my head and saw David limping toward me. With his bad leg, he couldn’t move fast enough to reach me, but he did the next best thing, kicking the machete and sending it spinning over the trampled ground until it stopped just close enough for my fingers to reach it.
As I did, the demon’s grip tightened, and the world turned inside out as my body used up the last of the oxygen in my lungs. I fought through the haze, focusing all my effort on my arm and the hand that held the demon’s machete. I swung up and over, not aiming so much as trying to make contact. Anything to get the bastard to loosen his grip.
I felt a thud as the machete connected, then the tension as I sliced through flesh and cartilage. A single thump, and the pressure on my neck loosened. The demon collapsed on top of me. I squirmed sideways, my vision clearing even as I did.
That’s when I saw it. The demon’s body, but without a head.
I found the head quickly enough, and as it babbled at me in a language surely known only in Hell, I used the machete for one more bit of dirty work—stabbing the damn thing through the eye so that the demon—as well as the body-was dead.
“David!” I called, turning to find him back on the ground. I rushed to his side, terrified by how pale he looked.
“It’s not an artery,” he said, tightening a tourniquet he’d manufactured from his own belt. “I’ll be fine. Nadia needs help.”
I gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, then sprang back up. The stone table had cracked down the middle, and now it was merely rubble. They were battling on it, though, and I was once again impressed by the woman’s skills.
Even so, she was no match for an angry, resurrected demon, and I got the feeling he was toying with her. I struggled forward, still lightheaded, and scooped up my knife along the way. As I got closer, Andramelech looked straight at me. “Little Hunter,” he said. “You will not win.”
“I think I will,” I said, and as I did, I let my knife fly. It landed square in his eye, and the demon—the great Andramelech, who had caused us all so much worry and trouble—was sucked out of the body and disappeared into the ether.
Honestly, the whole thing was rather anticlimactic.
“Eric!” Nadia yelled as she leaped from the table and sprinted toward him. “Thank God you’re safe. Thank God, thank God.”
She pulled him to her and pressed a kiss to his lips even as I stood there seething. David looked more than a little uncomfortable, but whether it was because she was kissing him or because I was standing right there, I didn’t know.
All I knew was that Andramelech was gone, and with him my last reason to work with David.
Eric, I thought, was truly dead to me now.
“Honestly, Crowe, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Nadia said, as she shoved a few more things deep into her duffel bag. “I mean, it’s been almost six years, you know? And you’re married. So why should you care what happened between Eric and me all that time ago?”
“I guess I’m just a silly suburban mom,” I said coldly. “It’s so hard for us to rein in our emotions.”
“Jesus, Crowe. I thought you’d be a little bit more rational about this.”
“About the fact that you’re telling me you had an affair with my husband?”
“I never said that,” she said with a tiny smile. “Not exactly.”
I leaned against Stuart’s desk and watched her cram a few more pairs of underwear into her bag, still not sure what to think. I trusted Eric, I did. And yet what possible motive would Nadia have for pretending to have had an affair? I couldn’t think of one, and that made me nervous. Very, very nervous.
Finally she finished packing and turned back to me. “Okay, look,” she said. “I came here without any idea that Eric was around. Honest. But after you told me about David, I wanted to go have a little talk with him. About leaving you to patrol alone, you know?” She was chewing gum—I’d refused to let her smoke in the house—and she paused to smack it.
“Go on.”
“I got there, all ready to rip him a new one, but he seemed so familiar. And he was staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. And that’s when he told me who he was. I mean, this is a man I really, deeply cared for.” She shrugged, not meeting my eyes. “Anyway, that’s when you came in, and—”
“You lying little bitch,” I said, the words coming out as a whisper, a defense against her onslaught. As soon as I spoke them, though, I knew they were true. I didn’t know Nadia’s reason, but I was certain she was lying.
A quick thrust of guilt slammed into my gut. I’d known Eric my whole life, and still I’d doubted. What kind of a fool was I?
She looked up at me, her head angled as she tied the knot at the top of her bag. “It’s easier to think that, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said honestly. “It is.”
The look she gave me was both cold and pitying, but I held my ground, fighting the urge to slap her as I indicated the door. She hoisted her duffel and headed out of Stuart’s office, toward the front door. She paused there, then, and looked back at me.
“In the end, it doesn’t matter what you think,” she said. “Andramelech’s gone, at least for now. It’s over. I know the truth, and so does Eric. And now you can go back to folding laundry and making meat loaf. Have a nice life in suburbia, Crowe.”
“Thanks,” I said sweetly as she stepped out onto the porch. I slammed the door hard, hoping it burst her eardrums, and then I leaned against the closed door. “I will,” I said, looking down the hall at the house that I loved, that was my home. “I do.”
The phone rang while I was still fuming about Nadia. I had rewound and rerun the conversation in my head so that I had a variety of different endings, ranging from me being incredibly polite but sharp-tongued, to me forgoing chitchat all the way and simply mowing her down with her own Lotus.
Satisfying, and yet ... not.
I checked the caller ID, saw that it was David, and immediately froze. Part of me desperately wanted to answer. The other part wanted to run away and hide.
Finally, the grown-up part decided to take over, and I pushed the talk button.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “She’s lying.”
“I know,” I said. I took a deep breath. “So how’s the leg?” I asked brightly.
“Not good,” he admitted. “But it will heal. But Kate, about Nadia ...”
“That will heal, too,” I said. “I was ... Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. Because I trust you. I do. I’m sorry I didn’t, even for a moment.”
“Kate,” he said, th
e edge in his voice scaring me. “I didn’t tell you everything. That night in my apartment when you came over. When I told you what happened in San Francisco. I left a few things out.”
“What?” I whispered, moving to one of the kitchen chairs because my legs were suddenly weak.
“We hadn’t just talked by phone. She’d come to San Diablo, too. She came to the library twice, I think. She hit on me, pretty hard.”
“And did you ... ?”
“No,” he said. “I told her I was married. I told her I loved my wife.”
“But she didn’t leave it alone.”
“That’s one of the reasons I didn’t trust her,” he admitted. “Why I didn’t tell her I still had the ring.”
“She must hate you for lying to her.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “If so, she has a funny way of showing it.”
“I saw,” I said dryly.
He chuckled, the sound teasing my heart and soul and conjuring up so many memories of his laugh. “When she came by this morning,” he said, “it was to chew me out for not helping you patrol. Then she looked at me and—”
“Knew who you were. Yes, I’ve heard the story.”
“I had the impression she’d known all along, actually,” he said. “Not that it matters. And not that I could prove it.”
I frowned at that. If she knew, why the song and dance?
“At any rate, she said that she missed me and that now that time had passed and you were married, the door was open.”
“She’s right,” I said, forcing the words out, and hating the truth of them. And it was true. David was single. He could date—even marry—anyone he wanted.
The thought made me more than a little queasy.
“She’s not,” he said, his voice tender. “The door’s not open, Katie. Not to her.”
I shivered, hearing the words that he didn’t say: It wasn’t open to her, but it was open to me.
“Eric, I ...”
“I know,” he said. “We’ve already been there, haven’t we?”
“Eric?”
“After the semester is up,” he said. “After that, I’ll move away. It will be easier on both of us.”