The Demon Always Wins: Touched by a Demon, Book 1

by Jeanne Oates Estridge

  Then he drove back to the ballroom, racing through the door as Betty was locking her office.

  “I heard you had a cancellation,” he said.

  “I didn’t give their deposit back.” She folded her arms across her big chest. “But they won’t be using the ballroom. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to make a little extra profit this weekend.”

  He removed the last of the money he’d gotten from selling the Lamborghini from his wallet and handed it to Betty.

  Dara thought Kelsey might mention seeing Dr. Lyle over the weekend, but the grant writer spent the entire day in her office. Several times during the day, Kelsey even closed her door to make phone calls in private. What did she need to keep private? Was she doing favors for Ben? Jaw tight, Dara decided to take that up with the demon doctor when he arrived.

  Once, she ran into Kelsey in the kitchen, getting coffee. Kelsey filled her cup so quickly she slopped coffee on the counter. She wiped it up and scurried out of the kitchen, guilt written all over her face. Dara would definitely be talking to Ben.

  At four thirty, he appeared in her office doorway. He wore a gleeful expression, like he’d put one over on her. Her hand twitched toward the bottle of holy water stashed under her desk, but she stopped herself. Instead she said, in a tone so snotty she despised herself, “Please take your cell phone and place it in your car.”

  “New rule?” He actually looked pleased.

  Of course he did. She was helping him evade his boss’s supervision. For a moment, she considered rescinding the rule, but common sense won out.

  “It is for you,” she said.

  He disappeared and returned a few minutes later. He turned his pockets inside out to demonstrate the phone was gone. She gave him a curt nod and turned back to her computer.

  “Do you have a few minutes?” He stepped closer to her desk. “I had something to discuss with you before clinic.” She dragged eyes away from her PC to find him watching her.

  “Certainly, Dr. Lyle.” She couldn’t quite manage a smile, so she settled for keeping her features in a calm mask.

  His gleeful expression returned. “I don’t know if Kelsey said anything to you…”

  Blood rushed to her head. How dare he waltz into her office and dangle his date with one of her staffers in front of her? You’re just jealous, a little voice said. She ignored it. He knew how she felt about him targeting her team. And after all the time she’d spent healing him last week. After what they’d almost…

  Her hand shot beneath her desk. Surging to her feet, she sprayed him squarely in the face.

  “Gaaaah,” he roared as his flesh turned crimson.

  “Is everything okay?” Kelsey called.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway.

  Dara grabbed Ben’s arm and dragged him inside the office.

  “We’re okay. Everything’s okay.” She slammed the door in Javier and Kelsey’s faces.

  “What in Satan’s name did you do that for?” Ben demanded, touching his burning face with one fingertip.

  “Like you don’t know,” she shout-whispered. “I told you to stay away from my staffers.”

  “Stay away from your…? What are you talking about?”

  The holy water hadn’t melted his skin, as it had when Nana sprayed him, but it still looked pretty painful. He touched his face and winced. Her hand itched to squirt him again, but that would be sheer self-indulgence.

  “How dare you come in here and brag about seducing that child,” she said.

  “Seducing…? I haven’t seduced anyone,” he said.

  “You liar.” She was yelling. She lowered her voice. “I saw you at Slyders Saturday afternoon.”

  Comprehension dawned on his face, but there was no accompanying guilt. Of course not. He was a demon, incapable of remorse, no matter how heinous his actions.

  “You saw me with Kelsey?” he asked.

  She nodded, sticking out her jaw.

  Instead of looking guilty, he quirked his lips. “And that upset you enough to spray me with acid?”

  “It’s not acid.” Even as she defended her action, she felt a little awkward. Something about his response was off, even for a demon with no conscience.

  “It is to me. It burns like acid.”

  Now she felt guilty, which was ridiculous. She folded her arms across her chest. “I warned you to stay away from my staff.”

  He checked his face in the mirror over her filing cabinet. The red was already fading. He walked to the door and opened it. “Kelsey, can you come in here for a minute?”

  Dara grabbed the spray bottle again, but she couldn’t very well spritz him in front of a witness. Kelsey came in, carrying a folder. Her eyes bounced between the two of them. She swallowed.

  “Were you able to make any progress today?” he asked.

  Warily, Kelsey opened her folder. “The caterer agreed to have a buffet of finger sandwiches, cold salads and cookies set up by two p.m. The party store has a full selection of poker-related decorations that we can pick up at a reasonable price. And it looks like we’ll be able to get a temporary liquor license by Saturday, though I don’t know how in the world that happened. It usually takes a month.”

  Dara’s eyes swung from Kelsey to Ben and back again. “Sandwiches? Decorations? A liquor license?”

  “I’m hosting a poker tournament on Saturday, with all proceeds benefitting the Matthew A. Strong Memorial Clinic,” Ben said.

  “Poker…?” Nana would be horrified. Dara opened her mouth to refuse, but before she could say anything, he continued.

  “We should be able to raise ten thousand dollars.”

  “That much?” Compared to the grant he’d provided, it was pocket change, but the right thought was definitely there. Except, where he was concerned, she wasn’t sure what the right thought actually was.

  “At least,” he said. “Maybe more. And next year, when you have a little more time to plan, you should be able to do five times that.” He turned one of his gorgeous smiles on Kelsey. “Thanks, Kelsey—you’ve done a great job.” His tone was a dismissal, and Kelsey took it with a grace that said she’d realigned her expectations concerning him.

  Dara reached out to thank him and apologize for dousing him with holy water, but at the sight of her disfigured hand, Lilith’s words came back to her. Your scars skeeve him out. That explained why he hadn’t suggested stopping to buy condoms on Saturday night, why he hadn’t been in touch since then. This fundraiser was his way of paying his debt of gratitude for her nursing care.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That was very kind.”

  He looked so crestfallen guilt stirred again, but she couldn’t afford to indulge her emotions. Nana was right. No matter how many nice things he did, he was a demon and a danger to her and everyone else in this clinic.

  Even though she had absolved Ben of trying to seduce Kelsey, Dara tried to keep her distance. It was a difficult thing to do when they saw every patient together.

  She was relieved when Gabby escorted their final patient in. Even being in the same room with him was starting to take a toll on her. Every time he glanced her way, she wanted to hide her hands, to make sure her scrub top covered her clavicles. Grit your teeth and get through it. She was Lonnie Perdue’s granddaughter, and no demon would make her cry. Not where he could see, anyway.

  The last patient’s arm was wrapped in gauze. When Ben peeled the gauze away, the sight was horrific. She was accustomed to infection, but the putrid stink of the boy’s wound made her stomach heave. The inside of his forearm had open lesions. Ben stared at it, intrigued.

  “How did you get this?” he asked the boy.

  “Wrap that back up,” she said.

  “It’s MRSA,” Ben said.

  “I know what it is. We don’t have the facilities to deal with it here. Our ventilation isn’t good enough and the infection protocols are beyond what we can guarantee.” She turned to the boy. “You need to go to Bermuda General, where they’re better prepared to help you
. Do you have a ride to get there?” If not, they’d send him by ambulance.

  The boy nodded. “My mom can take me.”

  Frowning, Ben rewrapped the boy’s arm.

  “How did you get this?” he asked again. “Have you been in the hospital?”

  The boy shook his head. “Some lady came into the restaurant where I work today. She reached for her cup as I was trying to clear her plate and she scratched my arm with her fingernail. A few hours later, it looked like this.”

  “Four hours?” Dara asked. MRSA took days to develop. Maybe this was some new super-infection. “What did she look like? We’ll need to track her down and—”

  “No time for that now,” Ben said. “He needs to get to the hospital.”

  She spoke to the boy’s mother, impressing on her the importance of taking him straight to Bermuda General. Then she called ahead to alert them to set up contagion protocols. When she returned to the exam room, Ben was still there.

  Eyes narrowed, she fingered the spray bottle in her pocket. “This is another plague.”

  Ben didn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t recall Egypt having a plague of MRSA.”

  “No, but they had a plague of blood, and that’s close enough.”

  He didn’t argue.

  “You didn’t need the woman’s description because you know who might have done that to him.” Again, he made no denial. “Because you’re in cahoots with another demon, a female.”

  Color rose in his face and his eyebrows crashed together. “I am not in cahoots with anyone.”

  “What’s really going on here?” She waved her hands to encompass him and the clinic. “This clearly isn’t a research mission about U.S. healthcare.”

  She looked into his eyes. His pupils were round and human-looking. It had been a long time since they’d turned rectangular. Even on the day she’d tossed him out of the car and made him find his own way home, they’d stayed round. But he wasn’t human. He was a demon, and no matter how blameless he looked or how good he smelled, he was dangerous.

  She bowed her head in defeat. “Nana’s right. I should close this place—shutter the windows and lock the doors—before someone gets hurt.”

  She felt sick at the thought. She was so tired. She had been fighting demons nonstop for six weeks, and it had taken nearly everything she had.

  Holding up his index finger, he disappeared out the door, returning a moment later with a pen and a pad of paper. Setting it down on the counter, he wrote, The mic in my phone may be able to pick up what we say, even from the car.

  Dara frowned, trying to figure out where he was going with this.

  It’s going to be all right. Your clinic is safe, I promise.

  She opened her mouth to argue, but he held up his index finger again and left the room. After a moment, the volume of the music playing over the PA system increased until, overhead, Lady Gaga bellowed that the boy she’d gone out with was really a monster. I know just how you feel, Dara thought.

  Ben came back into the room and closed the door. She took a step back, but he followed, trapping her against the counter.

  “I don’t know how good the tech in that mic is,” he murmured into her ear, “so be very careful what you say.”

  His breath was warm on her ear. It was impossible to think with him so close.

  “I have nothing to say,” she said.

  He crowded even closer, till his body pressed the length of hers. “What’s happened since the last time I saw you?”

  “Nothing.” She fought down a shiver of longing. “I’ve just had time to think.”

  “Don’t think.” He placed little nibbling kisses from one end of her collarbones to the other. Your scars skeeve him out, Lilith had said, but the erection brushing against her hipbone made that a lie. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And these”—he nuzzled her collarbones—”drive me crazy.”

  It was like he’d lit a bonfire in her belly. If Gabby and Javier’s voices outside the door hadn’t reminded her there were people around, she would have torn off his clothes and had sex with him, right there on the exam table.

  “Would you like to come back to the condo?” she asked.

  “I would love to come back to your condo and make love to you until we both pass out from exhaustion.” The heat in his eyes, not to mention the erect phallus bulging beneath his lab coat, said that was true. “But tonight I have a poker tournament to set up. After the tournament, I’ll have time to make love to you the way you deserve.”

  She tried to take that with good grace. “I can’t figure out how you’re pulling this together in less than a week.”

  He kissed her again. “Don’t think about it too much.” He walked out the door.

  On the way home, she stopped at the drugstore and bought a box of condoms.

  Chapter 39

  Dara hadn’t gotten a straight answer from Ben about the she-demon bedeviling the clinic, so the next morning, she stopped to see Nana before going into work.

  She explained the situation.

  “So there’s another one?” Nana’s age-spotted hands trembled. “And you don’t have any idea who it is?”

  The patient’s description, brief as it was, had screamed Lilith.

  “I have someone in mind,” Dara said. “There’s a woman I met about the same time Ben appeared.”

  Nana raised her wispy eyebrows. “Ben?”

  Dara’s face warmed. “Dr. Lyle. Anyway, I gave this woman the salt test, but she passed. Have you ever heard of a demon passing the salt test?”

  Nana never had.

  “Things kept happening, though, and she always seemed to be somewhere in the vicinity. So I tried making her mad, but her pupils didn’t change.”

  “She passed both tests?” Nana asked.

  Dara nodded.

  “But you still think she’s a demon?”

  Dara shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. Are there any other tests that you know of?”

  “Holy water and demonweed.”

  “Right. I know about those.” Dara rubbed her face. “The problem is, I have to work with this woman. I can’t figure out a subtle way to spray her or rub demonweed on her without seeming like a crazy woman.”

  “There’s the Bible test.”

  “I have even less reason to ask her to swear to something on a Bible.”

  “Bring her by tomorrow night,” Nana said.

  “I can’t.” Dara refused to expose Nana to further danger.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m really busy this week.”

  “What are you so busy with?”

  There was no point in lying. “Ben has arranged a poker tournament on Saturday with the proceeds benefitting the clinic.”

  Nana’s jaw dropped. “And you’re going to let him?”

  “He thinks it will raise ten thousand dollars.”

  Nana looked like she might have a stroke right there on the spot. “I see what his plan is now. He’s set your foot on the slippery slope. First it was drinking, now it’s gambling.” She didn’t say, “And next will be fornicating,” but the words hung in the air.

  “If two hundred and fifty thousand dollars didn’t corrupt me, another ten thousand won’t make any difference.”

  The logic of this was so compelling even Nana couldn’t argue. She bit her lip. “What is he up to?”

  “I don’t know,” Dara said. He’d said the clinic would come to no harm. For some reason, she believed him, but Nana wouldn’t.

  “You need to stay on your guard,” Nana said.

  “For right now, can we focus on the she-demon?”

  “Bring her here,” Nana said again.

  “I don’t think she’d come. She’s not a woman who does much she doesn’t want to.”

  “Convince her.”

  “How?”

  “Ask Ben.” Nana’s eyes swept Dara up and down. “He’s good at talking women into things.”

  “All right. All right. I’ll bring her
.”

  “When?” Nana asked.

  “Next week, after the tournament is over.”

  For the rest of the week, Belial worked long days, preparing for the tournament. Commandeering Kelsey, Javier and Jeremy as his team, he used the clinic kitchen as an operations base. There were poker supplies to buy—chips and cards, lammers and timers—and a thousand other details.

  The ballroom supplied tables and chairs, but their plain white tablecloths didn’t create the right ambiance, so Belial drove to Mobile, Alabama to buy sturdy green felt table toppers from a gambling supply house there. At least the Hyundai was good for that.

  He could have gotten supplies from Hell, but by the time you factored in all the palm-greasing and bargaining, not to mention the obligatory visit to the boss, it was faster and cheaper to do everything Aboveworld. Also, it allowed less potential for meddling.

  Dara kept the clinic running almost single-handedly while everyone else worked on the tournament. Whenever he caught her alone in an exam room, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Tuesday night brought a hot make-out session after the last patient left. He slid his hand up the front of her scrub top, but she grabbed his wrist. “Someone will hear.”

  The metal overhead door to the pharmacy rattled closed.

  “Is anyone still here?” Chris called.

  Dara opened the door a wedge. “I am.”

  “Everyone else is gone. I’ll lock the back door as I leave.”

  Dara thanked him and said goodnight. When the outside door slammed, color rose in her cheeks. She was so transparent Belial chuckled. That brought even more color to her cheeks. To mask her embarrassment, she pulled fresh paper onto the exam table and tore off the used section.

  He dared not make love to her and risk drawing her deeper into his web. It was no exaggeration when he claimed that no woman had ever resisted corruption after fornicating with him. He had no plans to harm her, but who knew what Satan might be planning? For her safety, Belial wanted that slim degree of separation. It felt as though he’d had a nonstop erection since the first time he saw her, but he couldn’t take any chances.