by Jenna Black
I gave him a suspicious look. It wasn’t like him to be this nice, or this conciliatory. He might not hate me, but he really didn’t like me. Perhaps he’d known better than to show them to me, but had shown them anyway, out of spite. “Didn’t your host warn you not to show graphic crime scene photos to a civilian?” I asked, and I’m sure he heard the undertone of suspicion in my voice.
The sudden hard glint in Adam’s eyes told me he’d heard it, all right. “No. He’s as inured to them as I am.” He grimaced. “And he asks me to extend his apologies as well.”
I had met Adam’s host during a brief time when Adam had transferred—most illegally—into Dominic to heal what would have been a fatal gunshot wound. I barely knew the human Adam, but I suspected he and the demon Adam were more alike than not.
“Tell him I accept his apology.”
Adam gave me one of those creepy stares of his. I’m sure he hadn’t missed the fact that I’d never actually accepted his own apology. But he didn’t call me on it. Instead, he shoved the manila folder with its ugly photos into the backpack, then left without saying good-bye.
CHAPTER 6
The fact that my brother was possessed was not common knowledge. As far as the world at large knew, Raphael had fled my brother’s body and gone back to the Demon Realm, never to return. How I wished that were the case!
What this meant as a practical matter was that Andy was unemployed. Like Dominic, he’d been a firefighter when he was a legal host. He’d also begun hosting as soon as he’d turned twenty-one, which meant he hadn’t completed his college education and had no particularly useful job skills. The Spirit Society would give him a small pension for a couple of years, but he was young enough that they’d expect him to host again—or get his life together on his own if he chose not to.
The pension wasn’t enough to live on, so when I arrived at Andy’s apartment, it was to find him poring over the Sunday want ads. It seemed like such a quintessentially human thing to do that I almost forgot this wasn’t really Andy. I shook my head to clear the confusion.
“Are you actually going to apply for a job?” I asked.
He gave me a sardonic look. “I do have to support myself, you know. Or did you expect me to ensconce myself in this apartment and spend the rest of my life cackling evilly?”
I wished I could think of a brilliant plan to remove this bloodsucking leech from my brother’s body. Unfortunately, since he was a member of the royal family, he was an unusually strong demon. Too strong for me to exorcize. Lugh might be able to overpower him, but I’d have to let him be in control to try it, and we’d already established that I couldn’t.
“I really hate you, you know,” I said petulantly.
Raphael sighed like I’d hurt his feelings. “I gave you my word I’d take better care of Andrew this time around.”
“And you expect me to believe you?”
He shook his head. “I suppose not. But I’ll tell you anyway that Andrew is fine. We will never like one another, but we have reached something approximating a truce.” He laughed suddenly, though I couldn’t imagine why.
“What’s so funny?”
“He’s testing the limits of our truce. He wants me to tell you that he’s all right. He also wants me to tell you, and I quote, ‘Get this fucking asshole out of my body.’”
I had no idea whether the message was really from Andy, or whether Raphael somehow thought this would disarm me. “I’m working on it, bro,” I said, just in case it really was my brother. Of course, I wasn’t working on it all that hard. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I had no idea how I was going to manage it.
To my surprise, Raphael reached out and patted my shoulder. “If you and I can ever reach our own truce, and if you can find someone else to host me, I will leave him. You have my word on that, for whatever you think my word is worth.”
I stifled my immediate desire to tell him exactly what I thought his word was worth, but no doubt my opinion showed on my face. Raphael looked disappointed in me.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “It’s obviously not for the pleasure of my company.”
Probably I should be nicer to him when I was here looking for information—particularly information he wasn’t overly eager to give me. But I just didn’t have it in me to be nice to Raphael, who was the author of so many of my troubles.
Instead of answering, I invited myself to take a seat on his living room couch. Since he was pretending to be my brother, the slob, I had to move aside a pile of junk mail and discarded newspapers to clear a seat for myself. I was glad I was wearing one of my more conservative outfits so that my skin didn’t come in contact with the stained upholstery.
“Make yourself at home,” Raphael muttered, then took his own seat in the similarly disreputable-looking recliner.
I decided we’d had more than enough preliminaries, so I got right to the point. “Was The Healing Circle the only site where you and Dougal played God?”
Raphael blinked, the question obviously not one he expected. He thought about it a long time before he finally got around to answering. “No.”
He didn’t say anything else, and I had to quell a surge of impatience. “Care to elaborate?”
“Is there something specific you want to know, or are you just on a fishing expedition?”
“You said you wanted a truce with me, right? So why don’t you just talk to me without looking for what’s in it for you?”
He closed his eyes and scrubbed at his scalp, once again looking strangely human, even to me, who should know better. “I know it’s completely out of character for you, but if you can see your way clear to giving me a break, I’d really appreciate it. Some of this stuff is really hard for me to talk about.”
“My heart bleeds for you.”
His eyes opened, and there was a flash of something dark and inhuman in them before he managed to control himself. I had to suppress a shiver. I was pretty sure Raphael hated me almost as much as I hated him, and he was not a good enemy to have.
He released his tension on a deep breath, and his voice when he spoke showed none of the anger that still lurked just behind his eyes. “I don’t give a damn what you think of me. But no matter how much I wish it were otherwise, I do care what Lugh thinks. I don’t much relish the thought of talking about things that will make him think even less of me than he already does.”
I think it was genuine anguish I saw on his face just then. He and Lugh have one hell of a twisted relationship. I felt a reluctant sense of pity for Raphael, who clearly idolized his brother, but who was doomed to fall short of Lugh’s expectations. Of course, that was only because of the choices he made, so I reminded myself not to feel too sorry for him.
“I think he’ll feel better about you if you tell me the whole story than if you refuse to tell me to cover your ass.”
“I’m not—” He shook his head. “Oh, what’s the use?” he muttered under his breath. The expression on his face faded until all that was left was a bland impenetrable mask. “We had numerous facilities throughout the country. Even with our considerable understanding of human biology and genetics, what we were trying to do wasn’t what you’d call easy. There was a lot of trial and error involved.”
I made a sound of disgust. “These are human beings you’re talking about, not lab rats.”
I expected that to piss him off, but his mask stayed firmly in place. “Some of them were sufficiently altered that I rather doubt they still qualified as strictly human. Certainly your father’s strain didn’t. The fact that, except in your mother’s case, we were unable to crossbreed them with human beings. .” He must have realized what thin ice he was treading, for he let his voice trail off. “What is it, exactly, that you want to know?”
“Did you have a facility at Haven Hospital in Houston?”
“Yes, though I personally had little to do with that one.” I gave him a skeptical look, and he smiled a bit grimly. “Would you believe I’m scared of flying?”<
br />
I thought about that a minute and realized I did. Planes don’t crash often, but when they do, there’s bound to be a major explosion—and fire. There were plenty of legal demons who worked as firefighters, but their superhuman strength and healing ability could keep them safe in all but the most volatile of situations. Explosions with airplane fuel were about as volatile as you get. It’s thought that around twenty-five demons died on September 11, not from the collapse of the towers—which killed any number of demon hosts, sending their demons back to the Demon Realm—but from their heroic attempts to penetrate the fire.
“But even if you weren’t there in person, you know what was going on,” I said, shaking off my morbid thoughts.
He shrugged. “Their goal was similar to the goals of The Healing Circle’s labs, though they were coming at it from a different angle. The Healing Circle worked on increasing the strength and durability of their subjects. The Houston labs were working on increasing the malleability of human flesh.”
“Huh?”
“We wanted stronger, faster-healing hosts.”
I started to protest, but he held up his hand for silence, and I complied.
“Yes, we can heal our hosts very quickly by human standards. But our hosts can still die of injuries and send us back to the Demon Realm before we’re ready to go. We wanted to create hosts whose flesh could be manipulated well enough to heal even catastrophic injuries quickly. I know I can never expect you to approve of our goals, but this one was actually beneficial to our subjects.”
I snorted. “Your subjects who were held prisoner for their entire lives and then killed when they were no longer useful.”
He had no answer for that accusation. “Why are you suddenly interested in the Haven project?”
I debated how much to tell him, then decided that if I expected him to talk, I needed to bite the bullet and do some talking of my own. So I told him the details of the Tommy Brewster case, watching his face for any trace of expression along the way.
He was silent for a long time after I’d finished, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Well?” I finally prompted when I got tired of waiting.
He blinked, as if coming back from a great mental distance. “From the evidence, it sounds like there’s a definite possibility he’s a product of the Haven project, but I don’t think there’s any way to be sure.”
“And how do you explain his mysterious change of heart? Why did he leave God’s Wrath and register to become a demon host?”
Raphael shrugged, his expression telling me how little this mattered to him. “I’ll buy Adam’s theory that Sammy was possessed, at least until it’s proven wrong. But you know, as fascinating as you might find this puzzle, in the grand scheme of things, it’s unimportant.”
Yeah, that was Raphael all right—compassion personified. “It’s important to the Brewsters.”
“I’m sure it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s important to you.”
“You don’t get to tell me what’s important to me,” I said through gritted teeth.
He rolled his eyes and looked exasperated. “Fine. Sorry I presumed to tell the demon king’s host that she has more important things to do than play girl detective.”
I’m usually a master of sarcasm myself, but I don’t much appreciate it when it’s aimed at me. “How’d you like fifty thousand volts of electricity running through your body?” I asked, though I refrained from actually pulling the Taser. I was sitting too close, and Raphael would be on me before I even got my hand on the damn thing.
Raphael’s nostrils flared. “The next time you Taser me, remember you’re Tasering Andrew at the same time. I can promise I won’t shield him from the sensation.”
I growled in frustration. Raphael laughed, but he sounded more bitter than amused.
“What’s the good of having a hostage if you’re not going to use him, eh?”
My fingers curled into fists, but the emotion that swelled in my chest was more grief than anger. So many people had suffered already because of me.
Raphael sighed, and his voice gentled. “I’m not really threatening to hurt Andrew,” he said. “I’m just trying to discourage you from hurting me. Surely you can understand that?”
Understand? Maybe. Forgive? No way in hell! “Just don’t try giving me orders,” I said, but I sounded defeated. “If I want to investigate the Brewster case, it’s my business, not yours.”
“I’m just suggesting you be reasonable. Think it through! Even if you ever figure out exactly what happened, as far as the law is concerned, Brewster is a legal demon host. Your chances of finding enough concrete evidence to prove he’s not are slim to none.”
There’s nothing like being told I can’t do something to make me bound and determined to do it. “I’ll find a way,” I said, and I meant it.
Raphael dismissed my assertion with a wave of his hand. “No, you won’t. But we’ve argued enough for one day, don’t you think?”
“Fine.” I stood up and managed about three steps toward the door before Raphael stopped me in my tracks.
“There’s something else I need to talk to you about.”
My instincts were to get the hell out of there now that I’d gotten as much as I could out of him, but I fought those instincts. I still wasn’t convinced whose side Raphael was on, but I couldn’t deny he was an important player in this deadly war of succession. And if he was actually willing to divulge information for once, it would behoove me to listen.
I forced myself to return to my seat. “I’m all ears,” I said, my voice brittle as broken glass.
“I wish you would let Lugh surface so I could talk to my brother directly,” Raphael said, and I snorted out a laugh.
“Not gonna happen.” Lugh was peeved enough at me to send a spike of pain through my eye, but that didn’t exactly endear him to me.
“So I gathered.” Raphael’s expression changed, the forced blankness disappearing as a mischievous grin took over his face. “I suppose there are some advantages in being able to talk to him without him being able to talk back.”
I felt my lips starting to curve into an answering grin, but stopped myself cold. I was not going to allow Raphael to disarm me. “So what is it you’re so desperate to talk to him about?”
Raphael sat back in the couch, the humor fading from his face. “I’m wondering if he’s formed anything that even vaguely resembles a plan.”
“If he has, I don’t think he’d tell you about it.”
Raphael ignored my comment. “Dougal will keep sending his forces after you. He might not know that you’re still hosting Lugh, but as far as he knows, you know the identity of Lugh’s current host.”
“Thanks to you,” I pointed out. Of course, I had to admit to myself that when Raphael had been playing inside man in Dougal’s conspiracy, he’d had no choice but to tell Dougal the name of the host into which he’d summoned Lugh. But just because I had to admit it to myself didn’t mean I had to admit it to Raphael.
His only acknowledgment of my jab was a brief dirty look. “Maybe even without having me on the inside, we’ll be able to protect Lugh. Adam is a powerful ally, and I’ll help as much as you’ll let me. But hiding out on the Mortal Plain is only a temporary solution. Eventually, you’re going to die.”
I must have made some kind of outraged face, because Raphael patted the air soothingly.
“I mean of old age, not necessarily by violence. Lugh can help you lead a longer-than-normal life with greater health than someone who’s not hosting a demon, but eventually the human body wears out. One of the many traits Dougal and I were trying to improve upon in our program.”
“Don’t even—”
“Forget I said that last part,” he interrupted. “What I’m trying to tell you is that demons are essentially immortal beings. The span of a single human life—even one that has been artificially extended by a demon—is a relatively short time to us. If Dougal decides he’s losing too many people a
nd wasting too much energy trying to destroy Lugh right now, all he has to do is wait until you die and Lugh is forced to return to the Demon Realm.
“You. . That is, Lugh, must come up with some kind of long-term plan. If that plan doesn’t involve me, I’ll understand.”
Maybe he’d expected me to rush in with reassurances, because when I didn’t say anything, his lips pressed tightly together, and a muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Is that it?” I asked. “Can I go now?”
He stared down at his hands and nodded briskly. “Yeah, that’s it,” he said in his flattest voice.
I supposed I’d hurt his feelings, and a small part of me felt kind of bad about that, because I couldn’t help but see the occasional echo of myself in him. But I had little trouble hardening my heart. “If you want any sympathy from me, you need to stop holding my brother hostage.”
He raised his eyes to mine, and the expression in them chilled me. “Has it ever occurred to you that I trust you as little as you trust me?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Raphael’s capable of one of the most malevolent stares I’ve ever seen, and he was giving it to me right now. “It means you’re a vindictive, reactionary bitch, and if I weren’t inhabiting Andrew, you might do any number of unpleasant things to me—like send me back to the Demon Realm to face the brother I betrayed. That is not a reunion I anticipate with any great joy.”
I almost laughed. “So what you’re trying to tell me is that it’s my fault you’re holding Andy hostage? What a crock of shit!” His face turned a shade of red that should have warned me to silence. Naturally, I ignored the warning. “I’m not powerful enough to exorcize you, and I’m not about to murder your host just to get revenge on you. You’re the vindictive one. You’re holding Andy just to hurt me. And maybe hurt him, too.”
The fire flared in his eyes once more. I got the impression he briefly tried to control himself, but that effort didn’t last long. “Here’s what I’d do if I wanted to hurt you,” he snarled.
He moved so fast I didn’t have a chance in hell of protecting myself. He leapt out of his seat and crossed the distance between us in a heartbeat, taking my arm in a bruising grip to hold me still while his fist connected with my chin. My head snapped back with the force of the blow, my jaws clicking together so hard I think I cracked a tooth.