The Devil Inside mk-1

by Jenna Black

  Wyatt hauled me to my feet and dragged me toward the stake. The pain in my head didn’t let up. I mentally screamed at Lugh to stop it, but he didn’t listen. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to endure. Maybe it would be a relief to be burned to death, if it meant this pain in my head would just stop.

  The pain was so bad I hardly felt myself being dragged into that pile of foul-smelling kindling. They didn’t unlock my cuffs, just looped another length of chain through them and attached that chain to the metal base of the basketball hoop.

  Lugh let up for a moment-maybe just to let me catch my breath. Wyatt stepped back from the stake, letting one of his flunkies squirt me with lighter fluid. My breath came in quick, frantic gasps. The fumes made me cough.

  “You really are a fool, Morgan,” Andrew told me. I looked up and snarled at him, but he didn’t seem to care. “Why should you suffer, when it’s Lugh’s sin you’re dying for?”

  “Shut up, Raphael,” Wyatt snapped. “What are you trying to do? Goad her into letting him in?”

  Raphael laughed. “Well, yes. I don’t give a shit about Morgan. My quarrel’s with Lugh, and it would be more satisfying if I could hear him cursing me as I finally win our little game.”

  “Well he’s a lot more dangerous than she is, so stop it.”

  “He’d be dangerous if I couldn’t Taser him. As it is, he’d be as helpless as a baby. I would so enjoy his helplessness.”

  He flashed me an unpleasant, shark-like grin, and Lugh put everything he had into another effort. The pain was like nothing I’d ever felt before, and I thought I might pass out. My vision went fuzzy around the edges. Raphael said something, but I couldn’t hear through the roaring of my blood in my ears.

  I felt something inside me shift. It wasn’t a physical sensation, not exactly. The best I can describe it is that it felt like a set of doors inside my head cracked open.

  I seized upon that sensation, closing my eyes and using the same visualization skills I use when I’m exorcizing a demon. Only instead of visualizing a gust of wind blowing the demon away, I visualized throwing open the doors of my mind to let Lugh in.

  Suddenly the pain in my head stopped completely. Not even an echo left. I raised my head and stared at Raphael, but it wasn’t me looking through my eyes.

  Raphael grinned delightedly. “Welcome, brother. What the hell took you so long?”

  Lugh made a horrible growling sound I wouldn’t have thought my throat could make. Raphael looked even more delighted. Lugh started to struggle against the bonds, and I expected Raphael to Taser him into submission.

  But that wasn’t what happened.

  With what looked like a respectful nod at Lugh, Raphael turned to Wyatt. And shot him point blank with the Taser.

  CHAPTER 27

  For a moment that seemed endless, everyone was shocked. Wyatt cried out and crumpled to the ground. Raphael put the Taser down on the ground, then plucked a gun out of the hand of the human standing closest to him. The man was just starting to protest when Raphael shot him in the head.

  Lugh recovered his composure quickly and, with a burst of strength, broke free of the handcuffs. I felt the press of the metal against my skin, but it didn’t hurt like it should have. I leapt out of the gas-soaked kindling, but I had no control over my own body.

  Later I would panic over the sensation-like I was sleepwalking while wide awake. Now I was just happy not to be burning.

  The rest of Wyatt’s people converged, half of them going after Raphael, half going after Lugh. It appeared none of them were demons, because they were about as effective as yapping Chihuahuas. One of them drew a gun and shot at me. At Lugh. Whatever.

  The bullet slammed into my shoulder. Painlessly. Lugh swatted the gun out of his hand, then struck him in the side of the head so hard I heard the neck snap. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Raphael shoot two more men who were trying to grab his gun arm.

  At this point, smart little minions would have run like hell, but these guys were fanatics. Even as their numbers dwindled, they wouldn’t stop attacking. Lugh and Raphael picked them off, one by one, bodies piling up until the field looked like a war zone.

  I suspect if Lugh hadn’t been controlling me so thoroughly, I would have puked my guts out.

  Finally, the last of our enemies was down. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but I thought everyone except Wyatt was dead. I’d have felt worse about that if they hadn’t been planning to burn me alive so that demons could take over the world, or whatever it was they’d hoped to accomplish.

  Wyatt started to regain control of his limbs. Raphael snatched up the Taser and gave him another jolt.

  Lugh crossed my arms over my chest and glared at his brother, who smiled.

  “Explain,” Lugh growled. Not much of a talker at a time like this, I suppose.

  The smile faded from Raphael’s face. A hint of some darker emotion-anger, maybe-glinted in his eye. “You’re the worst kind of fool, Lugh. So bloody self-righteous and self-absorbed you’re completely blind to the world.”

  We took a step toward him. Personally, I’d have been happy to punch the bastard’s lights out. But then, I wasn’t in control.

  “If you’d paid attention to the world as it really is,” Raphael continued, undaunted, “you’d have seen this coming. But no, you thought everyone was as honorable as you are-that once you became king, you’d make everything right. Arrogant ass.” His lips twisted in an ugly sneer.

  So far, this wasn’t the clearest explanation I’d ever heard.

  “Raphael…” Lugh said, a warning in his tone.

  Raphael shook his head. “I knew Dougal was up to something. He wasn’t upset enough at the prospect of you taking the throne. He should have been rabble-rousing as hard as he could, but he wasn’t. So I started dropping hints to him that you would make a lousy king. You and I get on poorly enough that he had no trouble believing I would stand against you. And so he let me in on his plan.”

  “The plan to force me into a mortal host and then burn me and my host alive.”

  Raphael rolled his eyes. “Yes, that one. And before you ask, if I’d run to you and told you all this, you wouldn’t have believed me. You’d have thought I was just starting trouble. And even if you had, there was nothing you could do about it once Dougal gave your True Name to his human followers.

  “The only thing I could do was try to preempt them by summoning you into a human who wasn’t under their control. I’d hoped Morgan would be able to keep you hidden until I’d figured some way out of this mess.”

  I felt my eyebrow raise. “And how did you know I wouldn’t be able to take her over? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  Raphael hesitated. “Block Morgan out, and I’ll tell you.”

  Block me out? I didn’t like the sound of that at all, but before I could start panicking, Lugh spoke.

  “I don’t have enough control to do that,” he said. “Whatever you have to say, you can let her hear.”

  Raphael shook his head. “Then all I can tell you is that Dougal has been up to more mischief on the Mortal Plain than anyone could have guessed. I’m not sharing state secrets with Morgan, no matter what you order.”

  Lugh advanced another step toward his brother. “You don’t get to make that decision.”

  Raphael’s chin set stubbornly. “Yes, big brother, I do. Do you think you can torture me into talking?”

  I kind of liked the sound of that. After all, Raphael might have just saved me from burning to death, but his methods sucked big-time. I remembered the burns under Brian’s arms, and the blood fountaining from Dominic’s leg. Unfortunately, revenge didn’t seem to be Lugh’s top priority. He clenched his fists in what I took for frustration, but dropped the subject.

  “Once your friends knew I was in Morgan, why didn’t you help her?”

  “I did help her. I arranged for her to be arrested so she’d spend some time in jail where no one could get to her. I’ve also arranged for the key evidence to b
e ‘lost’ so they’ll have to drop the charges. And I called her house to wake her up when Wyatt tried to burn it down around her ears.

  “I couldn’t prevent tonight’s rendezvous without blowing my cover, but I stalled as long as I could by being a temperamental bastard when she called. I figured if you couldn’t surface under these circumstances, you’d never be able to.

  “And don’t tell me that either one of you would have believed me if I’d come to you and told you I was on your side. Morgan doesn’t trust any demon, and you’ve never trusted me. I was better off staying on the inside.”

  Lugh swept the battlefield with a contemptuous gaze. “And if I hadn’t managed to surface tonight, Morgan and I would both be dead.”

  But Raphael shook his head. “No, brother. Only Morgan. If they’d lit the fire, I’d have had no choice but to shoot her.” He looked into Lugh’s eyes, and I could tell he was looking through them at me. “I’m truly sorry, Morgan. I did everything I could to goad Lugh into surfacing and goad you into letting him. But if I’d failed, I’d have had to kill you and send him back to the Demon Realm. It would have been a temporary solution at best, since they’d still have Lugh’s True Name. They’d just call him into another human victim, and I’d have thoroughly blown my cover. But I couldn’t have taken on everyone here by myself. I’m strong, but I’m not that strong.”

  I, of course, didn’t say anything. Panic beat at me as I realized I’d probably never be able to say anything again.

  “It’ll be all right, Morgan,” Lugh said, speaking to me with my own mouth. “I know what I did to take control, and I know how to let go.”

  Raphael looked shocked. “You’re going to let her back into control?”

  Lugh shrugged. “Even if I didn’t let her, I suspect she’d figure out how to do it herself. She always managed to kick me out of her dreams when she wanted to. This will have to be a partnership, rather than a dictatorship.”

  “The gallant knight again, eh, brother?” There was a hint of disgust in his voice.

  Lugh didn’t seem to appreciate it. “You should try it sometime.”

  The slight tightening around his eyes suggested Lugh had actually managed to hurt Raphael’s feelings. He lowered his gaze. “Do I get no credit for anything I’ve done? Can I never do anything right in your eyes?”

  Lugh sighed. “Forgive me. I truly am grateful, even if I don’t appreciate your methods.”

  Wyatt groaned, and the brothers both turned to look at him. He couldn’t move yet, but he stared up at Lugh with a mixture of scorn and fear in his eyes.

  “This is only one cell of Dougal’s revolutionary army,” Raphael said, his voice quiet and studiously neutral. “I tried my best to find others, but everything started to move too fast. You cannot return to the Demon Realm until we’re sure Dougal’s supporters can’t summon you to your death. And our best hope of wiping out the conspiracy is if I stay on the inside.”

  Lugh was silent for a long time. I wished I knew what he was thinking, but our communication went only one way. I’m sure he “heard” me yammering questions at him, but he chose not to respond. It pissed me off, so I tried visualizing shutting the door in my mind.

  Lugh winced, and I felt a fleeting spark of triumph. Yay! I knew how to make his head hurt!

  Unfortunately, he had his foot firmly in that door, and I couldn’t seem to shut it.

  Wyatt made another pathetic groaning noise. It seemed to snap Lugh out of his moment of indecision, if that’s what it was.

  “He mustn’t be allowed to warn anyone of your loyalties,” Lugh said, looking at Wyatt. Wyatt’s eyes widened in terror, and he fought to regain control of his limbs.

  Raphael gave him another jolt from the Taser, then went to kneel beside him. “Trust me, my friend,” he said. “You don’t want to heal this.”

  He punched Wyatt so hard you’d have thought his head would go flying. Not hard enough to kill him, however, for I could see his chest rising and falling, though his eyes were closed and his jaw slack.

  It wasn’t until Raphael picked the unconscious man up and carried him toward the stake that I fully realized what they were about to do. I shoved harder on the door, though it wasn’t as if I could stop Raphael my own puny human self.

  Again Lugh winced, though I didn’t feel like I was making any progress. But I couldn’t let the two of them just burn a guy to death without trying to stop them, could I?

  “Don’t feel too bad for him, Morgan,” Lugh said. I hated when he used my own mouth to talk to me. “Both the human and the demon are responsible for many, many deaths, most if not all of them by fire. This is a fitting end.”

  Yeah, I knew all that. And in a Biblical, eye-for-an-eye sense, it was hard to argue that the man didn’t deserve it. But I didn’t have the demon ability to shrug off necessary evils. I didn’t want to be party to burning a man alive, no matter how evil that man might be-no matter how dangerous he would be to me in particular and mankind in general.

  I kept shoving hopelessly on that door in my mind, knowing I didn’t have enough time to figure out how to shut it before the deed was done. It had taken Lugh weeks to figure out how to gain control. How could I expect myself to figure it out in minutes?

  Didn’t stop me from trying, though.

  Lugh bore the pain stoically as Raphael laid Wyatt’s inert body on the pyre and squirted him with lighter fluid.

  “You’re going to want to step back,” he told Lugh as he tossed the can onto the pyre and pulled out a book of matches. “We put a ton of accelerant on this thing. I can’t guarantee we’re not about to have an explosion.”

  Lugh took a few steps backward. I was still trying to close the door, but my efforts were weakening. It was too late already, my sense of urgency dwindling as I realized there was no way I could cross the distance between us to stop Raphael from lighting the fire.

  Raphael struck the match.

  It wasn’t quite an explosion, but it was close. As soon as the match hit the kindling, the whole pile blazed-a huge, wild bonfire, so hot Lugh had to take a few more steps back. Raphael ran from the blaze the moment it went up, and still he had minor burns on the hand he’d lit the fire with. The burns healed within seconds.

  The brothers stood side by side, watching Jeremy Wyatt and his demon burn to death. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t, not with Lugh controlling my eyes. At least Wyatt never made a sound. I hoped that meant he never regained consciousness.

  The fire roared so loudly that, at first, I didn’t notice the sound of a car driving up. Neither did Lugh or Raphael, who stood gazing at the fire and, as far as I could tell, feeling no guilt over what they’d just done.

  It wasn’t until a car door slammed closed that we turned, ready to do battle with a late-arriving enemy.

  But it wasn’t an enemy who’d stepped out of the car. It was Adam.

  He walked slowly toward us, looking from Lugh to Raphael, then to the bodies that lay strewn on the ground around us. I was relieved to see him alive, and I knew he deserved a hasty explanation for the carnage, but at that point, explanations weren’t my first priority. I hammered away at Lugh, trying to gain control, trying to force his mouth- my mouth-to form questions.

  He remained in control, but asked my questions anyway. “Are Brian and Dominic all right?”

  Adam’s hand hovered near his sidearm. “They will be,” he said, cautiously. “They’ve both been taken to the emergency room, but the EMS folks said their prognosis was good.” He looked at the bonfire, still burning brightly, then back to Lugh and Raphael.

  “Care to explain what’s going on?” he asked.

  Lugh did most of the talking, probably because he didn’t expect Adam to trust Raphael. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t that sure I trusted Raphael. I mean, yeah, obviously he was on Lugh’s side, but I wasn’t so sure his motives were as pure as he claimed. And I don’t care how bad the blood was between him and Lugh, he should have told me that he was one of the good guys. Even i
f he thought Lugh and I wouldn’t believe him, he could have saved us both a lot of pain.

  The fire was starting to burn down when Lugh finally stopped explaining. Adam looked over the collection of bodies and shook his head.

  “Well,” he said, in something of an understatement, “this is a bit of a mess, isn’t it?”

  Raphael found that funny, which made me dislike him even more. Lugh cut him a sharp look, but Raphael ignored it.

  “What did you tell the police about Brian and Dominic?” Raphael asked.

  “I told them my informant warned me a demon was holding an unwilling human captive in the basement of the club. The demon escaped and shot Dom to keep me from chasing him. I’ll take plenty of heat for not calling in backup and for taking a civilian in with me, but I’ll weather the storm eventually.”

  Raphael seemed satisfied with that explanation. “Then no one knows any of us has anything to do with these losers.” He drew the gun with the silencer out from under his jacket. “This is the gun I shot Dominic with,” he said. He handed it butt-first to Adam, who took it without a question, though the look on his face suggested he wanted to punch Raphael’s lights out.

  Raphael took a deep breath as if bracing himself for something. He gave me/ Lugh a long, searching look, then faced Adam. “The demon who kidnapped Brian was Andrew Kingsley. He attacked you, afraid you’d be able to identify him, and you shot him.”

  What the fuck…?

  As usual, I was a little slow on the uptake. Adam’s brows drew together, but even slow as I was, I knew the expression wasn’t so much puzzlement as indecision.

  “I’d do it myself,” Raphael continued, patting the gun tucked in his belt-the gun he’d taken from the human henchman, “but I don’t think any of us want the ballistics to match the gun that shot all these idiots.”

  My mind finally caught up with what Raphael was suggesting. For half a second, I hoped Lugh would object, but when Adam looked at him for confirmation, he nodded.

  “No!” I screamed mentally, frantically shoving on the door, but it was too late.