The Demon Hunters

by Linda Welch

  After a few seconds of hovering on the sidewalk, the three speedsters took off, towing me with them and I didn’t have time to see the sights. I spotted the apartment buildings as we tore through the streets, huge drab constructions surrounded by plots of dirt or concrete, or both, but only because my power-walking companions had to briefly stop when we came to a cross-street busy with traffic. Soon as they spotted a break, over we went.

  We stopped too abruptly for me and Royal had to steady me as I teetered. I clung to his shirt front with both hands fisted in the material. When I felt I could lift my head from his chest, I saw Gia striding up and down the sidewalk with cell phone in hand, waving it in the air. Suddenly she threw it to the ground, whereupon impact it exploded in a cloud of metal and plastic fragments.

  “What’s up with her?”

  Royal spoke out the corner of his mouth, close to my ear. “Can’t get a signal.”

  “And?”

  “We did not think to bring a GPS. We thought we could use our cells.”

  I still didn’t get it. I shifted away from him a fraction. “Perhaps you could spell it out for me.”

  “We have an address, but we don’t know how to get there.”

  I gaped at him. “Don’t know. . . .” I swallowed a chortle. I guess Otherworldy powers mean zilch when you’re lost.

  Daven strode toward us. “We need a map.”

  “We could backtrack, go into the city center and find a map, or,” Royal pointed along the street to two old cars lined up at the curb, “we could take one of those cabs.”

  Gia and Daven sped along the sidewalk. Royal put on a burst of speed and got ahead of them. I started after them. From Gia’s wild gestures, it looked like they were arguing, but they shut up when I reached them.

  We climbed into a ratty old Saab which had seen better days, Gia up front and the rest of us crammed in back like sardines in a can. Daven argued with the driver in what I think was Russian. He said the man was trying to talk us into a tour through Kazan. The guy looked pleased when Daven fluttered a wad of notes in his face.

  The second dose of Dramamine did the trick and I felt just fine. As our maniac of a driver sped through the streets and over bridges at double the speed limit, I fantasized about exotic vacations with Royal. With the aid of the blessed little anti-nausea pills, we could reach our destination via Bel-Athaer, saving time and a whole lot of money. A hot sandy beach with turquoise waves lapping our toes, a Margarita in hand, Royal smoothing sun-block lotion all over my body. Mm, mm.

  No, I hadn’t forgotten why we were in Russia. I was doing my damnedest to think of anything but that.

  We slowed down in what looked like the countryside, badly paved roads and hedges. We drove into a village with the cutest cottages I have ever seen. Lacy scrollwork, carved and painted plaques, geometrical designs and stylized animals and birds adorned the colorfully painted buildings, not just the walls but also window and door frames, porches and eaves. Overflowing flower beds reminded me of pictures of English country gardens. The plain, square brick tower of a mosque rose from among the clustered homes.

  At six thousand feet above sea level, Clarion’s climate is close to Kazan’s year round, so at least we were appropriately dressed. A lovely summer day, and warm, flower-perfumed air gushed through the cab’s open windows. I kind of wished we had time for a sight-seeing trip, especially with what I knew came next.

  I should have thrown myself out the cab.

  I felt Royal as a warm tingle tight against my side, more intense than usual, so I knew he was worried. Groping, I found his hand and twined my fingers with his. He gripped it fiercely, almost hurting. But when I glanced at him he kept his gaze firmly ahead.

  We stopped at the low wood gate of a cottage little different from the others we’d passed, although each had individuality. Nothing about it said a dying Otherworldy being waited inside. Cream, pink and salmon chrysanthemums clustered along the stone pathway leading to the door.

  Being squished against the passenger door on one side and Royal on the other, I nearly fell out when Royal reached around me and opened the door. We managed to safety extract ourselves and started along the path. The cab waited in the street.

  Daven opened the door without knocking and we went into a narrow hallway, with a staircase on the left and doors ahead and to the right. The interior of the house was far from pretty. Distorted by little ripples and bulges, hideous mustard-brown wallpaper with tiny blue flowers had been poorly applied to the walls. We went up the staircase to the narrow upstairs hall. An open door faced us, and I followed Daven and Gia into a small bedroom furnished with a twin-size bed and blue wood dresser. The room looked crowded and stuffy with five demons standing inside.

  I suppose they were beautiful, but I barely saw them. What lay on the bed took my entire focus.

  I had never seen such a badly burned person.

  Daven said it was female, but nothing indicated that. A head, body and limbs charred black, a crazy-paving pattern of red, weeping fissures. Her skin looked like lava as it cools and cracks to show the red fire beneath. A featureless face, a charred blank, and flat like a reptile.

  And the smell . . . oh god, the smell. . . .

  The only thing I know about the treatment of burn victims is it is lengthy, complicated and extremely painful. This woman didn’t even have a morphine drip to ease her pain. As I stood in the doorway, I wondered how she still lived. My last meal curdled in my stomach and threatened to crawl up my throat. I held the back of my wrist to my mouth.

  “This is what they do to us, and to Gelpha,” Gia said, her face marble-white.

  I knew it would be bad, but the reality was worse than the image conjured by my imagination. I wanted out of there in the worst way. I didn’t know if I could cope. “Royal!”

  “I’m sorry, Tiff.” But he looked everywhere but at me. “I’m so sorry to put you through this.”

  I swallowed bile and looked at the demons, who looked back at me. I had to do this, I had no choice. “What’s her name?”

  “Maud.”

  How long would the poor woman linger, how long would I have to wait for her to pass over, a burned body on a bed with just a tiny lift and fall of her chest to show she still lived?

  The poor thing lay there, suffering, as we waited for her to give up her pain and go on her way, and no guarantee I’d see anything. She was Gelpha, and neither I nor the Gelpha themselves knew if they lingered when violently slain, as humans do.

  With this thought, came another. “Wait a minute. I don’t think this will work.”

  Every eye in the room turned to me.

  I put my splayed fingers to my head and dug them in my hair. “I see people at the place where they are killed. Technically, as she was attacked and died - will die - from her injuries, she was violently slain. But although she will die here, she wasn’t killed here, nor at the place where she was attacked.”

  Royal faced me. He gently enclosed my hands in his and lowered them to his chest. “I’m so sorry,” he said again.

  I peered at him. My statement didn’t surprise him. He already knew.

  A demon with blood-red hair threaded with gold squatted and picked something off the floor, a long object wrapped in white material. He stood, shook the bundle and the cloth unraveled. He held a long, wide-bladed sword.

  “What. . . ?” Confusion swiftly became comprehension and disbelief. I looked wildly at Royal. “No!”

  He pulled me closer. “I know it’s barbarous, or will seem so to you. But she is no longer a person, she is a soul trapped inside a shell and in terrible pain.”

  Oh no. Oh my god no! I tried to pull away. “No! You can’t!”

  The bastards knew I saw the departed at the scene of their violent death. They asked themselves the same question I just posed, and came up with a solution. They meant Maud to die here, right in front of me, and violently, their plan all along and Royal part of it.

  “It will be a mercy, Tiff.” He trie
d to pull me to him, but I struggled in his arms and twisted away.

  The red-haired demon stood by the bed with the blade angled in his hands. I narrowed my eyes at him and growled, “You were on the mountain, you and another. Why?”

  “They were curious about you,” Royal said.

  I could barely get the words out. “You lied to me!”

  “I did not, Tiff, not technically.”

  “You knew why they were curious about me! You knew this was coming!”

  Royal grabbed me by the upper arms and pinned me to him. I couldn’t move an inch.

  A long silvered blade clasped in two hands, descending almost faster than could be seen. A wet, meaty thunk. . . . My face against Royal’s chest, I didn’t see it happen, but a victim of violence see’s their death with something other than their eyes, and through Maud, I did see.

  Royal let me go just as quickly, but kept hold of my hands. I wrenched them free and turned. My insides loosened and crawled up my throat like they were trying to find a way out. I gasped and bent over, gagging.

  The sword had disappeared and a dingy blue sheet completely covered the body. A woman hovered just above the floor, swaying like a leaf caught in a gentle breeze.

  This time I didn’t have to ask the victim who killed her. He stood in the room with me, a beautiful red-haired demon with glinting hazel eyes. Bent over, I tilted my eyes up at him. He held my gaze for a moment, then dropped his.

  I straightened up and made myself look at the shade. The first female demon I saw, and of course beautiful. Long hair black as ebony tumbled over her bare shoulders and the breast of the white ankle-length gown. Her eyes sparkled like citrine jewels beneath black arching eyebrows and a rose blush colored her high cheekbones.

  But she was coming apart in ribbons, strips of her peeling off and dissipating like smoke. She held out hands on which the fingers frayed.

  “Forgive me!”

  “Who attacked you?”

  She drifted across the room toward the wall. “I betrayed them! Forgive me!”

  “Maud, what happened? You must tell me.”

  Slowly she spun, what remained of her arms splaying out as she disintegrated. Her voice whispered through the room. “Elizabeth’s journal.”

  She shredded apart, and was gone.

  I found myself in Royal’s arms again, my breath panting out in tiny gasps. “What do you see, Tiff?”

  “Horrible. It was horrible.” I shuddered as I lifted my head from his shoulder. “She’s gone. She just came apart.”

  Blinding anger overwhelmed the distress of what I’d seen. I tore free of his arms and turned to face the others, and spoke with a threat in my voice I knew I couldn’t back up. “You bastards! You fucking bastards! You killed her! I should see you all in hell!”

  “She was a suffering husk,” Daven said from behind me.

  “She was a beautiful woman!” I wailed, tears welling in my eyes. I swiped at them with my sleeve. “And you did nothing to help her. Nothing at all!”

  A tall demon with hair and eyes the color of old, tarnished silver stepped toward me. “You saw her. You actually saw her.”

  Someone suddenly grabbed me by the arms and spun me. Gia’s black eyes bore into mine. “Did she say anything?”

  I stared at her stonily. “She asked for forgiveness. She said she betrayed them. And she said. . . .”

  Shit! Why didn’t I see it before? “You said the killer is targeting Gelpha.”

  Gia glanced to the side at Daven. “And our people.”

  “Then the Charbroiler must be able to distinguish them from humans. Which means either the Charbroiler is one of you, or - ”

  “We thought of that,” Gia said.

  “Or,” I went on, “one of your people is identifying the victims. Maud said ‘I betrayed them.’”

  Gia released me. “If Maud betrayed us, if she worked for the Charbroiler, why did he try to kill her?”

  “No idea.”

  I stepped back from her and looked toward the window. I didn’t want to look at them, at any of them.

  Royal tentatively put his arm around my shoulders. I walked from beneath it and a few paces away from him.

  “Then it is over,” the silver demon said.

  “I pray so,” Daven told him, “because one of our people was slain this morning.”

  I looked at the still shape beneath the sheet. Was it over? How many did Maud identify before someone killed her?

  I couldn’t take any more. I walked out the room and out the house. I’m glad nobody tried to stop me, because I would have resisted. I didn’t care how powerful they were, if they tried to take me back in there, I would go down fighting.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Royal came out the cottage first, looking around till he saw me already in the back seat of the cab. Gia came after him, then Daven. I thought of being squished in with Royal and Daven and wished I’d taken the front seat.

  I wished I were back home, turning pages of the newspaper for Jack and Mel, or sitting out in the backyard under an apple tree with a glass of iced tea and a good book. I wished I hadn’t quit my job with Clarion PD and opened the agency with Royal. I wished I’d never seen a demon or talked to a dead person.

  I wished I were anyplace else than the back of the old cab.

  He’s not human, I told myself. He doesn’t think like we do. But he shares our emotions, doesn’t he? Does he not see the barbarity in what they did to Maud? We would have done our damnedest to keep her alive.

  But what would that have meant for Maud? Years of surgery, years of pain - her life would have been hell. It wouldn’t have been a life. As badly as she was burned, how could she function in any way approaching normal?

  What was that movie I saw years ago, where Native American Indians left their elderly to die during a hard winter? They sacrificed them so the rest of the tribe had a chance. And those old people understood, they settled down to die, knowing their death meant something.

  I tried to justify what they did to Maud. I tried telling myself that, like the American Indians in that old movie, they did it for the benefit of the tribe. But they deliberately murdered the woman. They waited till I arrived and cut off her head.

  Royal was an accomplice to murder.

  I thought of the Labiosa family, what I did for them, and what they did to their granddaughter’s killer. But the memory didn’t readjust my thinking, make me agree with what the demons did to Maud. I wasn’t there when Senora Labiosa pulled the trigger, I didn’t take part. And only an idiot would endanger their life by telling Clarion PD. Right?

  I couldn’t get over what they did to Maud, killing her so I could talk to her shade. And they did it not knowing if she would remain as a shade, if I’d be able to communicate with her.

  I almost yelled out loud when Royal jerked open the cab door, took hold of my upper arm and slid me out the back seat. Daven was paying off the driver with another wad of paper money.

  “What are you doing?” I asked Royal with alarm in my voice.

  “We’re not taking the cab, Tiff. Come on.”

  I twisted out of his grasp and started walking. I didn’t know where I was going, except away from the cottage. He was at my side in a shot. I kept walking and he kept up with me. He tried to take my arm again and I gave him a look. I wasn’t ready for the demon dash yet.

  “It takes too long,” he explained.

  “Then why use a cab in the first place? Why not take the directions out the cabby’s head?” I asked as the notion occurred to me. I knew Gia and Daven could do that.

  “Precisely what Gia and Daven wanted to do, but I thought you needed a break.”

  “Gee, thanks. You considerately let me be driven to Maud’s murder.”

  His eyes went a shade darker, got a stony look, and I knew I’d hurt him. I didn’t care.

  He got in front of me and walked backward. He sounded weary. “Tiff, either come with me, or with them.”

  He stopped walking
and I almost barreled into him. He gave me no choice. I was not about to let Gia or Daven put their hands on me. I nodded. Royal clamped his arm around my shoulders.

  You can’t think properly when you’re moving so fast. Your thoughts just scatter. That was good, because I didn’t want to think anymore. My head hurt with thinking and my heart hurt from what I saw in the cottage. I couldn’t believe Royal took me there, knowing what would happen. I couldn’t believe he was part of a deliberate murder. Nothing he could say would change how I felt. He wasn’t any Gerarco Labiosa.

  I wasn’t sure what he was, not anymore.

  We stopped across from the same old gray building and Royal guided me through a doorway behind us, which led inside a small shop with dirty glass windows.

  He let go my arm and nodded at a wood door in the back wall. “We have to visit Lawrence on the way back.”

  First I heard of it. My voice came out sullen. “Why?”

  Royal jogged his head in Daven’s direction. “I told the High House I wanted to take them through Bel-Athaer. Lawrence wants to meet them.”

  I didn’t really know young Lawrence. I met him one time when Royal and I found him in Gorge’s shop. Having to detour to see him made me nervous. I’d rather forget my one experience in Bel-Athaer eight months beforehand. I nearly lost my life down there. Or up there. Or across there. Or wherever it is.

  Royal moved ahead of me and opened the door, and stood aside to let me pass. I pulled in a deep breath and stepped through, and we were someplace else, a small bare cube of a room with the entrance to a passageway ahead. I looked back just before we went on and didn’t see any windows behind us, or a door leading to the street, just gray concrete walls. Royal took my hand but I pulled free and paced ahead of him. If we had to do this, I’d as soon get it over with.

  This time, instead of shooting along at the speed of light, we just walked briskly along the corridor. Low illumination bathed it, seeming to come from the beige ceramic tiles which lined walls, ceiling and floor. I don’t think Royal saw my chest heave as I remembered walking a passage lined with glowing cobalt-blue tiles beneath House Morté Tescién, his ancestral home. Everything about that place was a bad memory.