Devil's Paw

by Debra Dunbar

  He paused, running a finger across my cheek and along a loose tendril of hair. “I know, Cockroach. I felt your sorrow about his death. I’m sorry you’re grieving, and I understand your need for closure and vengeance, but you will be safer at home. If this demon killed your friend, managed to overpower an angel, I fear he’ll do the same to you.”

  I could tell he wasn’t going to budge, that my personal safety outweighed any need to deliver personal judgment in his mind. He was an angel, though, and there was one thing I knew he was a stickler for — duty.

  “As the Iblis, it’s my responsibility to investigate these deaths and bring the murderer to justice.” I had no idea if that last part was true, but I knew it would make my case stronger in the eyes of an angel.

  A warm light came into his eyes, and once again he caressed my face. “He is very strong. I fear you might need to resort to something unsavory if you face him.”

  I understood the unspoken words. I was only an imp. And who knows if encountering another devouring spirit would set me off on my own course of destruction. Gregory had always been hands–off when it came to most threats to my person. The only time he’d intervened had been when an angel had caused me harm. This sudden protectiveness was both flattering, insulting, and rather suffocating.

  “I am the Iblis. You are always lecturing me about duty and responsibility; well here I am, ready to step up to the plate. He’s killed at least four demons. That makes his justice my responsibility.”

  “He’s killed an angel. That makes his justice my responsibility.”

  I faced him, seeing the resolve in his face. It wouldn’t matter. He could tie me up and stuff me on a plane, but I’d keep coming back. He’d never been able to control me, never been able to get rid of me. And from the look in his eyes, he knew it.

  “It seems we have a disagreement about jurisdiction. I propose we work together since we both want the same outcome.” It was an angelic solution. Normally I’d rant and rave, physically assault him and demand I get my way, but I’d found things went better when I played on Gregory’s terms. His eyes returned to normal, his form solidified as he considered my proposal.

  “We’ll be more likely to find him working together,” I added. “And the quicker we find him, the less likely he is to do massive amounts of damage.”

  “Your argument is a sound one.” Reaching out a hand, the angel took a lock of my hair and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, sending a tendril of his personal energy in to caress mine. “Don’t devour, little Cockroach. Promise me you won’t devour.”

  I promised. I didn’t swear it, though. Because if the shit really hit the fan, devouring might be the only option left open to me. And I was determined that this killer, whether or not he was Raim, wouldn’t get away.

  “So where is he?” I wondered how we’d get there since Gregory was refusing to gate me, although summoning me must be a whole different scenario. My presence would definitely put a cramp in his plans if I had to travel by human methods.

  “He tried to get through the gate in Seattle, to return to Hel. I need to question the gate guardian, then we can begin to track him.”

  “Well, the gate is down by the water, our rental car is up in Eastlake, and we’re probably an hour or so by taxi.”

  “You get a taxi, and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Oh, hell no! I’m in this too. We travel together.”

  The angel was starting to glow again. This whole trip wasn’t doing much for his temper. None of this was doing much for his temper.

  “Just transport me with you, stupid, stubborn angel. Surely you won’t need to move me through Aaru this short a distance. What’s the big deal?”

  I’d caught him in his lie, and he knew it. “No one can know you’re here, on this side of the coast with me. If I gate you anywhere, there’s a chance someone will notice. I can’t risk that someone will even think of you in connection with these killings — especially the murder of an angel.”

  He was probably right. He usually was. And if the murderer was trying to get back to Hel, he only had so many options. If we worked quickly, I might still be home by late tomorrow.

  “Okay. You rush off and question your guardian, and I’ll meet you somewhere after, so you can brief me and we can track this fucker.”

  He looked both surprised and relieved at my acquiescence before he vanished in a flash of light, leaving me in a jetway in the middle of an airport. I knew where the gate was, I’d certainly used it enough times, but I had no idea where I was supposed to meet him. Figuring I’d hang out at the waterfront and wait for him to find me, I headed out of the airport and toward the taxi stand.

  ~15~

  By the time I’d reached the waterfront, I’d changed my mind. I was an imp. It was my prerogative. The taxi driver, who’d channeled his inner Mario Andretti when I’d waved a Ben Franklin in his face, gladly detoured and dropped me at First and Union, not a block away from the gate to Hel.

  It had taken me nearly an hour to get there, even with our breakneck speed. Gregory was still there, talking to the gate guardian who looked like a cross between a homeless guy and a street musician. He’d never had a wide range of corporeal forms, and I’d seen this one many times over the last century. With my energy held tightly inside, I walked along the opposite side of the street, head down. Even with my precautions, I saw Gregory’s hand clench and knew he’d sensed me and was pissed at my presence.

  Taking that as a sign that I was close to detection, I casually walked to a front door and slipped through the narrow passageway between two buildings, looping around behind the buildings and the gate. I’d planned to skirt the immediate area around the gate guardian and lurk a block or so away, but halted when I saw the hole.

  It’s not like I could miss it. Nearly four feet across, the edges were a jagged tear, as if someone had taken a giant bite out of the concrete parking area. Cautiously peering over the edge, I saw water fill the hole about three feet down. It was obviously not made by a man–made digging machine, and I hadn’t seen any rock–eating monsters nearby. A troll could have done this, but the ones who’d slipped through the wild gates and established territory among the humans were all in Scandinavia. At least, they had been the last time I’d seen them. They didn’t generally like urban areas, and although there was a lovely statue of one up in Fremont, I doubted any were gobbling up rock and mortar here in the Pacific Northwest.

  Curious, I got onto my hands and knees and scooted around the jagged edge, examining it as carefully as I could. Bits of cement broke off under the weight of my hands and splashed in a rain of pebbles and dust into the water below. It was dark, edging close to midnight. The security lights in the parking area behind the building were strong enough to cast faint shadows along the ground, but not strong enough to pick out colors. Still, I couldn’t mistake the dark red along a twisted piece of the rebar grid that poked out from the concrete. It was human. Which didn’t always mean the being that spilled it was human. Faint traces of demon energy lined the edge of the hole.

  A demon had torn up this chunk of a parking lot, so very close to one of the major angel gates. What kind of idiot would do that? The energy it would take to convert the section of the parking lot into raw energy would be like a beacon call to the angels. If he’d had any plans to slip through the gate undetected, this would put a big dent in them. Unless he’d done it after his unsuccessful attempt? I rubbed a crumbling edge with my finger. If he’d been caught by the gate guardian, driven back behind the buildings, if he’d found himself without enough raw energy for defense, he would have needed to convert matter into energy quickly. He would have used whatever was at hand.

  I frowned. Matter to energy conversion was inefficient, even for us demons. We always tried to store up as much as we could before leaving Hel, replenishing it slowly from the scant resources of earth while here. This dramatic hole would have resulted in barely enough raw energy to kill a Low, although it was probably enough to
give a gate guardian second thoughts about pursuit.

  Had he cut himself? Was he wounded by the gate guardian and bleeding? I touched the blood and rubbed it between my fingers. Odd. It should be dry by this point, not thick, wet, and slippery. Slippery. It coated my fingers and dove down to the personal energy within them, touching my spirit self with a silicone–like glaze. I’d felt it on the necks of the devoured demons, felt it on Baphomet’s neck, wrists, and legs, and now I felt it in this demon’s blood. What did this stuff have to do with a devouring spirit, and a bunch of dead demons? If only I’d been able to get to the dead angel — did he have it too?

  Perplexed, I left the hole and headed to the end of the parking lot, walking face first into Gregory’s polo–shirt–covered chest as I rounded the corner. He grabbed me in an oh–so–familiar move and began slamming me against a nearby wall.

  “What were you thinking? I take all these precautions, and you waltz right on by us on the street?”

  He pinned me firmly against the building, his fingers digging into my shoulders as I caught my breath. “I held my energy tight inside,” I protested. “There’s no way he could have detected me. No way.”

  “I saw you! What if he recognized your human form? And although you had admirable control at that moment, twenty seconds out of sight and you splay your spirit self all over the place.”

  Crap. When I’d examined the hole, I’d forgotten and revealed myself. I bit my lip and looked up at the angel in what I hoped was an apologetic fashion.

  “What were you thinking?” he repeated, giving me a few more whacks against the building.

  “There. Was. A. Hole,” I choked out in rhythm with my back hitting the brick behind me.

  Gregory let go and I slid down a few feet, catching myself before I hit the ground.

  “The demon,” I gasped. “He must be low on raw energy, because he converted a big chunk out of the parking lot.”

  The angel frowned, turning his head to look toward the vast expanse of pavement. “How big? It would have to be a hole the size of two city blocks to produce enough energy to defend against an angel.”

  Standing upright, I wiggled past Gregory to lead him to the spot. “Yeah. I don’t get it. It’s dangerous to convert this close to a gate — suicide practically. And if he were being chased and defending himself, he would have needed to convert twenty times this much matter.”

  We stood and stared down at the hole, like two insurance adjusters contemplating the potential repair costs.

  “The guardian didn’t pursue the demon.” Gregory’s voice was slow, measured. “He blocked the demon’s passage, and when the demon attempted to devour him, he let him go.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Let him go? This guardian took his job seriously. He’d once chased me three blocks in an attempt to take me out. I couldn’t imagine him letting any demon go.

  “I don’t blame him,” Gregory said, squatting to better examine the hole. “There are legends about devouring spirits, and guardians are ill–equipped to deal with that sort of thing.”

  “So why the hole?”

  The angel traced along the edge with a finger, just as I had done. “Maybe he wasn’t converting. Maybe he was devouring.”

  I couldn’t help the small sound of disbelief that escaped me. Cement? A section of dirt and parking lot? Why the fuck would anyone devour that?

  Gregory looked up at me, and I could see his eyes, a solid black, even in the dim light “If he’s snapped, then he can’t help it. We need to find him now, before he completely loses control, before he manages to make it through a gate.”

  I didn’t believe it. If he’d snapped, there would have been a devoured gate guardian, and half the waterfront missing. This wasn’t the beginning of a devouring spree, it was something else. “I think he wanted to create a diversion. Bring the guardian running, then slip through the gate.”

  Gregory looked at me like I was an idiot. I know he preferred his own theory, but I’d done this a million times. Guardians were easily distracted, any bit of demon energy, magical activity, or a half–price sale at Macy’s and they were off and running. It was a piece of cake to loop back around and sneak through. I hated to give the angels our secrets, but I suspected Gregory might be putting too much into this. Sometimes a hole was just a hole.

  “He’s snapped,” the angel repeated slowly, as if to drive the fact into my thick head. “He’s devoured countless demons, an angel, your friend up in Fremont, and just tried to devour my gate guardian. He’s snapped.”

  Fine. We’d go with that, since Gregory was clearly not interested in hearing about demon distraction techniques.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier for you guys to just let him go back to Hel? He’d be our problem then.” In fact, his presence in Hel would be a plus to the angels. Who knows how many hundreds of demons he’d devour before someone managed to take him out. Less demons they’d need to worry about coming over here and causing problems.

  Gregory stood and walked slowly around the circumference of the hole. “Devouring is a problem for all of creation. Yes, it might be beneficial to turn this weapon against our enemies, but if the demons in Hel could not eliminate him, if he managed to overpower the elves, he’d be unchecked. Plus, there’s a chance he could be controlled if he fell into the wrong hands. A truly powerful demon, an ancient, could compel a devouring spirit and target him like a weapon.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, like me. We all know how well compulsion has worked on me. If you can’t manage to do it, no one can.”

  “Few devouring spirits are imps,” he replied. “Only the strongest can compel them under normal circumstances. Your being an imp makes you practically immune.”

  “But this guy probably isn’t an imp,” I mused.

  “Weapon of a powerful demon or an uncontrolled devouring spirit in Hel, by the time he reached a realm that we had a presence in, he’d be too powerful to stop.”

  “He’d devour all of creation,” I added softly.

  Gregory’s head came up, his eyes meeting mine in a stoic sorrow. “Exactly. I do not think this particular devouring spirit is the one to bring about the end, but it pays to be safe when the stakes are so high.”

  I looked down at the rebar, at the red blood with the tell–tale magic. Regardless of whatever magic was used to restrain these demons, this guy had to be stopped. I didn’t want to muddy the waters with misdirection, and I just couldn’t see how the slippery stuff I’d found on each corpse and in this blood tied in with a devouring spirit gone mad.

  “I need to see the dead angel,” I told him. Something nagging in the back of my mind told me there was a missing piece to the puzzle.

  “Why? What could you possibly discover from the corpse of an angel that you’ve been unable to find on four dead demons?”

  I opened my mouth to tell him, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand. “No. I cannot do it. There will be all sorts of questions. I can’t see that the benefit would outweigh the risk.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  The angel walked toward me, wiping the concrete dust from his hands. “He’s desperate to get through a gate. He’s so low on energy that devouring is all he has left, and he appears to be injured. He needs to go home.”

  “So we stake out a gate? Which one will he head for?”

  Gregory was silent, his eyes searching me for something. “What?” I asked.

  “How do you know where the gates are? Do you know every one of the angel gates, or just a few?”

  I laughed, quickly cutting off the sound with my hand over my mouth. “Sorry. It’s just …these gates have been in the same place for millions of years. There are seven main gates to Hel and forty–nine sub–gates. Everyone knows them. It’s not that hard to memorize fifty–six locations.”

  “Yes, but some are mobile. The one in Columbia could be anywhere in or around the mall. How do you find it?”

  “I just do. I can feel them nearby. I can’t pinpoint exactly where they are
until I’m pretty close to eyesight distance, but I can feel them.”

  “How close,” he urged. “How near Columbia are you when you feel the presence of the gate.”

  I shrugged. Where was he going with all this? “I don’t know. The parking lot maybe? I know there’s one there, so I’m not actively trying to sense it. I doubt I could feel it much beyond the exit off 29, tops.”

  He blew out a puff of air. “That’s a relief.”

  “So he’s coming back here, right? He’ll try for Seattle again?”

  “Yes, probably. If he can’t sense them beyond a few miles, he’ll most likely try for this one again.”

  I peered at him in the dim parking lot lighting, trying to see if he was making a joke. “It doesn’t matter if he can sense them or not. We know where all the angel gates are. If he’s injured, I’d doubt he’s in any condition to head for the east coast, and that’s the nearest major gate to this one.”

  “Name the seven main gates to Hel,” the angel commanded, ignoring my comment.

  I smirked. This was like a quiz show. I wondered what the prize would be. Knowing angels, It would probably be something I’d hate.

  “Columbia, Seattle, Dakar, Bangkok, Copenhagen, Bogota, and that stupid one off northern Russia. Why the fuck would you put a gate nearly two and a half miles up in the air over an island? Fine for those of us with wings, but I can’t tell you how many demons plunged to their death through that damned thing. Nobody uses it anymore. Not in the last eight decades…” I frowned, remembering something I’d read.

  “It’s gone. Well, not totally gone, but so damaged we had to disable it.”

  My mouth fell open. “The Tsar Bomba. Holy shit on a stick, the humans blew up an angel gate!”

  Gregory looked grim. “Novaya Zemlya is the island, and the bomb was a fifty megaton RDS–220, to be exact. There were a lot of very angry angels over that one. Many were advocating extermination of the human race, citing they’d acquired power they were ill–equipped to handle.”