Demon Underground (2)

by S. L. Wright

  When the bar was closed, I moved on to print interviews, talking with magazine reporters and journalists and having my picture taken at the bar. Lolita brought back my cats, so I posed with the Snow-monster and his minion whenever I could. Who could fear a crazy cat lady? The print interviews went more in-depth with the questions, but such large chunks of my life involving Dread, Phil, Ram, and the other demons couldn’t be spoken of, so I doubted people really understood me personally. But I kept my fingers crossed that they were getting the general picture of what it meant to be a demon.

  All sorts of bizarre comments were made on the Web site Marissa put up for me. I wrote the introduction and I spent several hours a day replying to questions on the chat boards. I got at least a hundred offers a day of marriage, from both men and women. I was single-handedly creating a new sexual preference—demon-amore.

  It was still odd to look at the TV and see my face, or glimpse my picture in the papers. Marissa pleaded with me to go to some of the swanky parties I’d been invited to, arguing that people with money had power, and I needed to suck up to them along with everyone else. I finally agreed to go to an art opening, and it turned out to be a pleasant change. The people in attendance weren’t dying to meet me like the tourists who came to the bar. I could relax and ease out of the spotlight. I actually had a nice conversation about American Chardonnay with an older woman in a Chanel suit who didn’t indicate by word or deed that she was speaking to the latest media sensation. Maybe it was polite breeding. Maybe it was narcissism—they were all much more into their own image and reputation than other people’s. After that I started showing up at social events around the city, shunning the paparazzi, but happy to watch the celebrities for a while instead of being the one in the fishbowl.

  Everyone surrounding me served as my protection. No demon came close, though several times a day, if not more, I felt Goad at the fringes of my range. I’d have to deal with him soon. But he was camera-shy, like the other demons, and doubtless he was trying to figure out how he could cut me out of the herd.

  After another futile call with my mom, I was starting to think I needed to go to California to see my family. They weren’t being besieged anymore—the media had no need of photos of them with me deliberately overexposing myself. But when I suggested that once I got my finances under control, I’d close down the bar and come out for a week or two, they weren’t enthusiastic. It was a moot point, anyway, since I was barely treading water at the moment, what with my suddenly extensive and expensive staff.

  Mostly I thought about Ram. A lot. It didn’t help that he never really loved me. It was the same with Shock—if she had really loved me, she would have stood by me like Lolita and Michael. Even careless Bliss had been more faithful. How could I miss Shock and Ram when they had abandoned me?

  Yet how could I not?

  Then one night just before closing, I felt the faint signs of Savor’s approach. Swallowing, I turned to Bliss, who pumped her fist, jumping up and down a bit. “Yeah, baby! It’ll be a hot time on the old town tonight. ...”

  “You really like her.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Bliss, you can’t trust Savor. You know that, don’t you?”

  Bliss waved one hand, dismissing me and my concerns. “What has Savor ever done to you, Allay?”

  I had to think about it, and that proved her point. It was true that I couldn’t say there was any time in the past ten years that Savor had hurt me. Sure, she had given me my marching orders, and I had to put up with her coming to my bar, but that was it. “I haven’t gotten in her way. Yet. Savor’s all about what’s good for her, so it’s bound to happen sometime.”

  “Don’t be such a downer, Allay.” With that, she breezed off to greet Savor, who was wearing her favorite Sebastian persona. The guards glanced at me when Bliss ordered them to let Savor in, and I nodded. They knew who was the boss here.

  I was busy saying good-bye to the patrons who were lingering as long as possible, but I could hear Bliss say, “I’ve got the cutest little outfit. Do you want to go up while I dress?”

  I abruptly straightened, startled at the idea of Savor going inside my apartment. Savor shot me a look; that sly grin was so Sebastian, yet completely Savor. He knew exactly how uncomfortable it made me.

  “I’ll wait down here,” he drawled.

  Savor plunked himself down at the bar and winked at Lo. She laughed and said, “I thought I was your favorite bartender.”

  “Would you like to come with us?” he asked, taking her hand and stroking it. He was feeding off Lo, but she was loving it. “It’s a private party, just a few dozen beautiful people in a loft in Midtown. Clothing optional.”

  I briefly closed my eyes at the thought of Lolita attending an orgy with Bliss and Savor. But Lo declined, having worked hard all day, asking for a rain check.

  When Lolita went to the back, I asked Savor, “Are you planning to fuck everyone who’s close to me?”

  “I can’t help it if I love the company you keep.”

  I had to be plain. “Are you working for Goad now?”

  “Allay—what makes you say that? You know I offered to be your ally.”

  “I think you’re too used to being a double agent to start aligning with only one side. I think you’re in it with everyone. And you’re passing around information as it suits your purposes.”

  He leaned his chin on his hand. “You don’t say.”

  “How’s Glory settling into her new digs?” I asked. “I hope she likes the heat. The desert can be brutal if you’re not used to it.”

  Savor didn’t reply, so I knew he had been in touch with Glory. And with Goad tickling at the edges of my territory, Savor had to know he’d be identified inside my bar.

  “That’s why I can’t trust you as an ally,” I told him.

  “Allay, in my heart, you’re my only real ally.”

  I raised my brows. “What about Dread?”

  “Dread’s gone AWOL. Goad says he’s not going to fight the Manhattan DA. It seems Prophet Anderson is kaput.”

  Kosciusko had told me that Dread’s lawyers were delaying the DA shamelessly, but a hard deadline had been sent for him to appear on Monday. Apparently Dread wasn’t planning to make that meeting.

  Savor was watching me closely.

  “Where is Dread?” I asked.

  “Who knows? I didn’t get the memo. As far as I can tell, only Dread and Lash have gone. Zeal is firmly in control of the Fellowship and its assets.”

  “What about Goad?” I hated his stinging signature, dancing around the edges of perception as annoying as a mosquito.

  “Goad’s demons have spread throughout Manhattan, taking over Glory’s Harlem territory. Stun pulled out of the Lower East Side and took over the Village.”

  “Sounds like I’m surrounded.” I wondered how long it would take before Goad attacked. Surely with Dread no longer holding his leash, he would try sooner rather than later. “I can’t believe Dread would give up his power base so easily.”

  “It was never his. Vex controlled everything, and everyone. And after the Prophet’s Center was professionally firebombed, on top of everything else you did to Dread, what could he do?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s why Goad is staying away from you. Ram made his point, dear. He struck at the very heart of Dread’s empire, and burned him out like a rat.”

  “That was Ram?”

  He gave me a funny look. “You didn’t know?”

  My gut clenched at the thought of those frantic, helpless people waving their arms from the upper floors as firemen raced to save them. Ram did that? He had endangered dozens of people to kill one demon? Perhaps that was business as usual for him.

  It made me sick. How could I love a man who did that? “How do you know it was Ram?”

  “Goad told me. So far they seem to have split up and there hasn’t been any horde activity like there was under Dread. Goad seems happy with his conque
st—he personally took all of downtown. Now that he doesn’t have Vex and Dread to check his appetite, he’ll be churning out demons like clockwork, just you wait and see.”

  Now I was really nauseated. “Well, I’m not Glory. I’m not running away and leaving this city in his hands.”

  “You go, girl!” Savor beamed at me, as doting as if he had made me himself. “I’ll bet on you, hands down. You and Ram will be the new power couple—with Vex gone, and Glory at the other end of the world.”

  That was it—that was why Savor was so interested in aligning with me.

  Ram.

  Savor just wanted to get on the good side of our mean demon-daddy. When it was clear Ram wasn’t coming back to me, a whole lot was going to change. I’d better be prepared for that.

  “What’s wrong, Allay?” Savor asked.

  To distract him, I asked, “Why don’t you come out, too? We could do it together.”

  He froze, and his Sebastian persona seemed to disappear for a moment. “Don’t be silly.”

  “Might as well make it on your own terms. Live free! That’s my motto.”

  “Allay, that motto is ‘Live free or die.’ You can’t leave out the ‘die’ part.”

  “Fine, don’t come out. Bliss hasn’t. Neither will Mystify, he says it’s too time-consuming.”

  Savor was saved from answering by Bliss’s arrival. She was tricked out in a skintight champagne dress that showed off her bust, and the highest heels I’d ever seen strapped onto her toes and ankles.

  Bliss came over and gave Savor a twirl on request. They were giggling like kids, much more poke-and-tickle than sexy, not at all like she had been with Crave.

  They ran off together, waving good-bye as I pushed the last of my reluctant patrons out the door. Some of the regulars had stopped coming. They didn’t like my early closing hours, and they hated dealing with the crowds. But old Jose was always on his usual stool, and I had acquired scores of new loyal customers who came back night after night, offering to feed me. It seemed to mean something to them.

  At least the lines of people passing by the bar were much more thinned out. Now they were mostly out-of-town tourists visiting the city. I had become another attraction, a must-see along with the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. I had to ban flash photography inside the bar.

  There weren’t many left at closing time. I was getting ready to go outside to pull down the shutter when I felt Revel approaching. Fear was my first response, my gut reacting faster than my head. I was alone and Revel had killed on command before. Would he have any compunction in killing me, just like he had killed Plea to make me?

  I had only a few minutes before he arrived, so I turned to the one tool I had denied for so long. I closed my eyes and tried to ease past that barrier in my mind, to see what Plea’s memories could tell me about Revel. It was hard; I had shored up my defenses for years, but cracks had appeared over the past week, and I was finally able to merge my mind into the random stream of what Plea saw and thought.

  Revel, I murmured, trying to direct myself in the confusion.

  I caught a glimpse of Revel laughing and helpless with mirth, at Plea. She shrugged, turning away.

  Then I remembered a tiny dab-and-wattle hut with a dirt floor. There was no door, only a window with a drape over it. An arm thrust through, palm up, questing, as a voice outside murmured tearfully, “Blessed Mary, help me.” Plea grasped her hand, soaking up her out-pouring of grief and despair, begging for mercy. Plea shuddered in ecstasy.

  The hand withdrew, and instead of another hand the curtain opened, and Revel’s face appeared in the too-bright square of light. He was laughing again, openmouthed, holding himself up by the windowsill to see Plea robed in a hair shirt and living like a hermit crab while people by the hundreds offered themselves up to her to feed. He was just checking in on her as he passed through the Pyrenees, to be sure she was doing okay.

  I opened my eyes to see Revel, rocking his moneyed EU look, and smoothly chatting with my security guard.

  It took a second for me to come back from the eighteenth century. I nodded to the guard to let him in, and said to him, “Shut the door behind you.”

  There were a lot of people outside looking in, so I felt safe and exposed at the same time. The guard was also keeping an eye on me as per my coded gesture to be on alert.

  Revel was unusually somber. “I came to apologize, Allay. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before about Plea. I thought at first when I told you I was a demon, you would realize it from your memories. Plea knew it was me who had drained her. I couldn’t understand why you didn’t remember it, and I kept waiting day after day.”

  “Why you? Why did Vex choose you?”

  “He’d made dozens of hybrids over the decades, but they always knew from the memories that he was the one who destroyed the demon progenitor, draining them to be taken by a human. The hybrids never trusted Vex.”

  “Even without the memory, instinctively I knew you couldn’t be trusted,” I agreed.

  “Vex knew that would happen, and now we know he wanted you to cleave to him so he could use you in his resurrection. Instead, you’ve done it on your own, without him.”

  “That’s not true,” I protested.

  “I know you aren’t religious, but that doesn’t matter, Allay. The Fellowship was just a medium for Vex. He was so seeped in the demon instinct to hide, he never would have thought of doing what you did—tell the truth. If he was alive, I bet he’d be backing you a hundred percent. He survived this long by periodically shaking things up. He was a genius at making the most of the transformations that civilization passed through. He thought it was time for a new paradigm.”

  I didn’t know what to think of that. “Maybe he should have tried to work with me instead of twisting my arm.”

  “Seeing as he’s dead now, you’re right.”

  There was a touch of admiration in his voice. Always before he had talked down to me, as if I were still the naive teenager he had introduced to demon life. Now he was watching me closely, like Savor, as if waiting for me to surprise him again. Since I didn’t trust either of them, I suppose that was a good thing. A moving target was harder to hit.

  “Why Plea?” I asked. “What did you have against her?”

  “Nothing. I tried to get Stun while he was in Barcelona, but he wouldn’t cooperate. I knew Shock didn’t care about her offspring, so I wouldn’t have to deal with any other demons if I killed him.”

  I shuddered to think what it would have been like to have Stun’s memories. Awfully ugly. Some teenager in Barcelona dodged a bullet on that one, for sure. I seriously doubted Stun’s last emotion would have been relief to see a girl come to the rescue. More likely he would have wanted to hurt her.

  Revel admitted, “I didn’t think it would bother me like it did, betraying Plea. I didn’t have much of a relationship with her. We had nothing in common, of course. She was a leader of religious fanatics, while I ran brothels. But she was the only demon other than Shock who would come to me if I called. So I was able to set up the ambush where a teenager would be able to ‘accidentally’ find her.”

  I shook my head. “You should have refused. You should have told Vex no.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  His expression closed. “I would have lost my standing with Vex. It could have cost me everything.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “You didn’t refuse when he told you to pass money to bad politicians, did you?”

  “You’re trying to wiggle out of your own guilt by pointing the finger back at me.”

  He frowned. “Allay, you know that when you’re subjugated to someone, you end up doing things that you normally wouldn’t choose to do. By your own experience, you know that’s true.”

  I noticed the guard had moved closer to the door and was frankly staring through the window at Revel’s defensive body language. I approved.

  “I don’t trust you, Revel.
I think you helped Vex because it suited your own purposes. Then you hid it from me ever since because you knew I wouldn’t forgive you.”

  He heaved a big sigh. “You’re right. But I’m not going to stop trying to prove myself to you.”

  Ever since he had let me do unspeakable things as a new demon, he had been trying to make it up to me. But I had trusted my gut feeling, courtesy of Plea’s buried memories, and avoided him.

  “Maybe this will help,” he said. “I know that you want to tell people the truth about what really happened with Dread and Vex, and how you got caught up in their illegal doings—”

  “I’m not going to out you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Thank you, my dear, but that doesn’t really matter. I have several other personas I could transition to, and Giles would simply die a peaceful death.” He smiled, as if to show me that he didn’t feel threatened. “In fact, I encourage you to speak about your personal life. It’s the only thing that will convince people you’re telling the truth.”

  “I can’t say anything because of the legal proceedings.”

  “For now, but that mess will be over quicker than you think now that the prophet has disappeared. And you don’t have to go into the specifics of any crimes. But you can tell your story. Dread will never be able to come back as Prophet Anderson and deny what you say.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve destroyed his persona, my dear. You got him to lie about being your sugar daddy, and then you came out, irrevocably tying the two of you together in the public eye. You blew him up, in every sense of the word. Dread will have to find a new shtick.”