by Misty Evans
“Sure.” I motioned for Cole to follow me out, ignoring the way he snickered at my easy lie. We took a good look around the parking lot for the priest again, but saw nothing out of place. The air was filled with normal Chicago night smells. As we climbed into my TT Roadster—a car built for much warmer climates—I slipped Volante into my lap for easy access. “What’s your gut say about the priest?”
Cole, as cautious as I was, kept his gun in hand. “Templar knights and the priests who blessed them for battle have been extinct for seven-, eight-hundred years.”
“So he’s not a Templar priest.”
“Didn’t say that.” He shrugged. “Secret orders still exist throughout the world.”
I started the car and she growled under my fingertips. “For what purpose?”
“The knights were servants of God, securing safe travel for those journeying to the Holy Land along with wiping out infidels. They also established an effective banking system, built temples and acquired land.”
“Medieval Donald Trumps.”
“The Templar priests were business savvy too. A few stood in place of the Pope at various locations and during battles. The rest amassed wealth for the Church and persecuted demons.”
I drove out of the parking lot and joined the other late-night drivers heading north. “You one of the demons they persecuted?”
“I tangled with a few of them.”
Best not to prod him for details about those entanglements. Cole kept his past behind a solid mental door and I respected that. Another thing we had in common. He’d tell me about his experiences with Templar knights and priests if he wanted to. “And the priest from tonight? You think he’s part of some secret order that still exists?”
“What I think is, your computer whiz spends too much time with his head in books. He needs to get out more and quit spending all your profits on new computer systems you don’t need. Did you see all that shit he bought?”
“Yeah. Not sure what’s up with that, but he just spent his year-end bonus.”
We drove in silence and I put my questions about the priest on hold. I needed to focus on the job with Neve, tracking down Victoria (and therefore Toel) and handling Dalinda. The ghost exorcism would be a snap. Finding Vicky and Toel, dangerous. But it was more of a scouting mission than a takedown. So it looked like Dalinda, the succubus, would be my toughest challenge for the night. Succubus Fae could chew you up and spit you out and instead of running from them, you’d beg for more.
I had experience on my side, though. I’d lived under the rule of the toughest succubus on the planet and killed her when the time came. “Any suggestions on how I get Maddy out of her funk?”
“God’s balls, I hate teenagers. Always so full of themselves.”
“Is there anything you don’t hate right now?”
He looked at me and one corner of his mouth tipped up. “Fighting, sex. You know. The basic vices.”
I did know. Fighting and sex fed our demon bodies and let our minds rest. “I suggested Maddy see you for a sparring match.”
“Sure, shove her whiny ass off on me. She sucks at hand-to-hand, but she’s good with a bow and arrow. I’ll give her some training exercises for that.”
“Bow and arrow, huh? Pretty cool. How come she didn’t tell me?”
“Jesus, Kali, stop mothering her and let her live a little. Take her to a concert, get her drunk, get her laid, let her have some fun. That’ll cure this woe-is-me shit.”
“She’s fifteen.”
“She’s a vamp. Outside of a stake in her heart, nothing can hurt her.”
He had a point. “I think I’m offended that you’re accusing me of mothering her.”
“Good. Maybe you’ll stop with the overprotectiveness.”
I was overprotective? “Classic example of the bodyguard pot calling the demon kettle black.”
“It’s my job to protect you.”
And in Cole’s mind, it wasn’t my job to protect Maddy.
Nope. So not buying that one. “Nudra turned her. I should have staked him before he had the chance.”
“Blah, blah, blah. You can’t save the whole damn human world.”
I could try. “It’s what I do, pot.”
He made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat.
Fine. I punched on my satellite radio, and, to Cole’s vexation, turned up Megadeath.
Chapter Six
Neve Lucrezia Vaselli is a combination yidde’oni and baal’ob. One who talks to ghosts and helps them cross over. The bible and other religious books refer to these ghost whisperers as witches, but they aren’t witches or supernaturals of any kind. They’re humans who have the ability to detect and interact with earthbound spirits.
An accident left Neve paralyzed from the waist down and able to talk to ghosts. According to her, the physical challenge was nothing compared to the psychological one. Trying to convince people she could see and talk to ghosts was much harder than accepting she would never walk again.
A decade after the accident, she’s estranged from her family and most of her friends. She feels more comfortable hanging around entities like me, a demon, and Di, a forgotten goddess, than other humans.
Our mutual client that night was a professional basketball player who’d once been on the Chicago Bulls. He was half Ludio demon, meaning his natural inclination was to excel at sports. Not exactly a badass unless his competitive nature got out of hand or his obsession required him to win at all costs. Drugging, injuring competitors, working magic in order to win a game…it happened most often with Ludio demons.
Fielder Benson wasn’t giving into his inner demon…at least not that I could see. His problem was a ghost of a pro-basketball wannabe who’d latched onto him and wouldn’t leave him alone. At first, the ghost rider simply tried to take over Fielder’s jump shot and free throw and did a hellaciously bad job of it, getting Fielder benched. Then he was fired. And then, he ended up in Shadow Hill Psych Hospital along with a whole bunch of other wackos. Most of them, like Fielder, some form of supernatural.
Neve, who was a clinical psychiatrist as well as a ghost whisperer, thought Fielder had had enough. If she didn’t get rid of Marvin, the ghost, soon, she was afraid Fielder would completely lose touch with reality.
Marvin had also been a supe in his earthly life. A short, overweight trickster demon who would’ve given his soul, if he’d had one, to be a superstar athlete. Hence, Neve’s request I be present during her confrontation with him was smart. She was going to encourage him to go into the light—in his case, the fires of hell—and if he refused to crossover peacefully, I was going to exorcise his ass into the afterlife.
If he refused was a misnomer. Without a doubt, I was going to have to kick Marvin across the great divide. He would refuse, sure as shit, and I would, too, if I had the choice of ghost riding my role model or spending eternity in the equivalent of demon prison. Dropping the soap is the least of your worries down there.
As the guard waved us through the gated entrance, I smacked the steering wheel. “I forgot to call Chloe before we left.”
Cole pointed at the front of the hospital where Neve sat behind the glass doors in her wheelchair impatiently tapping her fingers on the arms. “Better save it.”
“You’re late,” Neve said in greeting as she buzzed Cole and me into the building. Her once dark brown hair was as milky white as the ghosts she helped cross over. It had turned white after the accident. Another thing we shared…mine had bleached out the night I had my first nightmare about Rad stabbing me in the heart with a silver dagger. After two-hundred and eighty-three years, I doubted it would ever go back to its original color.
Cole glanced around with nervous eyes. “You’re lucky we’re here at all.”
Shadow Hill had originally been a military training school built at the end of the Civil War. Since then, it had been a vet hospital, a compound for a religious sect whose members had offed themselves on Y2K, believing it was the end of the world, a
nd now, a hospital for mental supernatural patients. Foreboding and depressing? Check.
Somewhere in the deep recesses of the building, an eerie cry rang out, followed by another.
Creepy horror movie sound effects? Check.
The buzz of Neve’s motorized wheelchair echoed in the quiet air as she rolled forward, nearly clipping Cole’s toes. She eyed my face. “You’re stressed.”
“What’s new? Come on, let’s get this over with.”
Neve wore a Wiccan robe, complete with hood, dream catcher earrings and a Celtic knot pendant at her throat. A bible rested in her lap. She liked to cover all her religious bases. The only thing on her that looked remotely Italian was her snapping dark brown eyes. In the low lighting of the foyer, they looked black. “You’re sure you want to be here?”
Was it that obvious?
Bone-deep cold seeped up through the floor and into my boots. The earth magic here was strong and unnerving. The building itself had undergone some major renovations to make sure its insane supernatural population stayed put. Inside the brick was some serious iron and refined steel, creating a magical barrier to keep the inmates inside and unwanted outside magical forces from entering. “Marvin won’t go peacefully, Neve. And he’s a trickster demon. You can’t trust him, no matter what he says or agrees to.”
“Was a trickster demon. Now he’s a spirit.”
A demon is a demon. I headed for the elevators. “Follow my lead and we’ll be done in fifteen minutes. Maybe less.”
She grabbed one of my hands, jerking me to a stop. “We do this my way first. If it doesn’t work, you can take over.”
This was her gig, not mine. I’d agreed to be back up, and, even though I knew she would fail, I had to honor that agreement.
Nodding, I motioned her into the lead. Cole chuckled under his breath as he fell into step beside me. He knew it was damn hard for me to play sidekick when it came to annoying demons. “We don’t have to chant or anything, do we?” he asked.
Neve ignored him, stopping at the elevator and punching the down button. We rode in silence to the basement and a weird energy rippled over my skin. Down there, the dampening barrier was even stronger. I wondered if it would dampen my magic when the time came to use it.
Stopping in front of a metal door with the number six affixed to it, Neve raised her hands in the air. “Divine will be done through me for the highest good of all and for the true manifestation of my purpose here tonight.”
Dropping her arms, she leaned forward and unlocked the door with a keycard.
The room was dark. Fielder sat on the floor in the corner, a darker shadow inside the unlit room. Here and there, tiny lights flickered around him as if miniature fireflies surrounded his body.
Hello, Marvin.
But something was off. Another shadow outlined his legs where they sprawled on the floor and ran toward the door. Blood. The metallic scent was heavy with decay.
Bye-bye Fielder.
“Oh, no,” Neve said. “Tell me he’s not dead.”
Wish I could have. “His life energy is gone, Neve. He bled out.”
“But how? Why? He was in this room to protect him from himself as well as others. This isn’t possible. No one but me has been in or out of the room all day, and I saw him right before you arrived. He was fine. Well, not fine, but you know. Alive.”
Even with my hot demon body temperature, I felt cold to the bone. The earth magic was still strong, but tempered. I laid my palm against the concrete wall and reached for it, drawing it to me in order to try and find some answers.
Since demon magic comes from the ground, I imagined my booted feet connecting with the earth under the building and waited for it to respond.
Out of nowhere, a flash bang went off in my mind. Blinding light, spurting blood, waves of sharp, terrified pain. My body seized, even as I tried to jerk my hand back and break the connection. The magic wouldn’t let go. It seared into my system with the force of a hot branding iron.
My demon awoke and bellowed. Volante tightened where she was wrapped around my arm.
Outside the agony, I heard Cole and Neve call my name. I mentally reached for that lifeline, reached for each of them. If I could latch onto their energies, I could break the connection…
It wasn’t enough. A darkness that I hadn’t felt in nearly three hundred years swamped my mind. The sensation caressed my demon even as it filleted my psyche.
Maria.
Couldn’t be. I’d killed the queen bitch, decapitated her and burned her body. Her earthly link had been severed, her soul sent back to hell where it belonged.
Twice in one night, my pain-filled brain reminded me. That was no coincidence.
A brittle thickness clogged my throat. Or maybe it was the memories Maria evoked. My demon roared her anger, forcing me to cry out. That cry broke the hold the building held on me and I staggered backwards.
Cole caught me and half carried me out of the room. “Holy hell, Kali. What was that?”
My legs wobbled uncontrollably and I couldn’t remain upright on my own, falling against Cole’s chest when he released me. My eyelids refused to stay open and my teeth chattered so hard, I couldn’t speak at first.
“Evil,” I heard Neve say. Her voice sounded like it was floating far away. “That was pure evil.”
“Get Neve….out…of here.” I grasped Cole’s arm and squeezed. “Now.”
“We’re all getting out of here.” He started to pick me up to carry me to the elevator.
I struggled out of his grasp, forced my eyes open. “I have to…go back in. Have to…figure out what happened.”
“Madonna mia!” Neve’s voice was stronger now, even though she was stage whispering. “What happened in there? Just touching the wall gave you a stroke! You go back in there, you could die.”
Walking away wasn’t an option. I could still smell the tang of Fielder’s blood, could still see the images touching the wall had invoked.
There had been a lot of blood, both on the floor and in the image I’d seen.
Maria.
“Fielder was murdered.” I rubbed a shaky hand over my face, took a deep breath to clear my head. “I have to know who did it.”
“The trickster ghost?” Cole asked. “He could do that?”
I shook my head. “Whoever killed Fielder was a demon, not a ghost.”
But I wasn’t sure about that. The sparkling witch’s features morphing into Maria’s earlier that night flashed in front of me.
Maria’s gone. Not just dead, but roasting in hell. Right?
Neve glanced at the door, back at me. “Earthbound spirits are amazingly innovative with what they can do. Especially those who were demonic or even half demon on earth. When they lose one body, they can possess another as easy as sneezing. But murder? That takes a spirit of incredible power.”
The night I’d killed Maria, there were no other bodies around for her ghost to sneak into. I made sure of that. “Neve, at the club tonight, I thought I saw the ghost of a powerful demon I killed…”
I trailed off, my brain cells arguing, it’s not her. It can’t be. “A long time ago. Long, long time ago. I cut off her head and burned her body, and there were no other bodies around for her spirit to possess. It’s not possible that she could still be hanging around, is it?”
Neve fixed me with her penetrating brown eyes. “Not unless she possessed you when you killed her.”
Now there was an uplifting thought.
“Can we take this conversation upstairs?” Cole grabbed Neve’s wheelchair without waiting for her consent and pushed her toward the elevator. “Freezing my damn demon balls off down here.”
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one feeling the cold. But was it from Marvin, who was still hanging around Fielder’s lifeless body or was it coming from something darker and more sinister?
A minute later, we sat on the first floor in Shadow Hill’s cafeteria, each of us trying to figure out what had happened below our feet.
> The evil seemed to be contained inside that room. I couldn’t feel any signs of it coming up through the floor. I still wasn’t certain what had happened, but there was nothing I could do for Fielder now, and I had a lot of questions about Maria running rampant in my head. “The spirit of the demon I killed couldn’t have possessed me. I would have known it.”
Neve nodded, her hand toying with the Celtic knot at her throat. “I agree. You’re not one to let others in, spirit or otherwise. Your blocking defenses are the strongest I’ve ever encountered.”
Her tone made it sound like veiled criticism. “Any other explanation for why I think I saw that demon’s ghost?”
She fiddled with the knot, face set in thought. “What happened at the club to stress you out? Were you with Rad?”
Boy, was I. “There was a lot going on tonight. Dru and his brothers were there and we discussed Toel and the possibility he’s raising a vampire army to attack Chicago. I was worried about Cole, and Rad made a most chaotic appearance.”
“Me?” Cole said. “Why the hell are you worried about me?”
Neve dropped the knot and gave me a relieved smile. “Crisis apparition. That’s all it was.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a common phenomenon. Under extreme stress, people sometimes report seeing a spirit. Doesn’t mean there wasn’t a real ghost, but like most people, you attached a familiar face to it. And oftentimes there is no spirit, it’s just a figment of your overworked and tired brain.”
“Oh.” For some reason, I felt let down. Not that I wanted Maria back on earth in any shape or form, but a crisis apparition? Nah. Not after what I’d sensed in Fielder’s room.
“Guess I better report Fielder’s demise.” She backed up her wheelchair. “Although how I’m going to explain it is beyond me.”
“Can you give me ten minutes down there before you report it?”
Shock was written all over her face that I wanted to return to Fielder’s room. “You really think that’s a good idea?”
I stood and straightened my cape. “I’m fine. I wasn’t prepared last time, but you know me, I’m Chicago tough. South side tough.”