The Others 03: The Demon You Know

by Christine Warren

  "Is this really what the world looks like to you?" she asked. She couldn't imagine it. She'd go crazy in a world completely devoid of color.

  At the moment it is. Normally, I'd see things in terms of their heat values, but your eyes aren't equipped for thermal imaging. Primitive, really.

  Abby frowned and very slowly and very carefully turned her head to glance around the entire room. If she moved at a rate of approximately one millimeter per minute, she could keep her stomach from turning itself inside out.

  The room she lay in was large and empty, not just of other living things but of other things in general. She saw no furniture, no boxes, no clutter, nothing to indicate anyone had ever been here before her, except for the fact that the walls were standing, so clearly someone had built it. She just couldn't tell if they'd ever been back since.

  She saw no windows anywhere in the room, but two doors cut dark outlines into the cinder block walls, one at either end of the room. The walls themselves appeared bare except for a few streaky patches that looked like water damage. They didn't even sport the scrawl of graffiti to break the monochrome surface, which in itself was pretty creepy. In a city like Manhattan, pristine vertical surfaces rarely lasted an hour before someone left their mark on them. Either the building owners had a security system Fort Knox would have envied, or no one came down here. Ever.

  "Um, I'm not thinking I'm real happy with this situation," Abby muttered, and carefully eased herself into a sitting position. The room swung a little around her, but everything stayed where it was supposed to. She wrinkled her nose at the musty smell.

  You’re not supposed to be. What? Did you think the werewolf bashed you upside the head because you forgot to mention you liked her new nail polish?

  Lou's sarcasm brought the last few hours rushing back, in particular those few panicked seconds in the alley behind Vircolac when she'd realized something was horribly wrong.

  Carly had invited her to lunch, and Abby had gone. It had never occurred to her not to trust the woman. After all, she was a member of the pack, was a friend of Samantha's. It wasn't like Abby had been taking candy from a stranger. There shouldn't have been a problem.

  There wouldn't have been, she was sure, if it hadn't been for that glow in the back of Carly's eyes.

  Abby shivered. "What was that?”

  I don't know if it's got a true name. Some people call it hellfire; some call it the taint. Mostly you'll hear about people like that being demon-touched. Or fiend-touched. Either way, it spells trouble. It means Carly wasn't the only one home when she lured you out of the club. If you were Other, you would have been able to smell it. She didn't smell like she did last time.

  "You're not human," Abby pointed out. "Why didn't you notice?”

  Hey, what am I? Your babysitter?

  "No, you're what's called my cross to bear," she grumbled, and slowly climbed to her feet.

  For someone who'd been kidnapped twice in one week, Abby thought she didn't look too bad. Her clothes were wrinkled and dirty, but nothing a load of laundry wouldn't fix. She lifted a hand to her head and felt a sense of déjà vu when she reached the spot where Carly had hit her and didn't even find a lump, just a small tender patch.

  Oh, good. Nothing's broken.

  "Maybe not," Abby said, quickly taking inventory of any other injuries. "But it still can't be healthy. Things are going to get all scrambled in there if this keeps up.”

  She found no broken bones and no other serious injuries. She had a couple of minor scrapes and some very major bruising, but considering the alternatives, she figured she should count herself lucky.

  You can buy a lottery ticket when we get out of here, but the getting-out part is the most pressing goal.

  "It would help if I knew where 'here' was." She played a quick mental game of eeny-meeny-miney-moe and headed for the door to her right.

  Wait! You’re not going to just open that, are you?

  "I thought you wanted to get out of here.”

  But you have no idea what might be on the other side!

  Abby laid her palm against the door and raised an eyebrow. "It feels cool, so I think I can be pretty confident that the other side isn't a raging inferno. What else do you want to know?”

  Who's out there? What do they want? What will they do to us if we try to escape?

  "Well, the fire trick was the extent of my repertoire in these situations, so unless you plan to imbue me with some sort of psychic ability you've been hiding from me up until now, the only way to tell what's on the other side of that door is to open it.”

  You could at least try listening. You know, to hear if you can hear voices or anything.

  "You mean just in case the villains are on the other side, outlining their plans for us in graphic detail?”

  Or in case there's a chain saw-wielding psycho out there. You don't know. Don't you ever watch horror movies?

  Abby snorted. "I hate to be the one to break it to you, Lou, but if we're in a horror movie, we are so already doomed. You're evil, I'm sleeping with the enemy, and we're trapped alone in the dark in what looks like a basement. By the laws of the horror genre, we should have died three scenes ago, at least.”

  Wow. Remind me next time I'm picking a human to hide in not to go with such a downer.

  "Gladly.”

  Figuring it wouldn't kill her to humor him, Abby pressed her ear to the surface of the door for a moment and listened. The only thing she could hear was her own pounding heartbeat. It resembled the sound check for a speed metal band.

  "Nothing," she muttered. "It looks like we're going to have to go downstairs to find out if the power going out in the middle of the thunderstorm while the escaped serial killer is on the loose had anything to do with that ear-piercing scream we heard coming from the basement of our supposedly empty house a few minutes ago.”

  Very funny. Do you see anything around here we can use as a weapon?

  "Aside from my razor-sharp wit?" Abby shook her head. "We're going to have to take comfort in the fact that I'm not blond, stacked, or a cheerleader, and hope God doesn't hold grudges over the occasional crisis of faith." She took a deep breath and curled her fingers around the doorknob. "Here goes.”

  Holding her breath, Abby said a quick prayer and eased open the door as quietly as possible. She didn't even breathe as she cautiously poked her head out of the room and glanced around.

  The door opened into a hallway, equally dark as the room, stretching in either direction for at least as far as Abby could see. She scowled.

  Now, see, I don't like this, she thought to Lou, glad she was wearing sneakers, which at least minimized the sound of her footsteps on the bare concrete floor. Who kidnaps someone, transports their unconscious body to a remote location, then goes away and leaves them all alone without even a token henchman to stand guard and make sure they don't run away?

  Carly?

  No. I don't know what her damage was, but when she was in her right mind, she seemed way too smart for that. Something weird is going on here.

  Abby eased her way out into the hall and headed to the right. It seemed to have worked last time. The hall was as bare as the room she'd just left, nothing but walls and floor, though out here the distinct odor of dampness was even stronger. She had the feeling that if she reached out and touched the walls, she would feel the slime of accumulated mildew. Somehow, she stifled that urge.

  Lou's enhanced night vision allowed her to walk through the hall without bumping into anything, but she still moved slowly, as if she didn't quite trust the unfamiliar perspective. An occasional door broke the solid line of the wall at her right, but after glancing in the first two and seeing bare rooms nearly identical to the one she'd just left, she ignored them and walked forward. Several minutes after she started, she reached another wall and realized she'd hit a dead end.

  She swore under her breath.

  Shhh!

  Abby just gritted her teeth and turned around to retrace her steps. I knew I
should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

  Do you know what time it is?

  Why?

  Because I'm getting my nails done at six and I don't want to be late. Because I asked!

  Abby raised her left arm almost to her face before she could make out the tiny lines on her watch face. Four forty-six. Satisfied?

  Not hardly. It's nearly sundown.

  So?

  So the way people like Carly get fiend-touched is by consorting with fiends. And archfiends like Uzkiel do their best work in the dark.

  Oh, bother. Abby hurried her steps, still trying to avoid making too much noise. That makes me wonder, though. If fiends aren't supposed to be able to go out in the dark, how come I could? I mean, you’re a fiend.

  Yeah, but I'm only a little evil. She could practically feel him shrug. I'm a minor fiend. Don't tell anyone I said this, but I come from a long line of imps. We're less in the business of evil for the sake of evil than we are in the habit of picking the wrong side in any contest of wills. If I told you how much I've lost in the football pool over the years...

  So, because you’re not bent on an existence of willful destruction and mayhem, I don't burst into flames?

  Pretty much. If you stayed outside too long, you’d get a hell of a bad burn, but no, spontaneous combustion ain't in the cards for you.

  Abby passed the room she'd exited a few minutes ago—at least, she was pretty sure it was the same room—and kept walking. She still couldn't see more than five feet ahead of her, but the hall seemed pretty straight, and since she'd only seen doors in the one side of it, she guessed she was walking along the outside wall of whatever building she was in. The lack of windows pretty much guaranteed that it was either a nuclear fallout shelter or a basement. Judging by the lack of canned goods and army surplus blankets, she'd put her money on the basement theory. And where there were basements, eventually there would be stairs.

  "Ah-ha!" she breathed. There they were, at the end of the hallway, just three feet ahead. She'd been right. She should have turned left. "Ground floor. Coats, shoes, ladies' lingerie.”

  Placing one hand on the cold surface of a chipped metal handrail, Abby began to climb.

  Wait! Did you hear that?

  "Hear what?”

  Would you keep your voice down! I thought I heard something.

  Abby paused for a moment, then resumed climbing. I didn't hear anything.

  I could have sworn I heard something.

  Well, if you heard it, I should have, too, and I didn't hear anything.

  You must be tone-deaf as well as night-blind. Listen. No, wait! Sniff!

  Sniff? What do I look like, a bloodhound?

  Don't tell me you can't smell that.

  Smell what? Abby inhaled deeply and had to struggle against the urge to cough as her lungs flooded with probably toxic mold spores. All I smell is a bad case of black lung waiting to happen.

  I smell sulfur.

  She froze. What?

  I smell sulfur, Lou repeated, and it's getting stronger the higher we climb. There's a fiend up there. At least one. I think we should go back the way we came.

  Abby tried to steady her heartbeat. For one horrible instant, her mind had gone blank with panic, but panic wasn't going to get her out of there, let alone get her out of there with all her limbs and her soul intact.

  There's no point in going back the way we came. It's a dead end. If we go back there, we’re trapped.

  There was another door in the room. Maybe it leads to a rear exit.

  We're in a basement, Lou. In order to get out, we're going to have to go up. Personally, I'd rather not take the chance of getting lost in what looked like a maze of identical rooms.

  And I'd rather not take the chance of getting my head ripped from my body and used as a Hacky Sack.

  Abby swallowed hard and tried to grin. What are you worried about? It's my head.

  Yeah, well, I'm using it at the moment.

  She grew serious and leaned her weight on the handrail. This is the way out, Lou. Either we can try it and see where it leads, or we can go back and sit in that little room until someone comes to strap us to the sacrificial altar. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to wind up dead, I'd rather meet the situation head-on, not wait for it to come get me like some kind of boogeyman.

  Trust me. The boogeyman is a pussycat compared to Uzkiel.

  Dead is dead.

  Yeah, but there's dead fast and painless and then there's dead at the hands of the cruelest fiend in the Underworld.

  It still equals not breathing, right?

  Lou fell silent, and Abby unclenched her fingers from the handrail. She might be all bluster and logic with the fiend inside her head, but she was all adrenaline and terror everywhere else.

  You realize I can hear what you’re thinking, right?

  Keep your mind to yourself, she groused, and resumed the climb.

  She counted twenty steps before she stopped. Maybe she was becoming hypersensitive, but she had begun to pick up the soft sound of the soles of her sneakers each time they landed on a stair tread. The steps might be concrete rather than creaky wood, but that didn't matter if whatever waited at the top could hear the pitter-patter of her little feet. Keeping one hand on the railing, she raised her right foot to the next step and leaned down.

  What are you doing now?

  My brother always said there was a reason Native American raiding parties didn't wear Nikes.

  She untied the laces and removed the sneaker, shivering when her foot touched the cold surface of the floor. Even through her thick athletic socks, the concrete chilled her. She carefully repeated the process on the other foot, then tied the laces of the two shoes together and dangled them over her shoulder.

  Now she just had to hope Noah's advice was enough to save her bacon.

  Her brother was ten years older than her, so she barely remembered him before he'd left home to enlist. By the time she'd really gotten to know him, he was already a soldier, and some of her fondest memories were of times when he'd played "guerrilla fighter" with her, much to their mother's dismay.

  Do whatever you can to make yourself quiet, he'd said, helping Abby pick her way through the woods behind their house and seeing how far she could go without scaring the rabbits. Take off anything that jingles, like belts or jewelry, and go barefoot if you can. Feet make less noise than shoes. But once you've got your gear quiet, remember not to try too hard. No one makes more noise than a fellow who's trying to make none.

  All at once, she wished desperately that Noah were here with her. If her brother had been nearby, he would have taken care of her. She wouldn't have been half so frightened if she'd had Noah to lean on.

  Or at least one of his really big guns.

  Bullets don't do much good against the armies of darkness. Didn't anyone ever teach you that?

  Maybe not, but even in this neighborhood, if I fired an AK-47, you could bet someone would call the cops. It never hurts to bring in reinforcements.

  Cops don't do much good with demons, either.

  Gee, thanks, Little Miss Mary Sunshine. And you called me a downer.

  She continued to climb, wondering how long this stairway could possibly last. It seemed as if she'd climbed at least a flight, but she hadn't even reached a landing, let alone the next level.

  Oh, by the way, Lou said, his tone suspiciously casual, there's one thing I should probably mention.

  Abby scowled. What thing?

  That spell I know... the one Uzkiel is after...

  The one that will enable the destruction of all that's good and decent in the universe?

  Yeah, that one.

  What about it?

  Well, I can't teach it to you, 'cause that would kill me, which seems really stupid considering all the trouble I've gone to not to die. But I've been thinking....

  That frightens me.

  I've been thinking that if you knew the first part of it, like the first word, you’d be ab
le to tell if it was coming.

  Abby froze. Why would I need to know if it's coming, Lou? If you recite the spell, you and I will both die, right? So why would it matter if I had five more seconds to prepare?

  Because. If we've gotta go, wouldn't you want to take Uzkiel with us?

  That wasn't a question she wanted to answer. She wanted too much to live to care about who she took with her when she died.

  The minute she thought that, she knew it was a lie. Yes, she wanted to stay alive, but she wanted Rule to stay alive, too. And Noah and Samantha and Tess and Rafe and Missy, and even Graham, even if she'd never met him, because Missy loved him and because her latest baby should grow up knowing its daddy.

  Abby closed her eyes and gritted her teeth against the impulse to cry. Now was not the time to break down. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, okay?

  Sure. Whatever.

  Heart heavy in her chest, Abby resumed her climb. She had to keep going. Like she'd said, their chances of escape might be slim, but that didn't mean she could stop trying.

  Abby?

  Yeah?

  It's "Spirits." If you follow along and say it with me, Uzkiel won't stand a chance.

  And, she knew, neither would they.

  She felt her throat knot up. Yeah. Okay.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Rule gritted his teeth and tried not to notice that the alley behind the club had already begun to fall into shadow. Dusk was less than an hour away, and he still hadn't managed to locate any sign of Abby's trail. He and Tobias and two seasoned Lupine trackers had combed the alley and the entire block around the club three times but had turned up nothing.

  "If she hadn't used a car, maybe," one of the trackers had said, looking apologetic. "Or if she had a mechanical problem. But the car was clean. No leaks, no burnt rubber. A Lupine would know we could track those, so she made sure there weren't any. I'm sorry.”

  Rule didn't want an apology; he wanted blood. Not the tracker's, maybe, but Carly's definitely, and that of anyone else who stood between him and Abby.

  "There's still a chance Rafe will be able to get those duty logs," Tobias murmured, coming to stand beside him in the diminishing light. "He should be back any minute. And every Other officer on the force is out looking for Carly's car. The minute they find it, we'll know. I swear.”