The Others 03: The Demon You Know

by Christine Warren

  Rule just nodded. He couldn't bring himself to speak. He'd lost the ability hours ago. Now he knew that if he opened his mouth, the only thing to emerge would be a primitive, earsplitting howl of rage.

  The Lupine jerked his head toward the club's rear entrance. "Let's go inside. We're not finding anything out here, and Rafe and Tess should be back soon.”

  Reluctantly, Rule let himself be led inside. His helplessness maddened him. He commanded an army in the Below, planned strategy, and executed operations. Entire squadrons jumped at his faintest word, and no one dared to disobey his orders. He answered to the prime minister and the prime minister only. And yet here Rule could not even protect his own woman.

  He felt Abby's absence like a raw, bleeding wound in his chest. A huge part of him had been torn away, a part so new he should barely have noticed the difference, yet here he was, struggling for his next breath. For the next beat of his heart. Their relationship was still new. Hell, it practically still had the dew on, yet if this was a sample of what his life would be like without her, he knew he wanted no part of it.

  Never fall in love with a mortal.

  The advice served as a mantra to his kind, as well as to others like him, the Fae, and even to vampires, to a certain extent. No one wanted to live forever and yet watch the one they loved age and die before their eyes. No heart, mortal or immortal, had been designed to withstand that kind of trauma. It had never occurred to Rule that he would one day have to face such a decision. There was no turning his back on this relationship now, but in forty or fifty or sixty years, when Abby's lifetime ended, he would have to decide whether or not he could go on without her.

  He'd never imagined the decision would be so easy. He'd already made it.

  Abby was his life. When hers ended, so would his. And since he planned on living a good long time to come, he was damned well going to get her back tonight.

  Rule and Tobias stepped into the club's main hall and nearly bumped into Tess hurrying down it in their direction. The expression on her face made his heart flip inside his chest.

  "What did you find?" he demanded, sprinting the last few steps toward her.

  "The old Hudson Shipping and Mercantile Building." She grinned. "It's not right on the water, but Claire got in within a few blocks. It's one of the few old buildings left after the Battery Park City Authority got done with the neighborhood. Even they weren't willing to take the place on.”

  Rule grabbed her by the arm and spun her toward the front entrance. "You can tell me why not in the car. Tobias, get in touch with Rafe," Rule yelled over his shoulder. "Tell him where we're going and have him meet us there. Get the same message to Noah. Then gather whoever you can and follow us. Keep it quiet if you can and meet us one block east so we can set a plan. I want everyone there in twenty minutes.”

  "Done!”

  Rule grabbed a coat from the closet and threw it at her. He had no idea if it was actually hers, and he didn't care. Across the hall, he barged into Graham's office and grabbed his scabbard and sword and the small utility pack he'd stored there out of respect for Graham's policy of no weapons in the club.

  "Rule," Tess protested, yanking the coat off her head where it had landed, "it's rush hour. It's going to take at least forty-five minutes to get down to that part of the city.”

  "Not if I have anything to say about it." He grabbed her again and dragged her out the door. She barely managed to grab her purse on the way out. "You're a witch. Get us a cab. Now.”

  Tess scowled at him. "Normally I'd tell you to shove it, because this is so against the rules. But these are extenuating circumstances." She furrowed her brow, closed her eyes, and chanted something under her breath. Five seconds later a very bewildered-looking cabbie pulled to a stop at the curb in front of them. "I'll try to get the traffic and the lights, too, but there's only so much you can do in this town, even with magic. If we fiddle with too many lights, we're going to get broadsided, and then we won't be any good to Abby anyway.”

  "Fine. Whatever." He shoved her into the cab and climbed in beside her. "Tell the driver where to go, make him do it fast, then fill me in on where we're headed.”

  "Wow, that debonair charm of yours makes it easy to see why Abby finds you irresistible," Tess grumbled, but she followed his orders, and just then that was all that mattered.

  "The building," he prompted.

  "Right." She settled back against the seat of the cab, half-turned to face him. "It was originally built in 1841 as warehouses and offices for the Hudson Shipping and Mercantile Company. The business belonged to a fellow named Isaiah Homer and his partner, Jonas Chapman. Apparently, these guys made their first fortune in the slave trade, but they saw which way the wind was blowing before the Civil War and tried to clean up their act by switching to coffee and cocoa. And a bit of opium.”

  "Much more respectable.”

  "Exactly. Anyway, they built the warehouse to store their goods, and rumors were that they dug a two-level basement under it to store some of their less legal imports. Including the last couple of cargoes of slaves they couldn't resist cashing in on.”

  "So there were deaths in the building?”

  "Where slavers were involved, there were always deaths, but that was only the beginning of the building's shining history. Horner and Chapman went bankrupt just before the end of the Civil War. Apparently, they were convinced the South would remain independent and become a lucrative trading partner for them." Tess shook her head. "Not the brightest souls in the history books. When they had a little trouble unloading the property to pay off their creditors, they decided to pioneer that old classic scam, arson-for-the-insurance-payout.”

  Rule could see where this was headed, especially since Claire had made clear the place had more than its share of negative energy. "Let me guess. They didn't wait until it was empty, did they?”

  "Not a chance. Torched the thing in the middle of a shift for the sailmakers they'd leased the space to. A hundred and thirteen people died, mostly immigrant women and kids.”

  "Dare I hope that was the extent of it?”

  "Oh, you optimist, you. Just the beginning. Since that original fire, the building has gone up in flames three more times. Every time there have been fatalities, but strangely enough, the structure has never been damaged badly enough to warrant tearing the place down. It's also been the site of two suicides, both during the Great Depression, and at least one murder, in the early fifties. And in 1972 the police found evidence of a bunch of idiots playing at summoning using the old living-sacrifice trick.”

  He winced. "Human?”

  "The police only ever found evidence of animal bones, but one of the cult members claimed they'd killed a woman. He was diagnosed schizophrenic and delusional, so they pretty much ignored him, but given the history ...”

  "Yes. Uzkiel should feel right at home."

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  By the time she reached the top of the stairway, Abby could smell the sulfur, too. It filled her nose with its rotting stench and made the task of breathing singularly unpleasant.

  Okay, I can smell it now. Do you hear anything that I don't?

  I'm not a guard dog, the fiend snapped.

  Don't yell at me. I'm just trying to save our asses. Well, my ass and your whatever you call your non-corporeal backside.

  Abby knew it was the tension making them snap at each other, and to tell the truth, she preferred it to being alone with only her own thoughts for company. At least the sniping gave her something else to focus on, other than the knot in her throat and the grinding in her stomach.

  She pressed her back against the wall and peered into the darkness. The difference between her own night vision and Lou's had been startling at first, but now that she'd grown used to seeing with his acuity, she realized the pitch blackness of the building they were in looked dark even to him. She could see no more than about five feet in any direction, and the inky space beyond that point had taken on a sinister quality that made the hair
on her arms stand on end.

  That's not just the dark, Lou informed her grudgingly. It's this place. There's some nasty energy here. Restless spirits and everything. Uzkiel must be in hog heaven.

  Are you telling me this place is haunted?

  As Salem.

  Great. Abby blew out a silent breath. Just what I wanted to hear.

  Trust me, it's not the ghosts you have to worry about. At least, not much.

  You’re such a comfort to me.

  Abby took a moment to steady her nerves, then gave up. She was as steady as she was going to get.

  Which way do you think the smell is coming from? she thought.

  Why?

  So I can head in the opposite direction.

  Right.

  Good. We'll go left. Left worked last time.

  Instinctively, Abby reached up to touch her gold and garnet cross. The action, the familiarity of it, gave her comfort. She just couldn't decide if the symbol itself still offered any.

  I guess this is proof of that whole "demons aren't inherently evil" thing.

  What is?

  The fact that I can be possessed and still wear this. Sounds like proof to me.

  It's proof that you can't drive one of us away with a symbol, Lou agreed, but that doesn't make it proof of the absence of God.

  Abby did a double take in the darkness. You believe in God?

  Well, I've never met him, if that's what you're asking. . . .

  I'm asking if you believe.

  The longer you live, the harder it gets to believe in anything, especially when you're living Below, he said. I can tell you, though, that when you've been around as long as I have and seen as much as I have, you have to believe there's some kind of method to all this madness. I don't know if that's God, but it's something.

  Abby thought about that for a minute, then laughed silently. I must be preparing to die, she thought. I'm standing in the dark debating philosophy with a fiend.

  Right. And what you should be doing is RUNNING!

  Her instincts reached her feet before her brain, but that was okay with Abby. By the time she processed Lou's scream of panic, she'd already sprinted twenty feet down the hall and had no plans to stop.

  Unfortunately, her plans changed when a hand reached out, caught a fistful of her hair, and yanked her to a stop.

  Abby couldn't help it. She screamed. The force of the pull felt like it had taken half her scalp off with it, bringing tears to her eyes and making the corridor swim across her vision. She fell to her hands and knees and felt a new, stronger wave of nausea overtake her.

  "Going somewhere, little human?" a voice rasped in the darkness. Abby couldn't turn her head to see who it had come from, but she didn't need to. She recognized the voice and the leg of the jumpsuit at the edge of her vision. The leg and the jumpsuit belonged to Carly, but the voice belonged to Seth.

  "Tsk, tsk, tsk," the fiend clucked in a mockery of concern. "We can't have that, can we?" The hand in Abby's hair jerked back and forth in time to the tsking, forcing her to shake her head in agreement. "After all, the party hasn't even begun, and you are the guest of honor.”

  Abby remained silent and concentrated on not passing out. Do me a favor and let me stay for this, Lou. I won't shut you out, so don't you shut me out. If we're going to get through this, we're going to have to work together.

  We’re not going to get through this.

  Speak for yourself, she snapped. I am not planning on dying tonight.

  "Come, little human," Seth hissed, and pulled Abby to her knees. She saw the inhuman voice coming from Carry's familiar, friendly face and shuddered. "I think it's time I took you to meet your host.”

  Every instinct Abby possessed screamed at her to fight!

  Run!

  Flee!

  Away! Get Away!

  —but she stomped on every one. She was in a dark corridor in an unfamiliar building in the very physical clutches of an archfiend that was fully capable of bashing her head in just to hear it pop. Running would only hasten her death, and she wanted to put it off as long as possible.

  "What? No begging? No screaming?" Seth-Carly pulled Abby along the hallway back past the stairs she'd climbed a few minutes before and down another short corridor. "By now, you humans are usually screaming like banshees. It's one of my favorite parts.”

  Abby kept her silence, at least partly because it seemed to annoy the fiend.

  "Well, no matter," it chuckled. "You'll scream enough before the night is over, I assure you.”

  Wincing at the pain in her scalp, Abby put her hand on her cross and prayed, really fervently prayed, the fiend was wrong.

  Faith doesn't need to be blind, she remembered, and you can have it in more than one thing. I have it in God, and I have it in the guys in my squad, and I have it in the people who love me.

  And she, Abby realized, had it in Rule.

  All at once, it was like a veil of calm settled over her. Oh, she was still afraid; she was scared shitless, to use one of Noah's expressions, but she realized right then that she wasn't alone. Rule was on his way, and he would move the Above and the Below if he had to in the attempt to save her. Sure, he might not succeed, but he was going to try. She knew that with the first unshakable faith she'd felt in a very long time.

  That's all well and good, Lou said, sounding strained, but please don't tell me you’re going to turn into a damsel in distress and wilt like a delicate flower until your knight in shining armor comes charging to the rescue.

  Abby nearly grinned, because, as she had just discovered, where there was faith, there was hope. I am a delicate flower. But even delicate flowers have thorns.

  She caught a glimpse of a crimson glow an instant before Seth-Carly gave a shove and sent her stumbling into another stone room, only this one was far from empty. She landed on the floor in an inelegant sprawl, but she had time to register a few details on the way down. The bloody light came from a series of torches mounted at shoulder height around the room, but the fire they burned with looked dim and unnatural. It also stirred a memory, a far from pleasant one. The light they gave off reminded her of the sickly crimson light in the vision Tess had shown her. The one in which Uzkiel had triumphed.

  Abby beat back the surge of panic.

  "Have you brought me a present, Set-halikel?”

  The voice hissed from behind her, as if a great serpent had mastered the power of human speech, and just the sound was enough to feed Abby's fear.

  It's magic. It's part of his magic, Lou whispered. The fear. He generates it, like a toxic cloud. Try to fight it.

  Abby had no intention of giving in. She took her time getting her hands and knees under herself and pushing into an upright position. She used the time to prepare herself for what she would see when she turned to face the archfiend. Suddenly she was glad for Tess's scare tactics. At least Uzkiel's appearance wouldn't take her by surprise.

  She still had to fight to keep from flinching. It looked as it had in the vision, an unnatural mishmash of incongruous parts. The bovine head, the serpentine torso, the misshapen satyric legs. Its hideousness was palpable, like a presence in the room, but Abby refused to let it cow her.

  What's the point of faith, she thought, if you don't test it?

  "Wow," she drawled, praying for strength to keep her knees from knocking, deliverance for her soul in case Rule came too late to help her, and speed to hurry that help along. "It's a little late for Halloween. You get a discount on the ugly freak costume?”

  She moved too slowly. The fiend crossed the space between them faster than she could blink, and when its hand touched her, she fulfilled Seth's prediction and screamed.

  Rule longed for nothing more than to burst into the building, sword swinging and guns blasting, destroying Uzkiel and saving Abby in one fell swoop. But the daring rescue, Rule knew, only worked that way in Faerie stories.

  That was the reason that he skulked through the hallways of the Hudson Shipping building like a thief
, following Noah's military hand signals and beating back his primitive impatience with every breath. Their extraction team, as Noah had labeled it, had assembled on the next block to arm themselves and review the rules of the operation before moving on the abandoned building that served as Uzkiel's headquarters on this plane.

  Rafe had taken point, shifting into his wereform as soon as they stepped in the front doors, using his feline stealth to ease through the darkened corridors unseen and unheard. Behind him ranged a compact line of warriors, beginning with Rule and including Tobias and his two best soldiers, Silverbacks named Simon and Huck. Noah brought up the rear, the only one of them who needed to bother with night-vision goggles, carefully guarding their exit. He had his favorite assault rifle in his hands and a compact pack filled with enough plastic to level the lower half of Manhattan. "Just in case.”

  A small army of Lupines was stationed outside the building, covering the other entrances and waiting in case they received a call for backup. At least three of them, Rule knew, were also in Rafe's car with Tess, guarding her. It looked more like physically restraining her to Rule, but it wasn't his job to get involved in a marital spat.

  His eyes had adjusted quickly to the darkness, and they tracked Rafe's movements as the Felix padded through the seemingly deserted building, following his nose, his keen night vision, and his instincts, toward Abby.

  "I may not have the nose of a wolf," he'd said, "but my nose is sharp enough and my eyes sharper. I'll find her. The scent of sulfur is not easy to miss.”

  Rule hoped not, because he hadn't caught a whiff of it yet. Rafe, though, moved through the empty halls as if he knew where he was going. He led the way to the back of the first floor and shifted back to human just long enough to raise the flat of his hand to signal the others to stop. He pointed toward the floor, and Rule looked past him to see the outline of a set of stairs leading downward. Gesturing to the others to follow single file, Rule gave Rafe the okay and moved forward.