The Devil's Playground mk-5

by Jenna Black

  We went to bed well after midnight, the council meeting having raged on into the wee hours. The good news was that we’d managed to come up with a number of backup plans to make sure I’d get the message if Lugh went down. The bad news was that the council had decided that rather than Adam being the one in ambush, it would be Saul.

  Lugh felt it important that he not show up for the duel with only human supporters at his side, but he didn’t want anyone on the opposite side knowing the identities of Saul or Raphael, and anyone who was at the duel was sure to be examined and recognized. Cynical me, I wasn’t sure that Lugh wasn’t just making sure his family members were out of reach if things should go wrong and Dougal’s supporters should turn on the bystanders.

  Saul had never fired a rifle, but Adam assured us that he could teach him how with minimal effort. There is no physical activity that demons aren’t better at than humans, and Adam guaranteed that even with his inexperience, Saul would hit anything he aimed at. But I still would have felt a hell of a lot more comfortable if Adam were the shooter.

  After that, all we had to do was work out the time and place. Adam would begin searching for the perfect location tomorrow. Which meant that once again, all the rest of us could do was wait.

  Brian and I were both too worn out to continue our earlier argument—thank God—but there was a chilly silence between us as we got ready for bed, and there was no affectionate cuddling. He was brooding, and I was just too damn tired to deal with it.

  twenty-eight

  FOR THE FIRST FEW MOMENTS AFTER I WOKE UP THE next morning, I lay in my bed in blissful ignorance. The fuzz of sleep kept my mind free of any inconvenient thoughts, and I just snuggled into the covers and considered allowing myself to drift back to sleep.

  But when I tried to relax, I remembered the upcoming duel between Lugh and Dougal—the duel on which the fate of two worlds depended. The memory forced back the last vestiges of sleep, and I pushed myself into a sitting position. Brian’s side of the bed was empty. I rubbed at my gritty eyes and looked at the bedside clock. It was nearly eleven. He must have gone in to work this morning, as usual. I’m not sure I could have managed it under the circumstances, but then I’d never been as career-driven as Brian. I hoped the fact that he didn’t wake me before he left didn’t mean he was still mad at me.

  I’d woken up less than five minutes ago, and already I was in major grouch mode. Probably just as well that Brian wasn’t around, or I might have picked a fight with him just to work off my frustrations. My nerves were buzzing with anxiety and good old-fashioned fear.

  Perhaps coffee wasn’t the best idea when I was so on edge I could barely sit still, but I feared I might spontaneously combust without it. I drank way more than was good for me and found myself pacing my living room as if it were a cage.

  I was absurdly grateful when Andy emerged from his room. Yeah, we’d been getting on each other’s nerves, but I needed a distraction from my worries.

  “Did Raphael behave himself last night?” I asked my brother as I poured him a cup of coffee. He hadn’t seemed any worse for wear when Raphael moved back into Tommy, but I’d decided then that I’d rather wait for a private moment to make sure he was all right.

  Andy gratefully took the coffee I offered him and took a sip before speaking. “He was Raphael,” he said, but he didn’t sound particularly bitter when he said it. “But he was right. I’m kinda used to him, and we managed to tiptoe around each other without throwing off too many sparks.”

  I felt my brows lift at that. “Raphael doesn’t seem to tiptoe much.” I remembered him laying on the brutal guilt trip last night, and tried not to imagine what it must have been like for Andy to have had that in his head for ten years.

  Andy smiled a bit. “No, not his strong suit. Mostly we just both kept our metaphorical mouths shut so we didn’t have anything to fight about.”

  “That was a brave thing you did,” I said, looking into my coffee instead of at Andy’s face. “Allowing Raphael back into you to protect Dom.” I raised my head, and it was Andy’s turn to stare at his coffee. Guess neither one of us was real comfortable with this touchy-feely stuff.

  Andy licked his lips, and I couldn’t tell if it was a nervous gesture or if he was just thinking. “It’s so easy for me to think the worst of him. Whenever he suggests something, my instant reaction is to not want to do it. And when he tells me something, I assume it’s a lie or that he’s wrong or that he’s somehow trying to manipulate me.” He grimaced. “Don’t you dare tell him I said this, but every once in a while, he gets one right. If I’d let him take Dominic to spare myself …” He shook his head.

  “That’s not the kind of man I want to be.”

  He took another sip of coffee. Not knowing what else to say, I did, too.

  “I became a host because I wanted to do some good in this world,” Andy said. “When I let Raphael take Tommy …” He shook his head and swallowed hard. “I couldn’t help wanting Raphael out of my head, and logically, I know it was only human. But I felt like I could never … consider myself one of the good guys again.”

  “Well, shit, Andy. You’ve always been one of the good guys.”

  He smiled at me, and I thought there was a little more light in his eyes than there had been in the last few months. “Little sisters are required to think their big brothers are heroes, so your opinion doesn’t count for much.”

  I gave him a mock scowl. “Well, big brothers are required to be assholes, so you’re doing your fraternal duty.”

  He tried to cuff me on the side of my head, but I managed to evade him. And I didn’t even spill my coffee. Go me!

  Then the moment of levity faded, and the smile disappeared from Andy’s face. But even without the smile, I thought he looked like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Maybe—just maybe—he was considering the possibility of respecting himself again. I couldn’t exactly thank Raphael for that—

  since it was Raphael who’d almost broken Andy’s spirit in the first place—but I was glad for it, nonetheless.

  Late that afternoon, Adam called to let me know he’d found a location he thought would work well for the duel. He came to pick me up around six, with Saul and Raphael in tow. I wasn’t excited to share a car with the terrible twosome, but we needed Saul to check the location out and make sure he had a place he’d be comfortable watching from. And we needed Raphael’s devious mind to make sure we didn’t overlook any potential pitfalls. I doubt I would have been invited to go myself, except Lugh was adamant that he needed to see the place to give it his personal stamp of approval. Since he was the one who’d be risking his life—at least, risking his life the most—I supposed it was a fair request.

  It wasn’t the most relaxed of car rides. Saul rode shotgun, and I got to share the backseat with Raphael. They were relatively civilized, and they only stuck verbal pins in each other four or five times during the long drive to the location Adam had selected. But at least they didn’t get into a brawl in the car.

  There was nowhere within the city limits we could have the isolation we needed to hold this duel. But as it turned out, Adam had found a place already guaranteed to be an effective demon-killing field. It was an industrial-sized farm out in the Brandywine Valley. The farm had once been owned by Jeremy Wyatt, who had at the time been the leader of God’s Wrath. He’d also been possessed by one of Dougal’s demons.

  The last time I’d been there, it had been a working farm, and Lugh and I had been destined to be burned at the stake—which in this instance was a basketball hoop set into a concrete court behind a large barn. But the night had ended with Wyatt and all his fanatical followers dead, and it looked like the farm had died with them. Locked gates featuring a “for sale” sign blocked the driveway, but the fields and buildings beyond screamed of neglect. It didn’t look like anyone had been in a hurry to buy the place out.

  There isn’t much that can stop a demon from going where he wants to. Saul got out and broke the lock on the g
ates, then Adam drove through. We left the gates closed behind us. Unless someone were to get out and examine the gate, no one would be able to tell we’d come through it. Not that it seemed likely anyone would be looking

  I tried my hardest not to flash back to my last trip out here, tried not to remember the horror of the fate that had awaited me at the end of the drive. But it’s damn hard to forget about the threat of being burned alive. I cast a sidelong glance at Raphael, wondering what his memories were like. He must have been pretty distressed during that drive himself, since it was looking at the time as if all his plans to keep Lugh safe were going to fail. But he hadn’t let a bit of what he was really feeling show back then, and he wasn’t showing it now.

  The concrete basketball court was still there, behind the barn, though the net was gone. The barn loomed between the court and the road, so no one would be able to see us. A big plus. Another plus—

  and the primary reason Adam had selected this place—was the stand of trees about fifty yards from the court. The rest of the farmland was, well, farmland—flat, and severely lacking in hiding places. Because the farm wasn’t in use, the fields were overgrown with weeds, but they were low and sparse enough that they would make an ambush impossible.

  Raphael shook his head. “Dougal’s people are going to search those trees,” he said. “There’s almost nowhere else within sight that someone could hide, other than in the barn. And that makes the trees damn obvious.”

  “Maybe,” Adam said. “But they’re going to be worried about bombs and incendiary devices, not snipers. Remember, it does us no good to kill Dougal’s host without killing Dougal himself, and they know that. Besides, even if they search, I bet they’d have a hard time finding him.” He turned to Saul.

  “Why don’t you go see if you can find a good spot to hide while the rest of us check out the barn?

  When we’re done, we’ll come looking for you and see if we can spot you.”

  Saul nodded and trotted off toward the trees. Checking out the barn was a formality at best, but since the point of the exercise was simply to give Saul time to pick a spot without us watching, we dutifully trooped in and looked around. Nothing quite so exciting as examining an empty, smelly barn.

  We gave Saul a good ten minutes to get himself concealed, then we all went out into the stand of trees and started looking. I knew practically from the first moment I passed under those branches that it would be nearly impossible to spot anyone. The trees were tall and leafy, the canopy dense enough to make it dark and murky between them. When I peered upward, all I could see were leaves, leaves, and more leaves. I doubted anyone else was having any better luck, but I crisscrossed the entire patch of woods anyway and couldn’t spot Saul.

  No one found him, but Raphael insisted we walk all the way around the perimeter of the woods as well.

  “No chance anyone’s going to see him,” Adam declared when we finally got all the way around.

  “Come on down, Saul,” he yelled.

  There were some rustling noises up in the canopy, even though there was no breeze. We all looked up and watched Saul magically appear from the cover of the branches, climbing nimbly down the tree as only a demon—or maybe a monkey—could manage.

  Wiping the sap from his hands onto his jeans, Saul sauntered toward us, looking mighty proud of himself.

  “Satisfied?” he asked his father with a smug smile. Obviously, putting one over on Raphael just made his day.

  The look on Raphael’s face said he was anything but satisfied, but he nodded anyway. “This is probably the best place we’re going to find. But we’ll have to see if Dougal will go for it.”

  “No reason he shouldn’t,” Adam said.

  Raphael looked at me. “Is Lugh all right with it?”

  Tell him it’s perfect. And tell him to stop worrying so much or he’ll be the first demon in history to have a heart attack.

  I relayed the message, and everyone had a good laugh at Raphael’s expense—even Raphael. It was a laugh I think everyone needed, because the drive back into the city wasn’t nearly as tense as the ride out.

  The place had now been chosen. All that was left was to determine the date and time. Adam would call Dougal as soon as he got back home. It was getting late for Dougal to come out and look at the place tonight, but maybe as soon as tomorrow he would put his stamp of approval on it. After that, it would probably take no time at all to agree on a date and time. Which meant the duel wasn’t far in the future.

  For someone who hates waiting as much as I do, I was beginning to think there wouldn’t be anywhere near enough of it before the day of reckoning.

  twenty-nine

  THE CLICHÉ FOR DUELS IS THAT THEY’RE HELD AT dawn, or thereabouts. The duel between Lugh and Dougal, however, was to be held at nine o’clock on Saturday night. There were several reasons for the late start, none of them being my reluctance to get up at oh-dark-thirty. The first was that Dougal’s minions needed time to do a thorough check of the location to make sure Lugh didn’t have an army of accomplices tucked away somewhere ready to charge the moment Dougal appeared. The second was that it would take some time to build the pyre on which the loser of the duel would be burned. The most important reason, though, was that we wanted to minimize the risk that a prospective buyer might want to view the property and stumble upon the duel. From the looks of the place, buyers weren’t exactly beating down the door to snatch it up, but it was safer not to trust to luck.

  Which meant getting up at oh-dark-thirty anyway, because Saul needed to be in hiding before there was a chance of a buyer or real estate agent stopping by, and Raphael insisted we accompany Saul so we could confirm he was well hidden. The sun was just rising when we arrived at the farm. We drove past it and parked about a mile away, then came at it on foot from an oblique angle. It was still dark enough that we could cross open fields without being spotted, and we got to the woods without seeing—or, hopefully, being seen by—anyone. We sent Saul into the treetops once more, this time with a highpowered rifle slung over his shoulder, a canteen on his belt, and pockets full of granola bars and trail mix. He had dressed in army-surplus chic, and his face looked pretty damn awful beneath a thick layer of camouflage makeup.

  We spent a good half hour trying to find Saul after he had hidden, but none of us spotted him. Lucky that we were putting on this little shindig in the summer, with all those leaves for cover.

  By the time we left, there were people moving around in the vicinity of the barn. They had a couple of dogs and a metal detector, and we figured they were Dougal’s people, checking for booby traps. They gave no sign of having seen us, their attentions much more focused on the search for potential bombs.

  After getting Saul situated, the rest of us drove back to the city. We had already determined that Adam and Dominic would accompany Lugh to the duel, leaving William locked up in their guest room. Obviously, the lock wouldn’t hold him if he really wanted to get out, but Adam and Dom were going to neglect to mention that they were leaving the house, and William was too much of a coward to attempt an escape when he might get caught. Raphael, residing in Andy’s body, would remain at my place with Barbie and Brian and me. The three of them would form the “circle” around me as I awaited the signal that Lugh was in trouble and I needed to summon him. The demons all assured me that three people were enough to form the circle needed for the ritual—though it looked more like a triangle to my untrained eyes—and I had no choice but to believe them.

  Adam and Dom went back to their place—I suspected so they could have a final frolic, just in case one or both of them didn’t come back—but they would be back to pick up Lugh in plenty of time to reach the dueling ground. Raphael, too, went home for a while, which was probably a good thing, since the tension level in my apartment was high enough as it was.

  I spent about an hour in the late afternoon practicing the incantation. I had no trouble with the Latin—

  though I wasn’t sure how well I’d do under s
tress—but I was really worried about Lugh’s True Name. To say it was a mouthful was an understatement. I counted twenty-six syllables that sounded like one nonsense sound after another. Lugh said it translated roughly into “he who shines in the darkness,”

  which seemed too simple for twenty-six frickin’ syllables.

  “What language is this?” I complained to Lugh as I stumbled over it for the umpteenth time. “Please tell me it’s dead; otherwise I’ll have to go kill it.”

  I heard his soft chuckle inside my head. If he was at all concerned that he might find himself burning at the stake in a few hours’ time, it didn’t show.

  It’s how we express our own native language with human mouths, so I’m afraid the language is not dead. Luckily, you only have to learn this one phrase.

  Even when I learned it, I was terrified that I would muff it under pressure. I remembered the painful efforts Jonathan had made to summon William, and how very long they had taken.

  You’re not Jonathan, Lugh assured me. You’ll do fine. But let us hope you don’t have to do any summoning after all.

  Yeah, I sure as hell hoped that!

  Adam and Dom were due to pick Lugh up at seven-thirty. Raphael—for once showing up on time—

  arrived promptly at seven. At seven-fifteen, I let Lugh take control so he could move into Tommy Brewster. Raphael hadn’t transferred into Andy yet, although Andy was holding out his hand, his face as set and hard as a soldier going into battle.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Lugh asked. He sounded impatient to get going.

  Raphael heaved a sigh, which didn’t seem to lessen the tension in his face or posture any. But instead of reaching for Andy’s hand, he drew the Taser that was meant to be Lugh’s weapon for the duel.