“And your mother knows nothing about any of this?” she asked when I finished.
“About my father? No. She knows about the avatar.”
“Duh. It’s at her house. But does she know what it is?”
I shook my head.
“And you just assume the elves will help you with this crazy scheme?”
I grinned. “A chance to hunt demons? They’ll jump at it.”
After dinner, we drove up to Loch Raven to see my mom and grandfather. The elves Joren had brought with him from Iceland, and those who came later, had built quite an extended village along the eastern side of the reservoir. But Joren lived with my mom in her house at the southwest end of the lake, below the dam.
When we arrived, we found Joren and Mom in the sitting room with a magikal fire in the fireplace, playing the elven equivalent of chess. They poured us each a glass of wine, then finished their game while we watched.
“Do you remember how to play sjakk?” Joren asked me after Mom beat him.
“I don’t get to practice much,” I said with a laugh. “We played a couple of times when I stayed up here last fall, but if you can’t beat her, then you can imagine what she did to me.”
“She cheats,” he said, and we all laughed.
“What brings you up here?” Mom asked.
“That little statuette we stashed in my workshop,” I said. It was uncomfortable, but I went on to tell her about the demons wanting their avatar back. Then I got to the really uncomfortable part.
“You know the implant I got when I graduated university? The one designed and built by Dad? It turns out he has one, too. So, for the past fifteen years, he’s been visiting me in my dreams.”
As I continued, all three of us kept glancing at Mom to see how she was taking the news that my father was still alive. She sat, completely poker faced, occasionally sipping her wine.
When I finished, Mom asked, “And what makes you think this demon queen will trade fair? You say that Besevial needs the avatar to bring Lucas across the Rift, but he also needs it to bring Akashrian across. What’s stopping them from killing you, taking the avatar, and going on their merry way?”
“Well, I was hoping I could talk a few elves into coming along with me.” I raised an eyebrow in Joren’s direction, and my grandfather returned a feral grin. “And I also made this according to Dad’s specifications.”
I held out the device I had been working on. Instead of a box, it was a square U-shape with a place for my hand and spiked ends that protruded from my fist on both sides.
“It’s an energy projector. It converts energy I pull with my magik from the world around me, concentrates it, and projects it as pure energy. He says it will kill Akashrian, or any other demon.”
Both my grandfather and mother had seen the statuette and felt its magik. Their lifted brows showed their surprise at my statement.
“Have you tried this device?” Joren asked.
“Not yet. I was afraid to try it in the city. But perhaps we could go over to the lake. I thought I could use Goose Island as a target.”
Mom shrugged. “There shouldn’t be much wildlife on the island this time of year.”
We all got up and trooped out to Mom’s truck. Joren and I got in the back, and Kirsten rode up in the front with Mom. She drove north to the end of the little peninsula jutting out into the lake, just before the road crossed a bridge to the east side. She parked, and we made our way through thick forest to the lake.
There was a half-moon, so we could see the island about two hundred yards away. I held up the energy projector, pointing my hand at the island, then used my magik to trigger it. Beams of light shot out from both ends, merging about three feet in front of me into a white, cohesive band about a foot wide that was too brilliant to look at.
I held it only for a moment, then cut it off.
“Danu’s tits!” Joren exclaimed.
I was blinded, my night vision destroyed. I looked to my grandfather, whose elven eyes were far keener than even an eagle’s.
“What is it? What did it do?”
He shook his head. Taking an arrow out of his quiver, he spelled it and fired it into the air in the direction of the island. It lit up the scene like a flare. At first, I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. Then the enormity of it struck me. The end of the island pointing at us was gone. Instead, there was a perfectly semi-circular bay at the island’s eastern end. A circle of at least twenty yards had been vaporized.
“Well, if Akashrian’s corporeal,” Mom said, “that should do the trick. Do me a favor and put that thing somewhere safe, though. Okay? I’d hate to have an accident that took out the dam or something.”
Chapter 28
On our way into town the following morning, I didn’t bother to turn on the radio. So, when I reached my office, I wasn’t prepared for the level of excitement. Police Headquarters was a madhouse.
“You’ve heard, right?” Luanne greeted me.
“Yeah, they made me queen. I’ve known about it for weeks.”
She snorted. “Right. I mean about the demons.”
Considering my meeting with Besevial the night before, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “What about the demons?”
“They seem to have abandoned the anti-Council forces. Just disappeared overnight. The Council has attacked Akiyama forces along several fronts.”
I wheeled around and trotted to the elevator. On the way up to Whittaker’s office, I thought about what Luanne had said with a feeling of unreality. Besevial had really abandoned Akiyama? Pulled all the demons out of the fighting?
“The Commissioner is busy this morning, Captain,” Whittaker’s secretary stopped me cold.
“I just have some information to give him.”
She shook her head. “He’s not here. He took a helicopter up to Novak at five o’clock this morning. If you need something urgently, you should see Deputy Commissioner Jefferson.”
“Uh, oh, okay.” Jefferson was officially my boss, a man I avoided like the plague. He and Whittaker had an agreement about me. I stayed out of Jefferson’s way, and he stayed out of mine.
I went back to my office, turned on the screen, and checked what the media had to say. They didn’t seem to know much but reported renewed fighting near the airport, south of Baltimore Harbor, and south of Wilmington. All of those areas had strong demon presences the day before, but it appeared the demons were gone. The Council forces were fighting human soldiers, witches, and mages.
I checked internal reports, and cops all over the Metroplex were reporting zero demon activity. Zero. Not even any unusual murders or stray body parts. I had talked to Besevial about six o’clock the previous evening, and I couldn’t find a single report of demon misbehavior filed after seven.
That was scary. It was an article of faith among human magik users that the demon lords controlled the demons in their territories, but I never guessed their communication was that good or their control so complete.
I was pretty sure Akiyama Hiroku was surprised as well. Our intelligence suggested that two-thirds of the Akiyama-alliance fighters in the Mid-Atlantic were demons. Another ten percent were vampires, usually working for the demon lord.
The really surprising thing was that Whittaker had pounced so quickly. No hesitation. Hit the Akiyama forces before they had time to regroup. For the first time, I realized just how good Whittaker’s intelligence services were. And how strong a general Tom Whittaker was.
I called Carmelita into my office. “Is there any fighting going on around the temple in Kensington?” I asked.
“I can check. Are you thinking about going over there?”
“If the demons aren’t guarding the place any more, then yeah.”
She came back a few minutes later.
“There’s a major battle going on southeast of there, with the Council forces making a major push to reclaim the beltway. But we should be able to get in there from the north, through Clarksville and Colesville.”
When I went to get my coat from the peg where it hung by the outer door, Billie Cargill approached me.
“Are you going out to the temple in Kensington to check on missing persons?” she asked.
“Yeah. We think it might be tied to something bigger. Hold down the fort.”
“Dani, I had about half a dozen missing persons reported to the Northwest Station. Young people who had connections to the temple, but I never had the manpower to really follow up on them,” Billie said.
That stopped me. We had tied missing persons to the peripheral churches but not to the main temple.
“Can you get me pictures? Any interviews done with those who reported them missing?”
“Sure. Give me about fifteen minutes.”
I waited for Billie and Carmelita to get their stuff together, then my partner and I got my car from the garage.
“Do you think we could grab something to eat on the way?” Carmelita asked. I realized I was hungry, so we swung by a place with crab-cake sandwiches-to-go before getting on the freeway and taking to the air.
We flew west until we passed beyond the city, then I swung south, passing over suburbs and occasional areas with grand estates and horse farms. When we got within ten miles of the temple, I found a straight road without any traffic and set the car back on the ground.
Carmelita had been monitoring what little information was available about the battle in the north DC area, and it appeared we were well away from the fighting. I wasn’t taking any chances, though, and had her maintain an airshield around the car. If Akiyama forces tried to retreat from the battle, I assumed they would head north, toward their main base in Wilmington.
I also didn’t completely trust that all the demons had completely disappeared from the area. When Ashvial had been demon lord of the Atlantic region of North America, there had been demons that disputed his authority. One had even been so bold as to steal Akashrian’s avatar.
We were stopped at the gate leading from the public road. I showed my ID, and that seemed to cause considerable confusion among the guards. One of them got on the phone, and then he waited for a while, talked some more, waited some more, and finally someone on the other end made a decision.
“If you’ll follow that car, ma’am,” the guard in charge said, pointing to a white electric car one of his men was climbing into.
I thanked him and followed the car around the parking lot to the front near the main entrance to the temple. He drove slowly, and by the time we parked, there were several more guards there to meet us, along with a couple of men in priestly cassocks.
“I’m Captain Danica James, Metropolitan Police,” I said, showing my ID to the guy who was evidently in charge.
“Welcome to the Harvesting Souls Church, Captain,” the ramrod-straight, gray-haired priest said in a melodious baritone that I was sure could melt the heart and resolve of any woman still breathing. “I’m Reverend Blake. How may I help you?”
To say that he had a charismatic aura would be an understatement. In spite of his age, he was incredibly handsome and held himself with an easy confidence. I had to drag my eyes away from his face in order to find my voice.
“Uh, we’ve had a number of reports of missing persons who are members of your church,” I said. “We spoke with Reverend Wilding in Baltimore, who said that a couple of his parishioners on our list had come down here to—how did he say it?—to ‘seek a more contemplative relationship with God.’ Their families have filed formal reports, so we have to investigate. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course. Please come in.”
He led us inside, where we got a glimpse of the magnificent sanctuary before he took us through a door and along a corridor to a cozy little office the size of the major crime’s detective bullpen that contained forty desks. It was only a little fancier than my Uncle George’s study. Of course, Uncle George had only been a trillionaire, and not the head of a religion no one had heard of six months before.
“You’ve done a marvelous job restoring the place,” I said. “I saw it a few years ago, and it was close to being a ruin.”
“The Lord doth provide, and we have worked very hard,” Blake said. He bade us sit at a table, offered us tea or coffee, and sat down with us.
Carmelita handed him a list, along with a folder containing pictures of the missing people. He thumbed through the pictures, then called three more priests into the room. They conscientiously went through our list and the pictures for almost three hours.
I sat with them while Carmelita interviewed the missing people in a room close by. The church authorities provided sixty of those who were on our list. About twenty more were identified as, ‘They were here, but they have left us, and we are no longer in touch with them.’ That could mean they were on a commune somewhere off in the woods, crossed the Rift, or were served up at a demon banquet. I had no grounds for suspicion and couldn’t ask. The priests denied that the church had any records of seventeen more. That one I believed more readily.
Still, the number of people on our list that the church acknowledged rather shocked me. I had been going on the idea that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. It was rather disconcerting to discover I had a raging inferno on my hands.
The priests showed us back to our car and watched us drive away. As soon as we were out of sight, I took the car airborne. Call me paranoid, but I didn’t discount the idea of some kind of ambush.
“What do you think?” I asked Carmelita as soon as we leveled out and were on our way back to Baltimore.
“True believers, every one of them. Ready to give their souls to the church,” she said. “But there’s something about them that sets my teeth on edge.”
I nodded. “There’s something off about the priests. I swear, if any of them had asked to get in my pants, I would have been tempted to strip right there.”
“I know what you mean about the priests,” Carmelita said. “Maybe some kind of pheromone? I probed the girls, but I didn’t get a hint that any of them have been exploited. Actually, they didn’t seem to be attracted to the priests like I was.” She shifted in her seat so she was facing me. “Dani, all of the people I interviewed were wearing a small pendant—a cross inside of a symbol I’ve never seen before.”
“Can you draw it?” I asked.
She pulled out her notebook and sketched the pendant. I went cold when she turned it to me. The cross was surrounded by the two glyphs that spelled Akashrian in the demon script.
Chapter 29
It had been a long time since I visited the international scholarly database on demons. Amongst the data stored there were academic papers on demon social systems and mythology, in addition to research detailing demon anatomy and physiology, sexual habits, eating habits, and anything else someone managed to be curious about.
Akashrian: Variously translated as a goddess or a queen, Akashrian appears to be one of the top-level personages in demon mythology and social hierarchy. When associated with mythology, she is considered the goddess of lust and pain. This is the goddess that sex demons, such as succubae, incubi, and lilliths, worship. When associated with social hierarchy, she is considered a queen, holding fealty from the demon lords of fire and water. As far as Earth is concerned, the majority of demons in North America owe their allegiance to Akashrian. She is an antagonist to Lakasvian and Delevidat, demon goddesses thought to control the demons in Europe and Asia, respectively. As far as can be determined, the top level of the demon pantheon consists wholly of the female and pan genders. No evidence of gods in the male, common, or neuter genders has been documented.
Interesting, to say the least. I dug a little further and found that Lakasvian was the goddess of fertility, knowledge, and intelligence, while Delevidat was the goddess of cunning and business. Lucky us in North America. I wondered about the relationship between Akiyama and Delevidat’s followers.
“It must be
interesting,” Kirsten said, coming up behind me. “It’s almost midnight, and you’ve had your head in that screen since dinner.”
I leaned back and had problems focusing on my roommate. Gradually, my eyes adjusted.
“Just reading up on our favorite demon,” I said, pointing to the screen.
Kirsten leaned over and read the section on Akashrian.
“Oh, goody. Pain? One of my favorite subjects. And you’re saying I can jump into the Rift and get the full treatment from her?”
“That’s only a theory,” I said.
“I’m happy to leave it at the theoretical level.”
I showed her the sketch Carmelita had given me. “These small pendants seem to be in vogue amongst the adherents of the Harvesting Souls Church. A Christian cross mixed with the demon glyphs signifying Akashrian. Any ideas?”
She studied the drawing, then said, “I could guess, but if you can get your hands on one of those, it would be better.”
“Thoughts off the top of your head.”
Kirsten shrugged. “They’re probably charms. Coercion? Suggestion? A spell that just makes you feel good? Almost certainly something that provides the giver of the charm with some kind of control.”
“So, I need to get you one of the charms.”
“Yeah, otherwise, I’m just speculating.” She looked at the screen and then the sketch again. “You know, the charms could be demon magik, not witch magik. A lot of the jewelry the sex demons wear incorporates that symbol. Sex and pain. Carmelita probably focused on trying to determine if those kids had been abused sexually. Keep in mind that masochists revel in pain. Unless you see scars, you probably wouldn’t know if their rapture came from suffering. From what you’ve told me about your dreams, Akashrian likes to mix her pleasures.”
Gordon, my undercover operative inside Harvesting Souls Church, called me two days later and asked me to meet him in a semi-dive bar in Highlandtown. I knew the place had good food, so we agreed to meet for lunch.
Soul Harvest (The Rift Chronicles Book 3) Page 15