1 Blood Price (31 page)

Weak and trembling, Henry stood over the body. The light in the pale eyes had gone out, leaving them only a muddy gray. Blood pooled at the base of the wall, hot and red and Henry, who desperately needed to feed, thanked God that dead blood held no call. He’d have starved before he’d have fed from that man.

His skin crawling at the touch, he picked the grimoire up from the floor and staggered into the night.

“I should have destroyed it.” Palms flat against the glass doors of the bookcase, Henry stared at the grimoire. He never asked himself why he hadn’t. He doubted he wanted to hear the answer.

“Yo, Victory!”

Vicki turned slowly in the open phone booth, her heart doing a pretty fair impersonation of a jackhammer.

Tony grinned. “My, but we’re jumpy. I thought I heard you didn’t work nights no more.”

“Any more,” Vicki corrected absently, while her heart slowed to a more normal rhythm. “And do I look like I’m working?”

“You always look like you’re working.”

Vicki sighed and checked him out. Physically, he’d didn’t look good. The patina of dirt he wore told her he’d been sleeping rough, and his face had the pinched look that said meals had been infrequent of late. “You don’t look so great.”

“Things have been better,” he admitted. “Could use a burger and some fries.”

“Why not.” Henry’s answering machine insisted he still wasn’t available. “You can tell me what you’ve been doing lately.”

He rolled his eyes. “Do I look like I’m crazy?”

The three coals burned in the bottom of a cast iron frying pan his mother had bought him. It was the first time he’d ever used it. The gold, the frankincense, the myrrh, had all been added. The three drops of blood sizzled in the heat and Norman backed quickly away, just in case.

Something had stopped the demon from materializing last night but, as that was the first and only time it had occurred, statistically, tonight, the demon should be able to get through. Norman believed strongly in statistics.

The air in the center of the pentagram shivered. Norman’s bandaged fingers began to burn and he wondered if it was going to happen again. It shouldn’t. Statistically, it shouldn’t.

It didn’t.

“I have called you,” he declared, bouncing forward when the demon had fully formed. “I am your master.”

“You are master,” the demon agreed. It seemed somewhat subdued and kept turning to look behind it.

Norman sneered at this pitiful tool. After tonight he would command a real demon and nothing could stop him then.

“Do you know what a grimoire is?”

“Yes, master.” It hunched down in the exact center of the pentagram, still leery after the pain that had flung it back from the last calling.

“Good. You will go here.”

The master showed it a building marked on a map. It translated the information to its own image of the city, a much more complex and less limited view.

“You will go to this building by the most direct route. You will get the grimoire from unit 1407 and you will bring it immediately back to the pentagram using the same route. Do not allow people to see you.”

“Must feed,” it reminded the master sullenly.

“Yeah, okay, then feed on the way. I want that grimoire as soon as possible. Do you understand?”

“Yes, master.” In time it would feed on this one who called it. It had been promised.

It could feel the Demon Lord it served waiting. Could feel the rage growing as it moved farther from the path of the name. Knew it would feel that rage more closely still when it returned from the world.

There were lives in plenty on its route and as it had so many from which to pick and choose, it fed at last where the life would end to mark the name of another Demon Lord. The name would take another four deaths to finish, but perhaps this second Lord would protect if from the first on the chance that it would control the gate.

It did not know hope, for hope was foreign to the demonkind, but it did know opportunity and so it did what it could.

It fed quickly, though, and traveled warily lest it attract the attention of the power that had broken the calling the night before. The demonkind had battled this power in the past and it had no desire to do so now, on its own.

It could feel the grimoire as it approached the building the master had indicated. Wings spread, it drifted lower, a shadow against the stars, and settled on the balcony. The call of the book grew stronger, the dark power reacting to one of the demonkind.

It sensed a life close by but did not recognize it; too slow to be mortal, too fast to be demon. It did not understand, but then, understanding was not necessary.

Sniffing the metal around the glass, it was not impressed. A soft metal, a mortal metal.

If it could not see the street, then the lives on the street could not see it. It sank its claws into the frame and pulled the glass from its setting.

Henry froze, fingers bent over the keyboard. He’d heard something on the balcony. Not a loud sound—more like the rustle of dead leaves in the wind—but a sound that didn’t belong.

He reached the living room in less than seconds, the overpowering smell of rotting meat warning him of what he’d face. Two hundred years of habit dropped his hand to his hip although he had not carried a sword since the early 1800s. The only weapon he owned, his service revolver, was wrapped in oilcloth and packed away in the basement of the building.
And I don’t think I have time to go get it.

The creature stood, silhouetted against the night, holding the glass door between its claws. It almost filled the tiny solarium that linked the dining room to the balcony.

Woven like a red cord through the stench was the odor of fresh blood, telling Henry the demon had just fed and reminding him how long it had been since he had done the same. He drew in a long, shuddering breath.
I was a fool not to have protected the apartment!
An open pentagram like the trap he’d prepared by the Humber. . . .
I should have known.
Now, it all came down to this.

“Hold, demon, you have not been asked to enter!”

Huge, lidless, yellow eyes turned in his direction, features reshaping to accommodate the movement. “Ordered,” it said, and threw the door.

Henry dove forward and the glass crashed harmlessly to the floor where he had been. He twisted past talons, leapt, and slammed both clenched fists into the demon’s head. The surface collapsed upon itself like wet cork, absorbing the blow and reforming. The demon’s backswing caught him on the way down and flung him crashing through the coffee table. He rolled, narrowly avoiding a killing blow, and scrambled to his feet with a metal strut in his hand, the broken end bright and sharp.

The demon opened Henry’s arm below the elbow.

Biting back a scream, Henry staggered, almost fell, and jabbed the strut into its hip.

A flap of wing almost held him then, but panic lent him strength and he kicked his way free, feeling tissue give beneath his heels. His shoulder took the blow meant for his throat. He dropped with it, grabbed above a misshapen foot, and pulled with all he had left. The back of the demon’s head proved more resilient than Henry’s television, but only just.

“Down, Owen! Be quiet!” Mrs. Hughes leaned back against the leash, barely managing to snag her door and close it before Owen, barking hysterically, lunged forward and dragged her down the hall. “Owen, shut up!” She could hardly hear herself think, the dog was so loud. The sound echoed, louder even than it had been in the confines of her apartment, and no matter how extensive the soundproofing between units, noise always seemed to carry in from the hall. She had to get Owen out of the building before he got them thrown out by the residents’ committee.

A door opened at the end of the corridor and a neighbor she knew slightly emerged. He was a retired military man and had two small dogs of his own, both of whom she could hear barking through the open door—no doubt in response to Owen’s frenzy.

“What’s wrong with him?” he yelled when he was close enough to make himself heard.

“I don’t know.” She stumbled and almost lost her footing when Owen suddenly threw his powerful body up against Henry Fitzroy’s door, scrabbling with his claws around the edges and when that didn’t work, trying to dig his way under. Mrs. Hughes attempted to pull him away without much success. She wished she knew what her Owen had against Mr. Fitzroy—of course, at the moment she’d settle for knowing they weren’t going to be evicted for disturbing the peace. “Owen! Sit!” Owen ignored her.