Fever (18 page)

The cat!
Eve realized.
He took on the form of the cat!

Faster and faster he cycled through his many faces, all the faces he’d used over the centuries. Eve recognized the homeless man, Mr Enslow, Phillip and her English teacher. How many times had she walked past the demon without recognizing him? All these people he’d disguised himself as so he could capture her friends and bring them down here.

Amunnic’s faces changed even more rapidly, too fast for Eve’s eyes to register more than a blur. Then with a
whomp
he ignited and let go of her. Flames covered every inch of his long body. Eve threw herself away from the searing heat.

And then it was over. The flames went out as quickly as they’d started. When they did, all that was left of Amunnic was a pile of coarse black ash on the floor.

Eve looked down at Jess as she lay on the stretcher, waiting to be loaded into an ambulance. ‘And the fun never stops,’ Jess joked weakly.

‘Never,’ Luke agreed from his spot close to Eve’s side.

Jess held her palm up to them, so they could see again that the spot of necrosis was gone. The puncture wounds on Amunnic’s other victims had almost disappeared too, leaving only small pink marks behind after the demon turned to ash.

An EMT worker in a hazmat suit walked over to them. ‘Lucky you forgot your cellphone in your locker,’ she said to Luke. ‘If you two hadn’t come looking for it … well, it might have gone really differently for the other kids.’

Luke had improvised a story about needing his cell and realizing it was in his school locker. He said Eve had come with him to retrieve it and they’d heard moaning in the basement and gone down to check it out.

Dave had jumped in and said that they’d been partying down there, then they’d all gotten sick and ended up too weak to leave. He almost seemed to believe the story himself. Why wouldn’t he? It was a lot less scary that the truth – that a demon had been drinking his blood.

‘You’re going to be fine,’ another EMT worker said as he joined the group by Jess’s stretcher. ‘I was just on the radio with the plague centre. The new antibiotics seem to be working – and fast. The most recent victims are even asking to go home.’

‘Hear that, Jess?’ Eve asked. ‘You’re going to be fine.’

‘Already am, thanks to you,’ Jess answered. She grinned. ‘I guess you’ll keep coming to kung fu with me,’ she said.

‘You know it,’ Eve answered.

‘Am I invited?’ Luke asked.

‘Mmm. Maybe. If you’re nice,’ Eve told him.

‘Luke’s always nice,’ Jess said pointedly as the EMTs began to roll her stretcher towards the ambulance.

‘I can’t wait to go over to the courthouse and see my dad. The real one,’ Luke told Eve.

‘I bet,’ she answered. ‘I just have one thing I need to do here. Will you stay with me?’

‘The always-nice Luke Thompson? Of course,’ he replied.

Eve led the way back down to the basement. ‘I don’t feel safe with this just lying around.’ She touched the pile of ash with the very tip of her shoe.

Luke walked over to the bowl and picked it up. ‘Let’s put him back in here,’ he suggested. ‘This kept him trapped for hundreds of years.’

Eve nodded. She knelt down beside Amunnic’s remains. Luke knelt beside her, holding the bowl sideways. ‘I think this might be a situation where a credit card will actually work,’ she said. She pulled her AmEx out of her purse and used it to scoop the ashes into the bowl.

When all that was left on the floor was a greasy scorch mark, Luke slid the bowl’s lid in place. He started to stand, but Eve put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m so glad you’re OK.’ Those words didn’t come close to expressing how she felt, how relieved and just joyful she was that Luke was alive and by her side.

‘I’m glad you’re OK too,’ he answered. He reached out and cupped her cheek with his hand. ‘You’re pretty awesome, you know that?’

Then they were kissing. With no thought, no awkwardness, no ‘Is this really a good idea?’. Just perfection. Perfect perfection.

And no cat-demon to interrupt.

‘Has Peter asked you anything about seeing me use my zap?’ Eve asked Jess. They stood in front of the portal the next afternoon, waiting for Luke. They’d decided sending Amunnic’s ashes back to hell was the safest way to deal with them.

Jess shook her head. ‘I think he wants to forget the whole thing ever happened. He hasn’t said anything about the demon either. Actually nobody said anything when we were all waiting to get picked up from the hospital, except Cathy, and she’s pretty much convinced herself she had some fever hallucination. I think it helped that the puncture marks closed up right away.’

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Luke called as he hurried over to them. ‘My dad wanted to go out to lunch. Recovering from the plague has given him an insane appetite.’ Happiness radiated off Luke. Eve could feel it flowing into her. ‘We ran into Mr Dokey,’ he added. ‘I never thought I’d see him alive, but he was wolfing down pizza at Piscatelli’s. It’s freaky how good he looks. It’s like his skin regenerated itself. It still looks a little grey and he’s definitely skinnier, but that’s it.’

‘I’m appreciating the skills of that priest who put the curse on Amunnic more and more,’ Jess said, rubbing the spot on her hand where the necrosis had been. ‘It’s amazing how all the symptoms of the plague disappeared. I’m a little tired, but that’s all.’

‘Not too tired to go out with Seth tonight,’ Eve teased.

‘Never,’ Jess answered.

‘I knew he’d understand why you freaked when you first saw him with the necrosis,’ Luke commented.

‘He more than understood. He actually apologized for looking so repulsive,’ Jess exclaimed.

‘I’m having to do that all the time – and I didn’t even get the plague,’ Luke joked. His expression turned serious as he took the bowl out of his backpack. He’d kept it in the church overnight. Eve and Luke had agreed that was the safest place.

‘I’m not sure how to open the portal,’ Eve said. ‘I guess I’ll just experiment. And hope that nothing is crouched on the other side waiting to come out.’

‘I’ve got my
hi-yah
ready,’ Jess assured her.

‘And I have the sword.’ Luke tapped his back. ‘Just in case.’

‘Then we’re all good. Nothing will get by the Trio of Terror,’ Eve said. She knelt down in front of the arch and touched the opening with the fingertips of both hands. The golden tapestry appeared, sparkling and glinting in the mild March sunlight.

It’s made of energy
, she thought. And she could absorb energy. She’d learned that.

Eve opened herself to the energy of the tapestry and felt the power at her core brighten with the infusion. She didn’t want to destroy the block, just make a little hole. She moved her hands lightly over a section at the bottom of the tapestry, until the threads in that piece loosened, became translucent, and disappeared. Eve heard a soft sucking sound from the other side that made her mouth taste metallic. ‘It should go through now,’ she said, without lifting her hands away.

Luke knelt beside her and pushed the bowl containing Amunnic’s ashes through the portal. It hovered for a moment, then began to fall, disappearing as it did.

As soon as she saw the bowl vanish, Eve released power through her fingertips, the golden waves repairing the tapestry. The hole closed in moments, but Eve kept sending her power out, enjoying the warm surge, urging more threads to form, creating another layer of protection over the portal’s opening, another layer between the demons who lived on the other side and all the people she loved on this one.

It wasn’t until she heard a soft cough behind – one that hadn’t sounded like it came from Luke or Jess – that she pulled her hands away. She stood and turned, anxious about her power being observed.

Callum and Alanna stood a few metres away, their expressions solemn.
Why was the Order here?
Eve walked over to them, Jess and Luke on either side of her. In spite of her surprise, she realized there was a question that she wanted an answer to. Maybe the Order would know …

‘So many people from so many places could have bought that bowl at the marketplace in Egypt,’ Eve said to Callum. ‘It can’t be a coincidence it ended up in Deepdene, can it?’

The lines around his mouth deepened as he prepared to answer. ‘Even with the portal closed, Deepdene will attract darkness.’

‘Demons, you mean,’ Eve said.

‘Yes,’ Callum said simply. ‘Although the door is closed at this moment, they can sense it has been opened recently. Lord Medway created something that can never be completely destroyed when he made the portal.’

‘So we can expect more, even with the portal blocked?’ Luke asked.

‘It’s possible,’ Callum answered, and Eve felt a knot of apprehension form in her belly.

‘
Very
possible,’ Alanna added. She glanced at Callum, as though waiting for him to say something more.

‘Did you come for a kind of final report on Amunnic?’ Eve asked when Callum remained silent, studying her with his shrewd grey eyes.

‘I emailed you guys all the details,’ Luke said. Eve noted that he didn’t seem particularly pleased to see Alanna.

‘Did it feel the same as when you’ve killed other demons with your power?’ Callum asked Eve.

She shrugged. ‘Pretty much. It didn’t feel like it took quite as much power as killing Malphas, but I had my hands right on Amunnic. Maybe that made a difference.’

‘Was he able to bite you?’ Alanna asked, and Eve thought she asked the question with way too much eagerness. Like she wanted Eve to say yes and give her all the gory details.

‘No,’ she answered. Callum raised an eyebrow. ‘He did scratch me though. More than scratch, really. He dug that claw of his right into my neck.’

‘Drawing blood?’ Alanna asked, with that same strange eagerness.

‘Yeah. I could feel it running down,’ Eve told her.

‘We believe that is what killed the demon.’ Callum hesitated. ‘That may be why you felt that you had to use less power. Your blood is poisonous to Amunnic.’

‘What?’ Jess burst out. ‘That makes no sense. Human blood can’t be poisonous to Amunnic, surely. He lives on it.’

‘Eve, remember we took a sample of your blood the last time we were here?’ Callum asked her.

‘You said testing it might help you come up with more ways to kill demons, since I can kill them without one of the special swords,’ Eve replied. ‘Is that what you found out? That my blood is poisonous to demons because I’m the Deepdene Witch?’

‘We found a reference in our archives. The only thing Amunnic is unable to survive is exposure to the blood of another demon,’ Callum said. Usually his gaze was strong and direct, but he dropped his eyes for a moment.

Luke frowned. ‘What does that have to do with Eve’s blood though?’

The knot of anxiety in Eve’s stomach grew larger and harder. She suddenly didn’t want to hear what Callum would say next, especially when he looked her in the face again and she saw a mix of revulsion and pity in his eyes.

‘We got the results of the tests on your blood back,’ Callum told her. He hesitated.

Alanna shot a pointed look at Luke, then said, ‘Eve, the results revealed that you have demon blood.’

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