Fierce Lessons (Ghosts & Demons Series Book 3) (17 page)

Next, your headlights illuminate a girl by the side of the road. You slow down.
 

You see the gleaming armor and…is that a sword? You speed up and swerve away, but now —
bam!
— the girl is on your hood.

“Please stop the car!” I yell. “This is an emergency!”

You stomp on the brakes and, as the tires squeal, I fly off, skidding down the road and throwing sparks and scratching up my armor.

I get up and brush myself off as you search for first gear again.
 

“Crap,” I say.

Let’s try that again.

In a moment I’m at your driver’s side window. You roll it up. I shatter it with my elbow (which, to my surprise, doesn’t hurt a bit.)

I grab you by the collar. “I said, this is an emergency.”

You try to pull away and I grab you by the shoulder and pull you out through the open window. I toss you in the grass as gently as I can manage.

You get up and, in the headlights, you see my head clearly for the first time. Yes, those silhouettes are horns.
Horns!
You gaze at me in wonder and terror.
 

“Sit!”
I say.

You sit.

“Stay!”

You do.

I could get used to this. No wonder demons are so badass.

I jump behind the wheel to back it up the road to where Devin Anguloora lies in misery.

Shit. I never learned how to drive a stick. I try to remember what Brad showed me but I don’t have the right touch on the clutch and I lurch backward and stall.

Naturally, I blame you. “I’m trying to save a burn victim here! Who the hell doesn’t have an automatic transmission anymore?”

Another car is coming and I’m parked in the middle of the road while you continue to stare at me. If you laugh now, I swear I might cut you.

The newcomer blares his horn helpfully and I’m out of the car in a flash. No more time for questions and explanations and bullshit. For the second time that night within the space of a few minutes, I go through a car windshield. At least this time I planned it.

The bearded guy driving the Toyota starts screaming but it’s not words, just a lot of vowel sounds. In his panic, the driver’s door becomes a complicated puzzle to solve while he continues to scream and claw at the upholstery.

I reach across him and open the door. I don’t have to tell this one to run away.

I glance down. No stick. It’s an automatic transmission. Thank goodness. I don’t want to be out here crashing through windshields all night.

I back up fast. Then I stop the car so fast the tires smoke. I race forward again and come to another rocking halt. I get out and run to the first car. You’re still sitting in the grass, staring at me as the bearded driver runs past, still screaming. (He’s resilient, though. It’s not all vowel sounds now. Most of it is swearing.)

I smash your back window, reach in and grab your grocery bag. “Thanks,” I say. “I’m not a bad person. It only looks that way right now.”

Then I’m already running back to my new stolen car — the one with the automatic transmission. I say something about how I don’t have time to explain but you probably don’t hear me. The roar of the engine swallows my words.

I roar up the road, barely missing another car coming my way.
 

You are probably relieved that the ordeal is over. Then you see me stop the car to the sound of screeching tires. From your vantage point in dim light, it appears I’m dragging a body into the back of the car, which is true. Anguloora only looks dead. (He still has the energy to wince and cry quietly.)

It finally occurs to you that, despite what the demon lady with the sword says, it’s probably a good time to run in the same direction the bearded guy went.

You run, too. Inexplicably, you run down the middle of the road, just like the bearded idiot.

A moment later, you hear the car engine roaring up behind you. You try to run faster, but I’m in a car and you’re a human, dummy. You can’t outrun me.

Car horn blaring, I flash past, barely missing you with the front left fender. I yell, “Thanks for the frozen yogurt, Einstein!”

There’s no time to explain that the melting yogurt seems to be soothing my archery instructor’s ruined skin. Well, at least the first degree burns.

You’ll tell this crazy story for the rest of your life. Everyone will assume you were on drugs or are still on drugs.

My last glimpse of you is in my rearview mirror, running back to your car. The bearded guy must have left the road and is off in the trees. I hope he didn’t get eaten by mountain lions.

Lesson 184: You mess with demon girl, you get the horns.
 

25

O
ne call to Command and Control got us the logistics and necessities. Our first priority was Anguloora. He needed more medical treatment than we could provide with first aid kits. The big Samoan’s skin had blistered and swelled.
 

We needed a pilot, too. Victor made a call to the Pentagon. By the time we arrived at the jet a local private contractor and the medical team met us.
 

The last I saw of Anguloora, a Navy nurse was pumping him full of morphine as medics wheeled him away to a helicopter ambulance. Our replacement pilot already had the plane refueled and the engines warmed up.

The people Victor sent had been briefed a little or they were so well trained they didn’t ask questions about the strange band wearing armor and carrying swords. By their eyes, I knew they were shocked at my horns. No one said a thing about them, however. In fact, they seemed to make a point of trying to stare in my eyes as they answered my questions.

I guess that, in that situation, having a weird disfigurement like mine is kind of like being a boss’s daughter with huge knockers. Nobody wants to get fired so the employees pretend the big tits aren’t there.

I could tell they’d expected me, but no one had prepared them for our Patton Oswalt look-alike. If not for his consummate professionalism and desperate need to be cool, I’m sure the pilot would have asked Psymon for an autograph.

Anguloora had first, second and third degree burns, but he’d probably live. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Things had gone wrong, but only half of it was my fault. Minnie’s death was on me. I’d acted fast but not quite fast enough. We had the demon mage in custody but I kept staring at Minnie’s empty chair, wishing she were with us instead of Chronos.
 

I stopped staring at Minnie’s chair and considered the big silver case at my feet. I hoped Anguloora’s prize was worth the price we’d paid. That was hard to imagine. I’d gambled my life to try to get rid of my horns to fit in with humans. I’d done Merlin’s bidding. Victor had lied to me. I hadn’t understood what the real stakes of the battle were.

“It’s not your fault,” Psymon said.

“I think some of it is.”

“Psymon says it’s not your fault.”

“Well, okay then.”

“Good job showing the Normies what we can see,” I said. “They’re going to be trying to figure that one out for a long time to come.”

“You’re welcome. That was the hardest, and biggest, trick I’ve ever done. I’m exhausted. The Tylenol isn’t touching my headache. I should have gotten some morphine from the medics before they left. But, there’s this.” Psymon handed me a steaming drink. “Rest now. It’s a hot cocoa day all the way to Brooklyn. Then, I suppose, the shit will hit the ceiling fan.”

Hot cocoa days.
“Psymon, reading people’s minds is rude.”

“Sorry. Can’t really help it. The radio is always on.”

“So you knew Anguloora’s mission was different from mine, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say that. To get that case he had to have Chronos out of the way. It suits the Choir’s objectives, and yours, to get Merlin and the demon together.”

“You should have told me what was really going on. Victor and Anguloora should have trusted me. And Anguloora didn’t have to run through fire. I could have gotten this thing easily if he — ”

“He didn’t plan to run through fire. It was a surprise. I guess a thing like that always is.”

“You should have told me.”

“No,” he said. “Mind reading is rude. You just said so. Besides, every military operation is a secret to somebody. The generals need to know. The rest of us are left and right hands with no idea what the other is doing.”

“You knew.”

He leaned forward. Over raised eyebrows he asked conspiratorially, “Can you keep a secret?”

“Yes, of course. That’s my point.”

“I can keep a secret, too.” He sat back and drank his hot chocolate.

“Why keep me in the dark?”

He turned his head to look at me and said nothing. However, just for a moment, his eyes flicked to my horns.

“Oh, my God!”

Psymon nodded. “You’re getting better at the body language thing.”

“Victor’s not sure I can be trusted?”

Psymon shook his head. “Don’t go too far. It’s more subtle than that. He trusted you with a team to go on this mission — ”

“After Merlin blackmailed him into it.”

“Possibly.”

“So you’re saying he trusts me, but not completely.”

Psymon looked to the case between my feet. “Not with that. It’s too important to trust to any one person.”

“He trusted Anguloora.”

“No, he didn’t. Not even with that case. Not completely. Victor takes operational security very seriously.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because, Iowa, I don’t know what’s in that case.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“Anguloora didn’t know, so I don’t know. Victor only told him it’s the key to stopping a demon invasion cold. That’s all.”

I drank my cocoa and thought about Victor and Minnie and Devin Anguloora. Minneapolis and Anguloora had paid a high price for their trust in Victor’s leadership of the Choir Invisible. Besides hemorrhoids from sitting on his ball chair all day in C&C, how much had the billionaire really sacrificed? It seemed to me Victor Fuentes owed the cause more than a heavy conscience.
 

“Careful, Iowa. Trains of thought like that can lead to treacherous waters.”

“You mean treachery. Victor worries I’ll turn traitor like my father, as if my genes are destiny.”

“
I
don’t doubt your commitment to the Choir Invisible,” Psymon said. “But you really don’t care much for the conductor of the Choir right now. Never let the boss know how you really feel about him. Trust me, before I got into show business, I worked retail.”

“Funny.”

“If it helps, the boss never says how he really feels about you, either.”

“Humans,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

“What you just said might be the problem,” Psymon said. “Be careful of us and them thinking. Take it from a mind reader, there is very little us and them except within the confines of the mind.”

I was pissed off at Victor and Anguloora and Chronos and Merlin. Then I was angry with Psymon. Minnie was still blown apart and dead. Wilmington was in the back recovering with the aid of the amulet from the Tree of Life.
 

I was mad at me, too.

Let’s call, “There’s no us and them,” Lesson 185. But it sure
feels
like there’s an us and them.

By the time I finished my cocoa it wasn’t hot anymore. I’d figured something else out, too. Psymon was almost asleep when I nudged him with my elbow. Then I nudged him harder.

“
Ow!
”

“Psymon?”

“Yes?”

“Your daughter is a much better mind reader than you, isn’t she?”

“Fawn is very gifted, yes. Between me and her mother’s contributions, you might say genes are destiny.”

“Don’t be bitchy, Psymon. Victor doesn’t want her anywhere near him, does he?”

“He’s a General, Iowa. Nobody likes mind readers, especially Generals.”

“Victor has a lot to hide, doesn’t he?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“You mean you won’t say. How’s your headache?”

“Still really bad.”

“Good.”

Psymon gave me a weak smile and pretended to go back to sleep.

I whispered in his ear, “You’re right, you know. Nobody likes mind readers.”

“We know. We know. Sometimes, to feel better about myself, I pretend to be a famous comedian everyone loves and I sign autographs. Now let me get some sleep, please.”

But that was not to be. We were somewhere over Illinois when Malta emerged from the cockpit. “Iowa, I have news from New York.”

“What is it?”

“Maybe first we should talk where the others can’t — ”

The plane was already descending quickly, headed for a quick landing.
 

Psymon jolted up from his seat. “Jesus!
No!
” The psychic stared at Malta in terror. “
My little girl!
”

26

P
symon collapsed in tears. The rest of the team stood and stared.

“Malta,” I said. “Report. Now.”

“We got an alert over the radio. At 3:20 a.m., New York time, the demons opened a rift beneath the Keep. The Ra poured through and the Choir was taken by surprise. The Keep has fallen and it’s believed there are no survivors. We’re too late.”

Damn you, Merlin, you jumped the fence.

Paul and Polly held each other and began to chant but at least they did so quietly. The others looked anguished or angry. I looked to Manny first because I didn’t know what to say or do.

Malta solved that problem for me. “We have new orders. The pilot has new coordinates and we’re being diverted to Bloomington.”

“Where?”

“Bloomington, Illinois,” Malta said. “It’s next to Normal.”

I wished I was next to Normal, oblivious to the unfolding Armageddon.

“We’ll be landing in a few minutes. Buckle up. We’re getting on the ground fast.”

“If there are no survivors, who is giving us orders now?” I asked.

“They didn’t say. The alert came from the Pentagon.”

My first thought was of my mother. The debacle in Medicament had ended with Mama coming to the Keep to be the Choir’s pharmacist. She was supposed to be safe there and now she was almost certainly dead. And I hadn’t even said goodbye.