Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei (38 page)

Her summoner paced back and forth, hands clenching and unclenching. “A child,” he muttered. “She calls me a child when I’ve killed a person.”

“You didn’t kill anyone. I did. You made me do it.”

He screamed something unintelligible, then shouted, “No! I have killed someone. I killed my mother. I made her crash the car into a truck. Don’t you get it? I look like this because she wouldn’t get me the new PlayStation. I hated her and I made her hit that truck.” He shoved his ruined face so close to the barrier it sparked with the proximity of his wild power. “No one can look at me without being disgusted. Everyone is horrified or they pity me and they either can’t look at me or they can’t stop looking. Even my dad. Especially him. But not Gerry. She was the only one who didn’t care about this, but then I learned why she didn’t care about how I looked. It was because she didn’t care about me. I asked her to stop what she was doing, I pleaded with her. She didn’t though. She didn’t care enough to worry about what I wanted. She wouldn’t listen to me when I told her what Asmodeus really wanted so I made sure she couldn’t keep doing it.”

His voice had quietened during his tirade and the last came out as a weary whisper. He stepped back from the circle, hands fidgeting at his sides, gaze roving around the room.

“And now I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d miss her like this. I didn’t think I’d feel like this. I didn’t…”

“Think, period.”

A man stood in the doorway. He was short and round and had about the saddest face Amaya had ever seen. Her summoner turned to him.

“Dad.” His back straightened. “How did you find me?”

“I’m sure the whole neighbourhood knows you’re here, Rufus. What were you thinking, shouting like that? It’s a wonder Hawkins isn’t here right now taking you out.”

Rufus scowled. “Brad and Ivan should never have brought him into this. Everything would be fine now if not for him.”

“No, son, everything wouldn’t be all right. Your stepmother would still be dead and you would still be her murderer.”

“I had to stop her.” A desperate pleading note entered Rufus’ voice. “She was going to destroy the world if she kept going. Don’t you understand that?”

Chris Davis came further into the room. He glanced at Amaya and his eyes flashed intense blue, a small, intimately familiar smile curling his lips before he turned back to Rufus.

“Rufus,” Amaya said. “Don’t listen to him. It’s not your father.” It was hers.

Rufus looked between them even as he backed away from the advancing man. He was scared now, eyes wide, arms shaking.

“She’s a demon, son. You can’t trust her. I am your father. And I’ll protect you from her and Hawkins.” Asmodeus lifted his stolen arms out to the boy. “Come with me and we’ll sort this all out.”

“No,” Amaya shouted. “Don’t do it, Rufus.”

Trembling, Rufus studied the man. All traces of Asmodeus were gone. He was just a small, worried father, trying to reach out to his son.

Rufus took a step toward Asmodeus.

“Stop!”

Hawkins skidded to a stop just inside the room. Erin was a step behind, her gun out and trained on Asmodeus.

Asmodeus snarled. “Damn you, Hawkins.”

Chris fell to the floor, leaving behind the blue spirit of the Demon Lord. It twisted into a tight coil and sprang across the room at Hawkins.

“Don’t,” Amaya yelled, but it was too late.

Hawkins and Erin dodged to either side, losing precious seconds and sight of Asmodeus’ real target. The spirit changed trajectory in mid-flight and arrowed back for Rufus. The boy watched it come, stunned into immobility.

“Move!” But again Amaya’s warning wasn’t fast enough.

Asmodeus roared into Rufus. The boy convulsed, gurgling a scream. The blue spirit emerged from his back, trailing a multi-coloured mist which he enclosed in his own presence. Then the Demon Lord vanished.

Rufus, slack jawed, collapsed.

“He’s alive,” Erin announced. She knelt by Chris.

“So’s Rufus,” I said, checking the boy’s neck for injuries before rolling him over. “Out cold, though.”

“Not unconscious.” Amaya sat in the circle still, even though the power that had trapped her was gone.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Asmodeus took him.”

I looked at the boy on the floor.

“His soul,” Amaya clarified softly. “Asmodeus took it.”

“What?” Erin went horribly pale.

“You interrupted him before he could kill Rufus, so he took his soul. They’ll be back in our realm now and Asmodeus will be torturing him. He’s done it before.”

Nick leaned in the doorway. “My God.”

“No closer,” I warned him. “I need Amaya clear headed now.”

“She won’t try to kill you anymore?”

From Nick’s tone, I wasn’t sure which way he was swinging on the answer.

“The bond between me and Rufus was broken the moment he crossed into Hell, the demon realm,” Amaya said. “You’re the only one with any control of me now.”

“Well, I don’t want it anymore. I can’t handle this. You’re free, Amaya. I’ll be in the car whenever you’re ready to go,” he said to Erin, deciding she must be about the most normal person present. “And if I could get a lift to the airport, I’d like to go home, too.”

Nick left. In her corner, Amaya heaved a big sigh.

“You’re really free?” I asked.

“I think so. I’d have to get close to him again to be sure.”

“No, ah, homicidal urges?”

Amaya gave me a tight smile. “Not yet.”

“What exactly happened here, Amaya?” I straightened out Rufus’ limbs, made sure there were no other injuries and then went to check Chris. Not that I didn’t trust Erin, but I had more medical training than she did. She sat back and let me do my stuff.

“Rufus was my summoner,” Amaya said sadly.

“We figured that one out. Did he say why he did it?”

Amaya gave us an almost verbatim replay of what had happened when she left us outside the Davis house.

“How did you find us?” she asked, coming out of the corner and shifting into her Lila appearance.

A little uncomfortable, I stood and went to study the circle. It wasn’t an obvious avoidance, but I’m sure it wasn’t missed by anyone in the room—well, by anyone who was conscious.

“I felt the power when he sparked the circle and followed it here.”

“Sniffed you out like a hound dog,” Erin supplied. “Poor Rufus. Thinking he killed his mother.”

“Maybe he did,” I said.

Erin glared at me, reminding me of the day in the hospital when she’d almost pried one of the few secrets of my past she didn’t know out of me. Rufus had been the cause of the accident that killed his mother. He’d had to live with that knowledge for half of his life, bearing the results on his body and in his soul. I understood the rotten sourness of his aura now; and I had finally found something he and I could relate on.

Erin’s glare dissipated as she watched me and not for the first time, I resented how well she knew me. How could a man remain mysterious and cool if someone knew all the worst bits of his dark soul?

Doing what I could to distance myself from bad memories, I said, “All I’m saying is he’s got power. Might not be your classic psychic power but it’s something and it’s strong. Maybe he did influence his mother. He was a child, he would have had no idea of what he was doing or the consequences of it.”

“He wasn’t a child when he commanded me to kill his stepmother, though,” Amaya said. “He was well aware of the consequences.”

“I think in this case he probably believed the consequences were worth it. He was stopping Asmodeus from installing himself as Demon King of my realm.” Was that anger creeping into my voice? Given that I was getting a bit angry, I’d say so.

“And that makes murder okay, does it?” Lila… Amaya stamped a foot so hard it was a wonder the tiles didn’t crack.

“No it doesn’t, but I understand his reasoning and agree with his sentiment, if not his solution to the problem. Asmodeus needed stopping and Gerry didn’t realise that until it was too late. It was too late for Karl Roeben. He’s going to have to live for the rest of his life with the memory of having a demon in his head, controlling him.”

“And I don’t have to live for another couple thousand years with the countless memories of various humans controlling me?”

“This isn’t about you! It’s about that boy Asmodeus is torturing right now.”

“That boy is a murderer.”

“And your summoner. That’s what you’re most pissed about, isn’t it. That you were caught and bound by a sixteen year old kid with pimples and a fixation on emo rebellion.”

“At least he had the balls to summon me,” Amaya snarled.

“At least I didn’t pretend to be something I’m not!”

“When will it get into your thick head? I had no choice. I had to do that.”

“No, you didn’t. You only had to kill me. You didn’t have to seduce me. You didn’t have to give me anything I wanted or did you forget that I never bound you?”

“I was trying to kill you but—”

“You didn’t have to throw Erin off a fucking overpass.” It came out deadly quiet. I hadn’t meant to say it.

Amaya hadn’t been expecting me to say it. She took it like a fist in the gut.

The click-clack of Erin chambering a round was thunderous in the silence.

“Did neither of you hear what I said in the car?” she asked, also threateningly soft. “Nothing has happened to alleviate my headache. Unless both of you want to be picking bullets out of your kneecaps, shut the hell up.”

Amaya gave in first. She spun around and stalked out of the room.

When she was out of the house, I let out a long, pent up breath. It didn’t do much to cool my head, but it fooled Erin at least.

“Right.” Erin holstered her gun. “At the risk of sounding like a parrot with amnesia, what now?”

“Get an ambulance here for these two,” I said. “Hopefully Chris will be okay. He wasn’t possessed as long as Karl. That can only work in his favour.”

“And Rufus?”

I crouched by the boy. Now that I was calming down, I could feel it. Or rather, not feel it. He wasn’t there. That rough aura I’d brushed the day I met him was gone.

“You really understand why he did it?” Erin asked.

“Yeah. He honestly thought he was doing something right.”

“No. I meant about his mother.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” whispered in my mind, and I wouldn’t break that promise. I wouldn’t tell anyone her part in it, at least.

“When I was sixteen, my uncle did something I couldn’t…” I let out a long, steadying breath. “He did something bad. Very bad. I found him at it and I lost it. It wasn’t the first time I went berserk but it was the worst, at that point. You thought what I did at Kirby’s was bad, but this went beyond that.”

Erin caught her breath and I could almost feel the progress we’d made this morning evaporating like the first drops of rain on a boiling hot road. I’d started and it wouldn’t stop, though.

“He lived. My mum managed to talk my aunt out of pressing charges, but it split the family forever and even my parents couldn’t really forgive me.”

“You didn’t tell them what he’d done?”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“No. I’d done enough damage already. You want to know why I lost faith in God and religion? It wasn’t because of science. It was because after what happened with my uncle, our priest refused to have me in his church. He said I was evil. I didn’t even get the excuse of being possessed. I was evil, plain and simple. For a while I believed him.” Running a hand back through my hair, I shook off the bad memories and said, “That’s why I understand Rufus. He couldn’t control himself and something terrible resulted. Objectively, he wasn’t at fault, but it’s hard to look at something objectively when you’re slap damn in the middle of it.”

Erin was quiet for a while, then she touched my shoulder quickly, lightly. “How do we get him back?”

I let out a small, relieved sigh. She wasn’t running away, screaming ‘monster!’ Was that why I kept telling her things I shouldn’t? Because she could still see me beyond all these horrible truths?

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Would Kermit know?”

I shrugged.

“Come on, Matt. Don’t give up now. You’ve spent the last day acting on impulse. What does your gut tell you to do now?”

“Get out before anyone else gets hurt. Maybe Amaya’s right. Maybe Rufus deserves what Asmodeus might do to him.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Might be easier to convince myself of that than fix this mess.” But even as I spoke, thoughts were moving in my head. I reached for my phone, pulled up a number and hit ‘call’. “Go find Amaya. See if she’ll forgive me long enough to help us.”

Erin left and I spoke to Kermit. He wasn’t happy about being woken up and he was less than happy when I told him what I wanted. I let him grumble and carry on about how I wasn’t immortal like a Primal before I made him cough up the goods. I was just finishing up with him when Erin returned, a stiff backed Lila-shaped Amaya behind her.

“What’s the plan?” Erin asked.

“Mad, that’s what it is,” I said. “Amaya, will you help me try to rescue Rufus?”

“That depends. What do you want?”

“Knowledge. How did you cross the boundary?”

Amaya hesitated. “Why do you want to know?”

“Professional curiosity. Everything everyone’s said to me says it’s pretty much impossible without a super-duper powerful human doing the summoning. So?” I left it hanging for Amaya to fill in the blanks.

“Natural fissures occur all the time. I found one and came through.”

“Common belief has it that those fissures are really small. A little imp might get through but nothing else.”

“Tell me why you want to know.”

“Tell me why you don’t want to tell me.”

Erin tapped the butt of her gun.

Amaya sighed. “I don’t want you to know because it might spread and then we’ll have demons aplenty doing the same thing to get here. Neither of us wants that.”

“You can trust us not to go blabbing.” I crossed my heart. “And hope to die. Erin?”

“Who would I tell that would believe me?”

“All right. It’s pretty simple, actually. You find a fissure, even a tiny one will do, so long as you can get a small object through. You have to have two of the objects, as identical you can, and they have to both be imbued with the same power. The more power the better. With one of them on either side of the rift, it’s an easy matter then of calling up the bond between the two objects. The power shift will open the rift wider for a second or two. You pass through and it closes.”

I glanced at Erin. She gave me a you-are-mad-if-you-think-I-understand-that look.

“Perhaps it has something to do with quantum physics,” I said.

“Either way, it works,” Amaya said. “It’s easy, but it takes a lot of power. When I came through, I was very weak. So weak I spent forty years bonded to a very feeble sorcerer in a slum in Delhi. You do not want to know what he made me do.”

“How long have you been here?” Erin asked.

Amaya thought for a moment, doing the math. “A hundred and fifty six years. Now that you know, what do you plan to do?” she asked me.

I told them.

When I had finished, Amaya held her hand out to me and said, “It was interesting knowing you.”

Erin’s expression said pretty much the same thing.

I just shrugged. “Told you it was mad.”