Dead Demon Walking (23 page)

The House is the biggest construction
I have ever seen. From where Royal and I stood on a dirt track
facing the central rotunda, the House seemed to stretch across the
horizon, portions of the white façade peeping through tall trees.
In an unbroken circle like a gigantic wheel, it surrounds a park
dotted with ponds, a lake, summerhouses and the small arena where
we once watched Lord Lawrence practice swordsmanship.

We crossed a strip of grass and
climbed two shallow, white stone steps. Gareth bowed his head.
“Welcome, my lord. Miss Banks.”

Royal is nobility in
Bel-Athaer.

We followed Gareth inside the High
House. A few demons stood about the reception hall, but nowhere
near the number as last time I was here. They watched us with
alert, glittering eyes as Gareth led us over the smooth, pale,
gleaming floor to one of the two staircases which curved up the
walls to the next floor. The steps gleamed slickly as if water
veneered them.

They were not as slippery as they
looked, but I kept close to the wall. Having no banister made me a
trifle nervous. Halfway up, my calves began to ache as if I hiked a
mountain trail. The staircase continued to wind around the
circumference of the hall until we came out on a long gallery
railed by glossy, polished wood. Gareth strode a few more paces and
turned down a passageway. Royal could drive his pickup along it
with room to spare and the ceiling could be fifteen feet high.
Round white globes on the walls shed haloes of illumination and
picked out the purple diamond pattern in the tea-green wallpaper. I
looked up at creamy moldings shaped like giant medallions on the
ceiling.

Hurrying to keep up with the men’s
long strides allowed no more than brief peeks in the open doorways
which lined the passageway. The rooms were small salons furnished
with silk-covered divans, fragile chairs and low tables.

We reached a door at the far end.
Gareth knocked, opened, and stood aside to allow us to precede
him.

Round and windowless, the room was the
size of the waiting room in Clarion Station. The walls, curving up
to a high vaulted ceiling, were a pale burnished brown in a pattern
which made them look like rippling silk. We stood on russet carpet
like crushed velvet. Thick braided gold silk rope looped around the
wall between heavy, glowing, golden sconces. A massive chandelier
of sparkling golden glass hung from the center of the
ceiling.

I examined the wall nearest me. Not
silk, frosting - whatever covered the wall looked like frosting.
With the rope looping the circumference, the walls looked like the
sides of a cake decorated by someone with a taste for
opulence.

A large throne-like chair of carved
wood with a gold plush seat sat on a raised platform across from
us. In front of that, five men and two women, their backs to us,
sat at a half-circular wooden table. Gareth crossed the room to the
table to stand behind the eighth, vacant chair, and motioned us
forward with a cupped hand.

Royal led the way across the room and
around the table, until we stood facing the High Lord’s
Council.

From the gray and silver in their
metallic hair, the fine lines on their faces, I thought they were
older Gelpha, like Gareth. They didn’t introduce themselves, just
stared at us with lazy eyes.

Royal began to speak and the eight
regarded him with relaxed, expressionless faces. I resisted the
impulse to beat a tattoo on the carpet with my toe. I didn’t want
to stare at the councilors, or let my gaze drift around the room. I
felt awkward, out of place, superfluous.

Royal fell silent. A man with
coal-black hair drizzled with gray and silver cleared his throat
and settled his clasped hands on what looked suspiciously like the
beginnings of a pot belly. He lifted his head to regard us with
eyes like pools of mercury. “A nasty business.”

The man was handsome, but a
pot belly? Every demon I’d seen till now had a lean, sculpted body.
I couldn’t tear my gaze from that small, insignificant indication
that demons are
not
physically perfect. Did they get slack with age, like
us?

“
Tiff.”

I snapped back to the moment.
“Huh?”

“
Are you positive you saw a
Dark Cousin?” asked a female councilor, an exquisite, aging face,
long fading-salmon hair and the body of a young woman clad in a
diaphanous gown which left her copper-tone shoulders bare. Her
pink-beige eyes glowed beneath arched brows.

I uneasily shifted one shoulder. “I
saw him briefly through his victims’ eyes, too briefly to put a
name to him. But from his speed and strength, he must be a
Cousin.”

“
He could be
Gelpha.”

I scrunched up my eyes. Did she not
listen to what Royal just said? “Then why did Dark Cousins tell us
to stay away from him?”

“
We know who he is, Darja,”
Royal said.

“
You do
not
know,” from the other woman. Her
long white and gray hair, done up in a chignon, looked slightly
brittle; her eyes flat smoky disks.

“
The question is,” Gareth
said, “why do you bring this to us?”

Royal took one pace forward. “Every
Gelpha in the human realm should watch for him. If we can pinpoint
his location, perhaps enough of us can take him down.”

“
Pah
!” from the pot-bellied demon. “Let the Dark Cousins see to
their own. Or perhaps the humans will find and overwhelm
him.”

“
But he’s slaughtering
people!” I exclaimed.

A demon wearing a white toga, his
bronze and silver hair in two long braids, looked along his nose at
me. “What happens in the human sphere is not our
concern.”

“
Baloney! Why do you have
enforcers there if that’s so?”

“
To monitor Gelpha
activity, not that of Dark Cousins,” Gareth said.

I began to boil. “Listen, you
ass-stupid - ”

Royal’s hand, squeezing my upper arm,
made me reluctantly swallow my words. I twitched free from his
grasp.

“
History tells us we can
defeat the Dark Cousins,” he said loudly.

If I were a dog, my ears would have
perked.

“
On our own ground, when we
massed against them.
Not
in a world swarming with humans,” from the
white-haired woman. She made a careless gesture. “We will not risk
our people.”

On her last word, the Councilors
jerked like puppets on strings, arms slashing out, hands flapping.
One man rising to his feet buckled at the knees. I took a startled
step to my left and saw Royal clap one hand to his forehead with a
surprised, pained expression.

Something affected the Councilors in a
bad way and Royal suffered in a lesser manner. I felt
fine.

“
Royal!” I curved my hands
around his biceps. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

He dropped his hands. Sweat slicked
his forehead. The Councilors went limp and fell in their
chairs.

“
Remember when I first
brought you here and told you we cannot just beam into the High
House?”

I nodded.

“
Somebody just
did.”

The Councilors pulled themselves
together. They sat stiffly in their chairs, smoothing their attire,
brushing at their hair. The salmon-haired demon wiped her brow with
the back of her wrist.

Gareth stood and cleared his throat.
“He is not Gelpha, nor human; we feel their presence. This leaves
one alternative.”

“
The pact has held for
centuries, why break it now?” from the pot bellied
demon.

Not Gelpha or human. “A Dark Cousin?
You mean a Dark Cousin is here?”

“
It can be nothing
else.”

“
Oh.” The word came out in
a puff of air. My fingernails dug in Royal’s arm. “It’s him. He saw
us, in Nebraska, or Vegas, I don’t know where. He knows what you
are. He followed us.”

“
Take her home,” Gareth
said.

They rose, turned in a swirl of robes
and made for the door. Royal pried my fingers off his arm, took my
hand in his and started after them.

“
So, you take me home. What
then?” I asked suspiciously.

“
Then I return.”

We were at the door. I dug my feet in,
although that just slowed us a fraction. My feet jittered over the
carpet, trying for traction. “I’m not going anywhere. If you’re
here, so am I.”

He eyed me with annoyance. “Not
happening, Tiff.”

“
Yes, it is.”

“
You don’t have our
strength and speed. You are little more than helpless.”

Helpless, huh?
I swallowed annoyance and denial. My ego was not
important now.

We dashed away, my feet tripping over
themselves. After zipping along corridors and through rooms of
varying dimensions, all a blur to me, we stepped inside a big
square chamber. Demons crammed the place, jam-packed together, all
facing outward. Sardines in a can had nothing on these people. I
don’t know how they drew breath. This place also lacked windows,
the walls and floor drab gray like wet concrete and no adornments,
with modern strip-lighting in the high ceiling.

“
Where are we?”

“
Lawrence is below, in what
you call a panic room which can be opened only from
inside.”

“
And these
guys?”

“
An additional line of
defense.”

They were prepared to defend their
young High Lord with their bodies. Admirable. How many in the
States would do that for the President?

Gareth came through the door behind
us. “It is done. The High House has been evacuated.”

That was fast, but
demons
are
fast. I
cocked my thumb at the door. “So what’s the plan?”

“
This is the
plan.”

I gawped. “What? Tuck Lawrence away
and to hell with everyone else?”

Gareth looked down at me - yeah, he’s
that tall - and nodded.

Flabbergasted, I glared. “That’s it?
One Dark Cousin on the loose, you run away and hide?”

“
The Cousins today are pale
remnants of what they once were.” He gave me a frosty look. “This
one is an Ancient. He kills with a swipe of his hand.”

Cousins of today? Did he mean Gia
Sabato? Gia, a pale remnant? I thought nothing could be more
powerful than her, until I saw the killer’s speed through his
victim’s eyes and the damage he did them.

First Royal and the
councilors, now Gareth, speaking freely of Dark Cousins as
I
listened! Good
grief.

“
He’s older than Jacob and
Gia?” I asked.

“
In terms of age, Teo-Papek
is young, and she is a child compared to those who inhabited
Nagka,” Gareth spat.

But Dark Cousins were not invincible.
Phillip Vance’s squad killed several of them. If humans could do
that, surely powerful Gelpha could overcome this monster. I splayed
my hands on my hips. “A gang of puny human men killed a few Dark
Cousins. Back there,” I cocked my thumb over my shoulder, “Royal
said you defeated the Dark Cousins once. Surely a bunch of you can
take down one guy. Why are you so afraid?”

“
I will not ask our people
to risk their lives.”

I never took Gelpha as stupid, but
apparently they were. “If you don’t, what’s to stop him leaving
here and waltzing through Bel-Athaer, tearing your people
apart?”

A low murmur rose from the crowd
behind us.

“
All are at risk while he
is at large,” Royal said. He stared determinedly at Gareth. “Long
ago we slew Dark Cousins. We were warned to always be on our guard.
Yet when they threaten us again, we cower in this room?”

A silence of seconds while Gareth
appeared to consider, then reluctantly, “What do you
suggest?”

“
Eight teams, two on each
floor and two the cellars. They split and go in opposite
directions. When we trap him between us, all teams converge and
engage him.”

“
Taking men from here would
weaken the High Lord’s protection.”

“
Look at them, Gareth.”
Royal flicked one hand at the room. “Packed in as they are, they
cannot battle this monster. They are a wall around Lawrence,
nothing more. Call back some who evacuated, to replace our finest
warriors.”

If I knew Royal, if the damn Council
denied him, he’d track that Cousin down alone. And I would do my
best to stop him. If I could not, I’d go with him.

Gareth turned from us. He stood with
hands curled into fists while everything around us seemed to stop
and wait expectantly; the Gelpha, time itself. I held my
breath.

His hands relaxed. “I will consult the
High Lord and his Council.”

He made his way through the crowd,
which was difficult, with a lot of shuffling and people treading on
others, until I couldn’t see him anymore.

I thought my fingernails would draw
blood from my palms before he returned; it seemed to take an age.
The demons faced the door, faced Royal and me, a frieze of
multicolored hair, glittering eyes in pale metallic skin, clothing
of glowing colors. My breath came shallowly through my pursed
lips.