Demon 04 - Deja Demon (21 page)

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Authors: Julie Kenner

BOOK: Demon 04 - Deja Demon
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“Yeah?” I cleverly retorted, yanking the hem of her skirt to knock her off balance even as I kicked out and got her in the gut. “Abaddon?” I demanded, pressing her back against the wall between the sink and toilet areas. I held the wand at her eye, certain she knew that this time I wouldn’t miss. “I stopped him from becoming super-dude once before. I think I can handle it again.”
“
Carmela
,” she hissed, which really wasn’t the response I’d been expecting. “Come, Carmela,” she repeated even as the window behind us shattered in an explosion of glass. I ducked, yanking down the demon even as I turned my face from the flying shards, silently cursing what I saw out of the corner of my eye—a zombie, standing rough and ready amid the broken glass.
“For crying out loud!” I shouted without thinking. “Enough with the freaking zombies!” Which probably wasn’t the most professional of responses, but it summarized my feelings quite accurately.
At the same time, the demon shifted, trying to get out from under my hold. I wasn’t having any of
that
, though, and about the same time the zombie made the final leap across the room to grab at the back of my shirt and pull me off her master, I thrust the mascara wand deep into the demon’s eye.
The maneuver had the side benefit of stopping the nowmasterless zombie in her tracks, who stood there, her viselike hand still clutching my shoulder, completely befuddled. She’d clearly been told to assist the master, and now that the master was gone, she was confused about what exactly she was supposed to do.
To be honest, she wasn’t the only one.
I was held fast by a rather oozy-looking, scraggle-haired zombie who would undoubtedly fight me if I tried to get free, then shift into self-preservation mode when I defended myself. And we were both trapped beside the dead body of a beautiful Emeralds customer. Not to mention, my husband was probably beginning to wonder how long a simple trip to the ladies’ room could take.
I had no good options, and so I twisted around and down, surprising the zombie, whose fingers were suddenly grasping only air. As for me, I’d danced a good two feet away, glass crunching under my shoes. And, miracle of miracles, the zombie wasn’t coming after me.
Okay, this was good. Maybe I could make this work after all.
First thing, I headed toward the main door, prepared to flip the lock. Only there wasn’t a lock.
Great.
In lieu of a lock, I shoved one of the plush chairs in front of the door. So far I’d been extremely lucky that no one had tried to join our little ladies’ lounge party. That luck couldn’t hold out indefinitely, though, and I wanted to be prepared for the inevitable party crasher. I wasn’t sure what I would say if someone tried to get in, but I told myself I thought well on my feet and something brilliant would come.
Next, I grabbed a bottle of hand lotion from the toiletry basket. I took a couple of paper towels and used those as a barrier between my hands and the lady in red’s ankles. Then I pulled her into the handicapped stall and rubbed her all over with a paper towel soaked in hand lotion that, I hoped, would sufficiently mess up any fingerprints I’d left on the body.
I locked the door from the inside, crawled under, and headed back to my zombie. With any luck, I could get Father Ben to come retrieve the body, maybe pretending she was a drunken parishioner desperately in need of confession. It was the best I could come up with, and I was once again struck by the fact that my job was so much easier when I had a disposal team at my beck and call.
The zombie was another problem all together, and unless I was prepared to enter into an all-out fight, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do but shove the chair aside, exit the ladies’ room, and leave her standing there alone. The trouble with
that
, of course, was that sooner or later, someone would eventually come into the powder room, take one look at Carmela, realize she wasn’t a woman but a monster, and try to do something about that, and Emeralds would have a full-blown horror movie on its hands.
Granted, most people aren’t inclined to leap to the monster conclusion, but even if they assumed she was merely ill and tried to help her, the moment they tried to move her or—God forbid—do any sort of medical test, the zombie would interpret the actions as hostile and transform from a clueless, confused blob to a preternaturally strong killing machine whose only purpose was to ensure its survival. A great plot for an action movie, maybe; not so terrific for the people of San Diablo.
And all the responsibility would be on my shoulders.
Which, of course, meant that I had to make the first move. I had to get the zombie back out through the hole in the window, find something with which to hack her up (or use the knife in my purse, however impractical), hide the pieces, and get back before my husband started to really worry.
No problem, right?
I mentally inventoried the contents of my purse, cursing myself for not carrying a scythe. Or, for that matter, a really sharp razor.
Still, you work with what you got. Isn’t that the sign of a true professional? I took my knife in one hand and my house keys in the other. Then I leaped across the room, surprising the zombie even as I prayed my aim was good.
It was; that’s the benefit of a stationary target. I thrust my keys into her right eye and the knife into the left, a maneuver which had two outcomes: One, my foe was now blind. Two, my foe was now really,
really
ticked off.
And because Carmela wasn’t the least bit worried about attracting unwanted attention, she flailed around the room, crashing into lamps and overturning chairs and generally making a huge nuisance as she tried to find me. The point of
that
, of course, would be so that she could rip my horrible little head off.
Hopefully, that plan wouldn’t be coming to fruition.
At the same time, I couldn’t simply keep my distance and let her destroy the room. I needed to catch her, drag her out the hole in the window and off to someplace remotely private, and then start whacking off limbs.
The scenario put a serious damper on my evening out with Stuart, but, again, that’s what happens when you have a demanding job.
“Okay, Carmela,” I said. “It’s time for you and me to rumble.”
At the sound of my voice, she turned and attacked, racing blindly to where I stood. I grabbed an outstretched arm and the waistband of her pants and flung her toward the window. Because she was light, she practically soared through the air, then smashed down on the sill, a few jagged pieces of glass slicing through soft flesh and trapping her there as she kicked and struggled. Thank goodness she couldn’t scream.
“Off we go,” I said, hurrying to grab her by the ankles. My plan was to flip her over and out, then climb out behind her. I was
not
expecting someone to help me by grabbing her hands and tugging from the other side. I let out a short yelp, realized David must have returned to town early, and exhaled loudly.
When I peered out, though, I saw the man from my street. The one who’d shoved the carnival flyer at me.
“You?”
“Me. I am Dukkar,” he added, with a friendly little nod. Then he gave the zombie a firm tug, and it dropped to the ground. As it began to push its way up, Dukkar picked up a machete and whacked off the right arm. He stepped hard on the chest and repeated the process with the left.
Right then and there, I decided Dukkar was my new best friend. He, at least, was smart enough to travel with a serious cutting blade.
“You go,” he said, looking up at my undoubtedly flabbergasted face. “You go back to your husband.”
No, no, no. Not without some answers. Like who he was, how he knew about zombies, and what the hell he was doing outside the ladies’ room of Emeralds.
“You go now,” he said, ignoring all of the questions I fired off to him. “I clean up mess. The zombie. The demon.”
“You know about the demon, too?”
“I know you must be careful. Only you can wield the sword. You must be protected.”
“Whoa,” I said, my voice sharp and my interest very much piqued. “Answers.
Now.
Like how you know about the sword. And more important, how you know about me.”
His eyes widened and I had the distinct impression that he believed he’d said too much.
Too bad.
“I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers,” I countered as he hacked off a leg.
Naturally, that’s when the door to the ladies’ room slammed open. Or, rather, tried to slam open. The force of the door moved the chair about four inches, then stopped. I held my breath, then felt every drop of blood drain from my body as I heard the voice calling, “Kate? Kate, what the hell are you doing?”
I turned and saw myself reflected in the mirror, along with Stuart’s face peeking in through the crack. And if I could see him, he could surely see me.
Damn.
I climbed back inside. “Long story,” I said.
“Open the door.”
“Um.” I glanced toward the window and realized he couldn’t have seen any of the zombie or the carnival man. “Right. Sure.”
I shoved the chair aside, then hustled out, tugging the door firmly shut behind me.
“Dear God, Kate. What the hell were you doing in there? That old lady came barreling out with a completely freaked expression on her face, and I kept expecting you to follow, but—”
“Counseling,” I said, which was the first and only thing that popped into my mind. I took his hand and started leading him back toward our table, wanting to get as far away from the ladies’ room and
that
particular explosion as possible.
“Excuse me?”
“There was this girl in there. Troubled teen. Pregnant. That’s why she shoved the chair in front of the door. Afraid her parents would walk in,” I said, spinning lies with the same ease with which I could spin a dagger. “But I think she freaked Mrs. Gunderson out a little.”
“The old lady?”
“Right. She left. I stayed behind to help.”
We’d reached our table now, and I realized with a start how long I’d been gone. The duck appetizer was ice cold, with Stuart having not taken a single bite, waiting instead for me to join him. “Oh, Stuart. I’m so sorry. And now we’ll miss the movie.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” he said. “And the movie is totally in your hands. We can stay and have dinner, or we can leave and go to the theater.”
“Leave,” I said, clinging to the offer like a life raft. Because at the moment, I wanted more than anything to get out of that restaurant. I checked my watch. “You pay the bill and I’ll go get the car from the valet.”
He blinked, a bit startled by my snap decision, then nodded. I hurried outside, afraid that any minute the maitre d’ would hurry after me, overflowing with questions about the broken glass, the body in the handicapped stall, and what sort of nonsense crazy Mrs. Gunderson was spouting.
Fortunately, I managed to avoid all that, and the valet trotted off with our keys and ticket at the same time Stuart stepped outside to join me. He eyed me quizzically, and though my instinct was to say, “What?” I kept my mouth shut. At the moment, probably best not to hear exactly what he had in mind.
Turned out, though, that Stuart didn’t need my opening to get the conversation going. “You’re a good woman, Kate,” he said.
“I . . . thank you,” I said, surprised.
“Is the girl better?”
I thought of the dead demon and the dismembered zombie, both of whom were hopefully being dealt with by my new best friend. “Yeah. I think she’s going to be just fine.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “But Kate? You don’t have to save the world.”
“I don’t?” I asked, wishing desperately that he were right.
“Sometimes it’s okay to back off,” he said, as I moved closer to my husband, now looking at me with soft, generous eyes. “You do too much. The house. The kids. Committees. PTA. And I bet you do stuff I don’t even know about.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
He was looking pointedly at me, as if he expected me to fill in the blanks with everything else I had on my plate. I didn’t. Instead, I managed a weak, noncommittal smile.
After a second he sighed. “The point is, taking up lay counseling in restaurant bathrooms is probably too big a commitment.”
“I know. Truly. And I’m so sorry. I messed up our whole evening, and I know dinner would have been fabulous.”
There was an uncomfortable beat during which I was afraid he’d suggest we return to the restaurant and wait for the movie to come out on DVD. Then it passed, and all he said was, “A dinner of popcorn and hot dogs will be fabulous, too, as long as I’ve got you next to me.”
“Always,” I said, as love and guilt and a dozen other confused emotions jostled for position inside me.
“And I hope this isn’t a movie you care too much about,” he added with fire in his eyes.
“What do you mean?” I asked, as our car turned into the circular driveway.
He smiled enigmatically, then pulled me close and planted a long, sensual, knee-numbing kiss on me, right there for all the world to see. A kiss so hard and deep that I didn’t need to ask the question again, because I knew exactly what he meant. If I wanted to actually watch the movie, I’d have to wait for the DVD. Tonight was all about my husband, a dark theater, and the very back row.

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