Demon Demon Burning Bright, Whisperings book four (9 page)

“A lone, helpless female. . . ,” she mocked,
her gaze washing over me as she let a disdainful breath sigh
out.

Only one thing to do when faced with
super-beings who can beat you to a pulp and not break a sweat. Get
pissy.

I answered her sneer for sneer. “You’re
making a grave mistake if you believe I’m helpless. It’d take more
than you to bring me down.”

“Indeed?” She snuffed through her nose.

“Yeah, indeed.” I smiled unpleasantly and
moved my hand to my hip, which brought it nearer my Ruger. “Don’t
believe me? Get your bony ass up out that chair and - ”

Gareth’s voice barked out. “Miss Banks!
Imeld!” He moved to stand between us. “This is unseemly.”

I swung on him. “You people sure have short
memories. Who found Lawrence and sent him to you? Who shot Dagka
Shan? And - ”

A hiss of distress interrupted me as a
councilor flinched.

“Yeah, Dagka Shan, one of those Dark Cousins
you don’t like talking about,” I continued relentlessly. I’m damn
sure I prevented Shan wreaking murder and mayhem on the Gelpha, and
I may well have saved the High Lord’s life. My voice dropped to an
undertone. “You owe me.”

“Miss Banks, it is not that we refuse to
help you, we cannot tell you what we do not know,” Gareth said.

“Yes, regretfully we cannot point you in
Ryel’s direction,” a demon with long, waving lemon hair said
testily. He flapped his hand at the door. “Gareth will take you
back to the Way.”

I squinched my eyes. “The
what
?”

“The Way. The road which links our plane and
yours.”

“The ways between worlds, huh? How
original,” I murmured.

I expected more from the Council. I thought
they would probe me about Royal’s disappearance, how long he’d been
gone, why I felt the need to come to Bel-Athaer to find him. It
seemed to me they more than took my announcement in stride. They
were altogether too calm, indifferent. They didn’t ask the right
questions. They barely asked anything.

I could almost smell the stench of deceit.
As I stood before the councilors, I imagined it as a fog filming my
limbs.

Gareth hurried forward, lips scrunched
sourly, hand outstretched as if to take my arm, but I wasn’t
through yet. My eyes flicked to Lawrence.
I saved your life,
twice!

The councilors watched me so did not see
Lawrence make eye contact and shake his head as if he desperately
tried to convey a message with his narrowed, glowing bronze eyes.
My senses quivered, a butterfly flit in my stomach. I was ready to
push the councilors, shove my questions down their throats till
they vomited out answers, until Lawrence gave me that warning
look.

My questions died before they became
words.

Lawrence stood and stepped down from his
chair. “I’m sorry we can’t help you, Miss Banks.” The councilors
stood as he walked the open space between their chairs. “I’ll walk
with you.”

When I last saw Lawrence he exuded
confidence and not a little superciliousness. Now his shoulders
were tense, he kept his gaze on the floor. I turned as he came to
my side and walked with him from the Council Chamber and along the
hall, the councilors trailing us.

“Lawrence,” I began in an undertone, but
without looking at me he again shook his head.

Frustrated, I pressed my lips together.
Lawrence was warning me to keep my mouth shut and he wanted me
gone, fast.

He let me walk on the inside of the
staircase, for which I was grateful. Through the tall windows, I
saw the sea of people on the grass.

The demons in the hall below watched our
descent. They made obeisance as Lawrence moved among them, the men
bowing from the waist, the women dropping to deep curtsies.
Lawrence dipped his chin at this one and that.

Outside the door, he held his hand to me, so
I gripped it. “It’s always nice to see you, Miss Banks,” he said.
“I hope Ryel’s home when you get back.”

I intended to protest my expulsion from
Bel-Athaer before I knew anything worth knowing, until I felt his
hand in mine. I disguised my surprise with a tepid smile. “I hope
so.”

Gareth came to my side. “I will walk with
you to the bus stop.”

I smiled at Lawrence again. He didn’t return
it, but focused on my eyes before turning away.

The demons who waited outside scrambled
upright. Lawrence lifted his hand to them, then crossed the path to
the grass. Gareth and I left the High House and started along the
lane. A few people headed our way and they moved aside to let us
through. Gareth faced ahead as he strode along, as if he did not
see them.

I felt as if the heat would press me to the
ground. To hell with it; I would frizzle up before much longer. I
shrugged my coat off and folded it over my arm.

I looked back to see Lawrence walking among
his people. He stopped to speak to one, moved on to another. He was
tall for his age, but small beside the adult Gelpha.

“You did not have to hide your weapon.”

I threw Gareth a sideways look. “You knew I
carry?”

“You always do.”

Huh.

He linked his hands behind his back. “I
truly am sorry we cannot help you. Wallace is right, although we
can sense one or a few of our brethren in an area populated by
humans, locating Royal among the multitude of our own people here
is impossible. But I will spread word I am looking for him and hope
he hears of it, or someone has seen him.”

“Thank you.”

He acknowledged my thanks with a nod.

“Does the name Cicero ring a bell?” I asked,
hoping to take him by surprise.

Apart from his eyes darkening, he controlled
his expression. “Indeed it does. Cicero is one of our Seers.”

Some names in Bel-Athaer obviously have a
capital letter, like High House, and the Lady. If I weren’t
mistaken, so did Seer. “
Our?
”

“He serves the High House.”

Gorge Ligori - Clarion’s resident demon
before Lawrence made him return to Bel-Athaer - mentioned a Seer,
way back when Royal and I found Lawrence at Gorge’s apartment. It
was another of those things Gorge and Royal didn’t want to talk
about; in fact, it sent Gorge into an agitated snit.

“How do
you
know of Cicero?”

I looked up at the pale sky. A few clouds
scudded along, but still no sun. One must be up there to produce
this heat. “He left a text on Royal’s cell phone.”

Silence ticked by, then he asked, “Indeed?
What did he say?”

“Something about Royal being late for an
appointment.”

Gareth strode along, hands clasped behind
his back, gaze dead ahead. “Curious.”

“Where do I find him?”

He smiled thinly. “Cicero? You do not, Miss
Banks.”

I felt the familiar prickling heat of my
temper rising. “Why ever not?”

“As all know, he values his privacy. Ask all
you wish, no person here will divulge his location.”

“Not even you?”

“Not I, not anyone,” he said with finality
not to be budged. “But I will contact him. Perhaps Ryel is with him
as we speak.”

“Can you do it now?”

“I’m afraid we do not just pick up a
telephone and call him. I will send a message as soon as I return
to the High House.”

“If that’s the best you can do, thanks. But
you can call
me
, right?”

“You can rely on it.”

I didn’t press further. After saying
good-bye to Lawrence, I itched to be alone. “Gareth, you can head
back, I know the way. I promise I
will
get on the bus.”

“I am sure you will, but you do not know
where to get off.”

He had a point. The street could be anywhere
in the city. I didn’t know the name of the stop.

Then how
. . . ? “How come I came out
in the middle of town? When I came here with Royal we landed
somewhere near the High House.”

“Gates are stable but the Ways can
fluctuate.”

“Gates? Ways?”

“I thought Ryel would have told you - Ways
are passages between your world and mine. A Gate is the door to a
Way.”

Had I stepped into a science fiction
movie?

Or maybe not. Einstein and Nathan Rosen
published a paper which expanded on Einstein’s theory of
relativity, saying
that
implicit in the general relativity formalism is a curved-space
structure which can join two distant regions of space-time through
a tunnel-like curved spatial shortcut. They called it the
Einstein-
Rosen Bridge. Science fiction writers call it a
worm hole, which travelers use to move from one area of space to
another, though they avoid some which are unstable because they
could end up anywhere.

“These gates - are there many?”

“To our knowledge, upward of fifty.”

Wow. “I bet most are in cities.” Royal told
me most Gelpha gravitate to highly populated areas in my world.

He gave me an appraising look. “Indeed, most
are.”

My thoughts tripped along, reminding me of
another journey. “Okay, so
Gates
can’t move but Ways can? Is
that how we got to Russia when we used the same door in Clarion,
but went directly to Kazan instead of Bel-Athaer?” We went to where
Gia, Daven and Royal intended.

“The Cousins can manipulate the Ways between
so they shift to different Gates.”

So that’s what he meant when he said the
Ways can fluctuate. Gia and Daven moved a Way so it led to a Gate
in Kazan, Russia. Given the Gelpha prohibition against revealing
anything about the Cousins, Gareth surprised me. I didn’t bring it
to his attention.

He increased his stride, his heels kicking
up dust. “Come, the bus is already here,” he said, indicating the
small blue vehicle with his hand.

“One more question. Why did you let me into
Bel-Athaer?”

“We can no longer keep you out.”

“Why not? What changed?”

He gave me an enigmatic smile, faced forward
and walked faster.

There are people who present an argument as
to why they won’t or can’t answer you, and there are those who
clamp their lips together and refuse to say another word. Demons
fall under the latter category.

I hefted a sigh and trailed after him, deep
in thought. Something did not add up, a whole lot of
somethings.

Gareth waited at the idling bus. Taking my
time, I continued to stroll.

“I told the driver where you disembark,” he
said when I reached him.

He gallantly offered his hand to help me
into the bus. I ignored it.

The bus labored along the country road. I sat
at the back, six seats between me and three Gelpha at the front.
Covered by the high back of the seat in front of me, I opened my
hand on the small piece of paper Lawrence palmed me, folded small
to conceal in a boy’s hand.

I smoothed it out on my knee, a piece of
eight by ten ruled paper, the facing side covered in large,
handwritten Gelpha symbols. One edge was ragged - did Lawrence rip
it from a book?

Why?

I turned it over and read the writing on the
other side: “
I beg you, kill the Burning Man before he kills
me
.
PS: Find Gorge.

I read it twice more before the message
penetrated. I tried to find some other meaning in the words, but
couldn’t. Lawrence feared for his life, so reached out to me. Not
his advisors. Me. And he didn’t mince words; he was specific about
how I should deal with this Burning Man. No
please help me
.
He got right to the point.
Kill
.

And what about Gorge? I felt bad that I
never asked after Gorge the two times I visited the High House -
three times now. I assumed he wasn’t with Lawrence because he
played no part in the boy’s official duties. Did he return to
Earth? He was less than enthusiastic about living in Bel-Athaer;
Gorge would rather have stayed in my world. Was he missing, like
Royal?

The Burning Man
. Why did that prick
my mind?

My fingers contracted, but I stopped short
of crushing the note.

I closed my eyes to summon recollection of
the evening I returned home to find Jack and Mel glued to the
window in the backdoor. They saw what Jack described as a fire, and
I decided was a firecracker.
“It looked like a man,
burning,”
Mel said.

I found nothing out there. No spent
firework, no charred grass, no smell of gunpowder. My roommates saw
something
in the backyard; they’re not delusional, but they
are drama queens who delight in anything remotely exciting and have
been known to let their imagination get the better of them. I let
it go.

Now I wondered, was there a connection?

God damn you, Tiff, of course there’s a
connection.
There always is.

This sheet of paper . . . was it the only
paper available when Lawrence wanted to print a quick note, or did
he use this piece for a reason? With another kid, I’d say the
former, but Lawrence was smart and I
did
see that Gelpha
script somewhere. If only I could recall where.

I folded the note and put it in my
pocket.

I gazed at the countryside idling past, a
warm breeze through the windows played with wisps of loose hair on
my forehead. I had no idea what to do. Lawrence couldn’t trust his
Council or he would go to them for help, not secretly pass me a
note. I knew one demon who could help me, and he wasn’t here.

CHAPTER SIX

I walked in the hall to find Mac waiting near
the door and raised voices in the kitchen.

“You don’t own the TV!”

“I didn’t say I did. I merely want to watch
something more sophisticated than malnourished girls draped in
ridiculous costumes.”

“You like Cirque du Soleil for the
acrobatics? You don’t fool me,” Mel huffed. “You want to ogle
virile young men in leotard.”

“Hey, Mac.” I turned off the alarm, leaned
on the wall, slid down till I sat on the floor and scratched behind
Mac’s ears. “Can you see and hear them? Or do you feel their
thunder and lightning?”