Demon Ex Machina: Tales of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom (30 page)

“We can’t live like this every day, Kate,” Stuart said. “And the demon is dead.”

“There are always more demons,” I countered. Suddenly tired, I sank down on the couch next to him. Everyone important to me was in that room. Stuart, Eddie, Allie, Timmy. Then Laura and Mindy and Cutter. The only one missing was Eric, and the fact that he wasn’t in the room—was no longer welcome in the room—had thrown off my equilibrium.

“Please,” I said, all of my exhaustion flowing into my voice. “Just for tonight. Don’t argue. Eat pizza. Play stupid board games. Just let me have this one night of knowing you’re together and that you’re safe.”

“And what about us worrying about you?” Stuart said.

I drew in a breath and shot Eddie a quick glance. “They’re not going to kill me.”

“I’m still not understanding why that is,” Laura said, an admission that Allie immediately seconded.

“I don’t understand how it works, either,” I admitted. “All I know is what Father Corletti told me, and considering Eric confirmed that they don’t want to kill me, we have to assume it’s true.”

“That you’re tied to Eric. Or at least to his soul,” Stuart said, speaking through near-clenched teeth. I didn’t blame him. Hard enough to know your wife still had ties to another man, and worse still if that man was turning out to be a demon.

I nodded, trying to keep my thoughts and demeanor in professional debrief mode. “Right. When I brought him back from the dead—”

“What?”
That from Cutter, but I chose to ignore it, figuring Laura could add in that detail later.

“—the magic worked a connection. If I die, he dies.”

“He-Daddy? Or he-Odayne?”

I met my daughter’s eyes, and had to smile when I saw that she was standing straight and tall, using the same tricks I did to remain objective. Or, at least, as objective as possible. “Honestly, I don’t know. The connection’s with Eric, so it makes sense that he’s the one who would die.”

“But that must kill Odayne, too,” Laura said. “Otherwise, I don’t think they’d much care. I mean, they’re just interested in getting him a body, right? Him and Lilith. A matching set.”

I had to agree. “Right. They’re being careful with me, because if Eric dies, then it’s San Francisco all over again,” I said, referring to Eric’s death back when Allie was nine. “Eric and Odayne would be back in the ether, and they’d have to wait for another chance to pop into a body. And that could take years, even decades.”

“The ether?” Cutter asked, and this time I took pity on him.

“It’s where most demons are. Think of it as another dimension. They’re only a problem to us if they manage to become corporeal. You know, get into a body.”

“A dead body,” he said, this time looking to Laura, who nodded confirmation.

Mindy lifted her hand, as if she was in class. “So you’re safe right now because if they kill you, then Eric dies and Odayne goes poof with him?”

I nodded. “Looks that way.”

Stuart moved to my side and took my hand. “They may not be able to kill you, but they can hurt you,” he said.

I managed a watery smile, knowing all too well that the hurt he referred to wasn’t physical. At least not to me. “Yeah. I know.” I swallowed thickly, afraid the tears would start up again if I looked at Allie or Mindy or Laura. The tears had already flowed once, when we were still at Cutter’s waiting for the disposal team that Father Corletti had ordered up from Los Angeles. They’d made great time, actually, and I think the sight of the team, in their matching scrub shirts and with their white cargo van, so efficient and controlled, had driven the truth home to Cutter. The shocked look on his face had vanished, replaced with a ferocity I knew only too well. He might not be trained at hunting demons, but he was one of the best fighters I knew, and if anything happened while I was gone, I felt better knowing he was there to fight.

I pushed up off the couch. “Enough,” I said. “It’s time.” I couldn’t put it off any longer. There were too many things about which I had to confront Eric. The dead demon. The missing page. “Lock the doors. Don’t let anybody in. Be safe.”

“Mom,” Allie said, but this time without the eye roll. “We know.”

“Call me if Father Corletti calls back,” I said. He’d promised to go straight to the archives and look for the book with the missing page. With any luck, we’d have a binding spell for Odayne by morning.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m off.” I headed toward the garage, Stuart’s
I love you
floating after me.

I paid attention as I backed the van out of the driveway, carefully watching to make sure no one managed to sneak inside the garage as the door was open. I saw nothing, and thought that was, at least, something. Now, alone in the car, I could finally let myself go. I didn’t cry—I didn’t have the time for that sort of luxury—but it felt like the tears were flooding my insides. Fear and worry and utter horror that my dangerous world had intruded so far into the real world.

Except it was all real, wasn’t it? Demons and monsters and things that wanted to hurt me and my family and my friends. All real and all horrible, and what had happened today at Cutter’s only underscored how impotent I really was. Even with all my training, all my knowledge, all of my secret peepholes into the messy netherworld. None of it mattered. Not really. Not when the demons were going to use the people I care about to get to me.

I wanted to say that I was a strong enough person that I could withstand their dirty tactics, but I wasn’t sure that I was. They’d gotten to me this time, and the one person I needed to pull me back to center wasn’t going to be able to help me. I knew that—was absolutely certain I’d lost him—but damned if I wasn’t going to try to get him back. Because if I could save him, then maybe I could save all of us.

“Hang on, Eric,” I said, not realizing how tightly I was holding the steering wheel. “Dammit,
fight
.”

I called his apartment from the road and got no answer. That was fine. If he was screening my calls, I’d confront him when I saw him. And if he really was gone, well, that was fine, too. I’d break in and search his apartment. With any luck, I’d find the page from the book. With even more luck, the part of him that was still Eric had left it there for me to find.

My fear was that I wouldn’t find it and that Father Corletti wouldn’t find it.

My fear was that the page was gone for good, the binding spell lost to the sands of time.

And without that spell, then there was no way to bind Odayne. No way, at least, that I knew of. Though I had to admit that my knowledge of binding demons was limited. I was much more of a kill them and be done with it kind of girl.

And, of course, binding Odayne wasn’t my only problem. The truth was that Lilith was as big a problem as Odayne, if not bigger. Odayne was simply more personal because he’d moved into my husband. But Lilith was not the kind of demon I needed gunning for me and my family, and if I did manage to stop Odayne, I was going to have to deal with her wrath, and that would really, really, really not be pretty.

Too bad there wasn’t some way to bind
her
. Some sort of two-for-one special would be good, actually. Something. Anything.

But nothing brilliant jumped to mind, most probably because this really wasn’t my turf. For that matter, until this whole mess with Eric, the only bound demon I’d ever really had to deal with was Andramelech, trapped inside Solomon’s Stone. Then again, I corrected myself, that had to do with Eric, too. He’d trapped the demon, after all, unknowingly sacrificing himself in the process, his soul getting sucked out of his body even at the instant the demon was sucked into the stone.

Wait
.

I played that back in my head, my eyes narrowing as I thought about what I knew about Solomon’s Stone. It could be used to trap a demon. All the person doing the trapping had to do was jam their finger—the one wearing the ring—into the eye of the demon. But the person trapping it had to be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice—their soul sucked out and up into the ether.

What would happen if Eric wore the stone and jammed his finger into Lilith’s eye?

Suddenly excited, I dialed my house, then waited impatiently until Stuart put Eddie on the line.

“Sounds like a damn fine plan for trapping her, but it makes Eric your scapegoat. He’s gonna get stuck back in the dead zone.”

“What if we combine the attack on Lilith with an unbinding ceremony? Then wouldn’t Eric stay and Odayne be sucked out?”

“Don’t know,” Eddie said. “Don’t really know.”

“Can we research it? I mean, it’s an idea, right? And it’s a way to get rid of Lilith. She’s dangerous, Eddie. And she’s never going to give up. She’s going to go after my family.”

“I’ll call Rome,” he said. “I’ll get the stone here. At the very least,” he said, “it’s a weapon. And we need all the weapons we can get.”

I hung up feeling slightly ill, because I couldn’t imagine sacrificing Eric back to the ether. If we could find an unbinding ritual, then maybe it wouldn’t come to that, but I had to confess that I was losing hope. My options seemed to be closing in around me, and my goal of saving Eric was beginning to waver against the bigger goal of keeping my children safe and alive.

I hated having the choice thrust upon me, but I also knew which way I was going to choose. For my children.

Always, always for my children.

I drew in a breath as I turned on Eric’s street and prayed that it wouldn’t come to that. I wanted to unwrap Eric from Odayne and fight side by side with him to nail Lilith and her demon lover. And all I could do was hope that Eric was still enough inside David’s body that he could help me make that wish come true.

It was perhaps a foolish wish, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. No matter how many secrets he’d kept from me, I knew that one thing was true—Eric loved me. And if there was any way—any way at all—for him to help me on this quest to save him, I knew damn well that he would find that way.

I found a spot right in front and pulled in, then raced up the stairs to his apartment. I pounded on the door, got no answer, and tried the knob. It turned easily, and I pushed the door open.

Then I froze.

The scene before me reeked of déjà vu. Nadia on Eric’s lap in the chair nearest the door. Eric’s hands on her, his eyes blind with passion.

The last time I’d walked in on such a scene, Eric had been mortified. This time, I don’t think he even noticed me as Nadia impaled herself over and over and over on him, her fingernails digging into his shoulders.

I should have looked away—I wanted to look away—but somehow I couldn’t. And because of that, the smug smile on Nadia’s face when she turned to look at me hurt that much more.

“We have company, darling,” she said, pushing Eric back as he bent forward to suckle at her naked breast. His head turned slowly, and I saw his eyes widen as he looked at me. I saw more, too. I saw recognition. I saw
Eric.

No
. That wasn’t him. That wasn’t the man I loved. It was Odayne and only Odayne, and with my chin high, I took a step inside the room. “Odayne,” I said. “He won’t let you stay, you know. Eric’s a fighter. More than that, he’s a winner.”

At that, the body I knew as Eric only laughed. “What makes you think he hasn’t already won? I am victory.
We
,” he said, in that painfully familiar voice. “We are victory.”

He rose then, his back displayed to me, and I saw the bulging, horrible scar on his back. The serpent, and it seemed to be staring right at me.

I shook my head and, unable to bear it any longer, shifted my gaze to Nadia. “I’m going to kill you,” I said, slowly and softly. “I’m going to take you out, watch you die, and then I’m going to dance on your hollow, lifeless body.”

“Temper, temper,” she said. “And don’t even think about it. We are very strong. And if we choose to, we will crush you like a bug.”

“We,” I repeated. “You and Lilith.”

“What a good little student you are. Of course. We are one now.”

“Not completely,” I said. “Not yet.”

“Do you think you can stop us? You cannot. We are strong. We are timeless. And we are ever so patient.”

“You’re evil and you’re vile, and I’m going to end you.”

“How?”

I stayed silent, and she laughed, the sound surprisingly girlish. “You enjoy your heroic fantasies, darling. The rest of us will live in reality.”

I took another step closer, my fists clenched tight at my sides.

“Ah, ah,” she said, and suddenly there was a knife in her hand, its tip pressing into the flesh over Eric’s heart. I froze. Eric, I noticed, smiled.

“You won’t kill him,” I said. “You want him too much.”

“Clever girl,” she said. “But killing him won’t send my darling away. Not this time. He’s twined enough inside the body now. Not fully. Not yet. But close.” With her free hand, she stroked his cheek, the gesture so gentle, so loving, it made me sick. “Kill the flesh and the demon will still live, here, inside this body.”

“And Eric?” I asked, hating myself for asking, and fearing that I already knew the answer.

This time, Eric’s head turned to look at me. “He will be with us, of course. He is always with us.”

“It makes the human in me happy,” Nadia—or, rather, Lilith—said. “She likes him, you see. And I think you already know that he likes her. Likes her very, very much I believe.”

I couldn’t stay. Couldn’t watch the two of them anymore, couldn’t listen to the horrible things Lilith was saying. Or that Odayne was saying through Eric’s mouth.

And as much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn’t take them on. Not and survive.

And if I didn’t survive, then neither would my family.

I turned away, my back to them before either could see the tears, and pulled the door open. I hurried out, Nadia’s laughter echoing after me.

I’d hoped to get away. To at least get into the car before the tears came, but my control wasn’t cooperating, and I stumbled down the steps with tears streaming down my face. I cried for Eric, trapped in a body he didn’t want to be in. And I cried for myself, unable to erase the picture of my beloved Eric with another woman, even though I knew it wasn’t really Eric at all.