Demons are Forever: Confessions of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom (30 page)

She slipped her shoes off and put one bare foot on the dash. “Oh, hell,” she said. “I don’t even really know what to say. I guess I should say thanks.”

“For what? You’re the one who saved my kid. You’re the one who brought us the information on the ring ritual. And now you’re the one letting me drive this sweet, sweet car.”

“All true,” she said. “But I’m sleeping in your house, and under the circumstances ...”

She trailed off, looking out the window at the beach and the Pacific Ocean beyond.

“Circumstances?” I asked. If I’d had antennae, they’d be perking up right about now.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just, you know.”

Actually, I didn’t. But since I also didn’t know her that well, I decided not to press. We drove another five minutes in silence, then she leaned over and turned on the stereo, cranking up some band I’d never heard despite the fact that driving Allie’s carpool keeps me on the cutting edge of the latest music. Or, if not the cutting edge, then at least the dull butter knife blade.

“Sorry about Eric,” she shouted, before the first track had finished.

“What?” I shouted back, since I wasn’t sure I’d heard her. She turned the stereo off. “Eric,” she said. “Sorry about what happened. He was ...” She paused as if looking for the words. “He was a really nice guy.” A tiny smile touched her lips. “Yeah. A really nice guy.”

A ball of something resembling lead settled in my stomach. “So, how well did you know him?”

“Oh, you know. Well enough.”

Right.

“So what’s your usual routine? You patrol every night? Go it alone?”

“There’s another Hunter in town,” I said, my mind still on Eric and the implications, both in her tone and her words.

“David Long, right?” I turned to her, my brows lifted.

She shrugged. “I asked around, and from what I hear, he’s rogue.”

“I’m aware of that,” I said.

“Can’t trust a rogue Hunter, can you? Where was he in the alley? You got a partner, he should be watching your back.”

“Something came up,” I said.

“So he hung you out to dry,” she said. “I’ve got half a mind to go have a little chat with your Mr. Long. I mean, you coulda got killed. You or Allie.”

I shivered, her words reminding me of Eddie’s theory, his belief that David had a dark plan.

“Anyway,” she continued. “Sounds to me like he’s excess baggage. I mean, for the most part I’d say you’re doing fine on your own.”

We’d reached a turnaround, and I veered off the road, downshifting as I spun the steering wheel so that we whipped around until the Lotus was facing north. Then I pulled back into traffic and looked over at Nadia. “What do you mean?”

I noticed that she’d reached up to grab the door frame as we turned, and I took a bit of secret satisfaction in knocking her even slightly off-kilter.

“You’re newly back in the game after one hell of a retirement, but I’d say you’ve done a damn fine job keeping this town in order.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

She did an elaborate neck roll, and I could hear the bones popping as she sighed. “I told you. I asked around.”

“With who? You’ve been underground for years.
Forza
doesn’t even know you exist.”

“I’ve got friends,” she said cryptically. “And as for my life, I like it this way. There’s freedom.” She turned toward me, hooking one leg under her as she readjusted herself in the black leather seat. “Come on, Crowe. Don’t you miss that? Not being tied down. Seeing the world. Experiencing life.”

Her words washed over me, bringing with them a flood of memories of my youth. Days when I could wake up on one continent but go to sleep on another.

I thought of that, and then I thought of my kids.

“Trust me,” I said. “I’m experiencing life.”

“So you wouldn’t trade it? Wouldn’t go back?”

“Not in a million,” I said. “Although ...”

I leaned forward and gave the dashboard of the Lotus a familiar pat. “If I could figure out a way to get a car seat in a Lotus, then I’d get me one of these in a heartbeat.”

Eighteen

“So where’s Nadia?”
Allie asked Saturday morning, as she tugged open the refrigerator and inspected the contents. “I was hoping she’d let me practice with her knife again this morning.”

“Honestly,” I said, “I don’t have a clue.” I remembered what she’d said about chewing David out, but quickly dismissed that. The girl was ballsy, but that much? Surely not.

Still ...

I looked at the phone. Maybe I should call him. Just to check. A quick phone call would hardly break my own rule, and—

“
Mo
-ther.
Hello?”

“Sorry,” I said, abandoning my fantasy of calling David. “What?”

“I was talking to you and you were totally zoning out.”

“Not enough sleep,” I said, which was true enough. Nadia and I had gotten home about two. She’d dropped me off, then turned around and left again, promising to let herself in with the key I left under the aloe vera plant on the front porch. Apparently, though, she’d never showed.

“So?”

I shook my head, once again baffled by my daughter.

She did the major eye roll thing. “So, if Nadia isn’t here, will you train with me? We can practice knife-throwing in the backyard.”

At the moment, the backyard was the only training field we had, since David still hadn’t had time to find a loft to lease. I pushed off a wash of sadness as I realized now that maybe he never would.

“Stuart’s home,” I said. “He took advantage of the fact that Nadia isn’t here to work in his study.”

“Oh. Wow. That’s weird.”

I agreed with her that it was weird for Stuart to be home on a Saturday morning. Ever since his campaigning had kicked into high gear, he’d been spending most of his weekends at the office. To myself, I thought about what a sad state of affairs that was. Clearly, the life I loved so much had a few rough edges.

“How about Cutter’s? We can’t practice with weapons, but ...”

“Sure!” she said eagerly, and I bit back a smile, pleased to see that she could be just as enthusiastic about training with me as she had been with Nadia. Even if I had no intention of wearing leather.

“Go get dressed, then,” I said, hurrying to finish my coffee so that I could, too. I was just putting the mug in the sink when the phone rang. I snatched it up, hoping it was Nadia. She was more than capable of taking care of herself, of course, but my mom instincts kept me worrying.

“Kate,” Father Ben said, the second I answered the phone.

“It’s today. The ritual with the ring will take place at noon today. Someplace called the mensa of life.”

I glanced at the clock. That was hardly any time at all. “Any idea where that is?”

“Not a clue,” Father Ben said. “But we need to find out, fast.”

To Allie’s credit
, she handled the fact that our plans to train had been shot to hell pretty well. A bit of whining at first, but when I put her on the phone with Father Ben so that he could go over the details of the ritual with her—and when she realized that while he knew the time, he didn’t know the location—her level of enthusiasm ratcheted up a notch.

“The mensa of life,” she said, repeating back what Ben had learned about the ritual. “Wow, that’s really freaky.”

“Hopefully you two can figure it out,” I said, having already admitted that I had no idea.

“We’ve still got a few hours,” she said. “We’ll totally figure it out.”

I hoped they would, because my toes were itching to kick a little demon butt. And to do that, I needed to know where to go.

I also needed help. It was one thing to patrol on my own. It was another thing altogether to walk boldly into a ceremony where a very pissed-off demon was about to be released.

I needed Nadia, but she wasn’t answering her phone. I took a deep breath, then another, working through my options. I could go by the library and round up Eddie, but even as I considered that possibility, I knew it was the least attractive option. Eddie still had a spark, but he was getting old. And if he got hurt because I’d dragged him to a battle that he didn’t want to fight, I’d never forgive myself.

I needed Eric. Needed him and, yes, I wanted to see him again, too.

This time when I called, he answered immediately, and his calming voice soothed me and promised that everything would be all right.

“I’m coming to get you,” I said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

I told Stuart I was going shopping, then raced off in the Infiniti. The drive to David’s apartment took about fifteen minutes, and I used that time to buck myself up. My heart was still raw, of course, but I told myself I could handle it. I had to handle it if we wanted to prevent the rise of one of the chancellors of Hell.

By the time I arrived at his door, I’d wrangled some measure of control. That control shattered, though, when I saw that his door wasn’t completely closed.
Eric.
A desperate fear that he’d been taken or harmed stabbed through my soul and I immediately tensed, my fighting instincts quashing my emotions and forcing me to stay calm and methodical.

I eased my purse off my arm and left it by the door, keeping only the pump bottle of holy water and my stiletto. I used the tip of the knife to push the door open just enough for me to squeeze through. And then I entered, walking on the balls of my feet so that—hopefully—I made no sound to telegraph my arrival.

They never saw me coming.

I, however, was drawn up short, caught by the horror displayed right in front of me—Nadia, perched on the arm of David’s couch, her breasts practically falling out of her top and her face so close to his that her hair brushed his shoulders.

David sat on the couch beside her, one hand on her shoulder. From this angle, I couldn’t see his face, but I saw hers. More, I saw the possessive, hungry smile.

I heard a little gasp, and realized it came from me.

Immediately, David turned, his eyes going wide as he saw me. He was on his feet in an instant, roughly pushing Nadia back. “Kate. It’s not—”

I held up a hand, determined not to cry. “Leave it,” I said. “We have bigger issues to deal with right now.”

We were in the car racing
toward the cathedral when my cell phone rang. I pressed the button to answer in speaker-phone mode, and my daughter’s voice blared out. “We got it! We totally got it!”

“Where?” I demanded, my eyes going automatically to the clock. Eleven-thirty. Maybe we could still make it.

“The stone table,” she said. “That’s got to be it.”

“It does?” I asked, slamming on the brakes and making a U-turn to head us back to the mountains and the National Forest. “Why?”

“Everybody says they did sacrifices at the table, right? Huge rituals about life and death. And
mensa
means table in Latin.”

“She’s right,” Nadia said. “Good work, kid.”

It wasn’t a perfect fit, but I couldn’t think of anything else around San Diablo that fit the bill. Somehow, I didn’t think that table of life referred to a really nice restaurant.

The stone table might be one of San Diablo’s famous landmarks, but it’s not a commonly visited one. That was good for us. Unfortunately, the reason it was so infrequently visited was that it was near impossible to access. The table had been discovered by some university botanists who’d forged their way through the dense growth of the forest while cataloguing plant life. Now, there was a narrow footpath, but it was still overgrown and rugged. Driving the entire distance was impossible, and running there wasn’t much easier.

As we battled our way through the underbrush, I decided that maybe Nadia did have the right idea about wearing leather. Whereas I was being assaulted by branches and stickers, she moved confidently through the brush, her tight leather pants forming a perfect barrier.

Bitch.

I frowned. The thought might be accurate, but at the moment I really needed to keep my head in the game. Whatever she was doing on the couch with my husband— former husband—could wait.

“Two minutes,” I said. “Where are we?”

“We have to be getting close,” Nadia said. “It’s been at least a hundred yards since we passed one of the park’s markers.”

The U.S. Parks & Wildlife Service had taken the trouble to mark various walking paths through the forest. We were following a series of arrows that led to the table. And if the department had accurately labeled the walk, we had to be getting close.

“One minute,” I said, my voice tense. “This damn well better be a long ceremony, or we aren’t going to make it.”

“We’ll make it,” David said, his voice as tense as his body.

We pressed on, moving as fast as we could, until finally we could see a clearing. The brush thinned and we picked up speed. Still a few seconds until noon. Still time to-

The deep bellow split the sky, along with a violent cracking. And as I burst into the clearing, I saw a burly man standing atop the now-splintered stone table, two other demons standing guard at each end. A knife protruded from the risen demon’s heart, and I felt a momentary wash of sadness for the innocent human who’d been sacrificed so that the demon might be freed.

“Andramelech!” Nadia yelled and rushed forward, her face a mask of rage.

I looked at David, but there was no time for words. The battle had begun. And if we wanted to keep Andramelech out of this world, the time to cut him down was now.

“You!” the demon howled to Nadia, quelling any uncertainty I might have had that this creature was, in fact, the risen Andramelech. “You who have stalked me, sought to imprison me. You,” he said, “must die.”

She wasn’t the least bit fazed by his words. Instead, she leaped onto the table, her sword at the ready, and thrust it at his eye. He slammed it away, slicing his forearm in the process, but not even hesitating. I swallowed, realizing just how powerful this demon must be. Newly made demons are usually a bit slower, more unsure. And their strength hasn’t reached its maximum potential. If this was Andramelech in low gear, then we really were in trouble.