Keeley Thomson (Book 4): Demon Trap (20 page)

Bal was watching Rebekah as she did some paperwork, trying to live up to her new job with the blood bank. That left Elis. He was... Focusing she tried to find him, expecting that he'd be in his room, but the line stretched further away, across the town in a direction that was a bit different than she would have expected. It led to Eve's place. The trailer park where she lived with her mother.

"Right. Balthias, come with me please. Try not to let yourself be seen. Don't act on anything unless I ask you to." She stood, noticing that he didn't hesitate, or look away at all. He either wanted this to happen, which was possible, or he didn't have any more clue what Eve was getting up to than she did. If it was using Elis as a slave herself, or torturing him, that would be fine, but what were the odds of that? The girl was too nice for that kind of thing really. No, Keeley had to guess this would be both major and something more personal than that.

"Follow along." She raised a single finger, which had the Lesser Demon moving toward her, even as she used a tiny bit of stored energy, smoothing the flow into magical potential and tearing a tiny rip in reality itself, so that she could move onto the inroads. Then she walked carefully, the Lesser Demon looking, not like himself, a great horned beast man, but like a silver wisp of energy. It was an interesting thing to behold, but made sense. After all, he didn't really exist.

She wanted to simply look in, just in case Eve was having sex with the Manthori, but the scene wasn't that at all, but rather the pale man scrubbing the stained floor of the tiny trailer's kitchenette. He was working hard, and only the barest hint of red foam told her that there was blood involved in the picture.

Right. Well, that made some sense.

"Bal, go and get Darla please. Tell her that it involves Eve, and her mother. Be polite. If she doesn't want to come back with you, that's fine. No need to push the issue." Those two didn't always get along, having some hard feelings between them in the past. Keeley had to be careful or Bal would use her orders as an excuse to be rude or try and push Darla around, which wouldn't work for long. Probably about the span of time it took for her sister to work out how much she'd have to pay Keeley to make destroying him right.

He was useful though, and not a bad guy, once you got to know him a bit.

It didn't take long at all though, since Darla walked toward her, a device in her right hand, approaching on the line. She spoke, but of course, they weren't really talking. It was more along the lines of telepathy.

"Keels, are you under attack again already? Is Eve-" Her gaze, looking silver and robotic at the moment, followed the silent finger of her sister to look at the picture in front of them.

Elis scrubbed and then put down bleach, while Eve stood in the corner, near the crumpled body of her mother. The form wasn't huge at all, but the fact that she'd been stabbed, a lot, was pretty clear. Keeley had never met her personally, but the woman wasn't old, being only about forty or so, and she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, instead of real mom clothes.

She hadn't been much of a mother though, so it sort of made sense. The big problem, Keeley decided, was that they'd never get rid of the blood that was seeping into the carpet as they watched. Elis really should have made sure they wrapped the body up instantly to stop that. He might not have been allowed though.

Keeley shook her head a bit.

"OK, I'll get rid of the body and get this place properly taken care of. You can see to Eve?" Something occurred to her, even as Darla tilted her head. "I need some weapons. Magical ones and firearms. I'll trade the work here for that. They need to be heavy duty though, and work well, since I might actually have to use them in a fight." She needed to be more specific, but there wasn't time. Darla stopped for a few seconds and then sighed. It wasn't a real thing, since there was no air, or the need for it on the inroads, but it still looked about right.

"I can do that. Try not to leave any traces, and don't just burn this place down. That will look suspicious."

She was right, of course.

They didn't bother hiding what they did next, all of them moving into the tiny space, which made Eve jump and cry out.

"Hell! Crap, guys, I... killed her. My mom. What do I do? I mean, I meant to do it, but I didn't think I would, really. I just got so angry and..." There was a lack of coherent words for a few seconds as Darla moved in and hugged her friend.

"Don't worry, Keeley will fix this. You'll have to go and live with Roy and Karen, but that should be fine. I hear you've both been getting along well? We can say that your mother decided to run off. I'll write a note. You have a sample of her handwriting?" They had to dig for a bit to find that, the woman not having been overly prone to putting her thoughts on paper at all, being more interested in drugs.

The letter itself was scribbled on the back of an envelope perfectly, fitting what the woman herself would have really done, including the scrape marks that indicated she'd had to scribble to get the pen to work. It was a good skill to have, Keeley decided, forgery, since she just might need to do something similar to that herself some day.

"Balthias, we need to get rid of the body. Can you toss it into an active volcano?" She knew he could, but she didn't have to make it an order. After all, he
liked
Eve. They were practically dating and everything.

That just left helping Elis scrub and removing the carpet, then getting a replacement from another state, stealing a used bit of very similar and equally stained, if not with blood, short pile carpet from an abandoned trailer of the same make. The layout inside was the same too, so they didn't have to re-cut the thing. It reeked, but that wasn't a horrible thing, it just meant that it wouldn't be examined as carefully if anyone ever bothered to look. The floor under it was wood though, so she had to treat that first. Bleach was used, but it might not be enough.

If they were on CSI, instead of in a real city, that was. In real life no one checked that closely for blood the vast majority of time. Not when the person missing was a washed up drug addict that had left a note saying that Eve was old enough to take care of herself now. Odds were that no one would even question it at all, or even
try
to look for her.

That, it proved out, was the simple truth. Darla got in touch with the Chief at work and he showed up not fifteen minutes later, to help his daughter get her bags and whatever else she wanted from the place. He didn't comment on the squalor his kid had been living in, even as he wrinkled his nose a bit. Keeley understood that at least. It was his neglect that had allowed it all to happen after all. He got Eve's mom pregnant and then left them alone for years, barely checking on his girl at all. The whole time she was being raped over and over too.

It might not be his fault, but he knew enough not to call attention to himself at the moment either.

The man spoke, his words a bit dry, and less than pleased.

"I should have expected this from her. The amazing thing is that it hasn't happened sooner." It was true enough, but he watched Elis carefully for a few moments and after blinking suddenly put it all together.

He was savvy enough to know a Vampire when he saw one that was as obvious as the man in front of him, with his blood red eyes, ultra white skin and multiple rows of fanglike teeth that made his mouth protrude in slightly aggressive fashion. Or, at any rate, he knew that the guy wasn't just a passer-by.

Roy also knew not to
mention
it, and tried to ignore the fact that anyone odd was there at all. It was a bit obvious to Keeley, but the rest of them seemed to think nothing much of it at all. That probably wasn't true in Darla's case. The fact was though that the Police Chief wasn't a fool, and the idea that there was a Vampire there had to be triggering alarm bells inside his mind.

There wasn't a lot to find though and even if he knew to look, he wouldn't do it. If his men tried, that would be stopped. The only way for anyone to really dig into the idea that Eve's mother had been murdered would be if someone set it up from outside the local situation. That was remotely possible, given all of the recent attacks, but, as she'd noticed earlier, so far those had all been pointed directly at her.

The idea might be to actually strike at Darla or Finias though, of course. Or, in the last case, maybe to free Fram? Killing her would certainly do that, if it was the goal.

The words used after that were mainly small talk. A bunch of phrases used to keep them all in synch, more or less, while Eve went to get her clothing and what things she wanted to take with her. It wasn't that she couldn't come back, at least for a while, but the feeling was that she didn't want to bother with it. After a time the place would be taken over by someone else, once the lot rent stopped coming in. Any of them could have afforded that kind of thing, except Eve and possibly Elis, though he could certainly have gotten the place protected, if he wanted to. The girl didn't ask for that though. Probably because the place was a hellhole of bad memories as far as she was concerned.

It was a relief when they all got to walk outside, the crisp air smelling clean and fresh after the faint sent of urine and drugs inside the tiny place. That was mainly the new carpet, but it hadn't been all that tidy before they did that. No one said anything for a while, so finally Keeley did, smiling.

"We'll see you at church for midnight mass?" It was a good way to remind Roy what socially acceptable little girls they all were, as well as make certain that Eve remembered that she had friends that would be there. They all attended the same place after all.

"Wouldn't miss it." He seemed to be genuine in his words, but his gaze went to his daughter, who seemed stressed. A lot more than would be expected if an unreliable mother had just taken off.

Luckily that was Darla's job to take care of.

Keeley needed to check on some other things, and even though the timing wasn't perfect, she had to ask about one of them, since Roy would be in the know.

"What happened with Bryce Miller and those others?" It would be normal enough for her to be interested, wouldn't it? Roy was with the police after all, and she'd been there, intimately involved in fact.

The man, who was dressed in a very nice suit, for a police Chief, looked at her, his eyes shining just a tiny bit. That was excitement, not pride though.

"Full confessions all the way around. It's a slam dunk case. I can't believe that he was going to do that to Gladys though. It's..." There was a pause and the man shook his head, looking to clear it of a dozen contradictory things it seemed. "I've seen a lot of things in my life, but the honest truth is that when most people get angry and lash out, they don't turn into monsters. They might seem like it, and even want to hide it later, but this guy and his friends... I've never seen a collection of evil people so close together. Given how many deaths and disappearances we've had here lately..."

Keeley nodded, since that only made sense to her, but Eve frowned.

"I don't get it, has there been a lot more than normal?"

It was Darla who answered, her face set and grimacing a bit.

"Most of them weren't regular humans, but yes, many have vanished in the last months. Roberto died at the hands of some Durgs who were pretending to be students at Wilson High.
They've
gone missing, and so has their school Principal. There are many worried parents in this city at the moment."

That was only part of the people that had gone, but Keeley could see it.

Roy too, it seemed.

"I've been being pushed to crack down on crime, except for the fact that I already know most of this is more of that high weirdness that follows you around Darla. Now Bethie just leaves town? This is becoming too much. As it is we're probably going to have a dusk to dawn curfew soon. At least for those under eighteen."

That got a response from Eve at least, who made a face and let her arms cross, the backpack with her stuff in it, an old and well worn thing that was made of canvas and seemed to be army surplus from the seventies sitting by her left foot. One of the straps was broken and frayed, hanging off to the side casually.

"Why lock the kids up? You know for a fact that they aren't killing anyone. Shouldn't you lock up criminals instead?" She sounded a bit displeased really, as if he'd told her that she, personally would be grounded or something.

Which, given that she
had
just brutally murdered her mother, might not be a bad idea. Keeley didn't add that however, just watching the scene unfold on its own.

"Yes, that would be the best case, but it's a lot easier to
see
that someone is young, and the parents of our little town don't care if what is being done is fair, they're scared and just want it to seem like we're able to do something. Besides,
you
have to be home each night early anyway."

There was, thankfully, no fight on that one. Eve just shrugged and then picked up the pack, walking off toward the Chief's very nice red sports car.

"Yeah, but not
dusk
. This time of year cheerleading practice won't even be over by that time, most days. What if I need to actually use the library or something, to study? Well, you know, not
me
, but what if some of the nerdy kids have to?" They started arguing the point, with Roy taking a sensible approach to it and Eve clearly playing devil's advocate.

They didn't seem to be stopping as they drove away either.

As soon as they were out of sight, Darla spun to face Keeley, her gaze hard, but her body language not overly aggressive really. That probably meant they weren't going to be fighting physically at least.

"Why did you let her do this? I had a plan in place you know." The gesture toward the little, dingy white and mustard yellow single wide informed Keeley as to what she meant, without going over everything.

"I would have suggested she not do it this way, but I missed it. I only came to find Elis, since he'd gone missing from home. I was a little preoccupied though, what with the nearly dying and all that. Still, if she'd insisted I would have backed her on it. This was a pain to clean up, but I'd left orders with Elis to help her do things like this, so don't blame him either." The woman had let her be abused and raped so many times it was only fair for her to be in the mix of those punished for the crimes. Keeley readied herself for an argument, but Darla just stared for a bit and then seemed to relax.