Read The Demon You Know Online
Authors: Christine Warren
I would say take your time, but under the circumstances, I'm not going to be able torecommend that as a first-line strategy.
The only thing Abby could see when she first opened her eyes was blackness, and consideringeven that felt like an ice pick to the retinas, she could only be grateful no one had thought to leave a lightburning for her. After a moment the darkness began to take on depth and she found that if she held herhand about six inches from the end of her nose, she could just barely make out that there was somethingthere.
She discovered simultaneously that any movement beyond shallow breathing sent nausea rollingthrough her like an invading army.
"Okay, that was so not worth it," she muttered, concentrating very hard on breathing very, very
slowly through her nose.
Sheesh, this human thing is so limiting. Let me help with that.
Abby didn't know what the demon was talking about, and until the urge to vomit subsided, she didn't really care.
"I think I may have a concussion.”
She did not get the world's most sympathetic feeling from Lou.
You're going to have worse if you don't take another look around and see if there's a way to get us out of here.
"Why is that my job?”
You're the one with opposable thumbs. Actually, you ’re the one with any sort of corporeal
being of any kind at the moment. You've been appointed.
"Swell.”
It took Abby another minute or two to tamp down the nausea enough to open her eyes and take another look around. This time, she could actually see things.
It was a little like watching one of those TV shows on ghost hunting, where the people wandered through old houses with all the lights off, filming everything with night-vision cameras. She could see the walls and the doors of the small room around her, but everything had the appearance of black-and-white and grainy shades of gray.
"Is this really what the world looks like to you?" she asked. She couldn't imagine it. She'd go crazy in a world completely devoid of color.
At the moment it is. Normally, I'd see things in terms of their heat values, but your eyes
aren't equipped for thermal imaging. Primitive, really.
Abby frowned and very slowly and very carefully turned her head to glance around the entire
room. If she moved at a rate of approximately one millimeter per minute, she could keep her stomach
from turning itself inside out.
The room she lay in was large and empty, not just of other living things but of other things in general. She saw no furniture, no boxes, no clutter, nothing to indicate anyone had ever been here before her, except for the fact that the walls were standing, so clearly someone had built it. She just couldn't tell if they'd ever been back since.
She saw no windows anywhere in the room, but two doors cut dark outlines into the cinder block walls, one at either end of the room. The walls themselves appeared bare except for a few streaky patches that looked like water damage. They didn't even sport the scrawl of graffiti to break the monochrome surface, which in itself was pretty creepy. In a city like Manhattan, pristine vertical surfaces rarely lasted an hour before someone left their mark on them. Either the building owners had a security system Fort Knox would have envied, or no one came down here. Ever.
"Um, I'm not thinking I'm real happy with this situation," Abby muttered, and carefully eased
herself into a sitting position. The room swung a little around her, but everything stayed where it was supposed to. She wrinkled her nose at the musty smell.
You ’re not supposed to be. What? Did you think the werewolf bashed you upside the head because you forgot to mention you liked her new nail polish?
Lou's sarcasm brought the last few hours rushing back, in particular those few panicked seconds in the alley behind Vircolac when she'd realized something was horribly wrong.
Carly had invited her to lunch, and Abby had gone. It had never occurred to her not to trust the woman. After all, she was a member of the pack, was a friend of Samantha's. It wasn't like Abby had been taking candy from a stranger. There shouldn't have been a problem.
There wouldn't have been, she was sure, if it hadn't been for that glow in the back of Carly's
eyes.
Abby shivered. "What was that?”
I don't know if it's got a true name. Some people call it hellfire; some call it the taint. Mostly you'll hear about people like that being demon-touched. Or fiend-touched. Either way, itspells trouble. It means Carly wasn't the only one home when she lured you out of the club. If youwere Other, you would have been able to smell it. She didn't smell like she did last time.
"You're not human," Abby pointed out. "Why didn't you notice?”
Hey, what am I? Your babysitter?
"No, you're what's called my cross to bear," she grumbled, and slowly climbed to her feet.
For someone who'd been kidnapped twice in one week, Abby thought she didn't look too bad.
Her clothes were wrinkled and dirty, but nothing a load of laundry wouldn't fix. She lifted a hand to herhead and felt a sense of déjà vu when she reached the spot where Carly had hit her and didn't even find alump, just a small tender patch.
Oh, good. Nothing's broken.
"Maybe not," Abby said, quickly taking inventory of any other injuries. "But it still can't behealthy. Things are going to get all scrambled in there if this keeps up.”
She found no broken bones and no other serious injuries. She had a couple of minor scrapes andsome very major bruising, but considering the alternatives, she figured she should count herself lucky.
You can buy a lottery ticket when we get out of here, but the getting-out part is the mostpressing goal.
"It would help if I knew where 'here' was." She played a quick mental game ofeeny-meeny-miney-moe and headed for the door to her right.
Wait! You ’re not going to just
open
that, are you?
"I thought you wanted to get out of here.”
But you have no idea what might be on the other side!
Abby laid her palm against the door and raised an eyebrow. "It feels cool, so I think I can bepretty confident that the other side isn't a raging inferno. What else do you want to know?”
Who's out there? What do they want? What will they do to us if we try to escape?
"Well, the fire trick was the extent of my repertoire in these situations, so unless you plan to
imbue me with some sort of psychic ability you've been hiding from me up until now, the only way to tell what's on the other side of that door is to open it.”
You could at least try listening. You know, to hear if you can hear voices or anything.
"You mean just in case the villains are on the other side, outlining their plans for us in graphic detail?”
Or in case there's a chain saw-wielding psycho out there. You don't know. Don't you everwatch horror movies?
Abby snorted. "I hate to be the one to break it to you, Lou, but if we're in a horror movie, weare so already doomed. You're evil, I'm sleeping with the enemy, and we're trapped alone in the dark inwhat looks like a basement. By the laws of the horror genre, we should have died three scenes ago, atleast.”
Wow. Remind me next time I'm picking a human to hide in not to go with such a downer.
"Gladly.”
Figuring it wouldn't kill her to humor him, Abby pressed her ear to the surface of the door for amoment and listened. The only thing she could hear was her own pounding heartbeat. It resembled thesound check for a speed metal band.
"Nothing," she muttered. "It looks like we're going to have to go downstairs to find out if thepower going out in the middle of the thunderstorm while the escaped serial killer is on the loose hadanything to do with that ear-piercing scream we heard coming from the basement of our supposedlyempty house a few minutes ago.”
Very funny. Do you see anything around here we can use as a weapon?
"Aside from my razor-sharp wit?" Abby shook her head. "We're going to have to take comfort in
the fact that I'm not blond, stacked, or a cheerleader, and hope God doesn't hold grudges over the occasional crisis of faith." She took a deep breath and curled her fingers around the doorknob. "Here goes.”
Holding her breath, Abby said a quick prayer and eased open the door as quietly as possible. She didn't even breathe as she cautiously poked her head out of the room and glanced around.
The door opened into a hallway, equally dark as the room, stretching in either direction for at least as far as Abby could see. She scowled.
Now, see, I don't like this,
she thought to Lou, glad she was wearing sneakers, which at least minimized the sound of her footsteps on the bare concrete floor.
Who kidnaps someone, transports their unconscious body to a remote location, then goes away and leaves them all alone without
even a token henchman to stand guard and make sure they don't run away?
Carly?
No. I don't know what her damage was, but when she was in her right mind, she seemed way too smart for that. Something weird is going on here.
Abby eased her way out into the hall and headed to the right. It seemed to have worked last time. The hall was as bare as the room she'd just left, nothing but walls and floor, though out here the distinct odor of dampness was even stronger. She had the feeling that if she reached out and touched the walls, she would feel the slime of accumulated mildew. Somehow, she stifled that urge.
Lou's enhanced night vision allowed her to walk through the hall without bumping into anything, but she still moved slowly, as if she didn't quite trust the unfamiliar perspective. An occasional door broke the solid line of the wall at her right, but after glancing in the first two and seeing bare rooms nearly
identical to the one she'd just left, she ignored them and walked forward. Several minutes after she started, she reached another wall and realized she'd hit a dead end.
She swore under her breath.
Shhh!
Abby just gritted her teeth and turned around to retrace her steps.
I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
Do you know what time it is?
Why?
Because I'm getting my nails done at six and I don't want to be late. Because I asked!
Abby raised her left arm almost to her face before she could make out the tiny lines on her watch
face.
Four forty-six. Satisfied?
Not hardly. It's nearly sundown.
So?
So the way people like Carly get fiend-touched is by consorting with fiends. And archfiends like Uzkiel do their best work in the dark.
Oh, bother.
Abby hurried her steps, still trying to avoid making too much noise.
That makes me wonder, though. If fiends aren't supposed to be able to go out in the dark, how come I could? I mean, you ’re a fiend.
Yeah, but I'm only a little evil.
She could practically feel him shrug.
I'm a minor fiend. Don't
tell anyone I said this, but I come from a long line of imps. We're less in the business of evil for the sake of evil than we are in the habit of picking the wrong side in any contest of wills. If I told you how much I've lost in the football pool over the years...
So, because you ’re not bent on an existence of willful destruction and mayhem, I don't burst into flames?