Read The Demon You Know Online
Authors: Christine Warren
Pretty much. If you stayed outside too long, you ’d get a hell of a bad burn, but no, spontaneous combustion ain't in the cards for you.
Abby passed the room she'd exited a few minutes ago—at least, she was pretty sure it was the same room—and kept walking. She still couldn't see more than five feet ahead of her, but the hall seemed pretty straight, and since she'd only seen doors in the one side of it, she guessed she was walking
along the outside wall of whatever building she was in. The lack of windows pretty much guaranteed that it was either a nuclear fallout shelter or a basement. Judging by the lack of canned goods and army surplus blankets, she'd put her money on the basement theory. And where there were basements, eventually there would be stairs.
"Ah-ha!" she breathed. There they were, at the end of the hallway, just three feet ahead. She'd been right. She should have turned left. "Ground floor. Coats, shoes, ladies' lingerie.”
Placing one hand on the cold surface of a chipped metal handrail, Abby began to climb.
Wait! Did you hear that?
"Hear what?”
Would you keep your voice down! I thought I heard something.
Abby paused for a moment, then resumed climbing.
I didn't hear anything.
I could have sworn I heard something.
Well, if you heard it, I should have, too, and I didn't hear anything.
You must be tone-deaf as well as night-blind. Listen. No, wait! Sniff!
Sniff? What do I look like, a bloodhound?
Don't tell me you can't smell that.
Smell what?
Abby inhaled deeply and had to struggle against the urge to cough as her lungs flooded with probably toxic mold spores.
All I smell is a bad case of black lung waiting to happen.
I smell sulfur.
She froze.
What?
I smell sulfur,
Lou repeated,
and it's getting stronger the higher we climb. There's a fiend
up there. At least one. I think we should go back the way we came.
Abby tried to steady her heartbeat. For one horrible instant, her mind had gone blank with panic,
but panic wasn't going to get her out of there, let alone get her out of there with all her limbs and her soul
intact.
There's no point in going back the way we came. It's a dead end. If we go back there, we ’re trapped.
There was another door in the room. Maybe it leads to a rear exit.
We're in a basement, Lou. In order to get out, we're going to have to go up. Personally, I'd
rather not take the chance of getting lost in what looked like a maze of identical rooms.
And I'd rather not take the chance of getting my head ripped from my body and used as a
Hacky Sack.
Abby swallowed hard and tried to grin.
What are you worried about? It's my head.
Yeah, well, I'm using it at the moment.
She grew serious and leaned her weight on the handrail.
This is the way out, Lou. Either wecan try it and see where it leads, or we can go back and sit in that little room until someone comesto strap us to the sacrificial altar. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to wind up dead, I'drather meet the situation head-on, not wait for it to come get me like some kind of boogeyman.
Trust me. The boogeyman is a pussycat compared to Uzkiel.
Dead is dead.
Yeah, but there's dead fast and painless and then there's dead at the hands of the cruelest
fiend in the Underworld.
It still equals not breathing, right?
Lou fell silent, and Abby unclenched her fingers from the handrail. She might be all bluster and logic with the fiend inside her head, but she was all adrenaline and terror everywhere else.
You realize I can hear what you ’re thinking, right?
Keep your mind to yourself,
she groused, and resumed the climb.
She counted twenty steps before she stopped. Maybe she was becoming hypersensitive, but she had begun to pick up the soft sound of the soles of her sneakers each time they landed on a stair tread. The steps might be concrete rather than creaky wood, but that didn't matter if whatever waited at the top could hear the pitter-patter of her little feet. Keeping one hand on the railing, she raised her right foot to
the next step and leaned down.
What are you doing now?
My brother always said there was a reason Native American raiding parties didn't wear
Nikes.
She untied the laces and removed the sneaker, shivering when her foot touched the cold surfaceof the floor. Even through her thick athletic socks, the concrete chilled her. She carefully repeated theprocess on the other foot, then tied the laces of the two shoes together and dangled them over hershoulder.
Now she just had to hope Noah's advice was enough to save her bacon.
Her brother was ten years older than her, so she barely remembered him before he'd left home toenlist. By the time she'd really gotten to know him, he was already a soldier, and some of her fondestmemories were of times when he'd played "guerrilla fighter" with her, much to their mother's dismay.
Do whatever you can to make yourself quiet,
he'd said, helping Abby pick her way through
the woods behind their house and seeing how far she could go without scaring the rabbits.
Take off anything that jingles, like belts or jewelry, and go barefoot if you can. Feet make less noise than shoes. But once you've got your gear quiet, remember not to try too hard. No one makes more noise than a fellow who's trying to make none.
All at once, she wished desperately that Noah were here with her. If her brother had been nearby, he would have taken care of her. She wouldn't have been half so frightened if she'd had Noah to lean on.
Or at least one of his really big guns.
Bullets don't do much good against the armies of darkness. Didn't anyone ever teach you
that?
Maybe not, but even in this neighborhood, if I fired an AK-47, you could bet someone
would call the cops. It never hurts to bring in reinforcements.
Cops don't do much good with demons, either.
Gee, thanks, Little Miss Mary Sunshine. And you called me a downer.
She continued to climb, wondering how long this stairway could possibly last. It seemed as if
she'd climbed at least a flight, but she hadn't even reached a landing, let alone the next level.
Oh, by the way,
Lou said, his tone suspiciously casual,
there's one thing I should probablymention.
Abby scowled.
What thing?
That spell I know... the one Uzkiel is after...
The one that will enable the destruction of all that's good and decent in the universe?
Yeah, that one.
What about it?
Well, I can't teach it to you, 'cause that would kill me, which seems really stupidconsidering all the trouble I've gone to not to die. But I've been thinking....
That frightens me.
I've been thinking that if you knew the first part of it, like the first word, you ’d be able totell if it was coming.
Abby froze.
Why would I need to know if it's coming, Lou? If you recite the spell, you and I
will both die, right? So why would it matter if I had five more seconds to prepare?
Because. If we've gotta go, wouldn't you want to take Uzkiel with us?
That wasn't a question she wanted to answer. She wanted too much to live to care about who
she took with her when she died.
The minute she thought that, she knew it was a lie. Yes, she wanted to stay alive, but she wanted Rule to stay alive, too. And Noah and Samantha and Tess and Rafe and Missy, and even Graham, even if she'd never met him, because Missy loved him and because her latest baby should grow up knowing its daddy.
Abby closed her eyes and gritted her teeth against the impulse to cry. Now was not the time to
break down.
We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, okay?
Sure. Whatever.
Heart heavy in her chest, Abby resumed her climb. She had to keep going. Like she'd said, their
chances of escape might be slim, but that didn't mean she could stop trying.
Abby?
Yeah?
It's "Spirits." If you follow along and say it with me, Uzkiel won't stand a chance.
And, she knew, neither would they.
She felt her throat knot up.
Yeah. Okay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Rule gritted his teeth and tried not to notice that the alley behind the club had already begun to fall
into shadow. Dusk was less than an hour away, and he still hadn't managed to locate any sign of Abby's trail. He and Tobias and two seasoned Lupine trackers had combed the alley and the entire block around the club three times but had turned up nothing.
"If she hadn't used a car, maybe," one of the trackers had said, looking apologetic. "Or if she had a mechanical problem. But the car was clean. No leaks, no burnt rubber. A Lupine would know we could track those, so she made sure there weren't any. I'm sorry.”
Rule didn't want an apology; he wanted blood. Not the tracker's, maybe, but Carly's definitely, and that of anyone else who stood between him and Abby.
"There's still a chance Rafe will be able to get those duty logs," Tobias murmured, coming to
stand beside him in the diminishing light. "He should be back any minute. And every Other officer on the
force is out looking for Carly's car. The minute they find it, we'll know. I swear.”
Rule just nodded. He couldn't bring himself to speak. He'd lost the ability hours ago. Now he