The Devil's Due

CHAPTER 28

That had been the longest Lugh had ever been in control while I was conscious and aware, and it felt kind of strange to move my own limbs. My chest ached where Big Cheese had kicked me. I’m pretty sure he’d broken the rib, though Lugh had at least partially healed it. Nausea roiled in my stomach, most likely from stress overload. My legs were none too steady as I crossed the room to Raphael. Actually, I felt kind of like I’d just gotten back to land after six months at sea, and I swayed on my feet when I came to a stop.

“What’s the story?” I asked Raphael out of the corner of my mouth. Claudia was still busy hugging and comforting the children, and she paid no attention to us.

“I told her I was a friend of yours,” Raphael answered. “You exorcized Tommy and had me transfer from my usual host to him for this rescue. All highly illegal, of course, but I doubt she’s going to complain when our actions saved the kids.”

“And what about Tommy?”

His voice lowered to a near whisper. “I told her I’d transfer back into my original host and send Tommy back to her, though I warned her his psyche was not in good shape.”

I still had plenty more questions—like what was Raphael really going to do—but the Tasered Crony was starting to regain control of his limbs. Raphael gave me a little push toward Claudia.

“Why don’t you all go upstairs,” he suggested. “Get the children out of here.” He indicated the bloody battlefield with a sweep of his arm. “They’re in for enough nightmares already.”

“Yes, of course,” Claudia agreed. She scooped up the three-year-old, and took the other girl’s hand to lead her up the stairs. But it turned out both girls wanted to be carried, and neither Claudia nor I had the heart to deny them.

So I ended up carrying a still-sniffling, clinging five-year-old girl up the stairs, leaving Raphael alone in the basement. My conscience wasn’t entirely happy about it. I knew Raphael was going to kill Crony. The demon deserved it, but it wasn’t the demon who would die, it was his host. That really sucked for his host, who might have been totally unwilling to participate in this plot. But we couldn’t let him live, couldn’t have him testifying to his version of what had happened down in that basement. Hell, I wasn’t sure what the legal ramifications of this night’s work were going to be. I didn’t think I’d like them.

“Where’s your husband?” I asked Claudia when we emerged from the basement. Yes, it took me that long to wonder why Devon Brewster III hadn’t come running at the sounds of the argument or at the gunshot.

“He went to bed,” she answered. I must have made some kind of face, because she hurried to clarify. “He hasn’t slept in two days.” A faint, exhausted smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Neither have I. But I talked him into taking a sleeping pill tonight, so I expect it would take more than a little shouting and the sound of a gunshot in the basement to wake him.”

“You should take one, too,” I said as I followed her through the living room and up another flight of stairs. The children’s sniffles were calming, though both still clung with arms and legs.

“I will,” she assured me. “After I’ve put the girls to bed.”

I followed Claudia into what was perhaps the girliest bedroom I’d ever seen. Everything was pink, and it looked like a lace factory had exploded inside. I suppose to a three- and a five-year-old girl, the place looked like the absolute height of femininity and romance. Myself, I felt immediately like a barbarian invading the royal palace.

I was very happy to have played the hero and saved the children, but I was now more than ready to go home. Claudia set her charge down on a ruffly, cloudpink bed, then pried the other girl out of my arms.

“I’ll take things from here,” she said with a smile. Yup, my poker face was working as well as ever.

“We’ll talk again tomorrow,” Claudia continued, her eyes misting with tears. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you, how I can ever—”

I held up my hand to cut her off, even more uncomfortable now. “Please. I just did what I thought was right. No thanks are necessary.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but then one of the girls pulled on the leg of her tracksuit, demanding attention.

“We’ll talk again tomorrow,” Claudia repeated, then sat on the bed and gathered both children into her arms again.

Not if I could help it, though I wasn’t sure it was possible. Surely we’d have to get our stories straight! A frown puckered my face.

“Um, what about the bodies in the basement?” I asked.

“Your friend said he’d take care of everything,” she responded without even looking at me, her attention riveted on the girls.

I had no idea how Raphael planned to “take care of everything,” but it was clear Claudia wasn’t inclined to discuss it just now, so I backed out of the room and closed the door softly behind me.

I made my way downstairs just as Raphael emerged from the basement. He held up his car keys.

“I’m going to pull my car into the garage. We’ll have to see if we can fit all the bodies into the trunk.”

I looked at him skeptically. These were all demon hosts we were talking about, which meant none of them was exactly tiny. “I don’t know if we could fit two of them in the trunk, much less three.”

Raphael shrugged. “We’ll take two cars if we have to. I’ve got a key to Claudia’s Mercedes.” His gaze darted to something behind me, and his eyes widened.

Because I still didn’t trust Raphael, I had the feeling I was falling for the oldest trick in the book when I looked over my shoulder. But I wasn’t. Devon Brewster III was descending the stairs, fully clothed, his hair showing no signs of having encountered a pillow, his eyes too clear to be those of a man under the influence of a sleeping pill.

“Mr. Brewster?” I asked. “Claudia said you were asleep.” And if you weren’t asleep, why are you coming downstairs instead of hugging your children and helping your wife put them to bed?

Brewster smiled, but it wasn’t a nice expression. “My wife is mistaken. In many things.”

Belatedly, I saw the Taser he’d been concealing by holding it slightly behind his leg.

“Get down!” Raphael bellowed, and for once, I followed orders without hesitation. I was about halfway between Brewster and Raphael, and from my vantage point on the floor, I had a decent view of the showdown.

Raphael drew his gun as Brewster raised the Taser. Raphael was just a hair faster, and for the second time tonight, the sound of a gunshot split the air. The bullet slammed into Brewster’s forehead. There was a squirt of blood as a small, circular hole appeared right in the center of his forehead. He grunted in pain, but didn’t immediately crumple to the floor as he should have.

Brewster blinked a couple of times. From upstairs, I could hear the renewed screams of the children, and I hoped like hell that Claudia was staying up there with them, protecting them. Surely she wasn’t the kind of heroic fool who would come running toward the sound of gunshots!

I was still waiting for Brewster to collapse, but he just stood there blinking. Raphael, still pointing the gun in Brewster’s direction, reached my side and hauled me to my feet. Neither one of us took our eyes off of Brewster, and we both gasped when the edges of that hole in his forehead pulled toward each other and then knitted together.

“Oh shit,” Raphael said, which I thought was the understatement of the century.

Raphael got off another perfect shot, but this time Brewster didn’t let a little thing like a bullet wound to his head distract him. The Taser popped, the probes digging squarely into Raphael’s chest. Raphael went down with a choked cry of pain.

Brewster and I faced each other. He ejected the cartridge from his Taser, but didn’t seem to have another one handy. Not that that would be much of an inconvenience for him. I’m sure he Tasered Raphael because he wanted to preserve Tommy’s precious body. He had no reason to do the same for me. He also didn’t need a weapon to break me in half, so I couldn’t take any comfort from the fact that his Taser was empty.

Pain stabbed through my eye. Lugh, trying to take control again.

Wait, I ordered him. Imagine, me giving orders to the demon king!

But—

Wait, I repeated. I’ll let you in if I need you, but I’d rather keep you hidden if I don’t.

He could have tried the same argument Raphael had used on me in the car, could have tried to convince me that if I waited until I needed him, it would be too late. But that argument didn’t fly, and he must have known it. If I could voluntarily let him in right this moment, then I could voluntarily let him in when I determined once and for all that I needed him.

Brewster took a couple of steps down the stairs. I could still hear the children crying, and I realized that whatever was going to happen, I had to get Brewster out of this house before Claudia couldn’t stand it anymore and had to investigate. Or before Brewster realized he could use those kids as hostages against me, just as his “friends” had.

So, I did what many would agree was the most sensible thing at a time like this: I ran like hell.

Demons have superhuman strength and agility, and they’re able to control their host’s bodies well enough to run with great efficiency. However, the human body has its limits, and an experienced human runner can actually outrun a demon in an untrained body, for a time, at least.

I wasn’t a trained runner, but I was naturally athletic and had long legs, so I was out the front door with a bit of a lead. My lead improved when Brewster made an ill-advised attempt to tackle me. I dodged and pulled farther ahead when he belly-flopped onto the driveway.

Raphael had the car keys, so if I was going to escape Brewster, I was going to have to do it on foot. I briefly wondered if I was better off trying to attract attention by going for the main road and flagging down passing cars, or avoiding attention by running through darkened backyards.

I didn’t know what Brewster’s story was, didn’t know how he’d come to be possessed, didn’t know why he’d been able to heal a bullet wound to the head as if it were no more than a minor inconvenience, but I didn’t want to risk innocent passersby being hurt by him in a fight, so I chose the darkened backyard option.

Being past the Main Line, we weren’t in the city proper, but we weren’t exactly in the country, either, so there was plenty of light to see by, even in the semi-wooded backyards of the wealthy.

I sprinted across a beautifully maintained lawn that could have been plucked straight from the fairway of a golf course, and had just enough light to see and jump over the croquet wicket that jutted from the grass. Behind me, I could hear Brewster’s heavy footfalls as he relentlessly pursued.

The coast ahead of me looked pretty clear for a stretch, so I diverted a little of my attention to grabbing and arming my Taser. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a spare cartridge on me, but the Taser could still work like a stun gun if this came down to hand-to-hand combat. I didn’t really want Brewster to get close enough to me for me to use the Taser, but though I could outrun him in the short term, his demon would give him more stamina than I had on my own.

Let me in, Lugh urged.

Not yet, I said again. I trusted you enough to leave you in control before. Now it’s your turn to trust me.

I didn’t think he liked it much, but Lugh didn’t try to take over by force.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Brewster was catching up. I guess I was starting to slow down, though I was still running as fast as I could. My breath burned in my throat and chest, and my heart slammed against my rib cage.

The next yard I tried to cross had motion-sensing lights that came blazing to life as soon as I set foot on the lawn. Worse, there were lights on in the house, which meant someone might look out to see what had activated the sensor in the yard. I was still worried about innocent bystanders—or overprotective landowners, as the case might be—so instead of continuing my sprint across the lawn, I veered toward the patch of overgrown woods that edged the property.

The lights of the backyard had killed my night vision, so the moment I plunged into the trees, I felt like I’d gone blind. Which really sucked, because I wasn’t kidding when I said the woods were overgrown. I hadn’t taken two steps before my feet tangled with some particularly aggressive underbrush and I crashed to the ground.

Somehow, I managed to keep hold of the Taser, and without even thinking about it, I rolled violently to my right, just avoiding Brewster’s next pounce. I hoped his night vision was as impaired as my own. If he couldn’t see the Taser, which I was doing my best to conceal, then I might be able to take him by surprise.

I came to a painful stop against a fallen tree, its bark soft and crumbly with rot. I was probably acquiring all kinds of hitchhiking nightlife.

I squinted in the darkness. My eyes were beginning to adjust, and I could see Brewster’s silhouette as he pushed to his feet, about five yards away from me.

I sucked in as much air as I could, and for the first time, I could hear something other than the pounding of my heart and the thud of pursuing footsteps: barking dogs. Loud barking dogs. As in, barking dogs that had probably just been let out of Overprotective Landowner’s house and were now on their way to deal with the trespassers.

Brewster didn’t seem to care about the dogs. He started coming toward me, slowly, stalking, ready for me to leap to my feet and make another run for it.

If he jumps you, he could break your neck before you even have a chance to pull the trigger on the Taser, Lugh said, his voice urgent in my head.

I knew he was right. But if I moved with demon quickness to avoid the strike, then we could end up sending Brewster’s demon back to Hell—okay, the Demon Realm, but right now Hell sounded like a better option—with the knowledge that I wasn’t alone in my body. Unacceptable.

The obvious conclusion was that I couldn’t let him jump on me. I could try to dodge, but if this ended up taking too much longer, those dogs would make an appearance, and I didn’t think I needed any more complications.

So I did the one thing Brewster couldn’t possibly expect from a human woman who’d been fleeing from him in apparent terror. I attacked.

With a battle cry to give me courage, I launched myself at him, Taser held before me, finger squeezing the trigger even before I made contact. He almost reacted in time, almost managed to grab hold of my arm before I shoved a fistful of Taser in his belly. But you know what they say about horseshoes and hand grenades. .

Brewster collapsed into a pile of what I hoped was poison ivy—not that I could see diddly squat—just as two large, snarling masses of fur and teeth burst through the bushes.

I was out of breath and overloaded with adrenaline, and my Taser was running low on battery power. Plus, I wasn’t in the mood to be mauled. So with only the briefest of efforts, I let Lugh take control.

Don’t you dare hurt those dogs, I warned. They’re just doing their job.

But apparently, their job involved a whole lot of intimidation and not much else. Instead of leaping for me and going for my jugular, they merely came to a stop and stood there between me and their home, teeth bared, neck fur ruffled, very intimidating snarls rising from their throats.

Moving slowly, keeping a wary eye on the dogs, which now that my eyes had finally adjusted all the way to the darkness I could see were a pair of German shepherds, Lugh bent to pick up Brewster’s limp body. The dogs snarled a little louder, but still refrained from attacking. In the background, I could hear a man’s voice calling to them, asking them what they’d found. I laughed to myself. Did the guy expect them to answer?

Backing away carefully and quietly, Lugh carried Brewster deeper into the weed-choked patch of woods, and the dogs didn’t follow.