Along Came a Demon (19 page)

He leaned over the table. “You were speaking on your telephone. You said you thought you knew Lawrence’s location. You would do well to tell me.”

I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I yelled, “You bastard! You murdering bastard! What makes you think you’ll get away with coming to
my
world and killing children?”

My voice created an echo in the cavernous place:
children, children
, it called back to me. The demons nearest us smiled, the white enamel of their teeth standing out in faces of pale metallic colors.

Caesar waved his hand back at his pals. “Oh, I had a little help.”

I silently vowed to hold my tongue and Caesar said nothing more. Minutes ticked by. The demons were uncannily motionless now. I wished they would shuffle, or whisper, or move their heads, or anything rather than watch me with hungry, chaotic eyes. Was I still on Earth, or in Royal’s world, his reality? How long had I been here? Panic fluttered in my chest.

I heard movement behind me and a hand fell on my shoulder. I flinched as I looked up. “Hello, Tiff,” Royal said.

Relief so intense, so
wonderful,
settled over me, making me lightheaded.
Thank you, God. I will never take your name in vain again!
Royal was here. He had tracked me down. “Royal,” I croaked.

“
Hush now,” he crooned. “It’ll be okay.”

He went behind me. Both hands on my shoulders now, fingers digging in my flesh, hurting. I felt his mouth on my hair, nuzzling, and he inhaled deeply. I couldn’t see him where he stood behind the high back of the chair, but … it felt wrong.

It’s Royal
, I told myself. I looked at the demons.
He won’t let them hurt me
.
He has a plan.

He came from behind the chair, fingers trailing down my arm to the wrist, diagonally across my belly to my left thigh. His hand dipped to brush my pale pubic hair, making me gasp and clench my muscles. “Patience, my Tiffany. It will soon be over,” he said in that same eerie croon. “All over.”

My gut cramped. I looked ahead with blurring eyes, chilled by numbing disappointment as I realized how completely I let him dupe me. The man I thought I knew would howl with rage and tear my bonds to pieces with his bare hands. He would not stand next to me, his mouth on my hair, while ropes held me and a horde of demons watched. He would not touch me like that in front of an audience.

Royal had not come to save me. He was one of them.

He patted my shoulder and left me, and ambled around the table to Caesar. His arm shot out, his hand fastened on a thick hank of sun-gold hair and he hauled Caesar to his feet and to one side. “Get out of my chair.”

Caesar staggered but kept his feet. His expression was murderous, yet he stepped back and made a bow from the waist down. “Forgive me, Lord.”

Royal lounged in the chair, twirling a lock of hair in the fingers of his right hand. He wore a silken, billowing white shirt open to his navel, the long sleeves fastened at his wrists with sparkling studs. Gold and jewels sparkled in his ears and on his fingers and glinted in the copper-gold of his hair. Yesterday, I would have admired the smooth, hairless chest framed by rippling silk, the narrow hips and solid thighs beneath skintight gray hose. Now I saw only the curl to his lip, the disdain in his glowing brown eyes.

He smiled at me, revealing his pointed teeth.

So that was a lie, too.

As I watched his beautiful face, my fear melted away. There is no place for fear in a heart which seethes with rage. Rage at him for fooling me, at allowing myself to be duped. For being sucked in by his seductive ways. For being his victim. This was the man … I let him touch me and make me want more. I felt dirty.

I turned my face from him. I couldn’t look at him anymore.

“
Tiff, look at me,” Royal said.

My voice was heavy with revulsion. “Tried it. Don’t like what I see.”

A hand snaked from behind the chair. An unseen demon’s blunt-nailed fingers dug in the skin of my mouth and chin, and forced my head around. I closed my eyes.

“
Don’t make him open your eyes for you,” Royal said.

I opened them, blinking, to see his pointed smile again. The hand of the unseen demon let me go. “How are you with torture?” Royal asked in a pleasant, even voice.

I felt my face blanch as his words sank in. The water on my body had nearly dried, but perspiration replaced it now. How was I with torture? I had no idea. I imagined I would scream my head off. But did he mean torture or torment, because to my mind the demon way of persuasion, the sexual desire they could arouse with just a touch would be as bad as physical pain when done by his hands. To be used so by Royal would be the ultimate humiliation. I would rather he stuck me with a knife.

I got my answer when he casually nodded to one of the demons near the table. This one’s hair shimmered like brushed stainless-steel and pale eyes like gray ice glinted from pale pewter skin. He walked to me, pulled back his hand and cracked the side of my face hard and fast with his palm, a blow which took my breath and knocked my head to one side. My other cheek hit the wing of the chair and I yelped.

Oh,
that
kind of torture.

But I couldn’t tell Royal where Lawrence was, not willingly. I was not brave, I didn’t possess the proverbial nerves of steel, but I couldn’t condemn a little boy to death at the hands of monsters. I would not be able to live with myself.

As I tried to lift my aching head, I spotted my clothes in a pile on the floor at the end of the table. My jewelry and the Ruger were on top. They had somehow managed to get it off me without burning themselves.

If only I could free myself. The gun could as well be a hundred miles away.

I tried to stoke my anger, but a sense of helplessness and betrayal overwhelmed everything else. I looked into the depths of the room again, my gaze running over Royal, his demon clan, the huge empty space beyond them. Nobody leapt from the shadows to rescue me.

I slowly turned my head to face Royal. I looked him in his gleaming eyes. “I can’t tell you anything.”

A tiny smile ticked at his lips. “Are you sure? We could have a very pleasant relationship, you and I.”

“
In your dreams,” I whispered.

“
You would give your life for a child?”

My heart faltered, then pounded and the space around me started to fade. I thought I would throw up and pass out at the same time.
Yeah, choke to death on your own vomit and save him going to all that trouble killing you
, I thought inanely. Because I knew, whatever I told him, he would kill me anyway, as he killed those little boys. As he would kill Lawrence.

Nobody knows I’m here. No one is coming for me.
I’ll be stuck in this god-awful place till he dies. I’ll be a missing person, then a cold case. Jack. Mel. What will they think when I don’t come home, what will they feel? Will they go on their way when they figure out I’m never coming back? Will they hang on, till other people live in my house - it will give them something to look at. And Mac! Who will care for my boy, who will love the irritable little beast like I do?
Please, someone, take him to Janie, don’t put him in the pound.

A morass of want, need and regret spilled through me. But I would not send them to that little boy. I would do what I could to protect Lawrence; it was the only thing left to me. I hoped, if they hurt me, my mouth would not betray me.

I curled my hands and dug my nails in my palms till they stung. Then I met his eyes. “You won’t learn where Lawrence is from me.”

He spread his hands as if with regret. “So be it.”

He nodded at a demon with hair the color of freshly shed blood and red jade eyes, who stood with muscular arms folded. The demon joined the silver-haired guy and moved to stand on the other side of me. Each worked on untying one of my wrists, the rope rasping my skin. Soon as I realized what they were up to, I got my feet planted firmly on the floor. I tried to ignore my aching face and back. I waited till both ties were undone and they started to haul me upright.

I wasn’t going out without a fight.

I exploded from the chair, crooked my arm and elbowed the silver-haired demon in the face. My elbow caught his nose and he reeled back a step, clapping hands to face then grunting with pain as his fingers nudged his nose. I lunged at the table, plucked up the glass jug and swung to smash it in the other demon’s face. He tried to duck away, but I altered the trajectory and managed to break the glass against his ear.

I stumbled along by the table, heading for my gun, but the bloody-haired demon grabbed my arm from behind, spun me and pinned me to the edge of table. I spat in his face, and as he grinned through the saliva spotting his lips, brought up my knee. Hard.

He buckled, hands going to the offended area.

I took another step, but another demon got between me and my weapon. With a thin smile, he wagged an admonishing finger at me.

So I went for Royal. It was the least I could do. I jumped on the table and aimed a kick at his face. He caught my ankle, twisted it and flipped me over. I went down like a log, landing on my side on the hard wood; my sore face hit with a meaty thunk. Before I could move, they were on me.

Half a dozen of them hoisted me in the air; hands on my bare calves, thighs, buttocks, waist and back. My head hung down at a painful angle. A blue-haired demon walked ahead of us, pulling on my braid as if he led a recalcitrant animal. I thought my hair would tear free of my scalp.

We didn’t go far, maybe twenty feet. The demons ahead of us parted to reveal a strange looking contraption low on the ground, something like a square, demon-sized platform made of thick lengths of wood put together like latticework. I had not seen it as I sat at the table with the demons blocking my view. It stuck up from the floor on an angle, so the top hung back farther than the base. They hoisted me higher with a kind of merry cheer, then lowered me none too gently to the platform.

Badly planed wood and splinters dug in my skin. Still short of breath after hitting the table, I didn’t have strength left to struggle as they tied my wrists and ankles to the thing. It didn’t support me well, and bits of me bulged through gaps, while the weight of my body pressed other parts into the rough wood.

The entire clan gathered en masse, one body of seething hair and glittering eyes.

They parted to let Royal through. He held a whip in one hand, a nasty-looking tool made of separate lashes, each tipped with a tiny piece of clear, sharp crystal.

I moaned aloud and wrenched my wrists about, instinctively trying to protect my body with my hands.

Royal gave the whip an experimental flick, and crystal sparked. He dipped his head and smiled cruelly.

The first stroke was gently done. He put little effort in it. The crystal seemed to lick my skin, then bit in my waist and one hip like shards of glass and I yelped.

I took air in through my nose, let it seep slowly through my mouth, looked down at my body. The nicks made by the crystal were minuscule, but already they welled with blood. I imagined how I would feel after a score, fifty, a hundred, until my body became one piece of bloody meat.

One. You can do two.

He coiled the whip in, let it loose, snaked it through the air so the crystals glittered like ice and chimed like tiny bells.

The next stroke caught me across the shoulder and breasts. I cried out again, a high thin sound echoing and dying to a whimper.

Two. You can do three. Dammit, you can do it!

Blood trickled on my belly. He reined in the whip.

Chapter
Seventeen

As Royal raised his arm, a voice literally boomed through the huge room.

“
I challenge you for the life of this woman!”

Head high, he lowered the whip and turned a slow circle. His mouth twisted in an ugly smile. “Ryel, you have no place here,” he said softly, slowly.

The body of demons drew back, creating a path, and Royal walked through them. He stopped fifteen feet from … Royal?

The pain eradicated by sheer astonishment, I stared at Royal One with the whip in his hand, and Royal Two. Face to face, they were identical.
What the fuck?

Royal One held very still, his body a single, tense line. “Leave while you still may,” he growled.

Royal Two said nothing as he sternly regarded Royal One. All in black - tight jeans, button-up shirt, jacket and boots - he looked more like the Royal I was used to, but he held a sword in one hand, a long thing like a slim scimitar with a wicked curve at the end.

In an otherwise deathly silence, I could hear my heartbeat. The entire room seemed to throb with it.

“
You intrude here,” Royal One growled.

Royal Two’s voice came low and harsh. “It is no intrusion when I come to claim what is mine. I offer challenge. Accept, or slither back to your hole.”