Blood Lite II: Overbite (32 page)

“I picked up that,” he said, pointing to a small, jewel-covered box inside. “The sign says it’s bronze with semiprecious stones. It’s wrong. The stones aren’t valuable, but the box itself is gold. I considered pocketing it but—” He shrugged. “Not while we’re invited guests.”

“And not when it’s an object of historical significance.”

He said, “Hmm,” which meant that was open to interpretation and he’d interpret it for himself when he came back for the amulet.

I bent to read the plaque. As I did, I saw the pattern on the box he’d picked up—symbols that told me this was not, as the museum claimed, a fifteenth-century noblewoman’s keepsake box. It
was
meant for keeping something, though.

“You opened it?” I said.

“Not intentionally. It seemed sealed, but when I was examining the jewels, the lid popped open. I closed it.”

“Not fast enough.” I straightened. “It’s a soul box for demons. Used by witches and sorcerers powerful enough to bind a—”

Shoes squeaked outside the door.

“I’ve found you,” a breathless voice said.

Nelson strode across the room, gaze fixed on me as if he didn’t even see Karl.

“Uh, sorry, we were just looking for the ladies’ room. I need to, uh, freshen up.” I flashed a smile. “Get looking beautiful.”

“Why?” Nelson stopped in front of me. “You are already the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on.”

“Umm, thanks . . .”

Behind me, Karl growled.

Nelson dropped to one knee. “I am yours, mistress. I live to serve you. To worship you.”

“Guess that demon soul isn’t in the monkey anymore,” Karl murmured.

“You don’t think I’m worthy of worship?” I said. “Maybe—”

Nelson started licking my shins.

Karl turned to me. “You were saying?”

“Never mind. You’re going to need to disable him. Just don’t—”

Karl grabbed Demon Nelson by the back of his jacket and started swinging him toward the nearest display.

“—do that,” I said. “Don’t break any displays. And don’t break him.”

Karl paused, as if considering whether he’d heard me.

Demon Nelson squirmed and shrieked. “Defiler! You are not fit to speak to my master’s daughter. You will pay for your—”

Karl dropped him headfirst onto the floor. Then he pinned him under one Italian loafer. I walked closer, staying out of licking distance.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Nybbas.”

He went on, giving his demon equivalent of rank and serial number. He was a demon under Lucifer. He’d gone AWOL a few thousand years ago and had himself a rollicking unauthorized shore leave in ancient Sumer, leaving death and destruction in his wake, until—as I’d seen in my vision—he’d ended up trapped in that box.

Now he was out and very, very grateful. He presumed I was the one who’d set him free. It didn’t seem wise to argue.

“I will repay your kindness, mistress,” he said, tongue extending, unsuccessfully, toward my shoes. “I will be your humble slave until my debt is paid, and then you shall tell your lord father how useful I have been, and he will take me back.”

I’ve never met my father. Never wanted to. Again, though, I didn’t set him straight.

“That’s very sweet,” I said. “I’m sure you’d make a wonderful demon slave, but it’s the twenty-first century and there are laws against that sort of thing. So how about I just let you go back to Hell, where I’m sure Lucifer will be happy—”

“Nooo!” he howled.

He leaped to his feet, catching Karl off guard, and darted out of his grasp.

“I must prove myself first,” he said as he dodged Karl. “If I please you, my master will be pleased.”

“Fine, then. Clean my condo for a few days and we’ll call it even.”

“I must show my respect properly. I will prepare a feast in your honor. A feast of chaos. The sacrifice of a hundred souls—”

“No! No sacrifices. I command—”

“Hope?” A quavering voice called from the hall. “Is that you, dear?”

Nybbas stopped and smiled. “The first offering.”

“No!” I said. Then to Karl, “Catch—”

Karl dove at Nybbas and knocked him to the floor. I raced into the hall. Outside the exhibit room, I slowed and tried to look sheepish.

“Hey, Gran,” I said. “Caught us doing a little unauthorized touring. Karl wanted to see the Amulet of Marduk. He read about it in the paper.”

“Is that what he said?”

She smiled as her gaze traveled over my dress and hair, which was in even more disarray than usual. She tried to peer into the room. When I blocked her view, she chuckled.

“Not in a state to be seen, is he?” she said.

“Uh, no, he’s just—”

“Karl is a very attractive man, Hope. Very powerful. Very . . . virile.” Her eyes shone with something that looked frighteningly close to lust and she tried, again, to peer around me. “It’s not easy to keep a man like that happy. It takes a lot of time and effort.” That sparkle again as she smiled. “But you seem to be doing a fine job of it. A fine job.”

“Er, thanks . . .”

She patted my arm. “I’ll cover for you. Just don’t be too long.”

I returned to the exhibit to find Karl kneeling on the struggling demon.

“She’s old,” the demon whined. “Let me sacrifice her, so she may do some good in her final days.”

“That woman is my grandmother,” I said as I walked over.

The demon stopped writhing. “She gave birth to his lordship’s chosen vessel?”

It took me a second to figure out that he thought Gran was my mother’s mother. Though two weeks in Nassau had given my grandmother a nice tan, no one was likely to mistake her for Indo-American. But if this demon had racial identification issues, I wasn’t setting him straight. Informing him that Gran was actually the mother of the human who’d
shared
his master’s vessel didn’t seem like a good way to prolong her life.

Nybbas lay still for a moment, then bucked, knocking Karl off. He leaped up and danced back out of Karl’s reach.

“This one would make a suitable sacrifice,” Nybbas said. “A werewolf is a base creature, unsuited to be consort to a demon princess. Your father would be pleased if I rid you of this embarrassment.”

“You want to kill me?” Karl bared his teeth. “You need to come a little closer first.”

He grabbed for the demon, who backpedaled, then feinted and dove at Karl, managing to snag his leg and send him crashing to the floor.

“Enough!” I said, jumping between them. “He’s not my consort. He’s my bodyguard.” I turned to Karl. “Stop playing with your prey and catch him. I command it.”

Karl arched an eyebrow but charged, foreseeing the demon’s feint this time, throwing him down, then pinning him on his stomach again.

Nybbas glanced over his shoulder. “I suppose, as a bodyguard, he is suitable. Sacrifices must be made, though. I will begin with my host.”

Karl hesitated and looked down at Nelson’s body beneath him. Then he backed off, just a little. I glowered. He sighed, then leaned on the demon again.

“The princess says you may not sacrifice your host,” he said. “Sadly.”

Nybbas nodded. “And the princess must be obeyed.”

“She must?” I said. “I mean, yes. She must. The princess commands that you are not to kill that host or my bodyguard. In fact, the princess asks that there are to be no sacrifices made on her behalf. She commands you to leave that body and begin your journey home.”

“As you wish.”

Nelson’s eyes glowed yellow, then faded to their normal brown as a warm wind circled us and his body collapsed, motionless, under Karl.

“He’s gone,” I said.

“Hmm.” Karl rose.

“Too easy?” I asked.

“I’d say so.”

“Damn.”

I grabbed the soul box before we left the exhibit. When I caught up with Karl, he glanced at it and nodded.

“Good idea. It’s more valuable than the amulet. Particularly given its purpose. It could fetch a small fortune on the supernatural black market.”

“Very funny. I’m borrowing it, then returning it to the exhibit just the way it was before you tampered with it. Demon soul and all.” I tried to hand it to him as we walked down the back hall. “You open it; I’ll turn on my chaos detector.”

“Open it?”

“That’s how the soul got out. Just do whatever you did before. And quickly.”

I pressed the box into his hands.

“I think this demon princess business is going to your head,” he said.

“Open it.”

He took the box and examined it, grumbling that he didn’t know how he’d done it the first time so he could hardly be expected to do it again. I concentrated on picking up tendrils of chaos.

I caught a blip of fear. I was homing in on it when a wave of chaos hit. I stumbled back. Karl caught me.

“I think—”

Darkness enveloped me. Voices chanted. A scream drowned them out. The rich coppery smell of blood filled the air. Hot droplets spattered my face. Someone intoned an incantation. The shrieks continued—the screams of a demon about to be cut from his mortal form and shoved into a very tiny box for a very long time.

I yanked free of the vision. Karl was holding me. I was still standing this time, which was always a plus.

“Did you find him?” Karl asked.

I shook my head. “Just another flashback of him being stuffed in that box. Maybe we should split up while you try to open it.”

“Or maybe I should just put it back because I can’t open it.”

“Just keep—”

A shriek cut me off. Karl spun toward the noise. A real scream, then, not a chaos playback. Some days, it was tough to tell.

We took off in the direction of the scream. Everything had gone silent now, but I could feel undercurrents of chaos throbbing through the air. Karl headed straight for them, following voices, I presumed.

We turned the corner. Down the hall, a beefy security guard had a partygoer pinned against the wall. Beside him a red-haired woman bounced, hands clutched by her mouth, doing absolutely nothing to help her date, just whimpering and gibbering.

“We were looking for the ladies’ room,” she said. “The other one was full. We didn’t know this part of the museum was off-limits.”

“The guy broke my fucking nose,” her date mumbled, trying to talk with his face mashed against the bloodied wall. “This isn’t about being outside the party zone. Call nine-one-one before this psycho kills me, Tara.”

“You don’t need to yell at me, Rick,” she whined.

I recognized the voice and the names. Tara Dunlop. During our debutante year we’d approached something like friendship, ending when she caught Rick with me in a back hall a lot like this one. The fact that he’d been pinning
me
to a wall at the time hadn’t mattered. I was the little slut who tempted her boyfriend. When I’d had a breakdown as my powers hit, she’d made sure every one of our acquaintances knew why Hope Adams missed her high school prom: because the psych ward didn’t grant day passes.

Karl peered down the hall. “Isn’t that . . .?”

“Uh-huh.”

I’d told him the story after Tara tried luring
him
into a back room at a New Year’s ball.

“Perhaps allowing a sacrifice or two isn’t such a bad thing,” he said. “Seeing that I can’t open the soul box, this might be our only way to get him back to Hell.”

“Tempting,” I muttered as I began walking toward them. “Very tempting.”

“Oh, oh!” Tara chirped. “Someone’s coming. It’s—” She leaned around the security guard. “Oh.”

The guard turned my way. His eyes flashed yellow. “You are early, my princess. The sacrifice is not yet complete.”

“Princess?” Tara said.

“Sacrifice?”
Rick yelped.

“Is this a friend of yours, Hope?” Tara said. “Figures. Bet you met a lot of them in the loony bin. Is that where you met him, too?” She gestured at Karl. “I heard it was a dating service. Goldiggers-R-Us, for rich girls too crazy to get a real boyfriend.”

“Last chance,” Karl whispered to me.

“Did someone say sacrifice?” Rick said. “Can we talk about that? Please?”

“There will be no sacrifices,” I said, walking over to Nybbas. “I thought I made that clear.”

“No, princess. You asked that no sacrifices be made on your behalf. That means you do not wish the deaths to weigh on your conscience. A human failing, but I understand. I will make the sacrifices for you and—”

“And no.” I stepped so close I could smell the guard’s cheap cologne. “I do
not
want the sacrifices. I command—”

The guard’s body collapsed at my feet before I could finish.

“We need to get that box open,” I said as we strode down the hall, having left Tara and Rick making a beeline for the back exit. “Are you sure you don’t remember how you did it?”

“Yes, I do. I’m just pretending otherwise to liven up a dull evening.”

“Wouldn’t put it past you,” I said. “But okay. Sorry. We need a backup plan, then. I know Paige and Lucas have a dispossession spell that might work, but we’d need to get them here from Portland. Meanwhile, this bastard has free run of a building filled with potential victims. We need to get everyone out so we can—”

The vision flashed again. I pushed it aside faster now, recovering after only a split-second blackout. When I came to, though, I found myself staring at a red box on the wall.

I glanced over at Karl. He plucked a glove from his pocket, and pulled the fire alarm.

As plans went, it was far from foolproof. For one thing, as the partygoers streamed toward the exits, their chaos washed over me . . . and washed away any chaos being caused by Nybbas himself. Then someone shouted, “Where’s the tour group? Has anyone seen them yet?” and I looked over to see the closed doors to the new exhibit.

I yanked on the door. It didn’t budge. Karl grabbed it and heaved, tendons in his neck bulging. Then, with a crack, the door flew open and we raced through.

Inside, it was pitch black and silent. Chaos thrummed through the room. Then a whimper, followed by a harsh whisper, someone urging silence.

“I can smell you,” a woman’s voice sang. “I don’t need lights to find dirty, stinking humans.”

When the fire alarm sounded, the lights must have had gone off. Now they were trapped as Nybbas hunted them.