Demon Ex Machina: Tales of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom (15 page)

“They had you on before,” I murmured, opening the door for Eric to tell me the full story. The story he’d kept from me during our years as partners, our years as lovers.

He said nothing though, just picked up the pace, his eyes searching the dark.

I cursed under my breath and sped up. This night wasn’t ending until we’d talked, he and I. But I could wait. I didn’t like it, but I daily counseled my little boy on the virtue of patience. Far be it for me to make a hypocrite of myself.

We were a few blocks away from the Old Town shopping area, just off Main Street, on a street lined with wooden-frame bungalows with cheerful gardens and brightly painted front porches. We both knew the neighborhood well, as we were only one street over from the house we’d moved into a few months before Allie was born. We’d spent countless hours walking these streets, pushing a stroller and talking about nothing. Nothing and everything. And never—well hardly ever—talking about demons. Instead we’d planned Allie’s future. We’d pondered the possibility of getting a dog. And we’d had long, involved discussions about what color we should paint the living room.

I’d thought we were so normal, like we’d climbed over some wall and left it all behind.

Obviously, I’d been wrong.

But we weren’t here tonight to reminisce. Instead, we were looking for a mother and her son. Two demons that I wanted to have a few words with. And then, yes, I wanted to drive stakes through their eyeballs.

Sometimes, it’s the simple things in life . . .

Stuart had wanted to come, had wanted to confront the woman and child who’d attacked his wife and baby. But as he hadn’t yet joined me on regular patrols, there was no way I would agree to walk him into what I truly hoped would turn into a combat situation. He wasn’t happy, but he’d agreed, and I had to wonder how many such arguments we’d have in the future, and if I’d ever be comfortable hunting with him the way I’d always been comfortable hunting with Eric.

“This is it,” Eric said, nodding at a pale blue house with a six-foot privacy fence. We were in the alley behind the house, and I climbed up onto a recycle bin to peer inside.

“Dark,” I said. “Probably rabbited.”

“They’re probably crashed in a motel somewhere. We can check the flops along the highway after we patrol here.”

I nodded vaguely, then hopped off the bin and tried the back gate. Open.

“Come on,” I said as I pushed inside and moved slowly to the back door. It wasn’t locked either, and we went in carefully, falling easily back into old rhythms as we checked the house, covering each other as we made sure the structure was secure.

“They’re not here,” he said when we’d circled back to the living room. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” I said. I wanted to take a look around. If they’d been living in the house for two weeks, it was possible they’d left something behind that could help us. Information about the She-Demon, or possibly even a forwarding address. You never knew. Demons, like humans, got sloppy. And the longer a demon lived in a human shell, the more human it became.

Without warning, I thought of Eric, wondering if the demon inside him had been humanized. And, too, wondering if Eric’s humanity would come through should the worst happen.

But no. The worst wasn’t going to happen. Not on my watch. Not if there was anything that I could do to prevent it.

“What are you thinking?” he said, his eyes fixed on me.

I considered dodging the question, but that wouldn’t help either of us. Instead, I faced it head on. “I need to know, Eric,” I said. “Everything that happened to you. I deserve the whole story. I can’t help you—not really—unless I know everything.”

“What do you know?” he asked, so calmly that I had to clench my hands into fists to keep from lashing out at him. Because what little I did know hadn’t come from him. I’d had to hunt it down on my own, pry it from other people, while the man I’d once loved with all my heart and soul stayed as quiet on the subject as he’d always been.

“I know what Father Corletti’s told me,” I said. “About how it’s been inside you all along. And about how the Cardinal Fire unbound it. The later stuff, mostly. The early stuff—like how the demon came to be inside you—he said that’s for you alone to tell me.” I drew in a breath. “It’s time, Eric. Tell me what I need to know to help you.”

We were in the kitchen, and he looked around, as if he hoped Lisa and John-John would leap from the cabinets and put a stop on this conversation.

I took his hands, pulled him until he had no choice but to shift on the bench and face me. “It’s me, Eric. It’s Katie. Whatever you tell me, it will be okay.”

For a moment, his eyes searched my face. Then he nodded, one quick jerk of the head before pulling his hands free and pacing in front of me. “It wasn’t an accident,” he said, his voice flat, controlled. “There was nothing surprising to them about the fact that there was a demon in me. Just the opposite, actually. It’s what they wanted. It’s what they planned.” He spit the last word out with such vitriol I closed my hands into fists by reflex alone.

“Who?”

He faced me, and the pain I saw in his eyes about broke my heart. “My parents.”

“Your parents?”
The words hung there between us, vicious and surreal. “But that’s—But you don’t know your parents. Don’t know anything about them?” Obviously he did, of course, but reality was about two steps behind my mouth.

“I did,” he said. “I do.”

“Dear God. Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I hadn’t meant to ask. I didn’t want to sound whiny or needy or hurt. Especially considering we were no longer married, my hurt feelings hardly compared to the pure hell—literally—that Eric was going through.

“Why didn’t you tell Stuart?” he asked.

It was a rhetorical question, of course. Eric knew perfectly well why I hadn’t told Stuart about my demon-hunting days. I’d married him as Kate, an ordinary widow with an ordinary suburban life. That was the woman Stuart had fallen in love with, and I didn’t want him looking at me and seeing another girl.

Yes, that had probably been extraordinarily neurotic of me, but the heart can’t always be controlled.

“But I knew,” I said. “I knew about demons and things that go bump in the night.”

“You knew about evil,” he said. “You knew what it did and how it could hurt.” He stopped pacing long enough to take my chin in his hand. “And I couldn’t bear the thought that you’d look at me the way you’re looking right now, with the knowledge that something dark is inside, that it was put there by my parents, and that one of these days, it’s going to come out.”

“That’s not how I’m looking,” I said, forcing my eyes to stay on him.

“Isn’t it? It’s what I think when I look in the mirror every day.”

“You’re not your parents any more than you’re the thing inside you,” I said, moving to him and holding his face in my hands so he had no choice but to look into my eyes. “Whatever is inside you, it’s not you. You can beat it back, Eric. You can and you will.”

A troubled expression passed over his face. “I used to think so, Katie. I really did. Do you think I could have lived with you, had a family with you, loved you if I believed that somehow I was putting you in danger? And I kept looking, even when we were living here, for a way to make it stop. That’s why I kept in contact with
Forza
. Why I met with Father Oliver and worked with Father Donnelly to become an
alimentatore
,” he added, referring to other secrets he’d kept that I’d only recently discovered. And now I knew a little bit more about why he’d done it.

He drew in a breath and continued. “And doing all of that made me feel safe. Like I had it under control. I had to believe that, you know, because I could never have done anything to do you harm. Even after I died,” he added, clenching his fists at his sides and then drawing in a deep breath. “Do you think I would have sought you out after I came back if I didn’t believe I could fight it down? That’s what I used to believe. That’s what I
had
to believe.”

Something tickled on my cheek, and I brushed it away, felt the wetness, and realized I was crying. “Used to think so?”

“It’s winning, Katie,” he said simply. “I try—I try so hard—but it’s winning.” He lashed out, kicking a cabinet so hard it not only made a dent, but made me jump.

“Try harder,” I said, angry now, too. “Dammit, Eric, you’ve beaten this thing back before. You can do it again.”

“Every damn day I try. Every. Damn. Day.” He drew in a breath, and I saw real fear in his eyes. “I go to Mass now, and it hurts, Kate. It hurts inside like a fire is ripping through me.”

I swallowed, not wanting to hear this. That was bad, very bad.

A demon can walk on holy ground, but it hurts like hell, and the longer they stay, the more it hurts. That’s one of the best tests, actually, for determining if a creature is a demon. Certainly it’s more accurate than breath, which could easily be present in a human simply because of poor hygiene.

In the past, Eric had no problems entering the cathedral, but if it now caused him pain . . .

I shook my head, wanting it to all go away. Wanting to fly back in time to the year Allie was born, when we were safe and Odayne was bound up tight, not causing trouble. Not doing anything.

But there was no going back, and even if we could, would I want to? Yes, I’d been blissfully ignorant, but the truth was that even then, Eric was tainted, his soul entwined with a demon.

What if he had lived to a ripe old age? What if we’d grown old, had grandchildren, and one day died peacefully in our sleep? I believed in heaven, believed in the tenets of my faith, and I believed that despite my lies and my secrets and my multitude of sins, that upon my death, my soul would go to heaven. And though I’d never actually sat down and considered the parameters of my afterlife, I think I’d always believed that Eric would be there with me. He was my first love so how could he not?

I knew now that I’d been both blind and naive. Nothing in this world is a given, and that is true times ten when you walk in the shadow of demons. Eric wouldn’t have met me in heaven. He was bound to Odayne, to the demon realm.

Bound to hell, unless we could find a way to untangle Eric’s soul from the demon.

“We’ll find a way,” I said. “I don’t care if I have to fight until my fingernails bleed and research until my eyes fall out. We’re going to get answers, and we’re going to save you.”

“I wish I was as confident,” he said.

“I’m confident enough for the both of us.”

That sad smile touched his mouth again. “I’m glad to hear that. But you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”

I started to shake my head no, but he took my chin in hand. “Yes,” he said. “I know it.
Forza
knows it. And Katie,” he said, the knife edge coming back into his voice, “even your parents knew it.”

“What?” The words seemed to swirl around me, a thick, viscous soup of nonsense. “I’m not—what?”

He turned away so that I was facing his back, and though I wanted to see his face, my legs didn’t seem to be working. So I sat and let his familiar voice wash over me, telling me things I’d never known and had never imagined. “I was six, maybe seven,” he began. “Not when the demon first came inside—that was before. That was at birth, maybe even conception. But there were things that had to be done. Rituals that had to be performed to bring the demon out, to infuse him through me. To make us one.” His shoulders shook as a shudder passed through him. I wanted to go to him, to hold him, but I couldn’t move. I could only listen and hope that it wasn’t going to be as bad as I feared.

“I don’t remember much, but I remember candlelight. And chanting. And the ritual cuts made into my back. They wanted to scar me, Katie,” he said, finally turning around. “They had to scar me in order to mark me, and I can still feel the sting of the blade digging in, ripping off flesh, and the feel of the salt in the wounds to ensure the scar remained.”

“I’ve seen your back, Eric,” I said. “There’s no scar.”

“They finished only part of it,” he said. “A serpent’s head, fangs bared, forked tongue lashing out.”

“It’s not there,” I insisted. “Eric, there’s no scar.”

His smile was thin. “It’s there,” he said. “Even if you can’t see it, it’s there.”

“Eric—”

But he held up a hand, cutting me off. “No. Let me finish. Because they
didn’t
finish. They didn’t bring it out, didn’t twine it with me. Not fully, anyway. And not for lack of trying. But they were stopped. The ritual interrupted.”

“By who?” I asked, though I feared I already knew.

“Your parents,” he said.

“They were Demon Hunters?”

“Not with
Forza
. I don’t think anyone ever really knew where they came from or how they got a bead on what my parents were up to. But they did, and they came, wandering the streets of Rome posing as a young couple on vacation. And they tracked my parents down and they burst into the ritual.”

“Intent on killing your parents,” I said, following the story although I felt numb.

“No,” he said. “Intent on killing
me
.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” he said. “They came in. They tried to take me out. My father wasn’t having it, and they fought. I don’t remember it. I only know what they told me. But at the end of it, my father and your parents were dead.”

“And your mother?”

“Lived three days. Long enough to come out of a coma and tell Wilson everything,” he said, referring to the man who would later become my—our—first
alimentatore
.

“Were they with a cult? Did she tell
Forza
who they were?”

“She didn’t have to,” he said. “He knew them. My parents were Hunters, Kate.”

“What? No. That’s impossible. Why would they do that?”

“They thought they were doing good. They’d been working with Father Donnelly, and they thought they’d made a breakthrough. A giant step in this centuries-old game we play.” He paused and drew in a long breath. “They thought they’d figured out a way to castrate the demon and yet steal its strength. They didn’t know what they were doing to me,” he said, and I knew he had to believe that. Had to believe that his parents had only wanted the best for him because otherwise it was too painful to look at what they did to him, no matter what they’d hoped the endgame would be.