Demon (3 page)

The watcher. I rolled over on my back, very gingerly, half-afraid he was waiting to pounce again. I kept picturing him like a bat, swooping down on me, dark wings beating at my head. Either I had
hit my head and had a concussion, or someone had drugged me.

The room was even worse than I’d thought, more a flophouse than a motel. Not that I’d ever been in a flophouse before—at least, I didn’t think I had—but the small table and two chairs, the hot plate, and the dismal china sink all looked like my idea of one.

I turned back and almost shrieked. The other bed was no longer empty. A man lay there, watching me out of hooded eyes.

I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice was strangled in my throat. He must have seen the fright and fury in my eyes, but he didn’t move.

There was one small, grubby window, and I could tell from the color of the sky that it must be a little past dawn. And then I remembered Amanda and the others, and real panic set in.

“Have to … get out of here,” I managed to wheeze.

He didn’t move, didn’t react, and I wondered if he’d heard or understood me. Maybe he didn’t speak English.

I couldn’t afford to waste time. I began to pull myself to a sitting position, ignoring the pain that shot through my body. “You have to listen to me,” I managed to say, my voice still thick with pain. “I can’t be here. I have to get far away. People will die.”

He still didn’t move. The room was murky in the predawn light, and I couldn’t see him clearly. All I could tell was that he was long and lean, and he was most definitely not from around here. They didn’t grow them like that in the Midwest.

I sat up, my feet on the soiled carpeting. “I’m getting out of here,” I said, starting to push myself up from the bed. I hurt like hell, but I could make it. I
had
to make it.

“No.” Though I hadn’t seen him move his lips, the word was, sharp, definite.

“I told you—”

“You told me people will die,” he said in a bored voice. “The only one who is going to die is you.”

His cool words should have chilled me, but I’d already figured out I was a lost cause. “Look,” I said patiently, “you can do anything you want. Stab me, strangle me, shoot me—I don’t care. Just do it miles away from the city.”

I suppose I should have looked him over more carefully to see if I could find a weak spot, but I was too wound up thinking about Amanda.
No more,
I thought.
For God’s sake, no more babies.

“We are in Australia,” he said.

I stopped trying to get up, finally looking at him. “How long have I been unconscious?”

“Not long.”

Okay, now I knew he was a certifiable fruitcake.
Not that I should have had any doubt—a sane person doesn’t swoop down on you like a bat and abduct you. I tried once more to get off the bed, and this time I made it, as if whatever had held me back finally let go.

“Go to the window if you do not believe me.”

I went. I didn’t see koalas or kangaroos bouncing by the window—it looked like any dingy waterfront. Even so, it would take more than a couple of hours to reach the ocean from the last place I remembered being. So clearly I’d been out for longer than he’d said, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Amanda and all the other newborns would now be safe.

“Okay,” I said, turning back to face him. I was tired of running, tired of the fear and panic that had threatened to strangle me. “Go ahead. Make my day.”

And I spread my arms wide, waiting for him to kill me.

T
HE MAN GAZED AT ME, HIS FACE
expressionless. “You have seen too many movies.”

I sighed. “Look, I don’t know who or what you are and I don’t care. I’m tired of running, tired of questions with no answers. If you want to shoot me, then go ahead and do it; otherwise, give me some answers or leave me alone.”

“I don’t possess a gun.” I was still deciding whether or not I was relieved when he continued, “You know as well as I do that I do not need a gun to kill you.”

I sat back down on the lumpy bed. “I don’t know shit,” I said flatly. “I don’t even know who I am, much less who you are. I’m sure you could overpower me if you wanted to, but I’m also going
to presume that if you were planning to kill me you would have already done it.”

“You should not presume anything. I can come up with half a dozen reasons why I have yet to kill you. Perhaps I need a better place to dispose of your body.”

“Like Australia?”

His face was impassive. “Perhaps I want to draw it out, let you suffer. Or maybe I have decided to give you a chance to talk me out of it. Or even give you a head start.”

Okay, none of that sounded even the slightest bit reassuring. I took a good look at him. By some standards he might even be considered attractive. Hell, freaking gorgeous—if it weren’t for the incredible coldness in his blue eyes. He had long, straight, very black hair, pale skin, a narrow face with finely chiseled high cheekbones, a thin mouth, and a strong nose. He looked as cold as Antarctica, and his faintly formal diction made him seem even more impenetrable.

“You know, for some reason none of those possibilities seems very likely. You don’t strike me as someone filled with the milk of human kindness.”

“I am not human.”

This barely struck me as odd. Impossible as it was, I had begun to guess as much, considering that we had apparently managed to travel thousands
of miles in a matter of hours. “Then what the fuck are you?”

“You know.”

I was facing death with what I considered a fair amount of noble equanimity, but he was getting beyond frustrating, ruining the whole Joan of Arc bit. “I
don’t
know. I told you, I don’t even know who I am, and even though you came swooping down on me like a bat out of hell, I’m having a hard time processing the idea that you’re anything but a crazy stalker who’s probably going to dismember my body and gnaw on my bones.”

“We do not eat flesh. That would be the Nephilim.”

That word, that name, struck an odd chord inside me, a surge of nausea that it took all my willpower to control. Yet the word meant nothing. “Who are the Nephilim?”

He didn’t answer. He rose, and I watched him, looking for any sign of weakness. Presumably he wasn’t lying about the gun—he was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans and I could see no sign of one on him. For a moment I was afraid he was going to approach me, and I steeled myself to fight, but instead he walked over to the window, pushing open the curtain to let in the early morning light. The soft singing on the radio finished, and the announcer came on—most definitely Australian.
I felt a shiver wash over me, and tried to control it. At least Amanda was safe.

And then he switched off the radio, turning to look at me. “It is time to go.”

“Go where? Are you going to explain anything at all or leave me to die of curiosity?”

He didn’t make the obvious answer. He just stood there waiting, and slowly, painfully I rose to my feet again. I felt as if someone had used me as a punching bag—presumably this man. I wondered if I looked as bruised as I felt. As I started after him I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. And screamed.

Even before the sound erupted he was on me, one hand clamped over my mouth, the other around my waist, imprisoning me as I struggled against the rising hysteria. I didn’t know that woman in the mirror—a stranger looking back at me out of warm brown eyes. In fact, in that first horrifying glimpse, it was only the eyes that seemed familiar.

I might have been fighting a machine. His body was impervious to my struggles, my frantic kicks. And as quickly as the panic had come on, it drained away, leaving me staring at myself in the mirror, with him behind me, holding me.

My hair was red. With all the bottles of dye I’d used over the years, the one color I’d never used
was red. I’d been blond, brunette, and everything in between, but the very thought of red hair had made me ill. My skin was pale, almost transparent, and the hair was thick and curling, hanging below my shoulders when I’d favored something short and manageable. His hand covered half my face, but I’d seen my mouth—wide and curving, different from the small mouth I’d occasionally augmented with lipstick. My own eyes stared out from the face of a stranger, and I wanted to throw up.

He must have felt the fight leave my body, because he slowly released me. I had no doubt those iron hands could clamp over my arms again at any moment, and I did my best to make my body soft and pliant.

“You do not fool me,” he said in my ear. “I am not going to turn my back on you for a minute.”

“Probably a good idea,” I said out of the stranger’s mouth in the mirror. “I’d run.”

“You would be more likely to disembowel me.”

Startled, I looked up at him. Again, he was totally without affect—I’d picked up that word during one of my lifetimes, but I couldn’t remember where. His eyes were cold, his face blank. He’d said he wasn’t human. Impossible as that was to comprehend, looking into his soulless eyes made it marginally more believable.

“Not likely, unless you’re going to hand me a knife.” I was pleased with the caustic tone I achieved, until his next words hit.

“You wouldn’t need a knife.”

“I think I’ll just stop talking,” I said, feeling ill at the picture his words conjured. That was twice he’d sent me to the edge of nausea. Probably a combination of jet lag and hunger. My brain was still trying to make sense of it all. So he said I hadn’t been out long, yet somehow we’d gotten to Australia. Clearly he was lying, and I must have been unconscious for days. It was no wonder my stomach was in an uproar—I was starving. “Just feed me,” I added, “and I promise I won’t bother you.”

He stared at me, and I thought I could feel his eyes on my throat. He still clasped one of my wrists, but the pain of that manacle-like grasp was nothing compared to the rest of my body, so I’d barely noticed.

Then he nodded. “After you.” And with a none-too-gentle shove, he pushed me out the door.

Yes, it was Australia, or he was going to great lengths for a practical joke. The license plates were different, and the ordinary-looking sedan he pushed me into had the steering wheel on the wrong side. He closed the door and moved around to the driver’s side, not even bothering to
see whether I was going to try to run for it. He must have known I was past fighting.

We drove in silence, into the dawning of what was presumably going to be the last day of my life. I leaned back in the seat, watching the landscape whiz by with incurious eyes. We’d been in some kind of port city, but by full daylight we were already past the suburbs and into the countryside. Oddly enough, he’d turned on the radio once we got in the car, and quiet music filled in the blank spaces in my mind. It seemed an anomaly—he was much too cold and empty a person to care about music. I figured that was the least of my worries. I listened to plaintive voices, some familiar, some not, and waited to die.

I must have slept. When I awoke, the sun was blazing brightly overhead and we’d stopped outside a restaurant that seemed to have erupted in the middle of nowhere. I glanced at my nameless companion, wondering if this was one of his creations, but it seemed real enough, and as I followed him out of the car I noticed a sign announcing that they had Foster’s. At that point I was grateful for small favors.

“Nice of you to feed me,” I muttered gracelessly after we’d slid into a booth and my captor rattled off an order to a sullen waitress. “But you might have let me order for myself. The condemned
woman should get to choose her last meal.” Though a hot lamb sandwich with gravy and chips wasn’t a bad choice, come to think of it.

“Deal with it.” He’d ordered a veggie burger for himself. So he could kill people but not animals. Great. I sat back in the booth, taking a surreptitious glance around me. He hadn’t used the bathroom since I’d been with him, but sooner or later he’d have to, wouldn’t he? Unless he truly wasn’t human, which I took leave to doubt.

I wondered if I could hot-wire a car. Newer ones might be tricky, but there were enough older cars parked outside the restaurant that I might have some luck, if I could just manage to distract my kidnapper for a short while.

I didn’t know his name. I didn’t want to. For some reason, thinking of him as an abstraction made the situation easier to deal with. If he had a name, like Joe or Tom or Harry, that would make it more real, and as long as it stayed a little otherworldly I could handle it.

When he went to the bathroom I could make a run for it, I thought. I could beg for help from some of the rough-looking customers—surely they’d help a lady in distress. There were two burly ones at the counter, another one toward the back—

“No one will help you.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what I was thinking. “Why not?”

“Because you cannot get up from that seat. You cannot speak.”

What the hell do you mean?
I began, and then realized my mouth hadn’t moved. No words had come out, not even a mute squeak of protest. I tried to move, but my butt might as well have been superglued to the booth. I put all my fury and panic into my eyes, but he simply looked away, bored, as the waitress brought a foaming mug of beer. One. For him.

I reached out, planning to either grab it or dump it in his lap, but my hands couldn’t move past the centerline of the table. It was as if there were a Plexiglas sheet between us, thick and hard and invisible. A diet soda had been left at my place, and I found I could reach it. Couldn’t swipe his beer, but in fact I was happier with the Diet Coke.

I waited for him to lift his voodoo spell, but he simply drank his beer, looking out at the dusty landscape, ignoring me. I went from fury to pleading to tears and back again, and it was a waste of time. When my food came I could reach it, but my appetite was gone and I just stared at it.