Demon High (17 page)

Kobal appeared almost instantly.

He stretched his wings to their full width, or almost their full width. The sides pressed against the invisible barrier of the circle, as if he was standing under a glass dome. He glanced up and frowned, then pulled them back in.

“It’s been a while,” he said. He flexed his wings, making the dark feathers on the tips shake. Then he pulled his shoulders back and stretched his neck from one side to the other. Finished with his warm-up, he leveled his eerily clear gaze at me. “Lucinda, are you alone?” He angled his head as if peering past me into the dark. If he could see Brittany, he made no comment on her. He looked back at me. “Have you been having fun?”

My hand tightened on the athame. The stitching that ran down one side of the handle bit into my skin. “You planned this.”

“Well.” He tapped his chin. “Planned is bit inaccurate. I had no way of knowing those three boys would come along and be so helpful. But, yes, it did seem to work out.”

I moved toward the burning candle, fully planning to chop it in half and send the demon back to hell.

“That won’t solve your problem.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down his aristocratic nose at me.

My hand shook, but I touched the athame’s blade to the wax.

“Don’t let him get to you, Lucinda. Ask him what we need to know,” Brittany murmured. Her volume was low, the words meant only for me, but of course, not having human limitations, Kobal heard.

“Listen to your friend,” he said. “You need my help, and I’m willing to give it to you.”

I rocked back on my heels and looked up at him, but I didn’t move away from the candle. “Why?”

He smiled. It was a perfect masculine smile. His teeth were white against his dark skin. His eyes twinkled. It was the kind of smile that should have made me tingle all the way down to my unpainted toenails. But it didn’t. It made me want to vomit instead, from fear.

Kobal was confident. I’d never encountered someone with this same vibrating sureness. It brought out every insecurity I’d ever had, even the ones I thought I’d overcome.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to look a gift horse in the mouth?” The tips of his wings fluttered. I got the distinct feeling he was laughing at me.

“My mother wasn’t around long enough to give a lot of advice. She did though—” I stood, the athame hanging at my side. “—tell me never to trust a demon.”

He let the laugh I’d sensed inside him free. It was smooth and infectious. Despite the fear curdling inside me I wanted to laugh with him. I felt the corners of my lips turn up.

“I like you,” he said. “You hide your fear well. I still see it.” His eyes flickered. “And smell it.” He inhaled deeply, his lips curling upward in a carnal smile. “But for a mortal, you hide it well. And you’re young. Lots of time to grow. But then you have always been a promising child.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant by the last. I didn’t like the insinuation that he had known me, even of me, when I was younger, but again I tamped down my natural reaction and forced my mind to why I was here, why I’d let myself be talked into this insane act.

“Can you tell us where Holmes is?” I asked. I should have made my question direct, ordered him to tell me, but instinctively I knew it wouldn’t have mattered, knew even with him trapped in my circle I didn’t have the strength to force him to my will.

“Holmes? Perhaps. Are you saying you want to make a deal?” His wings twitched again; this time his fingers did too.

“Deal, no. I don’t want to make a deal,” I said the words firmly, somehow managed to keep my need to scream them at bay. Sweat beaded on my brow. I’d drawn the circle and put my will in it. That should have been enough, but something was different tonight. The demon inside the circle was doing something different. My will continued to drain as I talked to him, as if he was leeching it as he talked. I straightened my shoulders and pulled on reserves I hadn’t realized I had.

His eyes flickered. “Good girl,” he murmured. “For that, you deserve a reward.” Suddenly, he was gone. In his place stood Holmes. The serial killer was dressed in modern clothing, but his moustache was intact. He was sitting in front of a computer monitor, his gaze locked onto the screen. There was a noise, a squeak and he leaned closer until I thought his nose would touch the glass. “So sad, so sweet,” he muttered, then he stroked the screen.

With no warning the vignette disappeared, and Kobal stood back in front of me. “Times have changed.” He waved his hand and a high back chair appeared. He sat. His wings pulled in at his sides, framing him. “You know, when our friend was here last, he had no way of seeing his victims. He had to make do with just hearing their whimpers and cries. But today—” He held up both hands, palms up. “—modern technology has changed all that.”

The drain on my will stopped. It allowed me to relax a bit, not enough for the demon lord to surprise me, but enough I could focus on what he had just shown me.

Holmes was dressed in modern clothing. The scene was modern—the killer watching Angie, the boys, or another victim I had yet to learn of, on some type of camera, and it was live, or close to it. The idea sickened me, but I couldn’t let my feelings show.

I tried to look as I thought Brittany would have, as if what he’d shown me was unimpressive. “He’s a demon. Are you saying he’s so weak he has to use human inventions to spy? Perhaps I shouldn’t be worried about him at all.”

This time Kobal’s laugh was deep and rollicking. “You are precious, aren’t you?” He wiped tears from his eyes and smiled at me with an expression not all that different from a teacher’s when dealing with a particularly slow student. “I’m not going to take that bait and tell you what powers our dear Holmes may or may not have. I will tell you though, that he’s a special case, someone who never quite accepted what he is. Don’t, however, let that lead you to believe he isn’t dangerous. Doesn’t his record speak for itself?” He templed his fingers and waited.

“How do I know that really was Holmes? You could put out any image. I wouldn’t know.”

He leaned forward, both hands on his knees. The muscles of his shoulders bulged. “You already believe he’s free. You already believe he’s taken those boys and that girl or you wouldn’t be here. What do you think he’s doing with them? Serving them tea?” He leaned back. “Besides, I have a connection to all the demons under me. I get to experience, at least to a degree, everything they do. It’s part of the fun.” His gaze drifted behind me. “Did you know that, Brittany? Does that add to the thrill?”

I flinched. My gaze dropped to the ground. I wanted to ask why he was talking to Brittany, what his strange question meant, but I didn’t, couldn’t. Instead, I said, “Prove it. Show me more.” If I goaded him, maybe he’d slip and give me some clue that would help me find Holmes.

He grinned, but only for a second and then he was gone. Holmes was back at his computer, clicking his mouse now. As he did my focus shifted, zoomed in onto the screen. The picture was of a room, shot from above. The camera I realized was mounted somewhere over head. A boy, one of the ones who had wandered through my circle, lay on a metal table, the kind you saw on TV in a morgue.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.

The camera shifted slightly, giving a fuller view of the boy’s body. He was strapped down with thick strips of canvas-like material. A blue paper sheet covered his lower half, but his upper body was exposed, naked. Beside him in a metal dish lay forceps and scalpels.

Holmes tapped the mouse again, then shoved himself away from his desk. He walked to the corner of the room, to a coat rack where a white doctor’s coat hung. Smiling, he pulled it on. Then he picked up a medical mask and looped the elastic bands around his ears. Finally, he pulled two gloves from a box on his desk and turned to the door.

He was dressed. Ready for surgery, and it was obvious on whom.

“So, want to make a deal?” Kobal was back, this time sitting sideways in his chair; his legs dangled over the arm. His wings dropped down over the other arm, brushing the dirt beneath him.

His too casual pose did nothing to reassure me. It had quite the opposite effect actually.

“When does that happen?” I asked.

He shifted, moved his feet back to the space in front of his chair. “Oh, so now you believe me?”

“When?” I repeated. Oscar had said time didn’t work for demons the way it did for humans. I prayed what Kobal had shown us was a scene from the future, a future I could change.

He placed two fingers under his chin. “Hard to say. Could be tomorrow, next week, or maybe right now. Actually—” He tapped the fingers against his chin. “It could have been yesterday.” He turned his gaze on me, clear, concentrated and intense, like a laser. “You won’t know until you get there.
If
you get there.”

The athame I’d forgotten I held knocked against my thigh. I glanced down at it, then moved it so it lay balanced on top of my palms. I held the knife, but my gaze quickly shifted to my hands and the blood I imagined there.

Whatever Holmes was doing. I had a hand in it.

I looked up. “What do you want?”

Kobal stood, and the chair disappeared. “Nothing you haven’t done already. Want to play?”

No, I didn’t, but I was beginning to believe I didn’t have a choice.

“Humor me. Tell me exactly what you want, what I give and you receive.”

He stepped forward. His wings seemed darker now. A wind caught them and rippled the feathers as they brushed over the ground. “I want to help others. There are many, many demons at home. Demons not lucky enough to have someone like you call on them. They’re lonely, depressed.”

My heart bled for them.

“You’ve seen firsthand that letting demons into the world doesn’t have to end with disaster. Look at Oscar and Nellie. Have they caused any harm?”

He didn’t wait for my reply. “Not all demons are like Holmes. You agree to work with me, allow me to shuffle demons into your world for short periods of time, and I’ll help you find Holmes. Pull him back myself.”

No, no way. I couldn’t do this. I bent down and picked up the candle.

“Lucinda.” His tone was terse and filled with warning. “You can save those boys and the girl too. Holmes only plays with his victims so long. They all die eventually and not in an easy way.”

I forced words through my teeth. “Death is never easy.” I chopped the lit end off the candle, waited for it to topple to the ground, and then crushed it under my foot.

When I looked up, Kobal was gone.

Shaking, I turned to Brittany. “Well, we did it. What did we learn?”

Her hands were wrapped around the fence, and her face was pale. “That Holmes is a sick son of a bitch, but I think we already knew that.”

“What about Kobal? Did he give us anything we can use? Or did we just waste an hour of our lives?” And the boys, an hour they couldn’t afford to lose.

Brittany walked around the fence, then bent over to retrieve the smashed bit of candle. Tossing it from one hand to another, she replied. “I think he did.”

By the next morning, Brittany had a lead.

She picked me up at home before school, except we weren’t headed to school. Not today. Today we were hunting a demon. I sat my backpack onto the floor in front of me. It clanked. Brittany glanced at it, then tapped a flat box that was suction-cupped to her dash. “I borrowed my dad’s GPS,” she said. “I told him we were skipping to help the Bethel Y set up their haunted house. That it was at some old farm house and I didn’t want to get lost.”

“You told him we were skipping?”

She raised a brow. “For a cause.”

“What happens when the Y says they never saw us?” I asked.

Busy tapping on the device’s small screen, she shot me a barely tolerant look. “First, he’s not going to check on us. Second, if he does, I have it covered. A friend’s really working on the house. I helped him find some speakers and stuff, cheap. He’ll cover for us.”

I settled back in my seat, thankful my grandmother would cross the street before she’d talk to Brittany’s family. She was not as trusting as Brittany’s father apparently was.

Done tapping, Brittany put her car in gear. “It’ll take us twenty minutes to get there, but we have a stop to make first.”

I glanced at her, surprised. She hadn’t mentioned this when she called last night.

After our visit with Kobal, Brittany had taken me home. After seeing Kobal’s Holmes skit, and I prayed that’s all it had been, it had been hard to walk back into my house acting like nothing was wrong. But I had to. Brittany was the expert at finding things, including information. My skills were tapped in that area. Besides, I’d had my own role to fill. I had to research killing or at least exiling a demon.

So, we’d gone to our respective homes and done our jobs. I’d dug up as many demon-hunting stories as I could, and armed myself with everything from holy water, thanks to our Catholic neighbor, to salt, thanks to Morton’s.

And Brittany had got us an address.

After seeing Kobal’s presentation, we realized wherever Holmes was, he was using some kind of computer monitoring set-up. Brittany had used her network and found a guy who installed security cameras. She’d told him she worked for Dr. Howard, and he’d taken the bait. With a little Brittany magic, she’d gotten the address out of him too. That was where we were headed, or where I’d thought we were headed. The detour was news to me.