Demonfire (3 page)

“You said you were a demon,
but you look perfectly human. What exactly do you mean?”

“Exactly that. I’m a demon
from the world of Abyss. It exists in a dimension apart from yours, but I was
sent here by people from another world, one called Eden that’s in yet another
dimension. The two worlds never touch, never interact. Complete yet separate,
they are entirely dependent on the balance that holds them apart as much as it
connects them.”

“So what does that make
Earth?”

He stared at his cup of coffee
a moment, picturing the three worlds as he imagined them. “Earth is the
fulcrum,” he said, raising his eyes to study her reaction. “Eden on the one
side is a world of light filled with people who are inherently good. Abyss, on
the other, is a world of darkness, a land of fire and ice populated by
creatures who personify evil. Earth is in the center, holding them apart,
keeping them in perpetual balance…. Or, at least, that’s the way it’s supposed
to work. The way it’s always worked in the past.”

Her brows knotted over her
dark eyes, and she looked confused, but at least she was still listening. Dax
ran his fingers through Bumper’s curly coat. The dog was a hard-muscled, frilly
contradiction—she had a powerful body with strong jaws, yet she was covered in
a curly blond coat that made her look utterly ridiculous. Dax couldn’t imagine
anyone creating an animal like Bumper on purpose, yet somehow the combination
worked.

Sort of like Earth. “Your
world is mostly populated by a mixture of different kinds of humans—some who
will always try to do the right thing, as well as those who are set on doing
something evil. The best of you and the worst of you are balanced by the vast
majority who are sort of like this dog of yours, a blend of both good and bad,
beautiful and ugly.” He laughed. “Smart and stupid. Somehow, it all works, and,
on the whole, humans get along and live their lives.”

She snorted. He grinned at
her. “Well, most of the time, anyway.”

Shaking her head, she set her
cup down. “I beg to differ with you—people don’t get along that well. There are
wars going on all over the world, people are starving and dying, we have to
worry about terrorists blowing things up, and…”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.
Evil has grown too powerful on your world. It’s giving demonkind a foothold.
Balance has reached a tipping point. It’s slipping over to the side of
darkness. The people of Eden recognized the danger, but they’re incapable of
fighting. Their nature doesn’t allow it. They can, however, hire fallen demons
to fight their battles.”

She ignored his reference to
himself and instead asked the one question Dax didn’t want to answer.

“What happens if the balance
slips too far?”

He didn’t want to think about
that. Couldn’t allow himself to consider failure. Bumper raised her head,
stared beyond Dax, and growled. Dax looked down at the dog, but he spoke to
Eddy. “Then the demons of Abyss take over. If Evergreen falls to the demons,
they gain a powerful foothold in your world. If this town falls, others may
follow. The fear is that all of Earth will fall to darkness and demons will
rule. There’s a risk that eventually, even Eden will be overrun.”

“Dax? I think you need to turn
around.”

He snapped his head up at the
quaver in her voice and caught Eddy’s terrified gaze. He spun around on the
couch, and his feet hit the floor just as the stone owl by the fireplace
stretched its gray wings and clicked its sharp beak, as if testing to make sure
things worked.

Willow shot up from the
bookcase so fast she left a trail of blue sparkles in the air behind her. Dax
leapt to his feet, pulled in the energy Willow sent him, and pointed both hands
at the owl, with his fingertips spread wide.

Fire burst from his fingers in
long, twin spikes of pure power. He caught the owl as it prepared to take
flight, trapped the creature in a blazing sphere of heat and light, and blew it
right through the wire screen and into the fireplace.

Eddy screamed. The creature
screamed louder, sounding eerily like the garden gnome Eddy had flattened. The
cry cut off the moment the flaming owl hit the back of the firebox and
shattered. A dark wisp, stinking of sulfur, coalesced in front of the broken
pieces, but before it could race up the flue to freedom, Dax called on Willow’s
power once again.

This time a blast of icy air
caught the amorphous mass of darkness, freezing it before it could make its
escape. It hovered a moment, quivering in midair, then fell to the hearth and
shattered into a thousand tiny pieces of black ice.

Dax hit the ice with a burst
of flame. The pieces sizzled and disappeared in puffs of steam.

He took a deep breath and
turned away from the mess. Eddy sat on the end of the couch, with Bumper caught
in her shaking arms. Both of them gaped, wide-eyed, at the fireplace. Before
Dax could assure Eddy that everything was all right, at least for now, she
raised her head and stared at him.

“Okay.” Her voice cracked, and
she took a deep breath. “I take back what I said. You won’t need to point to
Willow for proof. I promise to believe anything you tell me. Explain, please,
what the hell just happened.”

Dax wiped his hands on her
dad’s old sweats and sat down on his end of the couch as if nothing had
happened.

Bumper struggled in Eddy’s
tight grasp, raking Eddy’s thighs with her sharp nails. Luckily Bumper couldn’t
tear through Eddy’s heavy jeans, but before the dog freaked entirely, Eddy set
her free. The stupid mutt jumped off the couch and raced to the fireplace. She
sniffed the small pile of rubble that had once been Eddy’s beautifully carved
stone owl, sneezed, and then trotted back to the couch as cocky as if she’d
been the one to defeat the demon.

Bumper jumped on the couch
between Eddy and Dax, but this time she rested her head on Dax’s thigh and
gazed at him with pure adoration.

Eddy couldn’t blame the dog
one bit. Even though she was still trembling and her heart pounded like a whole
set of drums, she knew she stared at Dax the same way.

It was impossible not to.

Dark tendrils of thick, black
hair clung to his forehead and jaw. His bare chest, bisected with the colorful
snake tattoo, gleamed with a light sheen of perspiration from his efforts. The
gray sweats hung low on his lean hips. He epitomized sex appeal and good looks,
and to top it off, he’d just saved her from a completely impossible attack by a
demon right here in her very own living room.

If she could believe what
she’d just seen.

“Before we were so rudely
interrupted…” He actually grinned at her.

She had to swallow twice
before she found her voice. “Go on. Please. Don’t let me stop you.” She clasped
her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. There had to be a logical
reason for all this. Either that, or she was every bit as loony as old Mrs.
Abernathy.

“You asked what would happen
if things got out of balance.” He nodded toward the fireplace. “That’s a good
example. It’s happening now. Demons are slipping into this dimension through a
pathway that’s normally closed to them, a portal in the energy vortex that is
your mountain.”

Not exactly what Eddy wanted
to hear. “You’re kidding, right?” He didn’t look like he was kidding. In fact,
he looked awfully serious for someone making a joke. “The vortex is all New Age
folklore. No one around here really believes it exists, unless you count my
father, who is the king of otherworldly theories, or the stores and companies
catering to the tourists. The vortex is no more real than the Lemurians.”

“The what?” Dax frowned and
stopped rubbing Bumper’s ears. Bumper growled and wagged her tail. Dax went
back to rubbing.

Eddy couldn’t sit still any
longer. She bounced to her feet and began pacing around the small living room.
“Lemurians. They’re not real, unless you ask Dad.” She spun around and laughed.
“He’s going to be thrilled when he finds out about you. Proof that some of his
crazy theories are actually true.”
Dax and the demons.
It didn’t get any better.

“According to local lore,
they’re a race of mystical beings—tall, beautiful people with strange powers
who supposedly live inside Mount Shasta in rooms made of gold. Legend says
they’re descendents of people from the lost continent of Lemuria that sank
beneath the sea, that they had advanced science and technology thousands of
years ago. They were even supposed to have flying machines, sort of like the
old Atlantis myth.”

Dax shook his head. He twisted
around in his seat so he could follow her erratic pacing. “Atlantis is no myth.
It really existed, and its descendents are still around. I’ve never heard of
Lemuria. I’ll need to look into it. The vortex, though, is definitely real. How
do you think I got here?”

Eddy stopped in her tracks and
stared at him, looking for a twitch, a smile, anything to tell her he was
teasing.

He wasn’t.

She glanced at Willow. As if
the sprite knew she was being watched, she flashed bright blue and just as
quickly faded.

Okay.
Point made.
Eddy took a deep breath. “Why don’t you tell me exactly how
you did get here. Just promise to ignore me if I look incredulous.”

Dax stared at her for a long,
slow moment. Then he shook his head, and his gorgeous lips turned up in an
unbelievably sexy grin. “Eddy Marks, I doubt I could ever ignore you…not for
any reason.”

She felt it right between her
thighs. A hot lick of heat that had no business firing her senses and making
her muscles clench, especially after a hokey come-on like that. It took a
tremendous amount of will to continue gazing directly into those smoldering
eyes of his.
Demon’s eyes.
She had to remind herself
that, for all his appeal, Dax not only was a stranger, but he’d also already
admitted to being one of the bad guys.

“I’m waiting,” she said,
planting her hands on her hips, ignoring his innuendo and her body’s traitorous
response.

He still had that cocky grin
plastered on his gorgeous face, but at least he had settled back against the
couch. “I was a demon. An immortal in a world of evil. It suited me for a long
time, and then it didn’t.” He shrugged. “For some reason, I began to question
the life, the constant desire to cause pain, to kill.” He shook his head,
shrugged. Gave her a self-deprecating grin. “I guess I learned the hard way.
One does not question evil. I got tossed out of Abyss.”

The snake tattoo crawling out
of his waistband slowly writhed across his belly and chest. Mesmerized, Eddy
blinked. She must be more exhausted than she’d realized.

The subtle motion stopped. The
tattoo stayed put. She swallowed and raised her eyes. It was too unsettling to
steal even the quickest glance at his body, when things like that happened.
“Where does a demon go that’s worse than Hell?”

Dax ran his fingers lightly
over his tattoo. Had he felt it move? He stared at her for a moment before he
answered.

“Earth.”

Eddy blinked. “What? Life on
Earth is worse than Abyss?”

“For a demon, yes. I might
have been reborn here as a petty criminal, some kind of crook leading a useless
life, causing other people grief, or worse. I could have become a dictator, a
hired killer, a terrorist. Part of the balance of good and evil that keeps this
world in line. Not a pleasant way to spend one’s time, especially when you’re
beginning to question everything about the demon’s way.”

“So what happened?”

“I was still in the void, the
space without substance that exists where the dimensions of Earth, Abyss, and
Eden aren’t. I was unsure whether or not I even rated a rebirth after being
cast out. It’s still not clear to me how, but a contingent from Eden managed to
snag my soul out of the void.

“I vaguely recall a very
one-sided discussion. Somehow they convinced me to take on the job of ridding
Evergreen of the excess demons finding their way through the portal in your
vortex before the balance could tip too far on the side of evil. Since I’d
given up my demon body as well as the ability to manipulate inanimate objects
when I was cast out of Abyss, the Edenites gave me a living avatar, this body.
The snake tattoo holds my demonic powers of fire and ice for fighting demons.
And they gave me Willow, of course, to feed me the energy I need to use my weapons.
She’s actually a creature of Eden, and she draws her power from the air around
her.”

“What exactly are you supposed
to do?”

“My charge is to shut down the
portal in the vortex between Earth and Abyss, and destroy any of the demons
who’ve made it across the dimensions. Evergreen may be just one small town, but
all of its citizens are at risk. If I fail, demonkind will continue to gain
strength in this dimension. Other towns, other humans will be in danger. At the
very worst, all three worlds could eventually fail with me. Of course, that’s
not what Abyss wants. Their goal is to rule Earth, and maybe even Eden.”

“But why Evergreen? Like you
said, it’s just a tiny little town.”

“Mount Shasta.” He shrugged as
if it was entirely obvious.

Eddy frowned. “I still don’t…”

“The mountain is the vortex,”
Dax said. “The source of power for the portal between Earth and Abyss.
Evergreen is the closest community to the mountain and the portal that allows
demonkind entrance to this dimension. Demons aren’t strong enough yet to move
very far from the mountain—their link to Abyss—but with each day that passes,
they gain strength in this dimension.”

He glanced away, and took a
deep breath. When he turned back, Eddy could have sworn she saw a glint of
green fire in his eyes. “If they prevail,” he said, “you will fully understand
the meaning of Hell on Earth.”

She really, really couldn’t
believe she was standing here in her own front room having this conversation.
Her reporter’s instincts were screaming at her to grab her tape recorder, her
feminine instincts were all aflutter, and her brain didn’t seem to want to
function on any familiar level at all.

If it did, she wouldn’t be
accepting this outlandish tale as truth. Shouldn’t she be questioning
everything Dax said?
Yeah,
said a tiny voice in her
head.
Except that there’s this little blue fairy flying
around and a garden gnome armed with a pitchfork, and the stone owl tried to
fly and…

She paused at the back side of
the couch, planted her hands on the curved top, and leaned closer to Dax. “How
come I’ve never heard of Eden or Abyss? How come you guys know about us and
each other, but we don’t know about you?”

He wound his fingers in
Bumper’s curly coat, almost as if anchoring himself with the dog. “Absolute
evil is always aware of absolute good, and vice versa. In a way, Eden and Abyss
are two sides of the whole. Those of you Earthbound are too busy fearing both,
so you make us the stuff of legend and religion. Christians have Heaven and
Hell, Muslims have Jannah and Jahannam, Buddhists…well, you get the point.
Every religion has its own name for Paradise balanced by some form of evil
underworld.”

Damn.
He had a plausible answer for everything. “So what did they offer you? What
would make a demon agree to fight against his own kind?”

He smiled. His eyes sort of
unfocused as he gazed off into the distance. “Remember, I’d already been kicked
out of Abyss. The Edenites offered me my own shot at Paradise, at life on Eden.
The odds are against me, of course. I wasn’t a perfect demon, so it’s hard to
imagine myself as a perfect human. You must prove to be pure, without any stain
of evil on your soul, but it’s a greater chance than I had before.”

“What’s the alternative if you
fail?”

“Besides the end of life as
the three worlds know it?” He laughed softly, but Eddy had a feeling he wasn’t
really joking. “Remember, this body of mine is borrowed. I was given the form
of a man who died somewhere on Earth at some point in time—there’s little
meaning to time in the void—when I accepted the Edenites’ proposal. This body
will disappear at the end of my seven days. I, once again a demon, face
eternity in the void, but this time without chance of rebirth of any kind.
Nothing beyond memories forever of the pain and misery I knew on Abyss. Knowing
I’d come just this close…” He held his thumb and forefinger a hairsbreadth
apart. “This close to eternity in Paradise. I can’t imagine a more painful
hell, knowing I’d come so close and yet failed. Worse than my life on Abyss,
for all its agony.”

He raised his head and gazed
directly into her eyes. Eddy felt his need, his desperate hope for that one
slim chance at Paradise, and her heart sort of tumbled in her chest. If there
was any way to help…

Bumper suddenly sat up and
growled. Her curly hackles rose along her spine, and she stared over the top of
the couch at the sliding glass door leading to the backyard.

Eddy and Dax both glanced from
Bumper to Willow. The tiny creature pulsed in shades of blue, flitted away from
her perch on the bookcase, and buzzed around the room. Each lamp she passed
went out.

“What is it?”

Dax held a finger to his lips.
“Grab Bumper. Don’t let go of her.”

Eddy nodded, though she
doubted Dax saw her. The room was pitch dark without the lights. She wrapped
her fingers around Bumper’s collar and fumbled for the leash on the table
beside the couch. It took her a moment to find it in the dark, longer still to
snap it to the dog’s collar for added insurance. Bumper might only weigh fifty
pounds, but she was all muscle and sinew under that curly blond coat.

Eddy’s eyes slowly adjusted to
the darkness. She felt the shift of air currents as Dax slipped away and padded
on bare feet toward the sliding glass door. He didn’t seem to have any problem
seeing in the dark

She heard a strange sound in the
garden, a clattering noise she couldn’t quite place. Bumper growled, but
instead of lunging, she pressed tightly against Eddy’s leg. Eddy hunkered down
with the couch between her and the door, and peeked over the top to see what
was going on. Willow hovered beside Dax. Her faint glow was barely visible,
reflecting off the glass door.

Dax shouted, “Eddy! Out of the
way!”

He dove to one side as the
plate glass shattered into a million pieces. A huge, bronze horse galloped into
her front room. Its rider waved a deadly sword.

General
Humphreys? No way!

Eddy screamed and grabbed
Bumper. She lifted the dog’s fifty-pound body as if she didn’t weigh an ounce,
hauled her across the room and around the corner, where they hid in the hallway
that led to her bedroom.

Lights flashed. Dax shouted
what had to be a curse in some language Eddy’d never heard. Her little house
shook, and the smell of sulfur almost choked her. Banshee howls came from more
than one direction, and she couldn’t stand it a minute longer.

Hanging on to Bumper, Eddy
peeked around the corner. Dax stood in the far corner of the room next to the
fireplace with his back to the wall. His arms were stretched out in front of
his powerful body as he lit up the room, shooting blast after blast of fire at
the bronze horse and rider.