The Demon Abraxas (18 page)

He saw her standing in the doorway and waved her in, saying, “Shut the door behind you. How are you really?”

“Pissed,” she said.

“Sons of bitches. You didn’t get a look at ’em? That’s a shame.” One rough hand, dotted across the back with spots of brown and wiry white hairs, slid over the other.

“What’s up with Simon Drake?” she asked.

“Drake Investments wants to buy us,” he said. “Nathan was in town to soften us up for the deal. Like I’d throw us in the shitter with that lot.”

Ana glanced at the closed door. “Some of the executives want a sale?”

He didn’t answer at first and kept rubbing one hand over the other. He wasn’t wringing them, just sliding the fingers across the back of the other as if testing for something.

“It’s a lot of money,” he said.

“Why does Drake want to buy us?”

“We’re poised for growth, we’re working on the next generation of our software, but we don’t have the capital to go after the growth we could have. With the right investment, this company could triple in a year or it could fall on its ass. I’d rather grow organically, but the other VPs see profits, bonuses, raises.”

He leaned back in his chair, only a few inches from leaning forward, but his weight shifted and settled, and then he went on talking. “I have to wonder what that fucker Nathan was doing screwing around with Helen. She didn’t seem the type to be interested in that kind of flashy crap.”

“I don’t think Nathan Drake was Helen’s lover,” Ana said.

His thick brows shot up, “Why not? The cops found her goddamned toothbrush at his place.”

That was easy evidence to plant, Ana thought. But she couldn’t tell Detlefsen that Drake hadn’t been human. She put her suspicions together into reasons she could voice. “Drake talked to me after he grabbed me, when he was driving, and the way he sounded…well I found an email in Helen’s account from the person I think was her lover and it didn’t sound like Drake. I think her lover might have been someone who works here.”

“And Drake killed her, so maybe the lover set Drake up? Ratted him out to the cops ’cause he was pissed?” Detlefsen asked.

“Something like that, yes.”

His hands rubbed the arms of his chair. Those hands hadn’t stopped moving the whole time Ana spoke. “You’re going to send that email of Helen’s to me and the cops, right?”

“I already forwarded them to the police, I’m sorry I didn’t send them to you.”

He stabbed the air with his finger. “You’ve got good instincts about people. You think something else is going on, I want to hear about it. You send me anything else you find. There’s dirty business going on here and I’ll be damned if I can’t nail these rat bastards before they make us sell.”

“I will,” she said. “Thank you.”

She stood up to leave. When she had her hand on the doorknob he cleared his throat. “Don’t go anywhere by yourself,” he said. “Call me if no one’s around.”

She walked a little distance from his office, back toward shipping, and then paused to talk to Abraxas.

How much in danger am I? Do you think Drake will try to grab me from the office like Sabel said?

He sensed me in you as I sensed his demon nature, so yes, he will be making a plan to capture us. However, if he seeks to buy this company, he won’t do it in any way that connects him to your disappearance.

So don’t go anywhere alone?
Ana asked and looked into shipping where she could see four people moving around between the boxes. They were close enough to hear her if she yelled, but not so close that they could overhear her talking in a whisper so she switched to spoken words with Abraxas. She preferred speaking out loud, it made the whole voice in her head experience just a fraction less creepy.

“Why would he want to buy this company anyway?” she asked.

To channel resources to his human servants.

“Money?”

Yes, and status.

Detlefsen had mentioned bonuses as one of the reasons the VPs wanted to sell the company and she suspected they also stood to make a lot of money off the sale of their stock. Even Ana owned a little stock in the company. They got some every year. The people in leadership positions probably had a ton more shares than she did. Of course that suggested that some of Drake’s summoners worked at Roth.

“How are we going to get him?” she asked.

First, we’re going to make it harder for him to get you,
Abraxas said
. I have been thinking about how to teach you to be unpossessable. Demons cannot possess human consciousness.

“But I have been possessed,” Ana said. “I felt it. I couldn’t move or anything until you pushed him into my left side.”

The demon didn’t possess your consciousness. He possessed your identity, the self map that your body carries. By activating your painful memories, a demon can trap you in your small defensive self and command your body, but he does not actually overtake your consciousness and that’s an important difference. You must learn to separate your consciousness from the self-defined identity. Otherwise these demons will overtake you again and I will have to fight from the inside. I don’t know if you could withstand that.

That sobered her. “How do I separate from my own identity?”

Begin by simply being aware of it. You must learn to sense that the pain and fear you feel is not really you. That will spread to include other sensations, which also are not you. I’ll help you.

Ana had another question in mind that she didn’t really want to ask. Actually, when she thought about it, she had a lot of questions she didn’t want to ask. But this one came out first, “So what is thinking? Is it really a sense organ?” That had been bothering her since he first asked her in the desert days ago.

I don’t presume to say what things are, only what they could be said to be. To name a thing is to give it a certain power, but also to limit it. It is useful to think of the mind the same way you think of your other senses—as a filter through which the world comes to you.

“If I think my brain is like my ears, what good does that do me?”

What do you know about the limitations of your ears?

“The limitations? Well, there are sounds I can’t hear, like those ultra-high dog whistles. And I don’t have great pitch, I’d never make a good singer.”

Your ears do not allow all sounds through equally, as you pointed out
—
human ears can’t hear certain sounds. The brain is even more strict as a filter, ruling out a great deal. But as you remain unaware of the filter you think that you are actually having an experience of reality.

“Are you saying I’m out of touch with reality?”

Yes. You are in touch only with your own mind.

She almost didn’t want to ask, “Can I get in touch with reality?”

Maybe. Start by learning to see the mind working. Learn to listen to the speaking of your thoughts.

She laughed. “I am getting used to hearing voices in my head.” She imagined that he smiled at that.

Use your experiences with me to guide your understanding. Listen to your thinking the same way you listen to my voice.

She tried to do what he said, to listen to her thinking. What thinking? she thought. Oh, is that my thinking? I’m listening to myself thinking about listening to my thinking? Wait, I’m talking myself in circles.

Yes, you’re hearing your own thinking. Tell me how often it speaks to you.

Ana listened to herself think about that. How often? It was always there. She was always talking to herself in the back of her mind, only it had never sounded like talking before, it was just there. It was thinking. Everyone thought. Was there something wrong with that? Was she supposed to learn to stop thinking? She didn’t know how she could do that. Even as she wondered about it, she knew she was thinking about thinking, and then thinking about thinking about thinking. It went on endlessly.

“All the time,” she said. “I’m always talking to myself in my head. I can’t stop.”

Then tell me, who is listening?

For a split second, Ana heard a silence she had never experienced before. Her inner ear turned on itself and heard only the sound of its own listening, which was non-sound. The back of her head and throat opened into vastness.

It’s so big
, she thought and the vast, open feeling vanished and left her standing alone in a hallway of Roth Software with what she could only assume was a stupid grin on her face.

* * *

When Sabel had told Josefene she was ready to take the leash, Josefene insisted that they wait a day and let Sabel catch up on her sleep. On Wednesday night as Josefene fitted the woven energy inside her body, Sabel understood why.

The process took about three hours and she slipped in and out of consciousness a few times as it went on. This wasn’t a simple matter of just tossing a few cords of energy around her: the loops of the leash connected to the energy system of her body in dozens of places and allowed for varying degrees of constriction. The human energy body extended beyond the physical body in most cases, usually by a few feet, and crossed multiple fields of magic, so applying a specific set of constraints to it wasn’t easy. Depending on the kind of demon magic and its nearness, the leash could close off her throat and prevent her from speaking or could begin to constrict her chest to warn her to get away, in addition to simply knocking her out.

It went around her body in three bands: one band just below her breasts that covered her solar plexus, one above her breasts that covered her heart, and one around her throat. It was invisible and intangible to others. It felt like it rested just under her skin and she would only feel it if demon magic triggered it.

“There,” Josefene said. The leash flared for a moment and she felt a painful tightness around her chest. She opened her mouth and found she couldn’t speak. After a moment, it loosened and she couldn’t feel it at all. Josefene went on speaking, “If a demon seeks to possess you, it will render you unconscious instantly and only release when the threat is well past. If you’re in too close proximity to demon magic, it will begin to tighten more slowly so you have time to get to safety if you can.”

“How do I cause it to loosen?”

“Return here and try to relax. It should reset itself and if not I will come reset it.”

“What if I can’t get back here?”

“I’ll try to find you or, given enough time, it should reset itself unless the demon magic is still near you.”

“So if it knocks me out in a hotbed of demon magic, how long could I be out?” Sabel asked.

Josefene didn’t answer.

“I’d be out until someone finds me, wouldn’t I?”

“That’s the most likely scenario.”

“What’s the worst case?”

“If the summoners capture you and try to break the leash, eventually it would kill you.”

“Oh, great.”

“I told you, they cannot take your Voice into their dominion. The leash can slow your breathing and heart rate. If the magic is too strong or you’re in it for too long, it will kill you to protect us all.”

“You didn’t want to tell me that before you put it on me?” Sabel asked.

“As if it would have changed your mind,” Josefene said with a bare hint of lightness in her voice. “This woman, Ana, you won’t let her cloud your judgment.”

“No,” she said evenly.

“That wasn’t a question,” Josefene told her. “Now, I have the name you want and his address. We’ve done all we can to bias him toward accepting you as a new recruit. We planted some information for him about your abilities and implied that you knew Helen from a group for magically gifted seekers.”

“Thank you,” Sabel said.

The ghost of a touch fell on her shoulder. “Survive this,” Josefene said.

* * *

The name and address Josefene gave her led Sabel to an investment fund manager named Gabriel Leonard, working out of the financial district downtown. Sabel went on Thursday after her class. She expected to take the elevator up to a marble-paved lobby, but the offices looked shabby for downtown. The carpet was an old taupe and the walls seemed dusty. Outside the elevator was a tarp and ladder with a young man taking down an old sign with the firm’s name on it.

“Big changes,” Sabel asked.

“We’re redoing the whole floor,” the kid answered with a grin.

The reception desk might be paneled with faded wood, but the receptionist’s computer was top-of-the-line. Sabel told her that she was just in the area and had been recommended to Gabriel Leonard, was it possible to see him? After a few minutes of waiting, she was shown back to the man’s office.

Here the signs of renovation were more evident. Leonard sat behind a new desk of shining walnut in a mesh chair that probably cost more than all of Sabel’s office furniture combined. Leonard looked to be in his late thirties, with his brown hair cut in a deliberately messy style. He was just starting to put on an inactivity gut and the weight only showed at his belt line and in his face. She couldn’t be sure that he was the man who’d lain unconscious over Ana’s legs the night of the rescue, but his frame looked familiar. She forced herself not to stare. He shook Sabel’s hand and sat back down.

“What can I do for you?” Leonard asked.

“You look like you’ve been very successful recently,” Sabel said. “I’d like to share a bit of that success.”

“How much are you thinking you’d like to invest?”

“I got your name from Helen Reed. My investment would be in knowledge and abilities you might find useful.”

“How is Helen?” he asked smoothly, but his face was paler than it had been when she came in.

Sabel settled back in her chair and crossed her legs. “I think we both know she’s dead.”

“That doesn’t trouble you?” he asked.

“I don’t make the same mistakes other people do,” she said.

“And what do you think I can do for you?”

“I hear you’re a man of knowledge,” Sabel said. “And you work with a group of men who are good at certain things that I might be able to help with and benefit from.”